by Rob Johnson
‘So what do we do now then?’ said Statham.
‘We wait.’
‘For?’
‘For them to come out.’ Patterson looked towards the block of flats. ‘I don’t see we have much choice given that they could be in any one of seventy-odd apartments. In the meantime, we need to find out how many exits there are and stick a tracker on the car. Just in case they give us the slip – again.’
He pondered the situation while Statham went back to the Skoda and opened the boot. On balance, grabbing them in the street might even be a better option than bursting into some flat where they’d no idea what to expect. How many of them were there? He doubted there’d be just the two from the Peugeot What sort of weapons had they got? He checked his watch. And where the hell were Jarvis and Coleman?
Statham came back from the car and, as if seeking Patterson’s approval, held out a piece of black plastic that was about the same size and shape as a box of matches. Patterson glanced at the tracking device and nodded.
‘It’s a pity the car’s right opposite the flats,’ he said. ‘We’ll just have to brazen it out and hope the apartment’s at the back of the building or that no-one’s looking out the window.’
They set off down the litter-strewn pavement, and when they reached the Peugeot, Statham knelt down and attached the magnetic tracking device to the underside of the car. The metallic “clunk” must have woken the dog, which he’d failed to notice on the back seat, because she immediately sprang to her feet and began barking wildly at the perceived intruders through the partially open window.
He staggered backwards on his haunches and threw out a hand to stop himself falling. ‘What the—’
‘Still got the mutt I see,’ said Patterson and scratched his head while he contemplated whether the dog’s presence had any particular significance.
‘You might have warned me,’ said Statham, getting to his feet and brushing the dust from his trousers.
Patterson ignored the remark and scanned the windows at the front of the apartment block. ‘Don’t think anybody heard.’ He looked back at the dog, who seemed to take this as her cue to crank up the volume by several decibels.
‘Not yet anyway,’ he added and stepped off the pavement as the dog threw back her head and emitted a wolf-like howl of ear shattering proportions. ‘Come on, Colin. Get a wriggle on.’
They had barely reached the middle of the road when a screech of tyres from the far end of the street stopped them in their tracks. They spun round to see a dark blue Mondeo hurtling around the corner and fishtailing this way and that as the driver fought to regain traction.
Patterson’s jaw dropped as he watched the car straighten and then accelerate towards them. When it was within a few yards of where they stood, they heard the high pitched squeal of rubber against tarmac for a second time, and the car slewed sideways and came to a shuddering halt, almost blocking the entire width of the road.
‘Well if it isn’t Starsky and Hutch,’ Patterson muttered through gritted teeth, glaring back at Jarvis and Coleman as they beamed at him through the windscreen.
Jarvis leaned his head out of the driver’s window. ‘All right, guv?’ he said and gave him the thumbs up.
Patterson walked slowly over to the car. ‘I’m surprised that’s pink and not brown,’ he said, pointing at Jarvis’s outstretched thumb.
‘Sir?’ Jarvis’s broad grin was instantly replaced with a look of blank incomprehension.
‘Given that you seem to spend most of your time with your thumb up your bum and your brain in neutral.’
Jarvis’s vacant expression remained unchanged.
‘Tell me, Jarvis. Exactly what does the word “covert” mean to you, as in the phrase “covert operation”?’
‘Er—’
Patterson slammed his fist down onto the roof of the car. ‘Just park the bloody thing before you cause an accident.’
He stood back, and Jarvis began to manoeuvre the Mondeo towards the kerb. Once again, his eyes ranged across the windows of the apartment block to check whether anyone had been alerted by this second disturbance, but it appeared that all of the residents were either profoundly deaf or none of the flats at the front were inhabited.
‘Second floor.’
‘What?’ Patterson turned to see that Statham was pointing towards the flats.
‘Third from the left,’ he said. ‘Thought I saw somebody.’
Patterson grabbed his wrist and forced his arm downwards. ‘Jesus, Colin, you don’t have to point.’ He looked up at the window Statham had indicated. ‘Well there’s nobody there now, which I must say I find quite surprising. I mean, short of parading up and down with a bloody great banner saying “Hello, we’re from MI5 and we’re after your arses”, I don’t think we could have done a better job of announcing our presence.’
‘Double bluff?’ said Statham with a half-hearted shrug.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Well if you think about it from the bad guys’ point of view, they probably wouldn’t take any notice. They’d be expecting the Secret Service or whoever to be a bit more… secret.’
Patterson stared at him and wondered how it was possible that he had been assigned three of the most incompetent agents in the Service to carry out an operation which was supposedly a matter of national importance. – Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the whole thing was about setting him up to fail.
He hadn’t exactly been popular with MI5’s top brass ever since he’d been involved in an investigation into a suspected terrorist plot to assassinate Prince Charles some years back. Despite being a loyal patriot, Patterson had never been a big fan of certain members of the Royal Family and had happened to remark to a colleague that Prince Charles was a gormless tree-hugger with delusions of ordinariness and that his dad was a freeloading waste of space with a talent for insulting people. Unfortunately, the comment was overheard by one of the Prince’s staff, who put in an official complaint questioning whether “an anti-monarchist and probable communist sympathiser” was the right sort of person to be working for the British security services.
Patterson’s superiors were clearly of a similar opinion, and it was only because of the impressive inroads he’d made in a separate ongoing investigation that he wasn’t sacked on the spot. But that investigation had long since been concluded, and every assignment he’d been given from that point on could have been filed under “Largely Pointless and Potentially Dangerous” or occasionally “Successful Outcome Unlikely”. Perhaps his bosses had some knowledge that this current operation came into the second category – if not both – and failure would give them the perfect excuse to get rid of him once and for all.
‘Sod that for a game of soldiers,’ he said aloud and registered Statham’s frown of bewilderment. He had no intention of explaining what he meant, so he pre-empted any enquiry by turning his back and strode towards the entrance to the flats.
‘Stop dawdling, Colin,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Trevor’s eyes still smarted from the pepper spray, but at least his vision had returned to something like normal and he no longer had to rely on Sandra to lead him around by the hand. The hacking cough had also subsided to the occasional need to clear his throat, and when he spoke, the words were accompanied by an asthmatic wheezing sound from deep inside his chest.
‘So what’s with… the underpants?’ he rasped as he and Sandra stood gazing down at the dead man in the armchair and the pair of bright red briefs that lay in his lap.
Sandra picked them up daintily between her forefinger and thumb.
‘Haven’t a clue,’ she said, holding them up to the light to examine them more closely. ‘Maybe some sort of pervy thing. Doesn’t seem to be any sign of semen, though, as far as I can tell.’
‘Oh please,’ said Trevor, his features contorted with repulsion.
Sandra grinned at him. ‘What’s the matter? Not going squeamish on me, are you?’
With that, she flicked her wrist and let go of the underpants, launching them directly at Trevor’s face. He instinctively threw up his arms to defend himself, but his reactions were too slow, and the briefs landed on his shoulder. He brushed them off with the back of his hand as if he were being attacked by a swarm of hornets.
‘Do you not think we could be… serious here for a moment?’ he said, stifling a coughing fit. ‘I mean, we do happen to be in an empty flat with a dead bloke strapped to a chair and God-knows-who about to walk through the door at any second.’
Sandra forced the corners of her mouth downwards and frowned in a theatrical display of gravity. ‘Sorry, Trevor,’ she said, her voice almost masculine in pitch. ‘It won’t happen again. Promise.’
‘You see. That’s exactly what I—’
‘Have a look through his pockets.’
Trevor recognised the sudden shift in her tone from sarcastic to businesslike. He understood exactly what she was asking him to do but decided he needed further confirmation. ‘Pardon?’
‘We need to find out who he is, don’t we?’
Assuming that the question was rhetorical, he didn’t reply. Besides, he was busy contemplating whether they really did need to find out the guy’s identity. What did it matter? He was dead. End of story. Or perhaps it wasn’t. The end of the story – or the beginning of the end – might be when the police or Harry and his cronies or some other bunch of psychopathic lunatics turned up and found them with a dead body. Why should he care who the bloke was? Far better that they left it a mystery and got the hell out of there.
‘He’s not going to bite,’ said Sandra with evident impatience.
‘Why don’t you do it then?’
‘I’m covering you.’
‘From a dead man?’
‘From any unexpected visitors.’ Sandra waved her gun vaguely in the direction of the apartment door.
She was right of course. It wasn’t as if a corpse could do him any harm as such. It was just that—
‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ said Sandra and reached towards the body with her gun-free hand.
‘Okay, okay, I’m doing it,’ said Trevor, deflecting her outstretched arm with his own and placing himself between her and the chair.
He avoided looking at the man’s face and concentrated instead on the lapel of his charcoal grey jacket. Careful not to make any direct physical contact with the body itself, he slowly peeled the lapel backwards until the inside pocket was revealed.
‘Expensive,’ he said, more to himself than to Sandra when he spotted the Savile Row label.
He slid his fingers into the pocket and felt the edge of some kind of wallet. With all the caution of someone removing the trigger mechanism from a nuclear bomb, he eased it out and saw that it was indeed a slim, black leather wallet and had the initials G.M.Q. embossed in gold in one corner. He flipped it open. The main section contained a dozen or so banknotes, and all the other compartments were filled with an assortment of business cards and credit cards. He selected one of the latter at random.
‘Mr Gerald M. Quicke,’ he read aloud. ‘Mean anything to you?’
Sandra shrugged. ‘The Quicke and the dead? Never heard of him. See if there’s something else.’
Trevor looked again, and although only the top edges of the cards were visible, he noticed that one of them was slightly different from the others. It was fractionally larger than a standard credit card, and the upper part of a gold-coloured crest seemed strangely familiar. He slipped the card from its compartment.
‘Bloody Nora,’ he said, almost dropping the card.
‘Well?’ Sandra’s patience was clearly being tried to the limits.
‘Gerald Montague Quicke—’
‘Yes, you’ve said that already,’ she snapped.
‘—Member of Parliament for Baileyhill and Redbridge.’
Sandra whistled softly through her teeth and pursed her lips. ‘As you say, bloody Nora,’ she said and took the card from him to examine it for herself.
‘Right,’ said Trevor, trying to sound assertive but the quaver in his voice giving him away. ‘There’s nothing else we can do here, so I suggest we get out before someone turns up.’
But his attempt to take control of the situation fell on deaf ears, and Sandra ignored him.
‘At least that explains why MI5 are involved,’ she said, looking from the photograph on the identity card to the ashen features of the man in the chair and back again as if to verify they really were one and the same.
‘Oh?’ said Trevor, realising that unless he walked out of the flat on his own, he’d just have to wait until Sandra was good and ready to go with him.
She nodded towards the body in the chair. ‘This isn’t just any old stiff. This is a Member of bloody Parliament. The duly elected representative of the good people of Baileyhill and…’
‘Redbridge.’
‘Whatever. You want me to draw you a picture?’
Trevor guessed his expression must have conveyed mystified bemusement, but this was far from being the case. He knew as well as she did how all of the pieces had suddenly fallen into place. Or nearly all.
‘The bit I don’t get though…’ he said, hoping this would indicate that he understood all the rest of it and so wasn’t as stupid as she seemed to think. ‘The thing I can’t get my head round is why Harry’s mob would want to kidnap an MP. I mean, he’s not even a well known one, is he? Why not go for a Cabinet Minister or one that’s never got their mug off the telly?’
‘No idea. But I certainly intend to find out,’ said Sandra. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing else we can do here. Let’s go before someone shows up.’
Trevor rolled his eyes. So she had been listening to him after all. ‘And what about the Honourable Member for Baileyhill and Redbridge?’ he said, even though he had no desire to delay their escape a second longer than necessary.
Sandra glanced at the dead MP. ‘There’ll have to be a by-election, I suppose.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said. ‘I’m talking about…’ He tailed off when she turned towards him and he could see the smirk on her face.
‘I know what you meant,’ she said. ‘We’ll tip off the police as soon as we’re clear of the place. Anonymously, of course.’
Trevor barely registered the last few words as his attention was distracted by the screech of tyres from the street outside. ‘What was that?’
‘Somebody in a hurry by the sound of it.’
He was already at the window, looking down on a dark blue Ford Mondeo that was slewed sideways across the middle of the road. The driver had his head out of the window, and a shortish man in a tan-coloured leather jacket seemed to be yelling at him while another guy stood watching from a couple of yards away. There was something familiar about the man in the leather jacket, but he couldn’t quite place him. As he trawled his memory for some clue as to where he’d seen him before, he became aware of Milly’s frantic barking from inside Sandra’s car.
‘Anything I should know about?’ said Sandra, who had made no move to join him at the window.
Trevor was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy about what he was seeing and hearing from outside and thought that her tone seemed inappropriately nonchalant. He was about to tell her what was going on when the man who was talking to the driver suddenly slammed his fist down onto the roof of the car and took a step backwards.
‘Holy shit,’ said Trevor when the man’s face came fully into view for the first time, and he instantly ducked down below the window sill. ‘It’s him.’
‘Him who?’ Sandra’s tone was a lot less nonchalant all of a sudden.
‘The guy who stopped me when I was trying to leave the festival.’
‘The one you almost ran over?’
‘That’s the one. Er… Patterson.’
‘On his own?’
Trevor shook his head and crawled to the side of the window so he could stand upright again without being seen. ‘No, there’s a
t least two others. Maybe more.’
‘Anyone see you?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Well that’s something to be grateful for, I guess.’
From his position beside the window, Trevor strained to try to see what was happening in the street below without being spotted himself. He soon discovered that this was an almost impossible task and decided to err on the side of caution. He began to turn towards Sandra but stopped immediately when he felt something hard and cold being pressed into the back of his neck, just below the base of his skull.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
‘Useless fucking twats.’
MacFarland had seen Harry Vincent in some blisteringly foul moods before but never anything that came even close to this one. Apart from an all too brief interlude when he’d fallen asleep, Harry had spent almost the entire train journey labelling pretty much everyone as useless fucking twats – all of the other passengers who were keeping him awake with their ‘constant bloody yattering’; the train company for making him spill piping hot coffee and staining his clean white shirt; the railway engineers for ‘pratting about’ and making him half an hour late arriving in Bristol; and of course MacFarland himself for just about everything.
The driver of the taxi they’d climbed into outside the station was another one, but this was after he’d taken exception to Harry’s derogatory remark about his ethnicity and ordered them back out again before he’d even released the handbrake. Then, every taxi driver on the planet automatically became a useless fucking twat on the basis that Harry had had to wait ten more minutes until another cab was available.
In this particular instance – and on several occasions during the past hour – the twats in question were Carrot and Lenny. Ever since Harry had first called them from the train, he had repeatedly tried to phone them back but with a resounding lack of success.
‘Why don’t the bastards pick up?’ he said in response to the incessant ringing tone as the second taxi driver ferried them through the streets of Bristol.
