Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid

by Rob Johnson

  ‘Maybe there’s no signal,’ said the cabbie helpfully, glancing at Harry’s reddening face in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Course there’s a fucking signal, you usele…’

  MacFarland smiled to himself as Harry’s voice petered out. Despite his mood, it seemed that even Harry didn’t relish the idea of having to stand around waiting for yet another cab.

  By shifting his position slightly in his seat next to the driver, MacFarland managed to glimpse Delia’s profile in the mirror. He was staring fixedly out of the side window and appeared to be lost in thought. Come to think of it, he had spent most of the journey from Sheffield doing much the same thing, gazing out of the carriage window and barely speaking unless Harry addressed him directly. Once, he had left his seat to go to the toilet but hadn’t returned for several minutes. Harry had even commented on his lengthy absence and made some remark about how Delia might benefit from a good dose of Ex-Lax.

  MacFarland guessed that Delia had realised long ago that the best strategy for dealing with Harry in situations like this was to say as little as possible for fear that whatever he said might set him off on yet another rant. All the same, he couldn’t help wondering what was going through Delia’s mind. Keeping your gob shut to avoid incurring Harry’s wrath was one thing, but there was something about his body language and the faintly furrowed brow which seemed to suggest that something was troubling him. Maybe he was anxious about what they might find when they got to the flat, or maybe he was just mentally going through the runners and riders for tomorrow’s big race at Haydock Park or wherever.

  Then again, Delia’s behaviour had struck him as particularly odd when they’d stepped off the train at Temple Meads Station. He’d been strangely agitated and had looked repeatedly up and down the platform as if he was trying to spot someone he knew amongst the throng of disembarking passengers.

  ‘How much further?’ said Harry from the back seat of the taxi as he pressed the redial button yet again and held the mobile phone to his ear.

  ‘Not far,’ said the driver, gently revving the engine while he waited for a traffic light to turn to green.

  Harry leaned forward a few inches. ‘That’s not what I asked you,’ he said quietly but in a tone that was heavy with menace. ‘How – many – minutes?’

  The cabbie eyeballed him briefly in the mirror. ‘Dunno. Ten? Five maybe if the traffic’s not too bad and we don’t get too many more red lights.’

  Harry slumped back into his seat, clicked the cancel button on his phone and tossed it onto the space between him and Delia. ‘Useless fucking twats.’

  This time, the driver glared at him in the mirror. ‘What you say?’

  ‘It’s okay, pal,’ said MacFarland, deciding that an immediate diplomatic intervention was called for. ‘He wasnae talking to ye.’

  ‘And you can fuck off an’ all, ‘Aggis Bollocks.’

  * * *

  Once they’d spotted the dark glasses and the white stick, most of the people in the queue for taxis outside the station were insistent that he should go in front of them.

  How quaint, he thought. Almost restores one’s faith in human nature.

  But Julian Bracewell had no intention of getting too close to the head of the queue until he saw Harry and his companions were safely aboard a taxi of their own. As soon as this was accomplished, however, he became rather more proactive in getting himself to the front of the line, tapping his white stick loudly on the pavement to attract the attention of anyone who had so far failed to notice his disability. A young Nordic-looking man with an enormous rucksack helped him into a cab that had been five cars behind Harry’s, but even though these had already driven off, Harry’s hadn’t moved an inch.

  ‘Where to, guv?’ said the cabbie.

  ‘Milton Street, please. Cabot Tower.’

  The cabbie clocked him in the mirror. ‘You sure about that, guv?’

  ‘Oh absolutely.’

  The driver pulled away from the taxi rank, and Bracewell was surprised to see the passenger and rear doors of Harry’s cab suddenly open and all three men getting back out again.

  What’s he playing at now? he wondered, but quickly decided that arriving at the flat before them was probably not such a bad thing after all.

  * * *

  Logan stamped on the brake pedal and gave a long blast on the horn. The taxi had pulled straight out of the station car park and directly in front of them.

  ‘Bloody taxis,’ he said. ‘Idiot wasn’t even looking.’

  ‘We could always pull him over, sarge.’ Maggie Swann wasn’t entirely serious, but she had a vague notion that Logan might actually take her up on the suggestion if only to vent some of the anger that was threatening to resurface once again.

  He’d been perfectly upbeat when they’d first set off for Bristol, almost to the point of being uncharacteristically chirpy. But that was when they’d had some solid information to go on – the news that their quarry had finally been spotted, the vehicle he was in and even where he was heading. Since then, however, they’d had no reports about his current whereabouts. Not a dickybird. Logan was convinced this was because MI5 had put a block on anyone getting updates but themselves.

  ‘Seems like they don’t trust us,’ he’d said after yet another failed attempt to prise the information out of one of his many inside contacts.

  Swann had pointed out that this was hardly surprising since they had totally ignored the spooks’ order to drop the Trevor Hawkins enquiry altogether. This was when Logan had lost it completely and yelled at her that she was a brainless slapper and he’d see to it personally that she’d be back on the beat the minute this whole sorry business was over and done with. She had responded by telling him he was a sexist, arrogant narcissist with delusions of grandeur and the detective skills of a myopic jellyfish. After trading a series of increasingly inventive insults, they had lapsed into a sulky silence which lasted all the way from Junction 16 of the M6 motorway to just beyond Junction 7 of the M5.

  During this period, Swann had occupied herself with recalling each of the occasions when DS Logan had said or done something that had made her want to commit various acts of GBH, most of which were directed at a specific part of his anatomy. But there were just far too many to remember them all.

  From time to time, she had also found herself mulling over the facts of the current investigation – such as they were – and what the hell they were going to do when they finally got to Bristol. It was at one such moment that an idea had occurred to her, and she had reached round and grabbed Trevor Hawkins’s case file from the back seat of the car.

  She had flipped it open on her lap, aware that Logan was watching her out of the corner of his eye whilst studiously pretending to be taking no interest whatsoever in what she was doing. She’d flicked through the scant few pages to a photocopy of the notes she’d made during their interview with Trevor’s mother, and her eyes had flashed across the barely legible scribblings until she’d found the particular passage she’d been looking for.

  ‘That’s it,’ she’d said, jabbing a finger at the relevant section on the page.

  Logan hadn’t given the slightest indication that he’d even heard her speak, but the twitching muscles on the side of his face had betrayed him.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ she’d said, ‘can’t you stop sulking just for a minute?’

  ‘I am not sulking. I am simply concentrating on driving.’

  ‘Fine. So you won’t want me to distract you by telling you my idea then.’

  ‘Huh.’ Logan had managed to pack all the teenage angst of a pubescent schoolboy into that one syllable.

  Swann had slammed the folder shut and stared out of the side window while she’d waited for the inevitable.

  ‘Well?’ Logan had said after a silence of no more than thirty seconds.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘This brilliant idea of yours. You gonna tell me or not?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t want me to d
istract you from your driving.’ She could play the sulky card as well as him any day of the week.

  ‘Oh for f— Look, just tell me, okay?’

  ‘Trevor Hawkins has a sister,’ Swann had said with more than a hint of triumph in her voice.

  ‘Remarkable.’

  ‘And guess where she lives.’

  ‘How the hell should I know? The Mull of Kintyre?’

  She had milked the pause for as long as she’d dared. ‘Bristol.’

  Logan had countered the pause with one of his own. ‘Interesting.’

  Interesting? Interesting? Was that the best she was going to get?

  ‘And do we have an address?’

  Apparently it was.

  ‘Not yet,’ she’d said. ‘But it won’t exactly be hard to find out.’

  Logan had smiled for the first time in quite some while, but since they’d reached the outskirts of Bristol, the tension had returned with a vengeance. The order from MI5 couldn’t have been clearer, so even if Hawkins was at his sister’s place, what were they going to do about it?

  One thing was certain as far as Swann was concerned. Telling Logan to drop a case was almost guaranteed to make him want to pursue it all the harder, and she was being dragged along in the wake of his pigheadedness. It definitely wasn’t going to do much for her chances of promotion. – Hell, disobeying a direct order from MI5 was probably even a sacking offence.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Until the day before, Trevor’s experience of firearms had been almost non-existent, but he had little doubt that the cold, hard object which he now felt being pressed into the back of his neck was the muzzle of a gun.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said as the drummers in his chest begin to limber up.

  ‘You’re my hostage.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Look,’ said Sandra, ‘for all we know, this Patterson guy might already be on his way up here, and I for one have no intention of being caught in a flat with a dead MP who’s been strapped to a chair.’

  Trevor could appreciate the logic of this statement but still had no idea what she was proposing. He didn’t have to wait long for an explanation.

  ‘We have to get out of here sharpish,’ said Sandra. ‘The lift’s not working, and there’s only one lot of stairs. Even if there’s a fire escape, you can bet your life he’ll have that covered as well as every other way out of the building.’

  The light finally began to dawn in Trevor’s mind, and he turned to face her, assuming he was no longer in imminent danger of having his brains blown out. ‘So you’re suggesting we pretend you’ve taken me hostage and you’re going to shoot me if anyone tries to stop us.’

  ‘Precisely,’ she said and lowered the gun to her side.

  ‘But we don’t even know for certain who this Patterson is. Okay, so he might be Secret Service, but he might just as easily be one of the bad guys. Either way, he might not give a toss whether you shoot me or not.’

  Sandra shrugged. ‘I guess that’s a risk we’re going to have to take.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Trevor, I’m not actually going to shoot you whatever happens.’

  ‘Well that’s very reassuring, I must say,’ said Trevor, and then another thought occurred to him. ‘But they might.’

  Sandra rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. ‘Will you please just stop with the arguing and start looking scared?’

  Scared could be tricky, thought Trevor. On the other hand, pants-pissingly terrified would be a doddle. He looked down as she jammed the barrel of the gun into his ribs with what he considered to be an unnecessary excess of force.

  ‘You sure the safety catch is on?’ he said.

  Sandra grabbed him by the arm and marched him towards the door of the flat.

  * * *

  They were both surprised not to come across Patterson or anyone else on their way down the stairs, but as soon as they reached the ground floor they spotted him standing just inside the main entrance talking to a man in a blue denim jacket. Sandra raised her gun and pressed the muzzle against the side of Trevor’s head, making sure the weapon was clearly visible to Patterson. With her other hand, she held him firmly by the hood of his fleece.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she shouted when the two men instantly thrust their hands inside their jackets.

  They froze and then obeyed Sandra’s barked instruction to put their hands in the air and keep them where she could see them.

  ‘Now move away from the door,’ she said with a sideways nod of her head.

  The man in the denim jacket started to move but stopped again when he realised that Patterson had stayed exactly where he was.

  ‘How do we know you’re not bluffing?’ Patterson said.

  ‘Try me,’ said Sandra and pushed the gun barrel harder against Trevor’s cheekbone.

  Trevor managed to stop himself saying ‘Ow! That hurt!’ and simply winced instead. He was determined to play his part in convincing Patterson that Sandra meant business, and if the pounding of the taiko drummers in his chest and the unpleasant gurgling sensation in his bowel area were anything to go by, he was doing a pretty good job of looking terrified.

  ‘You want me to count to three?’ said Sandra when Patterson continued to stand his ground, and she gave Trevor another jab with the gun.

  ‘I do wish you’d stop doing that,’ he wanted to say, but he decided to save his complaints for later – if there was going to be a “later” of course. The likelihood that he would be having any kind of conversation with anyone in the future diminished dramatically when he heard her say ‘One’ and Patterson failed to move so much as a muscle.

  ‘Two.’

  Oh bloody Nora. Trevor closed his eyes and braced himself. Surely she wasn’t going to go back on her promise. What would she have to gain? Patterson or his mate – or probably both – would take her out a nanosecond after she pulled the trigger.

  ‘Thr—’

  ‘Okay, okay, but I don’t know how far you think you’ll get.’

  Trevor opened one eye and then the other as Patterson finished speaking, and he felt a tidal wave of relief flood through his body.

  ‘Far enough,’ said Sandra and released her grip on Trevor’s fleece long enough to point at the wall that was furthest from the entrance. ‘Over there. Shift it.’

  There was a moment’s pause, but then Patterson moved slowly in the direction she’d indicated. His companion followed, and all the while both men kept Sandra unblinkingly in their sight. Once they had reached the wall, she told them to turn and face it and place their palms against it as far up as they could reach.

  ‘Now spread ‘em,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ said Patterson, turning his head slightly away from the wall.

  ‘Come on, guys,’ said Sandra. ‘I’m sure you know the drill.’

  Patterson muttered something that Trevor couldn’t quite catch, but both men took a step back and positioned their feet about a yard apart.

  ‘You see? That wasn’t so difficult, was it? And I’m sure I don’t have to emphasise the fact that I’ll have no hesitation in blowing this bloke’s brains out if I even think you’re coming after me.’

  She winked at Trevor and released the pressure of the gun against the side of his head as they made their way to the exit. He opened the glass door, and they looked up and down the street for any sign of Patterson’s other pals. There was no-one in evidence, so they quickly crossed the road to Sandra’s Peugeot with frequent backward glances towards the flats.

  By the time they got to it, Milly was already performing her acrobatic routine and barking wildly. They made their way round to the far side of the car, and Trevor climbed in behind the steering wheel whilst having to use considerable force to push Milly over onto the passenger seat. Sandra ducked down as she made out the shapes of four men through the glass entrance to the apartment block.

  ‘Now what?’ said Trevor when she had clambered into the back of the car
and handed him the keys.

  ‘First of all, just get us out of here.’

  He started the engine, and the Peugeot lurched forward as the clutch reacted very differently from the one in his van. But by the time they reached the end of the street and he randomly decided to turn left, he’d pretty much got the hang of it.

  ‘We could do with somewhere we can lay low for a while,’ said Sandra, looking through the back window of the car to make sure they weren’t being followed. ‘Somewhere we won’t be disturbed while we make one or two phone calls.’

  Trevor glimpsed the back of her head in the rear-view mirror and then her face as she turned towards him.

  ‘Where exactly does your sister live?’ she said.

  * * *

  As soon as Trevor and Sandra had left the building, Patterson had radioed Jarvis and Coleman and told them to leave their posts at the fire escape and the emergency exit at the back and get their arses round to the entrance hall. They had arrived within seconds, and the four men watched as the white Peugeot lurched off up the road. All of them had their guns drawn, but Patterson had given the order that no-one should fire unless he told them to. In the end, though, he’d decided it was just too risky. He still had no idea who this Trevor Hawkins was, and maybe he was totally innocent. If so, he certainly didn’t want to be held responsible for the guy having his head blown off. Besides, the tracking device on the car meant they could keep tabs on them and do the necessary when the conditions were more favourable.

  ‘Let’s just hope the bloody tracker’s working,’ he said when they stepped through the door and saw the car turn left at the top of the street.

  ‘No reason why it shouldn’t,’ said Statham. ‘Those things are usually pretty reliable.’

  Patterson turned to him with a world weary expression and a tone of voice to match. ‘That’s what they said about the Titanic.’

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘instead of standing around gassing, I suggest we get on and put your optimism to the test.’

  He was about to tell Jarvis and Coleman to stay where they were and keep an eye out for anyone who looked even vaguely suspicious when a silver-coloured taxi pulled up on the opposite side of the street. All four watched in silence as the driver got out and opened the rear door that was nearest to them and then went to the back of the car and lifted the boot. The passenger emerged, wearing dark glasses and carrying a long white stick, and felt his way along the side of the taxi while the cabbie took a small brown suitcase from the boot and slammed the lid shut.