by Nick Oldham
Dix turned to face them, kettle in hand.
Marty was caught mid-way to retrieving his gun from the floor.
Debbie woke groggily to the noise, confused and woozy.
‘You do not move,’ the first one through the door shouted. The two behind him rushed past and pointed their weapons at Marty. The last man of the four covered Dix and Debbie, his gun constantly waving from one to the other.
‘On your feet,’ the first one ordered Marty.
‘Me?’ he said in disbelief.
The masked man shoved his gun right up into Marty’s face. ‘You.’
Marty rose unsteadily. His foot was still on top of his gun on the floor.
‘Let’s deal,’ Marty said quickly. ‘I’ve got money. I can give it to you.’
‘My job is to deliver you,’ the man said. ‘So shut up.’
‘Shit,’ blabbed Marty, ‘shit, shit.’
‘Come with us,’ the man beckoned Marty.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To a rendezvous.’
One of the men covering Marty grabbed his shirtfront and pulled him across the room, propelling him towards the door.
One by one they withdrew, leaving Dix and Debbie standing motionless and shocked. Dix was first to move.
‘Fucking hell,’ he cried. He stepped across to the window and looked out through the curtains to the car park below. A van of some sort was drawn up on the tarmac near the front of the motel, its registration number obscured. He watched the four men bundle Marty into the back. Three leapt in with him, the fourth got in the front passenger seat next to a driver and the van sped away, up the road. The night porter ran out behind the van and stood there arms wide, flabbergasted by events.
‘We’d better move,’ said Dix. ‘I have a bad feeling about those men, can’t think why. We need to lie very low.’
Debbie, totally out of her league, dropped back on to the bed and did the only thing she was capable of doing at that moment. She cried.
The three men pinned Marty face down on the floor of the van. One of them knelt on him, his knee pressed between Marty’s shoulder blades and his gun pressed into his neck. As soon as the back doors slammed shut, the van moved off. Marty closed his eyes and did not struggle because he knew it would be useless. He said nothing and tried to stay calm.
They travelled only a very short distance. The van slowed, turned, slowed more and stopped. Marty opened his eyes as the doors were pulled open. The gun was jammed harder into his neck and the man holding it leaned into Marty’s face, huffing garlic-scented breath over him.
‘You get out here. If you struggle you’ll die. Nod if you understand.’
Marty nodded.
‘Come.’ The man eased his knee off Marty’s spine, took hold of his collar and, keeping the muzzle pressed into Marty’s neck, pulled him out of the van. They were in a dark car park which Marty did not recognize. Away to his left, high up, was a motorway he could not place. Either the M6 or M65, but he was too disorientated to work out which.
He was pushed round to the side of the van and down a short pathway. Ahead of him he could see a group of figures in the darkness. He was prodded hard and staggered. He did not complain. He was not in a position to do so.
As the figures got closer, they became more defined in the night.
Four men were standing in a circle, looking at something. The circle parted as Marty reached them and revealed what they were inspecting. It was a man. He was on his knees. His wrists were bound around his back with duct tape, there was a blindfold of the same tape covering his eyes and a strip of it gagged his mouth.
One of the men switched on a torch. He shone the beam into Marty’s eyes, making him flinch.
‘Glad you could come,’ the man said. He turned the beam on to himself and held the torch under his chin, casting the light upwards, casting long eerie shadows up his face. Marty recognized him immediately.
‘Mendoza,’ said Marty.
‘Correct,’ he said, ‘and I don’t often make house calls.’ His voice was deep and slow and heavily accented. ‘But in your case I have made an exception.’ His English was excellent. ‘There is something I would like you to see.’
Mendoza took a step back and shone the torch at the kneeling figure on the ground. ‘Okay.’
Another man stepped behind the man and put a silenced pistol at the base of his skull, angling it upwards slightly.
‘Okay,’ Mendoza said again.
The trigger was pulled. The bullet entered the kneeling man’s head and exited through his left eye socket, taking that side of his face with it. He pitched headlong, writhing and jerking.
The killer stood over him and shot him twice more in the head, making him still.
Mendoza’s big head turned. He smiled at Marty. He had a big mouth, full of white, even teeth. ‘I want you to kneel down.’
‘Oh, Jesus, no,’ Marty gasped. He twisted away and tried to run. Hands held him tight and forced him down to the ground.
Debbie was feeling so weak she could not move. Her limbs would not respond. She felt as though she had been turned into frog spawn, or blubber, or something which had no form or substance. She was caught in a nightmare. In one way it did not feel real, in that, surely, this could not be happening to her. For God’s sake, she was a hairdresser. In another way, she knew that it was real, that she was here and that these events were definitely happening to her.
‘Harry, I feel sick,’ she moaned.
‘Yeah, me too,’ he responded. He had waited long enough to motivate her to move and was becoming irritated by her inaction. He pulled on his jacket and went to the window to look down at the car park. ‘But we need to move, get on, get out of here,’ he pleaded.
‘I know, I know – just give me a moment.’ Debbie rolled on the bed and drew her knees up into a foetal position. ‘I can’t stand up. I feel like I want to spew.’
Dix closed his eyes. He sighed and sat next to her. She grabbed one of his hands between hers and held it tight, transmitting her tremors to him. He stroked her hair.
‘It’ll be all right. We’ll just put a bit of space between them and us, chill out somewhere, make some plans, then go for it. How does that sound?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ she said weakly.
‘I love you, y’know,’ he told her.
She nodded numbly.
Dix tensed. He’d heard a vehicle coming into the car park. He sped back to the window and peered out through the gap in the curtains. It was the van which had taken Marty away. It had returned.
‘Shit, they’re back.’ He picked up the holdall, grabbed her arm and dragged her roughly off the bed. She whinged and he shook her. ‘We’ve got to move – now!’
He started for the door.
She made no attempt to follow him.
‘Now!’ he yelled.
The expression on her face changed as a dawning realization jarred her into action.
‘Come on,’ he urged her.
At the door he turned right down the corridor and headed for the fire escape at the far end. He burst through on to the steps outside, Debbie now right behind him. He closed the door and ducked down out of sight as four hooded men appeared at the far end of the corridor and crashed into room 34.
Ten minutes later the van was back on the car park where Marty was still being held down on his knees. The men climbed out and went over to Mendoza. Marty closed his eyes in desperation when he saw that none of them was carrying the holdall. It meant they had missed Dix. It also meant something far more fundamental.
Mendoza and the men from the van talked in hushed tones.
Marty looked at the body of the man who had been executed. A surge of fear corkscrewed through his intestines. His breath shortened and he swallowed back an urge to vomit.
Mendoza moved away from the men. Marty heard him say, ‘Gracias.’ He squatted down by Marty and lifted his chin up gently with the tip of his forefinger, so they were eye to eye.
‘Your friends have gone.’ There was a sort of sadness in his voice.
‘Give me a chance. He has the money. I can find him and I can pay you.’ Marty was frantic.
Mendoza shook his head. ‘Too late. Too many promises broken. Too much debt.’ Mendoza placed his hands on his thighs and pushed himself up. Marty’s eyes rose with him, pleading. Mendoza nodded at someone standing behind Marty.
The last thing Marty Cragg felt before his brain exploded was the muzzle of a gun being pushed into the back of his neck.
Nine
Henry Christie re-read through the photocopy of the custody records relating to Marty Cragg which had caught his interest previously. Every time a prisoner is brought into custody, they are allowed certain rights which can be delayed, but never totally withheld except under certain circumstances, for example, if the custody sergeant believes the prisoner is too drunk to understand what is being said, or is too violent, or both.
This had been the case on the night about six months earlier when Marty Cragg had been arrested for a fairly minor public order offence outside a Blackpool nightclub. According to the custody record, Cragg had been brought in and had been very drunk and abusive towards the arresting officers and also to the custody sergeant. Most detainees do not realize, particularly when under the influence of alcohol, that to be abusive to the sergeant is a bad move.
In Marty’s case, his behaviour resulted in him spending very little time chatting to the sergeant. He was forcibly restrained and searched and immediately heaved into a cell, the door slamming shut behind him, and he did not get his rights. He banged continually on the cell door and shouted verbal abuse for at least another hour. He urinated on the door, followed this by vomiting around the cell and then fell asleep. He had been arrested at 2.05 a.m. and was deemed to be fit enough to receive his rights, after mopping up his cell, some nine hours later at 11.15. The notes on the custody record said that he was compliant, quiet and apologetic. He was released an hour later following a written caution given by the sergeant. Because of the minor nature of the offence for which he was arrested, he did not have to provide fingerprints or a DNA sample.
Henry shook his head.
How things had changed, he pondered sadly. In his formative years as a young PC, everyone arrested would be charged and go to court and get fined at least. Not these days. Everybody got cautioned to death, or referred to some agency or other. Getting locked up meant little to people and a caution was just a piece of paper to blow your nose on. They only ended up in court for persistent offending.
And Marty Cragg had been fortunate. He had only been arrested once before for that particular offence, so he got cautioned and kicked out.
Henry’s face showed its displeasure. The criminal justice system, he thought bleakly, is fucked.
He re-read Marty’s list of previous convictions, which included several assaults. Henry decided he needed to know more about these, so he phoned down to the brainy people in the intelligence unit and asked the woman who answered to do a bit of research for him. She muttered about how busy they were, but Henry had no qualms in pulling rank for once, moaning bitch.
Then he returned to the custody record and the point at which Marty had been given his rights.
Then he had a thought and picked up his newly issued, state of the art, cancer-inducing (if reports were to be believed) TETRA radio. These new-fangled things enabled any officers in the force to talk to any other officer by simply dialling in their collar number. It did all sorts of other wonderful things, too, except tell you how to do the job. On the off chance that the officer who arrested Cragg was on duty, Henry dialled the number. He got an immediate reply.
‘Hi,’ said Henry affably and introduced himself. ‘Are you anywhere near the nick at the moment?’
‘Having breakfast upstairs.’
‘Can I come and see you?’
‘Have I done something wrong?’ the officer wanted to know.
‘No, no – just want a word with you about a job you dealt with a while back.’
Henry smiled. Bobbies always thought it was bad news when a senior officer wanted to talk to them. The thing was, he thought, that he felt exactly the same when a more senior officer beckoned him in, so things didn’t change, no matter what rank you got to, unless you got to the top – but then again, you got the police authority and Home Office on your back, so no escape.
Before leaving the office Henry dialled another number on the TETRA on the off chance and also got through. Wonders were never going to cease, he mused.
‘Rik, it’s me, Henry Christie – I need a chat about something.’
‘I’m up at Blackpool Victoria Hospital re the incident at McDonald’s at the moment,’ Rik Dean said. ‘I’ll be up here another hour at least, I reckon, boss.’
‘Okay. I might come up and see you if I get chance.’
Henry stood up, slung on his jacket and made his way to the canteen where he found PC Dave Watts tucking into a full, very unhealthy-looking breakfast. Henry knew him by sight. He paid for a mug of decaf coffee and joined him at the table.
‘Hello, sir,’ the PC said. He eyed Henry with suspicion and seemed to lose his appetite.
Henry hated being called ‘sir’, but he let it ride. Sometimes it was too much trouble to put folk right.
‘You’re not in any sort of bother,’ he reiterated.
The young man breathed a sigh of relief, took a sip of his tea and pulled his plate back towards him.
‘About six months ago you arrested someone for a public order offence outside the Palace nightclub?’
Watts’ eyebrows knitted together. ‘Did I?’
‘Probably one of dozens you’ve arrested,’ Henry conceded. ‘His name was Marty Cragg.’
‘Yeah, I remember him. Very hard work, bit of a bastard. A hard nut.’
‘What were the circumstances of the arrest?’
‘He rolled out of the club arguing with a woman. Right in front of us, he was. We were stood outside the club. They walked away, still arguing, then suddenly he turned on her and knocked her to the ground and, started kicking her. We intervened and locked him up. He should’ve been done for assault, but she wouldn’t make a complaint, so we ended up doing him for public order.’
‘Do you know who Marty Cragg is?’
The officer nodded. ‘Big time. Unfortunately he’s got a small-time temperament.’
‘Who was the girl?’
‘Dunno, she refused to give us details. She spoke with a strange accent, bit like Russians do in James Bond films.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ Henry finished his decaf.
‘That it?’
‘That’s it,’ Henry said. ‘Cheers.’
Karl Donaldson had once been a brilliant FBI field agent, working mainly in Florida from the Miami Field Office. His investigations had resulted in numerous convictions of top-flight felons as well as serial killers, bombers and rapists. He had enjoyed pitting his wits and skills against such people. But for over four years, Donaldson had not officially been on the streets, other than for occasional forays into the front line. Instead he had been ensconced in the American embassy in Grosvenor Square in London where he worked on the Legal Attaché Program, created to help foster good will and gain greater cooperation with international police partners. The FBI believes it is essential to station highly skilled special agents in countries other than America to help prevent terrorism and crime from reaching across borders and harming Americans in their homes and workplaces.
It was a wonderful job, very fulfilling and rewarding. Donaldson was settled, married to an English woman with two young children, and commuting every day into London from a little village in Hampshire called Hartley Wintney. He loved his work. He met many interesting people, got involved in many wide-ranging investigations which crossed international boundaries, but spent lots of time behind a desk, pushing paper.
In truth, he did miss working in the field. Sometimes he hankered for it so m
uch it drove his wife, who was a police officer based at the Police Staff College in Bramshill, bananas.
So what he did to alleviate this hankering was get his hands dirty from time to time, though theoretically this was a no-no.
One of the tasks he had taken on, so as to keep himself as close as possible to the sharp end, was to coordinate the activities of undercover FBI field agents operating in Europe. The general public would have been surprised by the number of agents working across the continent, but following the terrible terrorist incidents in America, the FBI had become more pro-active in infiltrating terrorist organizations worldwide. But their work was not solely focused on the terrorist, they also had a number of agents in criminal gangs in Europe too.
Donaldson enjoyed his time briefing, debriefing and staying in contact with his agents. He thought they were fantastically brave people who, without exception, made light of the dangers they faced each and every day, without, of course, underestimating them.
There were currently four agents in organized criminal gangs and Donaldson had responsibility for all of them, including an agent whose code name was Zeke.
Donaldson was a big, burly guy. Six-three, fifteen stone but with not an ounce of excess fat on him. He kept himself fit by daily runs and gym visits three times a week, as well as expending an equal amount of energy chasing his two young sons round his garden and his wife round the bedroom.
He was standing by the window in his office, sipping water from a disposable conical paper cup, looking out across Grosvenor Square but his mind was not on the view.
He smiled absently at one of the secretaries who walked past him. She was a very pretty English lady, secretly crazy about Donaldson, but his mind was not on her swaying ass.
Although no longer a field agent, Donaldson prided himself on the fact that his sharp instincts had not been blunted by desk work and sexual harassment from the staff. He knew he was as keen as ever in the brain department. Which is why, as he tossed the paper cup into the waste bin, he knew something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Henry was doing his best to avoid bumping into Jane Roscoe, although he knew it was inevitable they would soon come face to face. He resolved to tell her that their fling was over and that from now on the relationship would be purely professional and platonic. Yeah, he could do that. After all, it was only words, wasn’t it? One of the best things that could happen to him was to be taken off the Blackpool jobs and given something else to deal with at the far end of the county which would consume him for about six months. A mass murder, or something. He found himself praying for something like this to happen on the Lancashire–Yorkshire border.
