The Crime Trade

by Simon Kernick

  Since he and Stegs had arrived more than an hour ago, they’d been thoroughly searched, before undergoing a long and repetitive sequence of questions from Fellano about deals they’d done, people they were meant to know, etc. The Colombian had been trying to read them, to probe for weakness, not so much in their accounts of themselves, but in their characters, and Vokes was beginning to convince himself that the reason for this was that he was on to them. Knew who they were and was working out what to do about it. Fellano was a ruthless man. He had a reasonably good reputation in the marketplace (as much as anyone who sells hard drugs has a reasonably good reputation), but cross him – give him any reason to doubt you – and you could expect no mercy. Vokes had heard a rumour once that Fellano had personally cut the tongue out of a police informant’s mouth back in Cali, and had replaced it with the man’s penis. It wasn’t a thought he wanted to dwell on.

  He kept pacing, telling himself that it was he who was getting too paranoid. What possible reason was there to suspect the two of them? As always, they’d played everything just right, their stories standing up even to the closest scrutiny, their demeanour that of men not to be trifled with. And with back-up just round the corner, ready to move in if anything looked like it was going to go wrong. But even bearing all this in mind, Vokes didn’t like the fact that he was split up from his partner and stuck in a hotel room with two armed men who insisted on wearing sunglasses on a wet English afternoon.

  The phone on the bedside table rang, shattering the heavy silence.

  Vokes stopped. Dead.

  Slowly, he turned and stared at it. So did the two Colombians. It rang again, a long, shrill tone that seemed far too loud for the room. Who the hell was this meant to be?

  An urgent message in his head said: Run! Get out of there! In fact, it didn’t just say it, it screamed it. RUN! GRAB THE DOOR HANDLE, TURN IT, AND GET YOUR ARSE OUT OF THERE!

  He glanced at the two Colombians, who were looking at each other, their expressions puzzled. The phone rang a third time.

  One of them strode over and picked up the receiver. At the same time, the second Colombian, perhaps reading their hostage’s thoughts, produced a silver Walther PPK from inside his suit. He pointed it at Vokes and motioned him to get on the bed. ‘Now, now,’ he demanded impatiently.

  Vokes looked over at the other Colombian, the one on the phone. He hadn’t said anything since he’d picked it up but was listening to someone on the other end, at the same time staring hard at Vokes. He too removed a gun from his pocket – a Glock, Vokes reckoned. It didn’t seem like he was pleased by whatever it was he was hearing.

  Vokes thought of his two young children and realized then that he was too old for this game; that this was the last time he’d ever go undercover; that no more would he attend clandestine meetings in bleak hotel rooms with men who’d kill him without a second’s thought because that was what life was worth where they came from – nothing. He realized too that he was beginning to panic for the first time ever on an op, an unfamiliar feeling of dread spreading through him like a poison, and that was another reason why Stegs should have been up here in this room instead of him, because he was always able to handle the pressure.

  ‘Get on the bed, now.’

  The words came from the one holding the phone, except now he wasn’t holding it, he’d replaced it in its cradle, and his expression behind the glasses was angry. He walked over, gun waving, and grabbed Vokes by the arm, pushing him towards the bed. Vokes tried to sit on it, but was roughly pushed face down. He could feel the barrel of the Glock against the back of his head.

  ‘Stay there, do not move,’ said the gunman, before adding something to his colleague in Spanish.

  Vokes was shaking, shaking with absolute fear, and he could feel the sweat from his forehead sliding onto the sheets. He offered a silent prayer to the Lord, but it didn’t make him feel any better. He had never been so scared in his life because he knew that this was the closest he had ever been to death. And all the time he was wondering who the hell had made that phone call, what they’d said and, most importantly of all, when the cavalry were going to show themselves.

  The boot opened to reveal a leather briefcase similar to the one Fellano had shown them upstairs. He and Stegs leant in, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, while Moustache stood back. Fellano unclipped the locks and opened the case. A quick count revealed nineteen kilo bags of white powder inside.

  ‘Are you satisfied, my friend?’ the Colombian asked with a smile.

  ‘I’ll need to test it, a sample from each bag.’

  ‘Of course, we will do that back in the room.’

  Stegs nodded, standing back up as he shut the briefcase and closed the boot. ‘I’ll go and get the money and catch you up,’ he said. ‘My car’s just over there.’

  Fellano raised an eyebrow to indicate that he wasn’t sure about this change of plan.

  ‘We’ll look too conspicuous going over and staring in the boot of my car as well,’ Stegs told him, ‘and now I know you’ve got the stuff, plus my colleague, I’ve got no incentive not to bring it up to the room.’

  Fellano still didn’t appear convinced and gave him a hard stare in an attempt to prise out any lies from behind his eyes, but Stegs kept his business expression firmly on his face, and eventually the Colombian relented. ‘All right, but I want to get this deal sorted out right now, so hurry up. I have a plane to catch.’

  Stegs felt like telling him that if he hadn’t messed them around so much earlier he’d have had a lot more time, but instead he turned and walked away in the direction of the parked Merc fifty yards further along the row of cars. When he’d gone about twenty yards, he turned and saw Fellano and Moustache walking back to the hotel, Fellano’s ample wedge of black hair flying comically about in the high wind. He was talking on a mobile, and Stegs wondered who it was he was speaking to, and what exactly he was saying.

  He reached the Merc, flicked up the boot and removed the holdall, putting it over one shoulder. Fellano and Moustache had slowed right up in the middle of the car park, waiting for him. Reluctantly, he started after them, wondering just how conspicuous they wanted to be, and why they didn’t want to wait five minutes in the warmth of the hotel room for him to arrive, rather than hanging about in the rain.

  When he was within about twenty yards of them, something caught his eye. Three smartly dressed men – two black, one white – in raincoats and caps were getting out of a car a few yards behind the Colombians and to their right, and one of them was watching them intently from behind a pair of glasses that looked brand new and didn’t seem to fit his face.

  The man didn’t look right, not at all. Neither did the other two. They might have been dressed smartly but they weren’t like any normal businessmen Stegs had ever met. Who on earth wears a baseball cap with a suit? Maybe the odd fashion casualty, not three together. There was something else too. They were hard bastards, you could see it immediately; it’s not a look a man can hide very easily. He also noticed that the black guy with the glasses was holding something under his coat.

  Straight away he knew it was a gun, most likely a shotgun, and straight away he knew that it was there to be pointed at Fellano. Instinctively, he slowed down. At the same time, Fellano turned in Stegs’s direction, tapping his watch in a gesture of impatience, and then suddenly a look of shock crossed his face.

  Stegs froze as he heard the sound of rapid footsteps behind him, and the next second something hard and metallic was being pressed into his back. ‘Don’t fucking move,’ hissed his assailant, ripping the holdall from his shoulders, ‘or you’re dead. I’ll blow your fucking spine out. Got that?’

  ‘It’s all yours,’ said Stegs calmly, making no move to resist, too busy looking straight ahead of him at the scene unravelling in what felt a lot like slow motion. Moustache was reaching into his pocket for a gun while Fellano himself simply stood there, mouth open, watching Stegs, still completely unaware that the three men were makin
g straight for him and the briefcase, weapons now appearing from under their coats. Stegs was right about the shotgun; it was a nasty-looking sawn-off pump-action, and it was pointing straight at Fellano’s back.

  At that moment, Fellano must have heard them, or seen something out of the corner of his eye, because he swung round in their direction. Moustache turned as well, an Uzi coming out from his jacket, and Stegs, still standing there as his assailant secured the holdall, knew then that this was going to get very very messy.

  ‘Give us the fucking case!’ screamed the man with the shotgun, now only five yards from Fellano.

  At the same time, Moustache aimed the Uzi at the three robbers, pushing his boss out of the way and going for the safety at the same time. Beyond the group, Stegs could see those people in earshot turning round to see what on earth was going on, utterly transfixed by the shock of the surreal scene being played out in front of them. It was a first for Stegs as well, and difficult for him to get his head round, because even in his sort of game you didn’t expect everyone suddenly to go for the guns and start shooting. That sort of thing belonged firmly in Hollywood films.

  ‘Drop the fucking gun!’ yelled the pistol-wielding white robber as he caught sight of the Uzi for the first time, but it was already too late.

  Shotgun screwed his face into a snarl and, still coming at his target, pulled the trigger.

  And that was when all hell broke loose. Moustache flew backwards, the force of the blast lifting him off his feet, while his Uzi suddenly kicked into life, its thirty-two rounds discharging at the sky in a shrill clatter as his grip on the handle loosened. He hit the ground hard and the shotgun roared again, the noise making Stegs’s ears ring. This time, though, it missed its target and blew a gaping hole in the tyre of a people carrier opposite, immediately setting off the alarm.

  Someone somewhere let out a scream. Someone somewhere else shouted: ‘Armed police, drop your weapons!’

  The white robber had reached Fellano now and was trying to wrestle the briefcase out of his hand, with the help of one of his colleagues. Meanwhile Shotgun was waving his weapon in the direction of the dozen or so men in casual clothes – all wearing black caps – who were now appearing from among the cars, guns drawn, closing in on the scene.

  ‘Armed police! Drop your weapons!’

  But you could see straight away that Shotgun was not going to go quietly. This was a man who had never gone quietly anywhere in his life. His face screaming defiance, he pointed the weapon at a youngish guy in jeans and a leather jacket who was just coming round the back of the people carrier, an MP5 outstretched in both hands.

  The cop made the decision no-one with a conscience ever likes to make, and he made it quicker than his target. Two bullets cracked out of the MP5, hitting Shotgun in the upper body. Another cop also fired from behind a Nissan, the same two-shot double tap, this time the rounds striking their target in the face.

  Shotgun whirled round, still holding the weapon, still trying to fire, and then a third two-shot volley struck him in the side of the head, the final bloody coup de grâce. He died immediately, staring in Stegs’s direction, the shotgun slipping out of his hands and discharging for a third time as it hit the ground in a final gesture of defiant rage, the blast setting off another car alarm.

  No-one else decided to go out the hard way. Fellano’s hands shot skywards, and the other two robbers made the same gesture, although far more slowly, the shock of their predicament taking a little longer to register. At the same time, two cops in caps came round from behind Stegs, and he was pushed roughly to the ground. He just managed to get a glance at the man who’d relieved him of his holdall getting the same treatment five yards away before his face was pushed into a puddle and the cuffs were unceremoniously forced on to his wrists.

  The hotel room was on the fifth floor and the same side as the car park, so even with the soundproofing the shots and the general cacophony of the confrontation were clearly audible.

  Vokes heard his two guards talking rapidly to each other in Spanish, and his fear grew even more intense. He was shaking violently, the dread at what might happen to him becoming almost unbearable. If I get out of this, then that’s it, he told himself. I’m retired. Not just undercover, but the whole thing. They had a codeword if things went wrong but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by using it, and anyway, help should have been here by now. They were only in the next room. What was keeping them? Hurry up! he silently cursed. Get your arses moving! Let me get back to my family. Please, Father. Please, Lord. Not for me, but for them.

  One of the Colombians had stopped at the end of the bed. Vokes could sense it. Then he heard the door opening, the sound of movement and shouting in the corridor outside, and he was already thanking the good Lord for listening to his prayers when the silencer spat and the bullet ripped through the back of his head and into his brain.

  Paul Vokerman’s executioner was twenty-eight-year-old Manuel Lopez, known as Manolo to his friends, a long-term junior member of the Cali cartel and an ex-soldier in the Colombian army, now resident in London. He was a killer by trade and, as Vokes had suspected, thought no more about ending a life than he did about taking a leak. It was, after all, just business.

  Manolo fired a second round into the back of Vokes’s head, just to make sure, then turned towards the open door where his colleague, twenty-six-year-old Pedro Daroda, was standing. He could hear the noise of footsteps coming from outside, then the staccato bark of orders, and he realized they’d been betrayed. Pedro stepped out into the hallway, raised his gun, and then fell backwards as shots rang out. Manolo ran over to the side of the bed furthest from the door, then crouched down gun pointed out into the hallway, thinking that he was at least going to make it difficult for them.

  A black-clad figure half appeared round the door, gun outstretched, and Manolo fired twice, both rounds hitting the burgundy-coloured wall in the hallway as the cop stepped back. A moment later, a second cop appeared round the other side of the door, and started firing. Manolo let off a shot but was forced to turn away as the bullets passed over his head, the noise of them bursting in his ears. Suddenly there was a much louder bang somewhere near the foot of the bed, and he became disorientated and unable to see properly. It was as if somebody had force-fed him a bottle of whisky and dropped him on his head from a fifth-floor window, and he knew they’d used a stun grenade. But, even dazed, he still held the gun as the black-clad police in breathing apparatus came into view and, with a gesture of defiance that perfectly mirrored the expression of the man with the shotgun in the car park below, raised it in front of him, aiming at the first officer’s crotch.

  Sergeant Phil Winter of Scotland Yard’s elite firearms squad SO19 didn’t hestitate. He’d already seen the body of DC Paul Vokerman face-down on the bed, a growing bloodstain soaking the sheets around his head; now one of the suspects, hunched down in the corner of the room beside the bed, was lifting his gun. Two shots, then a step, two shots, then another step, then another two shots, every one of them finding their target. Beside him Constable Sammy Jecks opened up with his MP5, and the body of Manuel Lopez did a strange dance as the bullets ripped into his head and body and charged about his insides, ripping them and him apart.

  Minimum force. The training always says only the minimum amount of force possible must be used to incapacitate a subject. Shoot him too many times, particularly when it’s clear he’s no longer a threat, and a police officer leaves him or herself open to charges of manslaughter, or even, in extreme cases, murder. But Winter couldn’t resist pumping another two into the Colombian’s guts as he continued towards him, knowing that statistically he probably wasn’t going to get another opportunity to pop a bad guy. Lopez’s head slumped, the Glock with silencer fell from his dead hand, and Winter stopped in front of him, before kicking him hard in the face.

  Jecks rushed up to Vokerman and tried to find a pulse, but Winter could tell from the expression on his colleague’s face that it was
a lost cause. He turned to the door as the senior officers involved in what was supposed to have been a highly successful sting operation entered the room along with the remainder of the SO19 team. They didn’t look too happy.

  And that, unfortunately, is where I, DI John Gallan, join the tale, being one of those senior officers involved. The thing is, I was only meant to be there as an observer, as was my colleague, WDS Tina Boyd, but I don’t think that fact made either of us feel any better. It had been our informant who had provided the details and false character references that had set up ‘Stegs’ Jenner and Paul ‘Vokes’ Vokerman, both members of Scotland Yard’s specialist undercover unit, SO10, with a group of high-level Colombian drugs traffickers, so as Tina and I followed DCS Noel Flanagan and DI Asif Malik of Scotland Yard’s organized crime unit, SO7, into the hotel room, I was experiencing a feeling in my insides that was a nasty combination of fear, shame and nausea. As I saw the ruined bodies of Manolo Lopez and Vokes Vokerman, one of whom I’d got to know quite well over the past few weeks, watched the frantic efforts of the medical team as they worked their futile magic, and heard DI Malik curse loudly under his breath, the question I remember I kept asking myself was a very simple one.

  What the hell had gone wrong?

  2

  ‘What the fuck went wrong?’

  The voice belonged to Detective Chief Superintendent Noel Flanagan who’d been in charge of the monumentally misnamed Operation Surgical Strike, the carefully planned sting that had resulted in the deaths of five people, one of them a decorated police officer with eighteen years’ service under his belt, and the hospitalization of a witness who’d suffered a heart attack at the scene. It was a good question, and one Flanagan was going to need to get answered if there was any hope of him saving his hitherto successful, if not entirely blameless, career. Three hours had passed since the gun battle in the hotel car park and the fall-out was already beginning.