Shadows of Good Friday (Alex King Book 3)

by A P Bateman

  Shadows of Good Friday

  By

  A P Bateman

  Text © Anthony Paul Bateman

  2017

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, printing or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

  Author contact: authorapbateman@gmail.com

  Facebook: @authorapbateman

  Website: http://anthonybateman1.wix.com/author-blog

  Also by A P Bateman

  The Alex King Series

  The Contract Man

  Lies and Retribution

  The Rob Stone Series

  The Ares Virus

  The Town

  The Island

  For the chance to win a Kindle Fire HD and signed copies of A P Bateman’s books see details on how to enter after the story.

  For my wife Clair.

  Without your support and understanding this novel would never have been written.

  For Summer and Lewis, my two gorgeous children.

  Without you, this novel would have been finished so much sooner…

  1

  Autumn 1992,

  London

  The night is cold and dark. Despite the usual ambience of the city it is dull and the buildings close in on him in, consolidating the darkness to near total effect. The mist is dense too, surrounding him and dampening his clothes, as well as his spirits.

  He watches as the blue light bounces across the damp walls, a strobe-like phosphorescence niggling and teasing at the corners and recesses of the buildings and around the edges of the rubbish bin he is hiding behind. It is an American-style dumpster, and has not been emptied recently. He tucks his legs up closer to his body and pushes himself back against the wall. A gutter has dislodged above and is showering him under a cascade of drips; cold and probing at his collar. The stench is hateful, he has pressed his hand onto something gelatinous, rubbery and wet. He knows what it is, before he glances at it in the gloom. The alley is littered with them, a popular place for quick transactions and ill-conceived urges, and the inevitable walk of shame.

  A sweep of a torch lights up the alley. He can hear the crackle of voices, the static of radios. He cannot hear what is said, but he picks up on the tone and urgency of the short message. The net is closing in. The torch beam sweeps back and forth, probing the extremities, casting shadows upon the damp walls. His shadow is not one of them, the dumpster and collection of smaller bins are temporarily projected on the wall behind. The beam retracts and the alley is dark once more. He is about to move when the beam sweeps back. The light refreshed, slashing through the dismal shadow with renewed vigour. He realises it is another officer’s torch. The net is not only closing, but strengthening as the police numbers swell. He needs to get out of here, needs to put distance between himself and the search party. The beam sweeps across the walls and the boarded-up doorways. He pulls his legs closer, moves his hand and places it back down on broken glass. There is a distinct ‘crack’ in the air along with his sharp intake of breath. The alley goes dark and the burst of static suddenly sounds distant.

  His hand is badly cut and the blood is running down his wrist as he pulls his hand close to his face to inspect it through the gloom. It is a bad wound and he makes the mistake of pulling the shard of glass clear. It hurts, but he isn’t ready for the amount of blood. The wound is open and running like a tap with a worn washer. He pulls his jacket off and removes his T-shirt and uses it to wrap his hand tightly. He is shivering from both cold and adrenalin, and puts the jacket back on.

  There are no more signs of movement, light or noise from the street and he gets to his feet unsteadily. The bag is next to him. Both a beacon and an anchor. He picks it up, hefts its weight over his shoulder, holding it by the straps. He feels tentative walking to the entrance of the alleyway; his limbs feel like they are functioning in slow-motion. His heart is thudding against his chest, taking its erratic beat to his ears and affecting his senses. He cannot hear clearly, the pulsating like a bout of irritating tinnitus. He needs to hear, needs to be alert. His own body is confounding him.

  Back in the half-light of the deserted street he walks quickly and purposefully. His hand is still bleeding and has soaked the T-shirt through. He feels lightheaded, his legs are heavy and unsteady. The adrenalin is subsiding and he is suffering because of it.

  The heavily laden sports bag is a thorn in his side. It seems heavier somehow. He needs to keep it, but it is an insurmountable piece of evidence that will damn him. And not just to a life behind bars, but one that will threaten the life he has worked hard to attain. The promise to his wife to change, to become an honest man and work an honest day. But he has been weak, and with the weakness has come the risk. Again, he knows the penalty well. He must lose the bag. If he rids himself of the millstone, he will have a better chance of escaping.

  He stopped. Snapped out of his thoughts. He had a feeling. The same feeling that had told him to run when the driver hadn’t shown. The same feeling, a gut instinct that had told him to take to his heels and get out of the square. Barely a minute later, the square had been full of police and the night air full of blue strobe lights and wailing sirens.

  He trusted his instincts and broke into a jog, all the while searching for another hiding place, if not for himself then for the bag. Ahead of him he could hear tyres squealing. Not braking sharply, but cornering at speed, the rubber parting company with traction. He looked to his right. Shop fronts. Shallow shop doorways with no alleyways or cover. To his left are the two single lanes of road. Across the road is a churchyard. The church is derelict, the trees overgrown and unkempt. It is perfect and he crosses the road quickly and climbs through the broken and rusted iron railings.

  As he re-enters the street at the north end of the churchyard he is relieved to be without the incriminating evidence. He tucks up the collar of his sodden jacket and walks briefly across the road and back onto the side with the shops. There is no obvious place to hide, the shops are terraced. There is most likely an alleyway behind them, a ginnel of some sort, but unless he can access it from the street then it is pointless to speculate.

  He is in familiar territory and knows that there is a myriad of roadways and walkways at a large housing estate half-a-mile further on. He has friends there, people who will give him a place to crash for the night. In the morning rush-hour he will fade away. The police will not search house to house without a good reason, and logistically they would not be prepared for thousands of tower block flats and outlying ground level terraced bungalows. There was now only four hours until the city would be gridlocked and people were up and out and he would disappear.

  The street wound around to the right sharply. He only has another two minutes of being out in the open, another two minutes exposed to danger. Sanctuary lies ahead. But before sanctuary stands two armed police officers and a group of uniformed police officers huddled together who appeared to be studying or comparing notes. The armed police worry him. They have been a fixture on the streets since the mortar bombing in Downing Street the previous year, and with the Baltic Exchange bombing in April, the city has been a different place to walk the streets. The police were putting large numbers of paramilitary-looking officers on the streets and they were armed to the teeth.

  He eases between two parked cars and takes a breath, curses inwardly. He had only agreed to take the job because of his set of skills. The share would set him up. His recruitment had been persuasive. It was agreed this would be his last job, and then he would be left alone. There was never meant to be weapon
s, no violence of any sort. Now a security guard lay dead or dying and the idiot with the gun was out on the streets. The driver must have got wind of it, because he hadn’t shown. The police had been on the scene within minutes and now armed police were blocking his escape. But how did they know he would head for the housing estate? Did they already know his identity?

  He can usually think quickly, but tonight he is floundering. Stunned at seeing the guard shot, nauseous from the wound to his hand. Exhausted from the chase through the streets. He checks the wound quickly, the T-shirt is now completely blood-soaked and dripping like a filled sponge. He needs medical attention, but that will create a trail. He needs the sanctuary of that estate, the place where he grew up. The place he once called home. He cannot go onwards, but he will have to backtrack carefully. He moves slowly, not wanting his movements to catch their eye. He nears the bend in the street, but is illuminated in the bright headlights of an approaching vehicle. There are shouts behind him but he doesn’t hear what was said. He is running blindly across the road. The vehicle is reversing after him, blue strobes flashing and now the siren is wailing. It sounds so loud in the confines of the street. More shouts and now the sound of heavy footsteps.

  There is a Victorian garden ahead of him. The wrought iron railings are five-feet high and rusted. He scrambles over them, catches his clothes on top, his jacket rips and he falls heavily to the sodden earth. There is broken glass and empty beer cans in the undergrowth. The council has given up on the mini oasis of garden in the city, and much of it is like a jungle as he pushes through thick rhododendron bushes and untended roses that snag and tear at his flesh. He pushes through and out into an overgrown lawn. He can hear the footsteps behind him, faster than his own, and then the inevitable happens and he is barrelled to the floor. The landing winds him. Rough hands roll him over. The police officer is big and red faced. He is heaving for breath as he straddles him, a rugby player pinning him to the ground. He raises his fist, grips his prisoner tightly by the scruff of his jacket and smashes the large bunched fist down into his face. He raises the fist again, the prisoner offers no resistance but the officer grits his teeth cursing him, then smashes down, a great hammer blow and the man is out cold.

  The lights have faded, as have his hopes of freedom.

  2

  April 2nd, 1998

  HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs, London

  His pace fell into rhythm with the guard’s purposefully unhurried stride. The guard had nowhere to go, nothing to rush for. For Simon Grant, there was a whole life to live, six stolen years to make up for.

  The footsteps were hollow, echoing off the damp limestone walls. The corridor was cold and smelled of mildew. Everything smelled of mildew. His clothes, his hair, even his breath.

  “Any plans?”

  “The usual.”

  The guard smiled. “A shag and a steak then.”

  “I doubt in that order,” he said quietly.

  “I thought you had someone waiting?”

  “No.”

  The guard looked at the ring on his finger. He had just watched him put it on when he had been handed his envelope of processions. It had slipped on easily. He had lost weight. “What’s with the ring then?”

  “Habit.”

  “She’s moved on then?”

  “We’ll see.”

  The guard nodded. He saw it every day. He watched prisoner visits wane, stop altogether. He saw the change in the men stuck behind bars, their minds running away in the dark hours, the vivid pictures of their loved ones in another’s arms.

  They stopped at a pair of metal doors. The guard unlocked them with a key and when they walked through he slammed it shut and it locked automatically. They walked on through an open courtyard and into a second corridor, as equally cold and damp as the previous.

  “Have you got a lift?”

  “No.”

  The guard nodded. “Money?”

  “Subs.”

  The guard nodded. “Don’t spend it all at once.”

  “Wouldn’t take long.”

  Another guard stood ahead of them. He was a tough, often cruel Scotsman named McGivney. He had ginger hair and a hard demeanour, although he was as white as copy paper.

  “I know, he’s an asshole,” the guard said quietly as they neared. “He’ll try and wind you up. See if he can get a rise out of you. Ignore it, or you’ll be back in here tonight.”

  Grant knew the guard, hadn’t had many dealings with him in the three years since he had been transferred to The Scrubs. He looked straight ahead, took the guard in, then cast his eyes to the ground.

  “Who have we got here then?”

  “Grant, Simon.”

  “Wasn’t asking you, Pat.”

  Grant avoided the Scotsman’s eyes. “Grant, Simon, FA7214, Sir.”

  “And is Grant pleased to be getting out of here?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “I’ll take it from here, Pat.”

  The guard hesitated, but McGivney was senior in rank. He nodded to Grant and turned sharply. Grant looked at the Scotsman. The man held the keys and there was only one door between The Scrubs and the street.

  “A friend of a friend was shot in your heist. The security guard working the diamond exchange. Remember him?”

  Grant nodded. He had tried to forget, but the man’s screams and pleading as he lay bleeding on the ground haunted him most nights.

  “Well, he lives on sick benefit and shits in a bag.” McGivney said. “How does that sound to you?”

  “I didn’t shoot him.”

  Grant didn’t see the punch coming. It came upwards and into his diaphragm. The air spilled out of him and he dropped to his knees. “No. But you know who did! You played an ignorant little shit in court. You never disclosed where the money went, and got a longer sentence because of it. Now you’re free to collect your share. I have friends and they’ll be watching you and waiting. That guard needs compensation and you’ll fucking well give it to him or you’ll fucking well learn to swim in the Thames chained to a couple of concrete blocks. Got it?”

  Grant nodded. He was spluttering, gasping for air. “Look, I’m sorry, but I didn’t know anybody would have a shooter.”

  McGivney helped him to his feet. “Of course you didn’t, sunshine.” The Scotsman brought his knee up into Grant’s groin and he folded in two. He looked casually around him and patted him on the back. There was newly installed CCTV throughout much of the prison, but this alleyway and courtyard was a blind spot. It was how some of the guards got the contraband into the prison to sell to the inmates. “Let me tell you, sunshine, watch your back. And don’t spend the money. They will be in touch.” He pulled Grant back up straight and unbolted the final metal door. “Mind how you go.”

  Grant felt himself propelled into the outside world. The great metal door shut behind him with a deep echo that resonated off the limestone walls of the courtyard, and the stillness and quietness that followed hit him all at once. His ears felt as if they had popped, such was the magnitude of the silence. Still within the city, and surrounded by residential streets, Grant had never experienced such silence. The world slowly came back, as if somebody was slowly turning up the volume - a car horn sounding in the distance, birds singing in the trees, a door closing, the gentle hum of distant traffic. It was suddenly back. The sounds of the outside world.

  He rubbed his stomach, cupped his balls and looked down the street. It was empty one way, but there was a large black Mercedes heading down from the other. It slowed as it neared, then stopped in front of him. Grant felt a chill. The tinted window lowered. And the man it revealed filled more than half the front.

  “Get in Simon.”

  3

  Port of Holyhead, Anglesey

  The fog was dense and had stopped all other shipping traffic, the harbour master confining them to port until it lifted. With the exception of the Dublin ferry, that was late, due an hour ago and holding a circular pattern out in the Irish Sea, there was n
o further shipping movements. Which was good. Because it had given the two MI5 officers waiting outside the ferry-port time to check the passenger manifests via ship-to-shore radio.

  The man put down the binoculars and turned to his colleague in the passenger seat. “Nothing.”

  “There won’t be for a few more minutes,” he replied. “The pilot is bringing it in, escorted by a tug.”

  “It’s like pea soup out there.”

  “It’s going to be difficult to follow them, let’s just hope it doesn’t extend inland too much.”

  “It’s Wales. It’s either foggy or raining. And we’ve got to get across Anglesey first.”

  The man with the binoculars was called Randal. He was forty, ex-Army and from a working-class background. He had worked hard to become a watcher, the term MI5 used for its surveillance officers. The man next to him, who seldom drove by choice, was called Charles Forester. He was a graduate with a first-class degree from Oxford. He had seriously ruined his career in MI5 after a hunch had not played out, and had been demoted from what had been a promising eight-years climbing the ladder at a startling rate. He was thirty-four and knew he was destined for better things. He was determined to reach the top and the sooner he could get off watcher detail and back behind a desk on the higher floors of Thames House, the better.

  “The routes are going to be covered after we clear the island,” Forester said. “Once we can confirm the vehicle I have enough units on standby to get an eyes-on and follow. We can all chop and change, get back on route.”

  “You’ve thought of everything,” Randal said. “Clever boy.”

  Forester smiled. “Careful. I was your boss once; I will be again.”

  Randal laughed. “Ok, sonny.” He smiled, then seemed to take in what the younger man said. “I mean, boss.”