“What did you eat mate?” The voice outside laughingly asked.
"The all day breakfast pal." Mason called back and added a groan.
Silence again and he finished the disguise with the clothes. He pulled a bin bag from his rucksack, put his old clothes in, along with the rucksack, transferring his pistol, ammunition and other essential items into the sports hold all and finally putting on the tinted glasses he left the toilet, pushing his head down and forwards, slouching and walking with a less direct, less upright bearing than he usually managed.
He certainly wasn’t the same man that walked into the toilet. He passed within feet of his waitress and she looked at him directly, but didn’t even register him in her eyes. Job done he walked into the city centre, dumping the old clothes and disguise residue wrapped in the bin bag by a litter bin. He headed for Glasgow rail station.
DIC watchers in Glasgow didn’t recognise him even though he had to wait an hour and forty-five minutes for the London train and sat on the station concourse watching people go by, secure that anyone watching him or watching for him wouldn’t have a clue who he was or what he was up to.
Chapter 26
Euston Tower
4-30 p.m.
17th April
David and Beaumont worked solidly for some hours, looking at on line charts and using software to calculate all possible routes south and across the country. They highlighted possible terrorist targets on the digital maps and sent out the completed routes, when done, to the scanner teams on the other floors. This made it easier for those teams to make more finite searches and communicate with DIC watchers on those routes only.
Finally David completed the last digital map and pressed send. The compressed file zipped around the building and was then zipped across the country at high speed.
“What time is it?”
“It’s just gone three”
“Let’s go and take a break.”
“Sound idea.”
The two men sat in the canteen drinking coffee and eating biscuits.
“It’s been an interesting first day.” David smiled looking around.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t get any more interesting. Remember that curse? May you live in interesting times.”
“I see you’re eating Jaffa cakes. Now that’s an interesting conundrum. Is it a cake or is it a biscuit?”
“It’s whatever the majority of people decide it is I guess." Beaumont said and gave him a twinkly smile.
“What about the tyranny of the majority concept?”
“True enough. I see you’ve read your JS Mill.”
“Also if you start thinking of Pol Pot and the ‘Year Zero’ concept isn’t anything exactly what a powerful tyrant says it is?”
“Hmmm. I tell you what though a cake by any other name would taste as sweet.” To emphasise the point Beaumont popped the rest in his mouth.
“Well that’s philosophy, politics and literature covered what’s next?”
Beaumont looked at his watch.
“It’s information technology next my friend. Let’s go.”
Both men chatted amiably on their way to the lift. In a short space of time the pair had formed a bond.
Chapter 27
Mersey Marina
4 – 30 p.m.
April 17th
Inefficiently Cobb had not set the volume on the small digital alarm and though it flashed into action it made no sound. Cobb slept on in the warm bunk, lulled by the gentle action of the marina water.
It was too late that Cobb woke and seeing the time cursed his inefficiency. He lit a lucky, and put the kettle on. He noticed there were just two cigarettes in the pack and that the bag of groceries he’d ordered for the boat obviously didn’t include dinner of any kind. There were four eggs, two rashers and eight slices of bread from the small loaf left.
Coffee made, though instant, the kind Charlie hated, he went on deck to a river view close to sunset. He knew he’d have to stay put or leave the boat as it was. Charlie was essentially a comfort man. He didn’t fancy travelling at night and changing scene. The day was gone, why move on? The others wouldn’t have made London yet, he knew that. He flicked the cigarette butt into the Marina waters and mind made up decided to eat better. Some take away, a beer, one at least, a pack of cigarettes and he’d see if he could get a signal on the little TV.
Getting his coat and rucksack, with his weapon in it, identities and all useful tools of his trade included, he climbed off the boat, walked the boards, punched the numbers into the locked gate and headed into the city on foot.
The harbour watch man saw Charlie leave; he noted Charlie had his rucksack on him and figured him headed for a hotel. The Americans always did that. He knew the American hadn’t been off the boat all day and thought he’d be off for a night out.
As Cobb got on to the Nelson Street he found a convenience store, noting, further down the same road, a Chinese Restaurant doing take away. Ten minutes walk from the Marina, Charlie stocked up on useful and tasty supplies.
Chapter 28
Liverpool
5 p.m.
April 17th
Three miles away in a house on Croxteth Road, Sefton Park Walter, Wally to his friends, Tyson held the hands of his only child as they swung back the green, iron garden gate and arrived home, damp and laughing.
She was a sweet freckle faced seven year old girl. He held her book bag and sports bag in his other hand. She had been at after school club playing football and Wally had been watching her play. In spite of being small she was incredibly tenacious as a player. Wally wondered whether his love of football and lack of a son had begun to turn her into a tomboy.
They laughingly sang their way through the front door, dripping onto the hall carpet. He loved being able to collect her from school and the DIC work allowed him that most of the year and this year, at forty-five it was his last year for active rota.
He was feeling a little guilty as he’d been alacritous about his work today. His partner, Ginny, was down with the flu. Though he’d logged on, in his loft, in the morning and caught the traffic about the four intruders through day, including the call to check the marina, when he printed the four pictures, he’d been
shopping since and every time he’d meant to check again Ginny had called for some TLC.
With Tara home he decided to quickly nip down and check the marina.
He settled Tara with a snack and TV, fussed around Ginny and told her he had a ‘visual check’ to do. He kissed her hot forehead and grabbing diplomatic pass, intruder photos and his coat, no gun, he got into his little blue Fiesta and drove towards the Liverpool Marina and the Mersey. It was five o’ clock when he set out and it didn’t take him long to get there.
The marina watch man, a keen sailor in his mid twenties, was just finishing up in the office when he noted the red Fiesta enter the car park. He sighed as the tall, blonde curly haired figure in the beige duffle coat headed straight for him. He had a sinking feeling as the man drew out what looked like some sort of badge from his pocket, in readiness.
Glancing at his watch he set his face to helpful as the man entered the office.
“Evening I’m a civil service employee doing a Marina check for new arrivals.” Wally handed over the credentials. It took the watch man a moment to read it.
“Civil service?”
Wally raised an eye brow in a conspiratorial way.
“Oh I see.” The watch man handed the credentials back.
Wally drew out the pictures.
“Have you seen any of these men?”
Each picture drew a blank until they got to the sketch of Cobb.
“That looks a bit like a guy who got here after lunch. He’s American. He’s just gone out.”
“Just?”
“Yeah about ten minutes ago. He had a bag with him. He’ll probably be out tonight, stay in a hotel.”
“Can you show me his boat?”
It was Wally’s turn to sigh. Given the D
IC e-mail traffic he’d read he knew these men were on the move and was annoyed at having missed him. He was sure that Charlie was moving on. Still he’d check the boat and when he called in he’d not mention why he hadn’t checked earlier.
The watch man and Wally passed through the punch key locked gate, down the jetty and towards Charlie’s boat. The lights were off. The little boat sat bobbing in the early evening dusky gloom.
“Are you sure he went out.”
Wally hesitated, no weapon on him, but in Wally’s case he only ever got it out to clean it.
“Wait here.” He said sternly and climbed onto the boat. Charlie hadn’t locked it.
Wally gingerly entered the cabin. He saw the unwashed utensils and plates. The cabin reeked of greasy food. The bunk had been slept in. He called the watch man in.
“Hey you come in here.”
The watch man clambered onto the boat and stepped down head bowed into the cabin.
“What?”
“Watch me as I search.”
“Why?”
“In case I find something incriminating and the man I’m looking for, if caught, says I planted it.”
“I’m not sure about this. I might need to call someone.”
Wally was withering in his reply.
“Just do as I say.”
“Is the man in trouble?”
“Not yet, but you could say that as a person he is trouble.”
Wally began searching,
He found the stubbed ‘Lucky’ on a saucer, recalling Michael Dewey’s e-mail sketch from the match flare that morning. The man was a smoker. There were no bags, no passports and no gun. There were no personal effects, which struck a discordant note with Wally. If this was a regular American tourist where was the camera, the set of personal items and the paraphernalia of someone away from home? It was much too suspicious. Wally had made up his mind to get home, e-mail DIC centre and call the police to the boat.
Cobb, white plastic bag with prawn fried rice, duck, pancakes, vegetables, Ho-Sin sauce and a six pack of Budweiser in one hand and his backpack in the other noted the lights on in the marina office past the hours of business listed on the door. He tried the door handle and found the office open. Charlie smelt trouble. He double checked his handiwork on the CCTV camera control, still in place. The young man probably never checked it. He left the office his senses alert and made his way to the punch key locked gate. He looked along the jetties and seeing where his boat was, with the lights on he narrowed his eyes and flared his nostrils making a face that would have made a snake flinch.
He squatted down in the shadows by the gate, putting aside the take away and beer. In the last light of day the dull metal of his Russian PSS pistol swallowed the low lances of the setting sun. He punched in the access number, eased through and closed the gate with deadly silence. Treading the boards towards the edges with soft silent steps he honed in on the yellow beacon of his boat lights. There were no lights visible on other boats, he noted. He saw the shadows behind the boat’s thin curtains.
He could have climbed onto the boat, but knew better. They’d be coming out and he’d save himself some cleaning up. He lay down on the drizzle wet boards, hidden by the prow of the boat. They’d exit via the stern of the boat and move to his right back towards the gate.
Wally and the watch man did emerge, clambered off the boat, Wally doing most of the talking. Cobb heard the words ‘police’ and ‘alert’ and ‘CCTV’ footage’. He let them get four metres down the jetty and gave each a silenced shot in the back of the head within a second. Each victim pitched forward, damaged beyond repair and spiralling downwards brain dead they fell to earth near lifeless. Cobb was on his feet in a moment he stood over them and put a round in each heart. It had taken mere seconds to stop the life in them simply because of their inconvenience. The young watch man and Wally lay on the jetty like landed fish in the last gasps of drowning, small, pathetic after death twitches moving muscles as the last nervous signals pulsed and faded in their finished bodies.
The last light of the day saw Charley busy. Glad for the harbour water, simply for hiding the bodies and washing the blood he got to work. He checked the bodies for identification and car keys. He didn’t pause to muse over the pictures of himself and the others he took from Wally’s corpse and the even more curious diplomatic badge with Wally’s picture on it; he put them in his pocket with a definite view to looking at them later. He took what little money they had, frowning at Wally’s wallet pictures of Tara and Ginny. Who sent a family man to deal with a killer like him?
He found the cars, cut the tyres from the spares, took the jacks and rims for weight. The Sheets and duvet cover from his boat wrapped the bodies, tied by spare mooring rope from his boat. Weighted he lowered them into the marina waters, below the jetty, he knew the weight wasn’t quite enough and hoped they’d be hidden an extra day bobbing against the underside of the wood. He washed the jetty down quickly with three buckets, sloshing the blood away.
Looking around he saw the lights of the city, tens of thousands of people, but not one near enough to witness his actions. Cobb went back to the gate, picked up the now cold take away and his rucksack.
One remote key blipped a Peugeot 207 hatch back. The other key opened the old red Fiesta. He drove this out the gate and parked it on Hill Street. He walked back to the Marina, always looking around. He locked the office. Happily settled in the Peugeot 207 he drove away, Manchester bound.
‘So much for the quiet night’ in he thought pointing the car towards the M62. As he drove he wondered how the authorities had so quickly got pictures of all of them. He knew his picture was a sketch, seemingly lit by a glow? Could they have seen them that morning? It was impossible surely? Charlie was suddenly very worried. The whole situation looked and smelled like a set up.
Chapter 29
Leicester
5 – 30 p.m.
April 17th
It was the same thoughts which led Mason to get off the London train at Leicester. He was happily settled on the train, feeling warm and comfortable and then he started thinking about the submarine. It had told him from the start that it was a government job. Someone in power had given the green light to an assassination in the UK. He had thought it sensible to send five of them to make sure the job got done, but now that he thought of it, he was struck by the thought that there was something odd about it. He knew they’d gone in Scotland to avoid detection, but who were they avoiding. If the target was someone important they’d be guarded. If it was someone in secret service it made more sense that they came in from a remote place. Then it struck him. Stanton had chosen to hitch because he was avoiding CCTV and centres that meant that Stanton, who’d been far from chatty those two weeks on the sub, knew something they didn’t or at least had worked out what he was working out now.
The idea got into Mason’s head that whoever they were going to kill would have security that were watching for assassins. He’d made up his mind to get off the train and find transport that involved him being away from the public when Leicester station was announced. He grabbed his bag and stepped onto the platform into lashing rain.
He asked the ticket barrier guard for directions to a supermarket and was told the nearest one was the Tesco along the Uppingham Road and that a 747 bus would take him there. He had to make his way up to the Humberstone Gate and found the stops there. He stood waiting for the bus, the rain hammering onto the bus shelter roof.
Leicester public transport is known for its efficiency and the 747 bus arrived within minutes and Mason was at the Tesco quicker than he’d expected.
He was wandering the car park waiting for the right person and vehicle to show up and it was becoming a problem. He needed a car that was overloaded at the back, the boot lid held down by rope because wood was sticking out or something. It was either that or a van that was overloaded at the back or had a broken back door handle.
Mason had spent half an hour in the car park looking suitably fudd
led in case someone asked him what he was doing. He created a part for himself in case security came over. He decided to be a man with mental health problems who couldn’t find his daughter and the car. This was his lie and he worked it over in his head, mentally doing the voice and visualising the facial expressions.
He needn’t have worried as the rain was making people more concerned with themselves than anyone else.
He was going to give up, feeling exposed, when he saw a plumber’s van with faded writing, blue on white, ‘David Barrett Plumbing amp; Heating Engineer’ on the sides. It pulled into a space half way up the row he was walking along. Mason had seen it so easily because the small van had a bath sticking out the back and bungee straps holding the door.
Mason watched David, presumably, get out lock the van doors and do that half run half walk people do so embarrassingly into the Tesco entrance.
As soon as the man was out of sight he walked to the van, unclipped the bungee straps and pulled the bath out, which was thankfully coated PVC and not cast iron, laying it behind the car to his left. He climbed through into the driver’s seat, grabbing a screw driver on the way. Half a minute’s quick work and the van had started. He was pulling out when, as an afterthought, he pulled the bath into the space and popped the plug in.
As he drove away the bath began filling with rain water. Mr Barrett would think one of his mates was having a laugh and might not call the police for a while before he’d checked. Mason was spot on. Dave Barrett didn’t call the police. On seeing the bath where his van had been he simply stopped being amazed at the lack of his van and rang his mate.
“Alright Jimmy bring my van back.”
The conversation went on and the more Jimmy, who was in a pub, denied it the more Dave Barrett didn’t believe him. Mason was heading out to the M1 via East Park Road in the direction of the 5199. He decided to stop at Bedford for the night. He watched his speed as he hit the big motorway, easing into the fast moving traffic and playing it safe.
To Kill Or Be Killed Page 7
