Ben nodded to his guard who signalled a ‘thumbs up’, and whilst he was leading Ben away to safety another man ran towards the door.
***
We had been watching nervously as the electrician did his job, but the man deserved a medal in my opinion. Under extreme pressure he took less than four minutes.
As he was led away Geordie from Vastrick, armed with bolt cutters, appeared from behind a green telephone junction box and ran towards the door. In ten seconds he had removed the padlock and was heading back to his hiding place.
The telephone landline had been cut off over an hour ago, and the mobile phone jammer had been in action since before the Europol raids. We had noticed during the short journey from the police station to our current position that the people in the van, and the few we saw on the streets, had all lost their phone signals.
I found it amusing that almost everyone with a mobile phone did the same thing. They saw the message, ignored it, pressed a few buttons and held it to their ear. Seconds later, realising that they were not connected, they looked at the message again and frowned. Finally, the majority of them shook the phone and looked again to see whether the signal had been restored, because of course everyone knows that sometimes the electronic signal gets trapped at the top of the phone and a good shake will loosen it allowing the phone to work. At least it took my mind off the seriousness of what was about to happen.
A few seconds passed, and six battle clad men ran to the roller doors carrying deadly looking rifles. The policeman in the headset held up three fingers, counting down by bending one finger at a time. No sooner had all of his fingers closed than there was a muffled explosion.
Chapter 74
Tottenham Press, Commercial Road, London. Sunday 1:30pm.
Dee had been awake for a while now, albeit in some pain. The man who tended her wounds had given her a foil of painkillers which he had found in the secretary’s desk drawer downstairs. Dee had taken two, but as yet they hadn’t made a lot of difference. She concluded that she would need something a bit stronger than over-the-counter aspirins to tackle this amount of pain. Nonetheless, she thanked him for his help, and she thought that he might be blushing under his ski mask.
Before he left the room, he closed the door behind him and spoke to the two girls in hushed tones.
“I realise that you think of me as the enemy, but I’ve never hurt a woman in my life, and what happened downstairs was out of order. We certainly didn’t agree to any of that. My mate and me will be watching you from now on from the office at the other end of the corridor. If you need the toilet just go, but please don’t give them a reason to hurt you again, all right?”
He began to leave, but as an afterthought he added, “If we’re not up here, or if we’re asleep and anyone worries you, yell for help and we’ll come running. We just want you to get home safe. We’re in enough damn trouble as it is.”
Dee was standing up and trying to walk using the fixed table to lean on. If she was being honest it was no more painful than it had been lying down. At least the bullet had missed the artery and the bone. The muscle would repair itself, in time.
***
Rik stood at the office door on the lower floor of the little building, and looked around. Piet was sitting halfway up the stairs to his right, and the soldier was upstairs making sure there were no more escape attempts.
Gregor was asleep in the passenger seat of the Lexus, which was parked next to the Subaru 4x4 with Dutch plates. He would be glad when this was over and they were back on the other side of the Channel. Rik always felt uncomfortable on islands. They were surrounded by sea and too easy to close down if you wanted to escape. No, Rik preferred the mainland where, if you needed to run, you could go thousands of miles whilst avoiding manned border crossings.
Holloway and his friend Johnny were in close conversation at the back of the factory unit, almost halfway between the emergency exit doors on either side of the building.
The factory unit had too much wasted space, in Rik’s opinion. The printing presses and machines were in the middle third of the floor, like an island. On the far side of the unit, opposite the offices, were huge steel racks filled with giant paper rolls and box after box of paper in smaller sheets. Next to the racks stood a heavy duty steel walk in cupboard with a built-in fume extraction box above. Presumably that was where they store or mix ink, he thought.
At the rear of the unit, where the two Englishmen stood talking, there was more open space which housed a few lockers, a coat rack and a few mismatched tables and chairs.
Had it not been for the cars parked just inside the roller shutter doors, that space too would have been empty. They could be paying half the rent and still have plenty of room, he thought to himself.
His musings were disturbed when he heard a click. It appeared to have come from the shutter doors. He looked quickly at the two Englishmen. They had heard it, too. Sonny Holloway shouted over to Rik.
“Don’t worry Rik, it’s probably kids. Johnny’ll go out and scatter them in a minute, before they start spray painting their gang tags on my doors.”
Rik leaned against the door frame and polished his Sig Sauer P226 handgun, specially adapted for left handed users, by rubbing it on his trousers. The two tone Sig Sauer was a compact yet powerful pistol, known to be used by US Navy Seals, and more importantly it was easy to conceal.
Rik returned to the table, laid his gun down and took his seat. He was about to drink his lukewarm coffee when all hell broke loose.
Chapter 75
No. 2 Parliament St, Westminster, London. Sunday, 1:30pm.
Whilst Arthur Hickstead wasn’t under house arrest, his confinement wasn’t far short of it. The police had his passport, his accounts were being monitored and if he wanted to leave the building, Donald on the front door would accompany him whilst one of the back office staff manned the door.
It didn’t really matter. There was nowhere he wanted to be, and by tomorrow night the inevitable deal would have been reached with the authorities. The Establishment didn’t want a newly ennobled peer of the realm all over the tabloid newspaper front pages; the country would become a laughing stock. Whilst he had been very careful, he considered himself fortunate that there was as yet no evidence linking him to the murders of Sir Max or Andrew Cuthbertson. As it had turned out, the deaths were being reported as natural causes and suicide respectively.
He relaxed into the leather upholstery of the wingback chair as he reasoned that since the money and the painting were now in the possession of Van Aart’s men, the police would have trouble persuading the CPS to do any more than prosecute him for the Hammond blackmail. The peer had been told that the CPS would probably recommend a deal on that basis. Still, a deal would be assured if Hammond and Fisher refused to give evidence, hence the temporary absence of Lavender Fisher and Hammond’s girlfriend.
The bright spot of the weekend had been the visit of that awful policeman, Coombes, who had to ‘sadly inform you that your safety deposit box was broken into and your papers have gone’. The message had been delivered with bad grace and more than a hint of malice, because both men knew what had really been in the box and who had initiated the break in.
The Sunday papers hadn’t picked up on the scandal yet, albeit one of the more sensationalist tabloids carried the headline “Unnamed Peer in Criminal Conspiracy” under an ‘Exclusive’ banner on page 2. He read the article twice. It was a mixture of rumour and speculation, but there was no suggestion that he was the peer involved.
He jumped when the phone rang. He hadn’t been expecting any calls. It was Faik, his Iraqi friend.
“The documents you requested are ready. Do you want me to deliver them to the hotel?”
“Yes, Faik, thank you. Are they as discussed?”
“You pay for the best, you get the best. Yussi wants his money.”
“I have it at the hotel. Meet me there at seven o’clock tomorrow evening.”
; “OK, I will bring the documents.”
Hickstead terminated the call, and justified the expense to himself. It always paid to have a contingency plan. Anyway, once Van Aart had taken the million pound Churchill painting in payment for his services, he would have a million pounds in cash. A man could travel a long way on a million pounds, and travel in style.
Chapter 76
Tottenham Press, Commercial Road, London. Sunday, 1:50pm.
Dee was still trying some tentative walking when she was rocked by two explosions, which occurred almost simultaneously. Seconds later there was pandemonium downstairs. She heard lots of shouting, and a moment later a machine pistol rattled off a dozen rounds.
Lavender was terrified. Dee told her to get under the table because she would be safer there but, without knowing what was happening, she had no real way of knowing. It might turn out that nowhere in this place was safe.
***
Rik grabbed his gun and was at the office door in time to see two armed men in combat gear run into the building, rifles raised, screaming orders. As he turned he saw two more identical figures coming in from the other fire door. Light poured in through the spaces where the fire doors had been, silhouetting the policemen.
The first two people the police approached were Sonny and Johnny, who were so surprised that when they were told to drop their weapons and put their hands on their heads they forgot they weren’t even armed. As a policeman came towards them signalling that he wanted their arms up, three shots rang out from an automatic gun. The policeman was hit and fell to the floor. Sonny and Johnny’s eyes widened in horror, expecting a violent reaction from the police.
Gregor, awakened by the explosions, had slipped out of the car and concealed himself behind a print machine. Confused and still dazed, he was uncertain as to who he was facing. He stood up and fired a controlled burst at the first person he saw. He swore under his breath when he noticed the word ‘police’ painted on the helmet of the man he had just shot.
Gregor ducked down again. He saw Piet running up the stairs and so he stood up to give him some covering fire. Before he could aim, his head exploded as he was shot from behind. Gregor’s body shuddered, and then he fell as he was impacted with more bullets, his machine pistol firing wildly before falling silent.
The roller shutter door had been rising so slowly that the policemen outside decided to lie flat on their stomachs to get an angle of fire into the building. When they saw a masked man raising a machine pistol, intending to fire at their colleagues, three of them shot at once. Usual protocol; one to the head two to the chest, except that this time it was three to the head and six to the body.
Johnny had dropped to the floor when the firing began, and was now lying spread-eagled as speedcuffs were fastened onto his wrists. He wondered why Sonny was not being subjected to the same treatment, but then he saw why. He looked across the floor into the flat, dead eyes of his boss. Gregor had unknowingly sprayed Sonny with bullets as he fell to the floor in his death throes. Two bloody holes were left where 9mm slugs had pierced Sonny’s coat, and the third slug had taken off part of Sonny’s right ear as it passed into and out of his skull at an angle of forty five degrees.
***
Dee pulled Lavender to her feet and stood protectively in front of her as she heard someone running up the stairs. A second later the door crashed open and Piet burst in. He wasn’t wearing his mask, which was a pity because his face was contorted with rage, and Lavender whimpered.
“This is your fault! Die, bitch!” Piet snarled as he raised his gun.
Dee braced herself, spreading herself wide to offer Lavender maximum protection. She closed her eyes just before the shot.
***
Rik heard the shot upstairs and took advantage of a lull in the firing to race up the metal staircase. As he ran he was accompanied by a symphony of clanging metal as bullets hit the staircase. One bullet grazed his leg and another gouged out a wickedly painful groove in his left side just below his ribs. He dived through the door.
***
Dave had been dozing when the explosions woke him into instant awareness. He took off his mask as he saw the police burst in, mob handed. He put his gun down on the table and decided to leave the girls where they were. They were probably relatively safe in there, he thought. Then the lunatic Gregor shot a policeman, and within seconds it had turned into carnage. From his window he could see Johnny being cuffed, Sonny lying dead, and the twisted ruin that had once been Gregor’s body.
Piet rushed in to the accompaniment of gunfire and went straight to the girls’ room. Dave reacted instantly, reaching for his gun. As he closed his hand around the grip he heard Piet screeching “Die, bitch!” and watched as Piet raised the gun, ready to fire. Dave’s finger found the trigger but he wasn’t sure he would find his target in time. His gun was still swinging in an arc when he bit his lip and fired.
***
Dee opened her eyes to see Piet’s hands drop to his sides. There had been time for Piet’s brain to register shock before half of it hit the wall beside him. He collapsed onto the floor. Lavender was hysterical, and a moment later Dave came running in.
He wasn’t wearing a mask, and his face registered concern, not for his colleague but for the girls. He could see that both were fine. He spoke in a reassuring tone. “It’s OK now. It’s almost over.”
“Is it really, soldier boy?” Dave turned to see Rik standing in the corridor with his gun aimed at Dave’s chest. Dave lifted his arms and held his gun away from his body, to show that he wasn’t a threat.
“Come on, Rik. It’s all over. There’s been enough killing. We need to give ourselves up.” Dave kept his voice calm, but Rik shook his head.
“Well, I don’t think it’s over. Not yet. We still have two hostages.”
“Rik, I can’t let you do this. It’s insane.” Dave was watching for any sign that Rik might shoot, and he saw it in his eyes. Dave brought his gun down into shooting position and began to move into a crouch to offer a smaller target, but he was too late. Rik’s bullet took him in the chest and threw him against the wall.
A smear of blood streaked the wall as Dave slid down into a sitting position, his head lolling to one side.
Rik came into the room, holding his gun ready in his left hand. When he was satisfied that Dave was no longer a threat to him, he turned the gun on Dee.
“Move out of the way! I’m taking the girl.”
“No, you’re not! “ Dee spat out defiantly.
“Come on, lady, you’ve already been shot once today. I don’t want to kill you.” Dee held her ground whilst Rik found a position to shoot her where the bullet wouldn’t pass through her and hit Lavender. Then he fired.
Dee spun around when the bullet hit. Her leg gave up and she fell to the floor. The room was spinning. She was on the verge of passing out again. How much blood had she lost today? She clamped her right hand around her upper left arm. At least this time the bullet had gone right through.
The blood was oozing through her fingers, but she had to get to Lavender before that madman got them both killed by a stray marksman’s bullet. Dee tried to stand up, but couldn’t, so she dragged herself along using her good right arm.
She got to Dave when she heard Rik say to Lavender, “We’re going down the stairs now. Behave yourself and you’ll be fine.”
He took Lavender by the arm and led her through the door. “Get back!” he shouted to the figures below. “I have a hostage.”
Dave opened his eyes. He was alive, just. He lifted his gun.
“Take this, get Lavender,” he grimaced, and coughed. There was blood on his lips but he still tried to smile.
Dee took the gun from him and shuffled towards the stairs, inch by agonising inch.
***
Once Rik pushed Lavender ahead of him onto the staircase, the policeman on the stairs backed away and the others pointed their weapons towards him. He was probably the only hostile left standing.
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Keeping Lavender in front of him with his right arm across her throat, he pressed his gun into her neck with his left hand. Step by step he moved down the stairs, not allowing anyone to get a shooting angle. The Armed Response team were frustrated, but they kept him in their sights all the way. Sooner or later one of them would get a clear shot.
***
Dee had managed to drag herself to the door and look out. Rik had Lavender by the throat, and they were almost half way down the stairs. Dee lay down on her stomach and, ignoring the pain in her left arm, she levelled the gun and took aim.
Dee knew that a poor shot could injure Lavender, and so she took a deep breath, then aimed and fired.
***
Rik was concentrating so much on the policemen below him that he had no idea he was in Dee’s sights. Suddenly he felt a great pain in his chest. It felt like his heart was exploding. He was almost right. Dee’s bullet had passed through his right armpit and careered through his ribcage before destroying his heart.
Rik let go of Lavender with a gasp. He collapsed and slid on his back down the stairs, landing in a heap on the concrete floor. He lay still, mouth and eyes wide open as blood pooled under his body, the effects of gravity draining the blood from his body in the absence of a working heart.
Lavender rushed up the stairs to cradle Dee in her arms.
“I thought you were dead!” the younger girl sobbed. “Oh, Dee, please don’t die! I can’t lose you!”
Two voices shouted “Clear!” and a paramedic raced up the stairs to attend to Dee.
“There’s a man in there who needs you more than I do.” Dee pointed to Dave.
The paramedic was back inside a minute. “I’m afraid he has passed, Miss. Nothing can be done for him now. Well, you’ve certainly been in the wars, haven’t you?” he remarked, somewhat undiplomatically.
Lavender stood up and looked around at the carnage below her. She had seen two men killed in front of her and another two lay dead on the concrete floor. The armed policemen were gathering around a colleague who was just getting to his feet looking disoriented. His black chest protection had two holes in it and white material showed through. She watched as his colleagues removed his jacket and chest pad to show a pristine white tee shirt beneath. There were grins all around. The relief was palpable and the policeman’s colleagues were slapping his back and saying, ‘You’ll have a lovely bruise there tomorrow.’