by Ted Tayler
Phoenix watched over the top of the booklet as Kovacs reversed his BMW into the parking space. The drug dealer could afford the top-of-the-range model he locked behind double gates. Everything went to plan. Kovacs disappeared indoors.
“Now, we wait,” said Phoenix. “I’ll keep on the move, and watch out for when he makes a move. You get back to the van. Be ready to drive back here at a minute’s notice.”
“How sure are you he’s coming back out tonight?” asked Rusty.
“Giles provided me with a timetable of his social habits gathered over a reasonable period. He has a pattern, most people do. He’s showering and changing now. Then he’ll drop into that cocktail bar on the corner. He has three favourite places to eat later. A French restaurant in Notting Hill, a Chinese on Bayswater Road, and a traditional Hungarian in Cricklewood.”
“So, does he walk, or will he take the motor?”
“Cricklewood is a hike. He takes the Tube. Too posh to use the bus which is silly, as it’s only two quid on the 326.”
“Giles found that out for you, didn’t he?” asked Rusty, turning to make his way back to the car park.
“It’s good to know if you get stuck,” said Phoenix. “I file these little gems away in my head. I’ve spent a fair bit of time up here over the past four years. I’m beginning to find the quickest and cheapest ways to get where I need to be.”
Rusty was already out of earshot. Phoenix started his surveillance. He moved from one end of the street to the other, crossing from time to time. He couldn’t stay on McGregor Road for too long, that would attract attention, either from a curtain-twitcher or an old dear out walking her Pekinese.
Phoenix spotted activity at the front of the building. Adam Kovacs was on the move. He was walking towards the cocktail bar. So far, so good. Phoenix was on the opposite side of the road, heading in the same direction. Luck was still on his side. He was a hundred yards behind Kovacs, and there were dozens of cars passing between them, preventing him from noticing he was being followed.
Phoenix waited until he saw Kovacs enter the bar and order a drink. He called Rusty. In two minutes, they could park in front of the wooden double gates, no matter what the sign said. He called Giles to trigger the latest in the series of camera-feed interruption.
“Give us two minutes to get the van into position, then shut the feeds for eight minutes,”
“Consider it done, Phoenix,” said Giles.
Phoenix could see Kovacs chatting to customers at a table near the window. He was satisfied the drug dealer was settled in for a while. Wherever he decided to dine afterwards, they had sufficient time to do what he planned.
The window-cleaning van turned onto McGregor Road and trundled along the street, coming to a halt by the gates in the gap between parked cars. Rusty fetched the ladders from the roof of the van. He opened the back doors. The buckets, sponges, and cloths he needed were ready for action.
Rusty put one set of ladders up against the ground floor windows and got to work. Phoenix collected his tools from the van and climbed over, using the other set of ladders, which were leaning against the locked double gates. Rusty watched the street from his elevated position.
“These windows needed a clean,” he called out.
“Any chance I’ll be disturbed?” asked Phoenix, as he crouched by the BMW.
Rusty looked up and down the street. The light was fading. The sun would set in another thirty minutes. Traffic was minimal, and the pavements almost deserted.
“All quiet on the western front,” said Phoenix.
Three minutes later, Rusty had finished cleaning the windows and put his ladders onto the roof of the van. He was returning his cleaning materials to the van when Phoenix scrambled back over the gate and dropped to the pavement. His ladders were soon next to Rusty’s, and they were good to go.
They had no sooner sat in the van when there was a tap on the driver’s side door. Rusty lowered the window.
“You’re new to the area, aren’t you?” asked the elderly gentleman, “only, I could do with someone to clean my windows, and hand wash my car. What do you charge?”
“Thirty quid. It’s too dark to do it tonight. We haven’t got a business card with us, sorry,” said Rusty. “Look us up in Yell, and give us a call.”
Rusty closed the window and drove out of McGregor Road. The old bloke sauntered home.
“Only thirty?” asked Phoenix, “that seems cheap for London prices.”
“We might have hit on a gimmick,” said Rusty, “your windows, and your car. Not too many businesses offer an all-in service.”
“The BMW is no cleaner than it was when I climbed over the gate. We wouldn’t get much repeat business if we were that sloppy.”
Phoenix called Giles and the CCTV cameras were reactivated. Intermittent delays would continue until after midnight. The drive back to Bath was uneventful. Rusty turned onto the Larcombe Manor driveway at half-past eleven. He left the van by the transport section garages. They could return the borrowed kit in the morning. He and Phoenix made their way upstairs to their apartments. For them, tomorrow was another day.
Adam Kovacs left the cocktail bar at nine o’clock. He made his way along Bayswater Road and enjoyed a sumptuous Chinese meal. It was midnight before he returned home. Inside his flat, worse for wear, he stood in the kitchen and stared at two snowy screens.
“What’s the matter with this CCTV?” he shouted. He gave the top of the unit a sharp smack. The screens miraculously sprung into life. He had perfect views of his car and the front of the building.
“That’s better,” he said and staggered into the lounge. Time for a large brandy before bed.
Tuesday, 3rd June 2014
Adam Kovacs never heard the dawn chorus he was always still fast asleep. The triple-glazed windows prevented much of the street noise reaching his ears. When he finally stirred and made his way to the bathroom, it was ten o’clock.
Despite the alcohol he had drunk last night, he remembered the strange incident of the CCTV cameras. As he reached the kitchen after his shower, he double-checked. Everything was fine. No worries. With his first mug of coffee in his hand, he walked into the lounge.
The sun hurt his eyes. He squinted at the windows. Something didn’t look right, but he couldn’t work out what it was. He sat facing away from the street. His headache wasn’t helped by that bright sunlight.
He called Dominick Nagy.
“Be here at a quarter to twelve,” he ordered, “we’re taking a trip out to Park Royal. I need to make sure it’s ready for the next delivery.”
“Yes, boss,” said Nagy. He was still in bed. He looked at what he had brought home last night and groaned. She had seemed to be in her late twenties in the subdued lighting of the nightclub. Now, lying naked with her mouth open, and her make-up smeared, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she wasn’t in her late forties.
The minder headed for the bathroom. With luck, by the time he had showered, shaved, and the other things he needed to do, she’d have taken the hint and left.
The flat was empty when he emerged from the bathroom. Nagy breathed a sigh of relief. Things were looking up. He had time for breakfast in the café up the road, then he’d walk over to the boss’s house.
McGregor Road is never empty. There are always cars on it, either parked or moving through. They get their fair share of cyclists and pedestrians. At eleven forty-five Dominick Nagy rang the bell for Adam Kovac’s flat. His boss trotted down the steps to the pavement, and they made for the double gates. Kovacs undid the padlock, Nagy pushed open the gates to either side of the entrance.
“You can drive,” said Kovacs, “I might still be over the limit,”
Nagy didn’t question his boss. He wanted to say he was taking a risk himself driving this early too, but he needed the job. It didn’t pay to go against Adam Kovacs.
Dominick took the keys and opened the driver’s door. His boss got in and fastened his seat belt. Nagy didn’t bother. He had to ge
t out and lock the gates as soon as they cleared the entrance.
The bomb was fixed magnetically to the underside of the car, beneath the passenger’s seat. Phoenix was grateful to Giles for adding the extra touches that helped their direct actions go so smoothly. Those hours watching the drug dealer’s movements weren’t wasted. Nagy drove forward and applied the brakes. That was the trigger.
The minder got out of the car and a young mother with a toddler in a pushchair nearly bumped into him. He stood back to let her pass.
“How am I supposed to get by with these gates open?” she asked, “it’s very inconsiderate.”
Nagy didn’t want to hang around talking. He shrugged, shut the gates, secured the padlock, and shouted after her: -
“Have a nice day, yeah?”
There was no reply. He got back into the BMW and belted up. Kovacs looked at his watch. Nagy took the hint. It was time to drive to the warehouse at Park Royal.
*****
At Larcombe Manor, the morning meeting was ending. Athena had kept things moving along at a steady pace. Her main focus was to allow Phoenix to proceed with the direct action in Portsmouth later this afternoon. She knew he would be keen to have a final run-through of his plans with Rusty before they drove south.
The first order of the day had been to ask Henry to update them on the first day’s training of the new intake, and whether continued progress was being maintained on the retraining of agents recalled from their overseas postings.
“I can’t fault Rusty’s training schedules, Athena,” Henry reported. “Thomas and Longdon have a particular style which resonates with the older agents. They seem a happy bunch. I wish the teachers at my old boarding-school had made learning such fun. I wouldn’t have been in tears at the end of each holiday, dreading my parents dropping me off for another five weeks of torture.”
“How are the newbies settling in?” asked Athena.
“My impression was that Kelly Dexter came as a shock to many of the men in this set. She rules her sessions with a rod of iron and takes no prisoners. For many of them, she will be the first female trainer they have encountered. Hayden Vincent plays the role of ‘good cop’ and adds the right amount of encouragement without ever undermining her authority. He’s not as intimidated by her in their day-to-day life, as we know, but the trainees aren’t privy to that information. That couple adopts a different approach to our ex-armoury guys, but it will produce the results we seek.”
“Excellent,” said Athena. She turned her attention to Giles Burke and Artemis.
“Is it too soon to have learned much from yesterday’s missions?”
“The visit to the shop premises off Portobello Road helped solve the disappearance of Dawn Prentice, with the tragic outcome we feared,” said Giles.
“Yes,” sighed Athena. “Artemis informed me while Phoenix and Rusty were en route to London to carry out our response.”
Phoenix looked at the clock on the wall.
“We should learn more on that soon,” he said.
“Good,” said Athena. “I contacted Zeus and broke the news to him on Aurora. He wishes to be kept informed of today’s events.”
“The estate agent handling the sale of the shop premises was due to be persuaded to show the cellar to the pest control inspector from Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council this morning,” continued Giles. “He’s better known to us as Simon Garrett. The emergency services will have been alerted by now, and we’ll follow up on the case as soon as we get back to the ice-house. It might be a few days, however, before the time and cause of death are established.”
“Understood,” said Athena, “can you take the rest of the team through what happened yesterday evening, Phoenix?”
Phoenix had updated his wife this morning over breakfast. Artemis had been asleep when Rusty got to bed last night and had gone to the control centre to start her shift at six o’clock. Well before he was up and about.
“The window-cleaning cover worked a treat. In fact, it worked so well that Rusty picked up extra business for our dynamic duo. I’m not sure we’ll be available to carry it out. I attached the device to the BMW, and the electrical circuit was completed when the driver used the brake pedal for the first time. That will have initiated the timer. The surveillance carried out by Giles and his team suggested an average journey time to Park Royal in all traffic conditions is twenty-two minutes.”
“How did you know Kovacs would head for the warehouse this morning?” asked Artemis. “He might have been driving anywhere.”
“Not likely. This is thanks to Giles’s attention to detail again,” said Phoenix. “Kovacs makes only two trips in the daytime by car with his minder. Either to the warehouse or to the shop. I discounted a visit to the shop. He has no reason to visit it now Dawn Prentice is dead. He wouldn’t collect the body himself and dispose of it, he has thugs in his employ to do his dirty work. There’s no chance of them doing that in the daytime. They would operate under cover of darkness. Either he hasn’t issued the order yet, or they weren’t in a hurry to get the job done. That was their loss; and our good fortune.”
“We shouldn’t have long to wait for news,” said Giles. “Kovacs rarely went anywhere much before noon.”
All eyes turned to the clock. It had just clicked past twelve o’clock.
*****
Dominick Nagy was cursing his luck. A lorry reversing from a loading bay in a depot across the road from the warehouse had brought them to a halt. Seconds ticked by. He could sense Adam Kovacs losing patience. He edged forward.
Nagy tried to nudge through the gap. He was keen to get the BMW into the parking spot so eagerly anticipated by his boss. The lorry driver realised he was holding someone up, took his time to manoeuvre his truck and as he straightened up, he gave Dominick the finger through his cab’s windscreen.
“English bastard,” cursed Nagy.
The road ahead was now clear, and the lorry drew alongside. Nagy accelerated forwards to swing in front of the warehouse building. It was eight minutes past twelve.
Time was up.
*****
Athena and Phoenix had finished lunch. Hope was playing on the floor in front of them as they sat chatting on the sofa.
“What time are you leaving?” asked Athena.
“In an hour,” replied Phoenix. “Rusty is in the armoury collecting the things on my shopping list. We are travelling by car.”
The phone rang. Athena answered. It was Minos.
“Turn on the TV,” she said to Phoenix, “this is what we’ve been waiting for.”
The scenes that greeted them were from Park Royal. The police cordon restricted the camera views for the gathering media scrum to long distance. Ahead of them was mayhem. Fire appliances, paramedics, and police officers were milling around. It was organised chaos. The camera broke away from the centre of the blast and switched to a reporter interviewing a senior fire chief.
“A car bomb rocked this industrial estate at a few minutes after twelve o’clock. The blast blew apart the car, believed to be a BMW, and shattered windows in buildings a hundred yards in either direction. It’s believed there were two people inside the car. They died in the explosion. The site was busy with vehicular traffic in the middle of the day. Lorries driving past, or parked on the forecourts of nearby units were damaged by the force of the explosion. The pall of smoke from the car was visible five miles away. Fork-lift truck drivers working outside and dozens of warehouse staff from these units were cut by flying glass and falling equipment. At this stage, none of the injuries sustained appears to be life-threatening. Ambulances are removing the injured to local hospitals. A major incident has been declared.”
Athena muted the sound but left the images on the screen.
“That’s a relief,” said Phoenix, “there was a risk the bomb would go off in traffic. They could have hit a trouble-spot our surveillance team didn’t factor into their calculations.”
“Your misdirection had the potential to go wrong,�
�� said Athena, “but it was a gamble worth taking, I suppose?”
“I thought so,” said Phoenix, “let’s look at the possibilities. The police will soon identify the dead men. There’s an established link between Kovacs and this Park Royal warehouse, and the premises off Portobello Road. It will be simple enough for Giles to make an anonymous call to suggest that the police might find it useful to have a peek inside the warehouse. To check what type of business he was running.”
“How will we help explain who might have killed Kovacs and his driver?” asked Athena.
“My plan relies on the fact that his actions disrupted the money supply. Kovacs kidnapped Dawn Prentice, and that led to it being switched off. His partners on the continent will have been surprised by that move. Access to tens of thousands of pounds every month was a godsend to their operation. What was the first question the gang would ask? Why did Kovacs slow the transfer and conversion of their raw materials into street-ready drugs? A little nudge in the right quarter will point the investigation towards his partners-in-crime as having the best motive for killing him. We could intimate Kovacs was intent on getting more money from Dawn Prentice to allow him to cut out the middle man. To suggest that was the reason behind the kidnap. The loss of profits for the gang across the channel would be more than enough to make them act to remove Kovacs and send a message to other UK gangs not to cross them. If the police follow the trail of clues we leave them we could kill two birds with one stone. Avenge Dawn Prentice’s murder and destroy this particular supply line of designer drugs onto our streets.”
“If everything goes to plan with Simon Garrett, the discovery of Dawn’s body will soon filter through to the people handling this bombing,” said Athena. “Could the manner of her death change their way of thinking?”