END GAME a gripping crime thriller full of breathtaking twists

by Charlie Gallagher

  ‘I can’t. Not until I’ve had a bit of time to find out for sure.’

  ‘At least tell me what you do know. What is this big threat and why can’t I even trust the coppers to protect me?’

  ‘You can’t trust anyone, you have to believe me on that. I will tell you everything, I promise. I just need a bit of time to get it all straight.’ He looked down at his hands.

  ‘Here we are again. That’s all I hear from you, George. You started off telling me that it’s all over, you’re out of prison, acquitted, and I should be telling our daughter all about how it’s all back to normal. And now you tell me that you need time to get it straight, whatever it is! Life is never normal with you, George. That is the only certainty that’s come out of these last two years. All I want for Charley is a normal life.’ Sarah got to her feet.

  George looked up at her. ‘I need to see her, Sarah. I need to be with you both. We can be a family.’

  ‘Not a family, George. You may be happy to live your life on the run, but I’m not, especially when you won’t even tell me what we’re running from. I am going to disappear, just like you told me to, and no one will find me or Charley — not this mysterious threat, not Lennockshire Police and not you, George.’

  ‘Just sit and talk a bit more. I can sort this.’

  ‘No, George. You remember that night when we brought Charley home from the hospital for the first time? When she was so small she couldn’t get her hand round your little finger? You promised me that we would never grow up, that we’d stay young and silly and carefree for Charley, with none of the problems that eat other people up. Look at us now, George, look at our daughter. Who knows what damage we’ve done to her in the last two years, the damage you’ve done!’

  Sarah walked away. George stood up and took a step after her. Then he stopped, and his hands dropped to his side.

  ‘We can still have that life, Sarah!’ he called out, his vision blurred by tears.

  ‘Not with you. You’ve put an end to that life.’

  Sarah didn’t look back.

  George let her go. There was nothing he could say that would make anything better. He would find her and they would be a family again. He would just have to make it safe first.

  Then once and for all they could stop being grown-ups.

  Chapter 4

  Mick leant on his shovel. The man he knew only as the Irishman, or ‘Irish’ for short, dropped to his knees beside him, taking the weight of the grey, pitted patio slab that was next to be manoeuvred into place. Two other men were looking on. Mick picked up the hose, aimed it into the cement mixer, and span it to clear out the leftovers. Then he brought it to a halt.

  The sudden silence was beautiful.

  ‘Fuck me, she’s a noisy old beast!’

  ‘Reminds me of your mum.’

  Mick cast his eyes over their handiwork. ‘We should finish the whole slabs today,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Then just back in the morning for the last bits, a few cuts. Couple of hours maybe.’ No one replied.

  Mick and Irish walked out to the front drive. Their work van was parked awkwardly, hanging over the lip of the drive. The men had stashed their lunches in the back, hoping it would remain in shade. Mick heaved the large metal door open, and Irish leant in. Mick noticed something move past the front of the van.

  It was a car, a black Volvo estate. The passenger side of the car was closest to the van. The man sitting inside wore sunglasses and he was staring at the van, the number plate in particular. Mick thought he might have been writing it down. Irish had reached into the van to grab his lunch bag, but stopped and looked up at Mick. They both watched the Volvo, which had stopped just fifty metres away. It was a quiet area, the neat bungalows mostly occupied by retirees. The Volvo turned. It picked up speed, came back past the van and took a left out of the estate. Both men watched it go without comment.

  Mick took his own lunch and they walked back to the rear of the house, careful to put their feet on the ornate stepping-stones across the lawn. The two other men were laughing, taking the piss out of each other. The laughter stopped when they saw the Irishman’s face.

  ‘The cops were out the front. They were watching us,’ Irish said.

  Mick shrugged. ‘It’s no biggie, boys. We’re just a gang of ground workers with a job on. It’s the whole reason we do this shit.’

  ‘They must know, though. They must know about the job.’ Ainsley was the youngest of the crew, just eighteen, black, dreadlocked, and solidly built.

  ‘They don’t know nothing,’ Mick said. He ran a dusty hand over the stubble on his head.

  ‘Then why the fuck are they sat out there watching us work?’ said Ainsley.

  ‘They just know we’re active, or they think we might be. They wanted us to see them. They were letting us know that they’re watching so we don’t do anything.’

  Ainsley looked at him. ‘How come you know so much?’

  ‘It’s what I would do if I was a copper.’

  ‘Maybe you missed your calling, Mick!’ The Irishman laughed. ‘Do we need to change anything though, man? I mean, seeing the law this close to a job, it ain’t good, is it?’

  Mick shook his head. ‘No, we don’t need to change nothing. We just need to be careful, yeah? Boys, those fools practically stalled their car in front of me. Listen, we’re just a gang, out doing our job, so let’s shut up and eat. We get it done, we get paid and then at the weekend we get paid!’

  The four men laughed. Ainsley whooped.

  ‘Ah, fuck!’ Mick was digging around in his lunchbox. ‘Anyone need anything at the van? I forgot my water.’

  Mick walked back to the van. The street was empty, save for a silver-haired gent six houses away battling with a bright orange lawnmower. Mick heaved at the side door and leant in, looking back to make sure none of the crew had followed him. His thumb moved fast over the keys on his phone.

  Gotta lv this weather man. U fancy a beer anytime soon? Enough to make you thirsty.

  He sent the message to someone listed only as T. Mick burrowed in the van for the water and the reply soon popped up.

  You know me, I’m always good for a beer. As long as it’s not Fosters again. Felt shit for days!

  Mick checked again. He was still alone.

  Fosters it is! Round 8.

  * * *

  Eighteen miles away in the town of Langthorne, intelligence officer Emily Ryker sent her text to the undercover officer and made her way back to her desk. At eight o’clock tonight she would access one of the email accounts used by her and her asset, who was currently infiltrating a crew of thieves who specialised in high value cash break-ins. Fosters was the code word indicating which email account she would use. She would read a message saved to drafts, delete it and save her response in the same box. They made as little contact as possible, so there must be a problem.

  Chapter 5

  The jeep slithered on the stones, mud, and metal shards of the approach road to Alcani’s scrap-metal yard. Helen Webb had to fight to stay on course. It had just got dark. The car bucked through a deep gulley and as it rose back up, Helen was relieved to see its headlights pick out a slate-grey metal gate. She bought the jeep to a stop several metres short of it.

  Helen knew more about Alcani’s yard than most of the people who worked there. A web of mug shots featuring various Alcanis had been decorating the wall at Langthorne House police station for some time. One of the area’s largest organised-crime groups (OCGs to Helen’s old colleagues), the Alcanis ran their operation out of this site. Career criminals, the Alcanis were now into their third generation after immigrating from Albania. Since most of the second generation were now in prison, Sol Alcani, the son of Nial Alcani — the most senior mobster to be sent down — now sat at the head of the family table. Following a raid on the premises, fourteen of them had been convicted, but for money laundering rather than the murder charges or weapons-supply jobs that she had been hoping for. Helen had wanted to join that raid
but hadn’t been able to. She could never have foreseen that she would one day be counting her lucky stars that she had missed it.

  The Alcani family weren’t finished. They were too big for that. Lennockshire Police coppiced the family tree when they took Nial out, but it soon grew three more heads. The family were still involved in everything from crude and petty burglaries right up to moving weapons, large amounts of drugs and organising killers for hire. But now they were probably more careful.

  Helen Webb switched off the engine and stepped out of the jeep. The headlights still pointed at the gate. It was eight-foot tall, made of matt-finish steel and locked firm into magnetic housing topped by barbed wire. The gate was new, doubtless put up in response to the raid. The police wouldn’t breach this one.

  Helen crossed her arms and leant on the bonnet of the car. There was no buzzer system, and no point shouting or flashing. She was certain her presence had been noted by the state-of-the-art movement-detection and CCTV systems hidden among the trees. And from the less subtle camera that overhung the gate like a giant desk lamp.

  Helen waited.

  After nearly twenty minutes she was just starting to feel the temperature dropping when she saw movement. A man sloped towards her and coughed on a cigarette. He’d probably lost the argument over who would go out. He was obviously trying too hard to be casual, and walked far too slowly.

  ‘We’re shut,’ he said.

  ‘So I see.’

  The man’s fingers poked through the mesh on the gate and he looked her up and down. ‘So fuck off.’

  ‘You talk to everyone like that?’ Helen stepped up to the gate.

  ‘I’ll talk better tomorrow at eight. When we’re open.’

  ‘I didn’t come here to speak to you.’

  ‘No one else here, love. I suggest you come back in the morning, like everyone else has to.’ The man turned away, already digging in his pocket for another smoke.

  ‘Sol Alcani will want to speak to me.’

  ‘I don’t know who that is,’ the man called out. He didn’t slow his pace, didn’t turn his head.

  ‘He knows who I am. Tell him Helen Webb is here.’

  The man disappeared out of sight.

  Helen waited some more.

  Another twenty minutes. Then the gate made a noise, or rather it didn’t. The electric hum was suddenly gone. The gate shuddered, then slid open, and an orange light flashed. She stayed where she was until the gate had opened fully. She looked straight ahead. Twenty metres of rutted track which then twisted away into an area of woodland. The site itself was hidden from view.

  ‘Seems like we are open after all,’ the smoker called from the darkness, ‘but I don’t reckon you’ve got long.’

  If anything, the road on the other side of the gate was even worse. The left turn had a high camber where the big trucks with their heavy loads of metal had worn away the surface as they turned. The jeep was old. It was the first car she could get with the cash she had hastily withdrawn before the police could freeze her accounts. It had cost her £450. She had left her BMW in a residential street in Maidstone. Needs must. And those same needs now had her jolting up to a Portakabin, the only building on the site with any sign of life.

  She climbed out of the jeep. The windows of the Portakabin were brightly lit. She could hear people moving about inside, but it was raised on stilts and she couldn’t see in. She took a quick look around the site. Two silhouettes dominated the skyline — directly ahead of her was the huge warehouse that she had seen in photos of the raid and, on her right was a huge pile of twisted scrap metal, one of the means for laundering their dirty money.

  The man from the gate had already walked in, letting the door close behind him. Helen made her way up the steps, into the bright room.

  ‘It really is!’ He was seated at an ancient plastic table. Sol Alcani. Helen recognised him from the photos. Three other men were at another table close to the wall.

  ‘Helen Webb,’ he said, and nodded.

  Helen couldn’t have known what response her name would prompt, if any. She hadn’t been able to think of anything else to say. She had expected to be on every news channel by now. The press would have eaten up her story — her betrayal, her possible involvement in the deaths of officers, of the chief no less. But there hadn’t been a word. Helen guessed why. Lennockshire Police was a PR disaster and had been for nearly three years now. It couldn’t let this story break too, not yet.

  ‘It really is,’ Helen said. She managed an uncertain smile. The man facing her looked dishevelled. He was in his late thirties, of medium build. He was wearing woollen shorts, a battered grey hoodie and pit boots. His English carried a slight accent.

  ‘My people tell me you are not a very popular lady at the moment. Or you’re very popular indeed, depending on how you look at it.’

  ‘I guess you could say that both are true.’

  ‘Way I understand it, your police friends would be very interested to know where you are right now. There might even be a reward. Is there a reward?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Sol smiled. ‘So I should keep you here until there is one, should I?’

  ‘I’m here to offer you a reward, something no one else can.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Sol sat up straighter. ‘I’m interested.’

  ‘I need to disappear for a while. I need some things I reckon you can get for me, some ID documents, maybe even a bolt hole where I can buy myself a little time. And I need money.’

  Sol looked puzzled. ‘You want my help?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was interested. I mean, you sparked my curiosity, so I opened the gate to see what was going on. I did not expect you to walk in here and ask for my help. Your organisation and I don’t get along, Helen Webb. Why would I help you out?’

  ‘I want to strike a deal.’

  Sol jerked forward and spat. ‘I don’t deal with fucking snakes. The last time your snakes came here they took away my family. They fabricated the evidence, made up lies and sent us down. I don’t see that as grounds for a fucking deal, do you?’

  ‘I’m not part of that anymore.’

  ‘Oh, so that puts us in the same team now, does it? How do I know this isn’t all bullshit? Who says you’re not strapped up with technical right now, and my voice is being transmitted back to your fucking pig mates? Maybe this is how you weasel your way back in — a punishment posting.’ Sol shook his head. He nodded at the gate man.

  ‘Search her. Search her good.’

  The man turned to Helen, grinning. He ran his eyes down her baggy jumper, over her tight-fitting black leggings to her brown, fur-topped boots. She was in good shape, looking younger than her age with her shorter hair, now dark red.

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ Sol called out. The lad looked back over his shoulder and smiled at his boss.

  ‘I’m not taking anything off.’

  ‘Take off your fucking clothes,’ Sol replied. The boy’s smile widened.

  ‘Every relationship has to have an element of trust, doesn’t it, Helen? Right now you’ve got some making up to do. I need to be sure you’ve got nothing on you. Now take off your fucking clothes.’

  Helen weighed up her options. One of the men had moved towards the door, blocking it. They all stared at her intently. She reached under her jumper and pulled out an A4 envelope that she had been holding flat against her body. She stepped forward, and threw it on the desk in front of Sol.

  ‘That—’ Helen began.

  ‘Take off your fucking clothes!’ Sol lashed out at the envelope, and it span off the table. He rose to his feet, his chest rising and falling, and stood with his hands flat on the table. ‘We don’t say another word until I know you are not recording this conversation.’

  Helen stiffened, then raised her jumper and pulled it over her head.

  ‘No wire,’ she said.

  ‘You haven’t been searched yet.’ Sol nodded at the lad, who stepped forward with his eyes on her chest
. Helen looked up at the ceiling while he ran his fingers across her belly and up towards her breasts. Looking straight at her he put his hand inside her bra and took hold of her nipple. Then he put his hands behind her back, as if they were hugging. She averted her face from the cigarette stench on his breath. Her bra slipped down to her waist.

  Sol Alcani laughed. ‘This has to be done properly, Helen.’

  She said nothing. The lad moved round behind her and pushed against her buttocks, clearly aroused. His hands moved down her sides, then forward. His fingers pushed under her waistband and then beneath her underwear.

  Helen’s elbow shot back. The blow connected with the lad’s nose and he bent double. He was spouting blood even before he hit the floor.

  Sol Alcani laughed again, and slapped the table. ‘Fuck, I didn’t think he would get that far!’ Helen dragged her jumper back over her head, while the lad at her feet squirmed.

  ‘You done with your games?’ Helen snarled.

  Sol turned his attention to the envelope on the floor, and he gestured at one of the older men, who picked it up and handed it over. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Your old man and all the rest. They were convicted on the evidence of four undercover officers and two informants from within your organisation.’

  ‘That’s not news. Your lot came here with a confident swagger. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.’

  ‘I’m sure. I was responsible for what happened to them after they’d served their purpose. Those papers give the name of one of the men who supplied us with information. He still works for you. He isn’t on our payroll anymore.’

  Sol held up the envelope and shook it. ‘That’s in here?’

  ‘Yes. You get another name when you give me some ID I can travel with. I give you the rest in exchange for a safe house until I can leave the country with £500,000 clean cash.’

  ‘Five hundred grand! And a passport! What makes you think this so-called information is worth that sort of money?’