Despite Skin’s speeding brain, he had not been stupid. He had parked his transit with a clear route out – a good ten yards of space between him and the next car. This was where CO19 saw their opportunity. Two officers on foot on the other side of the street moved up level with the transit, while the other team remained two cars back. An unmarked police car overtook Skin’s transit and began manoeuvering into the space in front. A nodding dog had been positioned in the middle of the rear window for added distraction.
Skin was smoking with one hand and cuddling the sports bag with the other. His gun was lying on the passenger seat. As soon as he saw the reversing lights, his hand reached for the gun. But the CO19 men were moving quicker than Skin’s brain. The door opened and a Glock 17 was plugged hard into his throat.
‘Fuck.’
28
1.00 A.M., WEDNESDAY 14TH MARCH 2012
Hackney, London N1
Alyshia was conscious but in a state of shock and profoundly cold. Her eyes were wide open, unblinking, unseeing.
Amir Jat had them strip Alyshia down to her underwear and the boys who hadn’t been in the water were ordered to undress and put their dry clothing on her.
Her head lolled as they dressed her. Her feet and hands were numb, her arms and legs as cold and hard as marble. A boy was assigned to massage each extremity to warm it up. They wrapped her head in a sweater, covering her eyes, with only her nose and mouth free for breathing. Cheema turned up the heating in the van to the maximum. Tarar, teeth still chattering, changed clothes with one of his team.
Cheema drove back via Bethnal Green and dropped off Tarar and the four boys. Rahim stayed in the van to help move Alyshia. They went to Boleyn Road, where they put her in the basement. Jat ordered a bed to be brought down and for hot water bottles to be prepared, along with a pot of tea. He asked Cheema if he had a thermometer. Alyshia’s body temperature was 34.5°C.
‘That’s OK,’ he said, ‘she’s not going to die.’
Rahim brought down the hot water bottles. Jat put one in each armpit, another between her thighs and the last one between her feet.
‘Where’s the tea?’
‘It’s coming,’ said Rahim.
‘Lots of sugar,’ said Jat.
Cheema followed Rahim upstairs into the kitchen where they made the tea.
‘Give me your gun,’ said Cheema.
Rahim frowned.
‘Don’t question me,’ said Cheema. ‘I have my orders.’
Rahim handed over his gun.
‘Is it ready to fire?’
Rahim checked, found a round in the chamber, flicked off the safety, nodded.
‘Do you have a silencer?’
Rahim reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thick cylinder, took the gun from Cheema and screwed it on the barrel. Handed it back.
‘What is this?’ he asked.
‘We don’t know. We don’t understand,’ said Cheema. ‘We just do what we’re told. These are orders from the highest authority. Direct from Pakistan.’
‘You gave Hakim your word about the girl,’ said Rahim.
‘I know,’ said Cheema. ‘That was before I gave my report. Bring the tea. We mustn’t be too long.’
Rahim went downstairs first with the tray. Cheema shut the doors. Held the gun behind his back.
‘Good,’ said Jat, who was immersed in his project. ‘Pour her some tea. Put six teaspoons of sugar in. She’s going to be fine.’
Rahim did as he was told.
‘You’ll have to help her drink it,’ said Jat. ‘She won’t be able to hold anything yet. It’s not too hot, is it?’
Cheema was standing next to Jat, looking at Alyshia, whose head was still swathed in the sweater. The gun was now at his side.
‘What are you waiting for?’ asked Jat.
Cheema turned, put the barrel of the gun to Amir Jat’s temple and fired. Rahim dropped the mug of tea. Jat keeled over sideways, the wound smoking as he fell. Blood bloomed over the rough concrete and mixed with MK’s urine stain.
Alyshia’s scream came out as a dog’s yelp and a whimper.
‘What have you done?’ said Rahim, aghast.
‘Those were my orders,’ said Cheema.
‘But he is one of us,’ said Rahim, stating the obvious. ‘He . . . he . . . he . . . planned the Mumbai attacks. He is a hero. I thought . . . you were going to shoot the girl.’
Cheema handed him the gun. His hands were shaking. He didn’t know where to put them. He’d never had killer’s hands before.
‘What have you done?’ repeated Rahim, staring at his guilty gun.
‘As required by the UK command structure, I reported the operation we were being asked to carry out by Amir Jat,’ said Cheema, falling into an official-speak he’d never used before. ‘They called me back, having received instructions from the highest authority in Pakistan and told me that we should follow Amir Jat’s orders precisely and, as soon as the operation was complete and the girl safe, I was to kill him.’
‘But why?’ asked Rahim, clearly upset, nearly in tears, which was strange to Cheema, who’d never seen any emotion in the man’s face before now.
‘I asked the same question myself,’ said Cheema. ‘All they would say was that it was a complicated situation which could jeopardise another operation. They said it was imperative that I follow their orders and report back as soon as . . . as soon as the deed was done.’
‘And the girl?’
They looked at Alyshia, who was still trembling.
‘We will be given further instructions about the girl.’
‘And this body?’
‘We have been given a specific place where we are to leave it,’ said Cheema. ‘We must do it tonight.’
Boxer took Isabel back to her house on Aubrey Walk. Rick Barnes was waiting there. He had news. Boxer held up his hand, took Isabel up to her bedroom, gave her a sleeping pill, put her to bed. He picked up his computer on the way back down.
‘We got him,’ said Barnes.
‘Well, we didn’t get Alyshia, seeing as you asked.’
‘We got Skin,’ said Barnes. ‘He’s been taken to Rotherhithe Police Station.’
‘You’re staying here,’ said Boxer, and left the house.
He got back into the Golf and called Mercy as he drove.
‘I hear you got Skin,’ said Boxer.
‘Homicide are talking to him at the moment,’ said Mercy. ‘I’m on next.’
‘Can I observe?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mercy. ‘I’ll have to ask DCS Makepeace. What are you going to get out of it?’
‘I thought I might be able to help.’
‘Like how? This isn’t your work anymore.’
‘I always felt that the guy, Jordan, was a professional and, if he was, that means he’s been trained somewhere and is making himself available in the private sector. I’m talking military-trained. And that is my world. I think I’ve got a better chance of tracing him than you, especially if he’s a mercenary in the black.’
‘In the black?’
‘The type of mercenary who’s prepared to work on dodgy projects, like privately sponsored military coups in West African states, for instance – or arranged kidnaps.’
‘I’ll talk to the DCS. Call you back.’
Half an hour later, Boxer pulled up outside the police station on Lower Road. An officer took him down to the interview rooms, where he was met by DCS Makepeace. They went to the observation window to see Mercy interviewing Skin. He was relaxed, hands clasped on the table, feet stretched out towards Mercy, who was getting annoyed with his attempts to play footsie.
‘You’ve only missed the intro,’ said Makepeace.
‘Is he talking?’
‘So far,’ said Makepeace. ‘By the way, we found his boss, Archibald Pike and his Number Two, Kevin Heep, a few hours ago. Both shot. We searched the premises and there were two big chest freezers, which had been left open. Human blood traces in both of them.’
‘We’re not hopeful,’ said Makepeace, who turned to look at Skin, ‘We’re getting to the interesting bit now.’
‘So you picked up Alyshia D’Cruz from Jack Auber’s house in Grange Road and . . .?’
‘Dan put her out with an injection.’
‘And you took her where?’ asked Mercy.
‘To a disused warehouse of Pike’s in Deptford,’ said Skin.
Mercy asked him to point it out to her on the map on the wall. Makepeace took down the details and called them through to a mobile unit.
‘Can you describe that situation for me, please?’ asked Mercy, keeping it polite.
‘One half of the warehouse was empty. The other half was an old refrigeration unit,’ said Skin. ‘Pike’s contract was to keep the outside of the warehouse secure. So Dan stayed in the empty part and patrolled the outside every now and again. There were some CCTV cameras ’n’ all.’
‘And you?’
‘I was brought into the refrigeration unit, because there was only one security guy and sometimes they needed two to deal with Alyshia.’
‘Deal with her?’
‘Take her for a piss, dress her, that kind of thing.’
‘And there was just one security guy supporting the interrogator?’
‘Only one at a time,’ said Skin. ‘There were three in all, but I only met two of them. The one who called himself Jordan, he was an American: the group leader and interrogator. And once during a shift change, I heard the Irish guy call his friend Reecey.’
‘Describe Jordan for me.’
‘He was short and squat. Bit of a gut on him. Long, greasy hair, reddish and thinning on top and at the back. That was the view I had of him most of the time. Hunched over the microphone, talking. Oh yeah, he limped, too. His left leg was bad. I asked Reecey and he said it was a shrapnel wound from a roadside bomb in Iraq. Yeah, and his voice didn’t match the way he looked.’
‘Meaning?’
‘His voice was very soft, you know; he sounded as if he cared,’ said Skin. ‘Mind you, Alyshia wouldn’t have known. I listened to some of the recordings after and his voice had been messed about with electronically.’
‘Can you describe his face?’ asked Mercy.
‘I didn’t see much of it,’ said Skin. ‘He was pudgy. Bad skin.’
‘Spotty?’
‘No, just not very healthy. Red, but in the wrong places.’
‘Beard? Moustache?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘What about Reecey and the Irish guy?’
‘Reecey was in ace condition. Physically, I mean,’ said Skin. ‘Worked out regularly during the sessions. I got the feeling he’d been hired by Jordan to do the kidnap and he’d subcontracted Pike for the warehouse and cabbie.’
‘And Reecey was British.’
‘Yeah, and he was mates with the Irish fucker, who Jordan told me was called McManus.’
‘What about the one you didn’t see?’
‘I was told he was American,’ said Skin. ‘Never got a name. They weren’t a very sociable lot. Reecey read a book most of the time when he wasn’t working out.’
‘Size, height?’
‘Tall. Six foot something. Big, too. Fourteen, fifteen stone. Blond hair, cut short. Light eyes, maybe grey. Capped teeth. Looked army to me. Don’t know why I say that, but he did.’
‘And it was Jordan and Reecey who you shot when you took over the kidnap?’
Skin hesitated for a moment as if, perhaps, he’d better not confess to something so serious, so easily, but by then he knew that homicide had already matched his DNA and he was going down for good, so he might as well go down for everything. It turned him cocky and he twitched his pectorals at her.
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he said.
‘Can you describe the other security guy? McManus.’
‘You wouldn’t want to go anywhere near him. I didn’t.’
‘Why?’
‘You could tell he was a killer and that he liked it too much. He was the one who volunteered to do the mock execution. “Wouldn’t have missed it”, he said. “Pity I can’t follow through.” Nasty bastard.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Nothing. Medium height. Five ten, maybe. Black curly hair cut close to his head. Thin moustache. Brown eyes, I think, but I can’t be sure because you didn’t want to look in there for too long. Went straight to black, know what I mean?’
‘Why did you decide to take over the kidnap if you were aware of the professionalism of the people in charge?’ asked Mercy. ‘You were risking a lot for a hundred grand.’
‘It didn’t start out as a hundred grand.’
‘So, money was the motive?’
‘That wasn’t all of it.’
‘So what was the rest?’
‘We didn’t like what they were doing to her . . . Alyshia.’
‘It sounded to me as if you were involved in what they were doing to her. Helping her to go to the toilet. And what about the mock execution? Were you involved in that?’
‘That was too fucking much. That was going too far. That’s when we decided.’
‘So you were being the good guys,’ said Mercy. ‘Or did you just fancy her, Skin?’
‘Get away,’ said Skin, pursing his lips at her in a mock kiss.
‘Yeah, right,’ said Mercy, shrugging. ‘Bit out of your league I’d have thought.’
‘What they were doing to her,’ said Skin, suddenly animated, jabbing his finger at her across the table, ‘was too fucking much. And that’s why we went in.’
‘All right, Skin, keep your hair on,’ said Mercy.
‘That’s enough for me to be going on with,’ said Boxer, watching from the observation room.
‘You’ll let us know,’ said DCS Makepeace. ‘Won’t you?’
After the shootout in the Dharavi slum, Deepak Mistry was moved out of Mumbai and taken north by car to a village outside Bhopal, where one of the gang members had family. Yash gave him a British passport in a different name. He also bought him a ticket from Delhi to Frankfurt.
The following day, Mistry boarded a train to the capital. In Delhi he stayed in a cheap hotel and blended in with some German hippies. He spent the night smoking grass with them and they left together the next morning for the airport, where they boarded the plane to Frankfurt.
It was freezing in Frankfurt and Mistry discarded his hippie garb and bought a warm coat, a woollen hat and some ski gloves and, later, a ticket to London at the coach station. He’d been told that passport checks on coaches were slacker than on other routes into the UK. He arrived at Victoria coach station at 11.00 p.m. on 13th March. He took a cab to an address in Southall given to him by Yash. Two hours later he got another cab, this time to Notting Hill Gate. Just after 1.00 a.m. he walked down Holland Park Avenue and up the hill to Aubrey Walk. He knew the house from his earlier visit. He just wasn’t sure who was in it. He watched and waited in the cold.
At about 1.30 a.m., a Golf GTI arrived and parked outside the house. A man got out and opened the passenger door for a woman Mistry recognised as Alyshia’s mother. The man put his arm around her and guided her up to the front door. Ten minutes later the man came out again, got into the car and left, talking on his mobile phone.
From Rotherhithe Police Station, Boxer made his way to Pavis’s offices on Buckingham Palace Road in Victoria. He let himself in and set up his computer under a single desk lamp, which was the only light he turned on. He had some phone numbers, which he kept in two places – an encrypted file on his computer and under the floorboards in his flat in Belsize Park. The man he was calling usually resided in Worcester, Massachusetts and his name was Dick Kushner. His day job was running a retreat and rehabilitation centre for war veterans, for which he raised money by finding work for more able-bodied ex-soldiers, who might be described by the press as mercenaries. Boxer used the hotline number that Dick only gave out to a chosen few who he believed shar
ed his ethical view on the business.
‘Charles Boxer,’ said Kushner, in his soft American accent. ‘An unexpected pleasure.’
‘Hi Dick, I’m sorry it’s been so long.’
‘I know you don’t need me to find you work, so what can I do for you?’
‘I’m looking for somebody.’
‘Has he got a name?’
‘No, but I have a description.’
‘Why do you need this name?’ asked Kushner. ‘You know my rules, Charlie.’
‘We need it so that we can put it on the man’s grave. He’s been shot in London.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. In London? Was he doing something bad?’
‘I can tell you he was running with the wrong crowd, that’s all,’ said Boxer. He gave him Skin’s description of Jordan.
‘You think PsyOps?’ said Kushner. ‘There’s only one man it could possibly be and I don’t mind telling you his name. I never liked him, or his friend.’
‘You know the friend as well?’ said Boxer. ‘American?’
‘Sure. They were interrogation specialists. Ex-CIA. They were involved in the darker end of the extraordinary rendition programme until it was wound up at the end of the Bush era,’ said Kushner. ‘They ran one of the Black Sites near Rabat. The short, fat guy is Sean Quiddhy, and his friend is Mike Dowd. They’re Boston Irish, met at high school, went to Virginia Tech and then on to the CIA.’
‘They always work together?’
‘As far as I know, but I’ve never given them anything. They’re not my kind of people. I don’t have them on my books, so names is all you get.’
‘That’s great, Dick, you’ve been very helpful.’
Boxer hung up, called DCS Makepeace, gave him the two names.
‘And Reecey and McManus?’
‘I’m going to work on those two now.’
He hung up, kicked the chair back and wandered through Pavis’s darkened offices, thinking about Skin’s description of the English guy: ‘he looked army’. Boxer stood on the threshold of Martin Fox’s huge office, thinking Pavis must have a recruitment file with CVs of all hopeful employees. Pavis was not like Boxer’s previous employer, GRM, with salaried members of staff only. This was a freelance operation where a lot of CVs would get sent, from both good and bad people. He switched on Fox’s computer.
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