Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  The three men at the front of the stick dropped back quickly and took up positions across the road, beyond the pedestrian bollards. Graves watched the front door swing shut again. ‘Siege mode,’ he said into the radio.

  In the lead car, the three officers from SO13 heard the shooting and sat very still, listening to the radio. Colson, in the driver’s seat, rubbed the line of his lip with the heel of his thumb. Behind him, Webb’s face was grave. Swann shifted restlessly. ‘George, you’d better organize some technical back-up,’ Colson said. ‘I think we’re going to need it.’

  Webb got on the radio and spoke directly to the operations room on the sixteenth floor, requesting a full Technical Support Unit from SO11. He set the phone down then and joined Swann on the pavement, where he was watching the scene at the far end of the road. At the window of the hotel room above them, the bearded man watched, a light in the dark of his eyes.

  Further along the road, lights were coming on and windows were being opened in houses on both sides. Graves was on the phone to base in Old Street requesting a second team. He glanced behind him to the wall where he had set the sniping rifle, then summoned every available Trojan in the area. Mumbles, MacGregor and Gibson were still containing the front entrance. At the rear, the black was secure with Phil Davies and Eddie Butler in the yard. Graves watched the front of number 4 for movement, then he heard Davies’s voice in his ear.

  ‘Control from Davies. Light on the black. Window three/two.’

  Graves was silent for a moment. Outside, the rest of the team were preparing to evacuate the house immediately next to number 4. Graves spoke to Colson in the lead car. ‘Can somebody bring down a kit van? Quickest way to get these people out.’

  Swann heard the transmission and was behind the wheel immediately. He drove the length of the road at speed, spun the van in a three-point turn and backed it up. The occupants of the flats next door to number 4 were loaded hurriedly into it, with cover from the entry team protecting them. Swann drove them back up the road and they were moved away by local uniformed officers.

  In the observation point, Graves had a telephone held to his ear and was listening to the endless ringing from the unanswered line at number 4. ‘Come on, you fucker,’ he muttered. ‘Answer the bloody thing.’ But nobody did and he put the phone down. He lifted the radio again.

  ‘Colson from Control. How long till we have technical?’ he asked. ‘I want to know what’s going on in that house.’

  Webb answered him. ‘Graves from Webb. On its way now. I’ll let you know as soon as they get here.’

  Graves picked up the telephone and dialled again. Again it rang and rang, but still nobody answered.

  The Trojan units, marked armed-response vehicles, were backing up the SFO team. At the rendezvous point, at the junction with Adie Road, the Technical Support Unit had arrived and Webb radioed through to Graves.

  ‘OK,’ Graves said. ‘I still can’t get him to pick the phone up, but we’ve got an upstairs light on the black.’ He glanced through the window again, five o’clock now and the sun was lifting over the grey streets of the city. ‘Bring the support team up, Webb. Park on the target side of the road and stand by.’

  Webb and Swann got into the van with the TSU and moved up Queen’s House Mews, stopping halfway along on the right-hand side of the road. The SFO team had secured the front entrance to the house next door to number 4 and backed them up as the technical men moved in, walking swiftly, heads low. They were joined by Webb, Swann and two firearms officers.

  They worked first in the ground-floor flat where the adjoining wall backed on to the hallway of number 4. Gauging the height as best they could, they tried to figure out where the stairs would be and work slightly above. They chipped away wallpaper and plaster until the brickwork was exposed. Using a very small, very powerful, diamond-headed drill, one man started to cut a tiny hole in the brick, little flurries of red dust flying into the air. The drill made barely a sound, the head rotating slowly with a light buzzing noise. The officer worked until he was through the brick, plastic goggles covering his eyes. As soon as there was no more pressure on the head it died and rested against the inner side of the wallpaper. The officer removed the drill and fed a fibre optic listening probe, the size of the inside of a ball-point pen, into the hole. It came up against the wallpaper next door. The free end was fixed to a speaker and the device activated. They all listened in silence.

  Upstairs, in the first-floor flat which abutted the landing of number 4, a second technical support officer was working away at that wall. He finished with the drill, inserted the probe and activated the speaker. Swann moved up to him with an SFO, respirator hanging loose about his neck. They, too, listened in absolute silence.

  Downstairs, Webb was monitoring the first device. All at once they heard movement, footsteps creaking on the staircase. It was unmistakable. Webb winked at his colleague. ‘Got himself a loose one.’

  The footsteps reached the bottom and then they heard the sharp click of a weapon being made ready. Webb spoke into his radio. ‘Control from Webb. Movement. He’s downstairs, right now. Just cocked a gun.’

  ‘Received.’

  Again Graves picked up the telephone. Across the road, Webb and Swann could hear the phone ringing through the wall. Nobody answered it. Then Swann heard somebody muttering to himself upstairs.

  ‘Control from Swann. Upstairs. He’s talking to himself.’

  Downstairs, Webb frowned. He had not heard him go back up. He moved out into the hall and beckoned for the technical support officer to follow him. They went up to the first floor and joined Swann and the other officers. Webb ushered them out of the flat, back on to the landing. He pointed to the top flat. ‘Let’s look in the loft,’ he said, looking at the TSU men. ‘If it’s shared, we can drop a probe through the ceiling rather than go through the wall up here.’ As he was talking, they heard more movement coming from the next-door landing. A door was closed and then footsteps along the landing and then another door closing. Swann rubbed the stubble that had built up on his jaw. ‘Busy boy, isn’t he.’

  The SO19 officers brought a small assault ladder into the house and then moved up to the loft. Very carefully, they eased the trapdoor up and peered inside. It was fully light outside now, five-thirty. Graves was monitoring the situation, again trying to get the man to answer the phone. People were watching from the windows all along the far side of the street and the armed officers from the ARVs ordered them to keep inside through loud hailers. Two Trojans were now parked in the street, blue lights flashing, doors open with ballistic blankets thrown over them to protect the officers from fire. Graves used the same loud-hailing system to speak directly to Morton.

  ‘James Morton, this is Sergeant Graves of the Metropolitan Police Firearms Unit. You are completely surrounded by armed officers. Throw your weapon out of a window and come out the front door with your hands over your head.’ He received no answer.

  Upstairs in the attic, Webb stared. Not only was the loft not partitioned with number 4, it stretched the full length of the building. He glanced at the SFO who squatted next to him.

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Never showed up on the plans.’

  The lead SFO placed wooden treadboards over the beams on the floor, then Kevlar ballistic blankets were laid over the boards and Webb eased his way across them until he came to what he’d hoped he was going to find: an ancient, rose-type light fitting, holding a substantial chain-linked connection for a heavy chandelier. He slipped a final listening probe down and they waited. Somebody coughed directly below them. Everyone fell silent. Webb was on his hands and knees on the Kevlar blanket, praying it was as good as they claimed. He had never had cause to find out. If whoever was in the room below heard so much as a whisper, he would probably do so now. Again the cough, then a door creaked and closed. Webb let go a sigh. He and Swann moved out of the loft and went downstairs. They slipped out of the house and Swann glanced up to see a sniper on the roof o
f the building opposite: he was training telescopic sights on the upstairs windows of number 4.

  Graves watched the scene from the observation point. The listening devices were in place. There was no means of escape. He lifted the radio to his lips. ‘All units from Graves. Stand off,’ he said. ‘Maintain positions. Let him soak for a while.’

  He left the OP then and went out the back, climbed the wall of the yard and dropped down the other side. He walked the length of the next street and came out in Adie Road. The second SFO team had arrived and Graves sent one of them back the way he had come with an assault ladder for the garden wall. Swann, Webb and Colson moved back up the road to the form-up point.

  ‘Worst nightmare stuff,’ Graves said as they got to him. ‘Someone who actually knows what he’s doing.’

  From his window in the hotel, the slightly built man with the beard watched them. He saw Swann, he saw Webb and he saw Colson. From the travel bag at his side, he took a camera, focused the lens and snapped all three of them.

  ‘We’ll let him sweat it out for a few hours and then I’ll send the teams in,’ Graves said. ‘I’ll do the windows with shotguns and then the gas. We’ll storm them on ladders. At the same time I’ll drop a couple of lads through the loft space.’

  ‘Stun grenades?’ Webb made a face. ‘Could be lots of dets in there, Nick. Concussion waves could set them off.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’re going to do it anyway.’

  ‘Well, Webby. The way I look at it is this—if they do go off, he’ll be the only one in there apart from the team and they take that risk every time we use them.’

  ‘I hate the fucking things,’ Swann said. ‘Guy in 22 lost a hand to one.’

  ‘Jim Robertson. He was training with us at the time.’

  As they were talking a bearded man with glasses and a stick came out of the hotel, carrying a travel bag. He turned the wrong way down Queen’s House Mews and started walking towards the siege. Jack Swann spotted him.

  ‘Sir. Sir. Excuse me, sir.’

  The man stopped and looked round.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t go that way, sir.’

  The man smiled at him, heavy-browed, the beard straggling almost to his chest. He wore a fez-style cap on his head. ‘So sorry,’ he said. ‘I always walk that way.’

  ‘Not today though eh, sir,’ Swann said. ‘The road’s blocked off.’

  The man nodded, crossed the street, then disappeared round the corner. Swann shook his head as he went.

  Graves stood off for four hours. He would’ve liked to have waited until it was dark, but there wasn’t the time. Already, the whole thing was being filmed by a crew on rooftops at either end of the street. Pressmen gathered at the outer cordons and a helicopter was flying overhead. Graves looked up at the sky and pushed the sleeves of his coveralls higher against his elbows. ‘Somebody shoot it down,’ he muttered.

  The street was evacuated long before the stand-off period ended. Graves moved back to the control point and reassessed. He had men in front of the house giving cover fire with MP5s. Butler and Davies were still at the back and he had three men inside the house next door. That was enough to go in through the attic. There was still movement being monitored by the sound probes through the walls of number 4. All had been quiet for an hour and then the target was heard once more on the landing of the first floor. Graves knew the sound probes were his marker for the attack. He had to get men in there as quickly as possible, when they were the least likely to get shot at.

  At 2 p.m., he called the attack. Gibson, MacGregor and Mumbles were in the loft of the next-door flat, crouched in readiness on Kevlar ballistic blankets. Downstairs, one of the technical support officers was monitoring the second probe they had inserted. He heard something at one minute to two.

  ‘Control from TSU-1. I’ve got movement.’

  ‘Where?’ Graves held the handset very close to his mouth.

  ‘Second landing. He’s …’ The officer suddenly broke off as he heard the distinct sound of a toilet flushing. ‘Toilet. Second floor.’

  ‘GO. GO. GO,’ Graves shouted into the microphone.

  In the loft, Gibson and MacGregor hauled up the trap door and dropped a stun grenade. Gibson held it, pulling out the pin and keeping the safety arm pressed tightly against the canister. Nine separate explosions, indentations in the metal casing. He hurled it into the room below and it bounced off the floor and the walls; explosions and smoke and fire. The two men dropped as the ninth charge went off. They secured the door and then Mumbles dropped down behind them and moved on to the landing.

  At the same time, shotgun fire took out the windows on the first floor, then CS gas canisters were lobbed inside. Assault ladders were up in seconds and the attack team swarmed up them and smashed in the remaining glass. Quickly, they moved through the house. Gibson, Mumbles and MacGregor on the second floor. The toilet door was closed. They took up positions; Gibson one side, carbine high, the butt pressing into his shoulder.

  ‘Armed police,’ Mumbles shouted. ‘You in the toilet. Come out with your hands over your head.’

  Nobody answered him. Smoke drifted and as it cleared, Gibson spotted a tape recorder on the stairs leading down to the second floor. It was wired to some sort of electronic timer. Downstairs, the other team had secured the rooms. That only left the ground floor and the basement. Mumbles ripped open the door to the toilet and two MP5s were levelled at the empty seat.

  ‘Control, from Gibson,’ Gibson spoke into his radio. ‘Second floor clear. No bodies. But we’ve found a cassette recorder and timer.’

  Graves frowned heavily, the creases cutting the skin of his forehead.

  They had deliberately not attacked the front door. It was covered in case Morton tried to run, but, with the lawn mower in the hall and the floorboards taken up, rapid entry was impossible. Inside the house, the team moved through the smoke. Gibson put out the fire which had been started by the stun grenade in the bedroom. They searched everywhere, tossing the beds over and opening wardrobes. They went through it room by room, but found nothing except two more tape recorders. The lawn mower that now nestled among the broken floorboards in the hall had been attached by two cables on a trip switch. Gibson spotted two passive infrared movement sensors above the front door. A hole had been cut in the ceiling a little way back and a gun barrel poked through. Gibson got one of the smaller assault ladders and climbed up to investigate. The gun was an Ingram SMG. He looked at it closely, wedged as it was in the hole. There was something fixed in the trigger housing, a small cam-style motor which turned electronically. He left the weapon where it was. The jagged edges of the hole had fibre in them. He could see it clearly in the cuts in the plaster. Graves came in. He stood with his hands on his hips and looked at the lawn mower.

  ‘Movement sensors, Sarge,’ Gibson told him. ‘One for the mower, one for the SMG.’ He rubbed a hand through sweat-soaked hair. ‘He was gone long before we got here. The light on the black was on a timer, the noises we heard were from tapes. He knew we’d use listening probes.’

  Graves looked up at the gun in the ceiling, then again at the lawn mower. ‘What’s more important,’ he said quietly, ‘is how he knew we were coming.’

  Graves confirmed the house to be clear and handed it over to the antiterrorist officers. Webb and his colleagues from exhibits now dressed in paper suits, boots and gloves, took over. The area was cordoned still, but the homes that had been evacuated were returned to normal and the SO19 perimeter taken down. The firearms officers returned to Shepherd’s Bush for a debrief with the unused arrest team. Jack Swann went with them. He drove with Colson and Clements. All three of them were subdued. Swann sat in the back staring out of the window. At Shepherd’s Bush, they found a free briefing room and crammed inside. Swann and the senior officers from SO13 faced Graves and his firearms team across the table. Graves rubbed a palm over the bald dome of his skull. The energy exerted over the past seven hours had all but drained him and hi
s head ached with stopped-up adrenalin. Opposite him, Colson and Clements were still. Swann broke the silence.

  ‘He knew we were coming,’ he said. ‘It’s why he wasn’t there.’

  Graves looked at him. ‘I thought your team had put him to bed.’

  Colson picked up the surveillance log. He tapped an entry with his index finger and offered the page to Graves. ‘He went out at 14.05. They had X3 contact every second and he was back in the house by 14.15. He didn’t go out again.’

  At the far end of the table Phil Gibson shifted his position in the chair. It was hot and his Ninja suit was sticking to him. ‘He got out through the attic,’ he said. ‘We searched. He must’ve got down through the house at the far end. The one that’s for sale.’

  Everyone looked at him. ‘There’s a footprint up there,’ Gibson went on. ‘Me and Mumbles checked it out.’ He looked at Mumbles, who nodded his acknowledgement. ‘We should’ve known about the attic.’

  Colson spoke to Swann. ‘Jack, give SO12 a ring, would you. See if you can get hold of Christine Harris. I’ll want to talk to Julian Moore as well.’ He looked back at Graves. ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘Well, he certainly knew we were coming, which begs the question—how?’

  Swann put away his mobile phone. ‘Someone must’ve told him.’

  Webb co-ordinated the search at Queen’s House Mews. They photographed everything initially, every room from varying angles, so they could refer back once evidence had been recovered, bagged and tagged. The house was expensively furnished and well kept. A rumble of unease moved in the pit of Webb’s stomach—somebody had paid an awful lot of money to house James Morton.

  Upstairs they found a mini darkroom. All the materials for developing pictures were still there, but no pictures themselves. There were no clothes in the bedrooms, the place had been cleared out: dishes were done, no mess in the kitchen, nothing even vaguely hurried about anything. Webb had been in many such search situations over the past seven years. He knew what to look for—haste; the mistakes left by somebody making a swift exit. He saw none of those things here.