“Lots of things don’t make sense, man. People like me get paid to make sense of them.”
He was smiling as he spoke. Was that a good thing? A smile from Gant would usually be the equivalent of seeing a tiger smiling whilst looking at a potential dinner walking innocently along. People like Gant will smile with you one second and put a bullet between your eyes the next.
“But, if you’re Special Branch, you’ll know something about the kind of world I live and work in. The one thing I bet you do know is that, when someone like myself is hired to do a job of work, shall we say,” he looked straight at me, “the transaction is confidential. Whoever it is who’s hired me would not want personal details being made public.”
“That’s true, but it doesn’t change the situation. I don’t like the idea of foreign mercenaries playing Assassin’s Creed in our country, and especially not here in London, even if you are someone who’s worked for governments both sides of the Atlantic. Anyway, you still haven’t told me why someone with your rep is going after the Phipps brothers. They told me you’d already taken shots at them and missed. If only a small part of what I hear about you is true, I can’t believe you’ve missed a couple of times.”
“Wasn’t trying to kill them then, just trying to scare the shit outa them, make them panic, make them too afraid to leave home, then at a convenient time dispatch them to the afterlife any way I see fit. I got nothing else on at present and I’m road-testing a new gun, so I’m just having a little fun with them before I terminate their existence,” he said, matter-of-factly.
I looked at the weapon in his hand. “What kind of gun is that?”
“It’s a kind of variation of a Beretta 92 Centurion, specially adapted by some Israeli guy I know. Got a couple of special features like the red beam I used to attract your attention. Great for focusing on targets in the dark. I’m sort of road testing it for him on live targets but I’m not sure I like it all that much. I prefer my Sig Mauser.”
I looked at him for a couple of moments.
“You do know the Phipps have got a couple of hostages in there, don’t you? There’s no way out other than that door there,” I nodded across the road, “and the older of the two brothers is sufficiently reckless to start shooting blindly and kill everyone if he thinks he’s trapped.”
“I suspected there were a few others in there, that’s why I haven’t tried entering the place. I knew there wasn’t a back way out. My contact confirmed that when I told him where I was.”
“So, you going to wait out here all night?” I asked.
“What do you suggest?”
“You turn around and leave. Defuse the situation. Defuse that maniac in there who’s holding a knife at a young girl’s throat. I’ve no evidence you’ve committed anything I could take you in for, only the word of someone like Louis Phipps, and that’s probably as reliable as a dog in heat. So, why don’t you just leave? There’s nothing for you here.”
Gant started to smile, then he laughed. Not raucously, but sufficient to slightly unnerve me. Was he laughing at me? At my suggestion he stop doing what he was doing? Or at my nerve in telling a top-notch assassin his target is off limits? It was hard to tell.
“They said you were a piece of work,” he finally said.
“Who did?”
“Person who said it was probably you when I described who went into that place.”
He paused and his face took on a serious expression.
“I don’t actually give a rat’s ass about this job, to be honest with you. I only took it on as a favour to someone I know, who offered me a ridiculous sum to kill those two assholes. As I said, I’ve got nothing else lined up and it gives me a chance to test this baby out.” He held up the gun. “I’m just using this to keep my hand in. I’ll tell you what . . .” He slid the gun into a shoulder holster and buttoned his jacket. “They may well die but it won’t be tonight, alright? It’s late, I’m tired and I’m gonna go back to my hotel. So, tell Phipps he’s off the hook tonight. A pair like them will be easy to find, like finding sand on a beach.” He nodded at me.
“You still haven’t told me what they’ve done to attract the attention of someone like you. Who’d want them dead that badly they’ll pay what you charge?”
“You’d be surprised. Take care, Robert.”
Gant patted me on the arm, turned and walked away and, at the end of the alleyway, turned left and disappeared.
I walked back to the bar. The lights had been dimmed and I couldn’t see any shapes through the window. I knocked on the door.
“That you, Rob?” Mickey called out a few seconds later. “Yeah. I’m alone.”
The door opened. Mickey stepped back. Paulie Phipps appeared, still holding a gun.
“Come on, inside quickly.” He still sounded nervous.
I entered. Paulie stepped forward to lock the doors. In his haste he’d forgotten about telling us both to move away whilst he did so. A very basic error. Mickey jumped forward and grabbed Paulie’s gunhand, twisting the wrist around with his left hand whilst his right hand snatched the gun from Paulie’s grasp. He spun Paulie around and headbutted him. Paulie dropped to the floor, hands to his face and moaning from the pain.
Louis realised what was happening a second too late. By the time he was aware of the changed situation, Paulie had been neutralised. He looked worried. Mickey was holding Paulie’s gun. Louis raised the knife and placed it next to Amanda’s throat. She screamed as he gripped her tightly.
“Stay back or I’ll slice her,” he shouted.
“Think about it, huh? Look around. There’s two of us, Louis, you’ll not get past us both. Just put the knife down, okay? Nobody gets hurt that way.” I said this calmly but authoritatively.
Louis looked around as though seeking a way out. But the only exit was the front door, and Mickey and I were standing by it. His chances of winning the lottery were better than his getting past us. Mickey was armed. He started to move away from me. Phipps was looking between the two of us, wondering who was going to make a grab for him.
After a stand-off lasting close to a minute, Phipps’ resolve broke.
“Okay, okay.” He released Amanda and she moved away from him. Phipps put the knife on the counter and raised his hands slightly. Mickey and I approached the bar.
“Go sit over there, lady,” Mickey said to Amanda, nodding towards Sarah. She did. Sarah put her arm around Amanda’s shoulder. She was trembling, rubbing her eyes and trying not to cry.
“You’re safe now, everything’s fine,” Sarah said reassuringly. Amanda nodded, wiping a couple of tears from her cheeks.
Mickey took Phipps’ knife and looked at it admiringly. I put his gun in my jacket pocket.
“Impressive,” I said. “You know how many years in prison carrying this means? Doesn’t matter that you had no intent to use it, just having it on your person means prison. If you’ve got a record, and I’ll bet you have, sentence can be even longer. You ready to do time, Louis?”
Phipps said nothing. He looked deflated. The cold arrogance in his eyes had temporarily evaporated. He was helpless and he knew it. There was no longer any certainty of his status. The swaggering bully of a few moments ago was in limbo.
“I’m going to take these two to West End Central and talk to them there, find out what’s going on.”
I turned to face a very dejected Louis Phipps. Mickey walked to the door and helped a dazed and very confused Paulie Phipps to his feet. He was holding his face gingerly.
“C’mon, pal, this way.”
Mickey guided Paulie to the bar. Paulie sat down.
“I’m sorry, Louis,” Paulie said quietly, not looking at his brother.
“S’okay, Paulie. I know you’re a prize fuck-up.” Louis looked menacingly at his younger brother. Had Mickey and I not been present, I suspect Paulie would be getting a kicking about now.
“I’m taking you two in for questioning. For the moment you’re not under arrest and I’m not going to cuff you,
but either of you give me cause to and I’ll put bracelets on both of you, and I’ll make it hurt. Got it?” I enjoyed saying that.
“Okay,” Paulie said. He was rubbing the bruise on his forehead caused by meeting Mickey head on. Louis just stared straight ahead at something only he could see.
“I’ll change the tyre for her then come with you,” Mickey said.
Amanda Redmond was now looking a little more relaxed. The immediate fear of violence from Louis Phipps had receded. She and Sarah came over to the bar.
“Thank you,” she said softly. I nodded.
“Give Mickey your contact details, we may well need to talk to you again when this is over.”
She agreed she would. Thanking me again she left the bar with Mickey. I was stuck with the handsome twins. I looked at the forlorn figure that was Paulie.
“How’s your head?”
“Bit sore. Your friend’s got a hard head.” He rubbed the bruise again.
“That’s ’cause he’s thick.” I smiled at him.
“Don’t fucking talk to him. What are you, his best fucking friend all of a sudden?” Louis snapped. The old meanness and belligerence had returned. Paulie looked scared.
“Sorry Louis, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Shut your mouth, Phipps,” I said quite aggressively and stood up. I wanted to kick the shit out of him. The thought of seeing his bloodied face minus some teeth on the floor was a delightful one but I resisted the temptation. “Be quiet or I’ll gag you and make you stand in the corner facing the wall.”
Louis stared at me for a moment, then went back to looking at whatever was holding his attention on the far wall.
Mickey returned after changing Amanda’s car tyre. He washed his hands in the small sink behind the bar and then came and stood next to me.
“We taking your car?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“I’ll sit in the back with him,” he jutted his chin at Paulie. “You can have braindead there in the front seat, though I’d watch him, if I were you. He looks fruity to me, looks like he’ll make a move on your manhood you give him half a chance.” Mickey laughed.
“Bastard,” Phipps shouted.
He leapt at Mickey. Mickey stepped aside as Phipps threw a punch at him. He grabbed Mickey’s jersey. Mickey broke his grip, almost contemptuously, with a chopping movement using both hands and put a hard right into Phipps’ stomach. Louis dropped to his knees and remained on all fours, coughing and wheezing. He spat something out onto the floor. I helped him up and sat him on a barstool. He was still doubled up. For the moment the fight had left him.
“I’ll bring the car forward.”
I went out to my car. I put it into reverse and went back about twenty metres and stopped outside the doors. I kept the engine running. I went into the bar.
“Come on, gents, this way,” Mickey said to the Phipps. Both got up and walked towards the doors.
“You, get in the back,” he said to Paulie. Paulie nodded his assent. He was just glad to be leaving a bad situation behind him.
“I’ll close up and go home,” Sarah said to Mickey. He agreed it was a good idea.
I went in front and walked up the steps to the pavement. Paulie followed behind. Mickey steered Louis in front of him, alert and ready for him to do anything stupid. When we were all outside, Sarah closed the doors and went back inside to clear up before finally closing up after what had been an unexpectedly eventful night.
“You ready, Mickey?” I looked around the deserted street. Two shots then rang out. I heard two “Phwew” type sounds from bullets fired from a gun with a silencer attached. Both Louis and Paulie Phipps dropped to the pavement. Both were dead. Louis had been hit in the heart, Paulie through his forehead. Killing both the Phipps brothers had taken less than one second.
Mickey and I had dropped at the first sound but neither of us could do anything to stop what happened. I crouched against my car and looked around. Where had the shots come from? Mickey had assumed a prone position and was scanning the immediate vicinity. He was holding Paulie’s gun but had no idea which way to point it or who to shoot at. Between us we saw nothing. Neither of us knew where the shots had come from. However, I knew who it was who’d fired them.
Gant.
T W O
Tuesday
After a night in which sleep had played no part at all, I was in my boss’s office looking out over at St James’s Park. My boss was DCI Jack Smitherman and he was looking at the report I’d written up after the events of the previous evening. I’d returned home and typed up what had occurred whilst the memory was still fresh.
His office was small but deceptively spacious. There were books on a shelf and a filing cabinet next to a table by the far wall. His overcoat was hanging from a hook behind the door. The walls had been painted white, giving the room an austere and utilitarian feel. Smitherman was sitting at his desk, looking relaxed and assured, with his laptop open but not being used.
When I’d been satisfied that whoever it was who’d pulled the trigger on the brothers had probably long since left the scene, Mickey had alerted the police. An ambulance also arrived to take away the dead bodies of the Phipps brothers. Two squad cars had arrived and I identified myself as a DS in Special Branch, and Mickey as the person who’d been with me, to the senior officer, DI Harrow. He and I had gone inside and I’d told him all about what had occurred that evening, from the time of the Phipps’ arriving in the bar, the circumstances they’d said had led them there and ending with them prostrate on the pavement. I mentioned going outside the bar and talking to someone named Phil Gant, who had seemingly left the area after our little chat, and also my suspicion, given Gant’s line of work, that he was involved in the deaths of the Phipps brothers. Paulie’s gun had been checked and found not to have been fired. Louis’s gun was in my jacket and also hadn’t been fired. The DI taking Mickey’s and my statements seemed satisfied with the sequence of events and our lack of any direct involvement with the dead bodies and had left after assuring me I didn’t appear to be a prime suspect. Nice of him. DI Harrow said they’d be in touch again and they left after both dead bodies had been removed.
“Well, you certainly know how to enjoy a holiday, don’t you?” Smitherman finally said. “Dead bodies cropping up everywhere. I thought you were going to take it easy.”
“I’d not counted on running into a killer like Phil Gant.” “How are you feeling after being near the shootings? You okay? Do you need to talk to someone about what happened?”
“No, I’m alright, sir. It’s not the first shooting scene I’ve been at. I don’t need to talk to the house shrink. I’m fine.”
He nodded. “Your report claims Phil Gant was the trigger-man.”
“That’s right, I’m convinced he was.”
“You spoke to him not belong before the Phipps were shot,” he stated.
“Yeah. I went out the bar to see if it was Gant that was after those two, as they’d said, and it was. I had a brief chat with him but didn’t pick up anything, though he did confirm he was after the brothers. I asked him why but drew a blank.”
“He knew you, though.”
“So it seems. He saw me enter the bar, phoned someone with a description and it came back as me. He knows someone who knows me. Who that could be?” I mused.
“Maybe your pal over at Prevental?” He grinned at me.
This was a reference to Gavin Dennison, who’d been my assigned training officer when I’d first joined the Met from university. We were never close friends but we’d kept in touch and, from time to time after moving from CID to Special Branch, we’d swap notes, or rather I’d pick his brains about something I was stymied about. Which was quite often.
I’d not seen Gavin for a few months, not since I’d become convinced he was somehow involved in a case where three people who in one way or another had been involved with a Government-appointed committee investigating suspected paedophile activity in the Catholic Church had
turned up dead. The suspected killer had been identified but he’d returned to Eire and had disappeared. The Irish police had been asked for all the details they had about someone named Martin Riley, travelling under the alias Christopher O’Malley, but there was nothing on record about either man. I was certain Riley had been the killer of the three people, plus possibly two others. The other person I suspected of being his contact, Paul Farrier, had been found dead in his car in Malmesbury. No one had been arrested for this and the reason for his being there had never been known.
Could it be Gavin whom Gant had asked for information about me? Working for an organisation like Prevental, he would certainly know about the movements of mercenaries and hitmen in and out the country. What would Gavin be doing involved in this?
“Unlikely, I’d have thought, though I’m not discounting it.”
“He was never directly connected to that other case, was he?”
“No. I saw him with Farrier a couple of times but I couldn’t ascertain whether he was an active participant in the deaths. I’ve an open mind on that, though.”
“You may have to talk to him again.”
“Could be,” I replied.
“I heard, just before you came into the office, that MI5 had been to see Gant at his hotel this morning after your conversation with DI Harrow. He admits he and you talked for a while but he denied being the shooter in this case. Said he was back in the hotel before midnight, and CCTV suggests he was. He also claims that he was with a friend just beforehand, and this person can alibi him, so that seems to rule him out. When were the Phipps shot?”
“Around eleven thirtyish. Where’s Gant staying?”
“Hotel on Park Lane.”
“Plenty of time to get back, even if he walked.”
“I’m waiting to hear if MI5 know why Gant’s in the country. People like him aren’t tourists. If he’s in the country it’s usually bad news for someone.”
“Tell that to the mother of Paulie and Louis Phipps.”
“Yes, well, other than that he’s in the country, we haven’t got anything on him. We can’t hold him. We’ve only the Phipps’ word he’d been shooting at them and their word wouldn’t be reliable even if they were still with us.”
Gant! Page 3