The Englishman

by David Gilman

  ‘You and your officers have done a lot in a short time. My thanks.’

  She nodded. ‘The way in is from the canal side at the rear. Any attempt to break through the boarded-up windows and doors at the front will alert whoever’s inside. I can’t commit my officers to breaching the building and unless we have a terrorist threat we can’t get armed counter-terrorism officers here.’

  ‘I understand.’ He turned as the police car bearing Sorokina arrived. Raglan raised an arm and beckoned her to him. ‘You won’t have to.’

  *

  Abbie watched the Russian shake hands with the female police officer. Raglan was showing her something, then pointing out the building. They bent over the tablet with the superintendent. Abbie’s phone rang. It was Maguire.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘No, sir. We’re in Limehouse at an abandoned building in Commercial Road. ARVs are here but no evidence of anyone inside yet.’

  ‘Keep well back, Abbie, this isn’t why you are there. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Very well. I’m on my way. We’ve narrowed our search down on the String of Pearls information. I might need you back in town soon.’

  ‘Sir, this isn’t resolved here and Raglan might still need me.’

  ‘You don’t work for Raglan,’ he snapped.

  She didn’t answer.

  He sighed. ‘All right. You’ve done well. Let’s hope this is it. Tell Raglan to hold off going in until I am there. He’s switched his bloody phone off.’

  Abbie got out of the car but the burly policeman blocked her. ‘Stay in the car, miss.’

  ‘I have orders for Raglan. I’m only going to your boss.’

  The armed officer looked across to the huddled threesome. ‘Come on,’ he said and accompanied her. When they reached Raglan and the two women he stood off from his senior officer. ‘Ma’am? This lady has a message for Mr Raglan.’

  Raglan looked at her. She smiled with a hint of embarrassment, but was secretly pleased to be drawn back into his world. She was about to deliver Maguire’s message when he stepped quickly to her, took her arm and turned her away from the others.

  ‘I told you to stay in the car,’ he said quietly but firmly.

  Realizing that he didn’t want the others to hear what she had to say she lowered her voice. ‘It’s Maguire. He’s annoyed because your phone is off. He thinks they’re close to finding where Carter has hidden the information, but he wants you to hold off going in until he’s here.’

  ‘We don’t even know if this is the right place. Time is against us. If Carter is still alive we need to save him. Get back to the car.’

  ‘What do I tell him?’

  ‘That you told me.’

  *

  Raglan watched Sorokina spread her fingers across the tablet’s screen and enlarge the building’s plans. ‘This isn’t the greatest target appreciation I’ve ever seen,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all the Hungarians had.’

  ‘Better than nothing, then,’ he said. He pointed at the layout. ‘It’s a huge space. They’re probably on the top floor for a good OP. That corridor, it runs right underneath to the back stairs. That’s my way in.’

  ‘You cannot do this alone. He is my prisoner; I will be there.’

  ‘Have you been in a situation like this before?’

  She hesitated and then shook her head. ‘In training, yes, but I am not afraid. I have fought with guns before. I know the danger.’

  ‘All the training in the world doesn’t cover what happens. It’s different. Especially the first time. Stay here.’

  ‘We do not know how many men he has in there. I can be of use.’ She peeled off her jacket and checked her pistol.

  Since he first laid eyes on Elena Sorokina he’d been struck by her air of professional ability and self-confidence, and now having slept with her he knew she was forthright and liked to be in control.

  ‘You don’t move without my say-so. All right? Do what I tell you.’

  She nodded. ‘What about your Mr Maguire?’

  ‘You want him breathing down our necks?’

  ‘He will be angry.’

  ‘It comes with the territory.’ He turned to the assistant borough commander. ‘I need two of your officers to come in with us and secure the entry point. They don’t need to do more than that, but I need someone covering our backs.’

  She nodded and popped the boot of her car and took out two body armour vests. Raglan and Sorokina pulled off their jackets and shrugged into them. ‘Two of my officers are ex-paras. I won’t put their lives on the line, Raglan, but if it comes to it they have the experience to clear rooms and secure your backs. But only as far as the entry point. Good enough?’

  ‘More than. Thank you.’

  The burly officer and his partner who had waved down Abbie’s car followed Raglan and Sorokina. Raglan briefed them; they nodded their understanding, asking no questions. What Raglan asked of them was routine for the two ex-paras: their grins seemed to say: Give us half a chance. Raglan led them through a hole in the fence beneath the huge rectangular billboard that some church or crackpot organization had erected at the front of the derelict building. The printed message proclaimed boldly: Judgement Is Coming.

  The rear of the building was in as much disrepair as the front. Bushes and weeds had seeded themselves over time, choking much of the lower-floor windows. The glass in the dozen or more windows thirty feet above their heads was mostly intact, evidence that vandals could not throw stones from the narrow angle offered by the towpath below them. It also meant that if the top floor was intact and JD and his men were there then it was unlikely they could look directly down and see any movement. Raglan bent and moved through a sagging door frame.

  Inside the vaulted factory, steel girders supported gantries around the walls, a walkway for each of the floors. Rusted machinery was everywhere and looking at the underside of the first gantry that ran above their heads Raglan saw the green of mould on the wooden floor timbers. They might be too rotten to support a man’s weight. As he edged forward peering up into the vaulted roof he saw the pitched glass was still intact. The low dark clouds outside weighed down even more gloomily on the interior. Pigeons fluttered on the high beams and somewhere in the distance water dripped into a puddle, its gentle splash echoing through the cathedral-like chamber. There was no other sound. No voices carried across the bare space. But there were men inside somewhere. The breeze through the broken windows wafted the unmistakable stench of excrement.

  He turned, signalled the two cops to go left and right into the brick-walled rooms. They were good. Using hand signals they declared the areas safe. Raglan nodded, pointed with his forefinger to his eye and then to the door and passageway they had used to gain entry. One man was to stay to keep watch. Raglan gestured to the other to watch from another window’s vantage point. The concrete floor was mostly clear of debris and the officer had no trouble picking his way tactically across it. His new position gave him a clear view across the ground and the immediate upper floors. If anyone came out from a hidden place behind Raglan and Sorokina then the armed officers would have a clear field of fire.

  Raglan tested his weight on the first step that abutted the bannisters. If there was anywhere that would support them it would be here. The thick planking barely gave under him and as he turned on to the half landing he used the full width of the stair tread and looked up, checking the length of the gantry above him. He heard Sorokina’s quickened breathing behind him. Both held their handguns at the ready, moving the weapon in the direction they were checking. More confident that the heavy timbers would support their weight, Raglan moved quicker, eager to get off the exposed stairway. Fifteen more steps. Five more to reach cover. Always ready for the unexpected.

  A door opened on the next level up. A man’s voice. His words were indistinct as he looked behind him to someone else in the room he had stepped out of. A complaint. He went to the edge of the balustrade and tipped a toil
et bucket’s contents into the void. Movement was a soldier’s best friend or worst enemy, depending who was doing the hunting. Raglan froze, his arm stopping Sorokina from instinctively trying to hide. Raglan kept his eyes and his weapon on the man. It was a fifty-fifty chance whether he would have seen Raglan and Sorokina exposed on the open stairs when he tipped the bucket out. Turn right and he would be looking down straight at them. Turn left and his back would be to them. Raglan dared a quick glance downward. The burly cop had his weapon in his shoulder. He had read the situation. And waited.

  Still complaining, the bucket man turned left.

  Raglan took the stairs two at a time.

  They reached the gantry, edging forward. An open shell of a room, three of its walls broken down, held crates and pieces of machinery. Huge chains used for lifting goods from the lower floors; sealed double loading doors which would have given access to the canal outside. His gaze swept the room, caught a glimpse of Sorokina with her weapon doing the same at his back, both covering arcs of fire. She was good.

  It was barely noticeable but there was a slight change in the light from a broken window, then a pigeon clattered upwards, and a wooden pallet moved. Raglan swivelled, ready to shoot. A boy’s wide-eyed face looked back at him. The kid’s mouth opened and closed, fear restricting his throat.

  Raglan snatched at Sorokina’s gun hand, clamping it, forcing it down from the fire position as the small boy began to tremble. Her intake of breath told him her immediate instinct had been to shoot. The seconds it took for Raglan to separate the movement and the child’s appearance whirled him back to the moment years before when he had shot and killed the boy in the cave. The thudding in his chest took his breath away. He shook his head to clear the image and steadied his hand. He gestured for the boy to remain silent, lowering his weapon to negate any threat the boy felt and within a half-dozen strides reached the frightened stowaway.

  As Raglan reached the pallet he saw another boy huddled down, making himself small. They were only nine or ten years old. The wide-eyed boy was shaking, a pool of urine at his feet, his tracksuit bottoms soaked. Raglan smiled. ‘It’s OK. No one’s going to hurt you. Understand?’ he whispered. The boy nodded. ‘Tell your mate to stay quiet. There are bad guys here? Yeah?’

  Again the boy nodded. ‘Mister, they weren’t here last week… We play here… but… but we heard them and we hid…’

  The second child had stayed low, hugging his knees, looking up to the bigger boy. Maybe brothers, Raglan thought. Older brother taking his sibling on an adventure. Raglan glanced at Sorokina, who had knelt and covered the opening.

  ‘Listen, that lady is a cop. And there are a couple more downstairs. She’s going to take you down but you have to stay dead quiet and you mustn’t run. Got that?’

  ‘Are we in trouble?’ said the boy.

  ‘No. I promise you. I bet even your mum and dad won’t know you’ve been here.’

  The look of relief on the boys’ faces told him all he needed to know. The younger boy got to his feet, his voice barely a whisper. ‘We heard someone make a noise, like he was being hurt.’

  ‘Where?’

  The boys pointed in unison. It seemed there was another staircase inside one of the derelict rooms that must lead up to another room.

  ‘OK. Remember what I said. We don’t rush and we don’t talk. Got it?’

  They nodded.

  Raglan led the way to the gantry, peered down, saw the uniformed cop, who watched his every movement. Raglan pointed to the two boys. The cop nodded.

  ‘Go down with them,’ he told Sorokina quietly.

  For a moment he thought she would protest but she recognized the seriousness of the situation and ushered the two boys towards the stairs and then led them down. The ex-para cop moved forward, still covering the upper floors, and knelt in cover behind a hulk of machinery. It would serve as a good fire position and a safe haven for the children before he passed them to his partner guarding the entrance.

  Raglan watched Sorokina descend the stairs; when she and the children were near the bottom he turned and made his way into the room two doors along the open gantry. A broad iron stairway led upwards. He edged forward, waited, and calmed his breathing. It was darker here. The light did not penetrate these side rooms. He looked up and saw the faint glow of a gas lantern. And then the murmur of voices. The upstairs was blacked out, the windows most likely sealed.

  Raglan took the first step.

  Judgement Is Coming.

  32

  The attic room stretched across half the building. It was walled off halfway, before the glass roof could filter any natural light into it. It had once been a storeroom but now the windows were boarded, all except one, which had a panel cut out of it where a gunman sat on an old packing case keeping watch. From where he sat he could see the walled yards where the car and ambulance were parked and where the man they worked for would return through the double gates that led on to the side street. From the angle at which he sat he could not see the police blockade. And he was tired. They had been on the go for days and now they were nearing the end of the operation. He and the two other gunmen in the room would be gone by that night. The helicopter was organized; the rewards would be substantial. They would return to their homes and wait for the Russian’s next call. And before nightfall they would kill the man strapped to the chair. He was tougher than anyone had imagined. The gunman reflected for a moment and doubted whether he or his companions, all ex-Spetsnaz men, would have withstood such pain. Everyone had a breaking point. He mentally shrugged. Who cared? He chewed the sandwich and rinsed the dry bread down with water.

  ‘Pyotr. Make us a brew,’ he said in Russian, turning to one of the men. They had made themselves as comfortable as possible. They might only have old sacking beneath their sleeping bags, but the small gas canister camping stoves gave them hot water. They had forsaken cooking in case the smell drifted, but sweet tea was a constant comfort. They had kept things basic: candle stubs gave them enough low light and the bucket in the corner a means of relieving themselves. They would usually shit in a bag and take it away but there was no need in this run-down factory. Pretty soon it would make no difference what was found here. Most likely in time a wrecking crew would discover the remains of their prisoner. The man, Pyotr, rose without demur and checked the water bubbling on the stove. Even when he moved the few paces to where the camping gas stove flared he carried his assault rifle. Such actions were ingrained.

  Carter, barely conscious, raised his head as the shadow passed in front of him. ‘He won’t come back... or meet you... or whatever it is you’ve arranged... He’ll take it all... You won’t see him again. That’s how he works. Trust me… I know…’

  The man with the rifle, Pyotr, ignored him as he prepared the tea. The man at the window turned to look at the others. ‘What if he’s telling the truth?’

  The others looked at him. Uncertainty could undermine everything.

  ‘He’ll come back,’ said Pyotr. ‘Don’t listen to him. We kill him. Then we go. Relax.’

  ‘You’re fucking idiots,’ Carter said. He was barely able to hold up his head but forced himself to gaze at the blurred image in front of him. ‘Hey, Pyotr. All this way from home and… he runs out on you. Without him you’re… stuck… You think your kind will help you here?’ he grunted painfully. ‘You’re on your own.’

  The tea-maker put a wicked-looking killing knife at Carter’s throat. ‘I’m tired of you. Enough now. Shut up.’

  The third man rolled from where he lay and squeezed his companion’s arm. ‘Not yet... but soon. Be patient.’ He grinned. ‘We have to get going soon – we’re running out of sugar.’

  Raglan ascended carefully towards the opening above his head that in days past would have been a trapdoor. The flickering light illuminated the ceiling. Footsteps creaked across the floorboards. He stopped, controlled his breathing, urging his heart to stop thudding in his ears. He heard Carter and the murmuring of men’s voices.r />
  ‘He’s… double-crossed you. He’s not coming back. You... you don’t know him... like I do.’

  Raglan crouched and dared to go higher. He inched his face above the rim of the trapdoor. The floor area was dark, the candlelight throwing shadows against the walls. He saw Carter strapped in the chair. Three gunmen. One at the window. One spooning sugar.

  One gunman crossed his line of sight carrying a mug in each hand, making his way towards the man at the window. Carter sucked up the energy in a desperate attempt to needle his tormentors.

  ‘He’s gone! With the information. I know him! I was his controller! YOU – STUPID – BASTARDS!’

  Raglan controlled his shock at seeing his mutilated friend as the man spooning the sugar slapped Carter.

  ‘Shut up! Or I kill you now!’

  Carter slumped.

  The gunman at the window berated him. ‘Don’t be stupid. We might still need him.’

  The man with the sugar argued back: ‘Look at him. He’s finished. He won’t last another hour. What difference does it make? Let’s kill the bastard. I’m tired of all this.’

  The men looked at each other. The man at the window seemed in charge. He nodded. ‘Use your knife. We don’t want noise.’

  Raglan braced, ready to force himself into the room. The man at the window had his palms resting on the weapon on his lap. Window Man would react quickly; Raglan would kill him first. Knife Man’s weapon lay on the makeshift table next to the tea-maker’s. Tea Man would be the last man to die because he stood halfway across the room, with a mug in each hand: he was the least threat of the three. Raglan pushed himself up into the room.