If Fear Wins

by Tony J. Forder

  The irony of the threat was not lost on Bliss. Hadn’t he made similar promises to Sam Phillips only hours before?

  ‘Is that so,’ he said, not backing down.

  ‘It is. Plus… you do get one thing that you can actually touch and feel right now.’

  Bliss’s head jerked up at that. It sounded like an offer. ‘And that would be?’

  ‘I’m going to give you a couple of names,’ Six said. ‘Something of great interest to you right now. But in exchange, you must inform Emily Curtis that there is no official line for you, nor anyone else inside the police force, to follow when it comes to the death of her husband. Eventually the inquest will rule the way we want it to at the time. We’re shutting you down, Bliss. One way or another. That is a done deal – your taxes at work. Simon’s wife can mourn for an appropriate period, and then she can move on with her life as opposed to searching in vain for answers.’

  Bliss shook his head, smirking. ‘You don’t know Emily Curtis. She won’t stop looking for reasons why her husband died.’

  ‘Well then you need to convince her to, Bliss.’ The man lowered his voice, leaned forward and stared up into Bliss’s eyes. ‘We’re shutting her down as well. In whatever form works best.’

  ‘You can’t be serious?’ Bliss spluttered, disgusted by the implication. ‘She’s a civilian.’

  ‘The road to national security is littered with the shattered bones and spilled blood of civilians, Inspector. Don’t be so bloody naïve, man. You control the situation here, you’ll do well out of it. What I am about to give you is a gem, and I don’t hand it over lightly.’

  Bliss thought about it. Then something occurred to him. ‘Late Thursday night, early Friday morning I was woken by a noise outside my house. That wouldn’t happen to have been an advance party from your office, would it?’

  Six tapped a finger to his nose. ‘Some things are better left unknown, Bliss.’

  The pale yellow sunlight speared through the Insignia’s windscreen, having broken free of the low-lying cloud cover. For a moment it stung Bliss’s eyes. He blinked it away, using the time to consider everything the man from MI6 had told him. He felt trapped by circumstances, and that had never been a situation in which Bliss had felt comfortable. Yet this was no run-in with senior figures within the police service, no journalist hack after his blood. The men and women inside the MI6 machine were more than worthy adversaries. They could be friends or they could be foes, but if things went the way of the latter then they were to be feared.

  ‘Okay, tell me about this so-called gem of yours,’ Bliss said. ‘Tell me and let me decide for myself.’

  ‘Oh, there is no decision to be made,’ the man observed as if reasserting his authority. ‘I will give you something and that will help you. You handling Emily Curtis in return is something that will help me. Afterwards we brush our hands off and go our separate ways. Anything else… well, anything else and it starts to get messy. Very messy indeed.’

  ‘You enjoy making these little threats of yours?’ Bliss asked, his temper on the rise. He felt the blood pounding in his temples, and knew he had to get this man out of his vehicle before something snapped.

  ‘They are not threats, Bliss. I won’t dare to utter the cliché that they are promises, but I believe you know that whatever they are, they are neither little nor idle.’

  Six sat upright, and in the confines of the car he appeared huge and unimaginably powerful

  Bliss said nothing for a few beats.

  ‘Do we have a deal, Bliss?’

  Still Bliss made no reply.

  ‘Do. We. Have. A. Deal?’

  Bliss felt his shoulders sink back into his seat. He bowed his head and nodded.

  The man from Six gave Bliss two names, told him who they were and why they were important. In return, Bliss gave the man his word that he would shut Emily Curtis down.

  29

  Bliss sat in the obs van alongside Detective Inspector Graham Pursey from the Essex Serious Crime Division, adrenaline still rushing through his veins after the tumultuous few hours he had experienced. Pursey headed up a joint task force operation with the NCA and a number of other units. The target was a villain by the name of Darren Bird, whose import and export business included a trade in both drugs and people. Some of the people Bird smuggled into the country were willing participants, paying several thousand pounds for safe passage from Africa, Turkey and various ports around Europe and the Middle East. Others, specifically young girls from eastern Europe, were unwilling victims of the people trafficking chain of which Bird’s operation was but one link. It was organised crime of the worst sort, led by a man seemingly without conscience or compassion, backed up by like-minded thugs willing and able to enforce their boss’s wishes in any manner that got the job done.

  When the man from MI6 provided the names and information back in Peterborough, Bliss realised why he had been approached in such an oblique fashion. To a certain degree it was time-sensitive information, allowing Bliss very little of that precious commodity to think or plan his next move. Six informed Bliss that forty-four-year-old entrepreneur Darren Bird was almost certainly a person of interest to Operation Compound. Bliss guessed that the agent passing himself off as Simon Curtis had been assigned to either infiltrate the gang, or at the very least monitor as closely as possible their movements into the UK. His death was the price he had paid for somehow slipping up and leaving himself exposed to predators. Six would neither confirm nor deny, but Bliss did not have to hear the man utter the words; the look in his eyes was eloquent enough.

  Along with the names and details, Six also provided contact information. Bliss reached Pursey on his mobile and explained his interest in terms of suspecting the dead RAF officer had been part of the drug chain, or at least a cog in Bird’s criminal wheel. It was at that point that Bliss came to appreciate Six’s urgency earlier in the day, as a raid on Bird’s operation had been scheduled for that same night. Pursey invited Bliss along for the ride, telling Bliss he could ask Bird himself about Duncan Livingston.

  Job one had been to let Emily know he would be late home. Bliss did not feel up to facing her just yet, not with everything still boiling inside his head. He told her he was on an op and that she should not wait up for his return. He felt a little guilty leaving her alone for so long, but was satisfied that Emily was safe now that he knew it had been MI6 who had raided her home. Bliss then filled up the car’s tank and drove the hundred miles down to Tilbury, taking the M11 and M25, dropping off the motorway that encircled London at the A13 junction just before the QEII bridge spanning the Thames. The pre-raid rendezvous location was just off the Calcutta Road, minutes away from the old and now decommissioned Tilbury police station.

  The Essex police referred to the place as the Way Station. When the docks were in full flow, and the hundreds of industrial and commercial businesses in the area paid their staff weekly in cash stuffed into little brown envelopes, squads gathered regularly prior to armed raids. The warehouse they used felt like a way station, where any number of units came to form a single squad in order to progress on to designated strike locations. In addition to Essex SCD and the NCA, the assembled groups awaiting the Bird raid included the Operational Support Group – who specialised in drug raids and various public order incidents; the Force Support Unit – Essex police service’s equivalent to the Met’s SO19 firearms division; the dog section, plus the UK Border Agency.

  Bliss produced his warrant card twice, first to get through the gates leading onto the site that contained four large warehouses, and then again at the Way Station entrance having parked up the Vauxhall alongside a dozen or more other vehicles. It was late afternoon bordering on early evening, and any heat that had accumulated throughout the day was long gone. A light shower of rain had started to fall, but the thin cloud cover and mild breeze suggested it would soon blow over. Bliss had stood at the entrance to the warehouse for a few moments, gathering himself and willing his heartbeat to throttle back. He
breathed it all in before stepping inside.

  The joint task force was impressive, Bliss had to admit. In his NCA days he had worked with other divisions during major investigations, had taken part in many similar raids, but for some reason had never been to the legendary Way Station before. The warehouse was fully lit, and teams stood or sat in groups discussing their roles in the forthcoming raid on a farm eight miles away in South Ockendon.

  All of this was explained to Bliss after he had introduced himself to DI Pursey, a huge man with hair cropped close to the scalp and a face that looked ravaged by excess. The DI’s suit was crumpled, tie askew in an unbuttoned collar, and his neck suggested his last shave had been with a blunt razor. As the two men walked across to the command vehicle, Pursey pointed out the various units congregating under the one massive roof.

  ‘You can pretty much tell who they are by their motors,’ Pursey told him as he indicated each faction. ‘Dog section have the smaller vans, OSG larger transit types, border agency use the transport vans with dark and light blue chequered livery, whilst FSU have the fancy Beemer SUVs. Being ex-NCA you’ll know they use unmarked saloons.’

  ‘It looks very well organised,’ Bliss said, figuring it didn’t hurt to dish out a little flattery.

  Bliss knew the NCA relied on the co-operation of fellow police services and their individual teams to provide the more physical aspect of raids. It wasn’t that they particularly enjoyed sharing information or spending time assisting with the organisation, more a question of needing to and wanting to ensure everything was resolved in an orderly fashion. Joint task forces were necessary, but could become unwieldy if not managed correctly. Bliss thought Pursey seemed to have everything under control, and there was an air of confidence inside the building.

  ‘Experience,’ Pursey said. ‘I can’t remember a time when we weren’t working on a JTF of some form or another. Plus your old mob have been really helpful on this.’

  ‘Yeah, the NCA usually like to be pro-active when it comes to this sort of thing.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Pursey said, as they steered around a line of shiny Ford saloons. ‘Here’s the NCA head of operations now.’

  The woman with short brown hair with her back to them must have heard Pursey, and she turned her head to offer a smile of welcome. The smile faltered for a moment, and then spread across her face as she spotted Bliss. She turned fully to greet him.

  ‘Jimmy Bliss,’ she said, genuine warmth in her voice. ‘How are you doing these days?’

  ‘Hedgehog! What a pleasant surprise.’

  The officer’s name was Hanna Jez. Of Polish extraction, from the moment her colleagues discovered her surname derived from the word hedgehog, it was a name she had no choice but to live with. Bliss was one of very few people who knew Jez secretly loved the connection with a creature she had admired all her life.

  ‘Good,’ Pursey said. ‘You two know each other. That’ll save a bit of time.’

  ‘Jimmy and me are good friends,’ Jez said, after giving Bliss a hug and a peck on the cheek. She left no lipstick mark to thumb away. ‘We work well together.’

  ‘That’s good to know. Let’s get to it, then.’

  The plan was simple enough, but would rely on perfect timing. Initially they would all drive out to the target location and park up in a lane about a quarter of a mile from the farmhouse. The lane would then be blocked off with cones and warning notices referring to national highway works being carried out. The house itself was of little interest to them in terms of the raid. It could wait. But on the farm along a path to the rear of the house were two barns. The larger of the two, designed to house tractors and other mechanical equipment, was where Darren Bird engineered the onward stage of his trade. On delivery days, vehicles of all sizes and descriptions, at all hours of the day, carrying all manner of loads from all points on the compass, would trundle past the house and head into the largest barn. Inside, their cargo was removed and placed into waiting vans, which then immediately drove away to their regional distribution points. The arrival of the carrier was a critical factor as it was the one time when inward and onward were together in the same spot, providing the task force with an opportunity to scoop up not only the goods being traded, but also a large body of couriers together with their hired muscle.

  Pursey revealed that he had observed the procedure on two previous occasions, and had a firm grasp of what to expect. The window of time between the barn being sealed behind the arriving delivery vehicle, and the exit of the first courier, was often less than ten minutes. The task force allowed themselves seven during dry runs, and in six dry-run attempts had not once exceeded that figure. The moment the barn doors were closed up behind the carrier truck, armed police escorting an entry team would swiftly and silently move from the lane to the farmland and roll up outside the barn. The entry team would then insert their devices into agreed impact points on the doors and obtain their maximum leverage positions. Meanwhile, both the OSG and FSU would steal up close by, entering at speed and with a huge amount of disorienting noise the moment the entry team pulled the barn doors off their hinges. Once they had control of the situation, the dog section would go in, closely followed by the NCA, DI Pursey’s team and – on this occasion – Bliss.

  That was Plan A.

  Plan B, set in motion if the gang happened to station anyone outside the barn, was to use the two armed officers already secreted within the treeline at the rear of the property to take out anyone guarding the front. It would delay matters, but not by much according to the FSU team leader. Seconds rather than minutes.

  The first stage was complete, and everyone was tucked up either in the lane or, in the case of two FSU officers, on the ground inside the treeline beyond the barn. As Bliss, Pursey and Jez waited together with three other senior members of the joint task force in the obs van, its interior became stifling. It was not warm out by any means, but the heat and combined breaths of six people managed to make it uncomfortable for all concerned inside that metal shell. Bliss eyed Jez anxiously and checked his watch for what felt like the dozenth time.

  ‘They’re very late,’ he said. ‘How certain are you of your intelligence on this?’

  Pursey, seeming to take up half the van on his own, gave a thumbs up gesture. ‘One hundred per cent. My man on the inside gave the green light, which means he knows for certain the delivery vehicle is on its way.’

  ‘But over an hour late?’

  ‘The DI’s man is not with the vehicle,’ Jez explained. ‘He only knows that it left. Could be it broke down, or that they stopped for a break, maybe.’

  ‘On a drop off like this?’ Bliss shook his head. ‘No chance.’

  He was thrilled to be working alongside his ex-colleague again. Jez was a real star within the NCA. She had not changed her physical appearance all that much, and wrapped as she was inside a pink Puffa jacket, she looked more like a child than the fiercely determined cop he knew her to be. Jez was wrong on this one, though. No driver with the kind of load being carried inside that vehicle would stop off at a transport café or something similar. Not even a lay-by mobile snack bar.

  ‘We didn’t put a tail on them in case we spooked them,’ Pursey said. ‘We figured it wouldn’t matter. We would know when they left, and we know where they’re headed. So maybe they broke down, but they’ll be here.’

  The camera pointing at the barn revealed a thin ribbon of light spilling out from a slight gap at the bottom of the heavy doors. The information they had gathered from previous obs told them that the outward vehicles arrived at various times throughout the day, but that they would all be in place before the inward transport set off. It was a security protocol Darren Bird insisted on, according to the insider. They would all be ensconced within the barn by now, their mobile phones dumped inside a single plastic container so as to deny any outside communication from the couriers.

  Bird, who owned many properties in and around Essex, including a working kennels, several shops, a
car dealership and a couple of houses, was not expected to attend the exchange. A small team including an officer from each of the units were in position close by Bird’s house waiting for word to go. Within minutes of the raid, their target would be snatched up.

  Seventeen minutes after Bliss checked his watch for the last time they got word of a large lorry heading in their direction. It passed the lane in which they sat behind a dense treeline silently observing the scene. It turned right off the road and directly onto a gravel driveway. At the house it bumped from gravel onto a dirt track, created by the pounding of many vehicles before it. In the obs van they watched as the driver stopped outside the largest barn, climbed out of the cab, opened up the doors, got back into the vehicle, nudged it into the barn and out of sight, before closing the barn doors behind him.

  ‘Execute phase one,’ Pursey said into his comms. His philtrum was slick with sweat, and he wiped it away with a bulbous thumb.

  Something about the manoeuvre of the lorry into the barn struck Bliss as peculiar. ‘Strange,’ he said, almost to himself. But Jez picked up on the comment.

  ‘What is?’ she asked, looking up from her mobile.

  ‘You’d think they would have someone on the barn doors to open it up for the driver so’s he didn’t have to bother getting out and back in again. It all looked a bit laboured and clumsy to me.’

  Pursey, who had been staring at the monitor, now turned his head to Bliss. His forehead was creased into severe, deep crevices. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t make sense. And I can’t be certain, but I don’t recall that happening before.’

  Meanwhile, the first phase was complete. The advance team had slipped quietly up to the barn and the entry equipment was in place.

  ‘Execute phase two,’ Pursey said, eyes back on the cameras.