by Nick Oldham
Unsurely he knelt down, facing the wall.
Felicity stepped quickly up to him, placed the gun at the back of his head and shot him. She ran out of the room before he toppled over.
Begin’s car was outside the front door of the house. Unlocked, keys in the ignition, as were all cars left within the grounds. Headlights blazing, Felicity skidded down the gravel driveway and out of the gates with a loud ‘Yahoo!’ on her lips.
‘ I’d better be going.’ Tapperman indicated the wall clock. It was 2.30 a.m. He and Myrna were sitting in the living room of her house, having drunk endless cups of coffee. ‘There’ll be a black and white right outside the door twenty-four hours per day until you feel safe.’
‘ I feel pretty safe now,’ Myrna said. ‘Just tired, that’s all.’
‘ Hey, my fault. I’ve kept you talking too long.’
‘ No, it’s okay. I’ve enjoyed it.’ And she had, because the main topic of conversation had been the memories both had of Steve Kruger.
‘ Fine, see ya,’ Tapperman waved. He stood up, his head almost brushing the ceiling. His cell-phone rang. He unhooked it from his belt. ‘Tapperman.’
Myrna collected the cups and wandered wearily into the kitchen, a burnt-out case. She returned as Tapperman finished his call. His face was white, because he was suddenly remembering the familiar face he had bumped into at the airport. Now he knew who it belonged to.
‘ That was the office. An anonymous called just left a message for me.’ He gritted his teeth and found himself short of breath. ‘Patrick Orlove is on board that plane with Danny and Tracey. He’s got orders to take Tracey out and then disappear into Europe.’
Both their eyes turned to the clock.
‘ The plane’s due to land in half an hour,’ Myrna said.
‘ We need to get a message to the cops in England.’
‘ Do you know any cops in England?’
‘ No — but I know a man who does.’ She reached for her phone.
Since reading Stanway’s letter, Henry Christie had been far too excited to sleep. He had re-read the thing several times and spent the night agitatedly wandering about the house whilst upstairs his wife and two daughters slept soundly.
He must have dropped off around 3 a.m. because he awoke in a contorted position on the settee just before 6 a.m. with a stiff neck and dead arm. Then in a panic, he rushed round, brushing his teeth, grabbing a quick shower and getting into his work suit, waking the whole household as he did so, before leaping into the car and heading off towards Manchester Airport.
He arrived at the terminal building at 7.45 a.m., parked up and walked into International Arrivals. According to the screens, the flight from Miami was slightly delayed. He cursed, he was looking forward to seeing Danny.
At exactly that time, the first of three cells on the Solitary wing at Risley Remand Centre was unlocked by four prison guards. The door was pulled open and the inmate was found standing there ready prepared.
Louis Vernon Trent smiled amiably at the guards and compliantly held his hands out for the cuffs to be clamped around his wrists. His eyes watched everything that was happening, and everyone. He knew this would be his last chance to escape from custody for a while. After today his remand hearings would take place without his presence. The next time he would be at court would be for his committal hearing, and after that his trial.
This was the first of three chances to effect an escape and if the opportunity arose, he would be on his toes because he knew that, most probably, after the court appearances he would never be released for the rest of his life.
He was prodded along the landing to the next cell, opened by one of the screws. A mean-faced, impatient Charlie Gilbert was also ready and waiting. A pair of specially widened handcuffs were ratcheted onto his fat wrists.
He was dressed very well and expensively. He fully expected to walk out of court a free man, or at the very least on bail today. Bussola would see to that, he believed. And if he did leave as a free man, he would show the cops a thing or two. He would tighten up his network and continue to abuse young girls and if they were difficult, he would kill them; more and more he wanted to kill them anyway. It gave him a great sense of satisfaction. If he walked out of court on bail, he would flee the country, he had decided.
A prison guard’s hand propelled him to the next cell from which Ollie Spencer was extracted.
He was a man with no dreams or expectations. What happened, happened. He was content to take things as they came.
All three men were led out to the yard and bundled into a converted mini-bus with armoured windows and toughened body panels. The prisoners were put into an inner cage, the guards took up positions on seats outside the cage. The driver was in a protected cabin.
When they were ready the mini-bus pulled out of the remand centre.
‘ Would Henry Christie please attend the information desk to take an urgent phone call?’
Henry was standing under the Meeting Point with a cup of coffee in his hand. His mind was retracing the words of Stanway’s letter again and again. He was in deep thought. The letter was very much on his mind, everything else simply background.
I know that Charles has always loved little girls, Henry remembered reading, and he has always directed his energies to being in a position where he could meet them — or arrange to meet them. His amusement arcades were always a good place for this to happen and he frequently lured girls aged around eleven (because that’s the age group he loved the best) and then he would ultimately abuse them. Most he discarded back onto the scrap heap they came from (many were missing from homes, many never got to know his name), but some became regulars, being paid to perform the most disgusting sexual acts with him and his friend Spencer — who was always there. Some liked it. Some didn’t. Some fought him and he overpowered them. Some he could not overpower… and these he would kill.
‘ I repeat, would Mr Henry Christie please attend the information desk for an urgent message…’
At this mention of his name, Henry snapped back into the here and now. He threw his coffee down his neck and with a quick glance at the arrivals screen, which told him the flight from Miami had touched down, he went to the information desk.
The flight had been peaceful. A couple of good films were shown. The food was passable and the service excellent. Some people even managed to sleep.
Danny and Tracey spent a long time talking about Charlie Gilbert and Mario Bussola. Tracey knew a great deal about both and their activities, and her story was pretty typical of a young person’s involvement with them. Gilbert often arranged to take ‘likely candidates’ across to America where they were inducted into Bussola’s porn empire. It was easy, Tracey said, to arrange forged passports, work permits, social security numbers. Bussola did that for Gilbert so that all the Brit had to do was bring the right sort of kids over.
Gilbert would promise his girls a chance in films. Most were under his power and influence and believed anything he told them anyway. The reality of the ‘films’ soon hit them. Once Bussola had abused them to his own personal satisfaction, he passed them down the line where they got roles in poorly made, but expensive to buy, blue movies. They then passed on into prostitution and subsequently burned out on drugs and booze.
Gilbert had promised Tracey stardom. She had ‘it’, he told her. Looks, presence, potential, the body… everything.
But she knew he was lying. All he was trying to do was shut her up because she had witnessed him murder her friend; he’d whisked her off to America, where he handed her over to Bussola and his organisation. It was doomed from the start. She could not even pretend she liked being fucked in front of a camera, or that it was a pleasure fellating a guy with a lens pointed at her. She tried, because the cash and dope payment was good… but she hated it, her eyes could not hide it and the camera saw it.
She didn’t last long before she was turned out onto the mean and dirty streets of Miami.
Eventually she gravitated
into one of Florida’s most notorious motorcycle gangs — like Hell’s Angels, only a million times worse. Her life became a series of scenes from a movie: guns, robberies, shootings, drugs, one-man rape and then a gang-rape — fifteen of them — and being left for alligators to eat in the Everglades.
Somehow she survived.
She even got a job, on the sex-line, unaware that the business belonged to Bussola. And that night, when she saw the two of them together, Bussola and Gilbert, she flipped and attacked them — with the assistance of cocaine.
The cold light of dawn made her realise that by testifying against them, her life would be in danger; that was why she disappeared. By pure chance she had seen a copy of the Daily Mail with its coverage of the discovery of her friend’s body — Annie Reece, whom Gilbert had killed in her presence. An urge to do something for Annie had spurred her on to go and see Myrna, but then she got frightened again and ran out.
She returned a few days later when she discovered she had nothing to lose by giving evidence against Gilbert and, possibly, Bussola.
Danny frantically recorded everything on a witness statement form. It took four hours to write. When the statement had been completed and signed, Danny sat back and thought for a moment. At length she said, ‘There are a couple of questions which are nagging at me, Tracey. They’re not really answered in the statement and I haven’t pushed you — but one is why didn’t Gilbert kill you as well as Annie? He’s a ruthless bastard.’
Tracey squirmed uncomfortably.
Danny kept quiet, using the weapon of silence to her advantage, putting Tracey under pressure.
‘ I don’t know.’
‘ Yes, you do,’ Danny said quietly.
Tracey closed her eyes. A look of self-loathing crossed her thin, drug-ravaged face. She swallowed and then admitted: ‘I helped him to bury her body. Me and Ollie — we both helped him.’
‘ Shit.’ Danny sighed. She was going to need some advice on that one. ‘Right,’ she said slowly. ‘The other question is, you said you had nothing to lose by giving evidence against Gilbert. What does that mean?’
Tracey took a long juddering breath. ‘When I ran out on Myrna I learnt something.’ Her voice was weaker than it ever had been. A tear appeared, clung to her eyelid, then rolled tiredly down her cheek. ‘I’ve just found out I’ve got full-blown AIDS. Gilbert and Bussola can’t do anything to hurt me now. If they killed me, they’d only be doing me a favour. I don’t have long to live anyway.’
‘ Oh, Tracey,’ Danny cried. She twisted in her seat and closed her arms around the young girl.
The remainder of the flight was spent dozing, eating and movie-watching.
And three rows back, Patrick Orlove’s slitted eyes kept observation on the back of their heads. In the flight bag by his feet was the pistol which Ira Begin had thoughtfully managed to have placed in the life-jacket pocket, by one of the airport cleaning staff employed on a casual basis by Bussola. It was a good gun. Light, accurate and would do the trick.
But when? Orlove had to think this one through.
To shoot someone in a pressurised aircraft cabin, so the movies would have one believe, could have extremely dangerous consequences. Orlove was no martyr; he didn’t want to cause the plane to plummet to earth. To strangle her when she visited the toilet was one option he considered, but it was messy. There could be witnesses and no doubt cops would be waiting to greet the plane. So that was ruled out.
He knew he had to hit her at the airport. Somewhere between customs and the arrivals lounge would probably be ideal.
As the flight touched down, Orlove was calculating how far a quarter of a million dollars would go. He had heard Portugal was inexpensive. Maybe he’d crash out there for a few months and reassess his future then.
The plane finished taxiing and linked up to the terminal. The ‘fasten seat belts sign’ was extinguished. The doors heaved open.
Hello, Manchester, Orlove thought. So long, Tracey. Whoever you may be and whatever you may have done.
Henry slammed down the phone. Near hysteria gripped his voice when he said to the woman at the information desk, ‘What stage are the passengers at from the Miami flight?’
‘ Should be collecting baggage very shortly.’
Henry ran towards the doors which led to the customs channel. In his ears, the words of Karl Donaldson rang out. ‘Shit!’ Henry burbled repeatedly as he ran to the doors — which he found to be automatic sliding doors which only opened when approached from the opposite side. Henry inserted his fingertips between them to try and prise them apart. They refused to respond.
There was, of course, no need for Danny and Tracey to wait to collect luggage. They had none.
Once clear of passport control, and after a slight delay when the customs officer carefully read Tracey’s emergency documentation, they were en route to the baggage reclamation area which they had to pass through to get to the green channel.
Patrick Orlove was right behind them, having been first in the queue for holders of non-EEC passports. He had presented a passport bearing the name of Daniel Harrison; it was forged, but good enough to fool even a close inspection by a customs official.
‘ What do you think you’re doing? You can’t go through there, mate.’
A hand crashed down onto Henry’s shoulder and spun him away from the automatic doors. He was ready to punch whoever it was.
‘ Jesus, thank God for that!’ he breathed in relief when he saw the heavily armed police officer staring sternly at him. An MP5 was draped across his chest, a handgun was in a holster at his side and he wore body armour and a peaked cap. The epitome of a friendly, helpful bobby.
Henry pulled out his warrant card.
They were so far ahead of the other passengers, having gone through the green channel unchallenged, that when they hit the corridor between the customs and the international arrivals hall, there were only the three of them walking down it — Danny, Tracey and Patrick Orlove.
This is easy, Orlove thought. Portugal, here I come! Pop her here, and the other one, then I’m away and two dead bodies will be lying there ready for collection.
He was only a matter of feet behind his targets. His hand went underneath his jacket and withdrew the gun from his waistband. He upped his pace slightly.
The women were strolling casually along, totally oblivious to his presence.
He concentrated on the spot at the back of Tracey’s head which, when penetrated by a bullet, would take the girl down as effectively as a vet shooting a horse with a captive bolt.
The firearms officer could not believe this was happening. The moment for which he had trained so hard, for which he’d been put through his paces so many times. And now, just like the cinetronic screen, it was being enacted in front of him. But this was no video clip. This was for real. He clearly saw the gun in Orlove’s hand.
It was coming swiftly up.
There was no time to shout a warning, as had been drummed into him, time after time in the training environment.
He was learning at supersonic speed that no amount of time on a firing range, or dealing with situations in a training environment, could prepare someone for the real thing. Fuck the psychological tests. They meant nothing when you were actually faced with a life-and-death decision right in front of your eyes.
If he did not shoot now, an innocent person would die. Orlove increased his speed. He was right behind the intended victim. The gun was almost there, at the back of her head. The officer needed to shoot, to bring him down, to kill him, if that’s what it took to stop the bastard.
And if he missed there was an awfully good chance of killing one of the females.
The time for considered thought was over.
It was a sound, not unlike someone slapping a table top with the flat of their hand. Smack, smack.
Danny turned to look.
The male passenger walking behind her crumpled to the ground and the gun in his hand clattered across the tiled floor.
Tracey turned and saw the tableau.
She did not scream, cry, become hysterical. She just looked through tired eyes at it all.
A dead man and a cop with a gun.
So what else was new in her life?
‘ I’ll swear out a warrant this afternoon,’ Henry said quietly to Danny. She lifted her head from Stanway’s letter which was in her lap and looked at him, her eyes glazed as she thought of all the misery, suffering and death wrought by Gilbert and Spencer over the years. ‘Then,’ Henry went on, ‘I’ll get some search teams together and start digging up his lovely garden. Probably first thing tomorrow.’
They were heading north on the M6, filtering into the lane which would take them west towards Blackpool.
‘ He claims at least twenty bodies,’ Danny said, referring to the letter. ‘At least,’ she said, stressing the words. ‘I can’t get my head around that.’
‘ Fred West, eat humble pie and God rot your soul,’ Henry said. He nodded back towards Tracey, splayed out asleep across the rear seats. ‘She was one of the lucky ones.’
Danny snorted. ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’ She closed her eyes and sighed. ‘At least twenty… and that’s only in his garden. What about all those buried elsewhere?’
‘ I imagine they’ll stay buried and undiscovered, unless Gilbert or Spencer start blabbing, which I doubt. Twenty’ll do for a beginning.’
Danny felt silent. Then she touched Henry’s thigh. ‘Thanks for saving her life, and mine probably.’ She negotiated her seat belt and leaned across, pecking him on the cheek.
‘ Pleasure… but I do want payment in kind, you know.’
‘ Henry, you can have me any time. I’m too knackered to resist anyway. Just pull my nightie down when you’ve finished.’