by Iain Cameron
The outline of the farmhouse came into view, its gloomy silhouette looming at the summit of a slight rise. McGovern stopped playing silly buggers and closed the window. He turned in his seat and hissed, ‘balaclavas.’ To the team, it was their signal to shift into action mode and put all the negative thoughts swimming around everyone’s heads to one side and concentrate on the job at hand. This meant everyone doing what they were told, with the minimum of fuss, and the least amount of talking.
For the second time in a fortnight, there were no gates. It always took Rooney some time to open them with his electronic bag of tricks but it was hard to sit still in a car with three jumpy blokes, hands clutching sledgehammers, fingers twitching under gloves, the breathing heavy and stilted under sweaty balaclavas, all ready to leap into action at a given signal.
Once on level ground, Ehuru cut the engine and the car coasted to a stop, close to the house. Using night vision goggles, Cahill searched for the phone line and while they all exited the car, careful not to clunk the head of the hammer against the side of the car and wake the dog, the householders, or a neighbour if they had one, he removed a ladder from the boot and ran to the side of the house to undo the good work of an overpaid BT engineer.
On such an isolated property, it was no surprise to see the people inside had installed a burglar alarm but without a telephone line, it was like cutting the balls off a Lothario like Cahill, he might have the kit, but it was no bloody use.
Sure, it would generate a call from the security centre to their mobiles, but by the time it reached them, they would be inside and the clever home CCTV system which provided video replay of their night time activities, would soon be a heap of smashed up electronic circuits and broken plastic along with their phones.
On a prearranged signal, Cahill climbed the ladder as Ehuru and McGovern moved into position on either side of the front door. McGovern nodded. Ehuru swung first, aiming at a point near the side of the door where the lock and handle were located, its weak spot. He brought his hammer back and was still leaning forward when McGovern’s hammer swished past his ear. Christ, it was close. He looked over but the balaclava was inscrutable.
He swung again but this time pulled back quickly, but still McGovern’s sledgehammer swung close. The bastard was trying to bait him. He was sweating hard under the balaclava, his mind racing through the argument they had last week, trying to determine if he was still upset by it. He whacked again and this time he heard the tell-tale creak from the frame as the door moved.
He leaned back to allow McGovern to swing and all thoughts of revenge or retribution went out the window as he squared up for the ‘door opener’ swing. With a mighty lunge, the sledgehammer crashed into the door a few centimetres below where they had been bashing, the frame buckled and split and the door limped open. They were in.
Without hesitation, McGovern ran upstairs while Ehuru searched the hall. In an ideal world, the key to this guy’s Ferrari 458 would be in a drawer or hanging on a peg behind the door, but not this time. A few seconds later Cahill came into the house, moving so quietly it was hard to hear him.
Ehuru made a phone shape with his fingers.
Cahill nodded.
They waited. He couldn’t hear any trilling of mobile phones so either McGovern had got there first and smashed them or the silly buggers had switched them off for the night. They didn’t have long to wait before the pyjama-clad figure of a guy came half-tumbling, half-staggering down the stairs, the sole of McGovern’s boot helping him along the way. When he was near the bottom, Ehuru grabbed him by the lapels and growled, ‘car keys.’
‘No way.’
Ehuru punched him in the stomach. He convulsed in his grip and screeched something inaudible.
He raised his fist to punch him again.
‘Kitchen drawer,’ he coughed, ‘nearest the door.’
He nodded to Cahill who headed there.
Still holding the helpless owner in a tight grip, they listened as Cahill hauled out one, then two drawers before walking back into the hall and lifting them up for all to see, the distinctive Ferrari prancing horse visible. Ehuru imagined the grin of a monkey with a banana under the balaclava.
He released his hold on the man, who fell to the ground nursing his gut and turned to leave.
‘You can’t take my car you thieving bastards, it’s not even paid for.’
Ehuru reached the door, McGovern in front of him. Without a word, McGovern pushed past, back into the hallway and strode over to the semi-prone figure. He swung a boot at his chin, causing his head to snap back where it whacked against the leg of a small sideboard with a crack that resonated in the still night air. He flopped on the floor motionless.
McGovern spun round and stopped when he realised Ehuru was standing there, watching him. He strode over and pushed him outside.
Ehuru staggered out and climbed behind the wheel of a non-descript saloon and waited with the engine ticking over until Rooney got the Ferrari started. The engine burst into life with a throaty roar, the firing up of twelve cylinders with a rich mixture of petrol and air, shattering the silence, a similar sound to his old uncle clearing his bronchial chest.
It shot off down the bumpy drive, its rear lights dancing over the uneven surface and leaving little red tracers behind Ehuru’s eyes. If he was being picky, the Maserati Quattroporte, a car they nicked a few weeks back, might not be as good looking as the Ferrari but it had a beautiful, sporty sound, much sportier and aggressive than this car but he wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a Ferrari.
The door of the car snapped shut as McGovern climbed in. Without a word, Ehuru accelerated, his mind seething with yet another example of McGovern’s uncontrollable violence, and headed after Rooney. They reached the end of the drive and turned left. Up ahead, about fifty yards further on, and out of sight of the house, the van was parked under the shadow of a line of tall trees. Ehuru pulled in behind the van and as soon as McGovern got out, he sunk his foot to the floor and with the back wheels spinning and the back-end fish-tailing as if in snow.
Ehuru drove like a rally driver along unlit, twisting roads where trees cast dark shadows across the road and their headlights picked up the glow of many small eyes peering at them from the undergrowth, but this time he was too fired up with anger and resentment to be spooked.
Up ahead, he could see the bright lights of the main road, the A23. He joined it and headed north to London, keeping the car at a steady seventy-five miles an hour while hogging the inside lane as much as possible. His caution was perhaps unwarranted as the cops wouldn’t know anything about the robbery yet, as the house they were driving away from didn’t have a working phone and no near neighbours to run over to.
The murder of scag drug dealer, Stephen Halliday, had been in all the local newspapers and television news as he was a well-known figure in the area, an eccentric character who coached the neighbourhood football team and had a little side-line going on dealing drugs, but he wasn’t as bad as some. The papers said he had been killed by a rival dealer or one of his customers after being short-changed on a deal, but whatever the reason, Ehuru knew his name was Rab McGovern.
It was a risky piece of information to know, as McGovern was a dangerous man. On the other hand, if used well, it could be the little nugget he needed to get the violent, unpredictable bastard out of his face forever. Now wasn’t that something worth thinking about?
FIFTEEN
At one thirty, Henderson walked into Sussex House bearing an Asda thicker-cut egg and cress sandwich and a bottle of cranberry flavoured mineral water. As a consequence of Rachel’s assault on his wardrobe, many of his new clothes seemed to be designed with a neater cut and felt a bit snug around the waist and legs, with none of the ‘give’ of his previous outfits. Not to exacerbate the problem, he only bought the sandwich and ignored the mini pork pie and apple Danish, the usual accompaniment to a cup of coffee later in the afternoon.
She would claim it wasn’t the fault of the new and better
styled clothes, but his expanding gut on account of his love of Harvey’s Bitter, salted peanuts, and the occasional Chinese takeaway, often in the same evening. Being a canny Scot, he couldn’t see the point of spending a load of money on new clobber and not wearing it, hence the lighter lunch, but there was no way he was going on a faddy diet, as life was for living and not for counting calories or watching the readout on a set of bathroom scales, as if life itself depended on them.
He had spent the morning at a house in Framfield, on the outskirts of Uckfield in East Sussex, and for the twelfth time, met with a distraught householder, saw a door smashed to bits, and was shown the empty space where their pride and joy used to be. This time, the gang had upped the ante, as the owner of the car, Grant Basham, an insurance actuary in the City of London, had been hit on the head with something hard, either a bat, a boot, or a boxer’s fist and he was now in a coma.
The car, a red Ferrari 458 Spider and only two weeks old, was to be taken on its maiden journey the following week, on a five-day drive through the Dordogne. The car had been a present to self on Mr Basham’s fiftieth birthday, as up until then, he had owned a succession of small cars, used for the short drive between his house and Uckfield railway station. Now, it was touch and go if he would ever walk again, never mind drive a demanding car like the Ferrari.
At one of their team meetings, someone suggested the gang might end up killing someone as a consequence of their escalating violence, and at the time he dismissed it as scaremongering because, after all, it was only a car, a big lump of metal, glass, and plastic that could be replaced. Now, he was not so sure. It wasn’t only the violence but the nature of it; brutal, nasty, and incapacitating, way beyond what would be deemed necessary to extract the keys from a reluctant owner.
Their resident car thieving expert, DS Tony Haslam of the Traffic Department, assured them the gang were receiving anything from five hundred to a thousand pounds per stolen car, but was this a good enough reason to take a man’s life and spend the next fifteen to twenty years in jail for murder when they finally caught them?
He didn’t think so, and because it wasn’t what might be called in a police operational manual or a quality newspaper, proportional violence or systematic persuasion, he had to face the prospect that they were dealing with some irrational or psychotic characters. If this wasn’t enough to keep him awake at night, he didn’t know what was.
The edge of his appetite was curbed by all these negative thoughts and when he started eating, it was with less enthusiasm than when he first walked over to the supermarket. A couple of bites in, the phone rang. He was tempted to leave it, as it could be Chief Inspector Harris with part two of the, ‘you better catch them soon or we’ll all be out of a job' speech, as if he wasn’t thinking the same sorts of things himself, but with a groan he picked it up.
‘Detective Inspector Henderson? This is Sergeant Billy Hardcastle from the Met Stolen Vehicle Unit. Eddie Robinson said I should give you a call.’
‘He did, did he? Well done to you, Eddie. So Billy, how much did he tell you?’
‘Not much. I understand you need some footsloggers around the streets and alleys of Hackney.’
For the next few minutes he told Billy about the sighting of the chilled foods van and its disappearance somewhere in Hackney.
‘So what is it you want them to do?’
‘I need some people to knock on doors until we find the garage they’re using.’
‘I don't think it's such a good idea, sir.’
‘Why? Do you think they’ll scarper if we do?’
‘Without doubt, as soon as they get a whiff of something going on, they’ll vamoose These sorts of characters seem able to up-sticks in minutes and disappear into the wild blue yonder. A few weeks later, they'll buy some new gear and tools and start all over again. One of the costs of being in this sort of business, I suppose.’
‘Can you suggest anything better? I mean we know they’re around there somewhere, it’s just a case of finding them.’
‘We’re talking about how many streets?’
‘Hang on.’
Henderson opened his tatty A-Z, now marked at the page he and Walters had been looking at earlier. It wasn't a big area but he knew from studying satellite imagery on the web, it was densely populated with blocks of flats, lock-ups, warehouses, and light industrial units. ‘About half a dozen.’
‘I could get a few people, three or four max so as not to cause alarm and get them to walk the streets, looking for suitable places where they think your gang might have taken the van. I’m thinking it has to be more than a single garage or a lock-up. We’re talking here about a big workshop where they can switch the plates and I think a paint shop for doing the colour change on the cars. Do you know for certain the cars are transported inside this van?’
‘As much as we can be certain about anything,’ Henderson said, ‘because ever since we discovered it, we’ve seen it travelling up to London after three successive raids. I would say it’s good odds in my book.’
‘I’d be forced to agree with you. Tell me, is there any regularity in the timing of the raids?’
‘Nope, none whatsoever. Sometimes a week goes by, ten days, five days. If I could find any pattern to it, I would put a couple of cars on the M23 and a few more in Hackney and tail them.’
‘I was thinking the same. You see, I can see another problem with all this.’
‘What?’
‘Well if we do put men on the streets and they find say, five or six suitable places where someone could hide a big van and a few cars, we’ll need to watch all six locations for a few days or even a few weeks to identify which one they’re using. I mean, we just can’t ring the bell and ask if we can come inside and take a look around, can we?’
‘We’re into surveillance then. Mind you, if the gap between raids is only four days, we might not have long to wait.’
‘Yeah, but you said it yourself, the time between raids could be up to ten days or maybe now they’ll decide to take a break and go off on holiday.’
‘Yep, and knowing my luck on this case, I bet you’re right.’
‘Hang on a sec though, I’ve just thought of something we could do and it might save us a lot of time. Let me make a few phone calls and I’ll call you right back.’
SIXTEEN
Slowly, slowly he panned to the right. With the crosshairs lined up, a little behind its left ear, Dominic Green let out a brief smile. The Bambis had broken through the fencing close to a planting of three hundred ash, beech, and silver birch trees, part of his commitment to the environment as a responsible land owner, not to mention getting some free loot from the government, but the little buggers were in there and chomping for all they were worth.
In truth, his interest in the green agenda was to silence the ‘friends of the environment’ bitches from Brighton who were forever haranguing him in their vegetarian sandals and skanky hair about the way he was raping the green belt to make way for a new office or shopping developments. If governments listened to them and implemented what they were proposing, the country would go back to the Stone Age with no power stations, no cars, no airports, and nothing else to pollute their precious countryside. As a result, everyone would starve to death and instead of the tight planning controls in place at the moment which stopped him constructing whatever he pleased, the landscape would be littered with decaying corpses, discarded clothes, rusting cars, and crumbling buildings. No wonder everybody thought they were crackpots.
With over twenty acres of rolling countryside at Langley Manor to the west of Horsted Keynes in Sussex, planting a few trees was an easy commitment for him to make as the plants, the fence, and the protective sheathings were cheap. In addition, Kevin the gardener was already on the payroll and as happy as a dog with two tails to be doing something different, rather than cutting the grass or weeding the vegetable plot.
The shot was a good one and with the help of John Lester, his driver and bodyguard, they loaded
the lifeless body into the back of the trailer. The big American freezer in the kitchen and the chest freezer in the shed were heaving with venison and so the three bagged today would be sold to a local butcher.
At one time, he considered donating the meat to an old folk’s home or an orphanage, but he and Lester laughed like drains when a bloke from the council told him he thought the old dears would turn their noses up at the strange tasting food, and the little snotty-nosed buggers would have a hissy fit when they found out where their juicy steaks were coming from.
He had been lying on wet grass and his shirt, trousers and socks were muddy and so before Lester went off into town to take care of some business, he dropped him back at the house. Green showered and changed and as his kids were at school and his wife Natalie was out shopping in Brighton, he set about preparing his own lunch.
He was thin and ate frugally, as he hated fat people and the slothful way they moved, and in any case, a chopped up apple, a bit of Brie and some bread was enough to fill him up for the afternoon. After lunch, he strode into the small sitting room, poured a whisky from the decanter and took a seat in his favourite armchair beside a roaring fire.
He loved the look and smell of a log fire, but if Maria the housekeeper didn’t do it, he would be sitting in here freezing his nuts off as he could never get the bloody thing to light. A petrol fire at the warehouse of a rival or a gas explosion in an old building he was trying to redevelop was a piece of cake, but starting and keeping a log fire alight was a mystery beyond his comprehension.
From lowly beginnings and more than a few brushes with the law, Dominic Green had built up a multi-million pound property development business, responsible for swanky housing estates, luxury apartment blocks, and up-market shopping centres. In addition, he also owned several entertainment businesses, with two casinos, five pubs and numerous illegal gambling dens. Which was why he was curious that the Managing Director of a microelectronics company, albeit a business much larger and more valuable than his own, wanted to see him.