by Graham Marks
‘They had your pitchers, them lot.’
Paul turned towards the bloke behind the counter; not much older than him, if at all, looking totally foreign, with a completely London accent. He noticed Terri and Rob had stopped what they were doing and were staring at the bloke, too.
Rob walked over. ‘What was that, mate?’
‘Yesterday, innit? This geezer come in with some shots for us to look at, say if we knew where the people in them lived? They was of you.’ He nodded at all three of them. ‘Straight up.’
Terri came up to the counter. ‘What did you say?’
The young guy backed away slightly. ‘Me? Nuffin. Why would I, right?’
‘But you could tell it was us?’
‘Course I could.’ He jabbed a finger at Rob. ‘Chocolate Boy’s in here all the time, innit.’
‘What did the person with the photos want, Abdul?’ Rob thumped a kingsize Mars bar on the counter as if it was a deadly weapon.
‘Leave it out, Rob…’ Terri made a calming motion with her hand.
‘Leave what out? He is Abdul, it’s his name… we’re mates, OK?’ Rob smiled at Abdul and they touched knuckles. ‘What were they after, like?’
‘Wanted t’know if you was living round here, bruv. He din’t come on like plod, but I could tell that’s what he was, the geezer.’ Abdul glanced out of the shop window. ‘And I think it looks like he found someone who telled him…’
‘Why?’
Abdul jerked a thumb out of the window. ‘Your road’s bin like Piccadilly bleeding Circus for the last hour or so… vans, ambulances and stuff, and they’ve had a helicopter up an all. One of those with the chunky spotlight?’
The hairs on the back of Paul’s neck bristled and all the moisture was sucked right out of his mouth. What the hell was going on? Sure, what they were doing wasn’t legal, but was it worth this much police activity? It was like they were terrorists… he looked over at Rob and Terri for some kind of guidance as to how he should be feeling, or what he should be doing, but neither of them seemed to know what was going on either.
‘You wanna crash upstairs, guys?’
All three of them looked at Abdul.
‘Well, you can’t hardly go home, can you?’
Rob put some money on the counter, picked up his Mars bar and stripped off the wrapper. ‘What’s upstairs?’
‘Store room. You can kip on the floor there, till I go off.’
‘When’s that?’ Rob asked through a mouthful.
‘Round sevenish, when me uncle Mahmoud comes in to take over. I’ll have to chuck you out before that.’
Terri moved back from the counter as another car with a flashing light sped past the shop. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah, you.’
‘I told you…’ Rob stuffed the last of the bar into his mouth. ‘He’s my mate, that’s why.’
Abdul nodded, picking up the money on the counter and chucking it in the till. ‘You don’t trust me, you don’t got to stay, sister.’
‘I’m not…’
‘We’ll stay, Ab… OK?’ Rob looked pointedly from Terri to Paul.
‘Yeah.’ Paul nodded, unable to think what else to do, aware that the power dynamic had subtly switched from Terri to Rob. ‘Right…’
‘Terri?’ Rob looked at her.
She smiled a tight, humourless smile back at him, then shot a glance at Abdul. ‘Thanks.’
The room was packed, floor to ceiling, with boxes. Crisps, toilet cleaner, baked beans, Cuppa Soup, washing powder, Pot Noodles, instant coffee, dog food, tights. All the necessities, everything you might, for some reason, need at any time of the day or night.
Paul stood by one of the windows that looked out on to the street below. The bottom half was broken, the hole, and most of the glass, covered with a piece of cardboard, the top half just filthy. Through the city grime he could see the end of their road. Could just make out the diagonal stripes on the rear of a police patrol car. There hadn’t been any activity for a few minutes, but he couldn’t drag himself away. What had happened to the others… what was going to happen to him?
‘Sit down, Paul. Get some rest, we’re gonna be back out on the street in a couple of hours.’
Paul looked down at Terri, sitting on the floor of the darkened room in a shaft of street light; beside her was the slumped figure of Rob, curled up, fast asleep.
‘How does he do that?’
‘He doesn’t care.’
‘About what?’
‘Anything.’
Paul sat down opposite Terri. ‘What are we going t’do, then… when we leave here?’
‘Us?’
‘Yeah, us.’
Terri looked away. ‘I don’t think there is an “us” any more, Pauly. If they got Orlando and Sky, that’s it. Game over.’
They? Game over? What? Paul closed his eyes and tried to slow his head down, tried to think. Think. Think. Think. It was hard to do, with everything collapsing around him… if the squat had been raided – and what else could all the cops mean? – then what he had with him, the clothes he was dressed in and the stuff in his pockets, that was it. Everything he owned. And the jacket wasn’t even his.
And, to top it all, in an hour or so, Abdul would be turfing them out into a street where people – no, get real, not people – where the police were looking for them. Had their pictures. Knew what they looked like. Paul still couldn’t believe the huge amount of activity there was going on just to bust the squat. A helicopter, what was that all about?
Paul opened his eyes. ‘What’s going on, Terri?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
‘They must’ve got Orlando and the others, right?’
Paul stared at Terri, who was looking anywhere but at him. ‘I told you,’ she mumbled. ‘I don’t know, OK?’
‘This raid’s about Omega Place, and they’re acting like we’ve got bombs and shit.’ He stood up and went to look out of the window again; the police car seemed to have gone. ‘Why are we hanging round here?’
‘Stop asking me questions like I’ve all the bloody answers, will you?’
Terri’s raised voice woke up Rob, who rolled over on to his back and yawned. ‘What’s up… lovers’ tiff?’
‘Piss off, Rob.’
‘Charming…’ Rob sat up, rubbing his face. ‘Feel like I’ve eaten bleeding cat litter.’
Before either Terri or Paul could think of an appropriate reply, the door to the store room opened and Abdul came in.
‘Heads up, guy.’
Rob stood up. ‘What?’
‘I just had a couple or three of them plain-clothes geezers in the shop.’
‘Looking for us?’
‘Nah, getting fags an stuff, bruv.’
‘So?’
‘So they was just outside the shop, stopped to spark up, and I heard what they said, din’t I? Thought you’d wanna know.’
Terri got up off the floor and brushed her jeans down. ‘What did they say, Abdul?’
‘One goes something like, “D’you know the ID of the bodies yet?” and the other geezer says…’
‘Bodies?’ Terri’s eyes widened.
‘Yeah, bodies, and the other geezer says that, like, the one shot in the top room’s called Orlando, and they think the kid’s probably called Paul sunnink or other. And then they pissed off and I din’t hear no more.’ Abdul looked at his watch. ‘My uncle’ll be here in a half hour or so, right?’
Rob nodded. ‘We’ll be down, OK?’
‘Later.’
The three of them said nothing as they watched the storeroom door close. They stayed silent as what Abdul had said sank into their tired brains and they tried to make sense of it.
Terri sat down, head in her hands. ‘Orlando’s dead, been shot?’
‘But…’ Rob frowned. ‘Didn’t Abdul say the other one was…?’
‘Me?’ Paul looked out of the window at the empty street below. ‘Yeah, Abdul sai
d the other body was me.’
‘OK, OK…’ Rob frowned at Paul. ‘But why’d they think…’
Paul turned away from the window. ‘Must be the jacket, mustn’t it?’ He pulled at the one he was wearing like it was clinging to him. ‘Remember? I took Tommy’s by mistake? So he must be dead, too. Why would anyone kill him, ferchrissake? Who’d ever want Tommy dead?’
39
Monday 21st August, King’s Cross, London
Paul sat on his own at a table in the rear of the nearly empty café, as far away from the window as possible. Rob had gone to the toilet and Terri was off getting some tobacco and papers. A couple of minutes back he’d thought about pinching himself very hard, just to test whether this was all really happening, or if he was, by some miracle, actually asleep and dreaming. But though this might all seem like a nightmare, he knew he was awake.
He was awake. And he was alive. But Tommy and Orlando were dead and Sky and Izzy were banged up somewhere in police custody. He could not believe it was true, that he’d never see Tommy again. How was that possible? Who the hell had allowed that to happen? He didn’t live in a world where people he knew got killed, ferchrissake! He didn’t.
He’d left home not knowing what he was looking for and by accident he’d found a weird kind of other family, which had taken him in and accepted him for what he was, taught him to think, taught him that you needed action and words. Whatever you thought about Orlando, he could see the big picture, made you look at it and see what was really happening. And now, now he was lost again, the family had been destroyed, Orlando was gone and it was just the three of them.
Paul sat at the table, silent and still, not knowing if he felt scared or whether it was anger laced with fear that was making it impossible for him to think straight. He stopped staring blankly at the table and looked up. Terri and Rob had been gone a long time and a sudden empty feeling in the pit of his stomach made him think they weren’t coming back, that they’d made some kind of plan behind his back and had pissed off and left him. Then the door to the café opened and Terri walked in, smiling at him, and Rob appeared at the table, wiping his hands on his jeans.
Rob sat next to Paul, grinning. ‘I needed that!’
‘We didn’t need to know.’ Terri took a folded newspaper out of the carrier bag she’d got with her, put it on the table and turned away. ‘I’ll get us some more teas… and it doesn’t look like we made the papers.’
Paul grabbed the tabloid, checking the headlines on the first half dozen or so pages. ‘There’s nothing… not a word.’ He was whispering, even though there was no one near enough to hear what he said. ‘How can two people being shot dead not be a story?’
Rob shrugged. ‘Dunno, mate.’
‘Don’t you care?’
‘About not being in the papers? No. Less said the better, know what I mean?’
‘They’re going to cover it all up, aren’t they? No one’s ever going to know what happened to them…’ Paul wasn’t whispering now. ‘Bastards!’
Terri sat down opposite Paul. ‘Keep your voice down, OK?’
‘But –’
‘But nothing. I don’t know why there’s no story, but the fact that they’ve managed to keep last night out of the papers must mean some very high up people don’t want the story out there. But it doesn’t mean they don’t still want us; we’re gonna have to get out of town for a bit.’
‘We gotta git outta town, pardners!’ Rob grinned, mimicking Terri in his worst cowboy accent.
‘Can’t you take anything seriously, Rob?’ Terri looked at him like she’d just smelled something bad. ‘Dickhead.’
‘Takes one to know one, sis.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Your trouble, sis?’ Rob stood up, taking his jacket off the back of the chair. ‘You take life too seriously, man.’
Paul watched him push his chair back in. ‘Where you going?’
‘Buggering off.’ He nodded at Terri. ‘Getting out, like she said. Wanna come?’
‘What?’ Paul frowned, like he hadn’t quite heard what Rob had said.
‘He’s splitting… wants to know if you wanna go with him.’
‘Me? What about you?’
‘Doesn’t look like I’m invited, right?’ Terri stared at Rob, eyes narrowed.
‘Rob?’ Paul shifted uneasily in his chair.
‘Shit-or-get-off-the-pot time, Pauly.’ Rob was moving away, towards the café door, grinning. ‘And believe me,’ he nodded at Terri, ‘you don’t have a chance…’
Paul slowly sat back down, watching Rob turn and go out into the street, conflicting thoughts churning round in his head. Go with Rob – he could still catch him up – and see what the hell happened? Or… or what? He glanced over at Terri, sitting opposite him, and looked away, knowing Rob was right. He didn’t have a cat’s chance. But what was Rob doing, just walking out like that?
‘Hey!’ Terri snapped her fingers. ‘Over here.’
Paul looked round. ‘What?’
‘You made the right decision… all he can do is steal cars. Without Sky and Orlando and the rest of us, without Omega Place, he’s going to go off the rails. And you do not want to be there when he does.’
‘So what’re you gonna do?’
Terri stood up. ‘Right now I have some stuff to fix, but I’ll be back here, this café…’ she checked the time on her mobile phone, ‘… in about three hours. Meet me just after six, OK?’
‘Um… OK, yeah… but I’ve, like, got no…’ Paul patted his jeans pockets.
‘The bill’s paid here.’ Terri pushed some money across the table. ‘Should keep you out of trouble till I’m back… don’t spend it all at once.’
And then she was gone and he was on his own in the café again, only this time Rob wasn’t in the bog, about to come back, and he didn’t really reckon on the chances that Terri would be here in three hours’ time. He couldn’t believe she’d just walked out, too. No goodbye. Nothing.
Didn’t even look back…
40
Monday 21st August, Thames House
Jane Mercer sat alone in her office. She felt deflated, somehow. Flat. The operation was over and she assumed the team would now be reassigned to other duties. From what she could gather people were talking, internally, in terms of the job having been successful, even taking into consideration the fact that two of theirs had been taken down. From her point of view she was just happy that, while not exactly covered in glory, she’d had a couple of appreciative emails. But what kind of riled her was that the action had been so effectively hushed up. Nothing in the papers, nothing on TV or the radio. Nothing about what had really occurred anyway. Like it had never happened.
She sighed, shaking her head at her own slightly ridiculous naivity. Grow up, girl. What did she expect – when did the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth ever apply to this place? On the desk in front of her was a large buff envelope, the type used for inter-office correspondence. It was from Markham and she supposed she ought to read it. Find out the verdict that really mattered.
Flicking up the rather old-fashioned metal fastener she took out the two files that were inside. A hand-written memo was paper-clipped to the top one. ‘A difficult job well handled,’ it said. ‘Thought you might appreciate sight of the file I’ve sent to the Home Office. Please shred after reading.’
Momentarily nonplussed, Mercer picked up the first file and started reading.
INTERNAL MEMO – FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
FROM:
Alex Markham, Director of Internal Affairs, MI5
TO:
Michael Turner, PPS Home Secretary
Re:
Omega Place
Michael,
The attached files comprise a full and detailed account of this department’s operation last Saturday night/Sunday morning, and I thought a few bullet points might be of some help before you read the report in full.
• Henry Garden called me, at home, at about 1.50 a.m. Sund
ay morning. I taped the call, and a transcript is in the file. He’d obviously been drinking, and was rambling, but gave me a full and frank confession as to his recent conduct, implicating Nicholas Harvey, the owner and CEO of AquiLAN, the communications group, as the man blackmailing him, and the person ultimately behind Omega Place.
• Harvey is still in custody – we don’t want him anywhere near a computer until the forensic accountants and investigators have finished going over everything in his offices with a fine-toothed comb. We have yet to decide what he should be charged with.
• Garden also implicated one Dean Mayhew, an ex-SAS soldier, whom he thought Harvey had hired. We believe this is the man who was in the house when our people went in, and the person responsible for the two deaths and the injuries to our personnel. Unfortunately, Garden’s information came too late for it to be of any use in changing the outcome of what happened.
• The Mayhew situation is in hand.
• This whole incident is being dressed up and given to the local media as a drugs bust, victims as yet unknown; considering the location, I don’t think we’ll have any difficulty at all in selling it as such and the story really doesn’t have the legs to go national. We are, effectively, out of the picture, and have made the police first port of call for all information.
• The dead male, referred to originally as Orlando Welles, turns out to be aka James Hudson Baker, last known to us as a hard-left agitator in the late 80s, early 90s. He was, apparently, at university with Harvey, who was using him to run the Omega Place operation on the ground. Garden says that Harvey wanted Welles taken out of the equation, so to speak, because he wasn’t obeying orders and his activities were gaining too much attention. Welles has no living relatives.
• The dead youth is assumed to be a Paul Hendry, but the three bullets Mayhew used to kill him (we still don’t know why) completely destroyed any facial information that we might have used to ID him, as well as anything that could have constituted dental records. Using the drugs bust cover story, his parents are being informed today, and will have to make formal and final identification.