by Matt Johnson
As I turned and ran towards the closing gate, a round whizzed past my right ear and hit the steel shutter in front of me. Behind me, policemen were diving for cover. Fleeing criminals had shot at them before, but this was the first time that they would have faced hand grenades. Without exception they lost all interest in me. At times like that, the desire to preserve your own life takes priority over any thought about being a hero. That effect was what I had gambled on.
The steel shuttered gate was an unexpected bonus.
Chapter 74
Albany Street Police Station was now a quiet sub-divisional base on the larger Kentish Town division. The station yard was used as a store for unclaimed stolen vehicles.
As we ran through the yard, I saw the young PC station officer standing on his own, checking the cars against some form of paperwork. He looked up from his clipboard as we ran in and Kevin started the security-gate closure mechanism. As he sprinted towards the opposite end of the yard, I heard Kevin say something to the lad before leaping onto the bonnet and roof of one of the cars and then scrambling onto the rear wall.
Kevin pulled his Browning from beneath his jacket and pointed it towards me at the gate. I waited for what seemed an age as the shutters closed and then threw the lock switch to prevent the mechanism being operated from outside. The delay would buy us vital seconds.
I jumped up onto the car next to Kevin and threw him my bergen. He caught it neatly, dropped it over the far side of the wall and then extended a hand to pull me up.
‘What did you say to him?’ I asked.
Kevin said nothing until we were both safely on the ground, the pursuing police now hidden and delayed. ‘I told him we were filming The Bill,’ he said.
I laughed, it was a crazy thing to do given the dire situation we were in.
As we shoved the remaining masks and Kevin’s pistol into the bergens, the sound of loud voices came over the wall from the yard. Kevin quickly pulled off his jacket and reversed it. Where it had been black, it was now green.
‘Time to be going,’ he said.
‘Keep together for now and follow me,’ I replied, as I swung my heavy bergen on to my back. ‘Right … let’s go.’
With only a few precious moments to put as much space between our pursuers and us as we could, we ran like Olympic sprinters.
To our distinct advantage, the estate behind the police station was a maze of houses, blocks of flats and recreation areas. Despite our advancing years, adrenaline gave strength to our legs. In less than a minute, we covered over four hundred yards, twisting and turning around corners as we attempted to make ourselves impossible to find. I gambled that our pursuers would be much slower. Fearing ambush, they would move cautiously. Four hundred yards was a lot of ground to cover when facing the possibility of a gunman around every corner.
The council estate streets were deserted, the pavements, dusty and strewn with litter. Loud music and television sounds poured out from many of the open windows. Nobody looked out or took any interest in two men running passed their doors.
Reaching Hampstead Road, on the opposite side of the estate, we reduced pace to a fast walk. It was now a more public area and anyone running was bound to become the focus of police eyes. I checked the sky.
‘Listen out for India nine-nine,’ said Kevin.
I nodded. Our certain undoing would be the speed with which the police helicopter crew could be mobilised. If they were already in the air and nearby we would need to keep hidden.
Lady Luck chose that very moment to deal us a kind hand. An old Routemaster bus was pulling into the stop opposite. But it was going the wrong way, back into town. Kevin pointed towards it, the quizzical expression on his face asking a question of me. I nodded again as I struggled to draw breath. It was the best I could manage, all form of speech now completely out of the question. Kevin got the message. It was time to take yet another chance. Just as we settled into seats near the open doorway, two ARVs roared past, sirens blaring, headed towards the estate.
We were both soaked with sweat.
‘I’m getting too old for all this,’ Kevin laughed.
‘We’re not out of the woods yet. You got any money to pay the bus fare?’ I asked.
‘Nope, you said don’t carry anything traceable or which we might drop.’
I did my best to think quickly. ‘I’ve got a couple of blueys in my waist band,’ I said. But then I had a better idea. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Conductor’s upstairs. When the bus stops at the lights, that’s Drummond Street. We’re off. Short walk to Euston BR and we’re away. OK?’
‘Sounds good to me.’
We were quiet for a moment, getting our breath back. I suppressed a chuckle.
‘What’s the joke?’ asked Kevin.
‘The Bill. That was a nice touch.’
Kevin laughed too. ‘And did you see the look on his face?’
We laughed together. A moment of relief after the tension of the last few minutes.
Soon it was time to jump from the bus at Drummond Street and walk to Euston British Rail station. I changed my mind again at that point, remembering the closed circuit TV cameras that covered the concourse. Instead, we crossed Euston Road, ignored the obvious opportunity at Warren Street and headed for the quieter tube station at Goodge Street.
I glanced back as we headed south, away from the traffic of the main road. We were just in time. On the far side of Euston Road, where we had just been standing, I saw the local area car pull up outside and drop off two young policemen to keep watch on everyone entering the rail station.
Chapter 75
The Anti-Terrorist Squad were burning the midnight oil. The city outside the windows was blue-black, laced with chains of winking lights, but the office was still full, every desk covered in papers, every bin filled with discarded coffee cups.
Grahamslaw had held his temper this time and had, so far, kept from swearing. But he was not best pleased. Bad luck had, once again, been the major player in their failure to capture the two St Pancras gunmen. He had teams searching the Albany Street area but he knew the two suspects were, by now, long gone. He was also sure he knew who the men were. The decision now was whether to pick them up.
‘What do you think, Mick?’ he asked Parratt, in the privacy of his office.
Parratt was his usual, calm self. ‘Do you want to tell me how it went at the COBRA meeting first?’
‘Oh, Christ. With all that’s been going on, I forgot. Well … it didn’t go quite as I expected.’
‘So, are Finlay and Jones part of some official Secret Service operation or not?’
‘I didn’t manage to find out; unfortunately the Home Secretary intercepted me and, although he promised to look into it, I never got a straight answer.’
‘Not unusual for a politician.’
Grahamslaw smiled. ‘He had the new Home Office Minister, Michael Rashid, with him. The two of them cornered me in the police room. They didn’t want me raising things at the main meeting and, when you look at things from their point of view, I can see why. They’ve been concerned about the numbers of hangers-on who’ve been turning up for meetings to try and impress the big guns, and there’ve been some problem with leaks.’
‘Civil servants, you mean?’
‘Yes, and junior politicians. A lot of people seem to be thinking that attending COBRA meetings is good for their careers.’
‘They thought one of them might talk to the press about what’s been going on?’
‘Exactly. And with what happened at St Pancras, I think they were right to be cautious. What’s your opinion of it?’
Parratt sat up in his chair. ‘Well, it was Finlay and Jones, no doubt in my mind. We’ll have some CCTV footage to look at by tomorrow. That’ll confirm it. There is only the vaguest of descriptions from eyewitnesses. Two men, both early forties, both with short brown hair. The cabbie got the best look, but that was only at the getaway driver.’
‘He still refusing to get involved?’
‘Work on him, Mick. We need him to pick them out, photographs at least. That might give us enough evidence to hold them.’
‘I say nick them both now.’
‘What have we got on them?’ Grahamslaw stood, throwing his arms in the air in exasperation. ‘Surveillance pictures of them meeting an unidentified man, a report from a surveillance officer that they were looking at a picture of the Arab and another Special Branch man who says the Arab was in the St Pancras Hotel half an hour before they tried to kidnap him. Without the Arab we haven’t got a victim. No victim, no crime.’
‘No crime? How about conspiracy? Last time I read the instruction manual that was still something you could be nicked for.’
‘Ok, Mick. Point made. But what about finding the Arab?’
‘What’s his name again?’
‘Our files have him as Sultan Anwar, but, according to SB, he’s now using the name Yildrim.’
‘I’ll get those names circulated around London. He’ll turn up somewhere. And even if we can’t find him, I still say there’s enough evidence to justify arrests. Finlay was at the scene. The station officer at Albany Street says he saw one of them with a gun. The one in the back of the cab – my guess that was Finlay – he threw stun grenades at our blokes. The rest … well, we’ll have to rely on a bit of luck. We might recover some weapons when we turn their homes over…’
‘…and we might not!’ said Grahamslaw.
‘…and we might get some forensic? We could make a conspiracy charge stick.’
Grahamslaw sat down again as his telephone started to ring. He ignored it.
‘Let’s not forget, these two are coppers like us,’ he said. ‘They know how forensic science works. They know our limits when it comes to searching. We’ve got to find proof; they’ll see that we don’t.’
‘All the more reason for moving quickly, before they get a chance to cover their tracks.’
The telephone continued to ring.
‘But if we miss the evidence they’ll go to ground and we’ll never catch up with them.’ Grahamslaw raised his hand as Parratt made to reply. He picked up the telephone receiver.
It was the police laboratory. The news wasn’t good.
‘Nothing, not a bloody thing,’ said Grahamslaw as he ended the call. ‘The cab was clean.’
‘I still say go for them. We’ve enough for search warrants. Let’s see what we can find.’
‘I think it’s already decided Mick. We’re not going fishing. We don’t have enough to charge them and that’s my final decision. Now let’s move on.’
‘OK, you’re the boss.’
‘I am, so cut me some slack. We’re still no closer to finding out who is pulling their strings. Now … let me run this past you. How many hotels are there in London?’ Grahamslaw gestured at the window to indicate the crowded streets below.
‘Thousands, maybe tens of thousands,’ said Parratt.
‘So what do you think are the odds against a Special Branch man just happening to be in the foyer of one of them when Finlay walks in?’
‘Huge … you thinking it wasn’t a coincidence?’
‘The lad’s name is Anderson, Stuart Anderson. I’m wondering if he knew where to look and maybe we’ve found our MI5 mole.’
‘You think MI5 told him where to look? Want me to take a closer look at him?’ Parratt made a note on his pad.
‘You’re damn right I do. The other thing that struck me was the hotel. It’s just two or three minutes’ drive from the SO19 base at Old Street.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that maybe we were supposed to catch them. It’s so close to where our firearms officers deploy from, the chance of Finlay and Jones getting busted was greatly increased. Maybe someone set them up.’
‘I don’t buy that. If they were being set up we’d have been given more notice. The way it went, there was always a good chance they were going to get away before we got there.’
‘If we’d been given time to set up a trap we’d have caught the Arab as well. Maybe the Arab told Anderson that Finlay was there to give himself a chance to escape. Maybe Anderson was never anywhere near the hotel.’
‘Could be? Who knows?’ said Grahamslaw.
‘This gets more complicated by the minute.’
‘Yeah. And maybe this lad Anderson can fill in some of the blanks.’
The phone rang again. This time Grahamslaw picked up the receiver, immediately. It was DI Miller from Kentish Town with more bad news. The CCTV at the St Pancras Hotel had been disabled.
‘Check it Matt, and then double check. Someone must have seen something,’ said Grahamslaw, before slamming down the receiver.
Parratt broke the silence that followed. ‘Bad news?’
Grahamslaw relayed what Miller had said.
‘Clever bastards,’ said Parratt.
Chapter 76
As soon as we were below ground on the tube, Kevin and I split up. I kept an eye out for CCTV cameras. Although we both had an idea where London Underground sited them, I kept my head down and held my sleeve over my face until I was in the carriage.
Once again, I was alone with my thoughts. I tried to put myself in Grahamslaw’s place. He would be putting two and two together by now. If he hadn’t worked out that Kevin and I were the two men from both Alma House and today’s incident he could be confident that we were in some way connected. If I were him, I would pull both of us in for questioning. That meant one of two things. Either I was going to get a rude awakening during the early hours of the morning as SO19 broke down my door, or Grahamslaw was being stopped from arresting us. With no real understanding of the connections between the Anti-Terrorist Squad and MI5, I hoped it was the latter.
The appearance of the SO19 team at Alma House and just now at the hotel had to be more than a coincidence. Twice we had been compromised and both times we had gotten away with it. The nagging uncertainty that had been plaguing my thoughts in recent days was now starting to gain substance. There was a very short list of people who knew about our plans. An even shorter list that knew we were going to be at that hotel.
Kevin was as much at risk as me, so he was in the clear. The loyalty of Jenny was beyond question. To me, the only other way that details of the operation could have been leaked to SO19 was through Monaghan.
I tried to decide if I was being paranoid. Maybe SO19 had been tipped off about Yildrim and were on their way to arrest him when they bumped into us. That was a possibility. It was certainly more palatable than the idea that Monaghan had double-crossed us. The more I thought about it, the more likely that scenario became. I’d known Monaghan for years and thought I could trust him with my life. If he’d had something against me, I’d know about it. He wouldn’t do anything so elaborate as set me up to be arrested. That wasn’t his style. But then … there was the story that Kevin had brought back from Hereford.
I made my way to Kilburn and sat in a bus shelter as the evening air started to cool. The strain of recent events was taking its toll. I was beginning to imagine conspiracy and plot, even by people who I knew to be my close friends. It was often said by coppers, ‘You don’t have to be paranoid for them to be out to get you’, but I was starting to have difficulty separating reality from fear. Memories of the conversations with Monaghan were becoming cloudy. I shook myself, forcing my mind to focus.
I went through it again. Monaghan had arranged the Alma House op and given us the location of Yildrim’s hotel. Both times we had been compromised. Was that just an awful coincidence? Einstein believed that coincidence was God’s way of remaining anonymous. Maybe he was right, maybe we needed to see the obvious. If Monaghan wanted us caught he took the risk that we would tell our story. But then who would believe us? Monaghan would deny everything. We would be just another pair of mercen
aries claiming an MI5 conspiracy. But why would Monaghan do such a thing?
Again, the stories about Victoria Monaghan came back to me. It seemed totally crazy. But supposing her lovers were the guys who’d been killed? I hadn’t been guilty, but Kevin said there had been rumours about me. Suppose Monaghan had heard them and believed them? And if Monaghan was behind it, where did the Arab fit in? And why had Kevin Jones been brought into things? Unless, that was, Monaghan knew about Kevin’s secret.
I stood up to take in my surroundings. The Kilburn street was busy. On the presumption that Grahamslaw’s surveillance teams might be watching my car, I decided to ditch the bergen, together with its incriminating contents. I needed somewhere safe, somewhere nearby.
By chance, I walked into the solution. A British Rail left-luggage store. With the storage charge paid, I slipped the key into my pocket and hopped on a bus heading to North London.
I took a circuitous route and, by the time I reached Potters Bar, the day was drawing to an end. I decided to walk boldly as if I hadn’t a care in the world. In the fading light there was no point in looking for surveillance, I wouldn’t see them.
I unlocked the door to the hire car and climbed in. It started first time and as I pulled away I braced myself for the rush, the screams of ‘armed police’ and my violent removal from the driver seat. Nothing happened.
As I drove slowly down the ramp onto the main road, I looked around. Still nothing.
‘I don’t believe this,’ I said. I smiled. I was talking to myself now.
The journey home did nothing to help focus my thoughts. They kept coming back to Monaghan. Monaghan was a link between the dead men, the Iranian, me, Jones and the two occasions that SO19 had nearly caught us. There were links between the other factors involved but Monaghan was the only common link to all. And if he had learned of Kevin’s affair with his wife, he had the motive.