Wicked Game

by Matt Johnson

  To keep warm, he shuffled from foot to foot, ever aware of the need to stay alert. There was one light on in the target house but no movement. He had watched carefully from the concealment of the van, decided that the light was on a timer and then made his way to the ambush position. Now in place, he prepared things in his mind

  This wasn’t going to be like the last shooting. On that occasion, Dominic had been there to help and they had been able to use the Kalashnikov. They were also unaware of how dangerous their target could have been. This time he had prepared more thoroughly.

  With all available equipment either used up or seized by the police, the only weapon he had left was the Browning. It was more than enough, provided he maintained the element of surprise. In the darkness, he found himself fiddling nervously with the safety catch. The magazine was full, but he still felt the need to make sure and then, half an hour later, to check again.

  Yes, he accepted, he was scared. But he now had a plan. That would overcome the fear.

  Eventually, the cop would come home. According to Yildrim, he would be driving a red Audi. Regardless of where he parked, be it directly outside the house or further up the street, he would end up on the front drive ready to open the front door. Most people were right handed. Likely as not, the cop would use his gun hand to hold his house keys and, as he reached to open the door, that was when Costello would strike. Even if the cop was armed, he would have no time to go for his weapon.

  It was a method that Costello had used before. It had never failed and there was no good reason for it to do so this time. Only one thing might let him down. He found himself uttering a silent prayer that he wouldn’t suffer a misfire. To cater for that unlikely possibility, he had diverted via a nearby area of woodland to test fire the Browning. It was sound, and the ammunition was new. Yet still the doubts remained.

  At a little before eleven, the red Audi belonging to the target turned into the quiet cul-de-sac. Costello crouched and waited for the driver to pull up and park. As he listened, he heard it cruise past and stop further along the street. He raised himself enough to see that it was the right car, but that it had pulled up outside another house. The engine was still running. Costello counted the houses. The Audi was outside number nineteen. He cursed. If the Iranian had given him the wrong house number, the distance to the target was too great to maintain surprise.

  Then, as he waited, it looked like his luck had changed. The car was just sitting there. The cop was in his seat, not moving. There was another chance. But he would have to be quick.

  Moving quietly and slowly through the bushes, Costello edged out onto the pavement. His breathing became shallow and fast. He reached for and felt the reassuring steel of the Browning. The metal felt cold. It was time.

  He was now close to the car. Close enough. He could see the back of the cop’s head in the driver’s seat. The man moved slightly. Costello paused. Had he been spotted? He couldn’t take the chance. He leapt forward, the Browning ready in his hand. Now, he couldn’t miss. He raised the pistol and aimed.

  Chapter 88

  The Audi leapt forward, the engine roaring into life. The cop had seen him. Costello’s first round smashed the rear window. Twice more he fired, as the car gained speed. The Browning kicked, the spent cartridge cases spinning skywards and away to his right. Both bullets passed through the shattered rear window of the car. With his vision of the cop obscured, Costello aimed at where he knew he had to be sitting. The driver seat would offer no protection.

  The Audi swerved violently to the left as the cop lost control. A front wheel clipped the kerb, spinning the car around. It tipped sideward, the forward momentum rolling it onto its side. Engine roaring and wheels spinning, the car flipped onto its roof as the windscreen smashed and the doors flew open. The air was filled with the screaming sounds of tearing metal as shrubs were ripped from the earth and the front wall of a garden shattered with the impact. The noise only ceased when the car came to rest.

  Costello ran over. The front garden of the house was wrecked, the car now had the appearance of a stranded and upturned beetle. The engine was still running, the rear wheels spinning uselessly as petrol poured from the filler cap. Broken bricks and mortar littered the grass.

  Partially concealed by the wreck, the cop lay on a narrow path near the front door of the house. He was on his back staring up at the sky but, in the cool night air, it was clear that he was still breathing. It was time to finish him off, Costello decided, the coup de grace. Two headshots would do it, before all the neighbours appeared to see what was happening.

  He moved quickly, careful to avoid falling on the debris from the smashed garden wall and pot plants that now surrounded the upturned car. The air smelled of burning engine oil.

  He stood over the recumbent, vulnerable figure. Desperate to escape, the injured cop had crawled clear of the wreck. Costello allowed himself a moment of respect. The man’s arm was badly broken. It must have made any form of movement agonising. Although there no sign of a bullet wound, the amount of blood that trailed from the car to where the man now lay suggested he wasn’t much longer for the mortal world. This man was tough, Costello thought. He raised the Browning to fire.

  ‘Enjoy heaven … this one’s for Seamus,’ he said quietly.

  Declan Costello had never actually been shot before.

  He’d come close, on more occasions than he cared to recall. The closest had been when an army patrol had returned fire during a sniping job and splinters of wood had pierced his shoulder. He had often wondered what it felt like.

  A force hit him – as if he’d been kicked in the groin by a horse. The Browning flew from his grip and onto the grass. For a moment, there was no pain, just a feeling of confusion. And then his brain caught up and he realised exactly what had happened. With understanding came the pain, a searing agony that blotted out all thought. As his legs collapsed from under him, Costello caught a momentary sight of the cause of his demise. The cop had a gun.

  Costello knew he was badly hurt. Even through his agony, he knew that the situation he now faced had changed – from kill and escape, to kill to survive. Only one of them was going to live.

  He tried to move. Nothing happened. His legs wouldn’t function. For a moment, he wondered if they were still attached to his body. Reaching down, he squeezed his thigh. There was no pain and no feeling … and no movement. His spinal cord was gone.

  Costello turned his head to where the cop still lay on his back. The man’s eyes were open. He needed to find a weapon before the cop could react. Turning away, he flailed his arms around in a frantic attempt to locate the Browning.

  ‘Looking for something?’ came a voice.

  It was the cop. He could move.

  A sweaty, snarling face appeared inches above him. The smell of blood hit Costello’s nostrils. The barrel of a pistol was pushed hard into the underside of his nose. The fight was lost.

  ‘Kill me.’ Costello spat the words.

  The cop shifted his weight and moved away, as if he were straining to use his good arm to reach for something. Something in his pocket. Costello braced himself for the shot. He knew he wouldn’t feel it. Death would be instant. He remembered his childhood, the green fields … the games of football in the street. He remembered George Best and his dreams of playing for Manchester United. In a very short time he knew he would learn the answer to a question that every person asked but none could ever share, as there was only one way to find out. Was there another life, a second chance to put things right?

  But the shot didn’t come.

  The cop was back, kneeling down and holding a small dagger in front of his eyes. The blade caught in the light. It was as if the cop was holding it in such a way that Costello might recognise and understand the cause of his demise. A final moment of torment.

  ‘This is for Skinner,’ the cop said.

  As the blade was pressed down, Costello puzzled for a moment who Skinner was. Then the point touched his eyeball and all
thoughts were replaced by pain.

  He screamed. ‘No, no … for the love of God, no.’

  ‘Then talk now Declan … and I’ll let you live,’ the cop snarled. ‘Who told you where to find me?’

  Costello hesitated. The cop knew his name. How? he wondered.

  The cop pressed the point of the knife into his eyelid.

  ‘If I tell you that, I’m as good as dead anyhow,’ he answered.

  Again the cop growled, this time jabbing the blade into his cheek. Costello felt a trickle of blood start to flow where the skin was pierced.

  ‘Tell me … or this goes through your eye,’ said the cop.

  ‘OK, OK … it was an Arab. His name is Yildrim. Iranian, I think. I didn’t know you were SAS, I swear it. He only told me today. We thought you were just ordinary coppers.’

  ‘Where did he get his information from?’

  ‘Someone in the Security Service, he never told me who.’

  ‘A name … Give me a name.’

  ‘I … I don’t know, he’s dead anyhow.’

  ‘What do you mean he’s dead?’

  Before Costello could answer, two men appeared from the house. They seemed uncertain about what to do, whether to interfere or to go for help. But before he could call out to them, the cop placed a bloody hand across his mouth.

  ‘Get an ambulance. Now!’ the cop shouted.

  As soon as the men departed, the cop leaned forward, put his weight on Costello’s chest and repeated the question. ‘What do you mean, he’s dead?’

  ‘This morning … a bomb.’ Costello groaned as a wave of pain hit him again. There was a taste of blood in his mouth now.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I promise you.’

  ‘How many more of you are there?’

  ‘Just me … and Yildrim.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ The cop pressed the blade into his cheek again.

  ‘Yes … yes. I promise you,’ Costello answered quickly. ‘There was only ever three of us. We were hired by Yildrim, I promise you, he never told us you were SAS.’

  ‘Where do I find this Yildrim, Declan?’

  ‘He contacts me when he wants me. That’s all I know.’ Costello strained to move his upper body. The cop was weakening, he could sense it. The man’s voice was becoming slower and his grip was lessening as the blood that he was losing started to have an effect. There was still a chance.

  ‘Why’s he doing this?’ the cop demanded, his voice now slow and deliberate.

  ‘He only said it was a score to settle, he didn’t say what.’ Costello tried to move an arm, find some leverage, create a chance to overpower his opponent.

  The cop paused for a moment, appearing to sense what Costello was attempting. Then, once more, he leant his body weight onto Costello, pinning his arms to his sides.

  The chance was gone.

  ‘Keep talking, Paddy,’ he said. ‘The longer you talk the better the chance that the police will get here before I kill you.’

  Costello stared into the cop’s eyes. He no longer had the strength to resist but, at the same time, he no longer wanted to die. From the waist down, his body was numb. He could feel his breathing becoming laboured. He was fading, he knew it. Mercy was his only possibility of survival. ‘There’s nothing more,’ he said. ‘Just let me go … please.’

  ‘Just like you’d have let me go, I suppose.’

  Before Costello could reply, the cop pushed the small dagger between his ribs and into his heart. He twisted and turned, tried to speak, to beg for a final chance. A strong hand, clamped firmly over his mouth, was the last thing he felt.

  ‘Remember Bob Bridges?’ said the cop. ‘See you in hell.’

  Chapter 89

  Al-Tikrit’s room faced the front of the building.

  Two ‘prostitutes’ booked into the room across the corridor and ‘British Telecom’ started work on the telephone lines. At the same time, a surveillance camera team positioned themselves in the front bedroom of a hotel on the opposite side of the street. Four hours after locating Hassan Al-Tikrit, the hotel and all approaches were under full-time observation. Barely a rat would be able to pass without being seen.

  At nine o’clock that evening, Grahamslaw got the break he had been waiting for. The target had returned to ‘the plot’. It was Yildrim. Grahamslaw had already been at work for fourteen hours. He was now over-tired and becoming increasingly irritable, but the excitement of the pending arrest kept him sharp. It was also a useful distraction after having such a bad start to the day.

  Emma had taken the easy route and sent a text that had arrived just after lunch. It was over. There would be no last rendezvous, no dinner date and no final night in her arms. The message had been apologetic but unequivocal. He wasn’t to call her or contact her other than for issues connected with work. She hoped he would respect her decision and wished him the best for the future.

  Grahamslaw had deleted the text, and then immediately regretted his impulsiveness. When he’d shared the news with Mick Parratt, his Superintendent had been quick to change the subject. There was work to do and plans to make. In truth Grahamslaw was grateful. He’d packed his emotions away and turned to the job at hand.

  Parratt had called in SO19 to make the initial entry and arrest. Their tactical firearms advisor, an Inspector, had discussed plans with the head of the surveillance team and with Grahamslaw. There were two options: seal off the hotel and surrounding street and talk the suspect out, or a rapid internal entry.

  The first method represented the option of least risk to life. The hotel and immediate area would be evacuated, contact would be made and the Arab would be instructed to leave the room and surrender to the waiting officers. Whilst this option could turn into a siege if the Arab refused to co-operate, experience had shown that, sooner or later, he would have to comply. The main problem would be the time and freedom it allowed. Before leaving the room anything could happen, from attempts to destroy important evidence through to suicide.

  A rapid entry placed the SO19 officers at greatest risk. It was known that the Arab had access to firearms and, possibly, explosives. The approach to the premises would have to be covert and silent. Riflemen would cover the outside to minimise the risk of escape through the window, and inside the hotel, the entry team would break down the door, locate the suspect and neutralise him. Every effort would be made to avoid bloodshed, but in the heat of the moment, anything could happen.

  The final decision had fallen to Grahamslaw. Evidence and equipment that he expected to be in the Arab’s possession needed to be seized. He could not allow time for them to be destroyed. He ruled in favour of the rapid entry.

  The SO19 Inspector wasn’t keen. There had been no time to obtain a decent layout of the hotel. His men wouldn’t know what to expect inside the door. The SO19 Sergeant with him had a rather different view and was hard pressed to conceal his pleasure. It was the kind of job for which his boys were trained and loved doing most. At four the following morning, they would go in.

  With arrest teams in place in case the target decided to depart early, Grahamslaw set up a temporary control room in the CID office at the nearby Paddington Green Police Station. With everything organised, all the Anti-Terrorist Squad Detectives could do was wait, chat, read heavily thumbed newspapers or play cards. Grahamslaw kept a large cup of black coffee on the go. Every time it cooled or he finished the contents, the cup was replenished from a percolator that one of the detectives had managed to purloin from the canteen.

  It was gone midnight when the news of the attack on Kevin Jones started to filter through.

  Misunderstanding and inexperience both contributed to the delay. Neighbours close to Jones’s home reported a road-traffic accident and an overturned car. The first officers on scene found a man dead and, assuming he was a victim of the collision, they called in a specialist traffic officer to investigate. It was only when the Accident and Emergency consultant at Rush Green hospita
l reported that Jones had a police warrant card in his pocket and that his injuries were caused by being shot that the local CID had been contacted. Even then, in spite of the expert medical opinion of the doctor, the local night-duty CID from Leyton had been slow to respond. It wasn’t until they had attended the scene of the crash and found two abandoned Browning pistols that anyone thought to contact the Anti-Terrorist Squad.

  Parratt told Grahamslaw as soon as he heard about the call.

  ‘Sometimes, I wonder what these lads do for brains, Mick,’ said Grahamslaw.

  ‘To be fair to them, boss, they didn’t know about the guns until they went to the scene of the crash.’

  ‘Don’t make bloody excuses for them. With what’s been going on in London the last couple of weeks, they should have been on the phone as soon as they got the news that a PC had been admitted to hospital with a gunshot wound. Is there any news on how Jones is?’

  ‘None. Do you want me to send someone over to Leyton?’

  Grahamslaw thought for a moment. ‘No, that’ll only make it look like we don’t trust the local lads, even if we don’t. Tell them to get onto SO19, get a lock-down on the hospital and tell them that if there are any more developments they call us first, understood?’

  ‘What about Finlay? Shall I get him informed?’

  ‘You’re assuming that the dead man isn’t Finlay?’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Parratt. ‘That’s the first thing I checked. Surveillance has him tucked up safely at home with his wife.’

  ‘That’s good. No, don’t send anyone round to him yet. Let’s get tonight over with before we head down that road. Is there anything on the dead man? ’

  ‘Nothing. Only that he seemed be fighting with Jones. The neighbours thought they were both drunk and had fallen out … but then they didn’t see the guns.’