Wicked Game

by Matt Johnson

  ‘My money’s on Costello.’

  ‘Mine, too. So, as soon as we have the Arab in custody, that should be the last of them.’

  At 0300 hours, with Kevin Jones still undergoing surgery, Grahamslaw and Parratt climbed into the rear of one of the squad cars. Ten minutes later, they were parked within two hundred yards of Al-Tikrit’s hotel.

  At 0352 hours, a transmission came in from the tactical advisor. SO19 confirmed that the entry team were ready and awaiting command.

  At 0400 hours, Grahamslaw gave the word.

  Less than a minute later, the SO19 battering ram hit the bedroom door.

  Both Grahamslaw and Parratt sat in silence as they waited for news.

  After a few moments, a transmission came over the radio from the SO19 Sergeant. ‘X-ray secured, repeat … x-ray secured.’

  Grahamslaw punched the air.

  It was over.

  Grahamslaw and Parratt entered the room at ten past four. The Arab was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back to the door, his wrists clamped firmly behind his back with plastic handcuffs. His head slouched forward onto his chest. He wore white underpants, nothing more, and was shaking uncontrollably. As the two detectives surveyed the scene in front of them, the Special Branch search team leader approached. In a rubber-gloved hand he held a piece of white A4 paper. On the paper was written a list of names and addresses. He held it up for Grahamslaw to read.

  ‘I thought you should see this straight away, guv.’

  Grahamslaw could see why. There were ticks against the top two names, Bridges and Skinner. The next name on the list was Finlay. Finlay’s name had been circled and underlined, which was odd when compared to the marks against the other names. There was one more name, Kevin Jones. It also had a tick against it.

  Grahamslaw walked over to the Arab. As he stood over him, the man raised his head.

  Grahamslaw felt an immediate sensation of panic as he looked down. This man was an Arab, but not the Arab. This was not Yildrim or Anwar or whatever name the Arab was now using. It was not the man in the photographs, the man that had been meeting with Costello.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he exclaimed.

  Parratt turned, a puzzled look on his face.

  Grahamslaw felt himself shake with anger as he pointed at the cowering Arab. ‘It’s not him, it’s a fuckin’ decoy.’

  Parratt walked around the room so that he could clearly see the man on the floor. His look said it all. The man looked similar to Yildrim, enough that he could pass for him if only seen from a distance. Up close, it was clear. They’d been sold a dummy.

  ‘Get him out of here,’ Parratt shouted to a group of detectives who had appeared at the door.

  Two of the men lifted the Arab bodily to his feet and dragged him out of the room.

  ‘What now?’ said Parratt, looking as angry and frustrated as Grahamslaw felt.

  ‘Get him back to Paddington and get talking to him. We’ve been led a dance to buy Yildrim some time. Get onto the hospital and see if Jones is conscious. If he is, I want to find out if he knows anything. And get someone to the morgue to find out whose body was found next to Jones’s car. It has to be Costello or Yildrim. I want to know which one.’

  ‘Who the hell is Richard Webb?’ Parratt asked, holding out a birth certificate to Grahamslaw, as they sifted through the personal items that the search team had brought to Paddington Green.

  With their suspect lost, the SO13 search team had spent several hours sifting through the hotel room for any clue as to his whereabouts. It wasn’t until six a.m. that they found the Arab’s passports behind the bath facia. There were four passports and one birth certificate. The passports all bore the same face but different names: there was Anwar, Yildrim, Al-Tikrit and Hussein. But it was the birth certificate that generated the most interest.

  ‘Blowed if I know. What’s the date of birth?’ said Grahamslaw.

  ‘April 1965, Belfast.’

  ‘Maybe an alias used by Costello?’

  ‘Why would the Arab have this then?’ Parratt held the certificate to the light, as if trying to decide if it was genuine. ‘I’ll run the name through our database, see what it throws up.’

  Chapter 90

  We had just climbed into bed when the hospital rang. It was bad news. Kevin had been shot, he was badly injured and on his way into the operating theatre. A nurse had found my telephone number on a ‘please contact’ slip that he kept with his police warrant card.

  Jenny dressed even faster than me. Becky was still with her mum and, although I tried to suggest she allow me to go on my own, she was having no debate. She was coming with me, no arguments.

  By the time we arrived at Rush Green Hospital, Kevin had been in surgery for an hour. The young nurse on reception told us as much as she knew. There’d been a shooting, one dead, one wounded. Our friend was the wounded one, she said. The police hadn’t identified the other man.

  Jenny sat down in the waiting area. There was no telling how long we were going to have to wait. I was trying to persuade the coffee machine to provide us with a hot drink when the local CID cornered me.

  Considering both Kevin and I were in the same job, the two young detectives proved to be less than helpful. They wouldn’t tell me anything about my friend’s condition or what had happened. All they wanted to know was what our connection was to PC Jones: was he authorised to carry a gun; did we know the dead man? In a few short minutes they really managed to put my back up and tempers started to become frayed. It even reached the point where they threatened to arrest me for obstructing their enquiries. I called their bluff, I’d had enough of these two trying to be Starsky and Hutch. I told them to call Grahamslaw and returned to join Jenny in the waiting room.

  And there we waited, for hours. By the time the surgeon came to see us, it was well into the early hours of the morning. Fortunately, he was a lot more forthcoming than the detectives. Despite our clear distress, he sat us down and talked through what had happened. Kevin was alive. But he’d been very lucky. The surgeon explained that an ambulance had been called to a report of a serious traffic accident. By the time the crew arrived, Kevin had lost consciousness. In the ambulance he had gone into hypovolemic shock, a condition where loss of blood results in a failure to deliver sufficient oxygen to vital organs. Fortunately, the paramedic was alert to the symptoms, inserted an IV drip and put Kevin on oxygen. It was only once the reception team at the hospital stripped their casualty off that the bullet entry wound had been discovered. They’d called the surgeon, who, as luck would have it, was a ballistic-trauma specialist who had seen service on a hospital ship during the Falklands conflict.

  Kevin had been shot in the back. According to the surgeon, a 9mm bullet looked to have passed through the seat in which he had been sitting, slowing it down and causing it to tumble.

  I was keen to know more and said so. Ever since being shot myself, I’d had a bit of a morbid fascination with bullet injury. Jenny turned up her nose, stood up and walked out of earshot before the surgeon continued. The surgeon explained that the resulting entry wound had been into Kevin’s lower rib area and had been oblong, indicating that the bullet struck at a point where it was sideways on. That slowed it down again and by the time it struck Kevin’s rib cage, the kinetic energy of the small lead missile had reduced to a point where it was almost spent. The damage was bad, but could have been a lot worse. The bullet was found lodged against his collar bone.

  We were still waiting at seven-thirty, when Kevin regained consciousness and asked the nurse to show us in. A uniformed PC had been posted to stay at his bedside. I tried to make out that I was Special Branch and get the constable to leave the room. He was having none of it. Kevin was going to have to whisper.

  As it was, he could hardly speak. There were tubes going here and there through just about every part of his body. Up his nose, in his mouth, into his left arm. His right arm was in plaster. He looked a mess.

  ‘Listen,’ he croaked, as we stood
close to the bed.

  I leaned closer to try and make out what Kevin was saying.

  ‘It was Costello,’ Kevin continued. ‘He tried to get me. Before I did the bastard I made him talk.’ Kevin’s voice came out as a sort of rasping hiss.

  I leaned closer to the bed so I didn’t miss anything. ‘What happened, mate?’

  ‘I told you. It was Costello. Bastard was waiting for me at the house.’

  ‘He found you too?’

  ‘The Arab gave him my address, that one we saw in the picture. He’s behind it. Something about settling an old score.’

  ‘For the embassy?’

  ‘Must be…’ Kevin paused to draw breath. Although the painkillers were effective, his voice was becoming weaker. It didn’t look like he was going to be conscious for very long. ‘Costello said he killed the Arab’s contact yesterday,’ he continued.

  ‘Monaghan,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. The Arab told Costello to kill him, just like he did with you and me … Finlay, he’s gonna keep killing until you stop him.’

  Kevin’s eyelids closed. But I had another question.

  ‘Did he say where I can find this Arab?’

  But it was too late, he was unconsciousness.

  I turned to Jenny. She’d clearly heard what Kevin had said. The look on her face said it all. She thought it had been all over. With Monaghan’s death, the reason for the vendetta seemed to have gone. Now there was this Arab.

  I had to have been wrong about Monaghan being behind it. Somehow, it was all linked to the embassy. The Arab, whoever he was, had to be connected to the men we had killed. And now, he was back to avenge them.

  Chapter 91

  ‘We’re wanted upstairs,’ said Parratt as he walked into Grahamslaw’s office. ‘The Commissioner’s staff officer just called. He wants us now.’

  Grahamslaw stood up. ‘Still no news on the Arab I’m afraid,’ he said, following Parratt along the corridor. ‘What does the Commissioner want to see us about?’

  ‘Richard Webb. I ran a check on the name. He came up as a known IRA man, so I put in a call to the Northern Ireland Special Branch. They’re going to ring us back as soon as they can but what they did say is there was a ‘special interest’ marker on their computer referring all enquiries to the Commissioner, Met Police. You were busy, so I rang his staff officer to explain our interest. Next thing, I get a call for us to drop everything and go see the man.’

  ‘Did he sound OK?’

  ‘You mean are we in for a bollocking for what’s been going on with this operation?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I don’t know … but he did ask the operation name.’

  ‘It doesn’t have a name. What did you say?’ asked Grahamslaw.

  ‘I had to think on my feet. I didn’t want to sound like an idiot. I said Hastings, I called it Operation Hastings.’

  ‘Hastings it is, then. Right, let’s go and see if Hastings is in the shit.’

  The Met Commissioner occupied a suite of rooms in the other tower block of Scotland Yard from Grahamslaw’s office. The two detectives had to descend to the ground floor and then enter another lift system to take them up to where his staff officer was waiting. Within a few minutes, they were waiting to be shown into the Commissioner’s private briefing room. Grahamslaw smiled to himself as he caught Mick Parratt checking his tie in a nearby mirror.

  The staff officer was sat behind a large desk chatting hurriedly on the telephone. The surface of the desk seemed laden with more paperwork than Grahamslaw hoped to ever see in a year. He noted the starched crispness of the man’s uniform, how young and how efficient he seemed. A perfect front man for the most senior policeman in the metropolis, he thought.

  ‘He’ll see you straightaway.’ The staff officer pointed to the Commissioner’s door.

  Grahamslaw stepped forward confidently. He wasn’t too worried. He and the Commissioner went back a long way. Many would have called the two men mates, if it were possible for anyone so successful to truly have workplace friends. Grahamslaw had long ago accepted that ambitious people often sacrificed close relationships in their desire to get to the top. He wasn’t expecting any special favours should the news be bad, but he knew the Commissioner well enough to trust that they would be treated fairly. For Parratt though, Grahamslaw realised, it was a ‘once in a blue moon’ experience to get the royal summons.

  It wasn’t a bollocking that they received. Far from it, in fact.

  The Commissioner ordered coffee before asking about progress on the enquiry. After a brief chat and reassurance that all was being done to trace the missing terrorist, he moved on to the reason for the summons.

  ‘Why have you been checking on Richard Webb?’ he asked.

  As the Senior Detective, it was Grahamslaw who replied. ‘We found his birth certificate in a Bayswater hotel we turned over last night.’

  ‘What do you know about Webb?’

  ‘Nothing, yet. We’re waiting for a call back from the Irish Special Branch.’

  ‘You won’t be getting one. I’ve just had a call from the Chief Constable of the RUC. That birth certificate is the first document to surface after the burglary at the Castlederg SB office.’

  Grahamslaw was dumbfounded. He looked at Parratt and back at the Commissioner. ‘We didn’t think there had actually been a crime at that office.’

  ‘There was, believe me. You’re aware I’m leading an enquiry into the shoot-to-kill allegations against the RUC?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The burglary took place at our enquiry offices. Part of that investigation involved an allegation dating back to 1980 that the SAS murdered a group of men near a village outside Castlederg. Webb was the only surviving non-military witness to that incident.’

  ‘Was he IRA?’ asked Grahamslaw.

  ‘Oh, yes. He was convicted and spent the next few years in the Maze … that was before he escaped.’

  ‘In the big break-out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it the same Richard Webb on the birth certificate, you think?’

  ‘Possibly. Your call this morning alerted me as Webb’s was a particularly interesting case. After the Maze prison escape, he disappeared. We wanted to speak to him as part of the enquiry but never got the chance. To tell you the truth, we had given up on him. It was only when his file was taken from Castlederg last year that I asked for any intelligence on him to be forwarded to me.’

  ‘Was his birth certificate with that file?’ asked Grahamslaw, sitting forward.

  ‘I believe so, yes.’

  ‘Do you know anything more about him?’ asked Grahamslaw. Even after all his years of experience, knowing he was close to a solution was still a thrill.

  ‘Plenty … where would you like me to start?’

  ‘Anywhere that gives us a hint why his birth certificate turned up behind the bath in a hotel room used by an Arab terrorist?’

  The Commissioner took a deep breath. ‘It’s a fascinating story, Bill,’ he said. ‘One of survival and adaptability. According to MI6 intelligence records, Richard Webb escaped to Pakistan following the Maze breakout in 1983. He was next heard of thousands of miles away in Afghanistan, as a member of a group who fought against the Russians. After that, nobody heard of him for years. Not until 1996, when his fingerprint was found on a lorry used to bomb the Khobar US Army barracks in Saudi.’

  ‘I thought the attack in Saudi was carried out by Muslim extremists?’ Grahamslaw asked. ‘Are you saying the IRA were involved in it?’

  ‘Not at all. You’re missing the point, Bill. Webb had moved organisations. The IRA was long behind him. By 1996, he had moved to the Al Q’aeda group.’

  ‘That’s incredible,’ said Grahamslaw, as he and Parratt exchanged glances. Both seemed to sense where the conversation was leading. ‘Were there others who made the same move?’

  ‘None that we learned. He was one of a kind, I think.’

  ‘Was he anything to do with the Iranian E
mbassy?’

  ‘Nothing. He was in the Maze at that time.’

  ‘And he never went back to Ireland?’

  ‘No … never.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask if you’ve seen the briefing report on yesterday’s car bomb?’ asked Grahamslaw.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘The victim was an MI5 officer called Monaghan. He had copies of police files on him. Early on in this enquiry, we thought that the attacks on our men were linked to files on former SAS soldiers that were kept at Castlederg.’

  ‘Unlikely. No SAS files were ever kept at Castlederg, but I do remember Monaghan,’ said the Commissioner.

  ‘You knew him?’ Grahamslaw raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I knew of him. He was the SAS Commanding Officer at the time when Webb was prosecuted. He gave evidence at the trial. The only other soldier to take the stand was given a cipher code to keep his identity secret. But, to get back to Webb. It wouldn’t be an unreasonable conclusion that he could be behind these bombings.’

  ‘And this other soldier is the one who killed the IRA men with Webb?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And … sorry if I’m sounding a bit slow, here. Are you saying that this soldier was the sole military survivor?’ Grahamslaw frowned.

  ‘No, I’m saying he was on his own when he was ambushed.’

  ‘He took on the terrorists on his own?’

  ‘Yes, but it was an unusual situation. According to the evidence at the trial, he was the officer in charge of the local SAS troop and was on his way back to his base from a meeting when the IRA attacked him.’

  ‘An officer, you say?’ Grahamslaw was on a roll. What had started as a gut feeling that there was a connection between the SAS soldiers was now beginning to gather substance and momentum.

  ‘That’s right … a Captain.’ said the Commissioner.