The drunken man suddenly sobered up; he and the bobsleighing mechanic climbed into the back of the cash truck. The white van’s rear doors opened, and the two plain-clothed police officers climbed aboard; one received cash boxes from the stricken cash truck, the other took them and squeezed them into a specially constructed wooden frame bolted to the van floor, while another drilled two 8 mm holes in the ends of each polyethylene case.
It was like a production line. Smooth and well-rehearsed.
Do not panic, this is a training exercise.
A sixth man, dressed in a leather floor-length apron, clear face shield, and wearing long, heavy duty leather gauntlets, pushed an adapter into one of the holes in each case and from a distribution manifold behind him, fed a small tube onto each adapter.
When the cash truck was empty, the drunk and the bobsleighing mechanic jumped off, collected the cider bottle and metal bar, strolled to the white van’s cab and casually joined the driver inside.
With all the cases secured, all drilled, adapters and tubes fitted, the leather apron man turned on the liquid nitrogen canister mounted in a sturdy wire cage beyond the manifold. Then the plain-clothed police officers left the van and closed the rear doors, leaving the drill-man and Mr Nitrogen in the dark until the overhead lights blinked and came on. Mr Nitrogen diligently checked for leaks, then read the cylinder’s gauges and made adjustments as the van began moving away. He and the drill-man watched as creeping frost grew on the pipes.
The van travelled for less than a minute before it stopped.
The two plain-clothed officers and the masked gunman walked across the car park and climbed aboard their police cars. They turned off the flashing lights and megaphones and slowly drove away to an appreciative applause from the gathered crowd. They even waved.
Both cars joined the van half a mile away on a deserted lane. The plain-clothed police officers set the incendiaries and locked their cars. They deposited the roof lights in the already open hatch of a plain blue Ford Mondeo parked in front of the van, while the masked gunman threw his balaclava and his gun into the boot as well, and turned his black jacket inside out, put it back on and climbed into the driver’s seat.
The plain-clothed officers walked to the van, pulled off and rolled up the white magnetic sheets that covered bright blue and orange signage across the side, front, and rear panels; unhooked the false number plates and placed everything in the Mondeo’s boot and climbed aboard before it drove sedately away followed by the van.
The newly exposed signs on the van said Rapid Removals.
And it had been too; the whole operation from start to finish took nine minutes and twenty-four seconds. Both plain-clothed police officers allowed themselves a laugh and a congratulatory high-five. The driver smiled at them, and the relief on his face was evident; he was delighted it had gone well because he was due in court in a few hours, on trial for rape. His name was Blake Crosby, and he was looking forward to the trial judge throwing the case out within the first few minutes of the hearing and looking forward to a piss-up tonight to celebrate his continued freedom, and to toast wonderful British justice.
3
— One —
Eddie was stuck in traffic. It was turning into a hot day, and the temperature was rising in roughly the same proportion as his anger.
He wound down the window and could hear X99 hovering somewhere close by.
In front of him was a large Mercedes van with a bad case of rampant rust and an even worse case of oily smoke burping out of the blowing exhaust. It smelled awful, and Eddie closed the window back up.
Eventually, the Mercedes took off and left Eddie to drive through its haze of smog. He nudged up to second gear, and then he saw the reason for the helicopter and the temporary road block; there was police activity thirty or forty yards to his right as he drove by a small supermarket with a red truck parked outside. Looked like a cash-in-transit job maybe; scene tape all over the place, and CID standing around wondering what the hell to do. And there was a CSI walking around with a camera dangling from her neck.
Eddie’s eyes sprang wide, and he was sure that for a second or two his heart stopped. What the hell… that was no ordinary CSI; that was Ros. Well, it looked like Ros. Same face, same swagger, same everything. No, the hair was different.
He pulled over to the kerb and put the handbrake on.
‘Daft bastard,’ he said.
No way could that have been Ros. He’d obsessed about her for the last two years. He’d asked everyone he could think of where she might be. He’d even tried and failed to contact her parents, who lived up in Scotland, to see if they could help. No one knew.
Eventually, he calmed down, though his fingers shook and he had a queasy feeling in his gut. He wondered if it was time to go and seek advice about this. He seemed to see her everywhere; at first it was only in his dreams, and then he began seeing her out and about too. But it was ever more regular, and now, dammit, it was getting quite frightening. ‘She was so real…’
With some regret, he selected first gear and drove on.
Ros had been dead for two years.
— Two —
Benson nudged Cooper.
Cooper looked up, cleared his throat and that made Lisa Westmoreland look up too. She got out of the car and marched across to the courthouse steps, blonde hair raging like fire in the slanting afternoon sunlight.
‘What’s she doing? Christ’s sake,’ Benson looked at his DCI, and watched his emotionless face as he stared at the gang swaggering down the steps, giving high-fives and lighting spliffs as though they were untouchable. ‘We should take the fucking lot out.’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ Cooper stepped out of the car, leaned against the door and lit a cigarette.
Benson joined him and they watched DCI Lisa Westmoreland drag aside two of the cheerful group. She was talking closely to them, pointing a threatening finger up at them. She was five-foot-seven, towered over by two of Chapeltown’s meanest bastards, and she made their triumphant smiles die on their faces.
‘She’s got some balls.’
‘I wasn’t joking, boss,’ said Benson again.
Cooper sighed. ‘There are thirty-eight gangs around Leeds–’
‘I didn’t mean all of them.’
‘Okay; there are three main gangs. Chapeltown, Harehills, and Middleton. What’s that, twenty-five top people plus another ninety wannabes?’ Cooper turned to Benson, ‘What you going to do, bomb them?’
‘It’s a fine idea, but I’m sure I could think of something slower, more painful.’
Cooper smiled. He knew Benson was serious. Old coppers like him would love to stop playing tiddlywinks with these arseholes and start playing hard ball like they used to in the eighties. In the eighties, a copper could get away with all sorts – murder included.
‘I’m sure you could. But until then, I want to know how they got off–’
‘Expensive lawyers.’
‘Nah, it’s more than that. As a force, we spent eighty-five grand on exhibit tracking software, and suddenly an important piece of evidence can’t be found. Poof,’ he said, ‘it just disappeared as if by magic. Explain that to me.’
Benson stood silently for a moment, dropped his cigarette in the gutter and said, ‘Someone cocked up: that’s how we lost the evidence.’
‘Or someone’s bent and they destroyed the evidence.’
‘Ha, and you accuse me of still living in the eighties.’
Lisa Westmoreland walked back towards the car; anger stretched her lips into a thin dark line. She glared at Benson and Cooper as she approached. Over her shoulder, Cooper could see the two gang members giving her the finger, laughing with their mates.
4
They pressed his face into the carpet and knelt in the small of his back until he complied, until he calmed down and stopped thrashing about. He snatched gulps of air and felt them bind his wrists, heard the zip of a cable tie and hissed as it bit into his skin.
‘Las
t time I ask; give me names.’
The pressure left his head. Tony Lambert stared at the digital photograph frame on the marble hearth. The one of him holding a salmon proudly in both arms flashed onto the screen. Last summer up in Perthshire; he and Shelly had a ball. They went out for a meal that evening, and he’d proposed to her. Down on one knee, the full mashings. A great time.
He closed his eyes, not really wanting to see the photographs anymore.
The knee came off his back, and they hauled him upright.
‘Any more fucking about, we’ll stop being so pleasant. Alright?’
Tony panted.
‘I said, alright?’
Tony nodded.
‘Good. Give me names.’
Tony said nothing. He’d survived worse than this. In fact, he was a little stunned they’d been so lenient with him. If he’d wanted names, he would have begun hitting by now. Hard. But these two, Blake and Tyler Crosby, sons of the infamous Slade Crosby of Chapeltown, were hesitant; as if they didn’t really want to be here, mixing it up with a copper. Tony relaxed slightly, knowing it would soon be over, and these two would be on their way, none the wiser.
It was strange, though. Them being here at all. Wait ’til Cooper hears about this, he thought. And he wondered, briefly, whether mentioning that to the Crosbys might not scare them away right now.
Blake stood before Tony with a coil of old blue nylon rope hanging off one shoulder, and he nodded as if in response to some silent request from Tyler, who stood behind him. Blake disappeared through the lounge door, and Tony heard him quietly ascending the stairs. Towards Shelly. She was well out of it, though; always had problems sleeping these days – understandably, and the doc had given her something to help her rest.
‘Hey, wait–’
‘You had your chance, now shut it.’
‘Don’t make this any worse–’
Tyler twisted the cable ties, and they dug into his flesh.
‘I’ll tell you their names, just–’
‘Too late. I told you, I don’t fuck about. When I say something, I mean it. You already had your last chance–’
‘Don’t you fucking dare touch her.’ Then it hit him. Why they were mixing it up with a copper. Why they hadn’t done a runner already. They had no intention of running; they weren’t here just to scare him, were they?
‘Ssshhh. Don’t want to wake her just yet. Shelly, isn’t it?’
‘Please! Look, I’ll tell you their names. Phil Gibson, he’s one, and Dom Thompson, and Jimmy Akhtar; just leave her alone.’
‘Upstairs, Tony.’
‘Tyler, there’s no need–’
‘Enough.’
He moved forward, the hand in his back pushing him on. And now it had gone past the point of no return. It had gone past the questions and the denials, it had gone past the gentle slapping about and the low-level threats, and now it was into the lands of big pain. He knew it, and no one, not even the two men, could stop it now. Once Shelly woke up, things could never go back to how they were.
And the tears came. Tony Lambert was a hard bastard himself; he knew the drill, had practised it a thousand times until he’d become very good at it. And each time he beat the shit out of a small-time villain, he became harder, more proficient and less inclined to stop until the job was done.
He mounted the stairs with heavy feet, and his nose filled up. ‘Look,’ he whispered, ‘I told you all I know, there’s no need to involve her.’
‘What’s the password?’ Tyler whispered.
Tony looked up and at the summit of the stairs, peering into the front bedroom where Shelly would be sleeping, was Blake. His face was expressionless, but his eyes said he was ready to finish the job off too. Is that how I looked, he wondered; all steely-faced, determined, mechanical? Tony had no doubt at all that they would finish it off if need be. ‘It’s “Violet”,’ he said. ‘Now come on, I’ve told you it all, you can leave–’
The man at the top of the stairs slid the coil of rope from his shoulder and dropped it on the landing floor. He pushed the bedroom door fully open, turned on the light and hurried inside.
Tony’s eyes widened. ‘No!’ he screamed. ‘Shelly, wake up!’
Panic.
All she could see was the ceiling light; bright and edged with stars as her eyes watered. There was a buzzing sound too, a little like the sound you hear when listening to a seashell, but it was growing louder, and then she couldn’t see the ceiling light at all. He was big, and he cast his shadow across her face. She caught the briefest glimpse of Tony, another man holding him across the other side of the room. She saw the pleading in his eyes. The fear on his face broke her heart. His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear anything.
And all she could feel was pressure, immense pressure inside as his grip tightened. A fire burned in her chest.
She was very afraid, but she couldn’t scream.
And her world was shrinking.
At first, she could feel her legs and her arms and hands. But they had receded somehow, become automatic appendages she had no control over. They kicked and they flailed, and her hands grabbed feebly at his jacket, but it was nothing to do with her; she had no control over them. Only her eyes, wider, wider, seeing less and less. Darkness claimed the edges of her vision, spreading inwards towards the centre. Buzzing and booming in her ears.
Something inside her throat snapped. Her tongue filled her mouth.
He grinned down at her, and she could feel the leather of his gloves cold against her throat. And even though she couldn’t breathe, she could smell blood.
Somewhere in the background, a man screamed, Tony; muffled as though it came through a pillow. But it was shrinking, becoming quieter. The fear subsided.
And then the light turned dark. And the silence came too.
5
— One —
Slade lit a cigarette and reclined on the expansive leather sofa. He watched the young woman put her bra and pants back on. She would’ve been perfect, he thought, if she had bigger tits. Not much bigger, mind; just enough to get them swaying properly. Still, can’t have everything. She was new here, part of a consignment of twelve girls last month. And she was the pick of the litter, this one. Very handsome.
‘That was good,’ he said.
She looked at him, a blank expression on her pale face.
In fact, her whole body was pale. These Poles had no fucking colour at all.
‘I said,’ he shouted, ‘that was good.’ He gave her the thumbs up, and she cracked a smile at last. ‘Da,’ he shouted.
She nodded. ‘Tak.’
‘Talking to my fucking self again.’ He threw fifty quid at her.
‘Tea?’
He nodded, watched her hips as she walked into the kitchen. This was one of those swanky apartments – not flats, mind – apartments that had sprouted up in Leeds city centre over the last decade. It was open-plan; all wood floors, prints of New York skylines on the magnolia walls and some other abstract stuff that made his eyes go queer. Not bad, the apartment, modern, sleek. Totally unappealing if you preferred carpets and proper curtains. Why did everyone want fucking blinds these days? No character at all.
It had a view too, this apartment. Right over the canal. Rumour had it there was a troll who lived under one of those canal bridges. Bollocks, of course, but it didn’t stop some enterprising restaurant owner putting up a banner, creating a treasure hunt and making a bundle from the residents and tourists. Tourists? In Leeds?
How things had changed.
Still, Slade admired the man for his entrepreneurial streak.
He had given the girl fifty quid not because he had to – she was free, she was his – but because he believed in keeping things harmonious between employer and employee, just as he’d done when he took his cut during the building of these very apartments. And six others in Leeds. Two-hundred and twenty-thousand quid he’d made that year from back-handers and supplying the “security” for the building sites.
It was his best year yet. Better than the drugs by almost fifty grand. But not as good as property management. That was where to be these days; it was a posh title for being a landlord, mainly in the Holbeck, Beeston and Chapeltown slum areas where the DWP put the dossers and the kids, and he charged them ninety quid a week for one room in a crumbling rodent-infested shithole.
‘Cukier?’
‘What?’
She turned, showed him the sugar bowl, and he shook his head.
‘Sweet enough, dear.’
She nodded.
‘Not a fucking clue.’
She walked to the side of the sofa and placed a steaming mug of black tea on the table. The mug had Pooh Bear on it; was a heavy old thing, a bit like a Toby jug.
‘You haff wife?’
His head snapped around at her. ‘What? What did you say?’
The girl’s friendly smile shrivelled up, and she backed a couple of steps away. ‘Just I wonder.’
Slade’s gaze eventually left her, and he poked his head forward like a pigeon, like a man whose collar was too tight. ‘She died. Years ago. Maureen.’ He took big breaths, but the mood was spoiled now, ruined by some stupid foreign bitch.
‘Galfriend. You haff?’
And now she was taking the piss out of him. Never mind the sorry-looking wide blue eyes; she was laughing at him. Wouldn’t be surprised if she was in cahoots with Rachel! Slade swung his deformed legs off the bed and took hold of the hot cup.
She tried to turn away and put her hands up to her pretty face, but she was way too slow. He threw the tea in her face. She managed to scream pretty well, though; a sort of startled scream when she worked out what was happening, and then a real agonised scream as the pain bit.
The door to the apartment burst open, and Monty strode in. ‘Chief?’
No Time to Die_a thrilling CSI mystery Page 2