by Nick Oldham
Carver blinked uncomprehendingly, no flicker of recognition. ‘Never seen either of you before,’ he blurted harshly. ‘Get out.’
‘Mr Carver … Dave,’ the woman cooed, and stepped towards him. She had a genuine, caring smile on her face.
That was the moment when the man drew the small automatic pistol from the holster under his right armpit. With a smooth action he simply placed the muzzle of the noise-suppressed barrel to the back of her head and squeezed the trigger twice.
She reacted as though she had been hit by a baseball bat, staggering forward to her knees before splaying out on her front.
The .22 bullets did not exit her skull but careened around in her brain, destroying the organ instantly. Blood fountained from the entry wounds like a double geyser and gouts of it cascaded from her mouth and nostrils.
Carver watched the killing, then looked at the man.
Something cleared in his eyes, in his brain.
‘You’ve come for me, not her,’ he said. ‘He’s sent you.’
The man nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘I always thought he would. It was always at the back of my mind.’
‘I thought you were senile.’
‘I have moments of clarity, like now.’
Carver hurled his book at the man, throwing it like a Frisbee. It was a hardback novel. It swirled through the air, catching the man unawares, and connected with his right arm.
Carver also moved quickly. He followed the path of the book as all his latent and dying instincts surfaced in a powerful primal need to survive.
But though the charge was unexpected a gap of two metres was too much for him to cover. The man’s reactions were far quicker and more honed. He pivoted like a matador and pushed Carver headlong into the radiator, where he crumpled helplessly to the floor and into the half-world he inhabited, understanding nothing.
The man simply straddled him and put two bullets into his head, killing him instantly. Then he stood there for a moment and said, ‘I think I’ve done you a favour, my friend.’ He slid the gun back into the holster and took out his iPhone.
SEVEN
Flynn exhaled slowly, very unsteadily, after thumbing the ‘end call’ button on his phone and sank just as slowly on to the fighting chair on the rear deck of the boat. The phone slid out of his hand, hitting the deck with a thud. He brought up his left hand to his forehead and sat there in numb disbelief.
Rik Dean had described his day to Flynn, one of those from Hades. From having been turned out to the murder of Craig Alford – and the rest of the family – the night before, which had been bad enough, to beginning the first, crucial briefing for the murder team and wondering where the hell Jerry Tope was, how a DC had interrupted with the next bit of awful news: Tope’s body had been found floating in Preston Docks and it looked as though he had been executed in much the same manner as Craig and his family.
Rik Dean had called Flynn because one of the first things he’d done was to call out the underwater search team to dive into the docks in the vicinity of where Tope had been found. It had proved to be a fortuitous decision because the divers had fairly quickly found Tope’s iPhone on the bottom and, incredibly, after some drying out and TLC from the tech people, it still worked. From it Dean discovered that Tope had spoken to Flynn recently and had also sent him a photograph of the Operation Ambush team, at least the Lancashire contingent; ironically, Flynn had always thought that Ambush was, ultimately, the worst named operation ever. The phone also showed a blurred photograph of the marina at Santa Eulalia that Flynn had sent to Tope.
Dean had quizzed Flynn about the significance of the photograph, but he didn’t really have anything to suggest. It was just an old photo he assumed Tope had dug out, one of his mementoes, after returning home from Craig’s house and maybe feeling depressed.
‘Yeah, I get that,’ Dean had said. ‘Memories.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Mm,’ Dean muttered. Flynn could almost hear the cogs whirring and clanking in the SIO’s head, trying to work it all out. He had Flynn’s sympathy, because he knew that being a good SIO required an extraordinary level of skill, knowledge and abilities that only come from many years of detective work. Dean had gone on, ‘He and Craig were working on an operation together.’
‘Which was?’
‘Big drug trafficking thing … made several high-profile arrests yesterday, a really good job involving some very top line, nasty crims.’
‘Sounds like a starting point,’ Flynn suggested, but Dean already knew that, as well as the suggestion that he shouldn’t discount Craig’s wife as a possible target in her own right. She was, after all, a cop too.
‘In the mix,’ Dean said, ‘but thanks. The last thing I need on this is tunnel vision.’
‘Both Craig and Jerry have been involved in incarcerating a lot of bad people over the years in various operations, so you’ve got your work cut out. Don’t envy you. These sound like professional hits – with a touch of the personal,’ Flynn concluded. ‘Does Marina know, Jerry’s wife?’
‘I’m on it. We think she’s away in London. We have a number.’ Dean paused. ‘That photo …?’
‘Yeah.’ Flynn picked up on his train of thought. ‘You need to check if everyone else in it is OK.’
‘I think it would be wise, just to warn them, but not spook them … by the way, a copy of it was found floating near Jerry’s body …’ Dean stopped talking, clearly emotional.
There was silence on the line.
‘Shit,’ Flynn said. ‘Did he have it in his hand when he died?’
‘I don’t know … I really don’t know.’
‘Well, you know who they are, don’t you?’
‘I think so … but you could remind me,’ Dean said, like a good SIO: let others do the telling.
‘Well, this is just the Lancashire guys who were on Operation Ambush. There were plenty of others from other forces, but this lot – us – we were the main drivers.’ Flynn reeled off the names and told Dean he hadn’t been in recent contact with any of them except Tope. In fact, not long after the photo had been taken, a year maybe, Flynn had left the cops under his own cloud of recrimination.
‘I’ll get it followed up,’ Dean said.
‘I don’t envy you.’
‘Nah, not as such,’ Dean said with a sigh. Flynn could hear heavy weariness in his voice. But, like anyone else who was or had been a cop, Flynn did envy him being involved in such an investigation. Every detective in Lancashire would be clawing to get on to it now because it had become personal.
That was pretty much where the phone call ended, and Flynn slid into the fighting chair as the enormity of the news struck him like a wrecking ball in the lower gut.
He felt the touch of Santiago’s fingers on his shoulder. She had been half-listening to his part of the conversation, but going by the occasional glance he’d shared with her, she hadn’t fully understood what it was all about.
She had known Tope briefly.
They had almost lost their lives together.
They had a connection, a bond.
And so had Flynn.
He had known him almost thirty years, having joined the cops at around the same time, been posted to the same town and been on the same shift for a while. Flynn had even covered for him after the stupid one-night stand Tope had been daft enough to have, which could have cost him his marriage. When Flynn had quit the cops their friendship had become a fairly distant memory, and they had only come back into contact when Flynn had wanted some information from him and had cruelly used the knowledge of the one-night stand as a bargaining chip. Tell me what I want to know and I won’t tell your wife you were unfaithful. Since then they had always skated on thin ice with each other, although things had got better recently when, via Flynn, Tope got some huge kudos by dismantling an Albanian crime gang and discovering the whereabouts of a Mexican cartel member and millions of dollars of drug money.
Flynn would go so far as to say they had a f
riendship. Of sorts.
Tope might have said something different.
But now he could not say anything because someone had blown his brains out and it didn’t take a mastermind to work out it was something linked to his line of work as a very talented intelligence analyst. Flynn was already sure that he had died because of what he knew or in revenge for something he had done, and the same applied to Alford.
Flynn touched Santiago’s fingers with his and tried to find words. He knew it would be useless to say anything other than the truth, to try and sugar-coat the awful news. It was always best to deliver it upfront, firmly, compassionately.
He turned in the chair and looked into those amazing eyes again.
‘What is it?’ she whispered. ‘Something more about Craig Alford?’
Flynn shook his head.
‘Jerry Tope’s dead. Murdered,’ he said, and the hand he’d had on his forehead slid around to the back of his neck. Suddenly he was short of breath and he drew Santiago close in to him and held her very tightly.
They both needed a drink. Flynn secured the boat – although security in the port was a fairly vague concept because crime was very rare – so they had no qualms about leaving a few things out in the open. They went on to the quayside and back to the Mirage, where he bought a large beer and whisky chaser, and a tequila sunrise and whisky chaser for Santiago.
They sat on the edge of the patio area, silent, for a long time, deep in thought.
‘Do you want to talk?’ Santiago offered.
He screwed up his nose, a little offhand, then apologized for the gesture.
He fished out his phone and found the photo Tope had sent which, Flynn had worked out from what Dean had told him, must have been sent by Tope almost immediately before he was shot.
He had sent this to Flynn, possibly the last thing he had ever done in his life.
Flynn shook his head sadly, passed the phone to Santiago and showed her the image. She peered closely at it. The old Nokia wasn’t the best to see photos clearly on, but she could work out the faces.
‘Jerry is on it. And you. You look younger.’
‘Twelve years ago, maybe longer, not sure. Operation Ambush.’
‘Think there’s a connection?’
Flynn winced and shrugged at the same time. ‘Probably not, but I do know one thing … this is one of those jobs that comes back to haunt me.’
EIGHT
Detective Sergeant Steve Flynn peered through the driving rain flooding the car windscreen, making the wipers trudge through the downpour in an effort to keep the screen clear. Flynn’s left hand clung to the inner door handle and his fingers tightened their grip as he glanced across and down at the speedometer and saw the needle hovering just below 120 miles per hour.
He had done some ridiculous things in his time and, at that moment in late 2002, he put travelling at stupid miles per hour in a torrential downpour up there among the highlights.
One slip, one moment of broken concentration, one swerve or bad move by any other driver who could not comprehend just how fast this car was travelling in these treacherous conditions, would end in disaster, possibly death.
In simultaneous thought, he visualized taking off over the central reservation of the M6 motorway and landing on the opposite carriageway. Upside down. It would be chaos.
Flynn smiled grimly, glad that he wasn’t driving, then looked at the profile of the man behind the wheel.
His hands rested lightly on the steering wheel. Flynn saw that his eyes were constantly moving, looking ahead, checking his mirrors – even though the possibility of anyone coming up from behind was remote. He gave the impression of being chilled beyond ice and totally in control, which was what Flynn was glad about.
‘You OK?’ Flynn asked him.
‘Good to go,’ responded his partner, Jack Hoyle, keeping his eyes on the road.
Flynn grinned again. He knew Jack was a brilliant, highly skilled driver, better than Flynn – though that wasn’t too difficult – and he was in good hands.
Flynn peered through the windscreen.
There it was. The only car on the motorway travelling at anywhere near their speed, and even through the sheets of rain Flynn could identify it because the rear nearside light was out. Flynn himself had seen to that, because he knew it was always best to have some sort of advantage on a long surveillance operation that entailed any night time following and, additionally, terrible weather.
The car they were tailing had been parked up the night before in a secure compound in north London. Dressed in black, Flynn had scaled the barbed-wire-topped walls and braved a sleepy watchdog to sneak up to the car, disable the light (without smashing it, which would have been just a tad obvious) and also fit a tracking device underneath a rear wheel arch. There had been a few hairy moments after that, with the appearance of two men from the Portakabin parked in one corner of the yard, who had scoured the yard with flashlights and woken the dog properly, but Flynn had managed to roll underneath another car and had not been spotted or sniffed out. The men had returned to the warmth of the cabin and the dog had sauntered across the yard straight to Flynn, who fed it a treat, patted its head, then made his way at a crouch and scrambled back over the wall without being detected or having his backside ripped out by an angry mutt.
The ‘follow’ had started late next evening. Flynn and Hoyle suspected there was a huge stash of drugs and money in the car, a Mercedes, including a quarter of a million ecstasy tablets, heroin and cocaine, valued together at in the region of £3 million on the streets.
The police hierarchy had needed a lot of convincing to allow the surveillance operation to take place. The higher ranks were always nervy about the possibility of losing track of such a lucrative consignment, but Flynn and Hoyle, both detective sergeants on Lancashire Constabulary’s drug squad (a branch of the Serious and Organized Crime Unit), had argued the case: their information was that the drugs were due to be purchased by an unknown buyer somewhere in Preston and the two detectives, both with an outstanding track record (which they used mercilessly to win their pitch), had wanted to catch the money men as well as the suppliers with their hands on the product.
They had won the argument after much wrangling, but were left in no doubt that if the operation went awry, they would be gobbled up by the organization and spat out as uniformed sergeants working busy custody offices.
It was a risk they were happy to take.
It had all gone well, pretty much up to the point where the Mercedes drove out of the compound and jumped on to the M1 northbound with three surveillance vehicles behind it and a healthy signal emanating from the tracker on to the monitors on the dashboards of all the followers.
It was eight p.m.
By eight fifteen p.m. the tracking device had been dislodged and fallen off the vehicle, before they were even north of Watford.
Flynn knew this for certain because at the exact moment it came off he was driving the first following car, Alpha One, and was positioned directly behind the target vehicle, Tango One, and close enough actually to see the tracker drop off behind the drug-filled car. He instinctively ducked as – almost sarcastically, it seemed – the device bounced twice off the motorway surface. The third bounce hit the bonnet of his car and the fourth hit the windscreen, from which it shot off at an acute angle, leaving a chip in the glass. It ended up crunched under the wheels of a heavy goods vehicle behind.
Had he been quick enough, he could have opened his window and caught the thing, but since he was travelling at eighty miles per hour, the whole incident was over in less than a couple of seconds.
The signal from the tracker died instantly on the monitors in all three following cars.
‘Who the fuck attached it?’ Hoyle laughed, having also seen its demise.
Although it was a rhetorical question, Flynn answered, ‘That’d be me.’
‘And five hundred quid down the Swanee,’ Hoyle added, that being the cost of the tracker.
&n
bsp; ‘Alpha Two to Alpha One …’ The personal radios came to life, the operation having a dedicated, encrypted radio channel. ‘Tracking signal has just withered on the vine.’
‘Box fell off,’ Hoyle transmitted. ‘Box fell off … fitter has been bollocked … now all visual, guys ’n’ gals.’
At this news, snorts of derisory laughter and cutting comments came over the air from the occupants of the two other cars, but it meant that the three-car follow had just got much harder and everything now rested on their skills, the rear light being out on Tango One and the hope (probably forlorn) that the target was not too surveillance conscious.
The car they were following was a high-powered Mercedes, about three years old, clean and fast, and was starting to average speeds around the ninety miles per hour mark, so full concentration was demanded from all of the followers.
So far the people on board Tango One had not obviously adopted any anti-surveillance tactics, but the journey had only just begun. There was plenty of time for shenanigans.
The first leg was fairly uneventful and, apart from losing the tracker, they reached Birmingham without incident. Corley Services was where the first stop of the journey was made, on the M6 just to the east of Birmingham and before the tangle of Spaghetti Junction.
Although the following positions had changed several times, Flynn and Hoyle were in the first car behind the Mercedes as it slowed, pulled off the motorway and stopped in the car park close to the service building. Flynn, at the wheel at that point, pulled into a space fifty metres away. Both of the sergeants were tense, as were the crews of the other surveillance cars, because this scenario could easily be the one to blow apart the whole operation if Tango One had any inkling of being tailed. Flynn and Hoyle had to rely on the occupants of the other cars to act normally too, as they had been well trained to do. If Tango One was jumpy and simply pulling in to check who appeared in the car park behind it and saw three cars park one after the other, the game would be over. But first, Flynn and Hoyle had to look normal – which meant that although neither of the two people in the Mercedes had yet moved, they would have to. To make it look realistic, they would get out of their car and stroll over to the service area where the toilets and café were situated, because that was what normal people did.