Ambush

by Nick Oldham

Flynn heaved it open.

  Even years later he remembered vividly the sight that greeted his eyes.

  The inside of the container was illuminated by another strand of weak, swaying light bulbs hanging on wires from the roof, but only dimly lit for that.

  A blood-soaked man stood astride the body of another man with his head massively damaged by gunshot wounds, his mouth agape.

  The man held an automatic pistol in his right hand, which started to rise in Flynn’s direction. In his left he was holding something that Flynn did not instantly identify. Something rubbery, short, fat, squat and very bloody.

  Then he knew what it was.

  A tongue.

  ‘Police!’ Flynn screamed, swinging the Browning up as he dropped into the combat firing position. Already his brain was churning with everything, the equivalent of a crazy mind map.

  The lighting, the distance, the angles. Should I move? Throw myself to one side? But would that also expose Jack to danger behind me? Where should I shoot the man? What if he’s quicker? What would a bullet penetrating me feel like if it hit me anywhere apart from on the vest? What would it feel like if it hit the vest?

  And alongside those practical thoughts of survival, other things somersaulted through his mind.

  How do I explain the gun in my hand to my bosses and the Crown Prosecution Service? How will it look? Do I still want to be a cop? If I do, then pulling this trigger won’t do me any favours. It complicates things so much. I’d be better off throwing it down and getting shot.

  And.

  A fucking tongue!

  Shit!

  His finger curled on the trigger.

  He would use it, he knew he would. He would be able to explain it away, defend himself now and later.

  Self-defence. Reasonable force.

  Shit again.

  ‘Drop the weapon!’ Flynn shouted.

  Flynn saw there was no chance of that happening.

  And at that moment, Flynn actually froze as indecision racked him.

  The man’s gun came up and he fired.

  Flynn compacted his body mass, ready for the impact, the hot lance of a 9mm slug travelling at 1,500 miles per hour.

  But nothing came.

  The hammer crashed hollowly on to an empty breech. He had fired his last bullet.

  The two men shared a moment of realization.

  But he had not finished. The man flicked his thumb and the magazine dropped out of the stock and hit the steel floor with a metallic clatter. He hurled the bloody tongue at Flynn and then his left hand went to his jacket pocket to reach for a new magazine to reload.

  Flynn reacted instantly now. He was back on firmer territory.

  He dinked as the tongue cartwheeled past his head, feeling blood splatter on his cheeks, then launched himself at the man and connected with him at the moment the man’s hand found the new magazine.

  The man responded quickly, slicing the gun horizontally through the air, intending to smack Flynn across the head.

  He missed. Flynn was moving low and fast.

  He powered into the man’s torso just below his rib cage, doubled him over with the impact and continued with the momentum until he had him pinned against the wall of the container.

  Even trapped as he was, the man pounded Flynn remorselessly with the side of his gun against his face, smashing it into his cheekbone and jaw. Flynn held on grimly, knowing he was in a fight for his life and wondering where the fuck Jack Hoyle had gone.

  That question was suddenly answered when, unexpectedly, the battering of his face ceased.

  Hoyle had been behind his friend, desperate to help. His baton was out, extended, and he wanted to bring it down on the gunman’s head but not smash Flynn in error.

  He connected just right.

  The baton arced and smashed the gunman on the left temple with a crashing, well-delivered blow that instantly knocked him unconscious for about four seconds. His grip on Flynn opened and he slid down the container wall stunned, but regaining his senses as his backside landed.

  Hoyle pulled Flynn away and launched himself on the gunman. Although smaller than Flynn, he was strong and agile and within moments had the man face down on the floor, kneeling between his shoulder blades and forcing his arms around his back, peeling the gun out of his grip and throwing it aside. He kept him pinned there as he cuffed him even though he was now struggling violently, bucking like a horse.

  Flynn had dragged himself away on all fours and was spitting blood from the cuts inside his mouth where his teeth had sliced open the soft inner flesh, and also spitting out a tooth, which he picked up and slid into a pocket. He shook his head like a hound dog, then crawled back to the struggling gunman and sat on his legs.

  As the detectives held him down, they looked around at the poorly lit scene of murder and mutilation on which they had stumbled. They caught each other’s eyes, disbelief and horror on their faces.

  Flynn ordered another beer from the waitress at the Mirage. He had considered a Black Russian but singing and dancing the ‘YMCA’ did not seem appropriate that evening. Beer did not make him do strange things, as far as he knew.

  Santiago ordered a vodka tonic.

  She had listened to his retelling of events and as he drew to a close she said, ‘That sounds horrific,’ as she imagined the fight and the brutal deaths that occurred that night.

  Flynn touched his face, just below his right eye. ‘Still sore sometimes,’ he said of his eye socket. ‘Especially in cold weather – which is why I live in a hot climate.’ He laughed.

  ‘There are other reasons for that too.’

  ‘There are,’ he concurred.

  Their drinks came. On stage inside the Mirage the act for the night started their second set of old rock ’n’ roll songs. Their show was beamed to large screen TVs hanging outside the bar.

  Flynn sipped his lager meditatively.

  It had been another long day on the boat, with an annoying rich guy making silly demands of him, but at least he’d got through it and even pocketed a 500-euro tip.

  ‘I can see how the operation would have affected you,’ Santiago said softly. ‘Keep you awake at nights.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah … my tough guy image is breaking up like pixels,’ he complained.

  ‘Tough guy with a heart … my tough guy with a heart,’ she said tenderly.

  He looked at her. ‘Mm, he gave me a good whacking with that gun … and I’ve been trying for years to get in a good joke about a tongue-lashing, but it’s always eluded me.’

  Santiago shuddered with revulsion.

  ‘One day,’ Flynn promised.

  ‘So who was this guy, this Brian Tasker? A name, I have to say, not designed to strike fear into anyone’s heart … so ordinary.’

  ‘Which makes it all the worse, a wimpy name attached to a raving psychopath … a dangerous, dangerous guy.’

  ‘But you got him. Ultimately, Operation Ambush was a success!’

  Flynn uttered a short laugh. ‘Yes and no … what I’ve just told you about for the last hour … that wasn’t Operation Ambush.’

  ELEVEN

  Flynn spent most of the remainder of that night in 2002 in A&E at Blackpool Victoria Hospital being X-rayed and treated for his facial wounds, none of which were too serious, although there was a tiny crack in his cheekbone about which nothing could be done, other than to allow it to heal by itself. He had lost a tooth from the front row, he was cut and grazed to bits and two of his head wounds required butterfly stitching. (At this point, as he retold the tale to Santiago over their drinks, he leaned over and parted his short hair to show her one of the cuts which, years later, was just a faintly visible white line.)

  During his hospital treatment he made a phone call to his wife, Faye, but the voice of the electronic lady told him that the person he was trying to call ‘was on the line’. He actually doubted that, even though it slightly puzzled him. He guessed she was more likely to be tucked up in bed with her phone switched off.

>   And despite himself he kept an eye out for his favourite lady doctor who had half-propositioned him some years before. He knew she was now a consultant, married with kids, and still worked on A&E, but she was nowhere to be seen. He shrugged mentally, slightly disappointed.

  Throughout the course of his treatment, Jack Hoyle popped his head into Flynn’s cubicle from time to time to keep a check on him. Hoyle was also keeping an eye on the man they had arrested, who was now under armed guard in a separate treatment area. He had been admitted because of the whack Hoyle had given him across the skull during the violent arrest. The prisoner’s X-rays were fine but his head did need stitching.

  Hoyle kept Flynn up to date with progress, until finally he came to tell him that the prisoner – now identified formally as Brian Tasker – was being discharged from hospital and about to be conveyed to Blackpool nick by a section van, followed closely by an Armed Response Vehicle. Until they knew more about this man, the cops were taking no chances with him now.

  Flynn slid off his bed. ‘They haven’t quite finished with me yet, apparently,’ he told Hoyle. His face was swollen and puffy around his damaged cheekbone. ‘Well done, mate, thanks for hitting him. I’d lost it,’ he admitted.

  ‘We’re in it together.’ Hoyle shrugged modestly.

  ‘You’re a great mate and partner,’ Flynn said genuinely. ‘I owe you one.’

  ‘Cheers, pal.’

  There was a moment of awkwardness when they could possibly have given each other a man-hug, but Hoyle’s radio squawked: the section van had arrived and the escorting cops were about to walk the prisoner out of the hospital. Hoyle turned away and Flynn walked out of his cubicle to the end of the A&E ward where a central corridor ran through the department, knowing the prisoner would have to be brought past him.

  He wanted a good look at the man he believed had killed two cops and two of his own partners in crime, cutting out the tongue of one of them.

  There was a scuffling noise. A side door further along the corridor opened and the prisoner was led out by a PC holding his hands, secured by rigid handcuffs, in front of him. The PC’s hand was clasped on the solid bar between the wrists, giving the officer immediate control should it be required. One turn and the cuffs would cut into the nerve endings around the wrists and the prisoner would be on his knees, screaming in agony. Another PC was behind the prisoner and behind him were two armed cops with their Heckler & Koch MP5s slung diagonally across their chests.

  Jack Hoyle brought up the rear.

  Flynn, Hoyle and the prisoner were still in the same clothes they had been wearing during the arrest, all three soaked in blood up their arms, across their chests.

  A few nurses and a doctor came to gawp at the slow procession, fascinated by the sight of an individual who could murder someone and then cut out their tongue. It reminded Flynn of something medieval and he half-expected rotten fruit to be hurled.

  Tasker wasn’t a big man but lithe, fit-looking, early thirties.

  His eyes were pinned to the floor watching his own feet as they shuffled along but as he drew alongside Flynn his gaze rose, his head rotated slightly sideways and he looked straight at Flynn, and in that moment the detective was treated to a view deep into the darkness of that man’s soul. It was not a pleasant sight.

  Then he was gone and that was the last time Flynn saw him for another four months.

  He returned to his cubicle and sat down stiffly on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Long time, no see.’

  Flynn looked up and the lady doctor, who he had thought was off duty or working somewhere else, was in front of him, clipboard and white gown, very prim and proper.

  ‘You look a mess,’ she said truthfully.

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘I hadn’t made the name connection when my informant told me,’ Flynn said to Santiago. They strolled arm in arm along the marina, then past the Hotel Ses Estaques towards the Ses Savines restaurant where they were going to sit and share a bottle of wine. ‘The Tasker family were – and still are, as far as I know – one of the biggest crime families operating out of north London.’

  ‘The name rings a bell,’ Santiago said. ‘I think I’ve heard of them.’

  After showing her his skull scar, he had then delighted her by unscrewing his tooth from his top set, refitted at huge expense by a very skilled dentist. He had given her a gap-toothed grin from which she had recoiled.

  Flynn went on, ‘I’m not surprised, you know. They’re into everything from gambling to prostitution, drugs, people trafficking, you name it. Very wealthy, international, but also fairly discreet except when things erupt, as they tend to from time to time in their world. They prefer negotiation with other gangs, but if they have to they’ll don their balaclavas, grab their shotguns and hang people up on meat hooks … but that’s all pretty rare.’

  He continued, ‘That said, Brian is or was the son from hell they wish they’d never had. He wanted to run the business but in a very different way. Apparently he was obsessed by the way in which the Central American cartels operated, ruthlessly murdering and dismembering or decapitating their rivals or anyone else who got in their way, including cops. Thought it was brilliant – apparently Brian junior was a cat strangler – and hated the almost genteel, gentlemanly way the Tasker family operated. Which, of course, they didn’t really. But Brian wanted brutal expansionism and to become mega-rich, not just rich. His methods didn’t fit with the way the family wanted to operate.’

  They had reached Ses Savines and found a cane sofa outside the restaurant which gave them a view, through olive trees, of the bay of Santa Eulalia. Flynn ordered a bottle of wine.

  ‘For the family he did some bad things to rivals. A spate of killings in London and the south, four or five guys shot in the face, then smashed flat with a spade, and one beheaded with the same tool.’

  Santiago winced.

  ‘No one was ever arrested and the Tasker family did close ranks around him, but the heat was on and they had to cut him loose. Too wild, too uncontrollable, too psychotic, too dangerous, someone who could jeopardize years of careful business building in one blow.

  ‘So he set up on his own, which is pretty much where we came in.’

  It was good to get to bed with Santiago and in the air-conditioned berth they again made very slow love, after which Flynn lay awake thinking about Brian Tasker, Jerry Tope and others.

  As much as the cops thought they were being careful that night with regards to transporting Brian Tasker from the hospital to the police station, they were not careful enough. And, of course, a police escort can be very vulnerable.

  It was a journey that should have taken five minutes, tops.

  Tasker was led out of the A&E unit and shoved into the back of the waiting section van, a Ford Transit. He was locked inside the inner cage, which under normal conditions would have been fine, especially as two police constables sat in with him, one next to him, one opposite. The driver of the van slammed the cage door, which spring-locked automatically with a bar. Neither constable took much notice of the identity of the van driver – the rain was still hammering down, he had his cap peak pulled over his eyes and they had been given instructions to keep their eyes on the prisoner.

  The driver hopped in behind the wheel and set off from the awning outside the hospital.

  Behind, the two armed officers jumped into their Ford Galaxy, and behind them was Jack Hoyle in the Vauxhall.

  The little convoy set off fairly sedately, out of the hospital grounds and towards the town.

  In Flynn’s cubicle, the doctor said, ‘I saw your name on the computer, thought I’d say hello.’

  ‘Very nice to see you. How are you doing?’ Flynn quickly noticed the absence of a wedding ring, though he assumed that was because wearing jewellery in her line of work was not always wise.

  ‘I’m good, you?’

  ‘Good, too.’

  It was all pretty banal stuff.

  ‘Still happily married?�
��

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah … you?’

  ‘Was, not any more, but two little kids in tow.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’

  ‘No probs.’

  She handed him a business card. ‘The number’s different.’ She smiled, then said, ‘I have to go … left a patient wide open on the operating table … just kidding.’

  Then she was gone.

  In the back of the van, the two constables were morbidly fascinated by Tasker.

  ‘You cut out a man’s tongue?’ one asked in disbelief.

  Tasker was staring at the van floor. His eyes did not rise and he remained silent, though a tremor of a smile played on his lips.

  ‘Fuckin’ animal,’ the other one sneered – he was the one sitting across from Tasker.

  The convoy moved on and reached the traffic lights at the junction of Preston New Road where, when they changed to green, the vehicles would turn right towards Blackpool.

  But as they changed the van went left, away from the resort on to the dual carriageway that led to Preston.

  It took a few moments for the direction change to register with the two cops in the back.

  Behind, the ARV turned to follow, and the driver flashed his headlights at the van, then moved out to overtake.

  Jack Hoyle also followed, puzzled, suddenly worried.

  Then from a side road on the left a car flashed out and rammed into the side of the ARV. The vehicle was a big Toyota pick-up with bull bars across the radiator. It smashed into the flimsier Ford Galaxy and flipped it over on to its side, then reversed away, slotted in behind the section van with a quick J-turn before slamming on, stopping, then hurtling backwards into the front of Hoyle’s car.

  Hoyle was already in shock at the speed and surprise of the first impact, though he had gathered his senses enough to begin shouting into his radio for assistance, but the fast-expanding image of the Toyota powering backwards cut off his words as he tried to wrench his steering wheel down to avoid the beast. He knew he was too slow – too many hours awake, too much driving, not enough rest had taken their toll and if he was honest he’d been pretty much daydreaming even though he’d been wondering about the odd change of direction the van had taken. He braced himself for the impact. The huge machine smashed into him and crushed beyond repair the front of the Vauxhall, and the Toyota almost seemed to be climbing over his bonnet.