This was further confirmation of what Quintel had previously thought. ‘We’ll have to be careful near there, they’ll have security everywhere.’
‘Aye, that they will, which is why we are meeting a local sympathiser in a nearby side street, so he can show me the best way into the flat,’ McKnowle said, before he gave Quintel the details of the side road which was off Watling Street Road. Considering McKnowle had been off the manor for twenty years, he appeared quite well-connected.
Fifty-five minutes later, Quintel parked the Nissan in the side street where a middle-aged man in a leather jacket was waiting for them. He watched as McKnowle greeted the man with a hug but couldn’t tell whether they actually knew each other, or whether it was just a case of belonging to the same club. They had just disappeared around the corner when Quintel’s private mobile rang.
‘Are you alone?’ the caller started.
‘Yeah, but be quick.’
‘They’re releasing a press release saying they have found the unnamed kidnap victim alive and well.’
Quintel was taken aback by this. Jason said he’d done her and buried her, how could she have survived that? ‘You sure?’
‘Hundred percent.’
As annoying as it was, it didn’t really matter from his point of view, that cop Palmer had already seen him as it was, and after this final job was over he wouldn’t be hanging around. The only problem would be if McKnowle heard about it. He thought she was dead, an extra ten large ones rested on his belief in that. Quintel instinctively turned the car radio off. ‘Ok, thanks for letting me know, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.’
‘If you are thinking of finishing her off, you’d be taking a huge risk trying to get near her now. That cocky twat Vinnie Palmer who is hunting you, is all over Christine Jones like a love sick puppy.’
‘I not fucking stupid, and don’t forget you are paid to keep me informed, not to give advice.’
‘Just saying,’ the caller said.
Quintel ended the conversation by telling the caller not to ring but text until further notice. If he felt they needed to speak, he was to say so in a text and Quintel would ring him when he could. He then set all the alerts on his phone to vibrate only.
Then his new phone rang and McKnowle told him to grab the holdall and leave the car where it was. He directed him to a back alley which ran behind the shops. He told him to make his way to the last gate.
*
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Harry said as he rushed into the SIO’s office in the incident room at Preston.
‘No worries, Frank, it gave me chance for a fried breakfast. This canteen does do one of the best police breakfasts going,’ Vinnie said.
‘Thanks for that. I’ve just had to make do with tea and biscuits in the chief’s office.’
‘How is Mr Darlington?’
‘Not a happy camper today. He’d just come off the phone to Reedly when I arrived.’
Harry had rung Vinnie earlier telling him to get in ASAP, said he couldn’t speak over the phone but that it was urgent, which had proved a little baffling when he found the office empty. But it did explain why Harry didn’t want Vinnie to pay Reedly a visit en route as he’d suggested. ‘And was the chief’s chat with Reedly productive?’
‘No. He said he’d come up with a list of ten possibles whom he might have seriously pissed off back in the day, but our intel cell has apparently eliminated them all,’ Harry said.
‘Ah, that explains Darlington’s displeasure.’
‘I only wish that was true,’ Harry said, before closing and locking the office door. He then made his way to his desk before continuing. ‘You remember when I couldn’t get hold of the chief to brief him about you chasing the Nissan in Blackpool?
‘Yeah,’ Vinnie said.
‘Same thing happened with the press release re Christine. Both times I had to sort it out via the Headquarters Press Office. Via the chief’s office.’
‘Ok.’
‘Well,’ Harry started, while also starting to rub his head.
‘They’ve not fucking named her, have they?’ Vinnie said, cutting in.
‘No, nothing like that, but Darlington had been expecting a pre-arranged telephone update from me without having any knowledge of Christine, or indeed any idea of what was in the update .’
‘So?’ Vinnie asked.
‘So he made himself scarce on purpose so I’d have to go through his staff officer.’
‘Russell Sharpe?
‘Blister indeed,’ Harry said. And then he explained.
Apparently the chief knew about the sighting of the Nissan in Blackpool as the Force Incident Manager had mainlined into him, which was normal procedure anytime armed response vehicles were deployed. What Darlington had not previously told Harry was that for some time he had suspected a leak at senior level. ‘What, from the Press Office? Vinnie asked.
‘He didn’t know for sure, but he’s had someone working inside his own staff office looking for the leak,’ Harry said.
‘So Blister is one of the good guys after all,’ Vinnie said, almost feeling disappointed. Harry just carried on. Apparently, they had a suspect and had covertly put a live cell-siting on the individual’s phone. Subsequent analysis proved that soon after Vinnie had given chase after the Nissan, the suspect had rung a mobile number cited in Blackpool and left a voice message warning that the cops were “nearing in on you, in Blackpool”.
‘Whose number was rung?’ Vinnie asked.
‘It can only be Quintel’s, but it keeps being turned on and off so it is proving difficult to locate.’
‘Whose handset made the call?
‘That’s the tricky bit, it is a pool phone owned by Lancashire Police but of whom anyone in the Staff Office or Press Office have access to,’ Harry said.
‘No wonder the chief’s not a happy chicken. So what happens now?’
Harry told Vinnie that the chief had spoken to the Home Secretary and requested an urgent warrant of interception – a phone tap – or line, as they called them, on the basis that there was an imminent threat to life, as in Quintel’s next target. Vinnie knew that obtaining a phone tap by normal channels took months but also knew that in emergency situations where life was in danger it could be done in a matter of hours. ‘I’m guessing the Home Sec agreed?’
‘Well, he agreed to put a line on the mole’s phone as we could prove it had been used to tip off Quintel, but he refused the request for a line on Quintel’s phone itself.’
‘Why the hell not, after all it’s Quintel who is providing the main threat, not the mole?’
‘They don’t grant lines easily as you know, but until we can prove that it’s Quintel on the other end of that phone the Home Sec won’t sign. He said it could be anyone’s phone, as the police were probably chasing a lot of folk on that particular night in Blackpool.’
‘How long will it take to put the line on, if and when we prove that it’s Quintel on the other end?’ Vinnie asked.
‘Not long,’ Harry answered, adding, ‘they have most things in place to throw the switch, we just need a bit of luck.’
Then Harry’s phone rang and Vinnie didn’t pay too much attention as he sat back and absorbed all that Harry had just said. That was until Harry smashed his fist onto his desk, before ending his call, and turning to face Vinnie with a huge grin on his face.
‘That was Darlington, bingo. The bent police handset has just put a call into the same number, only this time it was switched on and caller and recipient had a conversation.’
‘What was said?’
‘The caller told the recipient that Christine was alive.’
‘The absolute bastard,’ Vinnie said.
‘The recipient was obviously Quintel, so London are now in the process of hooking up a live line on that phone too, which incidentally is somewhere in north Preston.’
‘Shit.’
‘Shit indeed,’ Harry said.
‘Any news on who the mole is?’
‘It can only be one of two people, because when I rang with the press release about Christine, only two people were made aware. The person I spoke to and the press officer whom that person passed the info to.’
‘But anyone could have heard the press release and then rang Quintel?’ Vinnie said.
‘They could in five minutes when it goes out, but in any event, Christine’s name isn’t being used in it. She’s just being referred to as an “unnamed kidnap victim”. ’
‘So if that puts the press officer in the clear, who did you speak to in the chief’s office?’ Vinnie asked.
‘The on-call Staff Office representative.’
‘Who was?’ Vinnie asked, the suspense unbearable.
‘Chief Inspector Russell Sharpe, no less, or Blister to his friends.’
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Christine was sat in the scrip edits room, with Paul Bury next to her on one side of the long, light wood table, and the programme’s producer Sally and her editor and the documentary’s director June across from them.
‘Before you play the Dictaphone let’s watch the opening to get us all back in sync,’ Sally said. They all turned to face a large TV on a high stand, with casters which always reminded her of the ones they had in high school. Christine knew that neither she nor June needed any sync-ing; it was for Sally’s own benefit, as she had so many half-done programmes on the go at any one time.
The title was ‘One for you, and one for me’, with the tagline, ‘How fairly shared, is the power-sharing in Northern Ireland?’ Over the last few weeks Christine had been busy fine tuning some of her pieces to camera and she knew June had pulled most of the programme together with those and her pre-recorded interviews. They just had the final conclusions to film so it ran like a visual dissertation. After the opening credits the first scene was of her walking down a very well-known road in Belfast with Loyalist Protestant social housing on one side and Republican Catholic ones on the other.
“My name is Christine Jones, and I’m strolling down a road known locally as ‘The Slayer’s Path’. It’s where two sides of the community live in relative peace now. The Protestants known as ‘St George’s Men’ on my left – after the English flag of St George – and the Catholics, known as the ‘Dragons’ are on my right.” Christine always hated watching herself on the telly; some reporters loved it, but she was not one of them. She thought she looked a bit pale. “But how fair is the share, in the new power-sharing of Northern Ireland’s regional government?” The opening went on to set out the two arguments asking had too much grace been given by one side to the other, or was this just paranoia? The Deputy First Minister of the Northern Irish Assembly was a Protestant and staunch Unionist, whereas the First Minister himself was a Catholic Republican whom many accused of previously being an active member of the IRA. This was something that Mathew McConachy had always denied, stating he had been a member of their political wing but no more.
Sally paused the recording and asked Paul to play the tape, which he did.
Christine enjoyed the look on both Sally and June’s faces, and when the recording ended Sally asked if Paul had a deposition from the officer proving the provenance of the recording. Paul said that he had, and opened a folder in front of him and handed some papers across the table. ‘Here’s his written statement,’ he said.
Sally read it and passed it to June, who spoke for the first time after reading it and putting it on the table. ‘Fucking hell; have we got an ending, or what?’
Christine laughed, and the others joined in. When order returned, Sally spoke. ‘This is huge and will have potentially major consequences.’
Christine worried that Sally was thinking of allowing McConachy a right of reply prior to any broadcast. She needn’t have. The strategy they then agreed was that McConachy’s visit to the North West was too good an opportunity. The ambush was on. Paul was to remain in the background as an observer in case anyone turned up that they should know about. ‘I can do covert,’ he said.
Christine, with a soundman and cameraman, were to do the ambush with a choice of words that Sally would quickly have run past the in-house lawyer first, and then she was to record McConachy’s comments in response, and if in the negative as presumed, to ask if he had ever used his influence personally to have officials removed from office.
‘Record his denials but with no follow ups,’ Sally said, continuing, ‘we get that on tape and then the night before we air, we can give him his right to reply then.’
‘Garden path the fucker,’ Paul said.
Christine joined the others in looking quizzically at him.
‘An old CID interview expression,’ he said, adding, ‘We’d take the suspect on a path of denials so there can be no doubt what he or she is saying, and then hit them with the evidence.’ He gave the example of finding a print or DNA at a crime scene, say, in someone’s house that had been burgled, and making sure the suspect couldn’t suddenly remember having visited the place once ages ago, after being hit with the evidence.
‘Exactly,’ Sally said, ‘that way, he’ll be none the wiser to exactly who or how we know.’
‘He’ll be “garden pathed” to within an inch of his life, don’t you worry about that,’ Christine added.
‘Ok, let’s get cracking, he’s due to give a speech outside an Irish community centre in Manchester in two hours’ time,’ Sally said.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Quintel found the last gate as described at the end of the rear alley by a brick wall. He was glad it was only five minutes from the car, as the holdall with all its goodies was starting to become heavy. Inside the rear yard he could see a half-glazed kitchen door ajar, which he closed behind him.
‘Upstairs, Jackie-boy,’ McKnowle’s voice boomed, and Quintel joined him in the front bedroom of what looked like a bedsit-come-office above a computer repair shop. Over by the window was a scruffy two-seater settee and a table. The window looked about four feet wide and had dirty net curtains covering the glass.
‘Where did you say the occupants were again?’ Quintel asked.
‘A little tied up on an unexpected vacation,’ McKnowle said.
‘Won’t the shop being closed draw attention?’
‘Apparently not. According to the man, the place is run by a couple of nancy-boys who are either out all day fixing people’s porn riddled laptops, or are up here letting life imitate art. I’d be careful where you sit, Jackie-boy,’ McKnowle said before roaring with laughter. Quintel gave the two-seater a miss and sat on a picnic chair next to it.
‘Nar, would you look at that,’ he said.
Quintel did, and got his first glimpse of the British Army’s North West Headquarters of some Brigade or other. It was a huge place situated on the busy urban thoroughfare that was Watling Street Road. The Barracks was set back slightly as the road curved around its perimeter at a set of traffic lights, where a further road joined and formed a sort of Y shape. McKnowle said it was within sight of Deepdale, which was Preston North End’s football ground. And according to him, the oldest league football ground in the world. ‘I didn’t know you were an English football fan?’ Quintel asked.
‘Not English, just football,’ McKnowle said.
Quintel took his time weighing up the topography of the area, as Jason might have said. The entrance was set back from the road accessed by a short driveway which had a barrier and sentry to protect it. ‘This isn’t going to be easy,’ he said.
‘Piece of piss,’ McKnowle answered.
‘So where is our target actually going to be, and when?’ Quintel asked.
‘He’ll be stood at the end of that driveway, but by the road itself.’
‘That sounds pretty exact information.’
‘Always make sure you have good intel, and we’ve got good intel.’
‘Your local sympathiser?’
‘Aye.’
Quintel further looked at the plot and knew that from this distance a handgun would be useless. As t
he proverbial crow flew, they must be thirty or forty metres away, more if you considered their elevation. He suddenly became aware of McKnowle looking at him.
‘I knows what yous arh thinking, Jackie-boy, but do yous remember me telling you that I wouldn’t get in the way?’
Quintel said that he did.
‘Well, all you have to do is sit around the corner in that old Nissan of yours and I’ll call you on when arh man’s in place.’
‘Then what? Drive past and try and hit him with a handgun?’
‘No, but I do want you to drive past and lob one of those grenades at the fooker; that should do it. But just the one mind, use the second one on the motor when you ditch it. I’ll fuck off from here and meet you somewhere. See, I won’t be in the way, but I’ll have a fookin good view of the bastard getting what he’s owed.’ Then McKnowle launched into one of his unhinged laughs and Quintel took a further look out of the window.
The Irish bastard might be a psychotic madman, but his plan should work, he thought. Not even an ex-SAS trooper would survive that. ‘So we get a look at him today, but when are we doing it?’ Quintel asked.
‘Need to know, and yous now needs to know. The fooker will be here in a couple of har’s time. Then we do the bastard.’
‘How will I know him?’
‘No worries Jackie-boy, he’s giving a talk first and then will come forward ta answer questions, so there will be plenty of time for yous to see him and get ta your motor. I’ll call yous on when he comes forward, it’ll be easier for yous then. Like I say; a piece of piss.’
*
‘So what happens to Blister now?’ Vinnie asked.
‘The chief has authorised a full surveillance on Blister in the hope that they can collect further evidence of the scumbag’s duplicity,’ Harry started.
‘I never liked the weasel,’ Vinnie interjected.
‘And,’ Harry continued, ‘to hopefully lead the team to Quintel. A full firearms authority has also been granted and there are three gunships – ARVs running behind the surveillance team. There’s just one problem.’
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