by Paul Finch
‘Not something I’ve heard of,’ Hunter replied. ‘They do have to pass tests to become regulars, and that usually involves committing crime – but not staging RTAs or using toy aeroplanes to attack fishermen.’
‘The biggest kick the Snake Eyes get is terrorising people,’ Brogan said. ‘It’s all about rep. They don’t hide what they do.’
‘And they don’t do it down in Surrey, either,’ Hunter added. ‘That wouldn’t impress anyone. This is where it counts: the badlands, bandit country.’
Brogan had only come over to join them after making his MP5 safe and stowing it in an open steel cabinet. Heck noticed that several other carbines were already in there.
‘You’re obviously expecting to move on them soon?’ he said.
‘If we’re lucky,’ Hunter replied. He grabbed a pen and made a couple of quick alterations to a report before signing it off at the bottom. ‘All right …’ He spun back to face them. ‘Here’s our interest. And I really don’t want this going back to Division, DC Honeyford, even down in Surrey, because these bastards are organised and they’ve got ears everywhere, maybe even inside the job.’
Gail made a zipping motion across her mouth.
‘You heard of the ’Ndrangheta?’ Hunter said.
Heck was surprised. ‘Mafia splinter group, aren’t they?’
‘Sort of. Based in Calabria, southern Italy. Very secretive, ultra-violent. Also massive coke-traffickers. The Snake Eyes are trying to get in with them. The dealing they do here is low-level. Grass, crystal meth. Rubbish stuff, street-corner business. And they’re quite happy for everyone to think that’s the length and breadth of their ambition. But in reality they’re sourcing better product to move into more lucrative markets. The ’Ndrangheta can provide, but it’ll cost. To meet that cost, the Snake Eyes are blagging like there’s no tomorrow. At the moment it’s pubs.’
‘Pubs?’ Gail said.
‘Mainly across south London. It’s that pattern that first caught our attention. We’re talking violent pub robberies, the masked assailants always barging into the premises late at night, just before closing … emptying the till at gunpoint, robbing any punters who still happen to be in there.’
‘Can’t believe it nets them very much,’ she said.
‘They’re making gains, trust me. Two or three grand a pub, and they’ve done at least thirty that we know about already.’
‘You mean there are some we don’t know about?’
‘Not every blag gets reported,’ Heck explained.
‘Correct,’ Hunter said. ‘Some of these dives have card schools in the back rooms, drug dens upstairs. Couple of knocking shops have been done too. They’re getting turned over at a rate of knots. It’s always the same crew – six strong, masked, gloved, heavily armed. They come and go in stolen motors which every few weeks or so we find torched.’
‘Can you be sure it’s the Snake Eyes?’ Heck asked.
‘The clever money says yes,’ Hunter replied, presumably referring to his insider. ‘The amount of indiscriminate shooting says the same. They must’ve let off five hundred rounds so far. It’s a miracle we’ve only had one casualty – some brawny, suntanned bonehead of a barman, who’d started believing the publicity of his own tattoos. He had a go and they shot his fucking knees off. Won’t be pumping much iron down the gym now.’
‘Guv …’ A junior Flying Squad officer stepped forward and handed Hunter a phone. ‘It’s Kenny.’
Hunter put the phone to his ear. ‘Talk to me, Ken.’ He listened intently. ‘Okay … usual time? How many targets? All carrying? Okay … no, that’s good … excellent. Is he indeed?’ Hunter broke into a broad grin, which was something Heck hadn’t seen very often, not even when they’d worked cheek-by-jowl. ‘That’s the best news I’ve had all day, mate. No, well done … you’re a prince. Yeah, okay, speak to you later.’ He cut the call and turned to Brogan. ‘Danny, get the rest of the lads in. I want a quick briefing. And alert SCO-19.’ Brogan nodded and moved away. Hunter turned back to Heck. ‘Seems the job goes live tonight. The target is the Heart of Stone in Lewisham. What’s more, Julius Manko himself is coming out to play. How much time you got?’
‘As much as I need,’ Heck said.
‘That roving commission of yours again, eh? Well, it seems these goons are getting greedy. They hit their last pub last week and they’re moving again already. Even though you’re an AFO, Heck, you’re not part of the team, so I can’t take you across the pavement. But there’s no reason why you can’t observe. You up for that?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Still don’t think you’re gonna get much out of this. The Snake Eyes are a tight crew. They won’t grass each other up easily – or anyone else. And that’s if they’ve actually got something to do with these murders, which I strongly doubt. You could be on a hiding to nothing.’
‘That’s been the name of this enquiry so far.’ Heck glanced at Gail and winked.
She didn’t look impressed.
Julius Manko looked every inch the street-gang sleazeball that he reputedly was.
Heck perused several photos of him. A couple were official mugshots; others had been taken from covert positions while he’d gone about his everyday business. He possibly was Polynesian by origin; he had a natural tan with an oval face and large jaw. His hair was jet black and shaved into a ‘Mohican’ strip, the scalp to either side covered with tribal tattoos. He was somewhere in his mid to late twenties, broad-cheeked and bull-necked. An old but very nasty scar connected the left corner of his left eye to the left corner of his mouth. One of the surveillance pics had caught him coming out of the Roost wearing only ripped jeans and a thin vest, which exposed a strong, muscular physique also covered in tattoos.
‘Looks like a handful,’ Heck commented.
Bob Hunter, who was seated in the front passenger seat, chuckled. ‘Don’t knock it. Today’s a red-letter day. Manko’s got fifteen levels of fall guys underneath him. It’s a rare event when he comes out and does the dirty himself.’
‘You sure that intel’s good?’ Gail asked. She and Heck were in the back seat.
Hunter snickered. ‘I would say so. It took the lad we’ve got inside six months to earn their trust.’
‘You’ve been tracking the Snake Eyes so long?’ Heck said.
‘Nah.’ Hunter adjusted his shades as Brogan, who was driving, steered them into Peckham Rye and glaring midday sunshine. ‘But the Organised Crime Division have. He’s officially working for them. They had to pull him down from Durham to make sure they had someone who wasn’t likely to get clocked. His cover story was that he’d just come out of the Scrubs, where he’d served three for battering two bobbies senseless. That’s the kind of nutcase Julius Manko likes to work with.’
‘So tonight could be the culmination of a lot of blood, sweat and tears,’ Heck said.
‘Well our lad has been building up evidence like billy-o, but up till now he’s never had enough to slot Manko himself.’ They passed from Peckham High Street into Queen’s Road, heading in the direction of New Cross. ‘This is strictly off the record,’ Hunter added. ‘But we’ve even let them do a couple of pubs because Manko wasn’t playing.’
Heck glanced sidelong at Gail, who looked amazed by such an admission. Despite the two murder arrests she’d made, high-level operations of this sort, and all the machinations they involved, had so far eluded her, so hearing that the investigating unit had received prior information about expected robberies and had taken no action to intervene came as a big shock, much as it did, to an extent, to Heck – though in his case only because he knew how much shit would hit the fan if it got out. This was typical Bob Hunter of course. While Hunter had been in SCU Heck had never accepted that he was quite as slapdash as Gemma felt he was, but he’d often been concerned about Hunter’s readiness to cut legal corners.
‘How’re things up at the Yard?’ Hunter asked. ‘Ship hasn’t sunk without me, I see.’
Heck shrugged. ‘We keep thi
ngs turning over.’
‘Yeah … got a result up in the Lake District, didn’t you? That nutty bird.’
‘That was a close one.’
‘Good result though. And then Nottingham, wasn’t it? The Lady Killer?’
‘That wasn’t just me.’
‘Come off it,’ Hunter chuckled. ‘You got the collar. Nothing like teaching Counties how to do the job. What do you think, DC Honeyford?’
‘I wouldn’t know, sir,’ she replied tartly.
‘Bet her ladyship’s over the moon with you,’ Hunter said, addressing Heck again. ‘She dragged you back into bed yet?’
‘What’s it got to do with you, Bob?’ Heck replied.
‘Which means she hasn’t. You poor sod.’
‘Why don’t we just keep our minds on what we’re doing, eh?’
Hunter turned in his seat and regarded Gail over the tops of his shades. ‘It may surprise you, DC Honeyford, but Heck here used to give it to his super. Not when she was a super obviously. When they were both DCs at Bethnal Green. Soon as she started getting promoted she dropped him like a stone.’ He glanced at Heck. ‘Or was it the other way round? Can’t remember. Think it was, wasn’t it?’
‘What does it matter?’ Heck said.
Hunter turned back to the front. ‘You’re just like the rest of us now, pal … tired footsloggers who aren’t getting any.’ He chuckled again.
‘I see pissant stuff still tickles you.’
‘Just having a giggle, mate,’ Hunter said. ‘This is the calm before the storm. Might as well enjoy it.’
Chapter 21
The Heart of Stone pub stood at the junction of Ashby Road and Wickham Road. From Bob Hunter’s perspective, the situation report on arrival was not ideal. Only a hundred yards north, Wickham Road connected with Lewisham Way, one of south-east London’s main arteries. If the blaggers got away in that direction, it would be difficult forming last-second barricades to effect containment, even though Division had confirmed they’d have support units standing by. In the other direction, it connected with Brockley Road, which was another major thoroughfare, while Ashby Road itself provided a rat run through from Brockley Road to Breakspears Road, which also joined with Lewisham Way, creating in effect a network of escape routes. In truth, this was probably why the Snake Eyes had zoned in on it; apparently Manko’s crew had scoped out numerous pubs south of the river, and only a relative handful met the criteria they’d set themselves.
That said, there were some benefits to be gained from this particular plot. The broad triangle of pavement between the pub front and the junction of the two roads was bollarded off, which wouldn’t allow the blaggers to drive right up to its doors – that was a lot of pavement they had to cross, and in which they could be caught amid three separate assault teams. There were several multi-storey flats overlooking from the south, where SCO-19 could perch their snipers, and an excellent combined observation post and lying-up point, or LUP as it was known in the trade, directly across the road from the pub, on the junction’s south-west corner: this was a three-storey building, the ground floor of which had previously sold electronics, though this shop was now closed, its window painted out, while the two apartments above it were untenanted.
After the area had been covertly swept for Snake Eye spotters – the Flying Squad even employed scanners to search for radio signals – the team assembled quickly and quietly. Two ‘gunships’ – armoured troop carriers filled with Flying Squad detectives and plain-clothes firearms officers from SCO-19, but disguised to look like everyday scruffy work vans – found good positions: the first parked in a cobbled alley on the right side of the pub, the second in an entry on the junction’s north-west corner. Just after midday, Hunter and Brogan entered the pub, ostensibly as customers but in reality to take the landlord into a back room and tell him exactly what was happening. The raid was only expected to occur at eleven o’clock that night – up to now they’d all happened at around eleven – but unsurprisingly the landlord concluded that it was better if he and his staff vacated the premises from early evening onwards, to be replaced by male and female undercover officers. More problematic would be the customers. The Snake Eyes were almost certain to make a couple of drive-bys during the day, so every aspect of normality had to be maintained, which meant the pub must stay open and members of the public had to be allowed to come and go. Hunter sought the advice of a higher authority back at the Squad’s HQ before deciding that punters would be admitted to the pub and served until ten p.m., from which point on all would be taken into protective custody and removed from the premises via plain-clothes vehicles parked at the rear; it would be explained to each and every one that they’d only be detained for a couple of hours. Any objecting, demanding they be released or allowed to make phone calls, would, if persuasion failed, be arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to rob. It was a high-risk strategy, but not as risky as the situation for those additional undercover cops, who, one by one, would replace them inside the Heart of Stone.
All day as these preps were underway Heck and Gail could do nothing but sit in the upper room of the OP, while around them inner London baked.
‘Summertime in the city, eh?’ Gail said, her brown hair hanging in damp ringlets over her forehead. There was no air conditioning in this empty building, and, though it had plenty of windows, for the moment they were to remain closed and those inside were under instruction not to approach them during daylight.
Heck swigged from a bottle of water, which he handed over to her. ‘Bit of a culture shock after Surrey, I suppose.’
She took a gulp and wiped her mouth. ‘Not to me. I lived round here for three years. Or near here. When I was a student. Took sociology at Goldsmiths.’
‘Did you graduate?’
‘With a first.’
He nodded. ‘Well done.’
‘At least you’re not laughing at the fact it was sociology.’
‘A degree’s a degree.’
‘I can’t imagine Bob Hunter would see it that way.’
‘Probably not.’
‘Heck, do you trust him?’
Heck pondered that. ‘Not entirely.’
‘Oh … great.’
He shrugged. ‘This is a complex operation, and I never had Bob down as a man for detail. But put it this way: they’ve done months of work on this firm, they’ve amassed a shedload of intel … we might as well stick around for the take-down.’
‘So that’s what this is? A spectator sport? I thought we were trying to trace a stolen vehicle?’
Heck took the bottle back and swigged from it again. ‘The Snake Eyes are the key to that. And this is the best chance we’ve got to get close to them.’
‘If there’s any of them left to talk.’ She nodded to the other side of the room, where two Squad guys were setting up cameras and laying out weapons. Aside from the Glocks and MP5s, there were pump-action shotguns, sledgehammers, hickory staves that looked more like pickaxe handles than police batons, and several heavy ballistics shields. ‘What’s Hunter trying to do, start a war?’
‘I think you’ll find it’s the Snake Eyes who started the war,’ Heck replied.
‘Yeah. And as soon as that lot get zapped, another group will arise to take their place.’
‘What are you crying about? That’s why we’ve got jobs for life. Look, if you’re bored, Gail, it’s best to try and get some kip. Could be a long day.’
As if determined to practise what he preached, Heck folded his arms, rocked back on his fold-away stool until it was leaning on two legs and his head and shoulders resting against the wall, and closed his eyes. To Gail’s amazement, within a very few minutes, he was snoring gently – though she supposed he had been up from very early that morning, roughly five a.m., in order to commence his recce on the Skelton.
Eventually she too began to nod off. But this didn’t last long before Bob Hunter and three of his lackeys came banging back into the upper room, causing such a din that she almost jumped from
her chair. The overweight DI wasn’t wearing the heat well either. His T-shirt was plastered to his chest and back; fresh droplets ran down his beery red face.
‘Rise and shine, boys and girls,’ he said. ‘Got some kit for you.’ He tossed them a duffel bag each. ‘That’s everything I owe you in one fell swoop, Heck, including the M1 nutters. So no calling favours after this.’
They opened the bags and pulled out blue baseball caps with black and white banding, Squad radios with earpiece attachments, both tuned to a dedicated channel, a pair of night-vision goggles each, and two lightweight Kevlar undershirts.
‘Just to be on the safe side,’ Hunter said when he saw Gail glance at him. ‘Your two guv’nors know what you’re doing today, I take it?’
‘It’s all been okayed,’ Heck said.
‘Good, cos there’re enough people here I’m responsible for.’
‘Wouldn’t want to add to the weight of your task, Bob.’
‘Glad we understand each other, Heck. Anyway, all we’ve gotta do now is wait.’
‘That’s what we were doing,’ Gail said, slumping back on her chair.
Hunter shrugged. ‘Patience is a virtue, DC Honeyford. You want to join some specialist team, it’s something you’ll have to learn – and quickly, given that it’s still eight hours to contact. Take my advice, try and get some kip.’
As the afternoon wore into evening, a heavy, stultifying silence descended on the OP. Those officers gathered there whiled away the long, tedious hours by playing cards, listening to iPods through earphones, or studying for exams. Hunter busied himself with one of his juniors, poring over a map of the immediate district which they’d spread between them on a low table, and taking occasional quiet reports from inside the pub. Heck continued to doze, though not especially comfortably. Gail barely slept at all.
At around seven that evening a Squad member came up by the back stairs, carrying a cardboard box containing ten newspaper-wrapped portions of fish and chips, and several fresh bottles of mineral water. Everyone ate and drank. When eight o’clock came and daylight was diminishing, the team began checking their weapons and body armour. By nine o’clock, dusk had fallen over the city and there was a general atmosphere of wind-down; fewer honking horns, fewer pedestrians around, streetlights winking to life one by one – at which point Hunter received a call from his insider. The job was still on; the Snake Eyes were saddling up. He passed this news to his subordinates, and sent word to put Division on stand-by. Medical facilities in the neighbourhood were also alerted.