by Conrad Jones
It wouldn’t stop her editor, Julia Fox from wanting to see them. Julia Fox had a number of sources within the civilian employees at police headquarters and she had no qualms about using them but she seldom checked how credible their information was. Julia would print the phonebook if she thought it would sell newspapers. She paid well and they would be queuing up to tell her about one of her freelance reporters being a witness to trafficking, a drug handover and a kidnapping. That was journalistic gold dust. She would have to speak to her at some point because if she didn’t, Julia Fox would print her own version of events. The screen stopped flashing as the answering machine kicked in.
Outside at the rear of her property, a man named Letva Lapsa crouched in the shadows and watched the house. His muscular frame was hidden by the black clothing that he wore. The bathroom lights had gone on twenty minutes ago but he hadn’t moved an inch since then. Patience was the difference between success and failure, life and death. She would be drying herself off soon, naked and vulnerable. Then he would move. Until then he could rehearse what was to come in his mind. He had trained for operations like today for years mastering tracking, watching, waiting, questioning and the disposal of a target. Time had dragged since she had left the police station but now time had run out for her. Finally they knew who she was and where she lived. His fingers touched the hilt of his knife and he slid it silently from its sheath. The movement was barely a whisper on the gentle breeze. The blade was blackened steel to stop it reflecting light, razor sharp one side with a double serrated edge the other. It was a thing of violent beauty designed for one thing only, the destruction of tissue; the blade was honed to slice and to cut and the saw edge was expertly engineered to rip flesh and splinter bone.
The knife felt reassuringly heavy as he checked his watch and slid it silently back into the sheath. He checked the backpack and then he was ready. Instinct told him it was time. He moved silently, his weight expertly distributed between each boot to lessen any sound. Hugging the shadows at the edge of the wall, he moved with stealth and purpose and he was at the back door in under a minute. He knew it was alarmed. There were contacts fitted to the door and motion sensors covered the entire ground floor. She was cautious and professional but then so was he. If anyone entered the ground floor of the house by force, the alarm would sound. The box on the exterior was wireless and powered by the mains and supported by a built in backup battery. Cutting the mains electricity would not stop it from ringing. Knocking it off the wall wouldn’t stop the internal box from ringing either and that was loud enough to alert nearby residents. Breaking into the ground floor wasn’t an option.
Without pausing, he reached for the fishing twine, which he had hidden behind the drainpipe earlier that morning when she first arrived home. One tug was enough to free up the rope, which it was tied to and it uncoiled and fell from the roof with a dull thud. He listened intently.
Nothing.
Pulling the rope with his left hand, he checked that it was still securely fastened to the chimney stack and once he was happy, he put his right boot against the wall and climbed. His powerful upper body took his weight making it look as if he was walking up the wall. He was quiet and swift and his powerful limbs pulled him to the top of the drainpipe in under a minute. He climbed onto the flat roof of the extension that Toni had had built a year before and squatted low. He could see condensation on the inside of the bathroom window and the silhouette of a female moved towards the bedroom. If his mission had been simply to silence her then she would have been dead already. She needed to answer some questions. He would enjoy the asking but she certainly wouldn’t. He kept low as he crept towards the house. He was across the extension roof in seconds. There was a Velux window on the main structure, which allowed light into the converted loft. That was his way in. Clearing up as he went was essential. He cut the rope from the chimney and let it fall into the back yard before sliding the blade beneath the beading which held the double-glazed unit in the frame. The glass unit slid out silently and he twisted the locking handle inside and opened the window before putting the glass unit back into place and tapping the beading around the glass. Rebuilding the window took half a minute at best.
Lowering himself quietly into the loft, he pulled the window closed and locked it. Even close inspection from the inside would not belie his entry point. He moved like a liquid across the attic to the access hatch and crouched next to it. It slid open easily, without making any noise. He listened to the sounds from the house beneath him. There was a marked police car at the front of the house but they couldn’t see the rear of the structure. Letva knew that they wouldn’t be armed, which gave him a huge advantage. They thought that they could offer her protection but they couldn’t. Not from the people that he worked for.
Toni padded across the tiles into her bedroom and flicked through her iPod. She had surround-sound fitted all through the house as part of the renovations. The screen showed ‘Little Lion Man’, Mumford and Sons. It was an ode to anyone with regrets and she often played it when her soul was unsettled. She pressed play and looked into the mirror. Her figure was pleasing on the eye, lean but not thin, firm but not muscular and her regular sessions on a sunbed kept her skin tanned. She hummed along as Mumford became more agitated.
‘It was not your fault but mine. It was your heart on the line. I really fucked it up this time, didn’t I my dear, didn’t I my dear?’
That was how she felt. She had fucked up. Her ambition and greed had blinded her to the point where she hadn’t researched the mill before walking into it blindly. She was so desperate for the story that she didn’t consider the consequences properly. A dull thud outside made her look towards the window and the landline began to ring. She was tempted to answer it just in case it wasn’t Julia Fox but there was no way of knowing so she ignored it. As she wrapped a small towel around her long hair, she heard a loud knock on the front door. She wasn’t expecting anyone to visit and she never had cold callers. Her driveway was gated, the garden walled and secured. The fingers of fear touched her spine; the goose pimples returned in an instant. Her breath quickened and she could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She had hardly had time to imagine who it was when another knock echoed up the stairs, louder this time. She grabbed her dressing gown and struggled into it when she heard a shuffling sound outside on the extension roof. She turned Mumford down a touch and listened again.
Looking out of the bedroom window she could see the familiar stripes of a marked police interceptor on the road at the front of the house. Its presence allowed her to relax a little. Her breathing slowed slightly, to almost normal. A uniformed officer stood at the gate talking to a man in an ill fitting suit. They were looking at the house as they spoke. Another loud knock reverberated through her home. She turned and caught sight of a shadow moving on the roof of the extension but when she tried to focus on it, there was nothing there. One second it had been there and the next it was gone. Her mouth went dry and there were alarm bells ringing in her head. She edged closer to the rear window and peeped around the edge of a navy blue velvet curtain. Raindrops streaked the glass as they raced downwards to the sill. Her eyes scanned the flat roof, left to right.
Nothing.
Bang, bang, bang on the front door. The noise made her jump. She drew the curtains closed and moved back from the window, hand shaking with fear although she didn’t know why. Bang, bang, bang, louder this time.
“Miss Barrat!” A voice called through her letterbox. “It’s the police. We need to talk to you immediately.” She was fixed to the spot for a moment but another sharp knock snapped her into action. “Miss Barrat!” Bang, bang, bang. “Can you open the door please!”
“I’m coming,” she called. She was flustered. Flustered, confused and frightened. She checked her appearance in the mirror, slipped her feet into her slippers and headed along the hallway to the stairs. Stainless steel frames held black and white pictures of her family. They lined the walls from the top of the staircas
e to the bottom. She held the walnut banister as she descended. Her legs felt shaky and her knees were weak. The letterbox was open, fingers poked through and eyes watched her. She felt scared in her own home for the first time in her life. “Who are you again?”
“Detective Constable Maxwell,” the voice said. “Detective Inspector Annie Jones sent me. I need to talk to you urgently, Miss Barrat. Open the door please.”
Toni hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. She pulled her dressing gown tightly closed and opened the door. Detective Maxwell and his colleague eyed her suspiciously. His black skin glistened with rain. He straightened his tie and stepped in without waiting to be asked, flashing his ID as he did so.
“This is DC Lucas,” Maxwell introduced the other detective. “We need to take you into protective custody, Miss Barrat,” he said abruptly.
“I don’t have time to sit in a police station all day,” Toni said defensively. Not being in control was fraying her nerves. “I told the DI this morning that I cannot divulge who my source is and my position hasn’t changed.”
“There have been some major developments since then.” Maxwell looked at the photographs on the wall and frowned. He looked bemused. “Can you tell us what you were doing at Yates’s Emporium this morning?”
“That’s none of your business.” Toni distractedly rubbed her hair with the towel, trying hard to be aloof.
“Did you leave the police station and go straight to see your informant?”
“What?” Toni asked incredulously.
“Did you go direct to see your source at the pawnbrokers?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Maybe you were angry with them or you wanted to warn them about what had happened?”
“Now you are being ridiculous.”
“Why is that so ridiculous?” Maxwell shrugged.
“Because it is!”
Maxwell tucked his hands inside his pockets and shook his head. He had a quizzical look on his face. “Someone thinks that you went there to see your informant.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Someone went to see her after you did.”
“Who did?” Toni felt sick inside.
“We don’t know,” he shrugged. “Why did you go there?”
“To see Kayla!”
“Kayla Yates?”
“Yes.”
“Is she your informant?”
“No, of course not!”
“How do you know Kayla?”
“We live together. She’s my partner for God’s sake!”
CHAPTER 15
Annie leaned against the van to put on her stab vest. Miranda Snow stood smoking a cigarette and kicked at the wheel, impatient and irritated. The wind blew in off the river and brought the smell of rotting fish with it. They were downwind of fertiliser factories that bulldozed mountains of waste fish into their concoctions every day. They were great for growing plants but not so good for the local residents that lived within the range of the prevailing winds. Annie could see why they had picked that unit for a vehicle exchange. The Fletcher Bros garage was a reasonably big operation and considering that it was within the city limits, it was fairly remote. The skyline was dominated by the suspension bridge. Its huge green girders seemed to glimmer against the grey clouds. Her attention was drawn by the area helicopter swooping overhead. It wasn’t often that she was beneath it twice in one day. Her feet had hardly touched the ground since the first report about Antonia Barrat. The case was snowballing out of control and the brass still hadn’t appointed a Senior Investigating Officer. She was hoping that whatever was left behind at Fletcher Bros would give them something concrete to work on. Armed units had entered the premises and so far, all was quiet.
“Clear!” The armed unit’s senior officer signalled that it was safe to enter the garage. “We need paramedics in here quickly!”
Annie and Miranda walked towards the building, heading for what she assumed was the customer reception area. It had been manufactured from a conservatory and bolted onto the front of the converted barn. The difference between the old and new was stark. The glass roof allowed the light in and gave it an airy feeling. Three of the walls were glass; the wall behind the counter was solid and decorated with certificates and photographs of custom built supercars. Two beaten up red leather settees provided seating. Annie spotted a large calendar that depicted a blond ‘mechanic’ wearing fishnet stockings, thigh length boots and not much else. Annie didn’t believe that she was a mechanic at all. She did have a spanner in one hand, although why she was licking it was beyond Annie.
“Why do I feel that I’ve been transported back to the 80’s?” Annie mumbled.
“I am way too young to remember them,” Miranda said from behind her.
“You keep telling yourself that.” Annie grinned sourly. The reception desk ran wall to wall, waist high with an access hatch that was raised. Annie stepped through the hatch and then through a doorway that led to the main office.
“This is Paul Fletcher.” The senior armed officer said as they walked in. Inspector Norris gestured to a man in oily overalls who was handcuffed and sat on a chair. Fletcher’s curly brown hair was receding and he wore a full goatee beard and thick moustache. He had his head bowed, looking at his steel toecap boots. “He made the 999 call.”
“What happened?” Annie asked.
“I am not a hundred percent sure what happened. We were tied up and shoved into a cupboard. We didn’t expect any of this,” Paul Fletcher said forlornly.
“Who put you in the cupboard?”
“Three men walked in with shotguns. We had no choice.”
“What did you expect to happen?” Miranda asked.
“We agreed to swap a van for a customer, no questions asked,” he shrugged. “They paid us upfront to dismantle a Volkswagen van and we sold them a second hand Mercedes. That was it.” He looked at Annie as he spoke and she could see from the look in his eyes that he was masking the truth. “The Merc has gone so I’m assuming they left here in it.”
“I want the registration of that vehicle,” Miranda snapped.
“The paperwork is on the desk there. They’re copies; they took the originals.”
Miranda picked up the registration document and handed it to a uniformed officer. “Have this called in immediately. The occupants are armed and dangerous.” The officer nodded and stepped outside to use his radio. “When was this ‘sale’ arranged?” Miranda asked sarcastically.
“This morning.” Fletcher blushed. “It was a rush job.”
“You didn’t think that it was suspicious?”
“I didn’t think it was going to be ‘this’ illegal,” he stuttered. “They stitched us up completely. I didn’t expect this...”
“I bet you didn’t,” Annie murmured. It wasn’t the first time that day that she had heard that. She didn’t think that the Fletcher brothers were involved with the traffickers. Paul Fletcher certainly wasn’t. He wasn’t the type but it didn’t detract from the fact that they were aiding drug dealers. Whether they were aware of it or not was irrelevant. Ignorance was no defence from the law. “Who is ‘they’?” Annie asked.
“I didn’t ask. The money was too good to turn down.”
“How were you approached?”
“By telephone,” he stammered. “It was via an existing customer. We were wary of the deal in the first place. It was too good to be true and we couldn’t see what harm it would do but when they turned up with guns...” He shrugged. “My brother Peter tried to talk our way out of it and got his skull cracked for his troubles. By then it was too bloody late.”
“Where was the caller from?”
“What?”
“What accent did the caller have?”
“I didn’t speak to them. My brother did,” he looked confused. “Why would that matter?”
Annie ignored the question. “The men that hit your brother and tied you up, were they foreign?”
Fletcher shoo
k his head as he thought back. “They had local accents.” He frowned as he thought of something else. “The men in the garage were foreign. That is a definite. I heard them shouting, Polish or Russian or something like that.”
“Okay, Mr Fletcher,” Annie said with a sigh. “We’ll need to sit down with you and talk in detail about who this existing customer is.” Fletcher nodded and returned his stare to his boots. “Do the CCTV cameras work?”
“Yes but they took the disks.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw them when they were tying us up.”
She gestured to a uniformed officer. “Get him to Canning Place.”
“The paramedics are with his brother,” Norris gestured to a hallway that ran from the office to the service bays. “He’s had a nasty blow to the head but he seems to be responding.”
“We’ll need to send someone with him to casualty,” Annie ordered.
“I’d rather it was an armed escort.” Miranda insisted.
“Agreed,” Norris said, “I’ll have two of my men with him in the ambulance.”