by Conrad Jones
Ivor crossed the road, his hands deep in his pockets, collars turned up and shoulders hunched against the breeze. His footsteps echoed from the pavement as he reached the second close. He checked the tracker as he neared the entrance. The briefcase was moving. He frowned and checked again. It was moving east to west slowly and erratically. He listened but couldn’t hear a car engine nearby. He walked further into the close and watched as the tracker showed the briefcase moving in ever decreasing circles. Ivor looked around and checked the GPS. This was the right place but the houses on his Google map were not actually there yet. The foundations had been laid and the first course of bricks had been built and then covered with Visqeen. The case moved again, stopped and then began to circle once more. Ivor cursed and reluctantly entered the street.
“What the fuck are you doing with my drugs,” he muttered under his breath. When he reached the third plot he checked the tracker again. The red arrow was still moving. It appeared to be zigzagging five metres left and right and then it circled again but in the opposite direction. It stopped and he looked up. The tracker was pointing to a position just a few metres in front of him. Ivor contemplated his next move. Had the chip corrupted giving the impression that the case was moving, or had Gary Powell hidden his merchandise, buried it maybe and the movement was simply refraction from the ground?
He checked around him and stepped from the pavement onto the plot. As he reached the concrete footings, he checked the tracker once more. The signal was now behind him. Ivor turned and retraced his steps. He was level with it but it was a few metres to his right. Taking a penlight torch from his inside pocket, he scanned the ground. Perhaps there would be signs of something buried or maybe a manhole cover. He was anxious as he studied the ground. There was a scratching noise to his left. He heard breathing. As the torchlight illuminated the ground in front of him it suddenly became obvious to him. On the next plot was a Portakabin that had steps leading up to its door. Ivor guessed it was the site office though daylight hours and a security hut at night. Whatever it was, it was dark inside. At the side of the steps was a kennel. As he shone the torch, a German Shepherd trotted out of the kennel. It went to the end of its tether and then trotted in a circle before slipping back into his kennel. Ivor checked the scanner and looked around. The tracker showed the case had stopped moving and was close. Ivor scanned the ground with his torch. A metre to his left was a curly pile of dog shit that had steam still rising from it. Without checking the excrement, Ivor knew that the chip from the briefcase had been removed and then replanted into some food, probably a sausage before being fed to the dog. Now, it had a smelly new home and Ivor had been duped. Ivor shook his head and bit his bottom lip. He had underestimated Gary Powell this time but he wouldn’t underestimate him again.
CHAPTER 42
Annie yawned and stretched her aching limbs. Five minutes earlier, she had taken a call from the hospital; the situation wasn’t good. Two hours sleep had left her groggy and weak but the news woke her up quickly. Kayla Yates had crashed in surgery. She had died on the operating table. Her heart had stopped and they couldn’t restart it for over two minutes. It was touch and go. Concerned about her brain being starved of oxygen for too long, the surgeons almost gave up but she responded at the last second. They had stabilised her and put her into an induced coma to allow her body to rest and repair itself but they were not convinced that she would make it through the night.
Annie didn’t want Antonia Barrat to go to the hospital. She simply could not protect her there. Despite her concerns, she had no choice. She had arranged to have her taken to see Kayla under escort. The Royal was under reconstruction and as such was a security nightmare. The new building had twelve storeys, twenty-three wards, six hundred and forty-six en-suite bedrooms, a forty bed critical care unit and nineteen operating theatres. It would take a small army to secure the building and defend their witnesses. Raitis Girts, Peter Fletcher, Kayla Yates and an unnamed Latvian woman were all under armed guard at the hospital. They were all on different wards in separate parts of the huge building. Adding Toni into the mix would only make a fragile situation critical. She had a limited amount of armed resources to utilise and they were spread thinly.
Earlier on, after a few drinks, Stirling had gone back to the station. He had intended to sleep in one of the bunks but when the call came in from the Royal, he insisted that he would escort Toni Barrat to the hospital. It had been a stretch for Annie to acquire and deploy another two armed officers to escort them but she had pulled it off. She looked at the clock and wished for the daylight hours to come quickly. The doctors had indicated that Peter Fletcher and the Latvian woman could possibly be released by lunchtime, which would mean two less targets to protect. It would be easier to protect Toni in the daylight and she would have more men at her disposal.
Annie lay awake for a while mulling things over. Alec’s return was both reassuring and disappointing. She enjoyed the support that he gave to her during an investigation but she also liked being in charge without him around. Her mind was too busy to allow her to sleep. She threw off the quilt and pulled on her dressing gown. Her feet were cold so she stepped into her tiger feet slippers and padded through to her kitchen. She filled up the kettle and switched it on. Coffee would take the edge off her tiredness. She avoided her reflection in the window and spooned the granules into a mug and waited for the kettle to boil. As she opened the fridge to get the milk, she heard her mobile ringing in the bedroom. It rang twice before her landline began to ring in unison. With both phones ringing at once, she didn’t need to be a detective to know that something major had happened.
Annie jogged into her living room and picked up the handset. The number dialling was withheld so she knew that it was work. She walked to the window as she answered it.
“DI Jones.”
“Annie it’s me,” Alec said hurriedly. “I know that you have only just gone to sleep but we’ve got problems.”
“What’s happened?” Annie looked past her reflection in the glass. Something in the near distance had caught her attention. The trees in her garden swayed gently in the wind illuminated by a dull yellowy orange glow from the streetlights. At night, it glimmered from the bark, almost flickering. In the winter when there was snow on the ground, the bare branches would almost glow in the dark, the flakes tinged yellow with the artificial light.
“Area Command has pulled all armed officers from non-essential deployments.”
“What?” Annie asked tiredly. “Why would they do that for God’s sake?”
“Four armed incidents have been reported in the last hour. They have deployed every armed officer that they have and all leave has been cancelled. Unless they’re out of the country, they’re on their way in now.”
“How many officers have they taken from us at the Royal?”
“All of them,” Alec sighed. “They’re being deemed as non-essential. I’ve replaced them with uniform for now.”
“All of them?” Annie moaned. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“What do you think?”
“Sorry, Guv but this is madness. How can they possibly prioritise anything over this?”
“Simple,” Alec explained. “Children.” He paused to allow her to catch up. “There’s a report of a gunman on the rampage at Alder Hey Hospital. He’s held up the coffee shop and shot up the reception area before threatening to kill as many kids as he can.”
“Jesus,” Annie moaned resignedly.
“Add to that someone has reported that King David’s School has been attacked by Muslim extremists; three bullets were fired through a window. Another report says that shots have been fired into a residential tower block in Netherley and a geriatric nursing home has reported that several windows have been shattered and there are bullet holes in the ceiling. They’re spread out across the city. The emergency lines have gone mad. You can see why they’re redeploying the armed units. The emergency switchboard is inundated with firearms incidents.”
“It doesn’t but what else can the ARU do?”
“Nothing I guess. Are the same people responsible for them all?” Annie asked. “What the bloody hell is going on?”
“I don’t know, Annie. AC has no other choice but to respond to every incident as an individual episode. Especially where kids are involved.”
“Can you really see an extremist attack happening at King David?”
“Yes,” Alec said flatly. “It is full of rich Jewish kids. Some powerful people send their offspring there and it is a soft target,” Alec said thoughtfully. “Apparently an eyewitness reported two men with beards shooting at the school. Can you see the headlines tomorrow? A school full of Jewish children under attack is a political minefield. AC has to respond with everything that we have.”
“I have a bad feeling about this, Guv,” Annie sighed. She noticed that the yellowy orange glimmer on the trees had become considerably more orange than yellow. It flickered and danced much more than it should even if there was a stiff breeze. She frowned and walked back into the kitchen. “Four armed incidents of this gravity in one night. Bit too much of a coincidence for me to swallow.” She paused and peered out of the kitchen window. “Fucking hell!” Annie swore loudly.
“There’s no point in shouting at me. There’s nothing that we can do. Area Command is trying to draft in reinforcements from neighbouring....”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Annie shouted.
“Annie?”
“Call the fire brigade!”
“What is it, Annie?”
“Someone has set fire to my house!”
CHAPTER 43
Raitis Girts was semi-aware of his surroundings. He had vivid memories of the African women attacking Oleg; their anger and hatred was aimed at him initially. Raitis had watched helplessly as they rained down brutal blows with a variety of makeshift weapons. Oleg had put up a monumental struggle before he finally succumbed to the beating. He eventually curled up and tried to protect his head with his handcuffed arm. It was quickly broken and useless leaving his skull vulnerable. That was when Oleg sought respite from the attack by hiding behind his associates, which made them targets too. Raitis remembered the first blow to the top of his skull from a sledgehammer. It was enough to turn the lights out. He lost consciousness quickly, although he was aware that his body was being battered regardless. The pain still registered somewhere in his brain. The screeching of the women during their frenzied attack was like a chorus from a choir of demons from the darkest reaches of hell itself. He was aware of his bones being fractured and broken and at that point he embraced the idea of dying. Death was a far more attractive option at that point. The incredible pain and the paralyzing fear of more pain to come were too much to take. He didn’t want to die but he didn’t want to live if it meant suffering.
The ambulance journey was more of a sensation than a memory. The sensation of intense pain and the feeling of motion flashed into the dark parts of his mind. He wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead but he had memories. Maybe that is what we all become, he thought, just memories. Part of him wanted to wake up but another part of his brain had embraced the morphine. It was intelligent enough to recognise that when the morphine entered his bloodstream, the pain stopped. It also knew that fighting the morphine would lessen its effects and the pain would return; dull and muffled at first but it would intensify to the point where it would be unbearable. That part of his brain wanted nothing to do with reality and waking up was not an option, his body was broken, bones cracked, muscles crushed, tendons and ligaments torn. He embraced the opiate and the tranquillity that it gave. Better to be numb and oblivious than awake and suffering.
While his mind debated with itself, he was unaware that the nurse in the room had a syringe full of insulin in her hand. She searched along his thigh, which was black and purple, his femur cracked in three places and she injected the liquid into his bruised muscle. Raitis didn’t feel the jab nor would he have cared. There was a slight moment of panic in his brain when his heart stopped beating but it wasn’t prolonged and then even his memories stopped.
CHAPTER 44
There was no going back and going forward would be more of the same. She vividly remembered that bastard Oleg had fastened them to a radiator and left them for dead. She didn’t know why they had left in such a hurry and it didn’t matter. Being left to burn had hurt her feelings. Feelings? Yes, she still had them although they were complicated and confused. She felt that she was the lowest of the low. Sold into slavery by an alcoholic father to be used as a whore indefinitely was bad enough, but to realise that she had no value at all was devastating. She wasn’t worth taking. It was better to let her burn. Krista struggled with it. The police and doctors were horrified that someone could tie another human being to a pipe and leave them to suffocate and burn but that didn’t surprise Krista. They were violent, brutal men. Her issue was that they didn’t think that she was worth taking with them. She was a whore but she was their whore and they didn’t think that she was worth keeping. She had no value at all and that hurt dreadfully. It was as if the fragile walls of her shit life had tumbled down on her. Her feelings were irrational yet she was devastated by their betrayal. The only identity that she had left had been snatched away. She was Krista the whore but they had valued her once. They had invested time and money into breaking her and shaping her into what they wanted her to be and they valued her. That misplaced assumption was shattered into a million pieces. Even as a whore she was worthless. That realisation had broken her heart.
As she lay in the hospital bed and contemplated what had happened, she began to feel sorry for herself. She had never allowed herself to do so before. She was trapped from the moment she stepped on the plane. Krista toyed with the idea of freedom for a while. The policeman with the cheeky smile had made her think about being free. The reality was that there was no way of gaining it without hurting her family. One way or the other she would be found and forced back into the life of slavery servicing a succession of sweaty balding men month in and month out. There was a never ending queue of fat middle aged men waiting to use her and others like her. She couldn’t go back to that life; not for one moment. Her life was already mapped out for her and there would be no happy ending. She would never meet a good looking man like the policeman who guarded her room. There would be no fairytale romance, no wedding and no children, not for her. Fate had conspired against her and she was destined for nothing but more of the same abuse that she had suffered for five years. There was no going back and no end to her suffering going forward but there was a way out. Krista slipped out of her bed and walked to the window. She marvelled at the lights of the city as she opened the window and climbed onto the ledge. A breath of cold breeze whispered in her ear. It made her skin tingle and she welcomed it. It made her feel clean and pure for the first time in years. There was no hesitation in her mind as she took one last mouthful of fresh air and stepped off.
CHAPTER 45
Toni Barrat felt sick to the core. The anticipation was torturous. The big sergeant hadn’t told her much. She knew that he was beating around the bush. The police wouldn’t be escorting her to the hospital in the dark unless the doctors had said there was a chance Kayla may not make it through the night. If there was nothing seriously wrong, they would have waited until daylight. She felt like her intestines were being crushed in a vice. Her expectation was that the worst that could happen would happen. She was setting herself up, steeling herself against the bad news. Kayla would die. Everyone she loved died, that’s just how it was. This time would be worse because she was to blame. Guilt was crushing her. Toni had stepped into something that was way out of her league and then led the gangsters straight back to Kayla. Mike was already dead. That was her fault too. Thinking about what he had suffered made her feel nauseous. They must have tortured him for information but the poor man didn’t have any, nothing worthwhile at any rate. Kayla hadn’t discussed the sou
rce of the information with him. They took his eyes out and put them in a bag. Who would do that? The detective at her house said they were sending a message. Toni had flipped. ‘No shit Sherlock. I can see how you got out of wearing a uniform; a one man crime busting phenomenon. They were sending a message. Do you think so?’
She wasn’t the biggest fan of the police and that swung both ways. As a journalist she was aware that there were plenty of hardworking talented police officers on the force but sadly she had encountered corrupt, incompetent and unintelligent officers too. In her opinion, the latter were in the majority.
“Are you okay?” Stirling asked from the seat next to her. He disturbed her thoughts with a stupid question.
“Would you be okay if we were going to see your wife in the ICU?” Toni tried to smile but it didn’t work. “I’m absolutely shitting myself if I’m honest.”
“Nothing wrong with that, I would be too.”
“I’m trying to think positively but it has never worked before, so I don’t see why it should now do you?”
“Sometimes all we can do is hope, Toni,” Stirling nodded. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid question.”