KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8)

by Frank Lean

  Technetium-99m now complete … Caesium-137 material still arriving ... 8.5 metric tons R/W now available … dump at M.O.Lochhead and Sons Ltd w/h … X-day Saturday asr … wind … strong breeze 25-30 mph westerly

  I believe this gives clues about the method they will use to implement their plot and the timing. I have relayed this information to Alban so he may be able to clarify the meaning. I’m sure the name M.O.Lochhead is significant.

  Margaret Pickering can be reached on 0298 2906826. She will answer with her full name. You will say “Mrs Pickering I’m calling on behalf of the Green Energy Solar Panel Company. Do you know the Government is helping us to offer you a very good deal on solar panels?”

  She will say “No thank you. The way the climate is now I don’t think solar panels are any use to me. Please don’t phone again.’

  If satisfied she will then call your number, using a secure phone. She will ask a special question. If you answer correctly she will give you the information you need about Alban.

  David, whatever choice you make I wish you the best of everything and I apologise for ever doubting you and believing the worst. Quite by chance my friend Mrs Elsworth revealed your true nature to me. I believe you will be a worthy custodian of my late wife’s inheritance,

  With fondest regards,

  Lew

  I was stunned. I hardly noticed when Tony plucked the notebook from my fingers. I’d been pinning so much on having a name, a person I could plead my case with.

  Tony disappeared into the computer room.

  I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock. If the cloak for my call to Margaret Pickering was to pose as a cold-caller now was the time to for it. I dashed upstairs for the anonymous mobiles Tony had delivered yesterday. They were fully charged. It took me a moment to note down the numbers then I went down, grabbed the notebook back off Tony who’d already scribbled down the info and called Margaret Pickering’s number.

  She picked up at once.

  ‘Margaret Pickering.’

  I intoned Lew’s pass phrase into the phone. I said each word carefully and deliberately, avoiding any slip.

  There was a pause of several seconds before she replied. My heart was in my mouth, and then she came back with the correct answer. Her words were not spoken with the polished, upper class diction I’d been expecting. This lady sounded a lot like Granny Clarrie, an East Ender. I broke the call and put the phone down. It rang immediately.

  ‘What did the boy hide behind the sofa?’

  It took me a second or two to gather my wits. It wasn’t what I’d been expecting. Lew, Aunty Magdalen, Weldsley … then my brain made the link.

  ‘He hid a broken china cup.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve got here. Now listen, have you got another mobile, if you have one call me on this number. I don’t want to make things easy for them.’

  As soon as I muttered yes, she ended the call.

  I phoned her on a second unregistered phone.

  ‘Sorry for the telephone games, but they’re necessary,’ she said when she replied. ‘You’re the judge’s special man, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘I’m going out of my mind with worry about my husband. I’m supposed to put you in touch with him but when I call the number he left me I just get nothing. His phone’s switched off, which never happens with him. Something’s wrong. He’s never out of touch.’

  Her anxiety transmitted itself to me and magnified a hundred times in my mind but I struggled to keep a grip.

  ‘There could be any number of explanations.’

  ‘No, it’s bad. I know it. I’ve been half expecting it since he opposed that monster’s plan.’

  ‘Do you know the man’s name?’

  ‘No, er … my husband would never tell me. He said they knew he didn’t tell his wife things and that would save my life if anything happened to him.’

  ‘Tell me what he did after he received the judge’s news on Sunday.’

  ‘That’s what’s caused this! He dashed off back up north.’

  ‘Where? I think you can say … our phones are secure.’

  ‘Secure, that’s a joke. There is some warehouse up there, in Corrieland, you know … in a big city. He had to check it before confronting the swine who’s doing these things and trying to get him to stop. I argued with him but he said he had to take a chance for the good of the service and now look what’s happened. I’m now a widow for the good of the service.’

  ‘We don’t know what’s happened but you’ve given me an idea and I’ll try to track him down.’

  ‘He’s dead! I know it.’

  ‘You can’t be certain of that. Give me the number just in case.’

  She said it quickly and I made her repeat it.

  ‘It’s no use. I’m certain he’s dead. Listen if you have a wife and children don’t be like … like my poor, loyal, flag-saluting chump of a husband. Put them first. Get on a plane to America or Australia. Whatever happens here won’t affect them.’

  ‘I’m committed and I have to go on.’

  ‘Brave, are you? It’s better to be alive if you ask me. My husband only wanted to use you as a last resort but first the judge has gone and now him. You are the last resort whoever you are. I hope to God you’re as good and as lucky as I was told you are.’

  The phone went dead.

  Tony came back to me as I was removing the battery.

  ‘Have you got the name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you’ll want to hear what the bastard’s up to. I know the whole thing.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said sceptically.

  ‘Geiger counters, Dave. What do they do?’ he asked breezily.

  ‘I’ve no time for this.’

  ‘Yes you have if you want to understand the cunning plan these people have come up with. They measure radiation.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. I was annoyed. I needed a minute to think about what Margaret Pickering had told me but Tony wasn’t going to let me have it.

  ‘What were people shit scared of at Windscale, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima and loads of other nuclear accidents? Radiation, that’s what and fear of radiation panics people.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Particles, that’s how you get the radiation to the people … carried on the breeze, in this case at thirty miles an hour. They’re going to spread a cloud of radioactive particles by burning a dump of radioactive waste.’

  I thought for a moment but I realised he had to be right.

  ‘But it’s insane. Who’d want to live in a country after it had been contaminated?’

  ‘That’s the cunning bit. I said it was a cunning plan. Technetium-99m is used in nuclear medicine. It decays almost immediately which is why they use it. If you burned a big pile of waste containing microscopic traces of it the smoke would register on a Geiger counter but it wouldn’t do any harm.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Now if you want a panic you salt the area round the bonfire with some Caesium-137. That’s really lethal stuff. The balloon would go up if the Government thought a cloud of Caesium was drifting across the country. They’d have to start mass evacuations of millions of people, move them down south or up to Scotland.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Why do you think your uncle was trying to write M.O. Lochhead under his body while they tortured him? They must have let him in on the secret and he knew that if anyone went to that warehouse they’d discover the whole gigantic con trick.’

  ‘I must phone Brendan.’

  ‘Wait, there’s another thing. They’re hoping the cloud will blow east over Rochdale, Oldham, Bradford and all the rest of West Yorkshire. Those are places where there are a lot of Muslims.’

  ‘That’s too complicated for my limited brain.’

  ‘No, think about it. You said this Appleyard guy was mustard to blame the Muslims for your Uncle Lew … doesn’t like Muslims, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ />
  ‘Well, now he’s got half the Muslim population in the country on the move. What could be easier than to put them in camps and deport them after blaming the whole thing on them? How’s that for a plot, Dave?’

  I looked at him for a moment. His eyes were gleaming with intelligence if that’s possible. Tony could be really dangerous if he put his reconditioned brain to it.

  I phoned Brendan Cullen, there was no reply. I phoned Claverhouse and again she wasn’t answering. I tried Pickering’s number with the same result. I suddenly felt as if the collar of my shirt was trying to strangle me. I pulled it loose. Pickering, Cullen, Claverhouse and were unavailable. It was impossible. Something bad was happening. In despair I phoned Rick Appleyard’s number. It too was unavailable. I phoned Appleyard because if he really was the villain I could do something to him if he let me get within arm’s length. I wasn’t convinced of his guilt. As described by Peter Kelly, Lew’s visitor was nothing like Appleyard.

  I was on the point of phoning the GMP when the house phone rang.

  I picked it up.

  ‘Is that Mr Lane’s carer?’ a quavering voice enquired. ‘It’s Mrs Cunningham here. There are men in black creeping up on your house. They’ve got the road shut off …’

  The line went dead. It had been cut.

  I sprinted into the kitchen.

  ‘Lee, get the car out of the garage and drive over the lawn and through the rose bed to the gazebo,’ I ordered while retrieving the rucksack from the cupboard.

  He looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

  ‘Do it now!’ I screamed.

  He moved.

  ‘Tony, Clint, we’re being raided, into the cellar now!’

  Tony dashed out of the computer room. He had two books in his hand. Clint already had the cellar door open and we went down the steps like rabbits with a fox on their tails. An explosion rattled through the house. That would be the front door being blown in. Finding the cellar entrance might take them a minute or two longer. We had a chance. Clint knew what to do. He opened the secret passage door and thrust Tony through it. I followed. Clint squeezed himself in behind me.

  37

  Friday: 9.25 a.m.

  It took us just seconds to reach the end of the escape tunnel. There were no sounds behind us.

  Clint heaved up the manhole cover just as Lee stopped the BMW in exactly the right spot. Not much of it was visible from the street side of the house because the brick-built, double garage blocked the view. There was a path between the garage and the house.

  We weren’t a second too soon.

  I could hear shouts and radio chatter from the front of the house.

  I jumped into the car next to Lee. I’d have preferred to drive but out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a figure in black military combat fatigues with a black hood or balaclava of the type worn by Formula One racing car drivers crossing the gap between house and garage. He didn’t look in our direction but the man following him did.

  He knelt, aimed an automatic weapon and opened fire at once. No caution, no warning: these weren’t police.

  A bullet hit the inside of the door as I was slamming it shut and another shattered the passenger side mirror. As luck would have it Tony and Clint got in at the other side and were completely shielded by the garage.

  Lee accelerated across the lawns, crunching through rose bushes and then smashing through the hedge and fence at the back. A bullet hit the rear window. It must have traversed the interior diagonally and exited through Lee’s open window without hitting anything else or anybody. In seconds we were out onto the cinder lane jolting over potholes that threatened to ram our heads through the BMW’s roof. In another moment we were zooming through a maze of side streets.

  A glance in the mirror showed no pursuit but I couldn’t expect it to be far behind. There were very visible tracks across the lawns. They may have lost vital seconds connecting with their transport but I couldn’t count on it.

  Using the glowing screen of the BMW’s GPS navigation device as guidance I directed Lee onto the main A538 and then turned left instead of back towards Manchester. We’d be picked up immediately on the wide straight commuter roads into the city.

  The main objective now was to get away from the hit squad targeting Ridley Close. Who were they? They could only be the mysterious MoD team that obeyed Mr Big. Distance had to be my main priority.

  Lee was straining at the bit for a car chase but I kept reminding him about speed limits. Mr Big had his contacts in the civil police so reports of a car chase might get his attention.

  We drove carefully through Hale and Hale Barns until we reached the motorway intersection, a complex junction involving two separate roundabouts. On my orders Lee drove slowly round the first roundabout. If we were being tailed they were very far behind.

  ‘Could they have put a tracker on the car,’ I asked.

  ‘There’s no signal of any sort from this car,’ Tony stated flatly, holding up his bug detector, ‘but they could be tracking us by satellite or even with a drone.’

  ‘Would they go to such lengths? This is Manchester not Afghanistan.’

  ‘Dave, those were real bullets they were firing. If they think you’ve rumbled their plot they’d go to any lengths. Ask yourself how they found Ridley Close? They must have triangulated phone calls you’ve received. Have you used any phone more than twice?’

  I thought for a second.

  ‘Aunty Velmore.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘It’s what I call the phone Marvin gave me.’

  He held out his hand.

  I felt through the numerous mobiles in my pockets and fished it out.

  ‘Dave!’ he accused, ‘this isn’t even switched off! And it’s got GPS.’

  He flung it out of the window.

  ‘Pull in somewhere,’ he said to Lee. We pulled up at the side of the road leading towards Wilmslow.

  I hung my head. Days of meticulously following procedure and then I’d neglected it with a phone that was bound to be suspect.

  ‘So they’ll be on us in minutes?’ I muttered.

  ‘If they’re following us visually and by that phone they could be. They’ll be able to identify this car from above.’

  ‘Drive on,’ I told Lee.

  The route ahead took us into the tunnel under the runways of Manchester Airport. It wasn’t a long tunnel but we made the most of it by crawling along at five miles an hour and ignoring the angry horns of the cars behind us. We emerged on the road passing Lindow Moss and pulled into the nature reserve. The trees were in lush foliage and after a ten minute wait I decided that if we were being observed from above they’d lost us.

  As we cruised along the tree shrouded lanes of Wilmslow my confidence grew. Then it was on to Weldsley Park for a change of car. We left the BMW under a yew in a corner of the drive.

  ‘Mr Cunane, what can I do for you?’ Peter Kelly asked genially.

  ‘I need one of the cars.’

  ‘There’s the Rolls. I’ll be happy to drive you anywhere you like.’

  ‘Have you got anything else?’

  ‘Sir Lew used his Ford Focus when he was going to church or the shops or anywhere by himself. The Rolls was mainly for court days … ’

  The question of why the hell he’d parked it outside my office on Monday occurred to me. Maybe he’d feared that if he came in on public transport they’d have bumped him off before he ever reached Pimpernel Investigations. Or could it be that he thought that unless I was targeted I wouldn’t do his bidding. Who knew?

  ‘… and then there’s the estate car. The long wheel base Land Rover that your uncle uses when we visit the farms on the estate,’ he continued, unconsciously slipping into the present tense.

  ‘They’ll do. I’ll take them both,’ I said abruptly. There wasn’t time to worry about his sensitivities.

  To his credit Kelly obeyed without even a Jeeves-like rolling of the eyes.

  While we waited I phoned Mar
garet Pickering on a previously unused phone. There was no reply. That could be ominous or it could simply be that she was out at the shops.

  Lee took the opportunity to study the BMW. Inspection revealed that apart from the bullet holes in the passenger door and the rear window there were several dents and deep scratches on the front and sides of the formerly immaculate vehicle. He was aghast.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault. I only did what you told me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Lee.’

  ‘Worry? He’ll rip my f**king head off. Bob loves that car more than he loves Tammy.’

  Kelly arrived in a black, highly polished two year old Ford Focus. He got out and looked at the Beamer. He raised one eyebrow fractionally.

  ‘This is minor damage. I can have this fixed at the main dealer’s today and back to you as good as new in a couple of days.’

  ‘Minor damage? That’s a f**king bullet hole.’

  ‘Young man, there’s a code of honour among us chauffeurs. If the dealer makes any sort of fuss he knows he’ll lose the custom of every other chauffeur in a hundred mile radius. As I say, the damage is minor and it’s fixable. I shall say this was an accidental discharge by a lawfully armed individual. Such things are not uncommon.’

  ‘There you go, Lee, there’s nothing to worry about. You and Tony take the Ford.’

  Kelly showed no unwillingness about handing over the keys of his deceased master’s car to Lee who despite the minor improvements I’d detected still looked the very image of a young scally.

  Kelly set off again and Lee watched him go.

  ‘Helpful old bugger, int he?’

  ‘It’s his job, Lee. He’s a servant.’

  Lee laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of that answer.