by Frank Lean
‘Thanks.’
‘You’ve got your “lads” I want mine,’ I said, still holding onto his arm.
Clint picked up the bad vibes and came and stood beside me.
‘They’re civilians, two of them ex-cons, and one … well I don’t know what Clint is.’
‘What they are Bren, is the team which has cracked this case. It’s not over yet and if you think I’m going to let you ditch them for the greater glory of Brendan Cullen and the GMP you can think again.’
Clint moved to stand between Bren and the Jag.
Bren surrendered.
He put his arms up.
‘All right, they can come but you’ll have to ditch the Land Rover. I need to be at the M.O.Lochhead warehouse in half an hour and that thing will never keep up.’
There was a glint in his eye.
I knew him well enough to know what he was thinking. Once he was on the main roads he’d leave the trio in the Ford Focus well behind. He didn’t know Lee.
‘You come in my car, Dave. The big guy goes with the others.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘Not OK,’ shouted Tony Nolan. ‘You’re not thinking. How did they know to set that bomb off?’
I looked at Bren. He shook his head.
Tony took out his bug detector and walked slowly round the Jag.
It began pinging when he came to the offside rear wheel, then furiously when he reached the back He moved the detector up and down and put his hand under the tailgate.
‘Open it,’ he demanded.
Bren pressed his key and the lock clicked open. Tony lifted the tailgate up and passed his detector over the interior floor covering.
‘Here we go,’ he said, lifting up the carpet.
Attached to the metal floor was a small square object.
‘That would be a GPS tracker,’ Tony crowed, ‘and they must have manned the hen house at Topfield as soon as you parked the Jag. All they were waiting for was for us to turn up. They probably had the bomb fused for delayed action to give them a chance to get away before it blew.’
Bren tossed the tracker onto the ground and raised his heel to crush it.
‘No, put it on the Land Rover and then they’ll think we’re still here,’ I said.
Seconds later I was in the Jag, siren blaring and all lights flashing, and Bren was racing away from the Cat and Fiddle in the direction of Buxton. As I expected, he was driving like a would-be suicide, of whom plenty have come to grief on this road. Fortunately, we’d already traversed the most dangerous section.
Bren kept looking in his mirror.
‘What the hell,’ he said.
I turned.
The Ford Focus was gaining on us.
‘Yes, Bren,’ I lied, ‘Lee’s a part time rally driver. He does stunt driving for TV companies.’
He grunted to himself and accelerated.
‘Liar,’ he muttered. ‘He’s a bloody get-away driver for Bob Lane, that’s what he is. The closest that little no-hoper’s ever been to a TV company is when his Dad got sent down for stealing TVs. I checked him out after I saw him at Bob’s hidey-hole.’
‘He’s good though.’
Lee was now tailgating us, quite an experience at over a hundred miles an hour on narrow roads. Where was that 3g seatbelt when I needed it?
We were through Buxton and on the A6 into Manchester in a very short time. The Jag ate up the miles and Lee kept pace with us. We went through speed traps but weren’t stopped. The flashing lights, I supposed. We jumped lights, cut through road works, and raced down the wrong side of the busy Stockport section of the A6 but we approached Oldham Road in less than twenty five minutes.
We turned into the industrial area.
It was deserted. There were no houses, only derelict businesses and no one on the streets. We went round one bend and then another before coming to a stop in a street where the pavements had been wrecked by heavy trucks and the road was pitted and scarred by vehicle tracks.
Probably the place was jammed with traffic in prosperous times but in this recession it was desolate and almost sinister. The place looked ripe for a full‑blown ambush. We were lost. There was no sign of M.O.Lochhead’s warehouse.
Tony leaned out of the window of the Ford pointing at his mobile.
‘GPS again,’ Bren muttered, ‘the bloody techno-freak.’
Tony pointed to the next corner.
Bren drove round it cautiously and parked alongside an industrial unit. It wasn’t what I’d been expecting a warehouse to look like but the word ‘Lochhead’ was visible on the building. Secured behind a chain link fence and razor wire it was a large modern looking structure, a steel and aluminium construction which could only be a few years old.
A sign on the corner announced ‘Unit to Let’ with the name of a Manchester commercial estate agent underneath.
The single entrance was a work of art. It consisted of a massive automated steel gate on a track. To ensure closure someone had threaded a heavy chain round and round the gate and the upright retainer. The chain was fastened with an outsized padlock. We slowly drove round the block with the Ford tailing us. When we’d completed the circuit for a second time Bren parked in the entrance. Lee parked alongside.
Beyond the gates there was a marshalling area and turning space the size of two football pitches. We gazed through the gate at the unit beyond. Our drive-by hadn’t provoked a response. The place looked abandoned. The attached car-park was empty.
‘We’re going to need a bolt cutter to cut that chain. We might as well wait until my mates get here, Bren concluded.
‘No need,’ Tony said. ‘I can get us in.’
‘Past that massive padlock?’ Bren asked sceptically.
‘I can,’ he repeated. ‘Size isn’t everything.’
‘He can,’ Lee seconded.
Tony fumbled in his jacket and extracted a thick wallet, which he opened in to reveal a set of lock picks.
‘We might as well let him try,’ I said.
A second later Tony was at the gates.
Bren and I joined him. Lee stayed in the car with Clint. I was alert for any sign of movement, but the air was tranquil, with just the faintest breeze stirring piles of litter into motion. A scrap of paper blew against my foot. I picked it up. It was a National Health Service bandage wrapper.
We were a long way from a hospital.
As if on cue, the distant wail of an ambulance siren reached me as I studied the wrapper. It was the only disturbing sound. There was no bird song. Here in this post-industrial wasteland we were the only living things. There weren’t even dogs or cats.
I could hear Tony grunting to himself as he fiddled with his picks.
‘We’re in,’ he said turning to me with a triumphant smile on his battered features. He held up the heavy padlock in his hand. ‘Cheap Chinese rubbish,’ he announced.
We joined him to unravel the chain and push the heavy gate open. To my surprise it slid open very easily. It was oiled and obviously in regular use. There were no windows in the warehouse structure but attached to it there was a dingy looking temporary office unit. If we were being observed it had to be from there.
Being shot at and almost bombed can have the effect of making a person jumpy and I almost leapt out of my skin when another vehicle drove up suddenly. It was a private ambulance, like the ones used for conveying corpses to undertakers. There were three men crammed in its cab.
‘My team,’ Bren exclaimed quickly enough to prevent me making a run for it.
The men joined Brendan. All of them were casually dressed in leather jackets or fleeces but all three had guns in their hands.
‘Get in the Ford,’ Bren ordered Tony. ‘You wait in the Jag, Dave.’
I didn’t like the way he spoke to me but he raised his hands to push me so I moved.
‘This is no place for civilians,’ he said slowly. ‘I mean it Dave. You can stay in the Jag and phone HQ if anything happens to us but it’s down to my team now. Those
three must leave.’
Tony retreated to the car and Lee backed out and drove round the corner.
‘Lennon, you come with me. Smithy and Temple you cover us from behind the van.’
The ambulace/van was now in the spot vacated by Lee.
Lennon was about six foot four and appeared to have muscles on his muscles. He might even give Clint a run for his money. He was wearing a navy blue Berghaus fleece and jeans and sporting a villainous moustache.
Smith and Temple took up firing positions behind the ambulance.
Lennon wasn’t happy. He unzipped his fleece just enough to reveal a bullet proof jacket.
‘With respect sir, you aren’t armed and you aren’t wearing a jacket. You should stay in the car and let Smithy come with me.’
‘No, we’ll do it like I said. I’ve left a message for the Cabinet Secretary and when he phones back I want to have a result.’
‘Death or glory, is that it sir?’
‘No, the place looks deserted. I have to find out if it is. That’s routine police work, Detective Sergeant or would you prefer that we hang about until the Zimmer Brigade are all over us? If there is a dirty bomb in there, guess who’ll get the credit for finding it if we wait.’
‘OK, Boss,’ the burly henchman agreed.
I got out of the car and approached the pair.
Bren ignored me.
‘Hang on,’ I said grabbing Bren’s arm. ‘You’re betting there’s no-one there but they probably left guards for the bomb … armed guards.’
‘This is a police operation now, Dave,’ he said curtly, fending me off.
‘Oh, yeah, you and three men in an ambulance make a big police operation. Where’s the rest of the squad?’
‘This is it. D/S Lennon couldn’t reach the other three.’
‘Well, I’m coming with you,’ I said.
‘Dave, I’m trying to save you for that pregnant wife of yours. Getting suspended will probably spoil my beautiful relationship with Billy-Jo, so I thought one of us might as well come out of this with his marriage intact.’
‘Stuff that,’ I said.
He shook his head but made no further argument when I set off with him.
‘I’m coming,’ Clint said from behind me. He still had his heavy tweed jacket on but he looked twice as thick round the circumference as normal, a regular Michelin man. Tony caught my glance.
‘Lee put him in his bullet proof,’ he said.
‘Thank God one of us has some sense but what about the ironmongery? Bren will arrest us all for sure …’
‘In the boot.’
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Tony and Lee followed us, with Lee in the rear.
‘Dear God, what is this?’ Bren muttered when he looked over his shoulder, ‘The Magnificent Seven?’
‘Eight, you mean.’
‘I only count seven, your two little pals count as halves.’
‘Don’t sneer, Cullen,’ I said, ‘my lads are magnificent.’
‘Magnificent idiots, that’s what they are.’
I laughed and he punched my arm.
‘Let’s do this thing,’ he said and began to run.
We reached the unit. Close up it was even more imposing than seen from the street. It was like a jumbo jet hangar that someone had picked up off an airfield and dumped in the backstreets. There were a series of four concertina gates each ten metres high and separated by tall steel columns. I knew they were ten metres because that was written above them alongside a speed limit sign for two mph. There were traffic lights fixed up there too.
Proportionate to the gates the structure itself was large. The steel clad building went on above the gates for another ten metres. There was an enormous volume of space inside.
Each concertina shutter was operated by motors or chains inside the warehouse and high and wide enough for heavy trucks. Presumably trucks came in one side and went out another when they’d dumped their load.
There were handgrips where the folding shutters joined in the middle but no locks Tony could pick. Bren and Smithy grabbed one side while Clint took the other. They tried to heave the gates apart. Nothing happened.
Bren banged on the shutter and shouted ‘Police’. He was joined by Lennon and Smith. There was no response from inside.
A newspaper was trapped under the shutter.
Bren ripped it free and looked at the date.
‘This is Thursday’s ‘Evening News’. The place is in use.’
I could see that he was desperately eager to find the dirty bomb and save his career. Nothing was going to stop him getting in now.
Apart from the folding shutters, the only access to the entire structure was through a single door in the front of the office. The temporary office itself looked flimsy enough to tear down with our bare hands but precautions had been taken against that. Heavy steel bars protected the small windows alongside the door. There was razor wire all over the roof and the corners were reinforced with angle iron.
That single door was a high security steel fixture set in a steel frame with six locking points and a tamper proof lock.
‘Well that’s it for now,’ Bren said. ‘We need a locksmith.’
‘Or a tank,’ agreed Lennon.
‘I can do it,’ Tony said eagerly, taking out his picklocks again. ‘I’ve seen a cut-out diagram of that lock in a catalogue.’
‘And how did you manage to get hold of such a catalogue? Distribution of diagrams of high security locks must be restricted,’ the policeman demanded.
‘Oh, it was … er … never mind,’ Tony gabbled. He waved his hands loosely to indicate the impossibility of further explanation. ‘I’ve seen it and I can crack it. It was on page seventy eight of the catalogue.’
‘Nice to see where you recruit your staff, Dave,’ Bren said, turning to me. ‘Are you running the Strangeways Rehabilitation Programme?’
‘Tony’s special, he’s got a reconditioned brain.’
Bren looked at me out of the side of his face but made no effort to stop Tony getting to work. He had nothing more to lose.
‘This doesn’t make sense,’ Tony commented as he went to work with his picks. ‘They have a rubbish Chinese lock on the outside gate and a state of the art lock on here. There must be some other way of opening those folding shutters, perhaps with a remote.’
I looked at the area above the shutters. Apart from the traffic lights and the signs there was nothing up there, no sign of a receiver for signals from a remote. My faith in Tony’s powers decreased.
I didn’t expect him to succeed.
Behind me Bren had taken out his phone and started up a muted conversation.
‘Yes, Sir Garret,’ he was saying, ‘this might be the real MOLOCH. I believe the Sparkbrook arrests are a blind alley. It’s a warehouse belonging to M.O.Lochhead and Sons Limited. Moloch … yes sir … It’s a huge warehouse … completely deserted … We think there might be a large dirty bomb in here … We have a locksmith working to get us in … It could be some time … Cunane’s with me … There are eight of us … We’re armed … Thank you, sir. Yes, I’ll cooperate fully with the MI5 team …’
He broke the call and turned to his men with his thumb up.
‘Reinstated,’ he said to me.
I raised my eyebrows and made a mental note to demand a letter of thanks from the Chief Constable for preserving the reputation of the GMP. Bren shrugged, put his phone away and raised his left hand. His fingers were crossed.
Tony frowned and concentrated. Beads of sweat formed on his hairline but after several minutes and after placing more picks into the lock it clicked open.
‘I’ve read all the standard works on locksmithing,’ Tony said apologetically. ‘They’re restricted but you can get them if you know where to look. This looks very fancy but it’s just your standard five-lever mortice.’
Bren looked at me with an ‘I told you so’ expression and opened the door.
‘They may have all sorts of electro
nic back up alarms,’ Tony warned. ‘There could be booby traps.’
‘Bugger that,’ Bren said. I knew it really was death or glory for him.
He dived inside, closely followed by Smithy and then by me.
Through an unlocked side door we stepped into a cavernous dark space. Unless they were troglodytes used to living in dark spaces there was no one inside except us.
Bren took out a small torch but it was like trying to illuminate a cathedral with a single candle.
‘Can you hear something?’ he said to me.
We stood in silence.
There was a faint droning sound coming from the dark space at the back of the warehouse. There was something sinister about the sound. I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck.
‘It’s the bloody bomb.’ Bren said. ‘The bastards have left it to go off. That’s why there’s no-one here.’
‘Bombs are supposed to tick,’ I muttered but he ignored me.
‘Lights, we need lights,’ he said desperately.
‘There must be a manual way to open those shutters,’ Tony whispered. ‘They’d need it if there was a power cut.’
He slipped away from my side and was joined by Clint. There was a sound of metal being moved and then Clint managed to force one side of the nearest shutter open a few inches. Smithy and Lennon ran to join him. They struggled but couldn’t manage to open it further.
‘It’s motorised and the brake or whatever is pushing against us,’ Lennon gasped to his boss.
Nevertheless the narrow shaft of light he’d helped to create revealed a control box mounted at waist height on the wall next to the door we’d come in by. It was secured by a padlock. Unfortunately the rest of the space beyond the entrance remained in deep gloom. Nothing was glowing in the dark but remembering the reference to highly radioactive Caesium 137 I didn’t fancy copying Bren’s heroics any further. Nor did he, there was no way anyone was going into that darkness which could be concealing any number of radioactive devices.
Bren strode over to the control box and rattled it. The heavy steel door covering the controls didn’t budge. In his frustration he launched a high kick at it and immediately recoiled.
‘Hell and damnation,’ he cursed, ‘we’re going to have to wait for lights and a generator unless … ’