Two minutes later, Gawber turned away from his mobile phone and said, ‘The car is registered to a Doctor Shannon in Cambridge.’
Angel nodded. ‘It’ll be twinned. I don’t like this, Ron. This isn’t Spencer. It bears all the signs of a heavy gang.’ He felt a tingle through his chest. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
Five minutes later, the big black car arrived back on Rotherham Road. The car taxied up to Mansion Hill flats like a jumbo jet fitted with a silencer. It stopped gently only feet away.
Angel felt his heart pounding again.
Gawber reached out for the video camera and pulled the trigger.
All four doors opened and a man got out of each door. The two nearest men were giants. They looked like the offspring of a steam train and a pipe-works. They were armed with short, light pieces carried at thigh height. They looked like old Sten guns. The other two were merely tall and wiry and carried something in their right hands. They were all dressed in dark coloured T-shirts, jeans and black jockey caps with the neb facing backwards. They made straight across the road to the side door of the flats.
The car glided silently away.
Angel’s breathing was heavy. He knew that plan A was down the pan, and anybody with half a brain could pull the chain. This was a far bigger operation than he had expected. He reached out for the mike. ‘Traveller One to Romeo Lima One.’
‘Romeo Lima One here, sir.’
‘Go quickly to the station, to Traffic, and get a magnetic tracer. Make sure it has a new battery and bring it back to me, smartly.’
‘On our way, sir.’
Gawber said: ‘The four men have found the back door and they’ve gone inside, sir.’
Angel peered through the binoculars. The street was quiet and deserted.
He grabbed the microphone again. ‘Traveller One to Romeo Lima Two.’
‘Romeo Lima Two here, sir.’
‘Run around the area, once only, and see if you can see where the Mercedes has toddled off to. It won’t be far away. Don’t go down the same street twice. You understand? The driver might just be sauntering round while the others are taking the flat to pieces and awaiting a signal from them, or it may be just parked up somewhere handy. But be careful. Don’t let them realize what you are doing. Drive away noisily if you think they suspect.’
‘Right, sir.’
He returned to the binoculars. Nothing moved. In the moonlight, he could just make out the lids of the wheelie bins and the glass panel in the door. There was a long, long silence. Five minutes. Ten minutes. He listened for the slightest sound. Nothing moved. There was zilch. Zero. Just the thumping of his pulse. It was so quiet, still and in moonlight … as if it was the final day on earth.
Then the RT crackled. ‘Romeo Lima Two here, sir. Can’t see the car anywhere, sir. Been all round.’
‘All right. Get back in position.’
‘Right, sir.’
Angel returned to the window and peered upwards. ‘I wonder how they’re getting along up there?’
‘They must have been in the flat about twelve minutes,’ Gawber added.
Angel brushed a sweaty hand through his hair. That was a long time in this business. It was much longer than he expected them to be. They must have felt pretty confident to have taken so long. He leaned forward to the microphone. ‘Traveller One to Romeo Lima One. How much longer are you going to be?’
‘On our way, sir.’
‘Yeah, but what’s your ETA?’
‘About two minutes, sir.’
‘Make it one. Come in quietly. I’ll meet you on foot on Chapel Street … at the first ginnel. Has that thing got a fresh battery?’
‘Fitted while we waited, sir.’
‘See you in a minute.’
‘Right, sir.’
Gawber stared towards Angel. He couldn’t believe it. ‘You’re not going out, sir, on your own?’ he breathed.
Angel stood up. ‘The Merc’s not back yet. I’m hoping I’ve time.’
‘You can’t go out, sir. You’ll be seen!’
‘Only if anybody’s looking,’ he said and he opened the door and slipped out on the pavement.
‘But, sir,’ Gawber protested.
He could have saved his breath.
It was bright. There was a lot of moon and no sign of a cloud.
Angel knew that there was no possible chance of not being seen walking down the street if anybody had been watching, so he walked boldly along to the corner of Rotherham Road. It was only a few yards onto Chapel Street, and only a few more to where Romeo Lima One had been hiding. Seconds later, the car arrived. Seeing him, it slowed. The front nearside window was down. He held out his hand and was handed a metal disc about the diameter of a truncheon and as thick as a bullet. ‘Thanks, lad.’
‘Good luck, sir.’
He pushed it into his pocket and retraced his steps boldly to the observation van. There was still no sign of any members of the gang or of the Mercedes. He sighed with relief as he stepped noiselessly into the van and closed the door.
There was a crackle from the RT. ‘The Merc’s back, sir. It’s coming your way.’
‘Right. Ta,’ Angel replied.
Almost immediately, the big black car pulled across the window of the observation van.
Angel silently slid the door of the van open, and made his way along the pavement and onto the road, crouching down at the rear of the observation van.
At the same time, four men dashed out of the flats across the road to the Mercedes; all four doors were opened, a man entered through each door, and then they closed them almost as one, like an army drill.
That was Angel’s cue. He knew he had less than a second. He darted from behind the observation van, crouched down and placed the magnetic tracking device under the nearside wheel arch of the Mercedes, and at the same time received a face full of exhaust fumes. He fell backwards onto his rear as the Mercedes sped away along Rotherham Road.
CHAPTER TEN
* * *
Angel stood the team down, returned to the station, handed his gun into the desk sergeant to be held in safe-custody until the armourer came on duty, went home and was in bed for 2 a.m. He had almost six hours sleep, an easy breakfast with Mary and was back in the office as fresh as a home-baked bap by 8.28 a.m.
As he walked into the office, his phone was ringing. He raised his eyebrows as he leaned over the desk and picked up the handset. It was Harker.
‘I want you, lad,’ the superintendent bawled. ‘Come up here, smartish.’ Then there was a loud click; the line went dead. Angel replaced the phone and wrinkled up his nose. He wondered what sort of a flea had got in Harker’s vest that early in the morning. He sounded threatening and was obviously in a bad mood.
‘What do you think you are playing at?’ Harker roared as he entered the office.
Angel stared back at him, sitting behind his desk looking like an orang-utan with toothache. The vein on his left temple throbbed at the beat of The Ritual Fire Dance.
Angel sighed, closed the door and came up to the desk.
‘What’s the matter, sir?’
‘I understand that you’ve put a young lass and her child in the safe house up at Beechfield Walk.’
‘Yes, sir. Well, it was the only safe thing to do. She is the mother of an eighteen-month child and—’
‘A one-parent family, eh?’
‘I believe so, sir.’
‘Oh I see. You’re fancying a bit of young easy skirt, is that it?’
Angel’s jaw tightened. ‘No, sir. I was setting a trap to catch the man whom I think is Harrison’s murderer, a Simon Spencer,’ he said. ‘This young woman might have been in the line of fire. It was for one night only. She can return back to her flat this morning.’
‘You realize that it has taken WPC Baverstock off her regular duties to play nursemaid to this lass and her offspring, don’t you?’
‘Well, I knew that somebody would have to—’
‘And
did you think of the cost? And the shortage of officers?’ He suddenly stopped. ‘What trap? Who did you catch?’
‘I didn’t catch anybody, sir. But I enticed a bigger fish than—’
‘A bigger fish? Who? Who?’ he yelled excitedly.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Angel said trying to control his temper. ‘It was obviously an organized gang of four men and a driver, armed to the teeth. We couldn’t possibly have taken them on. They were tooled up and ready for a fight. A commitment there and then would have resulted in a blood bath.’
Harker threw up his arms.
‘Well, where are they? Who are they? You talk grand, but you’ve let them get away.’
Angel sighed.
‘We had to remain concealed, sir, but I put a tracking device on their car. I was about to phone DS Mallin in Traffic to find out where their car is now.’
Harker’s face changed. The tirade stopped.
‘Hmmm,’ he grunted thoughtfully. It seemed to please him. He sat down and rubbed his chin. Then he reached out for the phone and tapped in a number.
Standing in front of the desk, Angel could hear a distorted reply through the earpiece.
‘Mallin? You’re monitoring a tracking device for DI Angel. Has it come to rest yet, and if so, whereabouts?’ Harker said.
There was more distorted chat from the earpiece.
‘Right,’ he snapped and dropped the phone back in its cradle. He sniffed. ‘As I thought. It’s from some green-belt land just off the motorway on the road to Huddersfield. It’ll have been discovered and thrown away. If the gang’s as professional as you said it was, it would be wary of tricks like that.’
Angel pursed his lips. Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, in his experience, when tracking devices had been found by crooks, they used to transfer them to a different vehicle. It amused them to think of the police tailing some innocent lorry or bus driver pointlessly around the countryside.
‘I want you to get that girl and her infant out of Beechfield Walk. Let WPC Baverstock get back to her duties, and you get back to those two unsolved murder cases. You’ve got plenty on your plate, lad.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Angel drove the BMW northwards on the road towards Huddersfield. Sitting next to him was Gawber who was looking at a laptop monitor showing the map and flashing co-ordinates indicating the whereabouts of the Mercedes. The flashing arrow on the screen showed that they needed to move west and north, so Angel left the main road and was directed to travel up a narrow unmade road, like a cart-track, almost parallel to the motorway. It was built up on the left like the banking on a railway track. Both sides were overhung with long grass interspersed with nettles and rosebay willow-herb.
The intensity of the signal showed that they were dead on course for the tracking device.
Angel frowned as the car rocked and splashed through a puddle on the uneven track. ‘Up here?’ he said.
‘We are very close, sir.’
‘Can’t see anything but grass and weeds.’
Angel suddenly had to take a bend round to the right and came onto an open piece of rough ground hardened with clinker from burnt-out coal fires and big enough for a vehicle to turn round. He pulled up in front of a sign. It read: ‘KEEP OUT. Private Property. Employees Grock’s Rhubarb Limited only’.
He read the sign and rubbed his chin.
Behind the sign was a large padlocked gate and beyond that a large spread of low buildings, thirty or more, built close together, in total extending to the size of a football pitch. They appeared to be mainly constructed from corrugated metal sheets and timber, arched like miniature airplane hangars, eight feet tall at the highest point. They had been heavily repaired and patched with all kinds of oddments, sides of packing cases, tea chests, bed heads, tin advertising signs for Mazawattee Tea, Senior Service and Zubes. The structures were roughly weatherproofed with brattice-cloth and heavily daubed with a mixture of tar and creosote. There were no windows and each building had large double doors with a padlock securing it. The place seemed deserted.
Angel looked around and pursed his lips.
‘Ah. They’re rhubarb forcing sheds,’ he said.
‘It doesn’t seem the likely HQ for an armed gang, sir?’
He nodded in agreement and looked across at the monitor. It showed that they were dead on target. ‘This thing is accurate to about forty yards. That car must be in one of these sheds, Ron.’
‘Which one?’
Angel shrugged and got out of the car. ‘There’s nobody about. Let’s take a look round.’
The sign indicated that they had reached a dead end so far as vehicles were concerned. Angel looked through the wooden spars of the gate. There was no sign of anybody. As he turned away, he spotted a trodden pathway between the fence and a hawthorn hedge.
‘Let’s see where this leads,’ Angel said.
They made their way along it for about twenty yards to another hedge with a stile through it. They looked over the stile into a small clearing with an imposing country house ahead, and a barn on the right of it. There was a formal drive up to the house from the left. Angel reckoned that the drive to the house and barn must be accessible from somewhere on the main Bromersley to Huddersfield Road.
Gawber made to climb the stile.
Angel suddenly grabbed the sleeve of his coat. ‘Hang on, Ron,’ he whispered urgently and pulled him behind the hawthorn hedge. ‘There’s somebody coming out of the house.’
Sure enough, from behind the hedge they saw a huge man in a black T-shirt, jeans, trainers and the distinctive jockey cap worn the wrong way. He appeared on the front doorstep of the house. He looked round, then went back in and returned with a slim, young man in a suit. The young man’s head was hanging down, his hands appeared to be tied behind his back. The big man frog-marched him down the steps and across the drive to the barn. The big door was open and fastened back. They went inside.
Angel’s pulse began to race.
Gawber and Angel exchanged glances.
‘There’s one of them,’ Angel whispered. ‘Did you recognize the other man?’
Gawber shook his head.
This was an important discovery. It looked as if they had found the headquarters of the armed gang who had raided Harrison’s flat the previous night. This journey was proving very profitable.
Angel reached into his pocket for his mobile and dialled a number.
‘Keep an eye out. I’ll get some back-up.’
Eventually he got through to his old friend Waldo White. He was the Detective Inspector in charge of the Firearms Support Unit at Wakefield. After they had exchanged pleasantries, Angel put him in the picture and told him their location.
‘There are four men, at least, in the gang, and they are all armed. A head-on confrontation would result in the exchange of fire. I want to avoid that.’
Angel explained that they were up the cart track and at the entrance to Grock’s Rhubarb forcing sheds. They agreed to meet there.
White said: ‘We’ll come straightaway.’
Angel closed down his phone and was about to drop it into his pocket when they suddenly heard a loud and disagreeable voice just behind them say, ‘What are you doing here? Don’t you know you’re trespassing?’
They looked round to see a tall, slim man with heavy five o’clock shadow. He was pointing a hand gun at them.
Angel could see it was a Walther PPK/S. Deadly and accurate from twenty or thirty feet. Angel’s and Gawber’s hearts started thumping.
Angel’s recognized him as another member of the gang. His heart leapt. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. He had a natural aversion to firearms … especially when they were in the hands of somebody else and were being pointed directly at him. He still had the mobile in his hand. He opened his fingers and deliberately let it fall to the ground. It landed silently in a tuft of grass. He hoped that that it might be discovered by Waldo White and that he might realize he had been there.
‘Put your hands up,’ the
man growled. ‘I’ve had a good look at your car, so I know you’re coppers.’
‘What’s the gun for?’ Angel said.
‘Shut up, put your hands up, face your front and get over that stile.’
‘What do you want with us?’ Angel said.
‘Shut up,’ the man said.
He marched them across the field to the barn.
Angel’s mind was working overtime. They were in a fix and he couldn’t see a way out.
The man with the gun directed them into the barn. The young man in a suit whom they had seen being frog-marched from the house, was being tied up by the big man. His hands were being secured behind him in a standing position to a sturdy pole, one of four, which supported the barn roof. The young man stared across at Angel and Gawber with glazed eyes but without any emotion. His pasty face had grey patches under the eyes. Angel knew he had been drugged. He thought he had seen a photograph of him recently, but he couldn’t quite place him.
The thug finished tying the man up and turned round as he heard their footsteps. His eyes opened up like bus headlights being switched on. His jaw dropped. ‘Who are they?’ he growled.
‘Coppers. Snooping around.’
‘Coppers!’ he shrieked. He raised the Sten gun. His hands were shaking. ‘What you brought them here for? What are we going to do with them?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied the slim man angrily. He pointed a thumb towards the open door. ‘Tell Eddie. Tell him we’ve got company.’
The big man rushed out of the barn, shaking his head and muttering expletives.
‘What do you want with us,’ Angel said to the man with the Walther.
‘Shut up,’ the man said thrusting the gun into his Angel’s stomach. ‘Don’t you understand plain English?’
Angel’s faced reddened. He could hear his pulse banging away in his ears.
Seconds later, three men and a young woman appeared at the open barn door; they stared open-mouthed at Angel and Gawber. The two heavies with menacing expressions, their stock-in-trade, carried old Sten guns and pointed them at them. The third, an older man with a face as hard as a life sentence, waved another Walther in their general direction.
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