“That might not have been a bad thing.”, the driver muttered under his breath, just loud enough for the others to hear.
“There you go!”, Carrington laughed, “You have got a sense of humour. You see, a little chatter makes the journey fly by. You checking that sat-nav closely? Don’t want you to miss your turn off. Long way to the station, isn’t it?”
After humming an annoying tune for a minute or two, staring directly at the rear-view mirror with an inane grin on his face, Carrington spoke again.
“You should know some things about us. At least, about the people we’re supposed to be. I’m Carrington apparently. He’s an interesting chap, as far as I know. Brilliant mind. And an ex jail-bird. Ten years inside. Imagine that. And all because someone killed his little girl. You think that’s justice?”
“No,”, he carried straight on, “don’t worry, I won’t ask you to judge. But think about those two sides to his life. First of all, the gift of being able to see patterns in seemingly random events. Couple that with the gift of a memory that sucks in information and can’t let it go. Oh yeah, I heard that he lost a lot of those faculties to booze, but that didn’t kill them. No, it just let them lay dormant. So, when he becomes sober again, he retains that gift. Amazing, hey?”
“Stunning.”, the passenger said sarcastically, “But not much use.”
“On the contrary.”, Carrington chuckled as he leaned forward, “It would be a gift that you could always keep up your sleeve. The sort of gift that would make you question things all the time. One that would allow you to summarise the facts of a situation and see beyond the illusion.”
“Can you shut him up.”, the driver hissed to his colleague.
“No, let me finish.”, Carrington continued his discourse, “I don’t know quite how you chose us to be your targets. How you found us, if we were those two guys. But, let’s assume that I share something of this Carrington character’s gifts. We weren’t shown any ID by any of you. You didn’t identify yourself as armed police officers. And this whole handcuffing and escorting away thing doesn’t seem quite right. It’s possible that almost anybody would notice those anomalies. But, I reckon that Carrington would see a little more.”
Philian Gregory sat quietly, trying to second-guess where his friend’s rambling was leading. He’d asked to be trusted. That would have to suffice.
“Yep, he’d look for more.”, Carrington continued, “Look beyond the obvious and question things. He’d wonder why armed officers from the West Midlands, a force that switched to Sig Sauer machine guns last year, would be carrying H&K’s. He’d try to assimilate the collar numbers that you’re wearing with the pattern of all local forces and see that the format is that of the Met. Then, he might wonder about the silence of there being no police radio crackling in the background, especially at such a sensitive time. You might be needed somewhere else. We’re not a threat.”
“What are you saying?” the passenger asked.
“Just that there’s something wrong with this picture. And the longer we drive, the stranger it gets. Why would you need a navigation system to guide you? And why the distance?”
“You need to shut your friend up.”, the passenger turned to address Gregory, “We don’t have to answer to you and if you try our patience too much, we may need to make an unscheduled stop.”
“You see.”, Carrington couldn’t contain his excitement, “It doesn’t make sense. Something tells me that our ‘arrest’ is not quite what it seems to be. PC Plod and DI Copper here are fakes. Go on, indulge me, am I right?”
“Just shut up and live with it.”, the reply.
“Okay, a non-committal reply. But, I said that Carrington had two advantages. You’re right, I suppose. Knowing you are not who you say you are doesn’t really help. But, remember those ten years that Carrington suffered behind bars? You think he wouldn’t have learned something from that time? Convict tricks and little tips?”
Philian Gregory’s attention was wholly on his friend as he continued to talk. The puzzled look he gave him met only by a brief wink.
“Man, he would have learnt so much in the clink.”, Carrington leaned back in his seat and smiled, “Most of it good. Some of it, the sort of stuff you don’t want to learn about. I bet they taught him the thumb trick. I hear it’s excruciatingly painful, but effective nonetheless. They teach you that at Police Academy? Oh no, I forgot, you never went there, did you?”
All the time he’d been talking, Carrington had been watching the navigation system closely and counting down the seconds in his head. As he spoke his last taunt, the motorway exit that he’d been expecting was taken at high speed and he slid across the seat to slam into Gregory.
“Easy tiger!”, he shouted to the driver, “Seat belts, you see? The correct procedure would have been to belt us up. You should have practised more. Never mind, no harm no foul. Where was I?”
Shuffling back to his original place, Carrington leaned closer to the officer in the passenger seat.
“I’m not annoying you, am I?”, he chuckled, “Just a bit nervous. And just one last thing, then I’ll be quiet. Probably. So, you don’t know about the thumb thing, well, how about the belt? Best advice you can get in prison, so I’m told. It’s a sort of Boy Scout thing. You know, be prepared and all that? If I was Carrington I’d have taken that to heart. Then again, you think I am Carrington, don’t you? So, do you think I’m prepared?”
He waited for the gun to be shifted a little as the passenger’s nerves started to get the better of him. The barrel shifted from Gregory to him and that was his cue. With a sharp cry of pain as shifted his right hand, he used the belt that he’d removed from his waist to catch the barrel, secure it and lift it towards the roof of the car. At the same time, he let the rest of the belt loop around the passenger’s neck before pulling it tight against the headrest.
“What the hell?”, the driver swerved and almost lost control of the car as he heard his colleague choking for breath.
Gregory reached out to Carrington who passed him the wire that formed the inner-core of his belt, which he then used to bring the driver under control.
“Pull in.”, he told him.
The car eased to a jerking stop after leaving the road and dipping down into a hedgerow.
“Listen carefully.”, Carrington spoke calmly and comfortingly, “We’re not in the punishment game, so we don’t intend to hurt you anymore than we have to. We’ll leave that to your bosses. But you need to understand, for you, it’s game over. This guy here has another minute at the most. You gonna play ball?”
The passenger was in no position to reply, so the driver made the decision. Gregory was slowly tightening the grip of the wire around his neck and neither of the fake police officers were under any illusion that he was bluffing.
“I’m going to reach around and take your Tasers.”, Carrington told them, “If you try and fight, that’s the cue I need to finish you off. Just so you know, I am the Nathan Carrington they warned you about and what you know about me is only the tip of the iceberg. You going to comply?”
Both officers raised their hands and allowed the Taser units to be unclipped from their jackets. Carrington passed them to Gregory, pushed himself away and watched as they were deployed on the officers. The safety catches were on both of the weapons but the car became a dangerous place as two grown men bucked and jerked as the high voltage shot through them. Carrington and Gregory would have to wait for the first wave to pass, which they did with a certain amount of pleasure. When it was safe, they clambered over and into the front of the car, disarming the two men and securing them with the cuffs that they’d only recently liberated themselves from. With the men tied, the car key thrown deep into the shrubbery and the two weapons tucked under their jackets, they walked away. The sat-nav that Gregory now looked at showed them that they still had time on their hands before they were expected. The destinatio
n meant nothing to them. They switched it off and walked in the opposite direction from where it wanted them to go.
“Tell me the thumb trick isn’t what I think it is.”, Gregory said to Carrington as they walked away from the main road.
“I don’t need to tell you.”, Carrington chuckled, “I’ll show you instead.”
He lifted his right hand and Gregory gagged at what he saw. The thumb had been fully dislocated and hung limply down.
“Man, that’s sick.”, he said, “You want to fix it before I puke?”
He tried to turn away, but it was all too compelling. Carrington grasped the dislodged digit and clicked it back into place, allowing himself a scream as he did so.
“What if they’d used nylon ties?”, Gregory asked.
“Piece of cake.”, Carrington picked up the pace, “This belt has a number of tools. The lock-pick and the wire, you know about. It also has a blade. Big Billy, the guy’s name was. He helped me make it when I got out. He was a bear of a man, but, fair play to him, he went straight. Opened up a florist’s. He told me about the thumb thing as well. He told me he’d used it to slip cuffs in the past, but I’m not sure. Reckon he’d have cried like a baby if he had. Man, it hurt a lot more than I thought.”
“You mean you’ve never done it before?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”, Carrington shrugged his shoulders and began to put distance between himself and his friend.
“So, where to now?”, Gregory was puffing as he caught up with him.
“Back to the boat. Lay low. Crunch a few more details and get ready for the next stage. We’re approaching the end game now. I can feel it. And whoever’s at the end of the trail must be feeling it too. Come on, we’ve got a way to go.”
Chapter Fifty-One
As somebody who’d committed his working life to the causes of justice and law and order, Dan Walker felt justifiably aggrieved at the way he’d been treated since handing over the list of names that certain people, who remained unknown, had seen fit to send to him. His colleagues had treated him well whilst he was confined to the police headquarters, allowing him the freedom to rest, to exercise and to eat at his leisure, but the confinement itself stuck in his craw. He’d worked hard to establish a reputation of honesty and competence amongst his colleagues. Sure, there had been times when he’d got it badly wrong, but they’d never been intentional. There were those who bent the rules for their own gain, and there were those who considered the odd foray into corruption to be recompense for the daily stress and strain that they had to endure. Thirty years in the service and he had never succumbed to either. To be under suspicion now was disappointing, to put it mildly.
As he returned to his home, those feelings were made the worse as he looked about him and could sense that the place had been violated. They’d told him they would visit, and they’d been very clear that they would be copying his hard drive and searching any files that he kept about the place. They’d gone further though. He knew it as soon as he began to walk from room to room, noticing the slight changes in the content of drawers, the positioning of treasured objects and the placing of familiar things. They’d tried to leave it as they’d found it, but you never could. Besides, just the knowledge of their intrusion was enough to make the place feel different.
He could live with the suspicion and the doubt, but what annoyed him more than anything else was that he’d been taken off duty at a time when he was most needed. The streets were quieter than usual, as much because they were patrolled by every available officer and by numerous regiments from the army. Today was Tuesday. The results were in and the guilty members of The New Progressives had already been sentenced to execution. Thankfully, there remained a semblance of sanity amongst the powers that be and it had been agreed that those executions would not be public. He’d been allowed to vote in the poll to reintroduce the death penalty. Whether they were watching over his shoulder or not, he didn’t care and had voted with his conscience. Some may deserve death, but he could never sanction that as a state action. He’d been in the minority. By a long, long way.
From what he could gather, the team that had searched his place and those who had been charged with seeking the source of the list of prisoners, had failed in their objective. The e-mail address used was anonymous and routed through so many servers that its place of origin would never be identified. The conclusion they had all had to come to was simply that DI Walker was chosen at random, and that his actions following the receipt of the e-mail had been faultless. What had happened to the list after it had been passed to Commander Janice Gould was still unknown. And, given that she had perished in the prisons purge, would remain so. Numerous mysteries continued to surround that whole affair.
On the one hand, it seemed to be a straightforward terror attack, the perpetrators of which had now been caught. The justification, a warped and twisted one, but understandable enough to accept on face value. On the other hand, it just seemed a little to clean and clear cut for Walker to accept. Any loose ends were dead ends. The resolution appeared to have been as swift as the action itself. Things just didn’t work that way in the real world. Still, who was he to try and fathom the unfathomable? Or indeed, think the unthinkable?
It was only later in the day that he remembered how long he’d been absent and realised that he hadn’t checked his mail. Despite everything being electronic these days, he maintained as many physical means of communication as possible, preferring to eschew the constant demands from everybody he dealt with to go paperless. He’d grown up looking forward to things arriving in the mail box and that feeling had never left him. Distant friends and relations knew him well enough to know that he preferred a postcard from faraway places instead of a selfie sent to one and all. And then, there were the numerous competitions that he liked to enter. It was an escape from the trials of a hectic life and the joy in hoping for a letter with a ‘congratulations’ and a cheque added to its appeal.
He always took his time over his post. With a cup of coffee in front of him and the letters neatly stacked beside him, he began to go through them one by one. About half of what he received usually turned out to be junk mail. That was the downside to entering competitions. It was still mail though, and he liked to see what they were trying to sell him, salvaging the free pens and address stickers, even as he rejected what he was being offered. It was a sign of age creeping up on him, he knew that, but he enjoyed the ritual.
Third from bottom of the pile was a letter that had no stamp attached. It simply had his hand-written name on the front. Judging by its position amongst the rest, it would have been delivered that morning. The envelope was thin, very thin, and almost seemed empty. He opened it with interest and shook out the micro-sim card that was all the envelope contained. The last few letters remained unopened as he fingered the tiny electronic device and considered his options. Not that he had much choice really. He knew what he had to do.
“Hello?”, Walker had fitted the sim into an old handset that retained a little charge and had dialled the only number in its memory.
“DI Walker?”, a man’s voice replied.
“A safe assumption.”, Walker spoke cautiously, “What’s happening?”
“Please, listen carefully.”, the man on the other end of the call had a certain urgency to his voice, “There’s a high chance that your home is being monitored. We need your help, but it’s not safe for you to talk just now. If you want to pursue this further, call us back in an hour from a safe space, if not, we understand.”
Before he could say anything, the line went dead. He’d never considered the thought that his home might be bugged, but now that he thought about it, it made sense. He’d think about his next steps and come to a decision before the hour. Meanwhile, he had a few safety checks that he wanted to complete.
“You were right.”, he said as the same unknown man answered the phone an hour later.
“We
usually are.”, came the reply, “And we’re glad you came back to us. Yes, to avoid any confusion, we are the people that sent you the list of prisoners. For what good it did.”
“Hey,”, Walker replied defensively, “I passed it on. Caused me a lot of grief too, so less of the sarcasm.”
“Sorry. We know you did all you could. That’s why we got in touch again. And sorry about the cloak and dagger stuff. Only one other person is involved in this so far and he was the one who sent the sim. We’re in a safe and secured loop just now.”
“Dave?”, Walker asked.
“No names, no pack-drill. Although for fairness’s sake, I’m John, and my colleague is George. You were advised.”
“Yes. Dave spoke to me. I said I’d help if I could. He warned me though. Told me that what was happening was something that even he was reluctant to pursue. I need to know honestly, is it that dangerous?”
“For us,”, Carrington told him, “yes, and becoming more so. For you, potentially. We’ll do all we can to protect you but can’t guarantee it. We need someone on the inside, someone we can trust, and that person is you. But the choice is yours. It has to be.”
“I appreciate that.”
“The choice, remember, remains yours.”, Carrington reiterated, “But we’ll be sending you something tomorrow, to your work e-mail. You still working terror?”
“Until they shift me to the rest of the madness that’s going on.”, Walker replied.
“Good. You’ll know what to do when you get the mail. Destroy this sim after we’ve finished and we’ll be in touch if you choose to help. Thanks.”
The line went dead and Walker checked around as he finished his sandwich and coffee, casually removing the sim from the phone, breaking it and including it in the bundle of wrappers he dropped in the litter bin. He rose slowly and returned to his home, managing somehow to relax that evening over a bottle of red that helped him sleep.
Philian Gregory Page 42