by Jean Chapman
‘I’ll do everything I can to help you, as I’ve tried to help Danny.’
‘Got to go to the house,’ Jockey muttered.
‘I’ll go with you,’ he said, envisaging the former council house in Snyder Crescent. ‘We’ll deal with Sean, then help you find Danny and Carol.’
‘He should leave her alone,’ he said, ‘she …’
‘Let’s go, then,’ Maddern said, beginning to feel he just wanted an end to this – one way or another. In the distance, that ride started up again. ‘You could bring Danny to Skegness when this is all over.’
‘Over, yes,’ Jockey mumbled. ‘I’ve got a knife.’
Chapter 22
The whole area was quiet as the grave – not the phrase Cannon would have wished to slip into his mind as he followed Callum back to his girlfriend’s home. He wanted to be sure Cathy and her family understood that there was going to be a major incident not too far away – or even on their doorstep, he corrected, as he was alerted by the roar of bike engines.
They met on a bend and he saw Callum’s vehicle rock with the shock of displaced air as twenty, perhaps more, huge motorbikes swerved and scraped past on the narrow road. Some blared horns but that was all. They were gone in seconds but Cannon was pleased Callum put his foot down after the encounter.
On the edge of the National Trust land, under a graceful sweep of trees, some already in bright green leaf, they reached a converted farmhouse. At the far side of the house were former barns – now shops and a restaurant – and tucked behind these, a car park. Callum signalled and stopped in front of the house. He drew in behind.
Almost at once, a petite girl, with long dark hair, part caught up on top of her head, ran out of the house. Callum put his arm around her and, when she would have drawn him straight into the house, indicated that they should wait for the driver of the jeep.
Cathy was there alone. Her parents had gone into a Lincoln wholesale outlet to begin stocking up for the Easter trade. Callum said he would stop at least until they got back.
‘Will your parents worry?’ Cannon asked him.
‘They know I’ll be here,’ he said.
From the main road there came the sound of more speeding motorbikes.
‘It’s serious isn’t it, what we saw and everything?’ Cathy asked.
‘Big time,’ Callum added.
‘Yes, and I think instead of staying here it would be a good idea for you to take Cathy to your home. You’re in a village, not isolated like this. Phone your parents, Cathy, let them know they should also go to Callum’s place, and stay there with you until the police, or I, can let you know it’s all over.’
‘You think so?’ she said, giving him that doubtful look the young give the middle-aged they suspect of over-reaction.
‘Mr Cannon was in the Met,’ Callum told her, ‘we should follow his advice.’
‘OK,’ she said as Callum took her hand.
Cannon went inside with them, supervised the locking of the house, personally checked doors and shutters on the shop and outbuildings, then saw them off. Cathy still looked doubtful until in the distance they heard a gunshot. They all stood still and listened, but it was a single shot.
‘Could be someone after rabbits?’ she suggested.
‘Could be,’ he agreed but stood stern-faced until she was in the car next to Callum.
‘See you, Mr Cannon, and thanks,’ he said.
They drove away and he stood with his hand on the jeep door, listening. He would have expected mayhem, an all-out gun battle if the groups had caught up with each other, not just one single shot. He wondered if some of the Faima had already found the empty cruisers. Following tracks of men carrying ingots as heavy as hefty babies would not be difficult with the ground as soft as it was. Had the single shot been to pinpoint where the Jakeses and the loot were? And every second, these bikers bent on revenge were closing in. He calculated that with a couple of ingots in each pannier they could about clear the loot – when they had disposed of the Jakeses.
He was about to climb in and head home – away from the action, which felt a strange thing to do – when the sound of a helicopter made him walk out into the road to check to see it was the police. He could imagine the great blob of glowing heat the Jakeses and the Faima would make on their radar.
He turned at the sound of more traffic and headed for the side of the road just as a police car, followed by a large police van, came around the corner. The car stopped next to him.
‘Get in,’ Austin said. ‘We need to be out of sight, the air folk tell us a few stragglers on bikes are behind us; we need to let them get past.’
‘Turn in behind the shop; there’s a car park.’ Getting in, Cannon waved his hand to the driver of the van to follow. Austin indicated and in a minute both vehicles were well out of sight. Even as their engines were turned off, the sound of the bikes came, grew louder and passed on.
A message came from above that they were clear now. ‘Getting out?’ Austin asked.
It was more a prompt for action than a question. ‘I know the roads, can take you to the exact spot,’ Cannon said.
‘We have to save lives, be it one side or the other,’ Austin decided and drove on.
‘And there’s the gold, they have it with ’em, they’ve sent for vans.’
‘They won’t be coming,’ Austin said. ‘Stopped those in Lincoln, and arrested some of the Jakeses’ understudies.’
‘Any of the family?’
‘No, more’s the pity, I want the arch-villains – the godfather particularly, Sean Jakes who’s stepping into the old man’s shoes, he …’ His radio sounded and he pressed the receiver more firmly into his ear.
‘The helicopter reports a solid ring of men now around the group in the woods some miles ahead,’ Austin said.
‘I’ll direct you. It’ll be quicker than relayed messages. How near are you going?’ he asked.
‘We’re the unit completing our own circle outside the Faima. We’ll have cars, men and stingers on every road and two armed units on foot ready to go in.’ He half-turned in his seat. ‘What the hell am I doing taking you along?’
‘Force of habit,’ Cannon suggested.
‘Keep behind me and don’t get into trouble, or I may be applying to you for a job as pot-man.’
Cannon gave a grunt of laughter. Robert Auguste Austin, barrister father, French mother, collecting glasses in a pub!
‘I could do it,’ the other man said seriously.
‘I’ll give you a trial,’ he promised, though infinitely grateful he did not have to account to Liz at that moment.
Cannon stopped the car and van at the edge of the field, on the far side of which were some very dense woods. The field gate was open and the ground churned into mud: very recent mud, for some still dropped from where it had been thrown up onto the hedge.
‘Sit tight for a bit, will you,’ Austin said, as he took some information over his radio then went over to the van. A dozen armed police came quietly from the back of the vehicle. This was not a sight he had wished to see repeated so soon in this green and pleasant land, Cannon thought, as he watched the men being deployed along two hedgerows and begin to move cautiously in towards the woods.
Caution did not last long, for mayhem did break out. From deep in the trees, the sound of rapid automatic fire could be heard – one gun, then more, interspersed with single shots. The police just walking in along the hedgerows now went at a run. A loud hailer burst into life somewhere and police emerged from other hedgerows around the area of the trees and closed in. Austin thrust the car keys at him and said, ‘Stay here, look after the vehicles,’ and followed.
Like bloody Nelson on his flagship in his full dress uniform, Cannon thought, and for the first time asked himself why his friend wasn’t in combat gear like the rest of the unit?
There was more firing, spasmodic gunshots – more like shots aimed at targets, sniping shots at individuals, where assassination got personal, one to one. The
armed police from the van reached and joined the circle outside the woodland. So far, he judged the police had not fired a single gun. Then a prearranged signal must have been given, for every man he could see lifted his rifle and shot up into the air, once, twice, three bursts of fire in quick succession – and a powerful loud-hailer announced the presence of armed police.
‘You are surrounded. Come out with your hands in the air.’
Cannon heard that plainly enough across the field. He held his breath in the pause that followed, then let it out in a great exasperated sigh as the firing started up again with a new intensity. There was going to be no stand-off in this battle, the stakes were too high. The blood was up, it was kill or be killed – with the police the enemy of both. He hoped Austin kept his pips and braid well out of sight.
The heaviest firing now seemed at the far side of the wood, the river side. The Jakeses would surely not be going that way by choice; water at your back slowed you up and dispersed men along banks were easy pickings. The cruisers might provide a cover from fire for a time, but they were far too slow for escape. So were the Faima driving them that way, away from the bullion they had carried there? If so …
The idea beginning to form was confirmed as there was the sound of engines brought back to life, and from the trees straight in front of him a line of motorcycles burst out and headed for the gateway.
Now there was something he could do. He ran and closed the gate, then, getting into the car, drove it in front of the gateway. Through the metal bars he saw the bikes coming straight towards the barrier.
The first did not seem to see their entry point was now blocked, swerving away only at the last minute. The bike slewed from under him, it going one way and him the other with the speed of a rugger player going for the winning try. The second rider, coming too fast and too close behind the first to see the danger, came straight on.
Cannon jumped sideways behind a substantial oak post just as, with an almighty metallic clang, the bike struck. The bars buckled, but the gate held, rider and bike fell as if pole-axed. The man, part under his machine, lay very still, body at odds with the angle of one leg.
The bikes behind these two swerved away and headed towards an un-gated opening into the next field. By the alarming sway as they turned, their panniers were well loaded. Even so, while he was still crouching between car and gate, they roared out onto the road behind him. He hoped the police stingers were in place everywhere.
Overhead the helicopter droned, hovered over the wood, and just the other side of the buckled gate the man groaned. He could see the telltale bulge of a gun under his jacket, and beyond him the other faller was struggling to his feet.
He was over the gate and had the revolver in his hand before either man had realized what was happening. The man on the ground was going nowhere – he undoubtedly had a broken leg – but the other man had reached his bike and was trying to pull it upright when he saw Cannon, dropped the bike, and went for his waist.
‘Don’t! Don’t try!’ Cannon shouted. ‘Put your hands high, right up above your head.’
In seconds he was by the man’s side and had relieved him of his revolver. At the same time he saw several armed police escorting a small group of the men in biking leathers out of the woods. Some were already hand cuffed, others had their hands above their heads. There was still a spasmodic shot or two from the far side of the area, the pungent smell of nitro-glycerine in the air – and no sign of Austin.
He waited for the group to come to him, urged his prisoner to join them, then indicated the biker by the gate. ‘Broken leg. This is his gun and …’ he held out the two revolvers to the sergeant in charge.
The officer took one. ‘Give the other to CI Austin. He’s unarmed, and—’ he turned his head and indicated the formally uniformed figure watching from the edge of the wood, ‘I was told to send you over.’
‘Right,’ he said and hurried towards his former colleague. Before he reached him Austin turned and walked back between the trees. He hurried after him. ‘You OK?’ he asked.
‘You mean faced with murder, greed, and lack of respect for all things living?’ He indicated a small, fawnlike creature lying in the shrubbery, its side ripped open by shots from an automatic. ‘Tried to run at the wrong time,’ he said.
‘A muntjac,’ Cannon identified, regretting the end of the creature’s life.
‘So did these,’ Austin said, pushing aside a green-leafed hazel bush. It was as if the colour palette changed from green to red.
Cannon blasphemed quietly, awed by the scale of the bloody slaughter, bile rising in his throat – manageable, but only just – as his mind went from the torn, blood-stained fur of that wild creature to the blood-soaked coat and fur collar of Luke Jakes, godfather and grandfather of the clan. He lay face up, shot through the heart, over a low pile of bags, around him at erratic intervals and angles lay at least seven of his gang.
‘All family by the look of the build,’ he said, ‘from grandfather to grandson.’ Criminals they were, but there would be overwrought mothers and partners some unfortunate sod would have to seek out and tell. No amount of training quite prepared you for that task.
‘None of them identified yet, of course,’ Austin said, ‘but the bags – are these the same as you saw in that old council house roof-space?’
He walked to the body stage-centre in the woodland horror. The smell of wet earth and warm blood was overwhelmingly potent as he stooped. ‘Yes, hessian, with as many gold ingots in each as a strong man could carry.’ He straightened quickly, adding, ‘Most of ’em now swaying about in motorbike panniers.’
‘We’ll get them,’ Austin said with certainty. ‘One by one, we’ll get them. I’m going to walk through to the river. You never know, we might’ve got lucky and netted someone like godfather-in-waiting, Sean Jakes.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said and offered him the gun. ‘From one of the bikers,’ he said.
‘You keep it for now, you were always a better shot, I seem to remember. I might kill someone.’
‘Or be killed. Why?’ he asked, indicating the full uniform.
‘Question of time, old boy,’ Austin said, leading the way.
They met a line of police coming slowly back towards them, re-searching the ground, one carrying a Hessian bag.
‘I think we’ve cleared between here and the river, sir,’ one reported. ‘The bank’s a bit messy, though.’
‘Well done,’ Austin said, ‘well done, I’m on my way there now.’
When they reached the river, Cannon realized it was more than a mere skirmish that had happened here. A blue-leathered biker, with yellow lightning flashes on his sleeves, lay dead on the towpath, as were three members of the other side – one across the bow of the furthest cruiser, two others, one half in and half out of the nearest boat, another half in and half out of the reed-edged water.
The Jakeses had been driven away from their loot and then ruthlessly slaughtered.
Further along the path, bikers were being held at gunpoint and cuffed. There would be nothing sweet about the revenge they had taken.
A smaller, separate group of four or five was being walked the other way. These were the solitary survivors of the siege.
‘Do you recognize any of them?’ Austin asked.
‘The man in the black jeans and top is one of those I saw bringing goods to Snyder Crescent,’ he said.
‘You’ll give evidence when the time comes.’
‘Of course,’ Cannon said, ‘but Sean Jakes is not among them, I can tell you that.’
‘I suppose that would have been too much to ask,’ Austin said. ‘We’ll get back to the car.’
He handed over the revolver and the car keys as they walked back. There was the sound of many sirens and ambulances as well as police cars. The biker who had hit the gate had already been taken away, but his bike still lay there. ‘You’ll have to collect these machines pretty quick or some smart alec will be taking them into safe custody f
or their own use.’
‘I thought we might…’ Austin took a pair of gloves from his pocket and stooped to open the topmost pannier, heaved out the bag that was in there, pulled the handles apart, then stood shaking his head. ‘Why does it have such a look of pureness, cleanness – such desirability? Gold never seems to take up the filth around it.’
‘The filth of man’s greed, you mean,’ Cannon said. ‘With a bag in each side, about twenty-four kilograms in all, no wonder he was unbalanced.’
‘I’ll get a guard on this lot until it can be moved,’ Austin said, struggling to lift the bag back into the pannier, before signalling to one of the men who was just coming back to the van.
Cannon, more used to awkward stiles, helped Austin climb the now unopenable gate. As he took his arm, Austin said, ‘I don’t think you should attempt to go back in your jeep until we have news from the road blocks. Do you want to phone Liz?’
Cannon said nothing.
‘Do it,’ Austin said.
She answered very quickly.
‘Liz,’ he said, ‘I’m with Austin near Callum’s girlfriend’s house. You OK?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just sitting in the car, talking,’ he answered.
‘Has Austin any news of Jim Maddern yet?’ she asked. ‘Surely his car should have been sighted somewhere.’
He looked at Austin, who had clearly heard what Liz said. ‘Tell her I’m going public on the car as of now.’
Chapter 23
Maddern thought he’d lost his sight as the tape was sliced through near his ear and pulled away. He had trouble raising his eyelids. Desperate to blink he had to make a forceful effort to screw his eyes tight before he could open them again, and when he did for a few seconds all he could see was bright white light.
A few more blinks and the puffed, punch-damaged features of Jockey loomed.
Jockey had worked from his ankles up, knees, wrists, arms, slicing through rope and tape, rapidly, one, two…. He tried not to think how sharp the knife must be.