by Gulvin, Jeff
‘Two reasons,’ Collier said, ‘Janice Martin’s talking. Or the Poles still have a leak.’
Gringo answered him. ‘I don’t think Janice would say anything.’
‘They know about us from John Stanley,’ Fagin said. ‘If he hadn’t fucked up, they’d never have got anything.’
‘Initially, maybe.’ Collier’s voice, tight in his chest. ‘They’ve got more than that, now, though. They have to, or they wouldn’t have made this move. You think with your prick, Gringo,’ he said. ‘Janice is on the street and look what happens—we get our names in the paper.’
In the car, they heard him get up. Then Webb bunched his lips, as he heard the distinctive sound of Collier taking the phone apart.
‘He’s going to look everywhere,’ he said. ‘Tell me he won’t find it, Chrissie.’
Harris looked through the gloom at him. ‘He won’t think of the lights, Webby.’
They heard him curse and then put the phone back together again. ‘Get me a Philips screwdriver,’ he said. ‘I want to check the TV.’
‘No one’s been in here,’ Gringo said. ‘We’re secure, man.’
‘It pays to check. We had that gas leak, remember?’
‘Yeah, and you phoned the gas board and it was confirmed. Fucking police can’t leak gas into a street and evacuate people.’
‘Can’t they?’
In the car, Harris twisted her features into a grimace.
‘We need to check our situation,’ Collier was saying, ‘discreetly though. No panic. That’s what this is about. They’re trying to put the shits up us.’
‘They’re doing a good job, then.’ Gib’s voice again.
‘Chill out, Gib. You start chasing round like some headless fucking chicken and they will get you.’
‘What about the guns?’
‘Not our problem, are they.’ Collier stood up. ‘I’ll talk to the Poles.’
Webb looked at Harris through the darkened interior of the car. ‘Poles must control the hides.’
She made a face. ‘Supplied, used and returned.’
‘Have we got anyone watching them?’
She shook her head, then picked up the phone and spoke with Colson, telling him that they needed a team on Robert Stahl, the Polish commander of operations. She switched the phone off again. ‘We’ll follow Collier when he moves,’ she said.
Gringo rode his motorcycle to Janice Martin’s flat and parked under her window. He did not ring the bell, but let himself in with the key he’d kept. He climbed the stairs slowly, quietly, thinking. Outside, the armed surveillance officers from SO11 were on high alert. They had sound in Martin’s flat, so if things went wrong they could hit it. The team leader spoke to the SO19 armed response vehicles over the encrypted Cougar radio and briefed the officers as to the situation. Back in the operations room at Scotland Yard, Colson chewed his knuckles and waited.
Janice had a visitor, one of the other London gang members, using her services for the night. Gringo let himself into the flat and watched them, hard at it on the living-room floor, before Janice looked over the shoulder of the other biker and saw him. Gringo kicked the biker in the backside. The man sprawled across Janice. He twisted his head back and Gringo leered at him. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Now.’
‘You fuck …’
Gringo hauled him off her. ‘You heard me. Go.’
Janice snapped her knees together, pulling down her T-shirt to cover herself. Gringo leaned in the doorway with his arms folded while the other man buckled his jeans, then left.
Janice was in the kitchen now, T-shirt not quite covering her buttocks as she bent to get beer from the fridge. Gringo lit a cigarette and sat on the couch.
‘You that desperate, darling?’ she said, as she handed him a can of beer. ‘Pulling rank like that.’
Gringo sucked from the can and said nothing. She sat down next to him, the T-shirt riding up her thighs. She leaned against his arm. ‘I’ll have to take a shower first.’ Standing up, she peeled the T-shirt over her head and walked naked, hips wiggling, to the bathroom. Gringo let her go and when he heard the water start to tumble, he got up and searched the flat. Living room, kitchenette and bedroom. In the bedside drawer he found two specimen bottles, looked at them briefly, then closed the drawer. He lit another cigarette and waited till she came through.
Her hair was wet and her skin red and hot, nipples bunched into wrinkles of jutting flesh. She towelled herself in front of him, rubbing between her legs with a smile on her face. ‘You’re quiet tonight.’
‘We need to talk.’
‘Do we?’ She stopped the motion of the towel and held it limply in her hands; shoulders low, breasts heavy.
‘You’ve got a big mouth, haven’t you, Janice.’
She stared at him, and lifted the towel to cover herself. ‘I don’t understand.’
Gringo got up slowly and faced her. ‘You got nicked. Now you’re out. You’ve got two previous convictions.’ His features twisted into an ugly grimace. ‘That doesn’t make sense. And now my face and Fagin’s and Gib’s are suddenly all over the news.’ He took one pace towards her.
She watched him carefully: he always carried a switchblade knife in the inside pocket of his leather jacket.
‘Gringo,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m on bail. My father’s rich, remember. He’s got connections. You know that.’ She gestured at the walls around them. ‘He bought this, didn’t he.’
‘I think you’re lying to me.’
Outside, the surveillance officers were tense, listening to every word. The first ARV turned the corner at the end of the street and stopped. Two armed officers climbed out, both in plain clothes. They started walking along the street.
In the flat, Janice had sat down and was puffing nervously on a cigarette. ‘Gringo,’ she said, brain clicking fully into gear now. ‘First of all, I said nothing to the police. I’ve been bailed by my father and when I go to court, I’ll more than likely do time. But in the meantime, I’m not a danger to the community. They let people like me out on bail.’ She looked at him, wide-eyed and evenly. ‘Secondly, what could I tell them anyway? I don’t know anything. Mammas get told nothing. Jesus, all you guys do is buy and sell motorbikes. I’m the rebel here.’ She poked herself in the chest. ‘I’m the one on the white powder panty remover. I piss off Dave Collier more than my own father. Jesus, Gringo. Get a life. What could I bloody tell, them?’
Gringo pivoted for a moment on the balls of his feet, one hand still bunched in a fist. Then suddenly his shoulders dropped and the breath went out of him. He picked up the telephone and spoke to Collier at the clubhouse.
‘She’s cool, man.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘No, really. She is cool. I know when she’s lying, man. And she ain’t lying.’ He put the phone down and cupped his hand round the back of Janice’s neck. ‘If I find out I’m wrong, I’ll cut you up myself.’
Jeconec checked the newsagent’s window on the corner of King Street, as he always did. He saw the card placed by The Regiment and the hairs rose on his cheeks. He walked back to the POSK, where Vaczka was teaching the Stanislavsky class. Harris and Webb followed him. Stahl was sitting in the cafeteria, drinking coffee. Jeconec looked at the clock on the wall; still fifteen minutes before Vaczka was finished. He told Stahl what had happened.
Stahl nodded his blond head, eyes set like stone. ‘I saw the news on TV.’
‘What about the hides?’
‘I’m checking them.’
‘You think there’s any way we can be linked to the bikers?’
‘No.’
‘What about the dance we led the cops? What about Amaya Kukiel?’
Stahl shook his head. ‘Jorge set her up. They stopped watching us ages ago.’
Vaczka came into the cafeteria with a dark-haired girl on his arm. He sat down and Jeconec looked at the girl. Vaczka frowned, then patted her on the bottom and sent her to get some coffee. He leaned over
the table. ‘What is it?’
‘Message from The Regiment. Collier wants to talk.’
Vaczka sat back again and smiled at Carmen behind the counter. He drummed his fingertips on the table. ‘Panicking, is he?’
Stahl looked sideways at him. ‘Never struck me as the type to panic, Jorge.’
‘Send word,’ Vaczka said. ‘I’ll meet him.’
That afternoon Stahl drove his van to Wimbledon and parked on the common. Webb and Harris walked hand in hand, with their dog gambolling before them. A kite-flier was desperately trying to get the wind to lift his craft, but to no avail. Joggers ran here and there, and a woman rode a horse at a trot. Stahl walked, straight backed, his Rottweiler running for sticks ahead of him. He was photographed every step of the way. At a copse in the middle of the common, he paused, bent for a short stick and threw it into the trees. His dog raced after it. Stahl had a brief glance left and right and followed him. Webb watched him from behind his long-lensed camera. When Stahl was gone, followed again by other spotters, Webb called the Yard and requested that an RAF aircraft fly over the copse and scan for ground disturbance. Colson told him it would take some time to organize.
Stahl was followed to two more sites: a grove of trees near Beaconsfield with an electricity substation in the middle of it, and then to a lock-up warehouse in Highbury. Every location was logged. Back at the Yard, the following morning, Colson had the results of the aircraft scan. Definite ground disturbance in the copse on Wimbledon Common, the same at the Beaconsfield substation. The ground disturbance could be as innocent as a badger’s sett, but somehow they did not think so. It was decided that they would make a covert entry to the lock-up in Highbury.
Webb and Phil Cregan sat in the back of the van outside the massive warehouse, which completely covered the individual lock-up units. The locksmith from MI5 set his equipment on the main entrance electronic lock and overruled it. Then he created a second digital combination and they went in. The driver backed the van up to the unit where Stahl had gone. Here there was a roll-up steel door, with a single entry swing door set into it.
Webb got out and held the pencil-light torch for the locksmith, while he checked the heavy padlock that secured the unit. Webb could hear him breathing as he studied it, setting a soft metal probe to work out what he needed. Half an hour later, they were inside. The lock-up was half empty. All they could see were a couple of motorcycles with no number plates on the back, three or four metal filing cabinets lining the walls, and an old carpet which lay across a bunch of weathered cardboard boxes. Webb inspected the motorcycles, a Honda and a Yamaha. Cregan looked through the cabinets—papers mostly. He called Webb over, who bent to look over his shoulder. Blue paper files secured with elastic bands. Lifting one carefully, he slipped off the bands and checked the contents. Business papers, bank statements, various companies. Christine Harris would love this lot, he thought.
Cregan had partially lifted the carpet and was studying the array of boxes. Most of them were worn and squashed against one another, nothing in them except yellowed curling papers. He looked more closely. ‘If there’s anything here, it’ll be at the bottom,’ he said. ‘We’ll have trouble putting stuff back as it was.’
Webb curled his lip. ‘Fuck it, Phil. It’s a mess anyway, isn’t it. We can do a pretty good job. They might suspect, but they won’t know. And there’s no point in being here if we’re not going to check everything.’
Between them, they lifted back the carpet and set about moving each box individually. Most of them contained paper, but then, as they got towards the bottom of the pile, the boxes became squarer, more uniform. Webb felt the adrenalin beginning to pump, and then he lifted the lid on one and saw a gun in a polythene, ziplock bag. They stared at it for a few moments, then Cregan unzipped the bag. ‘That’s a Vikhr Whirlwind,’ he said.
Collier rode out of London to meet Vaczka. Gringo and Fagin backed him up, with Fagin acting as third eye. A helicopter tracked them high overhead, a full team of surveillance vehicles interchanging behind them. They chose a circuitous route, riding hard and fast through the side streets close to the clubhouse, but were tagged by surveillance riders. They headed west on the M4, before cutting south towards Bracknell. They crossed the M3 at Hook. Collier rode on towards the village of Odiham, before pulling into the Swan pub car park on the left-hand side of the road. The lead surveillance car went straight on, as did the second. The third pulled in and parked. A man and his girlfriend went inside for a drink.
Vaczka sat on his own with Collier. Gringo and Fagin stayed at the bar, watching the door and trying to vet anyone that came in. The surveillance couple walked in, sharing a joke between them, and Gringo stared hard into the eyes of the man, a big, rugby-playing number 8.
‘What’s your problem?’ The rugby player said, and looked directly back at him.
Gringo ignored him and looked over his shoulder at the door as another two men came in.
The girl tugged the rugby player’s arm and they moved to the bar, bought beer and sat down at a table.
Vaczka sat with Collier on the other side of the table, two booths down from them. Gringo watched every person in the bar. There was no way to covertly take a picture. Collier had been careful. He had deliberately avoided a seat where anyone could photograph him from outside. He sat with a pint of Guinness settling in front of him and stared at the Pole out of steel-grey eyes. Vaczka stared back. Blunski and Stahl drank together at the bar.
By now, the surveillance team had covert photographers set up and were snapping everyone coming out of the pub. They would not get the bikers and Poles together, but they could get them leaving the same establishment, and the date was automatically stamped on the pictures.
Vaczka sipped his drink and looked at Collier. ‘So, why the urgency?’
‘You don’t watch television?’
Vaczka smiled. ‘Of course I watch television. But it’s not my problem. You should never have lost your soldier.’
Collier’s eyes were cruel and a vein lifted at his temple. ‘It’s more than that,’ he said. ‘That gives them a little, but no word is spoken outside my clubhouse. No women know anything and everything, as you know, goes down in code on paper.’
‘Maybe Special Branch bugged your clubhouse. I heard there was a gas leak.’
Collier shook his head. ‘I’d know if they’d bugged my clubhouse.’
‘Yes. I think you probably would.’ Vaczka lit a cigarette and blew smoke out the side of his mouth. ‘So what do you want?’
‘I think you still have a leak.’
Vaczka flared his nostrils. ‘Me?’
‘That was the reason you came to us in the first place, remember. You had an informant, a mole in your organization.’
‘Yes, and she’s gone now.’
‘Is she?’ Collier shook his head sadly at him. ‘Are you fool enough to think there’s no legacy?’
‘Listen.’ Vaczka leaned towards him. ‘My organization’s been operating without serious interruption since 1980. My paymaster is Abu Nidal. We think we know what we’re doing.’
Again, Collier shook his head. ‘I know Abu Nidal. Sabri al-Banna. He’s been infiltrated by Mossad for years. His war council’s made up of Algerian-Israeli agents. I’m telling you again, I think you’ve got holes in your boat. If the water leaks on me, you’ll wish we’d never met.’
Vaczka snorted at him. ‘Fuck you, man. Who d’you think you’re talking to?’
Collier had been sitting with one hand resting on his thigh, and as he spoke, a stiletto knife worked down the sleeve of his jacket. All at once he reached under the table and pressed the sharp end against Vaczka’s testicles. Vaczka’s eyes were suddenly orbs in his face.
‘All I’m telling you is to check your firm,’ Collier said softly. ‘Now, which bit of that don’t you understand?’
Vaczka looked sideways to where Stahl and Blunski were watching them. They could see what was happening. They did not move, their gaze shifting
between Collier and his sergeants. Collier was still staring into Vaczka’s eyes.
He stood up. They looked at one another one last time, then Collier turned on his heel and his sergeants followed him out to the bikes. They were snapped three times by photographers in the trees across the road.
In the pub, Stahl and Blunski slid into the seat opposite Vaczka, whose face was a rash of scarlet and his lips white against it.
‘Was he doing what it looked like he was doing?’ Blunski asked.
Vaczka looked witheringly at him. ‘A knife against my bollocks, yes.’ He lit a cigarette and sat back, then fisted his hands on the table in front of him. He smoked in silence for a few moments, then very savagely he crushed the cigarette in the ashtray. ‘Move the guns,’ he said.
It was growing dark on Pennsylvania Avenue as Swann stood in the Domestic Terrorism Section in the FBI building, studying the fax that Webb had sent over.
Byrne moved at his shoulder. ‘What you got, Jack?’ Swann showed him. ‘Passenger manifest,’ he said. ‘Flight from here to Detroit in August 1997. Pia Grava made a phone call to one of the passengers. It might’ve been Boese. It might’ve been somebody else. Can you do anything with it?’
Byrne plucked it from his grasp. ‘Sure we can. We can see who these people are. I’ll get somebody on it.’ He took the paper with him and went back to his own office on the fifth floor.
Swann looked after him, then turned as he felt someone staring at him. Harrison was leaning against one of the desk partitions, spitting tobacco juice into a Coke can. The female ATF agent, who occupied the booth, was grimacing. Harrison ignored her and pushed himself off the partition. He walked past Swann and touched him on the shoulder. In the corridor outside, he paused. ‘Let’s go get us some coffee, Jack.’