by Chris Thomas
‘Yes.’
‘I will phone you at about six thirty to make sure that you are awake. Do not answer it, just let it ring and then decline the call. Have you got all that?’
‘Got it.’
‘OK, and please stop drinking. We could do with you being reasonably compos mentis in the morning.’
‘No problem.’
‘And Joe? Try not to worry about it,’ said Pete, attempting to reassure Joe that his situation perhaps wasn’t as bad as he thought, in the hope that it might make him more compliant. But all it appeared to do was draw a grunt of sarcastic non-belief. ‘We will be watching you and assisting you. You just need to make sure that you do absolutely everything we tell you.’
‘Well that’s made me feel tonnes better, thanks. Guess I’ll see you in the morning. Bright and early,’ replied Joe, as he hung up the phone.
‘Why don’t we just bring him in?’ asked Grace. ‘The boy’s a bloody liability.’
‘No, it’s too risky. Despite what he says, I doubt very much that our friends in the Brotherhood are under the impression that we’ve had no contact with him. If we bring him in, we lose the chance of reeling them in. If we let him just carry on, there’s obviously every chance he could screw it up, being the buffoon that he is, but at least we have the opportunity to catch them. Look, we should eat and then you’d better go. I need you to be in at silly o’clock tomorrow. I’ll call Danny and make sure he’s up to date with everything.’
After dinner, Pete packed up an overnight bag for Olivia and sat down with her on the sofa to watch one last episode of ‘The Simpsons’ before it was time for her to go back to her grandmother’s house.
‘Right, munchkin, I need to take you back to Grandma’s. I’ve got an early start in the morning so she’ll have to take you to school.’
Olivia looked up at him, her expression in stark contrast to the jolly happy child she had been all afternoon.
‘I heard you talking on the phone. Do you have to go and catch some bad people?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Is it dangerous?’
‘No, of course not,’ replied Pete, doing his best to sound convincing. ‘It’ll be a piece of cake. Then next week, I promise, we’ll go to Legoland.’
The mere mention of the place was sufficient to bring the smile back to her face and she leapt up from the sofa and went to put her shoes on.
‘I can drop her off if you like,’ said Grace, putting her coat on. ‘Your mother’s house is on my way.’
‘Are you sure? Liv, would you like Aunty Grace to take you to Grandma’s?’
‘Yes, please!’ replied Olivia, excitedly.
‘Great,’ said Grace, putting her arm around the girl and zapping the car through the front door. ‘Tell you what, you can sit in the front seat. Well, Pete, thanks for dinner. I’ll call you in the morning when I’m in.’
She leant forward and gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek. He smiled back at her as she left, closing the door behind him. Back on the sofa, he picked up his mobile and dialled Danny.
‘Evening, Daniel. We’re on for tomorrow. You might need to skip breakfast though, I need you in for five.’
39
‘Everyone set?’ said Harris, munching on a petrol station cheese and bacon slice, rapping his fingers on the steering wheel as he surveyed the scene out of his windscreen.
‘Yes, we’re all ready,’ replied Fowler, over the radio. ‘The tracker indicates that he’s still in his house, and I’ve got no signal from his transmitter yet.’
‘Alright, he should be leaving any minute now. I rang him about forty-five minutes ago, so it can’t take him that much longer.’
Grace returned to Fowler’s desk with two cups of coffee and two doughnuts, before sitting at her own.
‘How’s life on the road? Must be a bit like being a travelling salesman.’
‘It’s alright. Coffee’s shit, worse than in the office,’ he replied, just as he heard the receiver come alive. Joe had activated his transmitter. ‘Thank god for that. At least he managed not to cock that up,’ he whispered to himself.
‘Come in the police, come in the police,’ said the voice over the radio. ‘This is Joe, repeat, this Joe.’
Brooks and Fowler looked at each other and shook their heads.
‘Mister Henderson,’ said Fowler, ‘you really don’t need to speak like that. We can hear you perfectly, can you hear me?’
‘Yes, I can hear you perfectly. Over.’
Harris interjected, hoping to save his colleagues from dealing with this imbecile. ‘Joe, seriously, just relax and talk naturally as if you were talking to us in the room. Hopefully after a while you’ll forget that you even have this thing in your ear. I’m parked just down the road from your warehouse so I’ll clock you when you get here. We’re going to switch the transmission to one-way temporarily, so we’ll still be able to hear you but you won’t hear us. OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good, now just get here. I’ll see you in a bit.’
Joe turned on the engine and pulled out of the drive. It still sat very uncomfortably with him that his employees would be turning up to work in a place that was now technically a murder scene. He had returned to the warehouse on Saturday morning, first thing, to make sure that the estate was empty, just to double check that everything was how it had been when they all left on Friday. The Brotherhood people had done a perfect job of clearing away any evidence, but he still gave the floor a good going over with the bleach.
Quite why the police hadn’t impounded it as a crime scene he wasn’t sure; would he be in more trouble for trying to cover it up? He convinced himself that he didn’t really care, since very little could make his situation any worse. As he pulled onto the pavement opposite the local convenience store to pick up some milk for the kitchen, it occurred to him that his mind had been wandering into a daydream, and he couldn’t really recall anything of his journey for the last fifteen minutes. He could have run over any number of old women crossing the road and not realised it. Still, the milk was important. Just do what you always do, they had said.
Joe got back in the car, threw his orange carrier bag onto the passenger seat, and started up the engine. As he pulled away, he turned up the car stereo as loud as he could manage. Might as well give the officers something better to listen to than the sound of his breathing. About a mile down the road, he pulled up at a junction. As he waited in the queue to turn, he felt a hard object press against his ribcage. His heart jumped as he turned to see a hand holding a gun against his body.
‘Don’t say a word,’ came the voice; Joe could now see the person hiding under his coat behind the driver seat. ‘Leave the radio on, and drive where I tell you.’
Joe struggled to breathe but did what he was told.
Back on the monitor, Fowler watched as the car got ever closer to the warehouse.
‘About five minutes away, I reckon,’ he said to Harris. The red dot on his map stopped. ‘Looks like he’s hit a bit of traffic, probably a tractor or something knowing that road.’
After a minute or so, the dot began moving again.
‘Shit,’ exclaimed Fowler.
‘What is it?’ replied Brooks, looking over his shoulder at the screen.
‘He’s moving, but in the other direction.’
‘Bollocks. Pete, did you hear that?’
‘Yes,’ said Harris, throwing the last of his coffee out of the window and driving off at speed. ‘Fucking hell. What is he doing? Can’t you hear anything over the transmitter?’
‘It’s muffled, like he’s covering it over.’
‘Bloody hell. Where’s he going?’
‘He’s on the main road heading out of town to the motorway. But you’ll need to hurry, he’s going at a fair speed.’
In the back of the van, Eric pulled his hand away from Joe’s ear and pressed his finger to his lips.
‘OK, Joe,’ Eric said, loudly and deliberately. ‘If you’d j
ust like to pop the earpiece out, you won’t be needing that anymore. I’m sure Detective Harris is now well aware that we have taken you on a small detour.’
Harris nearly choked as he heard his name. ‘How in the hell does he know that I’m on this?’
‘It must have been Joe,’ said Brooks. ‘He must have told them all about your visit on Saturday.’
‘Shit,’ shouted Harris, as he swerved to avoid an old man on a bike. ‘I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Where’s Smith, he should be watching this.’
‘He’s just arrived,’ replied Fowler. ‘Sir, you need to see this.’
Smith joined them around Fowler’s desk. ‘Fill me in, Harris.’
‘Sir, Joe Henderson was supposed to be meeting a member of the Brotherhood at his warehouse this morning. I was stationed on the industrial estate, waiting for everyone to arrive. It would appear that the Brotherhood was suspicious of our knowledge of the meeting and intercepted him en route.’
‘Do we still have communication with Henderson?’
‘No,’ replied Brooks. ‘The man knew he was wearing an earpiece and had him remove it. He also made it very obvious he knew that he was being listened to. He mentioned Pete by name.’
‘And the tracker?’
‘Still in there, sir,’ answered Fowler.
‘But why? Surely they would suspect that too? Why not just ditch the tracker and vanish?’ asked Smith.
‘Exactly, I think they want me to follow them,’ interrupted Harris. ‘I think they know that I’m after them and this is their way of trying to lure me in. Make it look as though they haven’t found the tracker, as though they’ve made a mistake. Danny, send the tracker to my phone, I want to make sure that we don’t lose them. They seem to know our every move.’
‘What, you think they’re being tipped off?’ asked Fowler. ‘Hang on a sec, be quiet, there’s something coming through on the earpiece.’
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Joe, you have nothing to worry about. The information that you gave us about Harris’ visit to your house on Saturday was invaluable.’
‘What? I didn’t give you any information. You’re fucking lying. Yes they came round mine, and then you phoned just after they left. I never said anything about what we spoke about.’
‘Oh, Joe, you were a bit pissed though weren’t you? You probably don’t remember.’
‘No, not then I wasn’t. I remember I didn’t say a word.’
‘I think he’s too shit-scared of going to prison,’ said Harris, ‘I don’t think he did tell them we went round. If you ask me, they found out from somewhere else.’
Smith, Fowler, and Brooks all looked at each other. The operation had been kept as hushed up as it could be.
Smith cleared his throat, ‘Harris, you carry on following. Grace, you and Danny keep monitoring Pete’s progress. See if you can get a positive I.D. on the voice and cross reference it with any possible locations that they could be heading to. I need to put in a call to SCO-nineteen, have them on standby in case.’
He pulled out his mobile phone and walked out of the office.
‘Pete, they’ve pulled off the motorway and are heading across country. You’re about two miles from the junction.’
‘OK. Grace, do you have anything on the voice?’
‘Working on it. Just coming through now. Got it: Eric Wolfe. Fifty-seven-year-old, ex-intelligence service. One of Six’s more maverick agents by the look of it. He was discharged about five years ago, and nothing has been seen of him since.’
‘Why appear now?’ muttered Harris.
‘I would guess, given the type of work that he specialised in, he’s gone freelance,’ replied Brooks. ‘I doubt he’s the brains behind this whole thing though.’
Harris turned off the motorway, following the red blip on his smartphone screen, which was attached to the dashboard. As he passed through the large town, he stared at the hordes of suited office workers carrying their maroon cardboard coffee cups, briefcases, and umbrellas. The mums, laden with book bags and PE kits, dragging their kids behind on scooters. This was a life he had never known, the mundane drudgery of the rat race, serving no purpose other than to create wealth for a faceless board of company directors. He had a job, sometimes sat in an office behind a computer, but he had a reason. It was because of people like him that these wage slaves could go about their business without worry. But now, he was entering a part of the job he had never encountered before.
It was rare for him to be out in the field at all, let alone on the chase for a group of murdering internet stars. He believed he could handle himself, but the more he thought about it the more it bothered him. The questions raced through his mind. Why had this operation been kept so quiet? Why were they not sending a whole army of squad cars to chase this Wolfe? How did the ‘Brotherhood’ manage to stay one step ahead? Questions for later. This was it, do or die time. And as far as he was concerned, realistically, those were the two options. His strength welled inside him. He needed to make damned sure that it wasn’t the second option. For Olivia’s sake.
After a few miles of winding country lanes, the red blip came to a stop.
‘It looks like he’s turned into an old disused farm,’ said Fowler. ‘There’s various buildings there. He’s stopped over by the largest in the far corner.’
‘Pete,’ said Grace, softly, cupping the handset so Fowler couldn’t hear. ‘Be careful. We need you to come back.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Harris, as he pulled into the farm, slowing down to a crawl to reduce the tyre noise on the crunchy, pothole-riddled path. ‘Just get firearms here.’
He stopped behind the next door building and turned the engine off. Peering around the corner, he could see the white van parked up but no people. He went back to the car, opened the glove compartment, and nervously took out the telescopic baton that he had borrowed from the stores. Not that he thought it would do much good against these people, but at least it made him feel a little better.
As he snuck up to the large building, pressing his back against the wall, he reached the van. Extending the baton, and holding it ready to strike, he pulled the rear door handle. Locked. But the noise had alerted the occupant to his presence.
‘Let me out!’ a voice shouted from inside.
‘Mister Henderson?’
‘Yes, let me out for fuck’s sake.’
‘I can’t, it’s locked. Just stay in there and keep quiet. Keep quiet,’ he reiterated, more forcefully. ‘Help will be on its way. I don’t know how long, so just keep your mouth shut.’
He turned away towards the building and stopped dead in his tracks. There, on the door in bright red letters, was scrawled, Pete Harris, it’s show time.
40
Saeed Anwar sat, completely disorientated, trying to gather his thoughts. All he knew was that his hands and legs were fastened to whatever it was that he was sat on. The hood over his head had not been removed once since the minute it was forced on him in the forest. He was tired and his thirst had made him weak.
Suddenly, the hood was ripped off and a startling white light flooded into his eyes. As his vision became clearer, a face came into focus: hers.
‘Hello again, Saeed,’ said Daisy, her face bruised and cut.
‘What the fuck do you want? What are you doing with me, you stupid little whore?’
Daisy laughed and slapped him hard around the face. ‘Still giving it the big man. You seem to be somewhat clueless, Saeed. Do you not realise what is about to happen to you? You are going to die.’
‘You haven’t got the bottle,’ he snarled back at her.
‘No, you’re quite right. I don’t,’ she replied, pointing over her shoulder at the camera set-up. ‘But they do. I’m going to enjoy watching you suffering, you pathetic excuse for a man.’
Saeed turned away as much as he was able. Daisy grabbed his face and turned it back towards her own.
‘This will be for everything you
ever did to me. To all those girls whose lives you ruined. Come on, Saeed. Pin me down on the bed now. Hold me down with all of your weight and force yourself into me.’ She slapped him around the face again. Once, twice, again and again. The anger and hatred overwhelmed her as she channelled it all through her fists and into his face. As she brought her fist up one last time, it was grabbed from behind.
‘Stop, enough. We have to go. Our guests will be here soon. Leave him to them. Start the transmission.’
It all went dark as they placed the hood back over Saeed’s head, followed by a bright white spotlight illuminating the inside of the thick hessian. He heard what appeared to be thick heavy chains lowering something above his head, clattering to a stop. Then it went completely black. The silence was broken only by the sound of a door shutting, followed by the crunching of tyres driving off into the distance. All he could now hear was the sound of his own breathing, nothing else.
BACK IN THE OFFICE, a message popped up on Fowler’s screen.
‘Grace, look at this,’ he said, as he clicked on the link.
‘No, no, fucking no,’ she cried, ‘get Pete out of there. Not him, it can’t be.’
The Red Room logo had appeared above the words A very special edition of the Red Room. Today’s special guest – Saeed Anwar.
41
Fowler stared at the black screen, rapping his fingers against the desk, waiting for something to happen. It had been a few minutes since they’d arrived on this page, with nothing to see but the Red Room logo. Brooks hung up and threw her mobile down onto the desk.
‘Nothing,’ she said, ruefully. ‘I can’t reach him. He must have turned his phone off.’
‘Well, I doubt he wanted his ringtone going off as he’s trying to sneak up on his unsuspecting targets now, does he?’ replied Fowler. ‘Either that, or they’ve killed him already.’
Brooks punched him on the arm. ‘Don’t say that, you arsehole. If anything happens to him—’