Wheeler avoided the shopping centres and went down market. Cash shops mostly, stacks of jeans, cheap sweaters and cheerful, thick socks and clean pants. He bought a razor, deodorant, soap and a towel in a pound shop and left the assistant thinking that he’d rarely seen anyone more in need of the items.
It was ten thirty when with a handful of plastic bags he got on a bus and headed back to Buchanon bus station. He checked the time and went to the toilets. He put the pants, socks, jeans and the old boots on in a cubicle. It wasn’t an unknown sight for down and outs to wash there. One or two patrons gave him looks as he washed and shaved at the sink. In the last ten minutes he was alone drying himself and putting on the new clothes. His bus was due to leave twenty minutes later.
Chapter 58
Glasgow
10 – 40 a.m.
April 18th
David and Beaumont had dumped their rucksacks on each of the single beds in a twin room of the Glasgow Thistle hotel on Cambridge Street.
Both were tired. They'd picked up their car at Glasgow airport and made their way to the hotel. The airport was twenty odd miles outside the city centre and once in the city the traffic had been thick and David didn’t like driving. He took four wrong turns and lost them some time. After check in they’d ordered hot drinks and made their way to the rooms. Neither of them was in a good mood, the night before catching up on them and Beaumont was in a worse mood because of David’s driving.
A knock at the door signalled room service coffee and in Beaumont’s case a slice of chocolate cake.
“Get that David. I’m going to log on.” Beaumont sat at the standard hotel room writing desk, his laptop on the blotter. The start up sequence began and he plugged the cell phone in. At the door David took the tray and thanked the porter.
“Do you ever stop eating?”
“No, but what worries me at the moment is that I’ve not been working out.”
David put the coffee and cake on the table and walked to the window.
“They’re out there somewhere.”
“Hopefully we’ll have a sighting in a minute.” Beaumont said, logged onto the system and sipped his coffee. With no hand free he eyed the cake with anticipation.
“My father lives in Motherwell. I told my wife I might drop by. If we have a moment could we take a drive out there?”
Beaumont slammed the laptop shut and pulled his Sig out and checked the status; he cocked it and put the safety on.
“We’re taking a ride now. Wheeler’s been spotted at the Buchanon Bus station, it was around eight am, but Lawton the spotter said he’d keep watching.”
David pulled out his phone and tried to call the armed police on the way to the lifts, but he lost signal as the phone rang and they entered the lift.
In the lift Beaumont looked at him.
“I’m driving.” Beaumont said flatly.
“Okay.”
“My God David I can’t see why you got so flustered over driving.”
“It’s my weak spot. Everyone’s got a weak spot.”
“I haven’t.” Beaumont replied.
“Yes you have. It’s food. I bet you’re thinking of that cake in the room.”
“Okay, but being constantly hungry is manly. Being a crap driver that’s… well it’s…”
“What?” The lift opened onto the lobby.
“Bizarre in a man like you that’s all.” Beaumont replied.
They were quickly in the car and on their way to the bus station. David rang the police again and finally got through. It was hard making himself understood. The conversation halted when he was finally put on hold waiting to talk to armed response.
“You know where it is?” David asked.
“Yes I do. Five minutes away. I checked.”
“Do you think he’s still there?” David asked.
“The e-mail was after nine this morning and Lawton the local DIC spotter said Wheeler got there after eight fifteen, then left; he says the next London bus is eleven. You could check your laptop for an update see if he’s come back.”
“I didn’t bring it.”
“Damn it David. Are you awake today?” Beaumont said angrily.
“I’m okay, a little shaken by last night that’s all.”
“It’s not amateur night David. We’re after hired killers now focus.”
Armed response answered the phone and Beaumont turned onto Killermont Street, the bus station was mere yards away.
David got out of the car first. The Bus station was busy and they were illegally parked. Beaumont joined him.
“Did you check your gun this morning?”
David shook his head.
“Well you had better find a quiet spot to do it, don’t want to scare the natives. Nip into the toilet and use a cubicle.”
They began walking for the toilets together they were nearly there when Beaumont stopped and looked over at the National Express coach.
“That’ll be his target vehicle. I’ll wait here and watch.”
David walked into the toilet, pushing back the heavy door to find all the cubicles busy. Suddenly there was a man just coming out of a cubicle. David took in the lines of the face as the man passed him, it didn’t quite look like Wheeler. He thought himself edgy, shrugged and pushed the door open on the cubicle that the man had just left. He saw the white bag with the abandoned clothes, but straight away it was the glasses, dimly visible, but pressed against the plastic, that did it for him. Anyone might change clothes, buts no-one left their glasses behind. He rushed back to the door and outside drawing his Sig as he came out.
Wheeler was walking towards the National Express coach and was just level with Beaumont.
“Stay where you are Wheeler! Beaumont it’s Wheeler!” David shouted.
Beaumont spun round trying to draw his weapon, but Wheeler was too close. Wheeler gripped the gun hand just as the Sig cleared the holster and pressed it to Beaumont’s chest. David daren’t shoot with them both in such a tangle and daren’t get close to help as he wanted to back Beaumont up with a clear shot if needed.
There was a muffled crack and Beaumont’s face creased in pain, legs giving way and folding under him he dropped to the floor, Wheeler pulling the gun from his grip as he did so. There were screams and shouts from bus passengers and in the noise David heard sirens approaching.
David stood pointing his weapon like a duellist, side on for a smaller target.
“Drop it Wheeler!” David shouted, suppressing the fear inside and trying not to look at Beaumont stricken on the ground. McKie steeled himself.
Wheeler’s arm came arcing up away from Beaumont and in a back hand, but before the muzzle was on target McKie squeezed the trigger. He aimed for the head and his round struck Wheeler dead centre of the forehead knocking him back, eyes blinded by the smashing of the brain as the bullet ripped through and came out the other side; he fell backwards, no arms out, and smacked flat backed onto the course way in front of the coach, head two feet from the passenger doors.
The Sig 220 rail had clattered to the floor right by its owner. Beaumont lay on the tarmac hand to his chest air rasping in and out quickly his face bearing the concentration it was taking to do the simple task of breathing.
McKie stepped over Wheeler and checked his pulse. He couldn’t help but see the ragged hole in the head the bullet had rent. Wheeler twitched, eyes glazed and the pulse was weak. McKie picked up the pistol and put it in his jacket pocket as he squatted down by Beaumont.
“Jack! Jack! Can you hear me?” Beaumont looked up and nodded. McKie called out to no-one in particular. “Is there an ambulance on the way?”
“Armed police drop the weapon stand up and step away facing me hands in the air. Do it now!” was the answer he got to his question.
David looked into Beaumont’s eyes “You’ll be alright no?”
Beaumont’s eyes in a pain and fear filled place of their own gave him no answer and David felt the danger of the police weapons pointed at him. He too
k a last look in Beaumont’s eyes and then did exactly as he was told.
Once up he noted the three police vehicles and with relief the arrival of an ambulance, pre called by the armed response team. Officers made their way to Beaumont and another checked Wheeler. David allowed himself to be manhandled and he was made to lie on the ground. He was frisked, the two Sig’s taken and his pass pulled out. The pass was handed to a senior officer who looked very closely at his pass.
David looked up, neck only able to move, his hands cuffed tightly behind his back.
“I’m a civil servant! I have diplomatic immunity; check the pass. My friend the black guy he has the same.” Beaumont was being loaded into an ambulance and the police man wasn’t going to hold up his rapid journey to Stobhill.
“We’ll see about that. I don’t know if you or the dead man over there called us. So you’re going to have to come with me.”
“For God’s sake!” David shouted.
The policeman leaned down.
“I had that Wheeler in the bag at Stobhill yesterday, but he knocked out my constable and got away. I’m going to be very sure of who I let go and give a weapon to today I can tell you laddie.”
McKie nodded it made sense. He was helped up and put in the back of the police car. Forensic teams arrived and that part of the bus station was sealed off, including, unfortunately for the bus passengers, the toilets.
Ten minutes later David was sat in a cell, no shoes, his belongings in a sealed bag at reception, staring at a cell door thinking of Beaumont and of Wheeler’s face as he fell to the ground. He hadn’t said a word. He knew it made sense for them to make sure. The Police Inspector had made it clear that he was personally going to make sure that no assassin got past him on his watch, not after Liverpool and certainly not after Perth last night.
David looked around. He’d sat in customs holding cells with suspected smugglers, but this was the first time he’d been locked in a cell. It was small square and yet high. Fifteen feet from the ground there were opaque glass windows in the ceiling, thick oblong slabs in grill pattern. They let in a grey washed light. The thick steel door had a drop down flap about chest height. A policeman had checked on him through it. The floor was stone and the bed he sat on was a board. There were brown blankets and a rolled up thin blue mattress. It was a holding cell. There was a half walled area with a metal toilet and a flush button. Opposite the bowl was a spy hole similar to that of a domestic door. No privacy and no chance of escape; he’d felt that when the door locked. He had to wait whilst they checked his credentials. He wanted to know how Beaumont was.
He sat there thinking over the incident and each flash of memory brought butterflies to the stomach. After twenty minutes in the cell, the memory repeating itself over and over he made for the metal bowl, noting briefly an eye at the viewing hole in the wall opposite and big man as he was he bent over and was violently sick retching up porridge and coffee.
The time passed with David seeing Beaumont folding to the floor and his fingers twitching as he recalled the single shot opening the hole in Wheeler’s head. With an empty stomach he retched each time the memory of the dead man’s fall popped into his head.
Monty Lawton parked his dark green Mondeo in the visitor’s car park of the police station at Port Dundas Place half an hour after David’s arrival there. He’d had a busy morning. First he’d seen Wheeler, whom he’d been watching for all the previous day. He had also been told to look for Stanton. It was just before he’d been called out today that he’d got through the train station CCTV. His sharp eyes and quick mind had noted the man at Motherwell station, right where he lived. A CCTV backtrack within a ten mile radius had flagged up the lorry at the race track and he was about to call the police when the window inset live stream had shown Wheeler back at the bus station. He’d tried to call McKie, but the phone was engaged. Beaumont’s phone had just asked for messages, since it was still attached to the laptop in the Thistle Hotel. He’d watched with horror the unfolding drama at Buchanon and made a call to Jack. He’d rushed out jumped in the car and driven into the city.
In reception he told them who he was and they’d asked him to wait and whilst waiting his phone rang. The desk sergeant gave him a frown.
“Hi Monty here.. Yes Jack…I’m waiting…You called them yourself… Good…No… Is he? Good. Good… That’s two dead then… Stanton… No idea…but I’ve to get the police here to check a lorry at Hamilton Race Course… I think Stanton’s in the area… Okay… yes, “ he looked over at the desk guiltily “… Yes I am and ready at that. Okay I’ll have him out in a moment. Alright…” The inspector appeared at the desk then the door opened. “Right I’ve to go now. I’ll call back.”
“Mr Lawton?”
“That’s me right enough.”
“Inspector Searle.” They shook hands. “You boss identified this man as one of your own. He’s got some pull your boss. He came off the phone and then the Home Secretary called. Sorry we had to hold him, but we weren’t sure who was who at the bus station.”
“Doesn’t he have a pass like this?” He handed the inspector his pass.
“Yes, but we couldn’t be sure, not after Perth.”
“Sure enough.”
The inspector handed the pass back.
“This pass gives you diplomatic immunity. I’m therefore not able to hold him for the shooting of that man at the bus station. In fact right from the top it says to let him go even though he shot that man, who your organisation are saying is Wheeler, a man picked up after a road accident and found to be armed. He escaped yesterday.”
“Sure enough the man killed by McKie is Wheeler one of the illegal immigrants and according to our organisation a hired assassin.”
“Is that so? I’m not exactly sure who or what your organisation is?”
“You’re not meant to, but take it from us the country’s a better place for that man being dead. I do commend your thinking on holding David until you were sure. Our communications network shows that the Mersey marina murderer managed to get onto a flight this morning using one of our passes and a disguise, so good thinking.”
At that point David came out and was handed his shoes, bag with watch and money in, his pass and his Sig and holster. He was handed a third bag with Beaumont's Sig in it.
“David. I’m Monty Lawton. Glasgow branch.” They shook hands. “Jack Beaumont’s stable, shot through the lung. He had a tricky half hour, but he’s looking good for it right now. I’ve to take you over there.”
“Thanks. Did Wheeler die?”
“Yes he did.” Monty patted his shoulder. “It’s not easy killing a man, it was kill or be killed, plain and simple; it was you or him and he had shot your partner.” David nodded silently.
Lawton took David to the hospital from the police station. The room had been quiet and Beaumont was asleep, wearing a respirator over his face and wired up to a heart monitor. Yellow sunlight brightened the room through angled blinds and hospital noises were distantly muffled by the door. It was a cocoon of quiet, even the heart monitor was set to silent in the room. It crossed David’s mind that it could have been him. He felt a wave of guilt and shame flush through him. He should have taken his laptop. He should have checked his Sig before he left. He should have checked with Lawton by satellite phone. He felt that he had lost the edge he had started out with. He wondered if he had the capacity to do the work. Spencer’s death, the fear of Stanton at the station and a lack of sleep had eroded his mental and physical edge. If it happened once it could happen again. He watched Beaumont breathing for a while as a new father watches the baby and dare not look away for fear it may cease. Lawton gently called him away.
Once back at the hotel David showered and drank a cup of sweet tea. When he was dressed he stood behind Monty Lawton as he sought evidence of Stanton’s whereabouts.
David stood uneasily behind the chair at the desk in the Thistle Hotel. Lawton was logged on to Beaumont’s laptop and was checking the latest communiques.
For David it was hard to focus on the screen as the uneaten slice of cake sat accusingly next to Beaumont’s laptop.
“Stanton has gone to ground, there’s no trace after the rail station. He’s either in a house nearby or has stolen a car. I’ve checked reported car thefts, but there’s nothing in my area. Stanton’s good. It makes you wonder just how good DIC are if we can’t track them fast enough to be there waiting for them.”
“Maybe it’s because they’re more used to this intensity and pace.” David said.
“It’s possible. The one that scares me is Mason. He completely disappeared shortly after entry, there’s only that footage at the industrial park and the stolen Alfa found in Glasgow, after that nothing. He must have disguised himself well.”
“That’s true enough, but we did pick them up at point of entry which is better than not at all.”
“True, true,” Lawton logged off. “You’d better call Jack and see what his instructions are. I’ll go and wait in the lobby, I’ll pay the bill.”
“I’d like to go to see my father. He lives in Motherwell, Sunflower Gardens.”
“Some coincidence that’s round the corner from me, I’ll drop you there and you can pop back round after your visit and we’ll sort out what Jack wants you to do.”
“Okay. Thanks Monty. It’s been quite a day and it’s not over.”
“Like I said killing someone isn’t easy.”
“Have you?”
“Yes. I was in the parachute regiment. I’m rare for DIC. I was recruited in the eighties after I came back from the Falklands. I don’t have a degree, but for some reason they head hunted me and here I am. Yes I’ve seen death. If action doesn’t leave an outer scar like the one Beaumont will have it leaves one on the inside. I’ll be in the lobby.”
David nodded. The door closed behind Monty and David sat heavily on the bed and held his phone.”
“David, are you well?” Jack asked.
“Yes, but I’m a little shaken and a bit overawed by events. I’m okay though.”
“Good. You did well…”
David interrupted.
To Kill Or Be Killed Page 15