What he wanted was the lot, complete charge of the Hijaz surveillance arrangements pending his deposition of evidence linking Hijaz to the Beaulieu killings. There was also a second charge relating to Hijaz’s involvement in a murder attempt on Regan by the driver of a red Jaguar in the UK. The ACC granted him the overall charge of surveillance provided he would dictate a report right away – the Commissioner must be fully briefed by the time the Bahrain Embassy came back with its heavy guns. Meanwhile the ACC called in his secretary, gave her three names in the Paris Police Commission and the Justice Ministry for her to phone. Regan also said it would be useful for him to talk to Guignard, and Huggueson added the name to the secretary’s list.
Regan walked down one floor to Squad Office and along to his office. Nothing had changed, a pile of mail and some new files on his desk, and a couple of dozen telephone messages. He avoided looking at them. He unlocked his equipment cupboard and got out a Philips Stenorette, closed the door, sat down, phoned the switchboard, told the Duty operator ‘No calls’, replaced the phone and concentrated. He fine-tuned his mind to short sentences, to get the whole thing explained, but briefly. He was now extremely anxious to get out to North Square. But he appreciated the ACC’s point of view. They had to know the full story. He dictated it in the formal, spare, flat style of police reports. He began with the first visit to the Wellington Clinic, and finished with his return from France and his appointment as Officer in Charge at the surveillance site. He had just started to itemize his thoughts on the possible range of legal procedures against Hijaz, the pros and cons of perhaps extraditing him to France, and, separately, the necessity for a prolonged interrogation needed if the names of the group who raided the gendarmerie were to be established, when the phone rang shrilly right at his elbow. He picked it up. ‘I said no fucking calls.’
A hesitation, then Haskins’ voice cold, but not affronted. ‘ACC says you’re Duty Officer, North Square. I’ve just been informed that three unidentified men entered the maisonette ten minutes ago. Five minutes ago, Hijaz, armed with a gun, accompanied by the three, tried to leave the house by a rear garden door. Hijaz fired at a constable who attempted to intercept, then retreated back into the house...’
‘Christ.’ Regan was already standing.
‘The PC has shoulder wounds, a bullet in the lung, not too seriously injured.’
‘I’m going there.’ Regan dropped the phone back on its cradle. It missed the cradle and fell to the floor. But he didn’t see that because he was already out of the office.
It was a small square, less than sixty houses cluttered round a plot of grass abused by dogs and contained by black railings, mostly broken. The facade on two sides of the square was Edwardian, the third side ‘fifties modern where a row of houses had been demolished after bomb damage. The south side of the square was Victorian, less and larger houses with short gardens and a mews lane at the back. The row was bisected by a narrow road leaving the square and filtering down through the back-up of small one-way streets to the main artery, the Bayswater Road at its east end near Marble Arch. Hijaz was in a corner house on the south side, where the narrow road met the square. So in fact the house could be overlooked, overseen, from three sides.
The first thing that Regan saw when he arrived was the grey face of the injured policeman. He hadn’t been moved from the mews entrance, back of the house, probably within yards of where Hijaz’s bullets had cut him down. The docs had got the man’s shirt off, installed a drip, and were now slowly propping him up with blankets and pillows on the stretcher, to make him comfortable for the lift into the ambulance and the journey to the hospital. They were also looking for the exit holes of the bullets. Four had gone in, two had come out. Haskins had been wrong. Regan knew a seriously injured man when he saw one. This constable was in a touch and go situation.
He spent a minute with the small crowd round the stretcher, including press photographers, then was off to prowl the square. Five times he stopped to introduce himself to various confreres. He said his line – he was DI Regan, Officer in Charge. There had been about twenty uniformed cops in the square when he’d arrived. By the time he almost completed his tour, he’d spotted another six prowl cars arrive. More would be turning up now like bees to a honey pot. The news would be across the police radio bands that a cop had been shot in Bayswater.
Most of the men Regan introduced himself to either knew him by name or reputation. Then a Special Patrol group arrived – the best the spg could round up suddenly at eleven a.m. in the morning was twenty cops in one of its buses, all armed. Regan knew Harris, the guy heading the group. Regan gave him his opinion, hang back from the square, concentrate on security in depth, and crowd control. Show their arms to the public. There was now a problem with the public. This immediate Bayswater area was bedsit and small hotel country. Fortunately the row of Victorian houses where Hijaz and company were holed up seemed to be still private houses. The police had already evacuated the south side of the square within ten minutes of the shooting incident.
A mobile control unit Leyland van arrived from the Yard. Regan got into the back of the van, took up a microphone, and started to issue a series of terse orders.
The first thing he organized was the cutting off of the electricity supply to the siege house. A police van was driven up on to the kerb in front of the Hijaz house and positioned between the house and the electricity manhole cover in the road. Three policemen, armed with Remington rifles, moved in with two London Electricity Board men. They stood by the men in the sheltering cover of the van while they removed the manhole cover and switched off the electricity for the whole south side of the square. While this was being done, a constable found a flat on the top floor of a house on the north side of the square which had easy access to the roof. Regan sprinted across to the north side, climbed four flights of stairs, got out on to the roof.
He had obtained a pair of binoculars from Inspector Harris. Now he studied over and across the square to the Hijaz house. The curtains were drawn in all of the Hijaz apartment windows. There were no curtains in the windows of the second and top floor apartments for sale. But just as Regan was about to put down the binoculars he saw a movement in a room in the second floor apartment. Into the room stepped the man Regan had glimpsed for a split second in the hall of the Beaulieu gendarmerie, the man with florid face and thick eyebrows who had shot Lassigny and then stood on the front steps changing the magazine on his M38. This man now saw there were no curtains in the room and immediately retreated. The whole action took less than two seconds. But it was enough for Regan to know that some of the men who had carried out the bloody massacre in the South of France had within hours got to this address in London. But how? It wouldn’t be too difficult. They could have driven their Citroens to a near-by small private airport and, like Hijaz, have gotten into another twin-engined Cessna for London Airport. Then they would expect, without ever having to go through Customs and Immigration formalities, to join Hijaz in the Boeing, taxiing on the runway. So they’d arrived at London Airport and found the Boeing wasn’t available. There was no reason why they shouldn’t then pass through Customs and Immigration in the usual way. There were no descriptions available and no alert out for the Beaulieu killers in England.
Regan studied for the last time the facade of the house. It was probably in this house that the pro-Arab group had planned the massacre. Over a dozen gendarmes and Israelis had died and it still hadn’t stopped the atom power deal between the Arabs and the French. But all Regan could really think of was the wounded policeman, and something closer to him, the dead Jo. And how Hijaz must pay.
Outside the house Regan met Harris who told him that Maynon and Haskins were parked in Maynon’s car in Broadley Street, a hundred yards north of the square. Regan walked across the square and north up to Broadley Street. He knew why the senior cops were parked there. They were deliberately giving Regan the free run of the square, deliberately steering clear.
Maynon’s driver got
out of the car and Regan sat in behind the steering wheel.
‘Hello Jack.’ The Superintendent made his notional greeting, no expression in his voice.
Haskins’ greeting was even more notional, a nod.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
‘I know that.’
Regan told them of his positive identification of one of the Beaulieu killers, and that he felt the shot cop was in a serious condition.
‘What have you worked out?’ Maynon asked gently.
‘Specifics?’ Regan hadn’t formed a detailed plan. He told them that.
‘Why did you cut off their electricity?’
‘They may have television in the apartment. The BBC’s arrived. Before ITV for once. I don’t want Hijaz and company getting information from a tv set, or being made overly nervous by seeing tv shots of crowds and cops.’
‘We’re going to have a traffic problem if this doesn’t sort itself out,’ Haskins said.
‘Who cares about traffic?’ Regan said. ‘Traffic doesn’t matter. These men aren’t going anywhere.’
‘When will you have a plan, Jack?’ Maynon asked.
‘Initially I suggest we follow the conclusions we all made after the Balcombe Street siege. A cooling-off period, then we try dialogue. But first a few hours while we all relax, get our bearings, get phones installed, communications sorted out, lay of country studied, then we’ll make the decision of how long to wait, or whether to flush them out.’
Maynon was studying the house, nodding slowly. ‘Okay,’ he said, like it was a detailed plan and had received his imprimatur. ‘Remember one key thing. The public’s looking on. We’re standing out like a newly white-washed toilet wall. Don’t give ‘em a chance to write graffiti.’
Regan stayed with them another five minutes. He wanted to reassure them that he was not about to embark on any crazy or injurious course of action. Of course from now on Maynon would be tuned in by w/t to every word exchanged by every copper in the square. Nonetheless Regan had to make the verbal assurances that he wouldn’t be doing any rough riding. That’s what he said, and they seemed to be assured. They didn’t seem to realize that he was lying.
He left the car but he wasn’t happy. He didn’t trust Maynon, not an inch, nor Haskins. The second it suited them, they’d get him relieved as Officer in Charge. Meanwhile he could stand about and carry the can if it went wrong. Then he realized that they were right not to trust him. Implicit in any course of action he was currently planning was that he was about to betray the whole of the Met’s trust in him.
He walked along to the southeast corner of the square. Armed cops were still arriving and sprinting all over the shop, like this was a preparation for a new Normandy landing. He met Harris and told him to organize a canteen lorry. Harris had anticipated him. One had already arrived, another one was on the way.
‘You can go off for an hour,’ he said to Harris. ‘I may have to take a break later. I really will have to shave for the tv cameras. You take an hour and be back at one.’
Harris was looking at his watch. ‘What time d’you think it is? It’s eleven o’clock, not twelve,’ he told Regan.
‘Right.’ Regan adjusted his watch. ‘I’ve just come from France. They’re an hour ahead.’
Harris went off. Regan sought out the canteen van, but he was not really interested in much more than a cup of coffee while he tried to think the whole thing through. He was Officer in Charge, and basically that meant he had to come up with an initiative in the next few hours, or at the latest by evening, or gradually the media would overtake the situation, build it up into a major crisis. Then the general public and its tv interviewers would only be satisfied by the presence and statements of the big guns. If the siege wasn’t over by nightfall, the Commissioner would have to show up at the scene and give interviews. If it wasn’t over by tomorrow morning then the usual queue of parrots in the House of Commons would be putting down questions. This was time suspended, in no man’s land. Regan knew his superiors were deliberately standing back to give him room, were sitting it out whilst he drank his free coffee and worked out some trick to get four guys and at least one gun out of that house.
Meanwhile a cop was in a serious condition. Regan, as soon as he’d arrived at the scene of the shot cop on the stretcher, had immediately given permission for several press photographers to approach and get the big Nikon close-ups. Those photographs would be in every evening paper. Those pictures would get the public firmly on the side of law and order, and any police initiative, even if it went wrong. From the political point of view, it was almost worth sitting it out for a few hours till the first newspapers hit the street. The fact was, Regan couldn’t see the incident ending without bloodshed.
He finished his coffee, walked over to the mobile communications centre, and made four phone calls. The first was to St. George’s Hospital, to check the condition of the shot constable. He was still in a critical condition but there had been a mild improvement. The second call was to the Bahrain Embassy. He talked to a First Secretary, he stated his business. Was there anyone available, perhaps the Ambassador, or a senior official, who would be prepared to come to North Square, Bays water, to talk to a Mr. Hijaz holed up in a house? Obviously the news of the siege in North Square had leaked through to the Embassy. In a few economical, curt and stiff-lipped sentences, he was told that the incident at North Square was of no interest to the Ambassador, who would not be intervening.
Regan decided to talk to Maynon again. The man was in his office at the Yard.
‘I’ve just one question,’ he stated. ‘D’you think the Top Brass are looking for anything like the scenario on the recent Balcombe Street siege, or the Spaghetti House siege? I’m wondering why I’m being given room?’
‘Don’t quote me on this. The Spaghetti House and the Balcombe Street sieges were pr jobs for police recruitment. This is different. This is political. This involves the Arabs whom this country has to be friendly to. At the same time this man has shot a policeman. Justice must be done. Also the Embassy here has written him off. Up to the moment all the public knows is that this is an incident involving one man and three confreres who’ve wounded a policeman in Bayswater. They don’t know about Beaulieu. We want the scenario kept small, at your level.’
He phoned Detective Sergeant Carter, his usual assistant, oppo, oracle of reasonable advice freely given and spiced always with the right blend of slyness, cynicism and Yard politics. ‘George, meet me now, the canteen lorry in North Square.’
Carter arrived twenty minutes later. Regan had already got him a coffee. Carter grimaced as he tasted it, but he drank it.
‘What d’you think, George?’
Carter shrugged.
‘You know the whole story?’
‘Yeah, I got it all – the raid on the South of France nick, the private plane at London Airport – from Haskins.’
‘What d’you think?’
Carter hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Let me give you an honest and dishonest opinion, guv. I put it that way because I can’t prove this opinion. But I think you’re being set up.’
Regan was studying the young man’s face intently.
‘I think you’ve been set up right from the beginning. From the moment the ACC and the Special Branch dumped you in it. You’ve gone from one laundry to another doing other people’s washing. Now you’re here in a political siege in London West Two, and there’s no way any OC is going to come out of it with high marks. You’ll come out dead or disgraced, but no way the Golden Boy. How am I doing so far?’ Carter asked gently.
‘Go on,’ Regan told him.
‘I’d say they cast you in the mug’s role right from the beginning.’
‘Is that right?’ No annoyance in Regan’s voice as he assimilated Carter’s words, but wasn’t quite sure if they were on beam. ‘I was set up at the beginning. But surely that ended when I solved the whereabouts of Haffasa’s killer. Once I’d phoned fr
om “La Reserve” to Maynon I was put in the picture. From that point I don’t think I was a patsy anymore.’
‘You were. You are,’ Carter said flatly. ‘No OC on this North Square siege is going to come out a hero. I heard you more or less blackmailed Maynon. You wouldn’t give over the bloke’s address in the South of France till you got the full story. Pulling a stunt like that on Maynon doesn’t make you his most popular cop. He’s delighted to make you OC, to pay you back, ‘cos you’re going to fuck yourself, guv...’
Suddenly Regan knew Carter was right. Carter was telling the simple truth and he hadn’t seen it. He’d had all the letters but he hadn’t spelled it out. Slowly the anger began to well up in him. Anger at himself, anger at his bosses, fury at Hijaz, the man who had killed Jo and was now set up to wreck his career. Nobody in charge was about to get out of the North Square siege clear, commended, with a career still intact, a lunatic Bahraini, three professional killers and a gun. No way that lot could be sorted out without one final Hellish incident.
He’d had a half-formed plan since he’d talked to Harris at eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock on Harris’ watch. The plan worked with the coincidence of his getting the London Electricity Board to the siege house to switch off electricity. For the plan to work, the four men in the house must not watch television or have any other contact with the outside world. The phone too had been cut off, or at least re-routed through the exchange for an intercept at the Mobile Communications van.
The Sweeney 03 Page 14