“Stop your crying woman,” he said in accented English. “I am not here to kill you. Get out of my way.”
The female was fearful of becoming another victim. Her local newspaper had talked about burglars targeting Indian homes for their jewellery.
To pre-empt his attack upon her, she removed her bracelet and offered it to him, pleading for her life.
“Woman, get out of my way, I am not a burglar.” He threw the bracelet back at her with a sense of honourable pride and pushed by en route to the kitchen door.
He stopped, seeing the helicopter, still hovering, the predator of the sky, its electronic eyes constantly scanning the ground; today there was only one target.
‘Me. They are here for me.’
He had to think quickly. ‘What can I do to throw these dogs off my scent? They will be in the house soon…think.’
He looked back at the female who was still quivering, distressed and anticipating his next move.
He beckoned for her to remove her clothing.
She refused.
The words of the Qur’an were repeating in her head as she stood, steadfastly refusing to obey him.
…Not to display their beauty except to their husbands, or their fathers, or their husband’s fathers, or their sons…
He spoke to her in English again – he could not speak her language and clearly she could not understand his dialect.
“Woman, take off your clothes or I will kill you – just the top and…the scarf. Now!”
She wanted to scream, to attract attention, futile given the lack of neighbourly kindness and empathy.
He pointed the weapon at her, causing her to sob uncontrollably and forcing her to comply. Her chestnut pupils were enhanced by the rapid reddening of her eyes.
She pulled the immaculate niqab headscarf away, fully revealing her face, which was framed by a thick head of shimmering coal-black hair which was offset with a solitary strand of grey.
He nodded to the burqa.
She grabbed hold of him, still pleading for clemency.
He swung his arm around and struck her on the forehead, causing an instantaneous gash to appear.
“Why can’t you people just leave me alone?”
Once again he levelled the handgun at her. This was taking far too long.
“Take it off! Now!” He pushed at the clothing with the barrel of the gun.
Sensing it was her only option, she slipped the outer garment from her body revealing what he saw to be Western clothing. She was probably an attractive woman – to a man who found such things pleasurable.
She had just provided an opportunity to escape unhindered, albeit an entirely surreal one, but he had learned to ride his luck.
Fearing he would ask her to remove all of her clothing, she grabbed hold of him again, pleading in fractured English.
He struck her once more, intending to hit her with the back of his right hand, but instead he struck her above the left cheekbone, the hardened plastic stock of his Glock driving the bone backwards and causing immediate, intense pain.
She fell to the ground; playing dead, praying for leniency. At least she was alive.
All he needed to do was escape – he had no time for another brutal killing. He hurriedly placed the garment over his own clothes and slipped the headdress in place. He knew he looked preposterous; better foolish than in their custody – or dead.
He stopped for a second, dipped his finger into the blackened saucepan and let the spices burst onto his tongue. It tasted sublime.
‘Move on fool!’
He opened the part-glazed door and looked right, along the row of houses and into the distance where the helicopter remained, indifferent, a hawk watching for its prey.
He hid his modest backpack beneath the flowing robe and exited, trying to a great extent to appear innocent.
The fusion of cultural clothing with Western garments was almost the local norm, it helped him to blend in and as quickly as his legs would allow he moved out of the small rear garden, into an alleyway and away to the south, and the car, his chance for freedom.
He left behind a quietly terrified female who had curled into a foetal position awaiting her salvation.
Nine Nine’s observer scanned the ground with his powerful camera, paying particular attention to the old shop. He relayed his observations back to the Force Control Room and to Woods.
“Nine Nine, no movement on the ground over. The street is, er….clear. No movement from the upstairs windows. At this time we will assume that both targets are still within the property. Nine Nine over.”
Constantin could hear his own heart. It was pounding, desperate to escape his chest cavity. He daren’t look back, but he also knew he needed to appear as normal as a wanted man in a hand-me-down burqa could.
Anyone in such a position would surely admit that they felt that the entire world was watching them, judging them, setting them up to fail?
But he kept walking; fifty metres, forty metres, thirty until he was there, alongside an anonymous rotting automotive relic of the nineties, no doubt the once-proud steed of a Regional Sales Manager, the only worn, sagging seat being directly behind the steering wheel – the rest resembling those of a freshly valeted showroom model, eagerly waiting for its highly excited customer.
Now it sat, anonymously on a side street, its flaccid suspension defiantly defying gravity, its damp carpets having long ago lost the battle with mould.
As he opened the creaking driver’s door and threw the pack onto the passenger seat, he allowed his eyes to sweep up and down the street. Despite the fact that only a short distance away the police were conducting a raid that would fuel local conversations for days, he felt remarkably confident.
He climbed in, his olfactory system immediately reacting to the fetid air within. He wiped the driver’s window and then involuntarily licked his fingers clean, leaving an acrid taste on the surface of his lips.
He placed the worn plastic-fobbed key into the ignition and felt the much-abused engine labour into life. Without indicating, he pulled off from the kerb and headed for the safety of an anonymous, pre-arranged location, leaving an indiscreet cloud of blue smoke in his wake as he changed from first to second.
The heavily suited Explosive Ordnance team member who had approached the property under the cover of a police marksman, utilised his HAL Building Access Kit, which quietly and efficiently encouraged the door to open. He slid a CCTV probe into the room and declared the doorway clear.
He was superbly equipped for all threats but never had to resort to using any of his Access, Investigation or Render Safe methodology. Truth be told, he was somewhat disappointed, but reminded himself not to be complacent – that going home was always more beneficial than not.
“If this place is wired for sound, then I’m not a Cliff Richard fan boss.” The time-served army engineer said as he fed back his on-site intelligence to the boss. “Very low key. There is a battery pack on the kitchen worktop and an egg timer. Amateurish at the very best”
“Received, do we give the green light to the police, over?”
“Yes, yes.”
According to the police staff who had carried out the earlier site inspection, the aging, simple wooden door was supposed to provide a semi-belligerent resistance to the Method of Entry team – who had forgotten more than most conventional police staff would ever know about such things.
The ‘doorman’ was ready as always to strike the basic structure with such force that it would splinter or collapse.
However, if it was anything like the last one he struck a week before it would need another three well-aimed hits to convince it to release its grip. On that occasion when it finally relented it flew across the kitchen colliding with the owner and then her newly installed stainless steel oven.
The fact that it was entirely the wrong address simply exacerbated things and added to the poor sergeant’s already-horrendous paperwork.
But this was altogether easier. The EO
D staff had found the door to be almost insecure; less problematic, and therefore, to the cynical team waiting to enter, suspicious.
The first officer was in, his polished leather and denier nylon magnum boots trampling over a pile of part-filled black rubbish bags.
Swinging his weapon in a well-practised arc Pete O’Neil, nickname ‘P-O’ cleared the right side of the room, taking a split second to look up to the ceiling and then over the sights of his MP5 machine pistol down to the ground, checking for any sign of a trap. He knew that his partner in crime and a survivor of many off-duty ‘epic events’ was only feet away from him. Sharkey Green was nothing if not dependable.
Green had almost exactly mirrored P-O’s actions; swift, deliberate and methodical. Neither had to shout ‘clear’ – they knew it was, and those waiting just outside the building also knew when things were going well. Call it intuition. But they did anyway – muscle memory.
“CLEAR!”
Chapter Thirteen
Green got to the next door, tucked himself up against the wall, lowered his stance and remembered to breathe. There could of course be a whole host of hidden atrocities waiting to ensnare them, but fortune, apparently, favoured the brave.
He nodded to P-O who gently pushed down the door handle and then eased the door inwards, allowing Green to see into the next room with an extendable mirror. Time in these circumstances did not equate to money, but rather whether one lived or not.
Again, he checked up, down and sideways. Nothing.
It was a lounge – of sorts. Sparsely furnished and reeking of damp; carpets, curtains and walls. Heavily faded wallpaper peeled back from the crumbling plaster to reveal brown watermarks and layers of previously fashionable coverings.
Remnants of past decades, in the form of a sagging corduroy brown sofa and an orange plastic footstool worked in tandem with an open fire, fringed in a seventies’ surround that had not seen a naked flame in years. Together they did their combined but futile best to make the place appear homely.
The carpets were sticky. The team would remember to wipe their feet on the way out.
Green’s frontal lobe had allowed him to process the whole room in a second. Everything, even the pile of unsolicited junk mail that had amassed upon the hessian doormat, adding its own distinctive aroma.
His Medulla, sitting innocuously within his brain stem, was carrying out the involuntary tasks such as breathing, which was quickened by the second.
Green had ‘that feeling’ – it had happened during a drug warrant a few years before, during which one of his team had been badly injured.
Instinct versus stupidity. Move on.
Being so sparsely furnished meant that Green could move forwards quickly, he broke to the left whilst P-O stepped deftly on his toes and to the right. They knew that two more members of the team had entered the kitchen and that three more were waiting on the other side of the main front door.
As they moved on, Green spotted the key to his suspicions. A door. Hidden behind a wall-hung rug – arguably the most valuable item in the entire building.
Green nodded to his colleague and reported in to his commander.
“Boss, sorry. Looks like we have a cellar to clear. May need more staff.”
“Yes, yes. Stand by one.”
Woods put his tactical thinking cap on once more.
“Is it locked?”
P-O checked and soon learned that it was.
“It is boss, how did you know?”
“I didn’t, but my dear old granny always locked hers in case someone tried to break in via the coal hole. Leave it to the back-up team and move on.”
Five minutes had elapsed.
P-O shifted his body position, swivelling his short weapon up into the stair void as Green waited for the signal to move from the left and to the bottom of the open-plan staircase.
As P-O lowered his gaze from the roof space onto the stairs he came face to face with the vacant gaze of a young male. As fearless and experienced as Peter O’Neill was, the image startled him. His finger flirted with the trigger for a nanosecond.
The man’s eyes had long since lost the desire to focus on the world around him. His facial expression was indifferent; cold and pale. A solitary, blackened red hole was evident above his left eye.
P-O had only previously seen one such injury, the owner of which had survived, but when he observed the two well-placed entry points in his chest he was in no doubt that the man was beyond any help.
Despite his primary diagnosis, he placed his index and middle finger onto the male’s hand and skilfully felt for a radial pulse. He shook his head at his team mate before speaking quietly into his tactical radio.
“Skipper, we’ve got one male, one oblique one. He’s on the stairs. We need to move him to get up to the next level. Your call, please.”
Out on the street, Woods processed the message. The coded conversation confirmed that one occupant was dead. He knew that this would necessitate a Scenes of Crime examination and a murder team – both of whom would want to crawl fastidiously across the site – and importantly, ensure that Woods’ team had not been responsible for the shooting.
Every cartridge case would need to be located, photographed, bagged and exhibited.
Woods exhaled, craving the discarded cigarette.
Cade caught his eye.
“Penny for them, Sergeant?”
“Nice, cheers, boss. I’ve got a dilemma. As always, Uncle Woodsie is damned if he does and fucked up the jacksie if he doesn’t. My boys have a body on the stairs and need to get up them to continue the search – with one more potentially hostile offender at the top of the bloody things.”
Cade sympathised but was out of his depth. “I’ll leave the tactics up to you Mac, but I think we both agree the body has to remain in situ.”
Roberts nodded before adding, “Can you photograph it first, then move it?”
“I can Jason but I’ve got a funny bloody feeling about this job and time is not on my side, all I need now is that limp-wristed commander of mine to ring and engage me in some well-meaning conversation about Standard Operating Procedures etcetera, et-bloody-cetera…”
Woods’ cell phone began to vibrate energetically. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“See what I mean. I live in a world full of conspiracies – I swear it’s like the bloody Truman Show here sometimes!”
He exhaled once more, deeply, deliberately, before keying the green button on his phone and allowing himself to smile radiantly.
He spoke with an emphasised smile. “Boss. How’s it going?”
“Good Mac. You have my permission to go in. But Mac…”
“Boss?”
“No bloody heroics or my arse is on the line.”
“Good call, Sir. You have my word.”
He disconnected and called up P-O.
“Climb over him and deal with the matter in hand. And boys…”
“Skip?”
“Flash bang – no gas. My distinguished guests from Londinium would like to have a little walk, though as soon as you have made it safe and I don’t think a mask would do much for Detective Sergeant Roberts’ hair.”
“Roger.”
Another five minutes had passed.
Constantin was now nearly two miles away from the target address, driving as slow as he dared, trying to adapt to his new attire, all the while desperate to avoid detection. Where were the roadblocks? The armed police? Who were these amateurs?
Green and P-O waited for the stun grenade canister to clatter into the room. Another joined it a second later. O’Neill had learned that simply tossing them into the target area allowed an offender to kick them out of harm’s way. Fire was always a secondary risk, but they would cross that bridge if they had to.
Both grenades detonated twice, the two-ounce charge in each taking only a second to initiate. The bedroom was filled with a blisteringly white, three hundred thousand candlepower light. Anyone present would have been con
cussed, confused and utterly disorientated by the one hundred and sixty decibel explosion.
The two-man team were equipped to deal with both aspects of the grenade – wearing active microphones and ear defenders they would only hear muted reports, but were easily able to communicate with each other and their bronze commander.
Green felt the reassuring squeeze on his right shoulder, three times, the unambiguous signal to go. As they moved up the uncarpeted staircase, the smoke had begun to clear, enough to provide a view into an empty room through the lenses of their SF-100 respirators.
No furniture.
No-one.
Despite their masks, both men could sense the familiar stench of chemicals from the canisters.
The second bedroom was pronounced clear, then the bathroom.
“Boss, the upstairs is clear. No sign of a second offender. Only the loft and cellar to clear.”
“Received. The other boys are seconds behind you. Just wait one.”
Cade’s phone vibrated discreetly in his trouser pocket. He removed the phone and lit up the screen. It was a text from O’Shea.
Heading out to buy lunch. How’s it going? X.
He thought about not replying but sent a simple message in return.
Interesting x.
Roberts was trying to be discreet but failing dismally.
“Jas, if you want to read the bloody thing just ask!”
“Sorry mate – you and her are actually, you know, really something…”
Cade wasn’t sure whether this was a statement or a question but replied equally ambiguously “Aren’t we?”
Green and P-O had been joined at the top of the narrow staircase. The third officer had a pole camera – a relatively new and simple idea, but one which had already saved lives.
The officer, Steve ‘57’ Heinz was the most recently qualified to use the kit and slid it systematically into place, teasing open the loft hatch, whilst P-O, who had stowed his MP5 and replaced it with his Glock, provided cover from within a bedroom doorway.
Seven Degress (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 2) Page 19