The Property

by Catriona King

  He stepped forward so that they were almost nose-to-nose and his voice deepened. “But if you double-cross me then you’d better watch your back, son. You won’t get the upper hand on me twice.”

  Then he was gone. Leaving Kyle Spence convinced of the truth of the old adage ‘who dares wins’.

  ****

  High Street Station. 7 p.m.

  Bill McEwan’s men arrived within fifteen minutes, their presence inside the small station impossible to miss. With the thick tread soles of their combat boots adding extra inches to each man’s height and the addition of Kevlar padding and concealed weapons bulking them up, not to mention the ever-present submachine guns worn as casually as others carried a briefcase, the ARC officers presented an intimidating front.

  McEwan had been his usual monosyllabic self since he’d entered, refusing Jack’s offers of coffees and snacks for his troops with a grunted, “No”; and his scornful gaze at Lavinia Hazzard’s impractical towering heels would have put a Fashion Week critic’s to shame.

  Craig left the grumpy commander to it and accompanied Kamran Barr outside to check his limousine, now minus its driver who’d been released from his duties twenty minutes before.

  The vehicle was large and roomy, the rear foot-well easily large enough to accommodate him, although he doubted that Liam could squeeze in there as well. A quick scan of the front interior and boot made up Craig’s mind and he got ready to go, knowing that however they arranged themselves inside the expensive saloon Liam would take the opportunity to have a moan.

  He gathered his deputy, McEwan and their charge together in the staff-room to brief.

  “Right, Bill, the job is to protect Mister Barr and get us at least one live shooter for questioning. We think there’ll be four of them.”

  Liam added helpfully. “That means if you happen to kill the other three no-one’ll lose any sleep.”

  He wasn’t corrected.

  “As we transit, your men will follow covertly in their unmarked cars. But they’ll need to look like ordinary citizens while they’re mobile, please, so weapons invisible, cover the Kevlar and ditch the Top Gun baseball caps.”

  The commander’s immediate frown made Liam wonder whether he could actually remove his. Maybe it was welded to his head? Or perhaps when they’d made the mould that he and his Robocops had stepped out of, they’d designed them and their uniforms as an all-in-one.

  Craig’s voice interrupted his conjecture.

  “Liam and I will be concealed inside Mister Barr’s car, so we’ll need the spare headsets and radios that you brought to stay in touch with you.”

  Liam extended his hand unambiguously, only just resisting the temptation to say, “Cough them up.”

  Equipment provided, Craig nodded his deputy to put on the Kevlar vest that he’d retrieved from his car, while he donned his own and strapped one on Kamran Barr, happily wrinkling his expensive suit in the process. After another minute spent checking their Glocks while an increasingly anxious businessman looked on, Craig gave the signal that they were ready to go.

  It prompted a shout of, “IT’S TIME TO ROCK AND ROLL” from Liam, who if he had his way would always play loud music going into battle like the helicopters in Apocalypse Now.

  In a crocodile topped and tailed by ARC officers they made their way out to the cars, and Craig braced himself for the inevitable groan from his deputy when he saw that his billet was the rear foot-well of Barr’s saloon.

  “I don’t know what you’re moaning about. I’m not much shorter than you and I’ll be crouched in front of the passenger seat.”

  It didn’t render Liam any quieter at all. “Ach, boss, let me drive. At least that way I’ll not be cramped.” The fact that he might get shot in the head seemed to bother him far less.

  Craig shook his head firmly.

  “No. I’d already thought about one of us driving but it won’t work. One, Barr is smaller than both of us, so if they can make out even the slightest outline through the glass they’ll know it’s a trap, run for it and we’ll lose them. Then they’ll try to kill him another time when we’re not there to protect him. And two, we both need to have our hands free in case we need to shoot back. So just get in the foot-well and shut up.”

  It took them a full fifteen minutes to traverse the city, fifteen minutes of crawling forward in rush-hour traffic during which Liam groaned loudly and Craig’s heart was in his mouth. Even though he was almost sure that no attempt would be made to kill Barr in public, that ‘almost’ made for an uncomfortable trip.

  A further ten minutes drive past Queen’s University and up the Malone Road and they arrived safely at Barr’s building, parking as close as possible to its front door so that they could hunker in unseen. As soon as the business magnate entered the spacious living-room of his top floor apartment he headed for the drinks table, pouring himself a large whiskey and gulping it down.

  “What happens now?”

  “Sit somewhere out of sight of the windows.”

  Craig had shouted the answer from the bedroom he was busy checking, he and Liam between them ensuring that every entry point was locked down before rejoining their charge in the living-room, where he was now seated on a settee that he had pushed well back against a wall.

  “All your access points checked, Liam?”

  “Aye, but I don’t like those.”

  The D.C.I. pointed to the huge panes of glass that, apart from a one-foot-deep prop wall at the bottom, made a window of one whole side of the luxurious living space.

  “They make the south side vulnerable.” He swept his hand in a quadrant. “All it takes is someone outside with a high powered rifle anywhere in that arc, and your man here’s a dead duck.”

  Craig nodded; he was right. The only parts of the room not visible through the glass were its side wall and one corner, so he gestured Barr to move to a different seat. They could have secreted the businessman in a bedroom but he wanted their target where they could keep an eye on him.

  Another scan and the detectives were finally satisfied. It was time to check where the ARC officers had positioned themselves outside.

  “Bill? Check in.”

  Bill McEwan’s unmistakable grunt said that the lines were live.

  “Sniper access to the target’s location is from the south. Top floor level, wide access and several high trees to provide firing posts outside.”

  Another grunt and he knew that McEwan had got the message. It was time to check any overview of the other rooms. Ten minutes later more men had been posted at the rear of the building to stop anyone abseiling in, utilising the last of McEwan’s men.

  Craig made three coffees and handed them around, then he readied his gun and took up position in the corner behind the living-room’s door, leaving Liam to cover Barr. If the shooters were smart enough to avoid being shot by the ARC and managed to enter the building, then it would be up to them to protect their charge.

  The peace didn’t last long before Craig’s mobile rang, heralding the first of several interruptions: Annette about Maggie’s article, which Jason Conroy had OK-ed and Craig decided to trust her to check before its release in the late edition online; Andy calling to apologise for not having had time to make his 3D computer model, something which Craig suddenly realised that he didn’t need and probably never had; and Davy with the locations of Dalir Barr and Farshid Lund, the latter of whom was in Saudi, and the former, the analyst’s diligence had discovered, was currently in London and MI5 had confirmed was actually inside the Pakistani Embassy now, no doubt holding hands with whoever had threatened Lavinia Hazzard and was about to have his brother shot.

  It made sense; someone had to have authorised the threats and hits coming out of London, and who better than Dalir, the man who had most to lose? He’d taken himself to the control room to watch things play out, because it was always easier to insure that things went smoothly if you were there to supervise.

  Craig decided to make a call to one of his old contacts a
t The Met to see what, if anything, could be done about arresting Dalir, something he already knew was probably a hopeless cause unless he was caught out on the street, embassies being effectively foreign soil and their occupants untouchable. Even if they took one of the assassins alive and he was prepared to name names, Barr would probably be secreted out of the country on a diplomatic flight and back home in Pakistan before they could do a thing. Although... the bastard at the embassy who’d threatened Hazzard and was controlling the assassins might be easier to lift, especially if he was resident in London.

  Either way Craig wasn’t going to get any satisfaction on it right at that moment because his head set crackled suddenly and then several deafening cracks burst down the line. He yelled over the noise.

  “Report, Bill!”

  There was no answer except another loud crack and then the sound of shouting, one shout sounding very like Bill McEwan’s grunt.

  A second later came, “They’re in the building. Repeat, two in the building and two down” in the commander’s unmistakable voice.

  Two of the shooters had got past the ARC and were heading their way.

  Craig glanced at his D.C.I. and a nod said that Liam had heard everything. He moved quickly, pushing Barr down behind a heavy armchair and pulling across another to act as a shield and a firing post. Craig hunkered deeper into his corner, with his Glock aimed at an angle that guaranteed anyone entering the room through the door would be taken out. He whispered to his deputy.

  “We need one alive, Liam.”

  “Ach no, boss.”

  “Unless you really have to kill them. But do your best.”

  The D.C.I. gave a grudging nod and both detectives tensed as the pounding of feet said that someone was racing up the stairs towards them. If it was the assassins then any minute now the front door would be sprayed with bullets and kicked in, giving them only seconds to respond before they and Kamran Barr were dead.

  For a second the pounding seemed to stop, as if the attackers had gone, then Craig realised it had just been drowned out by the rushing of blood in his ears and the first spray of bullets rattled sharply against the heavy wooden door, splintering it in several places and spewing some of the missiles through to pit the opposite wall. Barr lifted his head, curious to see what had happened, but Liam shoved it down again hard, his annoyance at the businessman’s part in everything making him far less gentle than he could have been.

  Craig meanwhile was watching the door, knowing, as a second wave of shots cut through the air rattling at a different tone, that the men were now using machine pistols, a single round from which would end their lives. Just as a sharp bang signalled the first kick against the door the detective heard something else; something further away but fast and heavy, like the sound of running men.

  Craig’s speculation ended when their attackers’ kicks quickened and strengthened, targeting the hinges, the weakest part of the door. After repeated efforts the gateway began to crack and pull away from its jamb, not at the lock but at its hanging edge, which meant that the first man in would enter the room not a foot away from the muzzle of his gun.

  Craig saw his chance, and when the next kick revealed the toe of a boot he pumped three rounds into it, and was rewarded by the owner screaming and hitting the ground outside with a thud. His partner’s anger was displayed by his machine pistol’s barrel immediately jutting through the opening, angled to spray bullets around as large an area as he could manage of the room. Thankfully he missed everything but the furniture, but Craig knew that it was time to take the fight to them.

  On his signal Liam was on his feet and across to the door and together they repeatedly kicked the hinges outward, watching as the heavy wooden slab teetered and then began to fall, resulting in a second, more erratic spray of bullets, most of which they would later find embedded in the ceiling above. As the door landed, both policemen jumped hard on it, pinning their attackers underneath, just as Bill McEwan and his men hit the landing outside and retrieved the assassins’ guns.

  Lifting the door revealed one man whose foot was gushing blood, and a second who’d been knocked unconscious and whose nose and arm had been broken in the crush.

  Liam nudged the bleeding one of the pair cheerfully with his foot. “I bet that hurt, didn’t it? Eh? You’ll not be doing much dancing now.”

  Craig meanwhile went to check on Kamran Barr, who by now was stroking his bullet-shattered possessions mournfully.

  “Are you all right?”

  The businessman nodded and brushed down his suit. “Fine. I’m more upset about my apartment.”

  It was almost time to tell him about his father, something that Craig knew he had to do himself. While he did that Liam accompanied their attackers to St Mary’s ED under armed guard, taunting them cheerfully about flattened noses and other things.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The C.C.U. Friday 18th August. 4.30 p.m.

  By the next afternoon, things on the case were starting to look a bit neater, with answers obtained and either acted on or dismissed, and suspects lifted and then charged or released. Davy was collating the hard forensic and pathology evidence, and The Met and M15 were interviewing the man who they believed had made Lavinia Hazzard’s threatening phone-call, and so logically had also controlled the men that they’d had their fire-fight with the night before. Craig knew enough about the methods the man’s captors would be employing to persuade him to talk, to know that pretty soon naming Dalir Barr and the other people above him in the hierarchy would seem like a very good idea.

  Maggie’s article was already generating calls and interest, and although they didn’t strictly speaking need a witness to Dorry and Sameen Lund’s abduction or burial, it would help in court and when it came to seeking the extradition of Dalir Barr and Farshid Lund, although no-one was holding their breath on that. Getting Lund out of Saudi and into a UK court was probably a better bet than getting Dalir Barr, given that Saudi Arabia relied on its UK trade in munitions and wanted a good diplomatic relationship. So if they could sew things up tightly enough on Lund they might succeed there. But Dalir Barr, the bastard who had actually committed the women’s murders, had as Craig had feared already fled England for Pakistan, right under the very embarrassed noses of MI5.

  Dalir Barr was the one that he really wanted; for the murders, but also because Davy and Kyle, working together for once, had just confirmed that the two men currently under lock and key in the medical wing of Maghaberry Prison, men who the captive in London would hopefully soon confirm that Lund and Barr had ordered him to send to Belfast, were definitely SSG; Pakistani special forces. Their two dead comrades had yet to be identified, but it wouldn’t surprise him if at least one of them had SSF stamped on his ass. The assassins had been working under the legal orders of their governments.

  It would give them leverage at the highest level, so that morning he and Sean Flanagan had agreed to draft a joint report on the incident for the Foreign Secretary. But no matter how persuasively it read they both knew that any extradition proceedings were likely to take years.

  That wasn’t all that he and the Chief Con had discussed; he’d told Flanagan that he was turning down the lead in Serious and Organised Crime to stay in Murder, only to be phoned back an hour later with a hybrid proposal that would see him leading both, but splitting the SOC lead with two other Detective Chief Superintendents, and Flanagan had promised him that none of them would be Terry Harrison.

  He’d tried saying that he already had Intelligence to worry about, but Flanagan had stopped that argument in its tracks, reading aloud from his own end of year report from April which had stated that Roy Barrett had only required his support once in the twenty-seventeen/eighteen year. He’d been well and truly hoisted by his own petard.

  How he organised his responsibilities between Murder and SOC investigations the C.C. would leave up to him, but Flanagan had emphasised that from the beginning of December his team had better be ready to go if the occasion arose. Cr
aig had decided that he would let them wrap up their current case before he broke the ‘good’ news.

  He glanced at his watch and decided to stop shuffling paper, turning his chair towards the river for a moment to think. In an hour’s time he would be face to face with Katy and he had to admit that he was scared. He hadn’t been frightened facing armed gunmen the night before, but he was terrified of rejection by the woman he loved.

  Craig didn’t get long to dwell on it as his office door was suddenly thrown open and he swung around to see his deputy filling the entrance with his bulk.

  “One day you’re going to enter like a normal person, Liam.”

  “You mean like a wimp, don’t you? Anyway, I’ve just come in to tell you a few things, so should I stay or bugger off?”

  The response was Craig nodding him towards a seat.

  “OK, well, we’ve got the doctor who checked Dorry Lund out at her wedding, but I’m not sure what to charge him on.”

  “Accessory to murder. He could reasonably have foreseen what his diagnosis would lead to.”

  Liam screwed up his face. “He’ll argue that he thought they would’ve just cancelled the wedding.”

  “Then find a witness who can prove that’s crap and let them fight it out in court. Get Davy to report him to the General Medical Council as well. Next.”

  “Do you want me to charge Jimmy Mooney for letting people squat on the building site?”

  Craig shook his head. “No. He meant it kindly, and anyway it would be impossible to prove after eleven years and I doubt that he’d repeat his confession on tape. Don’t bother with Brian Tanner either, we’d never make the drugs charge stick, but charge William Bruton on tax evasion and attempting to flee, and Kamran Barr I want held on remand while he’s being investigated on the fraud charges, although if he agrees to help the Fraud Unit nail his overseas investors we should be able to talk about bail.”