Текст книги "48 Hours"

Автор книги: Jackson J. Bentley

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Chapter 69

Vastrick Security, No. 1 Poultry, London. Sunday, 8am.

I had managed to snatch five hours’ sleep on a bed set up in a small room at the back of the offices. Obviously the Vastrick staff stayed overnight regularly because there were two such rooms. Don Fisher had retired to the other room.

DCI Coombes and Inspector Boniface had gone home after a raging argument with their superiors. They had both wanted to go into the printing press ‘hard and heavy’, in the early hours of the morning, but they were ordered to hold off for twelve hours after an intervention from Europol. Tom, Don and I were livid.

We were told that Europol would be taking down Van Aart and his organisation in a coordinated series of raids spanning the Netherlands, Belgium and Northern France. Van Aart’s home, offices, brothels and drug dens would all be hit by a variety of well-armed national police and security forces.

The Koninklijke Marechaussee, the Dutch Military Police, would also hit two industrial units where East European girls were held until they could be transported to a place where they could earn money by selling their bodies. Europol were tracking a container lorry from Bucharest, which they believed was heading for one of the units in Pernis on the outskirts of Rotterdam. It would arrive within the next hour and disgorge its cargo of teenage girls.

At twelve noon, European time, or one o’clock in the UK, the raids would begin. Unbeknown to either DCI Coombes or Inspector Boniface, the Metropolitan Police had been secretly planning to coordinate raids on the Holloways’ premises at the same time. The secret plans had been codenamed Operation Tango, and we couldn’t act until the raids were over. The Assistant Commissioner had explained that almost four hundred officers would be involved in the raids in four countries, and that they couldn’t take the chance of Holloway or Van Aart’s men reporting back to Amsterdam that the police were onto them.

Despite the Assistant Commissioner’s pleas, Don Fisher still had to be threatened with a night in the cells before he accepted the decision. I had serious qualms about the idea, too, but we reached a compromise that I was able to live with.

The police now had three men watching the Tottenham Press building; they had taken up their positions at four o’clock in the morning, and were in constant radio contact. One was in a highly specialised vehicle parked in the car park of the factory across the street, and the remaining two were concealed where they could see the two personnel doors that also served as fire exits. Nobody would go in or out of the printing press without being observed.

In less than an hour we would be meeting with DS Scott, DCI Coombes, DS Fellowes, Inspector Boniface, Tom Vastrick and a new face, Geordie Lowden, who would lead Vastrick’s assault team.

Geordie, as his name suggested, was travelling down to London from Tyneside on a chartered helicopter, which should have landed by now at London Heliport in Battersea. Given that the roads would be quiet, as they usually are early on a Sunday morning, I reckoned that the car journey from the heliport would take twenty minutes or so. I managed to pull myself away from my bed and head towards the shower.

Chapter 70

Commercial Road, Tottenham, North London. Sunday 11am.

Piet entered the room where Dee and Lavender were secured and removed the coffee cups.

“I’ll be back in an hour with your famous British roast beef dinner, or another packet of sandwiches.” He sniggered and left, closing the door behind him.

So far they had been provided with water, coffee from a vending machine and sandwiches. In each case the food had been delivered on the hour. Dee was working on the theory that they had an hour until the next visit.

“Lavender, our hands have only about nine inches of movement, and so I need your help. I’m going to lean forward, and I want you to unfasten my necklace.”

Dee leaned over the table so that her nose was almost touching the table top. Lavender reached over and unclipped the necklace. The necklace was sterling silver and consisted of a thin chain and a loop which attached just below the throat, from which hung three sterling silver rods. The outer two rods were the same length, which was around an inch, but the middle rod was slightly longer, perhaps by half an inch. Their diameter was about three sixteenths of an inch.

Lavender watched as Dee pulled the rods in opposite directions, opening the silver loop which held them. The three rods came free.

“Lavender, please listen very carefully, we don’t have a lot of time. Handcuffs are not that difficult to unlock. The fact is that the main reason you can’t unlock them is that they are often fastened behind your back. These police style speedcuffs are rigid, which means that your hands are held three inches apart and so you can’t reach the lock with either hand. Do you see?” Lavender nodded.

“Our friends downstairs have overlooked the fact that I can reach your handcuff locks, and you will then be able to reach mine, as your hands will be free. Now, hold out your hands and watch me work.”

Dee took Lavender’s right hand and turned it so that the lock was facing upwards. Taking one of the shorter rods from her necklace, she pushed it into the keyhole until it met resistance.

“Handcuff keys have to be simple and universal, because while one policeman might lock you into them, an entirely different one will probably have to release you. So they usually only have two tumblers. The key will have a space, a ridge, another space, another ridge. Like a tiny house key. The way a key works is that the ridges line up with the levers, and the spaces line up with fixed stays, so that when you turn the key the ridges open the tumblers whilst the spaces pass over the blocking stays. If you put in the wrong key the ridges will hit the fixed stays and the key won’t turn. Now, we don’t have a key but we have these three rods, and we should only need two of them.”

Lavender held her breath, watching carefully as Dee pushed the longer rod into the lock.

“I’m going to use the first rod to slide over the first lever like this.” Dee wiggled the rod until she could move the lever. “Now, this exposes the second lever and we do the same again. If we now push both levers at the same time, they should get to the point of equilibrium.”

“What does that mean?” Lavender asked.

“When you use a key to a deadlock, like the one over there on the door, you place the key in the guide, which we call a keyhole. As you turn the key you feel resistance don’t you?”

“Yes, I’m with you so far.”

“Well, that resistance is the key ridges hitting the levers. They are called levers for a reason. When the levers get to the mid-point, the point of equilibrium, gravity takes over and the only reason you keep turning the key is to remove it from the keyhole. Take notice next time you unlock a deadlock. When you get halfway through the rotation, the lock clicks open.”

Dee used the two rods to push the levers, and seconds later there was a click and Lavender’s right hand was free. Lavender unwound the chain from around the handcuffs and she was free to move around, albeit her left hand was still handcuffed.

It took Dee twenty minutes of patient coaching to teach Lavender how to prise the right hand side of her handcuffs open, but when she did she almost whooped with joy. She was so proud of herself that Dee couldn’t suppress a laugh.

Three minutes later both sets of handcuffs were off. Dee decided there wasn’t time for any more on the job lock pick training, and so released the left hands herself.

***

It was a quarter to twelve and Dee was standing at the open door on the upper level, looking out over the factory floor. There was no-one to be seen. Carefully she stepped onto the steel mesh landing at the top of the stairs.

So far, so good, she thought to herself. Since breakfast and the toilet visits, their captors had not bothered locking the door to their room, assuming the chains and cuffs would be more than enough to hold them.

Dee wanted to protect Lavender, and so she gave her explicit instructions that would ensure her safety. Now she had to act before their captors made the rounds again.

There were two cars in the unit; a Black SUV with EU plates, and a Lexus with UK plates. At the bottom of the steel staircase she could see an open half glazed door leading to a small office, and voices were coming from inside. She counted four separate voices. That was good. They were all together.

Rather than use the metal stairs, which would certainly make a noise, she removed her boots and climbed between the landing and the handrail. She hung on to the steel railings, lowering herself down until she was dangling six feet above the ground. A second later she dropped silently to the floor, landing like a cat on all fours.

The fire exits were at the far end of the factory unit, and so Dee circumnavigated the floor, keeping the bulky printing presses between her and the open office door. A few moments later she reached the fire door and her heart sank.

“This door is alarmed,” the notice read, as did the notice over the fire door opposite. They could not go through either of those doors without alerting their captors.

It didn’t really make any difference, Dee reasoned to herself. The difficulties would be the same. As soon as she exited the building the men would be alerted, and she would have to run over unknown terrain barefoot. She had no way of knowing how far she would have to run before finding somewhere to raise the alarm, but she had come too far to back out of this now.

***

The alarm on the fire door was really more of a buzzer, but it was enough to alert the four men in the office. They ran out on to the factory floor, looking around to try to discover what had set the alarm off.

“You two make sure our guests are secure, and we’ll find out what’s going on.”

Rik and Gregor had their guns at the ready as they ran out of the open fire door.

***

Dee had micro seconds to take stock of her location and try to work out which direction she needed to take. The building was an anonymous looking industrial box, with a car park on two sides and a concrete paved path leading to the front entrance. A fence, perhaps seven or eight feet tall, enclosed the site. The fence posts were concrete, with a galvanised steel chain link mesh strung between them. The top section angled inwards and was threaded with barbed wire, so there was no chance of climbing it.

She ran along the paved pathway towards the front of the building, a distance of some seventy five yards. As she got to the front of the building she heard the sound of the fire door crashing open, and she looked back to see two men in pursuit.

She raced across the car park and through the open gateway onto the deserted road, where she almost knocked over a man with a carrier bag who was walking by. Dee wasted no time.

“Please, sir, will you help me? There are armed men chasing me. We both need to run. Find somewhere safe.”

The man looked rather alarmed, but instead of running for his life he did something she wasn’t expecting. He punched her in the face.

“Shit, there were five of them,” she thought to herself as she tried to get up. Her plan was in tatters, but she had to try to keep Lavender safe somehow.

“Lavender, run!” she yelled at the top of her voice, until the tazer disabled her for the second time in a few hours.

Chapter 71

398 High Rd, Tottenham, North London. Sunday 11:30am.

Number 398 High Road in Tottenham is a huge Georgian red brick building with stone features around the Georgian paned windows and a carved stone portico around the door, into which is carved the word POLICE.

The ornate police station stands on a busy dual carriage way and so we had to wait for a change in the traffic lights before we could turn into the car park. The reason we were being hosted at this location was due to its proximity to the Tottenham Press, which was less than a mile away.

In the past week I had been in four different police stations and I didn’t really like it. I wanted my own life back. I needed to get back to dealing with clients who didn’t seek to destroy the lives of others because they couldn’t accept that they had made a mistake themselves.

Don Fisher and I were led into a bare and unfriendly waiting room whilst the four policemen went to the operations room. Tom Vastrick and three of his people were on their way.

The plan was simple, although not everyone had agreed on strategy. The four policemen who had been living and breathing this case for days wanted to storm the building from every angle with overwhelming force, a strategy the Americans refer to as ”Shock and Awe”. The commanders who were charged with designating personnel to the task felt that the Risk Assessment demanded a softer approach, a standoff where a negotiator would talk the men out of the building, leaving their hostages safely behind. In the end the final decision was to be left to the men on the ground.

Unless things changed, the plan was simple enough. Don Fisher and I would be sitting in an unmarked van parked a hundred yards away from the Tottenham Press car park, ready to comfort the hostages on their release.

The telephone landline would be disconnected at the exchange, and the white van already parked over the road would switch on its electronic jammer. Then, for the next few minutes, every mobile phone in that cell, about half a mile square, would be silenced with the notorious message “No Network Coverage” being displayed on their screens.

Armed police with protective vests would then form an outer ring around the building, and two armed police with full body armour and helmets would enter via each fire door. Another six similarly clad officers would go in through the roller shutter door.

The roller shutter door had presented a problem to the police during the planning stage, as they knew it was designed to be raised by inserting a key into a weather protected housing and holding the key whilst the shutter crept up an inch at a time. The police didn’t have the key, and nor did they have the time to wait for the door to open so slowly.

Vastrick, who provided security to many such buildings, referred the police to an electrical contractor whom they knew, who could bypass the key, but he would need at least five minutes to do so. The electrician was being briefed by the police upstairs. The roller shutter door was also secured at the bottom with a padlock that fixed the door to the concrete base, but that could be removed in seconds with bolt cutters.

Don Fisher wasn’t a man who could sit still for long and he was anxious to get on with the raid, even though nothing could be done until we heard from the Assistant Commissioner that Operation Tango was well under way. That would probably be closer to two o’clock than one o’clock.

“You know, Josh, yesterday I wanted to hang that Hickstead creep from the nearest lamppost. Now I don’t give a damn what happens to him. I just want my daughter back safe. Her mother will blame me if anything happens to her and I’ll probably not disagree.”

“Don’t worry, Don,” I said, feeling none of the confidence I was expressing. “We’ll get the girls back safely. Dee will care for Lavender like a mother hen. I certainly wouldn’t want to be the man that tried to hurt Lavender while Dee was around. The woman fights like a demon. She’s also a trained protection officer. She knows what to do in this kind of situation.”

The door burst open. DS Scott came in with a hand held radio.

“You need to hear this! Okay, Charlie two, say again.”

The radio produced a second of static and then a strong male voice came through.

“A female in a leather catsuit came flying out of the fire exit a minute or two ago, and ran barefoot to the road. She stopped a male on the street and he decked her. Two other males ran off searching the area, while the suspect on the street and one of the kidnappers dragged the female back inside.”

“Who were they looking for?” Don Fisher yelled, ignoring radio protocol. The man didn’t hear the question and so Scott repeated it.

“That’s the odd thing. We’ve been watching the place for hours and the female we saw was the first and only person to leave the building. But if the male with the carrier bag full of supplies is one of them, there are now six hostiles counted. Two searching, two dragging the female and two who came to the door to see what was going on.”

“Your woman is definitely a fighter, I’ll give her that. And in these circumstances that has to be an advantage,” Don Fisher said, sounding a little less afraid now.

I hoped that he was right, but I was worried. Dee was obviously trying her best to find a way out of her current predicament, but her plan had failed. The captors now had two hours, during which they might well make her pay for the escape attempt.

Chapter 72

Commercial Road, Tottenham, North London. Sunday Noon.

“Johnny, what the hell is going on here? I thought you had these women chained up?”

“Sorry, Sonny, but the ‘cloggies’ have been looking after the women. They wouldn’t let us near them once they were upstairs.”

Sonny Holloway and Johnny closed the fire door and joined the others, who were all gathered around the chair to which a hooded Dee was tied. Sonny took Rik to one side and kept his voice low.

“I come around to bring you some food and what do I find? A hostage running to me for help, that’s what. I could have been anybody. How did they even get out of the room, let alone the building? Those chains are supposed to be solid.”

“I don’t understand it. They got the handcuffs open, but I’m the only one with a key. But even if they got out of the room, they still had to get down the stairs and past the door, and we didn’t see or hear them.”

Rik knew that he was to blame. It showed on his face. The older woman had beaten up two of his best men as if they were rank amateurs, and she had also escaped from a seemingly secure environment. Rik’s career prospects were looking slim.

“OK, we are where we are. Where’s the other girl?”

“We don’t know,” Rik admitted.

“Go and bloody well find out, then!” Sonny growled through gritted teeth.

Rik turned to Dee and addressed her in a moderated tone. “Diane, we need to know where Lavender has gone. Please tell us, because we don’t want to cause you any more pain.”

“I don’t know,” Dee replied. “I told her to run as fast as she could to get help. I wasn’t going to get far in bare feet, was I?”

“I’m going to give you one more chance. Where is she? We’ve searched the factory, and she’s not here, and we’ve searched the area outside and she’s not there either. Last chance.” Rik waited.

“Look,” said Dee, “I realise that you aren’t English, and so I’ll speak slowly. I.... don’t ....know!”

Gregor had heard more than enough from this woman, who clearly derived pleasure from humiliating them. He stepped forward and shot her.

***

Blood spattered everywhere and Sonny tried to jump out of the way, but he was too late. The woman’s blood was on his coat.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, you lunatic?” Sonny screamed. “This is my place. If the police forensic people get around to looking in here I’ll go down for years. Put the guns away.”

“We haven’t got our answer yet,” Rick said, nodding to Gregor.

Dee had been shot in the thigh. She had no way of knowing whether her femoral artery had been damaged, but she knew that if it had she would have only minutes to live. What she did know was that she had never felt pain like it. She was in shock; she was fighting unconsciousness. She couldn’t give Lavender up. She had to convince them.

Gregor leaned over and pushed the hot barrel of his gun into the wound. Dee screamed and felt herself sliding away. Just before she drifted into the blackness, she heard Lavender’s anguished voice.

“Stop it! Please, no more! Leave her alone!” She started sobbing, but Dee heard nothing more.

“Go and get her down, Johnny. You too, Dave,” Sonny ordered. “And you three can stop this one bleeding all over my floor.”

***

When they had escaped from the chains, Dee had checked the factory floor below and, finding that they were not being observed, she helped Lavender climb onto the flat roof of the two storey office building. Dee handed up the remaining water and said, “No matter what happens, lie flat and still in the middle of the roof and don’t make any noise at all. Someone will come and get you.”

“Can’t I come with you?” Lavender had pleaded, afraid to be left on her own.

“No, darling,” Dee replied, her voice soft and calming. “We won’t make it far and they have guns. We have to make it look as if you got away. OK?”

Lavender remembered that conversation, and the promise she’d made, but she couldn’t let Dee die just so that she could stay hidden. Dee was the closest thing she’d had to a real friend since school.

Dee now lay on the table on the sleeping bag. She seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness. Sonny had ordered Johnny and Dave to look after the hostages. He didn’t want to leave them with the Dutch thugs. Johnny had cut off the leg of the cat suit to expose the wound. It wasn’t the neat round hole that might have been expected. The wound was ragged. It was black on the edges, and he could see the white fat layer under the skin. It was surprisingly white. He stepped back when he suddenly realised he could see the muscles beneath.

Dave took over. He lifted the leg and placed his hand underneath; he could feel the bullet under the skin.

“It’s not a through and through, mate,” he said to Johnny. “I’m not an expert, but I reckon if it doesn’t come out, by tomorrow night she’ll be in real trouble.”

“What a mess. Can we get it out, do you think?”

“No choice, Johnny. Go and get my toolbox, it’s in the next room.

Lavender listed to the conversation with increasing horror.

“You can’t cut her open! You’re not a doctor. You don’t know what you’re doing!” she sobbed.

“Look, Miss, that isn’t strictly true,” Dave answered. “I was in the army, in Afghanistan, and we often had to do emergency medical on our mates or they would never have made it to the field hospital. I promise I’ll do my best, if you help.”

Lavender shook her head, shrinking back. “I can’t watch you cut her, I just can’t.”

“I know, it’s tough. I’m going to roll her into the recovery position which will protect her if she vomits. It’ll also give me access to the bullet. I want you to roll up some of that leather until it’s about an inch thick and put it between her teeth on top of her tongue. That’ll stop her biting her tongue while I’m working.”

Johnny opened Dave’s bomb making tool kit and wasn’t surprised to see the neatest and most organised tool box in London.

Dave took a Stanley knife, or box cutter, out of the box and took a brand new blade out of its waxed paper. He then picked up a small bottle containing clear liquid.

“This is pure alcohol. I use it to clear residue from the ends of wires before I terminate them. It gives a better connection.”

Dave cleaned the new blade with the alcohol and slipped it into the knife. He swabbed the area around the bullet, which was clearly visible below the surface.

“Right, you both need to hold her down. The squaddies in Afghanistan were doped up with Morphine and they still kicked.”

Lavender took Dee’s head and shoulders, and Johnny took her legs. When he was happy she was restrained, Dave made the one inch cut. The new blade parted the skin with alarming ease. Dee moaned but didn’t struggle.

Dave laid down the knife and picked a pair of alloy pliers with a pointed nose. He had to use non-magnetic pliers when making or disarming bombs, as lots of wires and bomb components would become magnetised during assembly and the last thing you wanted to do was to attract the wrong wire to your pliers.

After dousing the pliers with alcohol and cleaning them thoroughly, he told his helpers to brace themselves. Dave put the closed pliers into the middle of the cut and opened the jaws. The bloody bullet stared out at him. Dee started yelling and trying to move her leg but Johnny held on tight. Realising he didn’t have much time, Dave prayed that his first effort would succeed and fixed the jaws of the pliers around the bullet, then retracted them slowly.

He dropped the bullet on the table and examined it closely. It appeared to be complete. The bleeding was minimal and so, wrapping the jaws of the pliers in a hygienic wipe, he cleaned the wound inside and out. Dee was back to moaning.

Dave would have stitched both wounds if he’d had some means of doing so, but he didn’t have anything close to a needle and thread. Improvising, he securely taped a cotton bud to each side of the wound and had Johnny pinch the sides of the wound together. This caused Dee yet more agony, whilst he taped two more cotton buds across the first two. Satisfied that the framework of plastic cotton bud shafts was holding the wound closed, he reinforced the structure with more medical tape before applying sterile dressings front and back. The task was completed by wrapping a bandage around the leg and tying it off.

Dee was in shock, but there was little they could do about that.

“Will she die?” Lavender asked, her voice trembling.

“No, but she’ll be in bad shape for a few hours. You’ll have to nurse her through it. And make her sip some water. Don’t let her gulp it down, though.” Dave closed the door.

“Johnny, what have we got ourselves into here? We took that girl. We’re responsible her safety.”

“I know, Dave. I felt bad about this from the off, do you remember me saying?” Dave nodded. “Dave, at least one of us stays with the girls at all times, right? When we hand them over tomorrow I want them in good order. I don’t want some mad boyfriend chasing me because we killed his girl.”

“All right, Johnny. Kidnapping’s is one thing, murder is something else entirely. We need to agree to protect these girls, whatever it takes!”

“Whatever it takes,” Johnny repeated, as they closed their fists and touched knuckles.