Blood debt, p.21
Blood Debt, page 21
After a moment’s silence, Dave cleared his throat. ‘About Rick – I’ve been thinking, maybe I should give him a call – see how he is?’
The big fellow had crushingly low self-esteem and assumed that any contact from him would, by default, be rated an intrusion. His armchair ninja was seeking an assurance that Rick would not reject his well-intentioned approach. He wanted permission to pick up the phone and make a simple call.
‘I think Rick could really use a friend right now,’ Sam said. ‘But do me a favour and leave it until tomorrow, will you? I think he’s had a tough day.’ He had other reasons for wanting Rick left alone tonight, but Dave didn’t need to know the details.
‘There is one more thing, if you can spare the time,’ Sam said. ‘I’m considering investing a considerable sum of money in a business run by an old friend, but it’s been a while since we were in touch, and I’ve since heard some disturbing rumours about the man. I believe he might be shielding his shadier deals behind shell companies,’ he added in a disapproving tone. ‘Now, I can’t ask him outright, but you have a genius for discreet but thorough financial vetting, so I wondered if you could trace where any money is routed, and the sums involved.’
‘Easy-peasy.’ Dave knew his strengths and was not cursed with false modesty. ‘You got names for any of the shell companies?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Sam said. ‘But I do have bank account details – I can send them over by text.’
‘No,’ Dave said, instantly alarmed. ‘No texts. Send them via the forum.’
By this, he meant going through a VPN, then onward via Tor to an encrypted chatroom on a Deep Web forum he’d specified for their written communications. The Deep Web was even safer than the Dark Web and since Dave was using his skills and his privileged access as a senior financial investigator at the Serious Fraud Office for his unsanctioned dealings with Sam, his extreme caution was understandable.
‘I’ll do that,’ Sam said. ‘And I hate to pile on the pressure, but this is urgent.’
‘Not a problem. Once I’ve set up the alerts, they’ll run in the background. Soon as I know, you’ll know.’
Chapter 37
RICK PEELED OFF HIS BEANIE HAT WHILE HE WAITED for Sam to call. It looked clean enough, but the wound on his forehead did feel hot after wearing the thing for the last couple of hours. He sniffed the fabric tentatively and recoiled – it definitely smelled ripe. The words of the Lancastrian nurse sounded loud and broad in his mind:
Might as well stick your head in the toilet!
He carried the thing between finger and thumb to the kitchen, washed and rinsed it, and left it to drip-dry over the back of a chair.
Keeping Sam’s burner close by on charge while he made himself a microwave meal, he ate in the kitchen, then snagged a beer and took it through to the sitting room, where he brooded over what to do about the tracker on his car.
Musing over his online chat, he decided that Sam was telling the truth – he’d have no cause to put a tracker on his car. That settled, it was clear that whoever was stalking him was either keeping their distance or monitoring him remotely. He might use that to his advantage – park the car up somewhere and hop in a cab before whoever it was came to check why he’d stopped. Or he might leave the car parked at the kerbside near the house and sneak out the back way. He was on sick leave after all.
An hour later, Sam still hadn’t rung, and Rick decided to see if Pandora had published her new podcast. Ignoring a disturbingly large number of notifications with his name in the header, and bypassing the social media platforms entirely, he went straight to her website.
She began by rehashing the widespread media speculation over Rick’s warning to the Wolf Pack on the night of the shootings, then moved smoothly on to her new exclusive: an eyewitness at the hospital who’d claimed that Rick had been as good as accused of being a Wolf Packer by a senior officer.
‘His exact words were: “You gave an order to those cowboys!”’
Rick groaned inwardly – she was just giving the conspiracy theorists more to work with.
‘This is a high-ranking officer,’ Pandora went on, ‘talking to a detective who’s just survived a bullet to the head – and is still coming round after treatment.’
Emphasising that she would not reveal her source, she added that she’d had corroboration of the accuracy of the account. Rick held his breath, but good as her word, she didn’t even hint that he had provided that corroboration.
She rattled through the sequence of Rick’s actions that evening before running a short clip from the video the Wolf Pack had sent her, and Rick heard himself bellowing: ‘Armed police! This is a POLICE OPERATION. Wolf Pack. Abort! ABORT MISSION!’
‘There’s been a lot of speculation about those dozen words, and clearly this senior detective had put his own interpretation on it.’ She paused, gazing in silence as if she was making eye contact with her eager followers on the other side of the screen.
‘But let’s unpack what Turner said: “This is a POLICE OPERATION.” Clearly, he was trying to warn the Wolf Pack that they had blundered into a police action. Now, if Turner was a member of the Wolf Pack, wouldn’t they already know about this operation? I mean, you would expect a vigilante to be in communication with his own team, wouldn’t you? Yet, clearly they didn’t know – because immediately after his warning, they withdrew. Is it even plausible that Sergeant Turner was part of this vigilante group?’ She gave her followers time to reach their own conclusions.
‘And what about the so-called “order” he gave? “ABORT MISSION!”?’ She paused. ‘How would you expect a police officer to address a pod of trained, armed men? “Hey, there, I’m a police officer. You need to stop – you’re in the middle of a police raid?” As a journalist, I’ve witnessed a few police actions in person, and I’ve watched an awful lot more online during my research for Pandora Unboxes … Hamstrung Law. Police always use simple, powerful commands – such as “ABORT MISSION”.
‘Now you might ask yourself why didn’t the multi-agency team involved in the operation know what was happening? To answer that question, you need to understand the layout of the warehouse and its location.’
She shifted to an aerial satellite view of the street.
‘As you can see, the access road to the warehouse is in a narrow backstreet – more an alley than a street, really. There’s a kind of dog-leg on the vehicle access approach from the main road, which means you have to advance about twenty yards down the alley before you can see the warehouse entrance. I know this, because I went to the location and checked it out today.’
To prove it, she showed an image of herself standing at the junction of the main road and the vehicle access to Emin’s drug factory. A high wall was visible to the right of the image and a mid-rise apartment block on the left, but the warehouse itself was out of shot.
‘The warehouse is slightly offset to the right,’ she explained, pulling up another image that showed the street at the point it widened, with parking bays and truck access to it.
Highlighting a narrow passage to the left of its entrance, she said, ‘The other end of the street is pedestrian access only – protected from vehicles by concrete bollards. No one at either end of the street could have seen what was happening. Only the detective in the apartment building overlooking the warehouse had a good view of events – and that detective was DS Turner.’
Next, she played a video clip of the apartment building, panning up to the window where Rick had been stationed, zooming in on a bullet hole in the glass.
Rick’s chest crunched in a quick spasm seeing blood spatter on the inside of the windowpane.
‘The only other people who might have had a view of events as they unfolded that night were the families living in that same apartment building,’ Pandora went on. ‘But they were sleeping in their apartments, completely unaware that a police operation was in progress.’
She froze the video frame on the window spattered with red, its spider’s web of cracks perfectly framing the bullet hole.
‘A reasonable person might argue that those sleeping families were saved from random bullets by two distinct actions that night: DS Turner on the one hand, and – let’s be totally honest here – the Wolf Pack on the other.
‘Another question arises: since the police teams waiting to descend on the warehouse did not have a clear view of it, would they have had advance warning of the vigilantes going into the building? They had crews at both ends of the alley, and we know that the officer who died had been stationed at the pedestrianised end of the street. We can safely assume everyone involved in this operation was in radio contact with their team leaders – that’s pretty standard stuff. But we also know that nobody tried to stop the Wolf Pack from entering the building. They accessed the warehouse from the pedestrianised end of the street, so the police officers on watch must have seen them approaching. Surely, they would have informed their bosses? How did their team leaders respond? And did Sergeant Turner warn his police colleagues of the danger?
‘My source at the hospital heard Turner say that he’d “conveyed intel per protocol”, which at least implies radio communication. And he did risk his own life warning the vigilantes about the police operation and – another undeniable fact – he was shot in the line of duty.’
She held the collective gaze of her growing number of followers. ‘I spoke to the Met Police, but they didn’t want to comment. Could it be that senior police ignored their surveillance crews’ warnings?’ She paused. ‘I don’t know. But I do know that the Wolf Pack stood down as soon as Sergeant Turner opened a window of the apartment building and shouted a warning. Does that mean that Detective Sergeant Turner is a member of the vigilante group?’
She waited for her followers to mull the question in their own minds before saying, ‘I asked the Wolf Pack leader. This is the man calling himself “Alpha One” – the boss wolf, if you like – so you’d think he’d know. He denied it categorically – no hesitation, no hedging.’ She tilted her head. ‘It would be good to get a straight answer from the Met.’
She sighed. ‘Okay, I can hear the sceptics out there, saying, “Of course the Wolf Pack will say Turner isn’t on their team.” In truth, we can’t be certain that this detective has no links to the Wolf Pack – I don’t have access to police recordings of communications between Turner and his senior officers on that night.’
She allowed that thought to lodge in her subscribers’ minds.
‘But in the circumstances,’ she said, ‘I think any reasonable person would applaud DS Turner’s actions.’
Rick turned down the sound as she segued into a marketing spiel and thanked her sponsors. Sagging back in his chair, he let out a long, shaky breath. Smiling to himself, he thought if he was brought in front of a disciplinary board, he’d want Pandora Hahn as his advocate. But her brilliant arguments could just as easily rebound on him: social media squirrels would have no trouble unearthing Ghosh’s identity and Rick knew that if Ghosh was volatile under threat, he could be explosive when he was backed into a corner.
He checked his watch; it was late, and it looked like Sam didn’t intend to make that call. It seemed that finding out who was tracking him was a question for another day.
Chapter 38
Four days after the Emin warehouse raid
RICK SLEPT FITFULLY, TUMBLING BACK to the night of the shootings when he’d watched black-clad men breach Emin’s warehouse with military precision.
Seconds later, he was awake, sweating, startled out of the dream by the sound of rifle shots. He rolled over and sank into light doze. He was lying on a hospital trolley, looking up at the nurse, Vee Verren. She was laughing.
‘You can’t really expect me to kiss you,’ she said. ‘I can’t be certain you’re not one of them.’
The next instant, Rick was sitting inside a van next to a man in tactical gear. Opposite him sat three more men. Fully kitted out: helmets on, visors down. The man beside him passed him a neatly stacked bundle. Rick knew this was Alpha One.
Taking the bundle, Rick was ready in seconds: padded jacket over Kevlar gilet, pistol in a pancake holster at his waist, helmet strapped and secure. Through the tinted rear windows, he recognised the backstreets of Limehouse.
‘This is a bad idea,’ Rick said.
‘They’ll be nervy, but it’ll be all right. We just need to go in hard.’
‘Seriously – it’s an ambush.’
‘We know,’ Alpha One said. ‘You told us, remember?’
Rick couldn’t work out what was before and what was after; they seemed to swap places like binary stars, pulling apart then merging into one so that he couldn’t tell one from the other. Finally, the best he could do was: ‘People could get hurt.’
‘That ship has sailed, Sergeant.’
He glanced across to the man who’d spoken; he was sitting on the bench seat opposite. But when Rick focused on him, he saw that it was Pandora Hahn. Her eyes were covered, and she looked badly scared.
He tried to reach across to help her but couldn’t move.
‘Why didn’t you stop them?’ Pandora demanded. ‘I’ll tell you why – you called those cowboys by name – you’re one of them, you bastard!’
Suddenly aware that he was dreaming, Rick struggled to wake, but he couldn’t open his eyes. He willed his limbs to move but they wouldn’t obey him.
They were nearing the warehouse.
People will die.
Hearing his breath rattle in his chest, he tried to force a sound from his throat, but it closed and he couldn’t breathe. Finally, with a tearing sound like the rrrrrrriiip of a Velcro fastener, he experienced a falling sensation and woke with a jarring thud as if he’d dropped from a height.
For a few seconds, he lay still, slowing his breathing and consoling himself that it was just a dream. Light seeped from under the curtains, and he checked his watch. It was one a.m.; the LED streetlights had created a false dawn. He thought again about how the morning light had kept Jess from her rest. A wave of loss rolled over him, and he waited for it to pass, knowing that the anger would follow, resigning himself to ride that wave.
A few minutes later, his breathing regulated, he began to drift off again.
In the instant between wakefulness and sleep, a quiet, slithering sound sent a spike of adrenaline to his heart. It seemed to come from the room below. The sliding doors to the patio?
Someone’s in the house.
Easing off the bed, he trod softly to the wardrobe and reached inside, silently removing boxes from the top shelf and carefully lowering them to the floor until he found what he needed. A small metal safe with a combination lock.
The bedroom door was open a crack, and he swung it halfway, knowing that the hinge would creak if he pushed it further. On the landing, he listened. A cold draught rose to greet him; he hadn’t heard the sliding doors a second time – the intruder must have left them open, keeping an escape route clear.
Padding barefoot down the stairs, he paused on the bottom riser. Was that a low chuckle he’d heard?
Weapon held in a double-handed grip at forty-five degrees, elbows pulled in close to his body, index finger just above the trigger guard, he checked left and right: the front door was secure; kitchen door closed; sitting-room door open. He and his father had knocked through the front room and dining rooms years ago to make one large sitting area, and this was the only way into it from inside the house. But Rick was sure he’d shut the door before he went to bed.
Holding the revolver in both hands, he swung the door open with his hip.
A man was sitting on his sofa at the far end of the room.
It was Sam.
Rick lowered the gun. ‘Sam, what the hell?’
Sam glanced over the top of the Marvel comic he was reading – from a box of first editions he’d left behind thirteen years ago when he’d vanished out of Rick’s life.
‘You did dig them out of the attic!’ he exclaimed with evident delight.
Rick broke out in a cold sweat. ‘Jesus, Sam, I could’ve shot you!’
‘You mean that thing’s loaded?’ Sam asked, glancing at the gun more in curiosity than alarm.
‘It wouldn’t be much use if it wasn’t,’ Rick said, fixing his brother with a dead look.
‘I’ve been away for a while – did I miss some new legislation about UK police being armed?’
‘Don’t be facetious.’
Sam watched him set the gun down on the mantelshelf. ‘Rick, did you steal that revolver from evidence?’ he asked with mock disapproval.
‘Of course not.’
‘So …?’
‘I confiscated it.’
‘That could be dangerous.’ He seemed serious. ‘Look, I can get you a clean weapon, untraceable, no markings, no … dubious provenance.’
Sam was right about the gun’s doubtful history – it had in fact been stolen from evidence – though not by Rick – and Rick had confiscated it to prevent the suicide of a friend. It had never found its way back where it belonged for the simple reason that he’d be at greater risk trying to return it than he was keeping it at home. But Rick wasn’t remotely in the mood to explain all this to his brother. Instead, he moved across the room to shut the patio doors, then perched on the arm of a chair adjacent to Sam.
A compact black electronic device sat on the coffee table.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘A signal jammer,’ Sam said, as though it was obvious.
‘I told you; I swept the house. There’s no listening equipment, no hidden cameras.’
Sam carefully replaced the comic on top of the small stack on the coffee table and dropped Rick a wink. ‘Can’t be too careful.’
‘How did you get in?’
Sam crinkled his brow, as if the question was obtuse. ‘Have you forgotten – I used to live here – I have a key.’
Rick offered a sardonic smile. ‘I changed the locks after what happened last autumn.’
With the merest lift of one shoulder Sam said, ‘I didn’t say it was the original key.’ Then: ‘How’s the head?’
