London Large: Blood on the Streets (22 page)

H took a deep breath: ‘Slow
down, son, slow down. He’s been dealt with. Everything’s under control. But I
need one more thing, one more thing to clinch it. And I need it asap.’

‘’course. What time is it?’

‘Don’t worry about the time
son. I need to find a phone. Remember the day me and Amisha came to see you and
someone had our car away? There was a phone in it. I’ve got to have it. I don’t
give a fuck about the car, I just want the phone. Put yourself about, quick as
you can, talk to everyone you know. And everyone you don’t. This is a matter of
life and death mate. Top priority. I don’t care what it takes. Bell me on this
number when you’ve got something for me.’

H, exhausted now that the
adrenalin rush he’d got while he was hammering the Russian had faded, slumped
and keeled over. He stretched out on the concrete floor, working his arms and
legs.

Think. Don’t sleep, think.
What happens next?

The phone was out there. John
would find it, if anyone could. Amisha was out there, going through…what? She
was his to find. But how was he going to track her down, tiny little thing that
she was, in the largeness of London? He’d need help, and plenty of it. He’d
have to risk it and talk to someone at the Yard.

Time to catch up with
Little Miss Drama Pants.

Agapov wasn’t breathing; H
threw an oily rag over his shattered face, locked up, and found himself,
blinking hard, in a gloomy London dawn. He clambered wearily into the car John
had got for him and gunned it towards Clapham.

Graham, fresh from his
morning’s humiliation at the hands of Joey Jupiter, had cleared away his breakfast
and was just about to get dressed when he heard a tap on the door. It was 6am.
He looked through the peephole and saw with a start that it was Hawkins, of all
people, looking like he’d just been dug up and released from his grave.

The shambling hulk formerly
known as London’s Top Copper mimed to Graham that he would like to be let in.
Graham opened the door.

‘Good morning, Detective
Inspector Hawkins. This is a pleasant surprise. I trust you are well?’

‘Morning Graham. Any danger
of a cup of coffee? I’ve had a hard night.’

And not for the first
time. Well, I suppose being suspended from duty has its benefits. But Jesus, he
looks rough.

‘Coffee. Of course, come in.
We’ll have to be quick though, I leave in half an hour. To what do I owe the
pleasure of this morning visitation?’

‘We need to talk, Graham.
About the investigation. How far have you got? I need to know what’s going on’,
said H.

‘Well, to be honest I’m not
really at liberty to discuss the investigation. What with you being suspended
and…’

H shot him the look, and
growled. Graham fingered his throat, gently, and thought better of it.

‘Nothing. Nothing’s going on
H. I’m still not getting anywhere. Nobody on God’s green earth has ever heard
of, or seen, this guy in the park. He may as well be Martian. The Murderer from
Mars. No change with Sir Basil Fortescue-Smythe; he is not exactly chomping at
the bit in his efforts to assist the investigation. If you ask me, he’s
impeding it. I know not why. I’m being jerked around like a puppet, and getting
nowhere. Here endeth the report.’

No surprises there then.

H changed tack:

‘What about this other thing,
with Sir Basil’s chum Carruthers? The home invasion. Is he brown bread, or
what? Is anyone in the frame for that?’

‘No, he’s still in a coma.
Could be worse, he’s not in a persistent vegetative state or anything. They say
he has a chance of coming out of it, with a bit of luck. We’ve got very little
on this one either. No witnesses, Carruthers lives alone. His CCTV was down.
They’re working on DNA and all the rest of it, obviously.’

H tried not to breathe a sigh
of relief.

Thank fuck for that.
They’re not on me. I’ve still got time.

H gulped his coffee and
thought for a bit while Graham busied himself with his clothes and hair. Yes,
he had some time, but how much? There was the phone, but would John find it?
Most importantly, there was a brave and beautiful young copper out there in
severe danger. At best. What were the chances of him finding her under his own
steam, even with the help of John, and maybe Ronnie? He would have to put
Miller-Marchant, useless as he was, in the picture. It was his only option, and
it was better than nothing.

‘Graham, listen. I’m being
serious now. I’ve been doing a bit of rooting about on my own. Amisha’s been
taken. I don’t know who’s got her, or why, but I think she’s in terrible
danger. I can’t talk to Hilary, so I’m telling you. We’ve got to get her back,
and I shouldn’t think she’s got much time.’

Time. One way or another,
it’s all about time now.

On his train into
Victoria Graham sparked up the tablet. He had almost no choice now; his old
love of surfing of the digital waves had been wrecked by the compulsion to
check in on Joey Jupiter’s blog on an hourly basis, just in case he and Hawkins
were once again under the cosh. He needed to keep up with the latest instalments
in his public humiliation - everyone else did.

Looking at the shattered,
hulking figure slumped on his sofa before he’d left for the station he’d felt a
twinge of…what was it?...not affection, exactly, but fellowship in suffering.
That was it. He and Hawkins were in this together, whether they liked it or
not. And, though he knew that the big man was not exactly a keen follower of
Jupiter’s blog, or of any blog if it came to that, he felt that he’d been treated
with a little more respect than usual during their surprise morning get
together.

Up came the page, the dreaded
page. Graham saw with relief that, for this post at least, Jupiter had found a
new theme:

THAILAND TRICKS

It is with alarm that this blog
has learned of the recent, shameful shenanigans of Lord Timothy Skyhill, that
bastion of the establishment and our public life. Until now there has been
barely a blemish on the great man’s record, making him an unusually upstanding
public figure in this day and age. Not for him the excesses or perversions - be
they financial, sexual or otherwise – of other lords of the realm, politicians
and banksters.

But His Lordship’s recent
‘business’ trip to Thailand, though it appears to have involved neither the
provision of backhanders to corrupt officials nor a spree with the ladyboys,
has cast him in an altogether darker light. It turns out that Lord Timothy is,
to use the parlance of the criminal fraternity, a ‘nonce case’. Though reports
of his adventures in the tropics have been carefully handled by the authorities
in both Thailand and the UK, we have it on good authority that Lord Timothy was
caught, on more than one occasion, going at it hammer and tongs with the young
‘uns.

This regrettable episode raises
a number of important questions: Is His Lordship to be allowed to get away
scot-free with these crimes? Are we to see a full and transparent investigation
into the facts of the case? Are there more where Lord Timothy came from? Are
there no depths to which the powerful men who govern our country will not sink?

We have become accustomed to
the fraud, the shady deals, the tax loopholes, the screwing of us all for every
penny they can get, the orgies in the corridors of power. Must we also become
accustomed to this? Are our schoolchildren even safe on their tours of the
mother of parliaments? We should be told.

The masked assassin
understood his orders clearly. Find and execute Harry Hawkins immediately, and
with extreme prejudice. The order meant there was no need for secrecy, or fake
accidents, in fact no need for any kind of sophistication. Just find and kill,
job done. The orders had come through at 5am. It was now 7.

Ronnie and Olivia were chatting
in the kitchen when the assassin made his entry, via the drainpipes, into the
bedroom Ronnie had been sleeping in.

Olivia passed Ronnie a piping
hot cup of builder’s tea and two slices of generously buttered toast.

‘Thanks love. Anything from
H?’

‘He’s sent me a couple of
texts, each time from different phones, letting me know he is ok. Other than
that I have no idea what he’s up to.’

‘Well, he’ll be in touch when
he’s ready, when he needs us. I have no doubt about that’, Ronnie said.

The masked assassin was good
at his job and had memorized the picture of his intended victim. He enjoyed his
work and had never missed a target. He crept along the corridor and made his
way towards the voices, the silencer already secured to the gun in his right
hand.

The cup fell from Oliva’s
hand and smashed to pieces on the floor as he entered the kitchen. Ronnie swivelled
on his kitchen stall, and stared straight down the barrel of a gun. The
assassin surveyed Ronnie’s face and knew he wasn’t the target. He would have to
kill them both, of course, but he needed information.

His voice had the measured,
neutral tone of an old-school BBC newsreader.

‘Where is Hawkins? You have
ten seconds to tell me before I kill you both.’ He didn’t waste time in
commencing the count.

‘9…8…7’

Olivia was in shock. H’s work
had never been brought home like this before. Being in the line of fire was a
new experience for her.

‘We have no idea where he is’,
said Olivia.

‘6…5…’

Ronnie thought quickly.

Have to stop the clock -
give us a chance.

‘4…3….’

‘Wait’, said Ronnie. ‘If we
knew we’d tell you, but we don’t. He’ll be calling us in ten minutes. We’ll
talk to him. Find out where he is. It’s the only way you’ll find him.’

The assassin considered the
option. Almost certainly lying, he thought, but he had the time.

Ronnie had turned ten seconds
into ten minutes.

The assassin held his gun up.

‘Do not speak. If the phone
does not ring in ten minutes I will kill you both.’

Inexorably the minutes
started totting up. Five, six, seven.

Ronnie concentrated on the
intruder, hoping for a moment’s lapse, a turn of the head. No one could stay
100% focused for 10 minutes. Except, perhaps, a trained assassin with a 100%
success rate.

But Ronnie stayed focused.

One moment, just one
moment.

Sometimes, in life, there are
moments of coincidence, and Olivia and Ronnie would later reflect on them. Some
people call them fate, or providence, or maybe even destiny. Or perhaps
sometimes you just get damn lucky.

The phone rang. It was
Olivia’s mother calling for an early morning chat. At the split second the
assassin turned his attention to the phone Ronnie was on him. With the gun
knocked out of his hand he didn’t add up to much.

Ronnie secured a vice-like
grip and smashed the assassin’s head into the wall, swung him round with
maximum force and smashed his head onto the edge of the sink. He’d forgotten
nothing of his army training. He repositioned his hold and watched Olivia wince
as he applied the coup de grace. As neck snaps go this one was pretty
straightforward. Ronnie released his grip and the dead assassin slumped to the
floor.

Olivia answered the phone.

‘Hi mum…er, can I call you
back in half an hour?’, she said.

Amisha’s stomach
reflexes forced the water from her body. The coarse brown bag was lifted from
her head and she flickered back to life as the light penetrated her eyes.

‘Let me ask you once more,’
said her interrogator, exuding a gentle charm, ‘how did you manage to find and
access those files, and who have you passed the information on to?’

Amisha coughed and gasped for
more air, some of the water still seeping out from her eyes and ears, her chest
heaving in its desperate search for oxygen.

She was close to talking. To
saying almost anything her captor wanted. But after only five breaths the sack
was once more placed over her face and once more the water poured forth. As it entered
her respiratory system the panic gripped her as she became unable to breathe.
Her brain triggered its primal, powerful, irresistible response, a response of
pure dread, the “God help me I’m drowning” response. It was as if she was being
submerged at the foot of Niagara Falls, unable to fight its awesome powers and
reach the surface.

The process had been in play
now for 15 minutes.

Sack on. Twenty seconds of
water. Sack off. Questions asked to which she could not respond whilst she
gulped five or six life giving intakes of precious air. Sack on. Twenty seconds
of water. Sack off. More questions…

God help me, when will it
end?

The voice of her tormentor
had started to sound oddly reassuring. She was at breaking point.

‘Take your time, my dear. We
have plenty of it,’ he said as he lifted the sack once more. Again the reflex
vomiting, the return to full consciousness and her body’s desperate intake of
the maximum amount of oxygen in the minimum amount of time.

‘What do you want?...’ she
managed to force out before the sack was replaced, suffocating, overpowering
all her senses. The water poured in as Amisha again lost consciousness. Her
tormentor was not ready, just yet, to allow the young girl her moment of
release. He was enjoying himself far too much for that.

The process continued for a
few more minutes, enough for a further 4 rounds.

‘Now, my sweet, where were
we?’

Amisha had been made aware of
waterboarding during her training. Its effects on human physiology and
psychology, its ability to panic the brain into saying almost anything the
torturer wanted to hear. She now understood the difference between theory and
practice.

‘Oh, yes. How did you manage
to access those files? Who helped you?’