Capital Punishment (45 page)

‘You think he’s going to call?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Once someone like him sees a hundred grand, they get used to it being theirs. Don’t like the idea of sharing it.’

‘What’s your game, Alyshia?’ asked Dan, looking at her out of the corner of his face.

‘No game. Just telling you how greed works.’

‘You an expert?’

‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘I’ve watched people operating around money all my life. Very few don’t succumb.’

It annoyed him, because that was the little worm that had gnawed its way into his brain over the last hour. He hadn’t wanted it to, but that was the nature of little worms. It made him angry and nasty.

He waved the gun around a little in her general direction. She didn’t take her eyes off his.

‘You better pray he calls, because if he doesn’t, I’m walking out of here on my own and you’ll be—’

The phone rang.

‘I’ve got it, Nurse. I’ve fucking got it. It’s all here. One hundred grand. Get out of there. I’m waiting—’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Dan quickly. ‘I’ll call you again in half an hour. Your phone was switched off.’

‘I didn’t want calls during the drop, and after the dexy my brain was still whizzing. Didn’t turn it back on until just now.’

They hung up.

‘He called,’ said Dan. ‘You’re free to go.’

The VW van pulled up in Branch Place. They’d checked the unit from Canal Walk and seen shadows moving in the room above the workshop on the canal side. They’d left Tarar there with one other. They’d picked up the lookout at one end of Branch Place and driven around the block. Now they were parked just around the corner. They all got out. The second lookout confirmed that no one had come in or gone out. The four men walked towards the unit, with Rahim out front. He unlocked the main double doors. The four went in, pulled the door closed behind them.

Isabel had her face in her hands, couldn’t stop crying; the pressure of the drop and the thought that it might have been for nothing because of the Met had been too much for her. Boxer stroked her back while he made phone calls, trying to find out what had happened. He’d already been outside to inspect the car, couldn’t find any tracking device. He hadn’t expected to. The money had been clean, he’d checked that. Nothing in the boot, or the back seat. He called Fox.

‘The Met were at the drop,’ he said. ‘You heard anything?’

‘What do you mean they were there?’

‘They tracked us. Isabel made the drop and guys and cars appeared out of nowhere.’

‘I’ll talk to Makepeace, call you back.’

Boxer called Rick Barnes.

‘I didn’t think you’d be able to keep your noses out of it.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Barnes. ‘That’s all I can say, Charles.’

‘I’m already worried. Isabel’s in tears,’ said Boxer. ‘We’ve heard nothing from the kidnappers.’

‘It’s all under control. Just don’t rock the boat. As soon as you get the address—’

‘You broke the deal, Rick. You said you wouldn’t follow and you did. So why should I keep my end up and give you the address,
if
they give it to us.’

‘They will,’ said Barnes. ‘It’s just a surveillance operation. No armed men. We want them alive and in possession of the money.’ ‘Where did you put the tracking device?’

‘In her handbag. The old tricks are always the best.’

Boxer hung up. Stupid, he thought. Hadn’t even seen the handbag, too preoccupied with the sports bag and what D’Cruz had been saying. The handbag was under Isabel’s legs. He got out, emptied the contents onto his seat, found the device, hurled it across the road.

‘My fault,’ he said. ‘I lost concentration.’

The phone rang. Isabel snatched at it.

‘Your daughter is waiting for you at Unit 6b, Branch Place, London N1, just off Bridport Place. Good luck. Here she is.’

Dan handed the phone to Alyshia and left the room, gun in hand. He opened the door to the flat, looked downstairs and came eye to eye with Rahim, who, having thought he would have the advantage of surprise, now found it savagely torn from him. His fraction of a second hesitation was enough. The man behind knocked into him. The shot from his gun hit the brickwork and Dan fired as he fell back into the corridor, which ricocheted off the brick wall high above Rahim’s head. Dan slammed the door shut with a wild bicycle kick of his feet.

Staying on the ground, he crabbed his way up the corridor back into the living room, where Alyshia was standing rigid as a statue, wrapped in her blanket, phone just off her head, mouth open, stunned by the gunshots. Dan came up off the floor and ran at her. As he collided with her, the phone span out of her grasp and he heard Isabel’s crackly voice shouting.

He picked her up off her feet, kept running and turned at the last moment as he smashed into the floor-to-ceiling panes of glass, his back crashing against the lattice work. The old and weathered wood cracked and splintered, the glass shattering, and they were through it and out into the freezing night air and falling, with Alyshia kicking out her legs in desperation at finding them no longer connected to the floor.

The splash was colossal and catastrophic for Dan, who landed first, with Alyshia on top of him. The force of the impact slammed all the air out of him and ripped them apart. The icy water closed around Dan’s head, filled his lungs. His chest felt slashed by machetes. The shock seemed to have arrested his heart and paralysed all motor reflexes, so that he found himself trying to remember how to breathe. He struggled. The water peeled back from his face for a moment and he saw the hole he’d made in the window, with a man standing in it. He mouthed to the night like a fish. He heard shouts and another splash, before the water closed back over him and he sank back down into the freezing darkness, his new friend.

Rahim hurtled back down the stairs and crashed out through the double doors, bringing along the two lookouts, still with the door breach between them. They hailed the VW van, which came towards them with a lurching screech. They piled in and took off with the side door still open, legs hanging out, Rahim pulling them in against the G-force. They rounded the corner, crossed the bridge and tore down the slope to the towpath. They all piled out. Cheema and Jat had torches. They scanned the canal.

‘Hakim is in the water,’ shouted a voice.

They ran down the towpath.

‘Where’s the girl?’ roared Jat.

‘She’s here, she’s here,’ gasped Tarar, barely able to speak from the black iciness.

He had her hair wrapped around his fist and he was pulling her towards the bank. Two of them grabbed the girl, hauled her out, carried her straight to the van, laid her down on the floor. Jat followed, pushed them out of the way and, grabbing her around the abdomen, pulled her upright and gave her a jolting squeeze. Water shot out of her mouth into the back of the van. She coughed and more water followed. He let her down to her knees where she coughed and retched up more of the foul canal.

‘Put a blanket around her and get her into the recovery position,’ said Jat. ‘Stay with her.’

He went back to the towpath, where they were pulling Tarar out of the water.

‘Where’s the nurse?’ asked Jat.

‘He’s in the water,’ said one of the boys, shining his torch into the middle. ‘He’s not moving.’

‘Is he dead?’ asked Jat. ‘Did Rahim shoot him?’

‘No,’ said Rahim.

‘Let’s go,’ said Cheema. ‘We have the girl.’

‘Make sure he’s dead,’ said Jat. ‘He must have seen Rahim.’

Tarar dived back in.

‘Everybody back in the van ready to leave,’ said Cheema.

‘You stay with me, Rahim,’ said Jat.

Tarar swam back, dragging Dan’s body by the collar. Jat felt for a neck pulse. Nothing. Rahim hauled Tarar out. They ran for the van. Cheema pulled away with no lights on. Tarar shivered uncontrollably in the back.

Boxer drove at terrifying speeds, along roads with no traffic. By the time they pulled up into Branch Place, he could hear the sirens coming from all directions. He pulled up outside Unit 6b. The doors were open, the lights on. He left Isabel in the car, stepped into the parallelogram of light on the pavement and looked around. He had his FN57 handgun in his right hand.

The studio was empty. He went upstairs to the flat. A deathly quiet and an icy wind greeted him. Only the whoop of approaching sirens came walloping through the night. He put the gun down the back of his trousers, covered it. He looked into the living room, saw the broken window. He stood in the jagged hole in the shattered panes and stared down into the canal, where the vague light cast across the water showed a humped body close to the far bank.

He turned to find two armed policemen pointing guns at him.

‘We’re too late,’ he said.

The officers of the Serious Crime Command, who’d sprinted into the Limehouse Basin in pursuit of Skin after the drop, were intent on one thing only: the make, model, colour and registration of the vehicle Skin was using. They telephoned it through to central command and melted away. A number of motorised units took over, handing the vehicle over to different squads, who took it in turns to follow the white transit until it came to rest in a side street off the Old Kent Road.

At that point they called in CO19, the armed response squad, who sent in two teams. Both parked up in an adjacent street and prepared themselves—one on the ground and the other in their vehicle, in case Skin suddenly moved off.

They picked up Skin’s call telling Dan the money was all accounted for and that he should release the girl. A report went back to central command, but still the armed response squad were not activated. Only when the four units that had converged on Branch Place confirmed that the girl had not been found, and the other kidnapper had been killed at the scene, was CO19 activated, with the express instructions to bring the surviving kidnapper in alive.

Despite Skin’s speeding brain, he had not been stupid. He had parked his transit with a clear route out—a good ten yards of space between him and the next car. This was where CO 19 saw their opportunity. Two officers on foot on the other side of the street moved up level with the transit, while the other team remained two cars back. An unmarked police car overtook Skin’s transit and began manoeuvering into the space in front. A nodding dog had been positioned in the middle of the rear window for added distraction.

Skin was smoking with one hand and cuddling the sports bag with the other. His gun was lying on the passenger seat. As soon as he saw the reversing lights, his hand reached for the gun. But the CO19 men were moving quicker than Skin’s brain. The door opened and a Glock 17 was plugged hard into his throat.

‘Fuck.’

1.00 A.M., WEDNESDAY 14TH MARCH 2012

Hackney, London N1

Alyshia was conscious but in a state of shock and profoundly cold. Her eyes were wide open, unblinking, unseeing.

Amir Jat had them strip Alyshia down to her underwear and the boys who hadn’t been in the water were ordered to undress and put their dry clothing on her.

Her head lolled as they dressed her. Her feet and hands were numb, her arms and legs as cold and hard as marble. A boy was assigned to massage each extremity to warm it up. They wrapped her head in a sweater, covering her eyes, with only her nose and mouth free for breathing. Cheema turned up the heating in the van to the maximum. Tarar, teeth still chattering, changed clothes with one of his team.

Cheema drove back via Bethnal Green and dropped off Tarar and the four boys. Rahim stayed in the van to help move Alyshia. They went to Boleyn Road, where they put her in the basement. Jat ordered a bed to be brought down and for hot water bottles to be prepared, along with a pot of tea. He asked Cheema if he had a thermometer. Alyshia’s body temperature was 34.5°C.

‘That’s OK,’ he said, ‘she’s not going to die.’

Rahim brought down the hot water bottles. Jat put one in each armpit, another between her thighs and the last one between her feet.

‘Where’s the tea?’

‘It’s coming,’ said Rahim.

‘Lots of sugar,’ said Jat.

Cheema followed Rahim upstairs into the kitchen where they made the tea.

‘Give me your gun,’ said Cheema.

Rahim frowned.

‘Don’t question me,’ said Cheema. ‘I have my orders.’

Rahim handed over his gun.

‘Is it ready to fire?’

Rahim checked, found a round in the chamber, flicked off the safety, nodded.

‘Do you have a silencer?’

Rahim reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thick cylinder, took the gun from Cheema and screwed it on the barrel. Handed it back.

‘What is this?’ he asked.

‘We don’t know. We don’t understand,’ said Cheema. ‘We just do what we’re told. These are orders from the highest authority. Direct from Pakistan.’

‘You gave Hakim your word about the girl,’ said Rahim.

‘I know,’ said Cheema. ‘That was before I gave my report. Bring the tea. We mustn’t be too long.’

Rahim went downstairs first with the tray. Cheema shut the doors. Held the gun behind his back.

‘Good,’ said Jat, who was immersed in his project. ‘Pour her some tea. Put six teaspoons of sugar in. She’s going to be fine.’

Rahim did as he was told.

‘You’ll have to help her drink it,’ said Jat. ‘She won’t be able to hold anything yet. It’s not too hot, is it?’

Cheema was standing next to Jat, looking at Alyshia, whose head was still swathed in the sweater. The gun was now at his side.

‘What are you waiting for?’ asked Jat.

Cheema turned, put the barrel of the gun to Amir Jat’s temple and fired. Rahim dropped the mug of tea. Jat keeled over sideways, the wound smoking as he fell. Blood bloomed over the rough concrete and mixed with MK’s urine stain.

Alyshia’s scream came out as a dog’s yelp and a whimper.

‘What have you done?’ said Rahim, aghast.

‘Those were my orders,’ said Cheema.

‘But he is one of us,’ said Rahim, stating the obvious. ‘He ... he ... he ... planned the Mumbai attacks. He is a hero. I thought ... you were going to shoot the girl.’