48 Hours - A City of London Thriller (35 page)

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.

Chapter 7
3

398 High Rd, Tottenham, North London. Sunday
1:30pm.

Don Fisher and I had been ushered into a marginally more
pleasant meeting room, its walls adorned with posters about the
collection and disposal of used needles, child abuse and a
particularly gruesome one picturing a victim of domestic abuse. Her
face was so distorted with bruises, stitches and swelling that she
did not look human. It struck me as a little tactless to sit us
under that particular poster when Dee and Lavender were in the
hands of brutal criminals.

DS Scott joined us in the room.

“
Right, gents, we should be moving into position in five
minutes or so, but let me update you on where we are.”

DS Scott looked down at a clipboard that had around half a
dozen sheets clipped to it. The clip on the top was blue, the
corporate blue of the Metropolitan police. The sheets it held were
a mix of printed and handwritten, but all carried the police
logo.

“
At noon Europol launched simultaneous armed raids in The
Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels and Strasbourg. Local police forces were
also scheduled to hit targets in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania but
they won’t report back any time soon.

In The Netherlands there was some armed resistance and five
suspects are being treated for injuries. Van Aart instructed his
people to stand down, preferring to fight with lawyers rather than
guns. In all over one hundred and fifty arrests were made and sixty
two young East European girls were freed from a holding camp in The
Hague.

France and Belgium reported little resistance, and were
equally successful but in smaller numbers.

Here the Metropolitan Police Armed response units hit Pops
Holloway’s known haunts and his house. They have arrested eight
people on suspicion of drugs, firearms and human trafficking
offences. Pops Holloway is under police guard at the hospital,
where he is reported as suffering from the symptoms of a stroke, or
else he’s faking it. They’re doing tests to find out. We couldn’t
find Sonny Holloway, but guess what? His Range Rover is parked half
on the pavement outside a sandwich shop on Commercial Road, less
than a hundred yards from Tottenham Press. Any
questions?”

Don Fisher beat me to the punch.

“
Can we go in, then?”

“
Yes, as soon as we’re ready. Listen, this is off the record,
you didn’t hear it from me. I just think you have a right to know
what’s going on, that’s all.” DS Scott leaned over the table
towards us and lowered his voice.

“
An hour or so ago one of our observers at the scene heard
something that could have been a gunshot, he wasn’t too sure. But
there has been no activity as far as they could see, and so we’re
assuming that everyone in there is still OK.”

I looked at Don Fisher and wondered whether my face had turned
as pale as his. We would have been angry if all emotion hadn’t
already been drained out of us.

***

Thanks to the Police psychologist, who said that the girls
would need to see their loved ones as soon as possible after being
freed, to reduce the post-traumatic stress, we were allowed to
watch events unfold from close by. We sat in an unmarked white van
in a parking space reserved for deliveries to the sandwich shop,
which had closed for the day. We could see the Tottenham Press
building through the front windscreen. One of the two plain clothes
policemen sitting in the cab of the van was wearing headphones with
a microphone curling around in front of his face. He was listening,
and occasionally contributing to the radio chatter. The headphones
were operated by Bluetooth and were wireless, but they were
connected to a secure closed network radio with encryption. Just in
case anyone in the area had a police scanner.

Commercial Road was sealed off by a sign that read “Road
Closed: Gas Leak” and which was manned by a uniformed officer.
There were very few people around the industrial area on a Sunday
afternoon, but those that were around were inside the building,
which was being observed closely.

The officer with the headphones repeated to us what he had
heard.

“
Armed response has arrived. Their adrenaline is up after a
good result with the Holloway raid. They’re moving into position.
The plan is a go. The electrician is kicking us off any time
now.”

I had to admit, I felt somewhat useless as a spectator. The
police were trained to handle such situations, and in that respect
I was happy to leave it to them, but I couldn’t help feeling that I
had let Dee down. I hadn’t been able to do anything to help her,
and I felt frustrated and perhaps a little bit weak. I was also
afraid to think of what might happen if all of this went wrong. I
had known Dee for a matter of days, yet suddenly the prospect of
life without her seemed inconceivable. I had no idea what I would
do if anything happened to her, but I knew that if – when – she did
get out of there, I would make damned sure I took better care of
her in future.

Fisher and I leaned forward and observed as two men wearing
overalls with a logo on the back appeared from the gap between
Tottenham Press and the building next door. Their overalls looked
bulky and I guessed they were wearing protective vests.

When I looked closely I could see the older man working
quickly whilst the younger man was constantly looking around. He
was holding a handgun.

The next few minutes were going to seem like an
eternity.

***

Ben Tyler should have been at home snoozing on the sofa with a
stomach full of Sunday lunch while his grandkids ran wild in the
garden, but instead he was in Tottenham working. Ben couldn’t
remember when he had been more scared. The presence of an armed
policeman, intended to make him feel secure, achieved exactly the
opposite result.

Nonetheless, he had to concentrate. This was a tricky job. For
a start, the system was live and electrocution was a distinct
possibility. Fortunately, the wiring to this unit passed through
the steel column that took the weight of the door and the roller
mechanism, and would remain concealed until the front plate was
completely removed. Whereas house wiring was simple three core
cable with a plastic coating, this cable was copper sheathed and
mineral insulated. The copper that wrapped the cores, or wires, was
packed with magnesium oxide, an inert chalky substance which
insulated the wires from one another. In order to keep the chalky
substance in place when the cores were exposed, the wires had to be
terminated with small aluminium pots. Had this not been the case,
Ben would not have been able to carry out this operation on a live
system.

Now they were in the third minute and he was just now exposing
the cores. He loosened the terminal screws and the switch with its
key control came off in his hands. Ben had to ensure that he did
not touch either wire on any metal parts of the switches. He also
needed to make sure that the two wires did not touch, or the roller
door would try to open. The electrician tucked the key operated
switch inside his overalls and extracted a much simpler switch.
This unit was plastic and had a simple red switch on and off. Very
carefully Ben attached a tiny crocodile clip to each exposed core,
inserting a plastic spacer between them to ensure they did not
touch, and allowed the plastic switch to hang suspended from the
copper MICC cable.

Ben nodded to his guard who signalled a ‘thumbs up’, and
whilst he was leading Ben away to safety another man ran towards
the door.

***

We had been watching nervously as the electrician did his job,
but the man deserved a medal in my opinion. Under extreme pressure
he took less than four minutes.

As he was led away Geordie from Vastrick, armed with bolt
cutters, appeared from behind a green telephone junction box and
ran towards the door. In ten seconds he had removed the padlock and
was heading back to his hiding place.

The telephone landline had been cut off over an hour ago, and
the mobile phone jammer had been in action since before the Europol
raids. We had noticed during the short journey from the police
station to our current position that the people in the van, and the
few we saw on the streets, had all lost their phone
signals.

I found it amusing that almost everyone with a mobile phone
did the same thing. They saw the message, ignored it, pressed a few
buttons and held it to their ear. Seconds later, realising that
they were not connected, they looked at the message again and
frowned. Finally, the majority of them shook the phone and looked
again to see whether the signal had been restored, because of
course everyone knows that sometimes the electronic signal gets
trapped at the top of the phone and a good shake will loosen it
allowing the phone to work. At least it took my mind off the
seriousness of what was about to happen.

A few seconds passed, and six battle clad men ran to the
roller doors carrying deadly looking rifles. The policeman in the
headset held up three fingers, counting down by bending one finger
at a time. No sooner had all of his fingers closed than there was a
muffled explosion.

Chapter 74

Tottenham Press, Commercial Road, London. Sunday
1:30pm.

Dee had been awake for a while now, albeit in some pain. The
man who tended her wounds had given her a foil of painkillers which
he had found in the secretary’s desk drawer downstairs. Dee had
taken two, but as yet they hadn’t made a lot of difference. She
concluded that she would need something a bit stronger than
over-the-counter aspirins to tackle this amount of pain.
Nonetheless, she thanked him for his help, and she thought that he
might be blushing under his ski mask.

Before he left the room, he closed the door behind him and
spoke to the two girls in hushed tones.

“
I realise that you think of me as the enemy, but I’ve never
hurt a woman in my life, and what happened downstairs was out of
order. We certainly didn’t agree to any of that. My mate and me
will be watching you from now on from the office at the other end
of the corridor. If you need the toilet just go, but please don’t
give them a reason to hurt you again, all right?”

He began to leave, but as an afterthought he added, “If we’re
not up here, or if we’re asleep and anyone worries you, yell for
help and we’ll come running. We just want you to get home safe.
We’re in enough damn trouble as it is.”

Dee was standing up and trying to walk using the fixed table
to lean on. If she was being honest it was no more painful than it
had been lying down. At least the bullet had missed the artery and
the bone. The muscle would repair itself, in time.

***

Rik stood at the office door on the lower floor of the little
building, and looked around. Piet was sitting halfway up the stairs
to his right, and the soldier was upstairs making sure there were
no more escape attempts.

Gregor was asleep in the passenger seat of the Lexus, which
was parked next to the Subaru 4x4 with Dutch plates. He would be
glad when this was over and they were back on the other side of the
Channel. Rik always felt uncomfortable on islands. They were
surrounded by sea and too easy to close down if you wanted to
escape. No, Rik preferred the mainland where, if you needed to run,
you could go thousands of miles whilst avoiding manned border
crossings.

Holloway and his friend Johnny were in close conversation at
the back of the factory unit, almost halfway between the emergency
exit doors on either side of the building.

The factory unit had too much wasted space, in Rik’s opinion.
The printing presses and machines were in the middle third of the
floor, like an island. On the far side of the unit, opposite the
offices, were huge steel racks filled with giant paper rolls and
box after box of paper in smaller sheets. Next to the racks stood a
heavy duty steel walk in cupboard with a built-in fume extraction
box above. Presumably that was where they store or mix ink, he
thought.