Criminal Revenge (25 page)

Ashwan was bleeding heavily, but he would live for a while. He couldn’t move. Nick and David carried Malik from the ambulance and they plonked him in the back of the BMW. He was doped and compliant, and unable to move for now. His surroundings were confusing to him, but he knew that he was in trouble. The wind and rain blew into the car as he was manhandled into the back seat. The world was spinning, and he closed his eyes to steady his mind. The door slammed closed and everything became quiet. The wind stopped blowing and he could hear traffic passing by, but the sound was soothing. He opened his eyes and saw the flashing lights of an ambulance. The vehicle was pulling away. A highway patrol truck was parked alongside his BMW in between it and the traffic. It blocked the view of passing motorists. The engine started, and it too pulled away. The passenger window opened and a hand waved goodbye to him as it drove away.

Malik tried to get his bearings. He was in the back seat of his own car. He recognised the dashboard and the leather seats. Why was he in the back seat, he couldn’t remember. Next to his right hand was a reactivated Mac-10 machinegun. He bought them and sold them in their thousands but he rarely saw them. The police had been chasing him for decades, but he’d been too clever for to be caught. Everything had been perfect until the bastards that planted bombs turned up. He remembered the hotel room. He was about to fuck Malinda, wasn’t he? Yes, he was right. She’d drugged him, and then the ambulance turned up. Bernstein, remember me? The ambulance men kept repeating it. Bernstein, remember me? He did remember them, they’d taken him from the hotel, it echoed, remember me? They were at the hotel. Why?

He remembered that Sarah Bernstein was their sister. Her face flashed into his mind. She was pretty, but then it warped into a frightened face. She was crying, but she couldn’t speak, and Ashwan was on top of her paralysed body, pumping her while she sobbed. The faces of his school friends were there, holding her down, probing her and squeezing her body. They were laughing. The sound of laughter echoed around his brain, and then it turned to screaming.

The image disappeared, and he looked at the machinegun again. Sweat ran down his face. His hand twitched and he touched it with his fingers. If he could reach it, he would shoot the fat ambulance man, Richard fucking Bernstein in the face, and then he would kill his brother. Fucking Bernsteins, they’d been a pain in his arse from day one. They should have killed the fat Jew when they had the chance. What were they doing now? Where had they gone? He remembered the ambulance pulling away. Were they in it? His mind was processing information a little quicker than it had. The effects of the Flunitrazepam seemed to be wearing off. Where was he? He looked up and around, taking in detail for the first time since he’d arrived. How long was it since the ambulance men closed the door and left him? Time had no meaning for now.

Malik suddenly realised that there was someone in the driver’s seat. They were slumped over the wheel. The sound of passing engines became louder, and he recognised that headlights were flashing by, illuminating the interior of the BMW every few minutes. He was at the side of a road. Intricate steel framework surrounded the road and it disappeared into the sky above him. Runcorn Bridge echoed from the far edges of his mind. He was in his car on the bridge. The car was surrounded by traffic cones, each one fitted with a flashing yellow light on top of it. He needed to know who the driver was.

Malik moved his right hand and then tried his left. His motor neurone functions were returning to him. He made a fist with his hands as the movement returned. The man in the front looked like Ashwan Pindar. Malik leaned forward, his head between the front seats.

“Ash,” Malik said. It came out as a gasp. “Ashwan.” This time it sounded like he had marbles in his mouth. He reached forward and grabbed the back of his jacket. He tugged as hard as his muscles allowed him to. Ash groaned and slumped back in the seat. “Ashwan, what’s wrong with you?” Malik looked at his hand. It was covered in Ash’s blood. He looked down and noticed the bullet hole in the seat, and the corresponding wound at the base of his spine. “Shit!”

Malik looked around for something to stop the bleeding. Next to him on the backseat was a sports bag. He reached for the zip, his limbs responding better now. His head was woozy but he felt in control of his body. He unzipped the bag and opened it. His eyes struggled in the dark; the passing headlights offered him some help as they lit up the interior of the vehicle. He reached inside and fumbled with the contents. His hands touched a tightly wrapped package. The plastic wrapping crackled as he handled it. He pulled it out. Cocaine. Malik reached in again and pulled out a second package with the same result. Cocaine. It was the cocaine from the ransom drop. Three kilos of it, which would equate to about fifteen years in jail.

“Ashwan, wake up!” Malik felt alone for the first time in his adult life. There had always been someone there to help him out of trouble, help him fight his battles, or to take the blame. He looked around the car. On top of the dashboard was another Mac-10. It was wedged above the steering wheel resting on the heater vents. Malik assessed the situation in his befuddled mind. He was sat in his car with a machinegun in his hand. The driver had been shot through the back, and there was three kilos of cocaine on the seat next to him. It was then that he heard the first police siren approaching.

Captain Bishpam reached the top of the cellar stairs. There was a light switch on the left, fixed to the wall, but it was an obvious place to fix a booby trap, so he ignored it. He switched on a head torch, which was fitted to the blast suit. The stairs were crafted from pine and stained with a clear varnish. The torch light swept the floor space that he could see from the top of the stairs. There was a gel substance spread evenly across the floor. The floor seemed to be a concrete base, covered in self-levelling cement. It had been painted red with floor-paint and the gel made it look wet in the torch light.

“Black three,” Bishpam made his call sign. He took the first two steps slowly, looking for tripwires or fine metal filament, which could be a trigger for a bomb.

“Go, ahead, captain.”

“The floor is coated in a gel, I’m guessing it’s an accelerant of some type, or a hypergolic liquid. The place stinks of chemicals.”

“Roger that, captain, get out of there,” Alec knew the cellar was rigged, and the captain had confirmed it.

“I’ll get halfway down the staircase, then I can get a proper view of the cellar,” Bishpam held the handrail and moved awkwardly down the steps. He ducked and scanned the cellar with the head torch. A camera fixed next to it relayed pictures back to the bomb squad command vehicle. There were workbenches lined up symmetrically along the length of the cellar, and the walls were lined with shelving. The shelves were packed with electrical gadgets. Stereo systems, video recorders, and televisions were piled high. “Are you getting this?”

“Roger, captain, we’re seeing it. It’s an Aladdin’s cave of electronic spare parts, right?”

“Right,” Bishpam replied. There were three blue lights glowing in the darkness across the room. He knew it was a bomb, even from where he was stood.

“Superintendent Ramsay.” A call came over the coms unit. It was Inspector Green from armed response.

“What is it, inspector?” Alec sounded irritated by the interruption at such a critical moment, but he knew the inspector wouldn’t be using an open channel unless it was important.

“We’ve got an Armed Response Unit en route to an incident.”

“Go ahead,” Alec was irritated now.

“A shooting was called in anonymously an hour ago. The first teams at the scene reported two men in a BMW, armed with Mac-10 machineguns. One of them is shot and wounded. The other man is holed up in the backseat. The vehicle registration plate has its owner listed as Malik Shah.”

“Where are they?” Alec scratched his chin.

“Runcorn Bridge, guv.”

“Roger that, inspector.” Alec didn’t know what was happening, but something was. He had to get the captain out of there.

“Can you see the lights across the room?” Bishpam said when the other conversation was done.

“Roger that, I want you out of there now, captain,” Alec repeated. The accelerant gel had been put down for one reason only. To spread fire evenly throughout the cellar and to destroy everything that was down there. There were a million and one ways to set up a trigger device that would detonate a bomb, or start a fire.

“Roger that, I’m on my way out of here,” Captain Bishpam said as he turned on the stairway. He moved his left foot off the fourth step down, and released the pressure in a pressure pad. The pressure release closed a live electric circuit, which was causing a magnetic field around a steel ball bearing. When the magnet was turned off, the steel ball rolled down a metal track and then slotted between two connectors and completed a circuit. The trigger detonated a series of explosive devices which were designed to destroy everything in the cellar and start a firestorm which would incinerate any remaining evidence. Captain Bishpam didn’t stand a chance.

“Drop the weapon and get out of the vehicle.” An amplified voice travelled across the bridge to him. Malik was surrounded by armed police units at the front and rear of his car. They had closed the bridge to traffic and set up roadblocks seventy-five yards back from his position. Ashwan smelled of excrement, which told him that he was dead; his bowels had relaxed and emptied. His options were limited. He was in possession of two machineguns and three kilos of cocaine. Ashwan was dead, probably shot with the gun that he had in his possession. The police would lock him up and throw away the key. He wouldn’t see the light of day ever again. The Bernsteins had stitched him up good and proper, and he knew it. The police would know it as well. Would they admit it was a set-up and miss the opportunity to lock him up? Malik doubted it very much. MI5 had tracked him for years because of his arms dealing. To catch him in possession of two reactivated weapons would be six numbers and the bonus ball.

“Throw the weapon out of the vehicle, and come out with your hands up,” the voice sounded more urgent this time. “You have nowhere to go, throw your weapon down.”

A helicopter roared over the railway bridge to his left. It soared above the suspension bridge and then hovered a hundred yards above him to the right. Malik looked up, and saw a sniper taking aim at the vehicle. He closed his eyes tightly when he saw the muzzle flash.

There were two loud bangs as the driver’s side tyres exploded, and the BMW rocked violently and lurched to one side. The sniper fired three more rounds and ragged holes appeared in the bonnet as the high velocity bullets fractured the engine block, sending sparks high into the air. Malik had nowhere to go. He was trapped and surrounded by his very own produce, cocaine and reactivated weapons. Another helicopter appeared a distance away and floated above the river, level with the bridge. Malik guessed it was the television cameras, trying to get a good shot of the action.

“Throw the weapon out of the vehicle.” The voice repeated. If they wanted him dead then they would have shot him by now. They wanted to take him alive. It would look good on the TV if they could capture an armed drug dealer alive. Britain’s top gangster is snared in a shoot-out, caught red handed with the dope in his possession. He would get life. There was no doubt about it. Malik thought it through. If he surrendered, he’d be put behind bars in a maximum-security prison for life without parole. His companies’ assets would be seized and he would be penniless. If he had no money, then he had no power. There was no one left to conjure up a daring escape plan to spring him from jail, and there would be no money to fund legal challenges. The prisons were full of his enemies, rival gangsters, bitter drug dealers, and dozens of heavies that had been on the wrong end of Malik’s justice over the years. He was untouchable a month ago, now he was nothing. Life in a prison cell taking one beating after another, ending up as someone’s bitch in the showers was about all he could expect.

The Bernsteins had brought him here because of Sarah, the silly bitch. She jumped off the bridge years ago, and they wanted him to do the same thing now, or rot in a six by four cell stinking of his own piss. There was another option though. He could go out in a blaze of glory. Malik checked the magazine. It was full bar one round. He put his hand on the door and took a deep breath. As he yanked it, the wind took it and blew it wide open. He ducked low and ran towards the pedestrian walkway.

“Drop the weapon or we will open fire. Do it now!” The officer on the megaphone bellowed the order. Malik ignored him and turned towards the helicopter. He raised his weapon, so did the sniper. Malik pulled the trigger to unleash a maelstrom of nine-millimetre bullets at the aircraft. This was his last stand.

Click. The reactivated weapon jammed. He tried again. Click.

The sniper fired. Two high velocity slugs slammed into the pavement a yard in front of him.

“This is your last chance, drop the weapon!”

Malik turned and ran full pelt at the railings. He threw the Mac-10 behind him and vaulted the barrier. The wind whistled by his ears as he plummeted into the abyss, and his desperate last scream resounded off a million tons of steel.

“Fucking hell, guv! Shah jumped off the bridge,” the armed response officer in charge of the standoff said as they arrived at the scene.

“I heard it on the coms. Did anyone get hurt?”

“No, sir, his weapon jammed.”

“There’s an ironic justice in there somewhere.” Alec shook his head and the deep wrinkles on his face creased.

“Sir?”

“I’m thinking out loud, inspector, don’t worry.”

Alec Ramsay felt like he’d been punched in the guts by Mike Tyson. The explosion at the farm had killed a good soldier, a real war hero. Losing an officer under those circumstances was hard to take, especially when it became obvious that the farm was rigged to blow. He knew it would be, and so did Captain Bishpam, but he still went in there to try and make it safe for others to do their job. Alec had no sympathy for Malik Shah or Ashwan Pindar. The world would be a better place without them in it. The fact that the Bernstein brothers had a personal axe to grind with them did not excuse what they had done. They were murderers too, and in Alec’s book that made them just as evil as Shah and his mob. He had to find them and bring them in, or Bishpam had died for nothing, and the case would eat away at him forever.

He walked through a melee of police officers and ambulance men towards the BMW. There was a chattering of voices on the wind, and everyone had an opinion about Shah jumping.

“What do you think, guv?” Will Naylor caught up, and was a step behind him.

“I think this scenario was planned from day one, Will.” Alec looked up at the steel girders above him. An icy wind blew through him as he tried to make sense of it all. “The vehicle was parked here and surrounded by traffic cones; now how could they pull that off without alerting the other road users that something was amiss?”

Will looked at the set up. Ashwan Pindar was still slumped back in the driver’s seat. Shah was in the back before he jumped. They picked the bridge because of their sister, and Will could understand their choice.

“How did they get them into the car in the first place, and why did they stay in it?” Will mused.

“There are traffic cameras at both ends of the bridge, right?”

“Yes, guv.”

“Get them looked at pronto, I want to know how they set this up without anybody noticing what was going on,” Alec ordered. Will took his mobile out and punched numbers in. Less than a minute later the stored footage was being sent electronically to the MIT offices. Alec had his own theories. He guessed that they were using a vehicle that wouldn’t look out of place, something that is almost wallpaper to a passing car. He was also of the impression that Shah and his sidekick were drugged when they were placed into the BMW. They couldn’t have transported them there in the vehicle; someone would have found it suspicious, two unconscious men.

Alec approached the BMW.

“Step away please, sir, we haven’t checked it over yet,” one of Captain Bishpam’s bomb squad officers shouted. Alec looked and waved in acknowledgement.

“Okay, let me know when it’s clear.”

He skirted the vehicle knowing that there was no bomb in it. The Bernsteins set this up like a game of chess. They nipped and prodded Shah relentlessly, picking off his people like pieces on a board, upsetting the balance. The kidnap was genius. They ruffled his feathers so much that he began to run in circles, attacking shadows and demons that didn’t exist. They pushed him to the edge, and then brought him back to where it all began. To the place where their beloved sister committed suicide carrying his child. They used the farm as their base until the game was over and then they destroyed the evidence. Alec reached the railings and looked over. The River Mersey looked steel-grey from up there. Below the bridge, the waters merged with the salt water of the Irish Sea as the tides ebbed and flowed. A river police launch trawled the waters looking for Shah’s body. He was dead; no one could survive a fall like that. The tidal undercurrents would drag him down and take his body miles before it would surface, if it ever did at all.

“It’s clear, superintendent.” The bomb squad officer finished checking beneath the floor plan and wheel arches. “You can approach the vehicle, but please don’t press anything, or switch anything on.”

Alec nodded and walked around the car. It was an odd request to make to an experienced senior officer, but he had just seen his commanding officer blown to bits and charcoaled in a firestorm, and he was doing his job the way he’d been taught to. Alec looked in the windows. Ashwan Pindar bled to death slowly. The foot well was pooled with congealing blood. His trousers were blown away at the knee, and most of the joint was splattered over the dashboard. There was a reactivated machinegun on the driver’s side heater vents. Alec didn’t think that Pindar ever used it. Why would he put it in the window in plain view? It was put there for a reason, probably for the benefit of the police officers that arrived first at the scene. There was an anonymous tip off about a shooting, and a Mac-10 in the windscreen of a parked vehicle. It was bound to provoke an armed response from the police. That’s exactly what they got. The rear door was still open, and the sports bag was clearly visible. Alec clocked the three packages of white powder. Cocaine he guessed. Malik Shah was far too shrewd to transport dope around in his own car. It was another piece in the game created by the Bernsteins.

“They’ve watched the footage, guv.” Will called him. He was twenty yards away with his phone to his ear. Alec had seen enough in the car to know what happened, but he wanted to know how.

“Go on, don’t keep me in suspense.”

“The cameras show the BMW being stopped by a highways vehicle. They flanked it and then an ambulance turned up and reversed up to the front of the vehicle. The ambulance men go back and forth while a third man in uniform places the cones around the scene. Everything is obscured from the road by the way they parked them up.”

“They brought Pindar and Shah here in the ambulance, drugged I bet.”

“They can’t take those vehicles back to the farm, guv. We need to find them.”

“Get the plates to traffic and airborne. They won’t be far away, I’m sure of that.” Alec looked west towards Liverpool. Planes were taking off and landing less than three miles up the river. “How far is it to the airport from here by road, four miles, five at the most?”

“Yes, no more than that.”

“They worked to a timetable, Will, and now we know why. Tell uniform to check the airport parking facilities, all of them, off site and on site.”

“I’m on it, guv,” Will took his mobile and dialled.

“What time did the cameras show them leaving the bridge?” Alec asked when he’d finished his call.

“Forty minutes before the first officers arrived.”

“Forty minutes, plus an hour stand-off. They could be in the air already. I want every bit of camera data at the airport checked, and find out which flight they got on. I want everyone we have at our disposal at the airport.”