Echo of the Reich (3 page)

In marked contrast to the cluttered and untidy office, the inspector was impeccably dressed in a light gray suit, the material of which shimmered slightly every time he moved his tall, slim frame. Bronson didn’t have to glance down at the floor to know that his black shoes would have a mirror-polished sheen; the man exuded an almost palpable aura of elegance. His features were even and regular, with a neat and slightly aggressive mustache that conveyed a military bearing.

Bronson was supremely conscious that he cut a rather less than impressive figure by comparison in his crumpled suit, slightly grubby shirt and black loafers. Nor could he blame the state of his attire on the train and tube journey up to Newham; he hadn’t, he realized, looked all that smart when he had left Tunbridge Wells that morning.

“Well, let me tell you something, Detective Sergeant Bronson. I don’t give a damn about your views on football or any other sport. You’ve been sent here by that bunch of yokels who laughably call themselves the Kent Police Force to help us out. Not that we can’t manage by ourselves, but we do need a few extra bodies on the ground while the Olympics are on, and you’ve been selected as one of them.”

“Yes, but—”

“Don’t interrupt when I’m talking. I couldn’t give a toss whether you like sport or not. I’ve got any number of
coppers queuing up to be on duty in a stadium when some of the events are being held. But we need other bodies.”

The Metropolitan Police inspector—the name on his door was S. R. Davidson—paused for a moment and glanced down at a note on his desk. Then he looked back at Bronson and smiled. “To be specific, I need somebody with certain talents and abilities, and I’m told you’re the ideal man for the job.”

“What talents?” Bronson asked suspiciously.

“You’re big and bolshie and nobody here knows you. Now open the door.”

“What?”

“You deaf or something? Open the bloody door.”

Bronson turned round and pulled open the glass door he’d closed behind him three minutes earlier.

As it swung wide, Davidson bellowed: “Curtis! Get in here.”

“Jesus,” Bronson muttered, temporarily deafened by the inspector’s impressive vocal capability. “Can’t you use an intercom or something?”

“Broken,” Davidson replied shortly, as a heavily built man, whose appearance and dress sense seemed closer to Bronson’s casual scruffiness than the inspector’s sartorial elegance, got up from his desk and ambled over to the door of the cubicle.

“Boss?”

“Remember that SLJ we discussed the other day, Bob? Detective Sergeant Bronson here is going to take care of it for us.”

A smile spread across Curtis’s face as he looked Bronson slowly up and down.

“And what shitty little job is that, exactly?” Bronson asked.

“Bob will explain everything,” Davidson replied, looking slightly miffed that Bronson had recognized the acronym he’d used. “Take him away, Bob, and fill him in.”

“A pleasure.”

Curtis led the way across the squad room to his desk.

“Grab one of them,” he said, pointing to a stack of dark gray metal-framed chairs with plastic seats.

“Popular man, your boss, is he?” Bronson asked, taking the top chair from the pile and sitting down in front of Curtis’s desk.

Curtis grinned at him. “Not so’s you’d notice, no. He’s one of that new breed—fast-track coppers. Gets a degree in knitting or something and then joins the force, aiming for a chief constable slot before he’s fifty. Frightening thing is, he’ll probably make it. His initials stand for Steven Richard, by the way, but round here everybody calls him Shit Rises.” Curtis paused and glanced across at Bronson. “Been in long, have you?”

Bronson nodded. “A few years, yes. But I was in the army on a short-service commission before I joined the force.”

Curtis smiled again and looked to his left, toward the officer sitting at the adjacent desk. “That’s a tenner you owe me, Jack.” He swung back to face Bronson. “Had a small wager running,” he explained. “Jack figured you for another graduate fast-tracker like Davidson. But I reckoned he was wrong because you look like you’ve been around the block a few times.”

Bronson thought that worked out as a compliment.

“I hadn’t planned on making chief constable,” he replied. “For one thing, I’m not a Mason, and in any case I don’t think I could handle the bullshit that comes with the job. Talking of jobs, what’s this nasty surprise you’ve got planned for me?”

“It’s not that nasty,” Curtis said. “In fact, you might even enjoy it. But it is really important, because we’re running out of ideas.” There were about half a dozen files sitting in an irregular pile on one corner of his desk, and he reached across and pulled out the bottom one, which was also the slimmest. He flicked through the first couple of pages before looking up at Bronson again.

“Let me give you the background. Pretty much ever since London won the bid to hold the twenty twelve Olympics, there’ve been cases of sabotage and malicious damage at the various venues. At first, we thought it was the usual mindless vandalism that you get in every major city, but over the last three months or so it’s become clear that we are looking at a concerted plan. There seems to be a definite objective to the damage. It’s not just a case of breaking a few windows or daubing graffiti around the place, though there’s been a fair amount of that as well. But these guys, whoever they are, seem to be targeting the machinery on the building sites, doing their best to ensure that the work won’t be completed on time.”

“Hang on a minute,” Bronson said. “The Games start in exactly ten days’ time. I thought that everything was pretty much finished—and all the construction work was completed ages ago.”

“Dream on. The government and all the other talking
heads are just saying what they think the public wants to hear. Most of the building work has been completed, that’s true, but there’s still a hell of a lot of finishing-off to do before the opening ceremony. I reckon that the paint inside some of the buildings will still be wet when the athletes arrive.”

Bronson nodded. “I hadn’t realized that. But what do these vandals want? What’s their motive? I thought most people believed that the Olympics would be a good thing for London, not just because of the income that’ll be generated during the Games themselves, but also because of all the redevelopment of the East End. Surely everyone will benefit to some extent?”

“Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But this bunch seems to have a different agenda.”

Bronson glanced at the thin file in front of Curtis. “From the look of that,” he said, “you haven’t got very much to go on.”

“You got that right. We know that they usually work at night, but so far we’ve made no arrests. In terms of evidence, about all we have got are the damage reports from the construction companies, and statements from our own people about how they broke into the sites.”

“But surely the Olympic sites are guarded? There must be cameras, nightwatchmen, patrols by security companies? And this close to the event, the work will be going on twenty-four hours a day, won’t it?”

“All true, and when the work stops the nightwatchmen are posted, but these people have a knack of knowing the odd corner or length of fence where the surveillance cameras don’t have total coverage, that kind of thing, and
there are so many sites involved that they’ve got plenty of choice about where they hit each time.”

“Have you got any leads at all?” Bronson asked.

“A few whispers on the street, but that’s about it. We think the gang is based somewhere in this area, because on the odd occasions when any of them has been spotted and chased, they’ve always managed to slip the net down alleyways, side streets and so on. That suggests detailed knowledge of the area.”

“Or it could just mean that they’ve done a thorough reconnaissance of the target area beforehand,” Bronson said, “or even that they’ve invested in a bunch of really good quality GPS units.”

Curtis nodded. “I can’t argue with any of that. We think they’re a local bunch, but we really don’t know. And we’ve no idea what their objective is.”

Bronson shook his head. “I can see how frustrating this must be,” he said, “but surely it’s only an irritant? Why can’t you just double the number of nightwatchmen and CCTV cameras and increase the regular patrols around the sites? Surely that would be enough to neutralize this bunch of idiots.”

Curtis smiled at him. “Until about a week ago, I’d have agreed with you. Then two things happened. First, we got a lead on the name of the man who seems to be the head of the group, and that does tie up with some of the graffiti we’ve found. At several of the sites they hit, we found fresh graffiti that looked a bit like a capital “M” with a lowercase “u” directly underneath it. In fact, we’d started referring to them as the “Mu Gang,” though we had no idea what the symbol was supposed to mean.

“Anyway, one of our informers finally came up with the name Wolf, spelling uncertain. He thought that was the man’s surname, and that his first name might be Mark or maybe Marcus, but he
wasn’t sure. He also told us that the graffiti, the “Mu” symbol, was meant to represent a wolf’s head, the “M” being the ears and the “u” the snout, so that all seemed to hang together.”

“Interesting, but not particularly helpful,” Bronson commented. “What was the second thing?”

“The second thing changed everything. Five nights ago, what we believe to be the same gang launched an attack against one of the stadiums. They got in undetected by cutting through the boundary fence, and made their way over to where some construction equipment was still being stored. They did a fair amount of minor damage to some of the most expensive equipment they could find, cutting diesel fuel lines, putting sugar in petrol tanks, all that kind of thing, because there isn’t much else you can do to a bulldozer or a crane to stop it working. Unless you’ve got a wrecking ball or cutting equipment, that is.

“Then it all went wrong. We think the nightwatchman on the site saw something on the CCTV cameras or maybe heard the gang. Whatever happened, he dialed triple nine and then headed out to try to stop them. He was by himself, and from the recordings we’ve looked at, there were at least six of them.”

Bronson had a horrible feeling he knew what was coming.

“He tried to tackle one of them, but he was set upon by the gang and beaten up. That was bad enough, but he wasn’t that young and his heart gave out during the attack. By the time the first patrol car arrived, he was already dead and the intruders were long gone. So what started out as just a bloody nuisance has now turned into a full-scale murder inquiry.”

“I presume you don’t want me to help out with that?” Bronson asked.

“No. We’ve already got a full Murder Room running, not that they’ve got very much to go on because of the lack of any useful forensic evidence. But Shit Rises has got a better—or at least a different—plan in mind, and that’s where you come in. He’s under a hell of a lot of pressure from the top to get this sorted. The clock’s ticking, and we absolutely have to find this bunch of thugs and get them off the streets before East London is flooded with athletes and spectators. He’s been looking for a volunteer for this for a few days, pretty much ever since the killing of the nightwatchman.”

“I’m not exactly a volunteer, am I?”

Curtis grinned again and shook his head. “No, not really. But he needed somebody from out of the area who wouldn’t be recognized as a police officer. And he also needed a man with certain talents and experience, so he checked all the local forces and the name that popped up at the top of the list was yours. So you’ll have to do.”

“So this really isn’t just a shitty little job then? I mean, it actually matters?”

“Oh, it matters. It really matters. That was just Shit Rises trying to be funny. As all of us working here know, he has a well-developed sense of humor,” Curtis added, with a perfectly straight face. “This is important, and
you’ll get whatever help and support you need. Make no mistake about this. As you said, the Games will be starting in exactly ten days, and we have to take this group of vandals off the streets before then. Between you and me, I think the powers that be are worried that there’s something else planned.”

“Like what?”

“I have no idea. But if there was any kind of attempt to disrupt the opening ceremony, for example, that would be really embarrassing for London and Britain, with a worldwide audience of billions, and the Met would be so deep in the shit that we’d probably never be able to dig our way out.”

“So no pressure, then?” Bronson said.

Curtis shook his head, and his expression remained grim.

“I’m not trying to con you, Chris. This isn’t going to be easy, and to make it worse, you’re going to have to work alone. We can support you, and provide backup if it’s needed, but basically it’s all down to you.”

Then Curtis passed the slim file across the desk, leaned forward and explained precisely what Davidson wanted Bronson to do.

19 July 2012

“Got another one here,” the uniformed constable announced, as he and his colleague made their way somewhat erratically toward the desk.

The reason for their unusually halting progress was the man between them. He was dark haired, unshaven and wearing stained jeans and a leather jacket. He was big and solidly built, and it was immediately clear that subduing him would not have been easy. He was still struggling and mouthing abuse, and it was taking all the efforts of the two officers to keep him heading in the right direction, despite the handcuffs that secured his wrists in front of him.

Two other suspects were already standing beside the desk, accompanied by three uniformed officers, but these two men were not giving anybody any trouble.

“What’s the charge?” the desk sergeant asked, eyeing the approaching trio.

“The usual,” the constable replied. “Malicious damage, resisting arrest and abusive behavior. And once we’ve shut him up and got a Breathalyzer mouthpiece between his lips, I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to add drunk and disorderly to that lot.”

After a couple of minutes, while the sergeant completed the processing of the other two men, the dark-haired man seemed to calm down a little, possibly realizing that he had no chance of getting out of the police station, at least until his handcuffs had been removed.