Fogarty: A City of London Thriller (11 page)

It seems that your twin sister is something of a high flyer. Her office is on Holborn Viaduct at Fleet Place House. Garner Brinkman is on the third floor above the Thameslink Station. There is a taxi rank right outside, in the middle of the road, od
dly enough, if you need a cab.”

“Thanks, Dee, I owe you. Perhaps I could take you and Josh out to dinner, once I’m sure that my sister is safe?” Taking a heavily pregnant business colleague out to dinner would be a risk, unless her husband was also present, so that he could deal w
ith any unexpected birth pangs.

“I’ll book a table at Simpsons on the Strand on Thursday night, if you like. We probably won’t be able to get in anywhere decent on
a Friday night,” Dee suggested.

“That sounds great, Dee. I’ve heard that they do the world’s best carve
ry, or certainly the poshest.”

Dee laughed.
“OK, Ben. Good luck. Remember, we have Geordie available if you need back-up.”

Ben said his goodbyes and hung up his phone. He had seen Geordie, or Pete, to give him his real name, and he looked tough. Ben could certainly use a wing-man if Den or his cronies decided to play rough; still, there wasn’t much the Psycho could do with an electronic tag on his ankle linked to a monitoring station in his flat.

***

Nick Palmer had served in Iraq, but he was more nervous walking past the TH Crew on the Farm than he had been at any time during his stint patrolling in Basra. Now working for
MetroSec,
he was a tagging supervisor, and a tag alarm had sounded at the monitoring centre in the City. The tags had a pre -determined range, and if the wearer was out of range for more than a few minutes an amber alert would be sent down the telephone line. If after an hour the tag was not back in range they would call the house and see if the offender was home. If that was indeed the case, the tag would be reset remotely; if not, a supervisor would attend before the police were called. The police were slow to respond to tagging breaches, mainly due to the number of false alarms caused by faulty tags, or by wearers deliberately testing the range of the tag.

Nonetheless, Nick found himself outside the flat belonging to Dennis Grierson and he could not believe hi
s eyes. Twenty-four hours earlier, this had been a comfortable, if not luxurious flat, but now it resembled a bomb site. The door hung loose on one hinge, all of the contents had been stripped and gang graffiti had been scrawled all over the walls. The place looked as though it had been abandoned for years. Over in the corner, the monitoring unit still flashed red and so Nick disconnected it and placed it in his bag. Dennis Grierson had gone and it didn’t look as though he was ever coming back.

Nick call
ed the Metropolitan Police bail monitoring unit and reported his findings. They didn’t seem particularly bothered. He also called Haringey Council and suggested that they might want to secure the flat before some lout torched it.

As he walked back to his van, teenage boys in purple hoodies, with the arms cut off at the elbows, watched his every move. “I’d resign and go on the dole before I came out here in the dark,” Nick thought, counting himself lucky when he returned to find his van untouched.

Trafalgar House Fl
ats, Broadwater Farm, Tottenham.

Tuesday 16
th
August 2011; 6:45am.

Dennis Grierson was in a world of pain when he awoke from a fitful night of sleep. Sophie was lying beside him on the only clean bed in the flat. Without make-up she looked plain and very young, just the way the clients liked them. Den wondered how he would control his girls from outside the manor. Perhaps it was time to retire. Other gangs would already be homing on his drugs operation, and before the week was out his girls would be looking for better protection than he could offer.

In the lock-up the gang had been holding close to a quarter of a million pounds
’ worth of high value electronic goods, counterfeit tobacco and spirits and drugs. According to his storekeeper, Ron, the TH Crew had looted the whole lot. Morons. They had left over a hundred grand’s worth of cocaine in the car when they torched it. Amateurs.

A series of late night phone calls had culminated in the plan
that was about to be executed. The TH Crew were patrolling the flats, and it was going to be impossible for Den to leave by the normal routes, and so Ron had suggested that at around six thirty in the morning he would cut a hole in the back security fence and he would park his car on the main road, well away from the flats. It would then be down to Dennis Grierson to get himself through the fence and to the main road. In normal circumstances that would not be a problem, as the TH Crew were not known for early rising, but with Den’s leg it would be a slow journey even though the distance was less than half a mile.

Squeezed into a grey tracksuit made for a size 14 woman, Den pulled the hood over his head and grunted his thanks and a brief goodbye to Sophie, who had already ensured that the escape route was clear. The flats were quiet as the grave, and Den limped his way to the steel security fence. He walked alongside the fence, testing every vertical steel paling until he found three that had the bottom welds broken. “Thanks, Ron,” he muttered to himself as he squeezed through the narrow gap. It took the injured gangster another fifteen minutes to cover the few hundred yards to the main road, stopping every twenty yards to try to alleviate the pain in his leg. As he looked down he could see blood flowing freely from the stitched wound and seeping through the jogging bottoms. He hadn’t trusted his usual nurse or the doctor enough to ask them to treat him. He felt certain
they would rat him out to the Crew and then both he and Sophie would be history.

Just a handful of people were walking along the main road, and none paid him any attention. Almost as soon as he appeared, a red Volvo pulled up
at the kerb and the door opened. He climbed in with some difficulty, swearing and blaspheming at the pain. The car pulled away as soon as he was secure.

***

Marty and Jaz had been told t
hat Dennis Grierson must be on the Farm, probably staying with a sympathiser in the flats. They had also been told that it was their job to make sure he didn’t get off the estate and rouse reinforcements. Mickey wanted to secure the area and let everyone know he was running the flats from now on, but some of the TH Crew were already secretly expressing doubts to Marty about whether the Crew could really control the community as Psycho had done. After all, he had ruled by violence and fear. Most members of the TH Crew were school kids who scared nobody on their own and who would be back at school in a couple of weeks.

It also worried the older members that Dennis Grierson had controlled the sale of serious drugs in the area, keeping
violent dealers off the manor. The Crew carried no weight with the Albanians who handled the distribution for the rest of the Farm. To Crew members like Marty and Jaz, who had young brothers and sisters, the ‘no drugs dealt in the flats’ rule was sensible, but the Albanians wouldn’t give a second thought to getting ten year olds hooked on drugs. They didn’t have to live here.

The two gang members had been on the prowl since six this morning and were now riding their bikes down to the Butty Van parked in the lay by on the main road, where they could buy a sausage, egg and bacon roll. They had just rounded the corner when they saw a red Volvo pull over to the wrong side o
f the road and pick someone up.

“Shit, Jaz, that’s Den getting in the car! We have to stop h
im! Mickey’ll have us whipped!”

Jaz and Marty abandoned their bikes at the side of the road and stood in the path of the Volvo
, which was now about seventy-five yards away. When the car showed no signs of slowing, Jaz pulled out a handgun and started waving it around.

“Jaz, what’s
that? Where did you get a gun?”

“Mickey gave it us last night. Said we might need it.” Jaz aimed the gun at the oncoming car, but it never slowed. Sweating
, and regretting his decision to carry, Jaz pressed the trigger. Nothing.

“Bloody hell, Jaz! The safety, man! You’ve got the safety on!” Marty yelled above the roar of the car engine. Jaz flicked the safety off and levelled the gun, firing at the same time.

***

Den had his eyes closed
, but they sprang open when Ron yelled.

“Jes
us, Den! Are we suddenly living in Dodge City? It’s a couple of the Crew and they’re tooled up again.” Den could see the two teenagers standing in the road; they were in the uniform of the Crew; purple hoodies cut off at the elbow.

“Drive straight at them,
Ron. They’ll get out of the way.”

Ron gunned the engine as one boy levelled the gun. At first nothing happened, but then a shot rang out, the bullet passing over the car roof. Ron pressed the pedal to the metal and aimed at the boy with the gun, hoping to scare him. A second later another, final, shot rang out and a crease appeared on the car hood before a ricochet punched a hole in the neoprene gasket holding in the windscreen. A crack started to spread down from the point of impact.

***

Marty was almost hysterical. Shooting people in broad daylight wasn’t what he signed up for,
and now the red Volvo was almost on them. He dived at Jaz, trying to move them both out of the way of the oncoming car, but it was too late. The driver’s side wing clipped Jaz, sending him spinning to the ground, his hip dislocated and his leg broken. His head banged into the tarmac and he was out for the count. Marty had pushed Jaz out of the path of the car, but this meant that he was now in harm’s way. He would perhaps have had a chance if he had gone over the hood and been thrown off, but that wasn’t to be. The car hit him whilst he had both feet grounded, and the bumper hit his knees, bending his legs in the wrong direction. The boy was dragged along the road for fifteen yards, until his unconscious body fell under the chassis and the car accelerated away.

A uniformed security guard from the building opposite raced out of the building and commanded witnesses nearby to assist him. He laid his uniform jacket over Marty’s dead, staring eyes as he took note of the mangled mess that had been a young boy just seconds earlier. Instructing a businessman to call 999, he moved over to Jaz, who was hurt but alive. The security guard used his shirt tail to pick up the gun by the barrel before dropping it into the plastic carrier bag held by a surprised onlooker, telling her not to move. The guard then decided that Jaz would be run over again if he remained where he was, and with the help of a van driver he carefully moved the boy to the pavement.
The boy was unconscious but breathing steadily, with the guard kneeling at his side.

“Did anyone get the number plate of the car?” he asked vainly. The gathered crowd looked at each other in some bewilderment, and shook their heads. “Shit!” he muttered to himself, before looking up and catching sight of the CCTV camera pointing in his direction.

***

DS Scott was in early, as was DS Fellowes, still on loan from the City of London police. They had the hearing of Dennis Grierson to prepare for. CPS was not going to lash this one up. DS Scott was still booting up his computer when the scroll bar at the bottom turned from yellow to red. ‘ALERT’ said the scrolling tickertape. There was a brief pause and then: ‘fatality and a shooting in Tottenham, Red Volvo GN 08 PRZ sought, one killed, one injured – both wearing purple hoodies, cut off sleeves. OIC 0789 248651’

DS Scott called Fellowes over and showed him the scrolling information as he picked up his mobile and dialled the number for the Officer In Charge shown on the screen.
His call was answered almost at once.

“Hello
, Sergeant Botterill speaking.”

“Hi, Sarge, this is DS Scott at the Yard. What can you tell me about this crime scene of yours? We think it might be linked to one of our cases
in the Trafalgar House Flats.”

“I’d be surprised if it wasn’t,” the Sergeant answered glibly, “as the two victims were wearing TH Crew hoodies and they both had the
gang tattoos on the forearms.”

The sergeant then repeated what he
knew, and DS Scott took notes.

‘Two
boys tried to stop a red Volvo. One had a gun, two shots were fired, the car ran into both without even slowing down. A lady caught most of it on her mobile phone video camera. No names yet on the victims, gun quarantined, both victims at Whittington Hospital.’

“Thanks, Sarge. We’ll take the lead o
n this one, if you don’t mind.”

“Gladly, DS Scott. I’ll see you at the hospital later. Don’t rush. Th
e boy’s going to need surgery.”

DS Scott and DS Fellowes had just adjourned to the conference room to discuss the possible links with their case when a uniformed officer p
opped his head around the door.

“DS Scott?”

“That’s me,” Scott confirmed genially.

“OK, sir. I’m from ‘Offender Tracking’ on the fifth f
loor. I have a report for you.”