KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) (24 page)

‘Yeah, that way we can run a deception operation, you know like the Double Cross system in World War Two when the British …’

‘Turned all the German agents against their own side, yes, I know. That’s very clever Tony but let’s hope we don’t get too clever for our own good.’

Not at all deflated, he handed me an envelope with fingerprints on tape mounted on backing cards.

‘I’m ninety nine percent certain they’re hers. They were inside the safe, on the desk and also on the women’s sanitary towel thingy in the toilet.’

‘That would be her.’

‘Yeah,’ he said beaming with satisfaction, ‘but I haven’t told you the best.’

‘Go on,’ I said. My heart sank. He’d found some way to wreck the firm double quick.

‘My friend, the one who’s ace at debugging places, well he’s also a genius with a computer.’

‘Yes,’ I said hesitantly. His invisible friend, I thought.

‘Well, he penetrated all your rival’s office accountancy systems and found what prices they were offering on various jobs, so when the companies rang Pimpernel I was able to answer straight away and undercut the opposition. We’re going to have more work than you’ve had for weeks. The volume of trade we’ll be doing will more than make up for the slightly reduced profit margins on the prices I’m offering. Two insurance companies practically bit my hand off.’

‘Oh God!’ I said burying my head in my hands. ‘Don’t you think someone will A) find out you’ve been in their systems and B) smell a rat when Pimpernel suddenly start mopping up all the contracts?’

‘I’m not stupid Dave. I quoted the same as others on some jobs, some a bit more and some a bit less and the computer programs all have these backdoors left in by the designers. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look for them.’

‘And you do?’

‘Yes, er I mean my friend does.

‘How many of your quotes were less?’

‘Enough to give Pimpernel a more healthy balance sheet and I hit Schneider the worst,’ he said cunningly.

‘Very crafty, you knew I wouldn’t mind hitting him.’

He smiled. Peter Schneider is the former employee who’s now my main rival.

I thought for a minute and then laughed.

‘OK, but be very careful. I don’t want to inherit a fortune and then end up in court for computer fraud.’

‘No chance Dave. I told you, my friend’s a genius. Anyway, don’t you think as there’s so many bugs it might be that some of your friendly fellow detective agencies are bugging you?’

‘It’s possible,’ I agreed. I didn’t like to say that Schneider employed a top ex-military bugging expert who certainly knew how to drill through walls to plant a bug.

‘And the other thing?’

‘What?’

‘The ex-coppers who might know something about our dear former receptionist, you were going to ask them …’

‘Yeah, I did that. She must have been pretty tight lipped with them.’

‘That figures.’

‘But there was one, Greg Loveland, fancies himself as a bit of a charmer; he said she told him she had a boyfriend who works in the tax office. I’d say he was trying to get into her knickers. She told him the boyfriend’s name but he couldn’t remember it on the spur of the moment. He says to tell you it’ll come to him tonight.’

‘It’ll come to him when we hand him a fat brown envelope with some notes in, that’s what he means.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. Coppers, they’re all bent.’

‘Shut it, Tony. My dad’s not bent.’

Lee arrived about an hour after Tony. To give him his due he looked exhausted. He’d contacted many of his mates in the ‘mugging community’ and they were going to contact others. Some had demanded cash in advance so I owed him some. There were no results today but it took time to get such worthy citizens mobilised for action and results might come in at any time in the week ahead.

Tony went out for pizzas and as the meal finished I told my two employees that their work for the day wasn’t done. I also gave them both a bonus for work so far and then explained my next little job.

‘What about Jaws?’ Lee asked. ‘Is he coming?’

‘Jaws?’

‘It’s what he calls Clint,’ Tony explained.

‘Clint isn’t coming. He’s been working and will need his rest.’

‘Good,’ Lee grunted, ‘he makes me nervous.’

26

Wednesday: 9 p.m. Sheepfold Cottage

As dusk was approaching the three of us climbed into Bob’s BMW X5M. We were all kitted out for a walk in the country.

After long and careful thought I’d decided to ask two foreign friends to come along with us, Mr Uzi and Mr Glock. I know what I promised Jan but while I might be prepared to risk my own life by going in without a weapon I felt that I’d no right to risk Lee and Tony. As an afterthought I put the two normal sized bullet proof jackets in the backpack along with the guns.

I’d spent hours poring over an Ordnance Survey map which covered the part of the West Pennine Moors near my Dad’s cottage. There’s a network of lanes and field paths by which it’s possible to approach Sheepfold Lane and Paddy and Eileen’s cottage indirectly.

Tony drove and I sat in the back. There’d been a long discussion before we set off. We’d agreed that it would be a solo mission for me. The other two would act as look outs.

Clint stayed at home, getting on making an Airfix model of a four point five litre Bentley in his room.

I tried to socialise with Lee.

‘Tell me about this Beast,’ I said. ‘What did you do to get up his nose and why didn’t you go to the Five Oh?’

‘Go to the f**king Five Oh?’ he repeated swivelling round in his seat and fixing me with an angry glare. ‘Do I look as if I’m f**king mad?’

‘Actually, Lee, you do look a bit irate,’ I said mildly.

I don’t know what it was, but there was something about that cropped ginger head studded with livid red pimples like the polka dots on a tart’s bikini that roused my spirit of mischief.

‘Actually, Boss, I’d be a bit dead now if I started calling the Five Oh every time someone in Benchhill got on my wick.’

‘That was quite a good sentence, Lee, no swear words and a touch of irony. You’re improving.’

‘C***!’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Here, Nose, stop this f**king car. I want to get out.’

‘We’re on a motorway, Lee,’ Tony replied calmly. ‘Why don’t you tell Dave about the time you went out with Beast’s lurcher?’

There was silence in the high performance vehicle broken only by the sound of Lee grinding his teeth and cursing under his breath.

‘It was like this, Dave,’ Tony began. ‘Beast, his real name’s … ’

Lee tapped him on the back of the head at this point.

‘Well, I’d best not tell you his real name. Beast’s a real hard man. Everyone’s shit scared of him … ’

Lee tapped him again, harder this time.

‘Sorry, nearly everyone in Wythenshawe’s shit scared of Beast and that includes the Pigs. I reckon he’d even give Clint a hard time because he always fights dirty.’

‘Yes, I got that bit,’ I said when Tony lapsed into silence. ‘Go on, I’m really interested.’

‘OK, Lee and some of his mates were in this pub in Benchhill with Beast and they decided to arrange a little test for their lurchers. Mainly it’s so Beast can show that his dog’s better than anyone else’s not that anyone would quarrel with him anyway, but Beast laid it on thick, how wonderful his dog was. There’s this place near Sheffield where you can chase hares and things and no one bothers you. So they hire a van and go over there for the day. Beast goes in his own car.’

‘We didn’t
hire
the f**king van,’ Lee corrected.

‘Anyway, they’re at this field and they have to wait for hours for Beast to arrive and the fun to start but in the end he gets there and they wait a bit more and they finally spot some hares. They all had their dogs, lined up like, Beast along with the rest.

So they let their dogs go.

Beast is drooling, saying his dog will rip a hare to pieces and like I said no one’s giving him any arguments.

So off the dogs go, streaking across the field and over this little rise. A few minutes later the dogs trail back. No dead hare but … ’

‘But Beast’s f**king mutt,’ Lee broke in, ‘the one we’re all suppose to be amazed at, comes back last with an empty Coca Cola tin in its mouth and no one says a word. They’re all pissing their pants in case Beast loses it. He has a sawn-off in the boot of his car, never goes out without it. So we get back in the van. Beast gets in his car. No one says a word, not a whisper. Then as we’re pulling away I shout to him. “Your f**king dog’s a wanker,” I said. “It’s as queer as you are.”

Lee gave a sort of triumphant chuckle at this and then lapsed into silence.

‘So?’ I said at last.

‘On the way home Beast pulls up alongside the van and waves the sawn-off,’ Tony said. ‘He points at Lee and says you’re f**king dead.’

‘So we pull off the motorway sudden like and go home round half the side streets in Yorkshire. I had to hide for three weeks with Beast turning the place upside down to find me but he didn’t and his reputation’s now precisely shit,’ Lee explained proudly. ‘He’s so mad he gets careless and the cops find him with his shooter in the car and he’s off for eight years in jail and his mother sends his precious mutt to the glue factory.’

‘Showed him a thing or two didn’t you?’ I said. ‘When’s he due out.’

‘He’ll be really old when he does,’ Lee said happily. ‘Did a screw, didn’t he? Put the bugger’s eye out so he’s in for another ten in Wakefield Jail.’

By this time we were going through Bolton and approaching the road to the West Pennine moors. When we reached the fork in the road I didn’t take the direct route to Sheepfold Lane by way of Pennine Road. Instead I took the Turton Road and turned off towards the Pennine Hills Golf Club. According to the map there was a right of way across the golf club leading to Sheepfold Lane.

My parents’ cottage stands on one side of a shallow valley. The golf course is on the other slope about two miles away: a series of low, red tiled buildings. I hoped to approach the cottage from the rear where the sloping ground forms my mother’s vegetable garden. I wanted to avoid alerting the opposition. I hoped they wouldn’t be watching the back way in.

There was a crescent moon and I had a torch but first I had to find the right of way. The ‘Public Footpath’ sign had been broken, presumably by the golfers. The post was still there though. We only found it and the bramble covered stile that marked the start of the path on our second slow pass along the lane.

It was just before nine. I was more determined to recover Paddy’s message than ever. My hopes were high. Did he know who the ‘
certain individual’
was?

My cunning plan was that Lee would stay with the car, ready to be our getaway driver. Tony Nolan, the reformed burglar, would come with me to within sight of the vegetable patch to point out various dangers like hidden cameras. I had the submachine gun and both bullet proof jackets in a backpack.

We made fair speed across the course although the golf club had made efforts to obscure the right of way by planting quick growing shrubs directly on the path. As we went on I could make out lights at Wilberforce’s farm and then the dark outline against a lighter background of the cottage.

The nearer we got the more difficult it became. We had to cross one of Wilberforce’s fields and although there were no cattle there were several pieces of rusting agricultural machinery lying about which caused detours.

We stopped about two hundred yards away from my parents’ property while Tony gave the old place the once over. The white van was still there. He stared at the house for ten minutes until I began to get impatient.

‘Nothing moving, Boss, but I don’t like it. There’s too many places they could be hiding and why would they leave that van in the lane if they weren’t keeping the place under constant surveillance?’

‘That’s the way they operate Tony. These guys aren’t hands on. They’re probably half a mile away waiting to see me enter the house on their little screen then … ka-boom! But I’m not going to, am I? I can be in and out of the vegetable patch in a few seconds.’

‘I still don’t like it. It’s too quiet and anyway in this line of work once you suspect someone’s waiting for you, even if it’s only a one in a hundred chance that they are, you stay clear.’

‘Tony, if the Judge gave my dad some hint about who’s behind all this shit I’m in it’s worth taking a risk to find it. It might take us weeks to track down either one of the Fothergills.’

‘Yeah, there is that but if you find his name and still get blown away it won’t do you much good will it?’

After more whispered discussion we decided to crawl as far as the edge of the garden so that Tony could inspect the place at closer range.

When we reached the dry stone wall that marked the boundary we crouched behind it. It was dead quiet except for the occasional sound of traffic on the distant road.

‘Anything?’ I asked after he’d spent another ten minutes staring intently.

‘I can’t see anything but then I wouldn’t, would I?’

‘I’m going.’

He gripped my arm. ‘I say no,’ he said. ‘This smells like a trap.’

‘I have to go.’

‘You still don’t trust me, do you?’

‘It’s not that. I must find the truth. I think Lew left his killer’s name for my dad to find.’

‘That doesn’t compute, Dave. A copper like your dad would have made the name known.’

‘Not if it’s some really powerful person and he thought he’d be arrested or worse if he opened his mouth. That could be why he legged it so fast. Listen, I’ve got stuff in here,’ I said, slipping the backpack off my shoulders. I pulled out the bullet proof jackets, handing one to him.

‘Put it on,’ I urged. ‘It might give some protection is there is an explosion.’

For a few moments there was the sound of Velcro. There was another noise I couldn’t quite make out. I put it down to insects.

‘There’s this as well,’ I said, handing him the Uzi and two spare magazines.

‘This is Bob’s int it?’ he said, holding it very gingerly. ‘You know we’ll both get five years minimum if it’s the police waiting for us?’

‘OK, leave it and go back to the car.’

By way of reply he checked the fit of the magazine and then slid back the bolt back and cocked the weapon.

‘In for a penny …’ he muttered fatalistically.

A dark cloud cloaked the moon as I prepared to climb over the wall.

We both pulled on the masks I’d improvised from a pair of Tammy’s tights. Her perfume lingered on them but they did the job.

There was a light breeze blowing in our faces and carrying faint but pungent odours from the distant farmyard. The joys of country living, I still haven’t been able to understand why Paddy and Eileen moved to the country after a life in peaceful suburbs.

I put my foot onto a projecting stone preparing to hoist myself over the wall.

‘Wait,’ Tony whispered clutching my arm. ‘I think I heard something.’

I slumped back to the ground.

I listened intently but there was nothing.

‘It’s probably an insect,’ I said dismissively.

I was about to climb up again when I heard the noise. It was a curious ‘plink, plink,’ very quiet, barely detectable like large drops of water falling into a water butt. There was a subtle electronic quality to the sound.

We listened again and after an interval the sound was repeated.

‘Time the gaps,’ Tony whispered to me.

I did, craning my neck to see my watch.

The interval was exactly and unvaryingly fifteen seconds, so it wasn’t a natural sound.

‘There are people there. They’re hiding in the house like I told you,’ Tony whispered. ‘We’d best be off.’

With a deadening feeling I knew he was right but I had to cling onto something. Paddy had left a message in the vegetable patch. Having made it this far I didn’t feel like slinking back to Altrincham without making an attempt.

‘What’s causing the ‘plink plink’ sound?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know but it could be some sort of detector, a microwave barrier like radar. You know, it sweeps from side to side in fifteen seconds.’

‘But the noise, that’s a dead giveaway.’

‘You didn’t hear it. They’d have got you.’

He was right but that was no comfort.

‘Whoever’s operating it probably hasn’t set it up properly,’ he continued. ‘They have these small portable T/R sets …’

‘T/R?’

‘Transmit and receive. There’ll be reflectors to bounce the signal back to the receiver.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ I said weakly. My mouth tasted as if I’d been drinking acid.

Feeling completely blocked my hand crept to the butt of the Glock pistol that I was wearing on my belt. Should I go over the fence, death or glory style with gun in hand? That thought died swiftly. Killers who planted bombs and used helicopters were hardly likely to be impressed by one man with a Glock. The image of Claverhouse’s minders hanging upside down and smashed to pieces in the cab of the ‘security van’ flooded into my mind. 

No, the ‘Battle of Mrs Cunane’s Vegetable Patch’ was never going to happen.

Another sound began reaching my ears, the faint lowing of cattle.

There were cows in a field adjacent to the farm. It wasn’t the next field to us, but the next after that and when the clouds cleared for a moment I could see that there were two gates between the cows and us.