Severed (11 page)

'Just papers,' reiterates Rubberface, his accent becoming more obvious as he starts to walk towards the door.

The officer moves away from the counter, blocking his path, and I see that his hand has moved down towards the can of CS gas in his belt. Five feet separates the two men. Probably the same distance separates the officer from the end of the MAC-10. I wonder if he can smell the tension. But no, it seems he can't.

'Do you mind if I have a look?' he asks.

'Yeah, I do mind,' snaps Rubberface. 'I'm in a hurry.'

He goes to walk past, but the cop doesn't move.

'I'm afraid I'm going to have to make this official,' says the cop. 'I'm searching you under the terms of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 on suspicion of possession of drugs.'

'This is fucking ridiculous.'

'Don't swear, sir. Please put the briefcase down and put your hands in the air.'

Rubberface does neither of these two things. Instead, he and MAC-10 man exchange a brief glance. A silent message passes between them, and MAC-10's trigger arm becomes as taut as a drum.

Both cops turn in MAC-10's direction, as if seeing him for the first time. He stares back at them, his left hand out of sight under the table, the right still holding the foul-smelling cigarette. He puts the cigarette to his lips and takes a slow, contemptuous drag, before flicking ash directly onto the table top. The contours of his face are cold, dead stone. It's the gaze of a natural killer.

The whole room becomes still, as if the pause button's been pushed. No-one moves. Even the cafe's owner has stopped what he's doing. He looks petrified. The coffee percolator fizzes and froths in the background, and there is a certain inevitability about what's going to happen next.

The MAC-10 is a so-called 'spray and pray' weapon, designed for close-quarter combat rather than accuracy. With a rate of fire of twelve hundred bullets per minute, its thirty-two-round magazine will empty in under two seconds if the trigger is pulled while the weapon's set to automatic, the nine-millimetre bullets tearing apart anything in their path as they leave the barrel at more than six hundred miles per hour. In a confined space like this one, and with the pistol bucking in the
shooter's hand, the effects will be devastating.

I need to move, and fast. Before the shooting starts.

The black cop turns back to Rubberface. For the first time, I see the tension in his features. He's unarmed and outnumbered, and he knows it.

But he won't back down. Even now, he won't back down.

'Please put the case down, sir,' he repeats, unclipping the strap on the CS gas holder, 'and place your hands in the air.'

The white cop's sweating, and I can see that his hands are shaking.

MAC-10 sits with Zen-like calm, as if he is above the petty fears of the others in the room. He is at peace with himself, if not with the rest of humanity, and I know that he's making the final preparations to commit an absolute minimum of two murders, and that I may well be number three.

'I'm going to ask you one last time,' says the black cop, his voice faltering, 'then I'm going to place you under arrest for obstruction.' Slowly, he removes the spray from its holder.

'This is stupid,' complains Rubberface.

He has his back to me, and I'm wondering if I can use him as cover.

MAC-10 is looking at his boss expectantly, waiting for the final nod. He's sitting back in his seat, giving himself support for when he opens fire.

Every second seems to crawl by. The air in here is like glue.

My legs tense and stiffen, and I begin, very slowly, to get up from my seat.

And then it happens.

The door crashes open.

A man has rushed into the cafe. 'Officers!' he shouts, clearly panic-stricken. 'There's been a stabbing in the shop round the corner. The assistant's been knifed. She's bleeding all over the place. You've got to come quick.'

The cops don't need asking twice. The white cop is already running for the door and tugging his radio free. 'Has someone called nine-nine-nine?' he shouts, the relief evident in his voice as he kicks up a real cloud of dust in his desire to get out of here. You have to give the black cop credit, though. As he follows his colleague out the door, he shouts at the three of us to stay where we are because he hasn't finished with us
yet. He even manages to chuck an instruction to the cafe owner to keep his bacon and sausage sandwich warm.

And then they're gone.

For a moment, no-one seems to know quite what to do. Then, without looking back at me, Rubberface says something to MAC-10 in Serbo-Croat, and he gets up, his machine pistol hidden from view once again. They hurry out together in single file, taking the briefcase with them, while I slip the Glock back into the waistband of my jeans, pick up the holdall and get to my feet.

The cafe owner looks at me vaguely aghast. He knows something bad's gone on here but, like the coppers, he's not quite sure what. I take a ten-pound note from my pocket, walk over to the counter and put it in his hand. 'That was an excellent lunch,' I tell him with a smile, and before he has a chance to answer I'm walking out of there, knowing that Lucas won't be able to distract the cops with his story of an armed robbery gone wrong for very long.

Outside, the street's busy with passers-by, all of them oblivious to the drama that's just been played out right under their noses. It always amazes me how little people really see of what goes on around them. They're like sheep grazing contentedly at the edge of a wood full of wolves. I try to imagine what the scene would have been like had MAC-10 made one simple movement of his index finger and pulled the trigger. Two seconds of noise followed by blood, death and outright panic, and suddenly the writhing underbelly of society would have been thrust right into their midst.

I look down the road but I can't see the Yugoslavs any more. I'm guessing they arrived
by car and left the same way. Now that I'm in possession of the evidence against me for Leah's murder, I'm not a hundred per cent sure what I'm going to do with it. I feel vulnerable carrying the holdall containing the weapon used to butcher her. I need to get rid of it.

My phone rings. Not the one supplied to me by Leah's killer, but the one belonging to Martin Lukersson Associates. The ringtone is 'Rhinestone Cowboy' by Glenn Campbell, and I remember that Snowy is a fan of country music and that all their phones announce incoming calls with famous country hits. Snowy's own phone plays 'Big Bad John' by Ron Jordan.

It's Lucas on the other end. 'Where are you?' he asks.

'Going north on the Caledonian Road. I've just passed Wharfdale Road. You sound tired.'

'Are you surprised? I've been running away from those cops. They got a bit pissed off when they found out that their stabbing victim only existed in my head. What the hell happened in there? Who were those guys?'

'I think they're Yugoslavs. They were speaking Serbo-Croat.'

'Since when have you had any run-ins with Yugoslavs?'

'I don't think I ever have. We never had any problems with the locals when we were serving in Bosnia, did we?'

'Not that I remember. I thought we were on pretty reasonable terms with everyone back then.'

'And it was more than ten years ago as well.'

'So it sounds like they're working for someone else?'

'It looks that way, but they're no off-the-street stooges. One of them was packing a MAC-10.'

Lucas whistles down the other end of the phone. As a former soldier, he can appreciate serious firepower. 'You've got yourself involved with some serious shit, Tyler.'

'Don't I know it. And it almost got even more serious. Those cops walked in right in the middle of the deal, and decided to get involved. It was a good thing you appeared. I think the guy with the MAC-10 was just about to start shooting.'

'It's all part of the service, sir. I trust you were suitably impressed with my acting skills.'

'Oscar-winning. So, where are they now?'

'Eastbound on the Pentonville Road. Snowy's on them.'

'I hope he's not drawing attention to himself.'

'We're professionals, Tyler. We do this every day. And anyway, he can hang back. The tracker on the briefcase emits a signal we can follow without being right behind it.'

I'd always known I was going to have to hand over the briefcase in exchange for the evidence linking me to Leah's murder, but that didn't mean I was going to give up the hunt for her killers. I'd got Lucas to plant a tiny GPS tracking device barely half a centimetre across in the narrow gap created in the material where the case opened and closed. It wasn't a perfect fit, but you'd have to look quite hard to find it, and Rubberface hadn't been looking that hard, especially after he was interrupted.

'Listen,' continues Lucas, 'I'm just getting in my car now. I'm parked round the back of the station. I'll pick you up on the Caledonian Road in three minutes.'

True to his word, he pulls up beside me exactly three minutes later in the second-hand BMW X3 he bought from the showroom last year. I notice that it needs a clean as I jump inside.

He's talking on hands-free to Snowy, who's giving him a rundown of our quarry's location. Still talking, he pulls away and takes the first left turn. Snowy had been waiting in his car on double yellow lines fifty yards from the cafe and is now following the Yugoslavs who left the scene in a car driven by a third man. Snowy tells us that their vehicle's currently stuck in heavy traffic just east of the Angel, Islington, on the City Road, a distance from us of just over a mile. He's currently six cars back from the Yugoslavs, and one lane over. He talks us through what's happening, or more accurately what isn't happening, in a voice that's very similar to Lucas's - deep, confident, and in control. Lucas tells him that we're five minutes behind him. 'Call me with a status report in five minutes,' he says, 'or when you start moving again.' Then he ends the call. 'No point listening to him sitting in traffic,' he explains, pulling a battered pack of Lucky Strike from the glove compartment and lighting one. 'He's not that interesting.'

Lucas looks dapper as usual in a short-sleeved white shirt with not a crease in it (ex-soldiers are always good at ironing), and a burgundy silk tie with matching Parachute
Regiment tie pin, which he likes to wear in front of the punters, since he feels that it sums him up as a man of action, even though it's close to a decade since he wore the uniform. His charcoal-grey suit trousers are tailored and his black brogues smartly polished, although his cherished blond locks have grown just a little bit too wild and free. In my opinion, they need the services of a good barber to rein them in.

While Lucas smokes his cigarette and manoeuvres the BMW through the back streets of Islington, trying without much success to avoid the worst of the traffic, he asks me more about the details of the events I'm caught up in. So far, I haven't told him too much. There wasn't time when we were in his offices. Now, though, I figure that, having trusted him enough to ask for his help, I may as well trust him enough to say why, and I start talking. He interrupts repeatedly with questions which I do my best to answer. I tell him about Leah and the manner of her murder, and then the exchange of briefcases that ended in the deaths of four people.

He whistles through his teeth. 'And you shot two of them?'

I nod. 'It would have been three, but someone beat me to it.'

'You know, Tyler, if it ever comes to court, I'd avoid letting the jury hear that.'

'It was self-defence,' I explain. 'I had no choice. But, you know, after what happened to Leah, I'm not in the mood for showing a lot of mercy.'

'You really cared about her, eh?'

'Yeah,' I say simply, staring out of the window, 'I did.'

Seeing the expression on my face, Lucas decides to move on. 'And you've got no idea what's in the case?'

I shake my head. 'Just that whatever it is is being used to blackmail a businessman. I got the impression it was something . . .' I pause for a moment, trying to come up with the right words. 'Something very unpleasant.'

He raises his eyebrows. 'Really? Now I'm getting curious.'

'Also, the guy I was picking the case up from, he was someone from the regiment.'

Lucas looks surprised. 'From my time?'

'Yeah, I'm sure he was there when you were. He was a captain, first name Iain, I think.
Medium height, thin face. About our age.'

'Ferrie,' he says decisively. 'His name's Iain Ferrie.'

'That's right,' I say, remembering now. 'I'm impressed. I never realized you had such a good memory.'

But Lucas is giving me a strange look. 'My memory isn't that good,' he answers. 'The only reason I know is because I've just done some work for him.'

'He came to see me twice,' explains Lucas. 'The first time he wanted a Land Registry search done on a property in Bedfordshire. That was back in May. I advertise sometimes in
Army News
, and he said he'd heard of me from there. I did all the relevant searches, and it turned out that the property belonged to an offshore company based in the Bahamas. He wanted to know the names of the directors. He was pretty adamant about that. Same way he was adamant that I kept things absolutely confidential. He didn't even want to involve Snowy. I got the directors' names - although as far as I could see they were just local Bahamian guys put there to make the paperwork all above board - and gave
them to him. He paid me, and that was that.'