Omega Place Read online

  Moments like this were what he’d been trained for. Instant assessment of the unfolding situation; likely outcomes; best advised actions; worst-case scenarios. All this in the time it would take most people to fill their pants.

  This was not a bomb. It was most probably a steel two-man battering ram, which meant that either bailiffs had got a lot more proactive, or the other lot had found the house too. The likely outcome of which was that the place should be surrounded, except he hadn’t heard any entry noises from the rear of the house, so someone was being a bit sloppy. And that meant his best and only action, if he wanted his life to carry on pretty much as it had been, had to be a swift and speedy retreat. Which was when the two men carrying the ram came into view, silhouettes backlit by the street lamps.

  Dean wasn’t out to kill now, just disable. Put out of action. Tie up other personnel who would have to attend to their injured colleagues. These people would be wearing upper-body armour, so leg shots were what you went for.

  Even if they’d looked up they wouldn’t have seen the shadowy face-blackened figure kneeling on the landing. By the time they saw the muzzle flashes it would be too late. And so, as they stopped in the hallway, each man in turn had no idea why one of his legs felt like it’d been hit by something deliriously hot, and was then whipped out from underneath him as he collapsed, writhing on the floor.

  Dean stood, turned and stepped over the body on the landing, pushing open the bathroom door. In his mind’s eye he ran over the schematic of the house that he’d roughed out as he’d gone from room to room… the bathroom was over the kitchen, and the kitchen had a pitched-roof extension just below the bathroom window… which he now sprinted straight towards. He only had the space to take three short steps, but it should be enough.

  Head down, forearms up, covering his face to take the brunt of the action, pistol in his right hand, barrel extension tucked tight into his armpit, Dean gave one final push and launched himself at the window. He smashed through the glass and thin wooden dividers, turning the leap into a flying somersault… one complete turn and up on to his feet, knees bent and then powering upwards as he jumped off the roof and out into the blackness at the rear of the house.

  He knew this was the riskiest part of the whole business. A real, no-shit leap in the dark. The garden was a dump, rubble and crap everywhere, so who knew what he’d land on. Whatever it was, it was not going to be soft. The ground rushed towards him, a grey blur that resolved itself into broken furniture, discarded junk and bottles as he landed on it. Dean tried to fall as protectively as he could, and he did a good job, considering, but there was no way to stop himself from stumbling and falling to his left as he tried to start running.

  Broken glass dug into him, sharp teeth trying to bite his hand as he pushed himself back up, the piece that dug into his palm making him drop the Glock so he could pull it out. No way he could go back to get it, but while he hated leaving expensive gear in the field, they’d get nothing off it, no prints, no serial number. Behind him Dean could hear the sound of people busting out of the house, coming after him. He knew, whoever they were, they weren’t likely to be combat-seasoned and they’d still be shaken by what had happened in the house; which, hopefully, would give him the time he needed to get over the fence before they started getting organised.

  * * *

  Standing in what passed for the back garden of the squat, Jane Mercer snapped her phone shut. The chopper with the heat-seeking gear and mega spotlight was up and would be overhead within minutes, but whether that would be soon enough she had her doubts. The individual who’d been in the house when they went through the door was no amateur, that much was obvious.

  The two men who were down had each been taken out by a single shot to the leg by someone who knew not only what to target, but how to hit what he wanted in almost total darkness. While there was no way she could have known anything like this was going to happen, no possible way she could have planned for it, this was not going to look good on the report. Neither was the fact that there were two dead bodies in the place, and the person who’d killed them had got away.

  Mercer looked down at the fence he must’ve gone over. There was blood on it, Ray Salter had told her, and the man had dropped his gun; he was lucky all he’d done was cut himself, jumping off that roof. But this had been a professional hit, and somebody was picking up the tab, which wouldn’t be cheap, so luck probably had nothing to do with it. She wondered who the hell the man was, who’d sent him and why.

  The house was secured now and she’d called for back-up. Right now it was just her and the team, but very soon there’d be Scene of Crime, the body boys and whoever else thought they should be involved. Mercer, who wanted time with the two live ones they’d got before anyone else poked their noses in, went back inside.

  Walking through the kitchen she found Ray Salter in the front room with the older man she recognised from the High Street Ken and Bristol surveillance footage. Upstairs Castleton and one of the newly seconded female team members were looking after the hysterical girl who’d been found with the dead body at the top of the house, waiting for the medical unit to arrive so someone could sedate her. The man merely seemed bemused, sitting, handcuffed, in the armchair he’d been found slumped in; he was frowning, with a puzzled expression on his face.

  ‘What’s your name, sir?’

  The man looked up. ‘Scuse me?’

  American accent… Mercer’s turn to be surprised. ‘Your name, what is it?’

  ‘Sky… you know, like “kiss the sky”?’ The man laughed. ‘Hendrix, man, he could play… right? Like a damn demon…’

  Mercer looked at Salter, who jerked a thumb at an ashtray on the floor by the chair, and the bong next to it. She nodded.

  ‘Just your name, sir, that’s all we want. Then we can start processing you out of here.’

  The man nodded and smiled as he scratched his head, which, Mercer thought, made him look like a wasted Stan Laurel.

  ‘I tole you, it’s Sky, man!’ He shifted in the chair and made like he was trying to get to the back pocket of his jeans. ‘You let me get my wallet, I’ll show you…’

  ‘Stay still, sir,’ Mercer looked at Salter. ‘He’s been searched, right?’

  ‘Yeah, boss… the wallet’s there on the box.’ Salter pointed at the large cardboard box that was obviously used as a table. Mercer reached down, picked up the wallet and began looking through it.

  The man looked amazed. ‘You got my wallet – how’d you do that? Didn’t feel a thing! Great trick, man!’

  The wallet was old and well-used, the leather soft and slightly greasy, moulded to the shape of the back pocket it must have spent years in. Tucked away in one of its credit card slots Mercer found a small, laminated card with a photograph of a much younger version of the man on it. It was a Wisconsin driver’s licence, with a Milwaukee address, and it belonged to a Jerome M. Petersen. It had been issued in 1966.

  37

  Sunday 20th August, Kingsland Road

  03:10. An hour in and the squat was now the property of the white romper-suited Scene of Crime boys and the kind of senior officials who specialised in appearing, well after the shit had stopped hitting the fan, to ‘take charge’. Sidelined for the moment by internal bureaucracy, Mercer was in the kitchen, with her team; it was still their gig and they weren’t going to bow out that easily.

  ‘OK,’ Mercer pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, ‘what do we have? Who’s got the timeline?’

  ‘Me,’ Perry waved his notepad. ‘Want to go through it now, boss?’

  Mercer nodded. ‘Better that we’re all singing off the same song sheet, right?’

  Perry sat down and flipped his pad open. ‘We rammed the door at approximately 02:10 hours, me and Tony following the muscle, so’s we could get straight through the ground floor and secure the rear of the building. But Phillips and Young got hit almost immediately; I think I saw the muzzle flash, but whoever was up there on the first landing w
as using a silenced weapon. We had two officers down and Tone and me pulled them out of the way as Ray and you,’ Perry nodded at Mercer, ‘went through after us, Ray up the stairs and you to the back. The shooter went out of the bathroom window about a minute and a half in, and was over the rear fence and away by the time you got the kitchen door open.

  ‘I called for back-up and medical assist at about 02:12 hours and did what I could for Phillips and Young, who both had nasty leg wounds; Ray secured the ground floor. In the front room he found Jerome Petersen, so stoned he’d slept through everything; on the first landing Tony and back-up found the first body, three shots to the back of the head. They went on up and discovered the girl and the second vic. He had two shots to the temple. Back-up started to arrive at about 02:45 hours.’

  ‘Thanks, John.’ Mercer sat back. ‘Opinions?’

  ‘A pro hit, boss, SAS trained.’ Ray Salter lit a cigarette. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

  Mercer raised her eyebrows and nodded in assent. ‘Trouble with those types is you can’t untrain them… and what was he using, Ray?’

  ‘The weapon we found in the garden was a .45 calibre Glock; the wounds are consistent with him using hollow-point ammunition. Small hole going in, big one going out. Guaranteed end result. The kid lost his face, and our guys were lucky he didn’t hit anything major… lost a lot of blood as it was.’

  ‘Why d’you think the kid got it worse than – what did our American friend call him, Ray?’

  ‘Who, the man upstairs?’ Mercer nodded. ‘He called him Orlando, boss. Orlando Welles.’

  ‘Right, Orlando. Any sign there was someone called James Baker here?’

  ‘No, boss, not so far.’

  ‘Any news yet on the prints from the body?’

  Salter shook his head. ‘Waiting for a call.’

  ‘So why did the boy warrant the extra treatment, d’you think?’

  ‘No idea, yet.’ Salter flicked some ash into the sink. ‘Evidence says he was sleeping in a room with two other people, both male from the looks of it. I think we have a line on who he is though.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘There was just the one jacket hanging at the bottom of the stairs, and it’s the right size to fit him. The Yank said it wasn’t his, and it’s not the girl’s because the wallet I found in it belongs to someone called Paul Thomas Hendry, seventeen, from just outside Newcastle, according to his driving licence. And there were some other personal effects by the bed he’d been sleeping in, a ring and a kind of shark’s tooth thing on a chain that could be his.’

  ‘Seventeen… sweet Jesus…’ Mercer got up. ‘Do we know who the girl who was with this Orlando is?’

  Salter ran the cold tap on his dog end and put it into an empty milk carton on the work surface. ‘The girl’s called Isabel Morley, boss… didn’t get much else out of her as she was totally freaked, waking up next to a dead boyfriend, then seeing the mess on the landing. We couldn’t get her out of the house without her clocking there was another body.’

  ‘You didn’t cover it?’

  ‘Course we did, but a body under a sheet’s still a body. No way of getting round that. The girl had hysterics when she saw it.’

  ‘The job was to off this Orlando character, wasn’t it?’ Mercer stared out of the kitchen window, not asking anyone in particular. ‘That was the neat, tidy, professional shot, right? The boy was a mistake; he was in the wrong place at the very worst time, poor sod. Glad I’m not going to be the one telling his parents.’

  Salter lit another cigarette. ‘Let’s hope they give a shit…’

  Tony Castleton, Ray Salter and one of the CID blokes had gone to a nearby all-night shop to restock with cigarettes, John Perry was with the Scene of Crime boys, going over what they’d found so far, and Jane Mercer was sitting by herself in the kitchen, thinking they should probably call it a day. Thinking, maybe on her way home she’d swing by the station Petersen and the girl had been taken to. And then her mobile went.

  She picked up without checking the number and found herself talking to Alex Markham. Thrown for a second, she didn’t know what to say; he was the last person she’d expect to be calling her now.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I gather the operation didn’t go quite as planned.’

  ‘Not quite, sir.’ Bad news, she thought, always travels fast. ‘We disturbed someone else’s operation… two dead, two of ours down, and I’m afraid he got away, sir.’

  ‘Bad timing.’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘I had a call, about an hour ago. Too late, I’m afraid, for it to be of any use to you.’

  Mercer stood up, the tiredness she’d been wearing like a cloak falling off her shoulders as she started to pace the kitchen. ‘A call about this operation?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘Who from, sir?’

  ‘Henry Garden. I gather you’ve had him under surveillance.’

  ‘We think he had some kind of connection to Omega Place, sir… that he was probably the source of the RPA info.’

  ‘Well, you thought right. And he also confessed to passing on information about the Bristol operation, and the general whereabouts of the squat.’

  ‘Information?’ Mercer stopped walking. ‘Why would he give them information about themselves?’

  ‘He didn’t. Garden gave it to the person who’s apparently been funding Omega Place, and he apparently gave it to someone called Dean Mayhew.’

  Mercer changed ears. ‘Dean Mayhew? Not a name we’ve come across so far… who is he?’

  ‘He was the one who shot your people.’

  Mercer wasn’t at home in bed. She was back at the office, with the rest of the team, and she felt like she was operating entirely thanks to adrenalin and caffeine. The former was running out and the latter wasn’t really having much effect any more. Dog-tired didn’t really describe her condition.

  ‘What d’you think of this, Ray?’ She tapped the copy of the transcript of Garden’s phone call on the desk in front of her.

  ‘I think his timing was crap.’ Salter picked up a sheet of paper. ‘“I’ve been battling with my conscience all day”… bullshit, he could’ve made that call the moment he worked out who the info was being given to; he just didn’t have the guts to do it, so two people died and two of ours got shot. Where is he now?’

  ‘Downstairs, being taken apart.’

  ‘What about…’ Salter referred to the transcript, ‘… Nicholas Harvey?’

  ‘Ditto. He was brought in kicking and screaming his innocence, threatening the arse off everybody in sight with major legal action, but it’s all over. Garden’s done his fat lady impression.’

  ‘Will he get immunity for giving evidence?’

  Mercer shook her head. ‘Didn’t ask, did he? No bargaining, just cracked and spilled the beans.’

  ‘Good. I hate it when creeps like him get let off easy.’ Salter’s phone rang and he picked up, listening and nodding and then putting the handset back down. ‘Tony, boss.’

  ‘What’s he say?’

  ‘Fingerprints are back. Orlando Welles is none other than –’

  ‘James Hudson Baker?’

  ‘Hole in one. And the US State Department has confirmed the identity of Jerome Petersen… He is who his documents say he is, and his name is still flagged and tagged, apparently.’

  ‘Why, what’d he do?’ Mercer picked up her coffee cup, and then realised all it contained was an inch or so of cold dregs.

  ‘He was a dope dealer, got busted with “a significant quantity of primo home-grown” I was told, and jumped bail. Told the Canadian authorities he was a draft dodger, then disappeared.’

  ‘And managed to get into the UK, somehow.’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Salter picked up a ballpoint and started doodling cage-like constructions on his copy of the Henry Garden phone transcript. ‘I wonder if we’ll have to give him back before he goes to trial. Could be better for him if we didn’t, right?’

&
nbsp; Mercer shrugged. ‘I’m too tired to care… did Tony say anything about this Dean Mayhew character? Do we have a line on him yet, where he might be?’

  ‘No…’ Salter leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. ‘He’s hurt, but we don’t know how bad, and, even though he dropped a weapon, that’s no guarantee he’s not still armed. I’d lay good money that he is.’

  ‘He’ll have gone to ground…’ Mercer drained her cup of cold black coffee. ‘That’s what they do; he’ll wait for the dust to settle, then make his move.’

  ‘We going to put his face out?’

  ‘If we do, it won’t be for this.’ Mercer shuffled the transcript. ‘This will never have happened.’

  38

  Sunday 20th August, Kingsland Road

  Paul couldn’t remember exactly when they’d finally decided to go home. Whenever it was, Rob – big surprise – had been up for more, but Paul hadn’t been too unhappy when Terri’d said she was calling it a day as she remembered hearing Orlando say to Sky something about an early start. He did look at his watch when the night bus dropped them off, saw that it was just after half past three and thought that he was going to feel like shit if an early start really was on the cards.

  It was as they came nearer to the road the squat was in that Paul noticed the normal night-time activity in the area – when the shadows came out to play, as Sky put it – was somehow different. More edgy. More sirens, if that was possible. He followed Terri and Rob into a twenty-four-hour minimarket for one of Rob’s emergency snack purchases, watching as an unmarked Mondeo, with a flashing light on its dashboard, accelerated down the street.

  ‘Wonder what’s going on tonight?’

  Rob didn’t even look up from his trawl of the sweet shelves. ‘Drugs bust, what else, man?’

  ‘Come on, Rob, get a move on, I’m knackered!’ Terri was flicking through the magazines, looking very like she had when Paul had followed her into the newsagent near the train station, all that time ago. All those miles away.