Corpse in Waiting Page 16

  In the next second he had gone. Already having the Smith and Wesson in mine I ignored the instruction. There was a flurry of shots and the man with the machine gun nosedived to the pavement, the weapon still firing as he fell. The one on his left went over backwards but I did not see what happened to the third as I had rolled into the cover of a metal litter bin that had escaped the truck and took out the fourth, who was firing in the direction of where I thought Patrick might be right now, behind a group of concrete flower tubs.

  I decided that my responsibility lay in disabling the lorry so potted the windscreen and two of the tyres nearest to me. Thus encouraged I followed this up with a shot to discourage the digger driver that whanged off the cab superstructure and killed a street light. The two men in the truck abandoned ship and would have run off had it not been for two people who ran past me shouting ‘Police!’ and tackled them to the ground. Sirens blared in the distance.

  The driver of the JCB extricated the vehicle from the mess he had made and, bouncing over rubble, jerked forward into the main road, the driver shaking the bucket to rid it of more detritus. He endeavoured to turn right but there was no room to manoeuvre so veered around to the left and after twenty yards or so wrenched the vehicle around in the road, crashing into street furniture and a parked car. Bucket lowered it then headed straight for where the two who had apprehended the lorry driver and his accomplice had just started to cross the road, hauling them off to meet a rapidly approaching police van. They ran to get out of the way but one of the suspects tripped and fell flat, almost pulling over the man who was holding him.

  I dared not shoot in case the digger careered out of control to cause mayhem and death on the other side of the road. Then, unaccountably, it swung hard right and thundered into the truck. For a moment it looked as though the latter might overturn but it thumped down again, trapping the bucket underneath. The digger stalled and juddered to a halt.

  Gingerly, I raised myself a little. People, hopefully police, were arriving but cautiously, crouching behind parked vehicles, obviously not knowing how many would-be robbers were left. I could not locate Patrick for a moment but then saw that he was in the bank doorway with someone I presumed was gunman number three whom he had disarmed. As I watched he brought the man out, one hand tightly in the material behind the neck of the other’s sweatshirt.

  ‘SOCA!’ he shouted to the four winds. ‘You can all come out now.’

  DCI Murphy was one of the first to appear. ‘I thought that was a pretty good response time, actually,’ I heard him say to Patrick.

  He was given a big, bright smile. ‘In that case, congratulations. Would you like this one?’

  ‘I shall need you to make a statement.’

  ‘We both will. In the morning. To Greenway. You can always read it afterwards.’

  I joined them, and Murphy left with his prisoner after giving me a curt nod. Any further conversation was impossible at the moment because of the alarm bells and ambulance sirens so I went with Patrick as he moved from one wounded or dead man to another, trying to identify them, or rather find out if they were either of the Capelli brothers. None appeared to be.

  The man with the sub-machine gun was very dead and, as Patrick said to me later and not for the first time in his career, you simply cannot risk them being able to use a weapon like that again. The one I had hit was wounded in the leg. I always aim low even though this also is risking them using their weapons again and killing someone. I always incur Patrick’s anger over this – ‘it’s unprofessional’ – but causing the kind of pain and loss of blood that I was witnessing now is bad enough.

  The digger driver, a grossly overweight individual, was found to have suffered a fatal heart attack.

  ‘Right,’ Patrick said, having conferred with the paramedics in attendance. ‘We’re now superfluous.’

  ‘The two who arrested the men in the lorry were the Chinese man and his girlfriend,’ I told him when we had put a little distance between ourselves and the scene so we could speak fairly normally.

  ‘Just as I thought.’

  He was deliberately being annoying so I merely commented, ‘There weren’t enough mobsters here to do the job properly.’

  ‘No. No Capellis either. I agree, it’s odd.’

  ‘So are they still going to hit West End Central, only tonight, or the jewellery place tomorrow as planned or was this another outfit entirely?’

  Patrick paused on a street corner and gazed around. ‘Pass, although I lean to the latter. But the police personnel at both places should be prepared for anything and it’s not up to me to try to teach Murphy his job. I have no intention of riding shotgun for the Met for the rest of the night – it’s not my brief.’ The wonderful grey eyes rested on me briefly. ‘And what do I do now? Mike’s told me to do as I like, hasn’t he?’

  ‘I think he meant just tonight,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yes, tonight. I shall go and look for Tony Capelli.’

  ‘That’s if he’s not dead.’

  ‘That would be a great pity.’ He stopped speaking and then looked at me again.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ I said. ‘You want to go alone.’

  ‘Ingrid, you look all in – terrible. You’ve had a nasty crash and this job’s not worth killing yourself for.’

  ‘This is about Capelli ordering Luigi to kill James and hitting Joanna instead, isn’t it?’

  Patrick nodded. ‘I know that neither of our friends is safe until he’s dealt with, one way or another. He’ll want to settle what he regards as old scores. He’s like that. He’ll want to take out Carrick, then Joanna, then me. Thorns in his flesh. His failures.’

  ‘But surely then you’ll have the rest of the Capelli clan after you.’ I could see that even talking about it was reigniting the anger he had felt at the time.

  ‘It’s unlikely. James told me. It was Martino’s brother in Italy who tried to finish him off last time. His own family. He’d done things at home that brought utter disgrace to them.’

  ‘One way or another?’ I queried.

  ‘No, I’m going to kill him.’

  We went to our hotel together where Patrick made sure that I was safe and comfortable, told me only to open the door of the room in answer to one of our special knocks and then moved to leave. Then, chuckling at his own forgetfulness, he came back and kissed me, his parting remark as he went out of the door, ‘That was good shooting by the way.’

  In the ensuing quiet I flopped on to the bed, the cursed writer’s imagination churning out what the aftermath might be.

  This was how it all ended. He went out of the door and she never saw him alive again. All that kind of pathetic piffle in third-rate women’s fiction that nevertheless haunts me when Patrick goes off on his own. It seemed like hours that I sat there brooding about it but my left behind watch insisted it was only five minutes.

  ‘This isn’t fiction,’ I said to my pale, miserable-looking and scabby reflection in the dressing table mirror.

  Five children.

  ‘Oh, God,’ I whispered. ‘What shall I do?’

  I prised myself off the bed and went into the bathroom where I swallowed two of my painkillers plus two of the pills Patrick carries with him and takes when he needs to stay awake. Then I reloaded the Smith and Wesson, put some more ammunition in my other jacket pocket, slammed out of the room and tore after him.

  He could always bring me back and chain me to the loo.

  A piercing whistle rent the calm of the foyer as I hurried through it, the kind that some men use to summon taxis. I gazed around wildly and saw the source of it sitting in a little bar near the entrance doors. When I breathlessly arrived I saw that he was drinking strong black coffee.

  ‘Ah,’ Patrick said.

  ‘You’re a pig,’ I panted.

  ‘I thought it would be a good idea to hang around for a little while as you always follow me and this is one job where I’d prefer to have you under my nose right from the start.’
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  ‘That’s about the most pompous thing you’ve ever said to me.’

  ‘True though.’

  ‘I seem to remember getting you out of really sticky situations a couple of times.’

  He smiled infuriatingly. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks, I took a couple of your wideawake pills.’

  ‘You’re only supposed to take one.’

  ‘I didn’t bother to read the label.’

  ‘Ingrid, you’ve done this before! I can distinctly remember you dosing yourself up with a god-awful brew concocted by some harridan in Hinton Littlemoor, one of her “rural remedies” or other such rubbish.’

  ‘Your mother gave it to me. It was called Essence of Flowers.’

  ‘Yes, mostly home-grown poppy juice!’

  After I had admitted to experiencing a floating away sensation – we had been undertaking rooftop surveillance at the time – he had poured the rest of it down the kitchen sink.

  While it was naive to assume that Tony Capelli would be calmly ‘at home’ in Romford that was where we headed initially, to lurk and watch. Despite what Patrick had said, I was of the opinion that he would make every effort to arrest him. If not, it had been the Italian who had made death threats first.

  There were lights on in every room at the rear of the flat, clearly visible from our position in the small car park, that is, wedged in a dark corner near the inevitable stinking bins. The outside door of the apartment was actually ajar but there was no movement within, no shadows criss-crossing the curtains.

  ‘Was that raid a feint?’ Patrick whispered. ‘A few expendable thickos sent off to keep the Met busy and make them think the threat’s over?’

  I said, ‘As we’ve already discussed, it’s obviously not practical to raid a jeweller’s at night because everything’s in the strongroom, never mind the steel shutters over the windows. Unless you go and grab a senior member of staff and force them to open up everything, that is.’

  ‘I don’t think they’re that organized. It would probably be early tomorrow morning just after the place has opened.’

  ‘Leyland won’t be too pleased if you grab Capelli first.’

  Patrick’s teeth flashed white in the gloom as he grinned at me. ‘That’s all part of the fun.’

  We had not entered the area through the drive-in from the main shopping street but via a pedestrian access to another road with smaller shops and a public library where our taxi had dropped us off. Patrick had silently drawn my attention to a car with two men sitting in it parked nearby and then flung an arm around my shoulders and generally acted tipsy, almost causing me to lose my balance. But surely Leyland would not really have given out the descriptions of two members of SOCA with a view to warning them off. Would he?

  Several minutes went by during which we did not speak and precisely nothing happened. Then Patrick broke the silence by saying, ‘You know, I’m still not happy with the idea of allowing these mobsters to commit a crime so they can be arrested. It’s quite likely innocent people will be hurt or killed. The police might even screw up and they’ll get away.’

  ‘You might have to let the other bloke get on with it for once,’ I murmured.

  He did not respond for a moment, then said, ‘Is this my oracle speaking?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘We might have to pick up the pieces.’

  ‘We won’t have to pick up anything. SOCA wasn’t created to sort out any potential disasters the Met might have.’

  ‘But as I’ve just said, people might be killed!’

  ‘Remember what Daws once said to you? “No more tilting at windmills.” Stick to what you’re meant to do or you might be the one who ends up injured or dead because of a misplaced crusading instinct and an erroneous belief that someone who’s been in special services knows best.’

  ‘Bloody hell! How long have you wanted to say that to me?’

  ‘Years. May I make a suggestion?’

  ‘I have an idea you will anyway.’

  ‘You want Capelli. But in my view, he could already be dead. I think we should wait. See what these people plan to do, if anything at all now Irma’s not returned. Let the Met do what’s necessary and if he’s alive and well and they fail to catch him then you’ll have your chance.’ When Patrick said nothing I continued, ‘You were planning to storm in there when everyone was catching up on a little sleep, weren’t you?’

  ‘I do believe I was,’ he muttered. ‘Right now actually.’

  ‘Ignore me if you want to.’

  ‘I loathe this man, Ingrid.’

  ‘I know you do but please don’t allow it to rule your common sense. Remember what you said to me about gunning for terrorists and gangsters in Northern Ireland and elsewhere? Something along the lines of the satisfaction being in the planning, tracking down, the fine weapon to hand, the outwitting of someone who employs vigilant and vicious weapons-carrying minders, etc. etc. To burst in there now would be unprofessional and messy.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right, of course,’ he sighed.

  We waited.

  Seemingly a couple of decades later and when I was of the firm opinion that all oracles should be bagged up and reconsigned to Greek mythology, four cars arrived at the kind of speed that suggested their drivers had some serious purpose in mind. They swung around and formed a half-circle at the bottom of the iron stairs that led up to the flats like prairie wagons preparing for an attack by the Sioux. In comparative silence at least eight men then ran up the stairs and entered the flat.

  ‘Could it be undercover cops?’ I hissed.

  ‘Not unless they’re playing a very strange game. And if they’ve arrest in mind they wouldn’t have turned up in unmarked cars.’

  The grandmother of all gun battles erupted, one of the flat’s windows seeming to explode outwards under a hail of bullets.

  Patrick went, shouting over his shoulder, ‘For God’s sake stay hidden until I tell you it’s safe!’

  Those remaining in the cars started firing at him as soon as they saw movement, shots pinging off everything nearby. I had no intention of countering my instructions this time but it was important to give those firing something to think about so I ran forward using the parked cars as cover, and, when in range and from the shelter of someone’s people carrier, performed my usual target practice on the vehicles’ tyres. Reloading, I then remembered my training and, bending low, shifted position, just in time as it happened, hearing the crash of breaking glass behind me.

  OK then, we wanted no one being cowardly by remaining in cars where they could take more shots at Patrick. I did a little light strafing of rear windows and very soon doors on the far sides of the vehicles were being flung open and whose within baling out. I realized they might come in my direction. If so, good, I was not staying around. Moving quickly I scuttled off to my right, away from what a man would probably refer to as ‘the action’, and in the general direction of where I thought Patrick had gone.

  Over on the far side of the car park I paused behind a large concrete pillar, one of several that supported an overhead structure of some kind to the rear of a shop, and crouched down, peering around it. People were lining the windows in the other flats staring out. The firing was more sporadic now, men furiously shouting at one another, in Italian, I thought. There was then another shot and a man staggered out of the door and pitched headlong down the stairs.

  ‘You bastard!’ someone inside yelled.

  There was then another shot and a horrible scream followed by several shots in quick succession. The ensuing silence was broken, for the second time that night, by the howling sirens of approaching police cars.

  Watching, I remained where I was. Moments later a short, tubby figure cautiously appeared in the doorway but dived back inside again when someone took a shot at him. Seconds later two people were silhouetted against the light, one holding the other in front of him as a shield, the impression being of a gun rammed in the man’s back. It made no difference, ther
e was a burst of fire and the one in front toppled down the staircase, no doubt riddled with bullets.

  ‘The idiot should have put the light out,’ said a voice softly close by, from behind another pillar.

  ‘I was convinced you were inside,’ I whispered, feeling weak with relief.

  ‘I thought I’d wait and see who wins. With any luck the Met’ll use their loaf and do the same, although I reckon this lot’ll jump ship like rats when the law finally arrives. What the hell are they doing – stopped at traffic lights?’

  ‘Who do you reckon arrived with back-up? Martino?’

  ‘That’s a fairly safe bet.’

  ‘The drivers of the cars are still around somewhere.’

  ‘Two are and that’s who’s doing the shooting. You must have winged one of them as he’s under the stairs not feeling too good. Another came this way and is now in that black bin over there marked non-hazardous waste.’ Patrick chuckled cold-bloodedly. ‘Now I know exactly where you are I’ll go and find the other two. Please keep right out of the way.’

  He went away again.

  The police arrived with a flourish like a scene from The Bill, marksmen from a firearms unit immediately taking up positions. After this flurry of activity everything shivered into an uneasy stillness although I was sure I could hear groaning inside the flat.

  Then a man appeared in the doorway. ‘I’m the only one not dead or badly injured,’ he called, leaning against the door frame.

  He was answered by a voice amplified by a megaphone. ‘Armed police. Come down, arms up and lie face down on the ground.’

  He limped down and lay there, close to the two bodies.

  I could imagine senior officers conferring and it was not difficult to guess where their considerations would lie. Informers had said that these mobsters were intent on shooting up a nick so this might be a ruse and they were now going to make do with a mobile unit instead. I did wonder how many of those indoors were fit for such activity after all the firing. On the other hand they were not the SAS and quite a high percentage of the shots had probably missed. There was also the chance that this latest development was merely a time-wasting exercise and the remainder of those still mobile were now escaping by climbing out of the windows at the front on to the wide canopy above the shops and making their escape. I sincerely hoped a watch was in place out there.