Going Rogue, page 4
part #2 of Tom Novak Series
‘That’s grand.’
*
Billy, a flame-headed boy in his early twenties, was connected to drips and monitors and appeared to be sleeping. Both his eyes were heavily bruised, and his partially open mouth looked like a medieval graveyard, thanks to the number of broken teeth within.
Liam sat in the bed next to him and waved the uniformed, armed officer out of the room. Buster just stood at the back of the room, his arms folded.
‘Not looking so good, Billy-boy,’ said O’Halloran. Billy jumped awake as if jolted by a nightmare.
‘Who are you?’ he said in a croaky, woozy voice.
O’Halloran produced his warrant card which Billy looked at, squinting to make out the details before sagging back down on the bed.
‘Who’s that fucker?’ Billy said, nodding in Buster’s direction.
‘Mate of mine. What happened, Billy?’
‘I told the uniformed Peeler. I’ve nothing to say,’ he murmured, turning his head away from the officer.
‘That’s fine, Billy, you can just listen to me then. I know who your uncle is, I know what he may be wanting to do to whoever did this to you. I just want the message to get back to Uncle Gerard that any retribution will be heavily frowned upon and we will be looking at him if any suspicious missing persons or bodies turn up anywhere. Will you tell him that, Billy?’
Billy began to shake with suppressed, bitter mirth, almost sniggering through his bloodied teeth. ‘You think Uncle Gerard will be looking for revenge for me, you’re fucking deluded, Mr Peeler.’
O’Halloran was surprised. He naturally assumed that, with Billy’s family connections, revenge by Casey senior would be swift and violent.
‘Why’s that, then? Come on Billy, I can’t protect you if I don’t know what’s going on.’
Billy continued to chuckle, although there was little evidence of genuine humour in the dry, rasping noise. ‘It was fucking Uncle Gerard that had me put in here. He thinks I stole from him. Not for anything else. He blames me that a large quantity of his property has gone missing.’
‘What is it and who’s taken it, Billy? Was it drugs? We can put him away forever for that; he’ll never touch you again.’
Billy’s chuckling grew louder and he coughed violently, spraying spit and blood flecks onto his pillow. He turned and looked straight into O’Halloran’s eyes, the pupils like pinpricks because of the opiate drugs; he was clearly stoned out of his mind. ‘You’ve no idea what you’re dealing with, ye stupid bastard. Who said anything about drugs? My uncle used to call it his insurance policy. He’s now fucking fuming as he’s lost the fucking lot. All seventy kilos of it is gone and I’m getting the blame as it was buried on my granda’s farm and I was supposed to be keeping an eye on it. It’s only because I’m his nephew that I’m not pig-food right now.’ He slumped back into his pillow and closed his eyes, tears spilling out and running down his cheeks.
‘You can’t protect me. No one can. Now fuck off, Peeler. I’ve nothing more to say.’ Billy turned his head away from Liam indicating that the interview was over.
Liam nodded at Buster and they both left the room. As they walked down the corridor back towards the car park Buster quickly dialled a number on his phone.
‘Buster. What do you know?’ Jane Milligan asked.
‘It’s worse than we thought, Jane. Much worse.’
6
A few days later, Tom sat in the back of the prison van with just one thought in his mind: the determination to make things right.
The fact that the stakes were now so high only strengthened his resolve. The Muslim community were feeling very vulnerable and serious rumblings from tension indicators throughout the UK showed that retaliation would be forthcoming if further attacks were not circumvented. The powers that be had thrown every available resource at the team to get a start-point for investigation. So far, they had nothing.
The team’s objective was now clear. Recover the Semtex at whatever cost and stop the bombmaker and those who controlled him or her. As always, prosecution was a secondary consideration: disruption of the offenders was the primary objective.
Authorisations to deploy had been written and signed. Risk assessments prepared and strategies formulated. A 24/7 extraction team had been assembled and trained to be able to enter the prison and get Tom out at a moment’s notice if the worst happened. Tom knew, however, that that option would not help him a great deal: if he was exposed, the recovery team would be extracting his corpse.
Tom’s legend had been agreed with some care. He was to be known as David Vidmar, a Slovenian ex-soldier who fled to the UK after a fight which resulted in a Muslim male being stabbed and paralysed. Intelligence reports had been disseminated showing that Vidmar was a violent and committed anti-Muslim extremist suspected of attacks in the Balkans on Muslims. The cover had been closely researched and was very close to a genuine unsolved case that had occurred in Ljubljana the previous year. It was simple enough to create a European Arrest Warrant for a crime which listed David Vidmar as the main suspect. The warrant was issued to the Met Police Extradition Squad and a “Crimestoppers” intelligence report released identifying an address that David Vidmar was currently residing at with a high urgency rating attached to it.
Tom was rudely awoken the very next day in “David Vidmar’s” Lewisham flat by the extradition squad, backed up by armed officers from SC&O 19. He went along quietly and compliantly, bundled into a squad car and then taken to Lewisham Custody Suite, where he was booked in. All the time he maintained a quiet and cooperative persona; there was no value at that stage in being obstructive or uncooperative. It wouldn’t suit his legend and would probably drag the whole process out much longer than it needed to be.
A couple of hours later he was put before the first available district judge at Greenwich Magistrates Court. He had declined a solicitor, both at the police station and the court.
Once in court there was a short administrative procedure during which the process for extradition was explained to him and he was asked if he consented with the process. He said he did not; this was important as it would give a period of leeway for him to get into the prison. He was told that an extradition hearing would be heard in three weeks and then that was that.
No one in the court paid much attention to the hearing which was mundane in the extreme. What they couldn’t have known about was the avalanche of bureaucracy that had been necessary for them to arrive at that hearing. Jane Milligan had personally presented the application for Tom’s undercover deployment to the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the surveillance commissioners. She had also applied direct to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service. The district judge had also been briefed ahead of the hearing as, despite the urgency and gravity of the circumstances, misleading a court was unthinkable.
Tom was returned to the court cells and then after a few hours he was on his way to Belmarsh Prison along with several other remanded prisoners. He ignored all of them, simply staring blankly at the walls of his small box in the prison van, rubbing his newly cropped scalp. He had figured that a far-right leaning ex-soldier would favour the skinhead look. As he was a remand prisoner, he was allowed to continue wearing his cover’s preferred clothes of stonewashed jeans and Armani-branded t-shirt. He had nothing of value with him other than his copy of the European Arrest Warrant.
There was a big risk in him being trapped in prison with a whole bunch of violent criminals, but he was confident that he wouldn’t be recognised as a police officer. The inmates on the wing had been thoroughly researched and nobody he had encountered professionally or otherwise was incarcerated within the wing. He was also comfortable that his legend was tight. Slovenia was not a huge country, and the UK population of immigrants was small. His accent was natural and his grip of Slovenian was excellent, being very similar to his native Serbian tongue. In any case, there were many variations of accents across Slovenia and so he knew he could blag it if challenged.
He felt a tingle of anticipation at what was his most challenging undercover deployment to date. The plan was now firmly in his hands. He somehow had to strike up a conversation with Lenny Smith; how that happened could only be formulated on the hoof and depended on many factors, none of which Tom had any control over.
He felt, rather than heard, the prison van negotiating the gates of the prison, not bothering to try and look out of the small reinforced window in his box.
The prisoners were escorted from the van and lined up in the reception area of the prison in front of a central control desk which was occupied by an unsmiling, heavily tattooed prison officer. The officer was staring at a computer screen without any obvious interest, whistling tunelessly to himself. The floor was being mopped and polished by an inmate wearing a grey prison-issue tracksuit and the air was thick with the acrid smell of floor polish. At the other end of the room were reinforced gates in place of a door, through which they were ordered one at a time to be processed in turn by the surly reception staff. The atmosphere in the room was one of quiet resentment and tension.
Tom sat quietly on one of the benches that ran around the perimeter of the room as he waited his turn. He spoke to no one and stared straight ahead. Now was not the time to make friends or enemies. Now was the time to be the grey man.
One of his fellow prisoners, a huge, muscled black man, walked over and sat heavily on the bench next to Tom. They exchanged nods as he sat, and Tom noted that he was wearing an Islamic kufi cap and sported a lustrous beard with a trimmed moustache.
‘You okay, brother?’ the man said in a rich, sonorous voice. Tom didn’t answer but just nodded with a resigned smile.
‘What you in for?’ the man added.
‘They want to deport me,’ Tom replied, his accent soft but definitely noticeable.
‘Where you from?’
‘Slovenia,’ Tom said.
‘What did you do there?’
‘What is this, twenty questions, man? I’m not in the mood for fucking speaking.’ Tom decided that a little pugnaciousness wouldn’t go amiss and might help his cover, especially given the man’s religion. He made his voice irritated but not hostile.
‘Suit yourself, bro’. Little piece of advice: make sure you know who you’re speaking to before you get vexed with me. Life may be more difficult if you don’t.’ The man’s tone was slightly amused but there was no mistaking the menace which lurked underneath it.
‘I’ll bear that in mind. I’m just not feeling like speaking, right now. Got it?’ Tom wasn’t intimidated, but it wasn’t the time to make enemies. There was plenty of time for that. Normal behaviour for his cover at that stage would be to present as being insular and reflective, rather than openly hostile.
As he waited, he reminded himself why he was there. If he didn’t create an opportunity to infiltrate the ADF, how many more innocent victims would they claim? The image flashed across his mind of Afri sobbing and comforting her two boys outside the cemetery. The memory only served to steel his resolve to make everything right.
The bars slid open. ‘Vidmar, you’re up next.’ Tom looked up at the tired-looking prison officer holding a clipboard and stood to follow him out of the room.
*
Tom followed the heavy-set middle-aged prison officer through the sturdy, barred gates and onto the landing at the top spur of the House Block 4. He was carrying a set of rough blankets, a sheet and a pillow as well as a plastic bag containing toiletries which had been supplied by the reception officer.
The booking-in procedure had been as straightforward as he had expected. He had been subject to a thorough strip search and all his belongings bagged and tagged. As he was a remand prisoner only, he was not required to wear prison clothes and so he’d been allowed to keep the digital watch he was wearing and the clothes he had been arrested in. At first glance the watch looked like any standard cheap digital watch that you could buy for twenty quid but it had been specially designed with one function in mind: if the two buttons on the side of the watch were pressed simultaneously, an emergency signal would be relayed to his support team and he would be extracted. It was of limited use but was as good as they could come up with in the circumstances.
He had been asked a raft of health questions, including whether he was drug dependent or suicidal. Tom gave his answers in a low, flat monotone, all the time being careful not to draw attention to himself. He was made to sit on a full body scanner which used low-level x-rays to scan for anything secreted within the body. Tom was more than aware of the problem of “stuffing” contraband internally. He was, of course, clear: much as he would have liked a method of communicating with his team, he just couldn’t take the risk.
The first thing that struck him was the noise, a cacophony of thumping rap music and coarse shouting between cells. The air smelt strongly of sweat, cigarette smoke and disinfectant. An atmosphere of tension and latent aggression hung in the air, almost visibly. The prison officer waved Tom forward, saying, ‘Welcome to spur four, house block four. I am the Sheriff of the Spur and I like to run a peaceful ship. Lunch is done so you won’t get fed until 6pm. You will get a breakfast pack to take into your cell for the morning. Once that’s done it’s done until lunch tomorrow, so I’d make it last, if I were you.’
Tom said nothing; there was nothing to say at that point.
‘You’re lucky. Your cell is a three-man but one of your pad-mates moved out this morning so it’s just the two of you; for now, anyway. You’re in with Charlie. He’s a nice man and is one of our trained “listeners” who help out new detainees, so any problems you have you can chat to him. I’d still not advise pissing him off, though.’
The officer paused for a reaction from Tom, but there was nothing.
‘Now I’ve read your file,’ he continued, ‘I know why you’re here and what happened. I’d be careful who you tell what you did. We have a few Muslim prisoners in here and whilst the terrorists are on the High Security Unit, there are some who wouldn’t take kindly to what you did.’ The officer was in full monologue mode now and it was clear he had a familiar patter for new inmates. ‘I don’t want any grief, son. Keep any problems you have with Muslims to yourself. I try to run a happy ship here.’
‘I’m not planning on causing any trouble,’ Tom said quietly, more to let the officer draw breath than anything else.
‘Good. Just how I like it. You’ll get association with the other inmates as long as you behave. Any grief and you’ll be sent to the segregation block quicker than you can imagine, okay?’
‘No problems.’
‘There will be a full induction process tomorrow. You’ll get some lectures on how you make calls, order your toiletries, tobacco and extra food from the canteen. You’ll have a medical to make sure you are healthy as can be and you can also meet the chaplain, if that’s your kind of thing.’
‘Fine,’ said Tom.
They walked down an iron walkway which was bordered by chipped maroon-painted railings and a shiny, polished floor. As they were on the first floor there was a significant drop on the other side of the railings to the association area, with a mesh netting below the balcony to catch anyone who considered jumping. Arriving at a thickly painted cell door, the officer reached for his belt and unhooked a single heavy key on a length of chain before unlocking the cell door and swinging it wide open.
‘Welcome home, Vidmar.’
An empty set of wrought-iron bunk beds with plain green plastic covered mattresses sat alongside the cell wall. On the opposite wall was a single bed of a similar wrought-iron design upon which a middle-aged, stocky, grey-haired man sat looking at Tom with mild curiosity. The room was far too small to accommodate the three beds, particularly as they had to compete for space at a small table and chair and an even smaller table upon which sat a portable TV and kettle. The paint on the wall was chipped with etched graffiti, and a stainless steel toilet sat in the corner of the room partially obscured by a low wall. Modesty was not a prime concern of the authorities. The scene was completed by a stainless steel sink on which sat a cup and a solitary toothbrush. It was a gloomy and depressing sight.
‘Charlie, this is David Vidmar,’ the officer said.
Charlie rose to his feet and extended his right hand, ‘Pleased to meet you, David,’ he said in a surprisingly well-spoken accent.
Tom deposited his bedding on the lower of the bunks and took the man’s smooth and warm hand. He had twinkling blue eyes that shone with intelligence and the corners of his mouth turned upwards in a smile.
Tom nodded in reply. ‘I can’t say I’m pleased; I’d rather be somewhere else.’
‘Wouldn’t we all,’ said Charlie.
‘Right, I’ll leave you to get acquainted,’ said the officer. ‘Charlie is an approved listener: so if you want to unburden yourself, he’s your man.’ He turned on his heels and left the room.
The slamming of the cell door reverberated through Tom’s body. No turning back now, he thought. He was in deeper than he’d ever been.
Tom’s military background kicked in almost immediately. Turning up at a new base with just what you could carry was not a new experience to him although he had never been behind a locked cell door before. So he did what he would have done when in the military: he made his bed and organised his toiletries whilst Charlie watched him wordlessly.
‘You look like you’ve done this before, David,’ he said.
‘Not in prison, but I was in the army in Slovenia. It feels the same to me.’
‘You’re very calm.’
‘No reason to be anything else.’ Tom spoke flatly and without emotion. He was very much playing the “grey man” and wasn’t about to start showing his hand.
‘What’s the accent?’
‘I’m Slovenian. Been in the UK for a while and now they want me back, so they hit me with a European warrant.’
