Stop Them Dead, page 34
‘Good afternoon, everyone,’ Grace said. ‘Tomorrow morning we will be executing warrants to enter and search Appletree and Long Acre farms, both in the proximity of Hailsham, East Sussex. At the end of this briefing, you will be allocated to either Team A, led by myself, accompanied by DS Potting and DC Nicholl, which will carry out the raid on Appletree Farm.’ He pointed to the whiteboard to the right. ‘Or to Team B, led by DI Branson, DS Alexander and DC Wilde, which will carry out the raid on Long Acre Farm.’
He paused for a moment before continuing. ‘Our command structure will be as follows. ACC Robinson will act as Gold, setting the strategy, and although she will not be directly involved, she will have overall authority throughout the raids. DCI Andy Wolstenholme will be the Tactical Firearms Commander. Chief Superintendent Justin Burtenshaw will be Strategic Firearms Commander and I will be Investigations Bronze Commander, responsible for managing the arrest teams, securing evidence and with overall responsibility for the raids.’
He pressed the digital clicker and a woman in her late teens or early twenties, wearing dungarees, appeared on the screen. She had a round face, framed with two short plaits, and was smiling at the camera. Behind her was a cage containing what looked like several puppies.
‘To summarize our objectives in this operation: We have a missing person, this young lady, Rosalind Esche from Ukraine. She has not been heard from since Friday evening of last week and was last seen at Appletree Farm. We are concerned as to her whereabouts and finding her takes precedence over everything. She may be being held against her will, or something has happened to her.’
He pressed the clicker to bring up the next image. ‘In the raid on Appletree Farm we will be looking to arrest this hunky Chippendale, Terry Jim, behind me.’
There were several laughs and sniggers. Someone called out, ‘Never saw a Chippendale with a pot belly, boss!’
Grace clicked again. ‘And his chip-off-the-old-block son, Dallas Jim at Long Acre Farm. They will be charged at this stage with conspiracy to import, breed and traffic dogs. We have good reason to believe Terry Jim has an associate who goes under the name of John Peat and possibly several other pseudonyms.’
He let this sink in before continuing. ‘We will also be looking for evidence that could link these two suspects to the murder of Timothy Ruddle on the night of Thursday, March 25th at the Old Homestead Farm, and in particular we are looking for two vehicles with minor damage on them, a 2014 Ford Ranger and a 2011 Range Rover.’ He indicated the whiteboard with each. Then he clicked again and a Collision Investigation Unit photograph of Lyndsey Cheetham’s Nissan Leaf, embedded in a tree and surrounded by debris, appeared on the screen above him.
‘This is the vehicle in which a twenty-one-year-old, Lyndsey Cheetham, died last Monday. She was working at Appletree Farm and was, we understand, good friends with Rosalind Esche. We believe this was not an accident but that she was pushed off the road on this bend. We don’t have absolute proof of this, at this stage, but red paint particles were found at the scene, and we believe a 4 x 4 or other large vehicle of that colour may have been involved. We have strong suspicions she was on her way to meet Polly Sweeney to give her information about Rosalind’s disappearance.’ He caught Polly’s eye and she nodded in confirmation.
‘From enquiries in the area we have a witness who believes he saw Dallas Jim driving a red Dodge RAM recklessly. We believe this may be the vehicle that shunted Lyndsey Cheetham. We may find it at one of the farms. In terms of safeguarding,’ he continued, ‘we have potential firearms issues. On the night Tim Ruddle was murdered, the offenders seized a loaded shotgun from his farmhand, Norris Denning. We also know that most farmers have guns – mostly shotguns and small-bore rifles. We have established from the firearms licence records that both Terry and Dallas have in the past applied for licences for shotguns and a .22 rifle. These licences were not granted, but from what we know about these characters, they are likely to have these weapons, regardless. That means all of you are in potential danger from firearms. The first two points on Gold’s strategy is to maximize the safety of the public and to minimize the risk to you. Is that understood?’
There was a show of nods, but a lot of them half-hearted. The Public Order team were veterans of these kinds of briefing and safety warnings. Not many of them looked too worried. The message on most of their faces seemed to read, Mess with me and you’ll live to regret it.
‘So,’ he continued, ‘when I give the signal for the raids to start, only the Firearms team go in, and no one else follows until I hear from them that they’ve neutralized any firearms threat. Is that absolutely clear?’ He looked pointedly at Glenn Branson, who had been shot, but fortunately not critically injured, after rushing in too soon in a previous raid some while back.
The DI grimaced and nodded.
Roy Grace pressed the clicker, and a drone video began to play on the screen behind him. ‘OK, this is location A, Terry Jim’s place, Appletree Farm.’ He turned and aimed the red laser dot at the screen. ‘This is the driveway off Beeches Lane, which winds up for a quarter of a mile until it comes to these steel gates, which are covered by CCTV. Under earlier cover of darkness, the Public Order team will have taped over the cameras. So far as our intel informs us, there is no one in the farm monitoring these 24/7 – there is just Terry and his wife, Rula, and her daughter, Darcy, in the main house, and a few other members of their family living in some of the campers and caravans dotted around.’
The camera panned over the dog sheds, the Jims’ house, and various farm buildings behind, including a row of pigsties, and then over an assortment of derelict cars and vans, outbuildings, caravans, trailers and mobile homes.
‘It would make a lovely holiday camp!’ one of the Public Order supervisors called out. ‘Just imagine the reviews on TripAdvisor – charming rural location with authentic rustic dwellings . . .’
Grace smiled, then focused on the next drone video which was of Dallas Jim’s farm. There was open access to it, which indicated to him that Dallas had less, if anything, to hide. But the team weren’t to assume anything, and he told them the same safeguarding applied, with the Firearms Unit going in first to ensure it was safe before anyone else entered.
He then spoke. ‘The interview team who spent several hours with our friend Gecko have ascertained a detailed description of what we may find at the farms. He has cooperated with us hoping to reduce his sentence. At this stage we don’t believe he was one of the four men involved in the killing of Tim Ruddle.’
The RSPCA inspector, Kirsty Withnall, then briefed those present with details of how her teams would deal with any animals found on the farms to ensure everybody’s safety.
‘Thank you, Kirsty. The weather forecast is good, clear skies,’ Grace said. ‘Drones will be up, giving overhead coverage on both farms. I want all of you with radios to have the channel set to 8, and I’ll be issuing instructions on this airwave. We will be assembling at Polegate police station at 4.30 a.m., approximately fifteen minutes’ drive from each of our targets. Any questions at this stage, before I go into the details of each of the raids?’
There were none.
101
Thursday 1 April
As she left home Katy was filled with cold, dark dread about Bluebell. Her fear deepened the closer she came to the hospital.
When she’d parked, and made her way to the ICU ward, a nurse told her Bluebell was in recovery, and had diverted her to the Relatives Room, where she’d found Chris, hunched over his laptop, dealing with emails. He had no further news other than that Dr Shah had popped in to tell him that everything was going to plan. They both knew it was going to be many long days before Bluebell started to come out of the induced coma and more long days before they would know, assuming she survived that long, whether all her faculties were intact and she would be able to live a normal life.
Long days of utter hell for both of them – during which at any moment Dr Shah or Dr Pallant might come and tell them that they were sorry, Bluebell had not made it.
At 7 p.m. Dr Shah, looking weary, came into the room. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘this may sound harsh, but you really should go home and get on with your lives and your business – for your own health and sanity. For the next week or so, Bluebell won’t have any brain activity at all. Even if you believe in telepathy, her brain functions will be so low I doubt that would be possible. You can come and visit all you want, and if there are any developments, I’ll call you. But all you can achieve right now by being here is to torment yourselves.’
‘I just want to be near her, I can’t help going over and over how low the odds are. I just want her alive and healthy,’ Katy said dolefully.
Shah shook his head. ‘She’s young and strong. I think her chances could be very much better than the statistics.’
‘How much better?’ Katy asked, desperate for a straw she could cling to.
‘I can’t put a number on it,’ Shah said. ‘It would be wrong to do that. But I would take comfort, if I were you, that we are treating your daughter step by step on the instructions of Dr Rodney Willoughby, to whom we are speaking every few hours.’
‘Thank you,’ Chris said. ‘That’s comforting to know.’
‘Good. So, go home, then come back in tomorrow to see your daughter. For the next week, honestly, there is nothing you can do.’
‘Can we see her, at least, before we go?’ Katy asked.
Shah shook his head. ‘She is still in the recovery room, under the care of the team of anaesthetists who put her into the induced coma. Once she is back in the ICU, then you can be with her as much as you want.’
‘When will that be?’ Chris asked.
Shah glanced at his watch. ‘Two more hours, at least. Honestly, please take my advice. Go home, try to get a night’s sleep. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.’
Chris turned to Katy. She looked every bit as exhausted as he felt.
Katy nodded. Yes. Let’s do that. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
102
Friday 2 April
The stars and the full moon were invisible behind the blackout curtain of cloud. A light drizzle was falling, despite the forecast last night that the clouds would have dispersed by now. The weather was a mixed blessing, Roy Grace thought, cradling a thermos of coffee and checking his watch: 4.16 a.m.
The cover of complete darkness gave the members of his team equipped with night vision binoculars an advantage, but the dark also made it easier for anyone on the property to escape unnoticed. Farmers rose early, he knew, but well before any of the Jim community woke – doubtless having dreamed of charitable works and kindness to their fellow human beings and all animals, he thought cynically – there would be cordons around both properties that no one was going to get through in a vehicle. But both properties had large perimeters and someone could flee on foot, which was why he’d decided, with Silver’s agreement, it would be better to wait for dawn, where the drones would provide clearer images than through their night lenses.
His interview with Gecko on Wednesday had been helpful. The oddball was clearly just a minion and an outsider minion at that. He stole dogs to order for Terry Jim and got paid in cash when he delivered. He told Grace about Humphrey, and the opportunity he saw to make a bit of cash on the side. Grace had already learned that Humphrey’s collar and tag had been found in the glove locker of Gecko’s seized van.
But Gecko did tell him about two other connected families who lived on Appletree Farm, one in a cottage some distance from the main house and the other in a mobile home, again some distance away. He was unable to say what specific role they performed but he thought they were relatives.
The other thing Gecko gave him, which interested him, was that Terry Jim regularly frightened people by threatening to feed them to his pigs. Grace knew that crime gangs feeding victims to pigs was not a myth, these creatures ate and digested just about everything. His detective friend in New York, Pat Lanigan, had told him some years back that pigs were a favoured tool of the Mafia for disposing of bodies, and he knew that there were some seriously nasty crime families here in England who had developed an interest in breeding porkers.
Roy Grace gingerly sipped some more scalding coffee, wary of frizzing his tongue. He had butterflies in his stomach, as he always did before the start of a raid, adrenaline coursing through him along with his thoughts. He was mindful of the old saying that the darkest hour is the hour before dawn, and his darkest fears always came an hour before an operation started. The fear of something going badly wrong and an officer being injured, or the fear of finding nothing at all and arresting no one, and the resulting egg on his face. Especially right now, with seventy officers who would be receiving handsome overtime payments that he would have to answer for.
He sat in the front passenger seat of the unmarked Mondeo, in the car park of Polegate police station, as a steady stream of vehicles parked up around him, before extinguishing their lights. Next to him, behind the wheel, Norman Potting suggested drily, ‘You could always say it was a late April Fool’s joke, if it all went tits up, couldn’t you, chief?’
Grace took another tiny sip of the coffee, then screwed the top back on the flask. His Kevlar vest beneath his jacket was on too tight, making him feel constricted. About to get out and adjust it, his radio came to life, and he heard the voice of the Tactical Firearms Commander, DCI Wolstenholme. ‘Charlie Tango One?’
‘Charlie Tango One,’ Grace responded.
‘Good morning, Roy, everything good?’ Wolstenholme’s voice was friendly but precise. And he sounded almost ridiculously perky for this dead hour. As if he was fresh out of the gym.
‘We’re in assembly position A, Andy. I’ll be doing a roll call in ten minutes, then a final briefing before we head off and move into positions B and C.’ He glanced down at his lap, at the chart of names, vehicles and call signs attached to the clipboard, stifling a yawn. He’d barely had any sleep last night and doubted Wolstenholme had either – they’d been in the command room with Gold and the firearms Bronze until after 9 p.m., going through and fine-tuning the plans. One of their last decisions was to include two hostage negotiators, in case the missing Rosalind Esche was seized as a pawn by either the Jims or their associates, on either premises.
‘Good, let me know when you’re in position at B and C.’
Polegate police station, located in the middle of a housing estate, wasn’t the ideal place for such a mass assembly of vehicles, but it was perfectly located for the two farms. It principally served as the hub for the Roads Policing Unit for the entire east of the county, and a large contingent of its traffic officers were being deployed as part of this morning’s operation. They would set roadblocks on all possible escape routes from the two farms. Grace had already worked out from maps, and the previous drone footage, all roads and lanes that could be accessed by someone desperate in an off-road vehicle, or even a tractor, from either farm.
Moments after Andy Wolstenholme signed off, Roy Grace heard Glenn Branson’s voice, ‘Charlie Tango One?’
‘Charlie Tango One,’ he responded. ‘What do you have for me, Charlie Tango Two?’
‘Me and DC Wilde and all our team are here, boss.’
‘Good man.’ Grace looked at his watch again: 4.25 a.m.
At 5 a.m. both teams would move into prearranged positions, approximately half a mile from the two target farms. They had roughly half an hour before the sky began to lighten, and the level of that would depend on whether the cloud cover was still there or had begun to disperse. As soon as the drone operator informed him there was sufficient light to see everything on the ground, he would give the signal for both Firearms teams, backed up by Public Order officers, to go in.
‘I was reading this book, chief,’ Norman Potting said. ‘About the great military battles of history. It said that most of them weren’t won by the generals leading the charge, they were lost by the other side’s mistakes.’
‘Is that right?’ Grace asked absently, focused on his task ahead.
‘Uh huh. Take Agincourt. Our history lessons in school tell us we defeated the Frogs – I mean French – because the firepower of our longbows was better than their crossbows. Not true. We won the battle of Agincourt because the French won the toss. Their leader, Charles d’Albret, got to choose the battle site and he chose a ploughed field. It rained heavily the night before, and all the French horses and archers got bogged down in the mud – and were easy pickings.’
‘Is this relevant to now, Norman?’ Grace asked. ‘Other than it’s raining?’
‘Just saying, chief. It was the same at Dunkirk. The Germans could have wiped us out, if Hitler hadn’t decided to divert his army to go after Russia.’
‘Very helpful, Norman, thanks. I’ll make sure if I win the toss, to take the Jims on terra firma. And I’ll avoid attacking Russia.’
Potting raised a finger in the air. ‘Wise decision, chief.’
103
Friday 2 April
Chris and Katy Fairfax had done their best to comply with Dr Shah’s suggestion to go home and try to get some sleep. They’d dug a moussaka out of the freezer – the only thing in there that could be cooked from frozen.
Try to have a normal evening, Dr Shah had said. Would either of them ever have another normal evening in their lives? Chris wondered. He’d quit smoking over five years ago, but if there had been any cigarettes in the house he would have had one. Probably more than one. Probably the entire damned packet.
For several hours he’d lain in bed in some twilight world, neither asleep nor awake. As he sensed Katy had too. He kept thumping and moving his pillows around, too hard one moment, too soft the next. And, it seemed, he kept needing to get up to pee.
