A Fatal Drug, page 15
Conlon was taken aback: this was not the sort of voice he was used to. There was no trace of an accent and whoever it was sounded as if they knew him. “Err, yes. Who’s that?”
“I’m ringing on behalf of Greg Simpson. I believe we have something you may be interested in. We ought to meet up.”
Conlon exhaled loudly. He could not disguise his relief. No way would he ever get involved in anything like this again. The stress had been too much. It just wasn’t worth it. He smiled and held the phone closer. “Yes, that’s fine, that’s great. Where would you suggest?”
“How about the car park of The Green Dragon in Willington at eight tonight? I’ll be in a dark green Transit – horrible colour but that’s what I get to drive.”
“That’s a bit out of the way, isn’t it? Why the countryside? Why not Derby?” Conlon was suspicious. He knew the pub, but it was miles away.
The tone of voice hardened slightly. “It’s quiet. It’s where I want to be and I’m the one holding what you want. We do it my way.” The voice on the phone switched seamlessly back to being pleasant and matey. “This sort of transaction needs to be done without prying eyes. That’s why I chose that venue. Is that OK with you?”
The hint of steel in the man’s voice convinced Conlon that he should co-operate. “OK, yeah. Eight o’clock will suit me fine. I can get a bus dead easy.” A short bus ride was inconvenient but it was nothing compared to the cash he so desperately needed.
“See you there. Don’t be late,” the man on the phone said and ended the call.
Conlon put the phone down, rubbed his hands happily and allowed himself a laugh. Merriment had been in short supply since he’d heard about Bateman’s demise. He’d keep the cash handover quiet. There was no need to tell Ponds and O’Donnell just yet. They’d be grateful enough when he doled out the shares.
It was Ponds who had come up with the idea of a little subterfuge on the way back from Spain. The incident at Dover with the Customs woman had reminded him of their cargo’s high value and how important it was that they weren’t followed. The three had stopped at Watford Gap services on the M1 and Ponds and O’Donnell had stayed in the cafeteria while Conlon had hidden the van behind a queue of parked lorries and changed its number plates. Then he’d driven up to the A5 along Watford Gap’s service road. The other two had joined him on foot and the journey north to Derby had continued north via Burton-on-Trent. It was just a precaution, Ponds had said. They were safe and the police weren’t after them but a change of tack would be a good idea if there was an off chance they were being followed. No one would expect them to deviate from the most direct and obvious route home.
Conlon and Ponds had agreed that they would split eighty per cent of the money while O’Donnell would get twenty per cent. That seemed fair, as O’Donnell had done nothing. Or, as Ponds had said, he’d just looked pretty and taken up space in the van.
***
In Solihull, James Poundall, put the phone receiver down and turned to his companion. “It’s a doddle. We don’t even need Lucio. This mark says he will get a bus so we don’t have to worry about his transport. It also means he’s planning to be there on his own.”
Poundall, Christopher Burnham and Lucio Negro were a little group who saw themselves as the ultimate professionals. Each weekday they sat behind their desks as young, high-powered management consultants at an international accountancy firm. They were well spoken, enjoyed taking business risks and were almost always successful. It was this combination of dedication, aggressive teamwork and public bonhomie that charmed the clients and maximised profits.
Their success meant that they were given ample freedom. They were valuable employees. Sometimes their working days were long, so time off was always given when they asked. Three or four times a week they would meet for target practice and unarmed combat training. Weekend SAS-style training expeditions took place in the Welsh mountains. Hunting and war games for these three were a hobby and an obsession. Dogs, deer, vermin: anything that breathed was a target for their wide range of guns. That was the beauty and thrill of being hunters par excellence, and that was why George Washington employed them for the most discrete tasks involving terminations.
“We’re taking the van, not the car,” Poundall told Burnham. “The contract says ‘remove without trace’. I know this pub backs on to the Trent and Mersey Canal but I don’t want to be that local.
“It’ll be a short and simple pick-up. I’ll drop you at the car park early so you can carry out a people and geography survey, ascertain the optimum location and assist me when I roll up in the vehicle. I don’t want the mark to be spooked so we’ll let him get there two minutes before I arrive. Let’s go and have a recce of the terrain now.”
Poundall, spoke flowingly in a cod-militaristic way, something that he and Burnham found natural. They’d been childhood friends, growing up on neighbouring country estates in Worcestershire. They’d attended two private schools together – the second because they had been expelled from the first – and then gone on to agricultural college to study estate management. Bored with academic studies, and knowing that eventually they would inherit wealth as well as the family estates, they had found a close camaraderie in learning how to hunt and kill efficiently, quietly and with minimum interest from landowners or, if things were more complicated, the police.
Their accountancy jobs had been organised by their parents so that they could get a taste for how money could be made quickly and easily and go on to build up the families’ riches as well as manage the complex business of the estates. Their parents also hoped that they would find a professional working environment more exciting and pleasurable than playing at soldiers.
Burnham drove the anonymous, dark green Transit north along the dual carriageway A38 and turned off at the Willington sign. The Jolly Farmer was set back from the road by at least a hundred and fifty yards and had two car parks. One stretched from the picturesque pub façade, with its long wooden porch, down to the road; the other, on a spur, was a much rougher pot-holed area with sparsely occupied spaces shaded by trees. This, they had decided, was the ideal location.
They drove along beside the canal and, after about four miles, pulled to the side of the road after crossing a railway line. Without speaking, they reached behind into a sack and carefully took out a small collection of firearms. As each was withdrawn the two checked and worked the mechanisms smoothly and fluently. It was as if they were extensions of their own hands and arms as they lovingly handled the weapons. With the checks completed, the guns were lined up on the flat area of the bench seat in the front. Burnham drove back to the centre of the village, some hundred yards or so away.
He parked in front of a small, closed shop, got out of the van and looked around for a suitable and comfortable place to hide and wait. Poundall had moved across the seat and was now behind the steering wheel. He tapped the side window to get Burnham’s attention and then pointed to a brick structure back in the pub’s secondary car park. It looked like a derelict outhouse that had lost its roof. At the rear was a single-thickness brick wall about three feet high. Poundall passed an old hessian sack to Burnham, who walked back and laid it over some of the loose bricks that had fallen from the wall and made a seat that was marginally more comfortable than bare bricks. He put his back against the wall and waited.
Poundall drove the van on to some rough ground about three hundred yards away on the other side of the road, close enough to see the car park and Burnham’s hiding place but far enough away to make it seem as if, when he drove onto the car park to meet the mark, the van would appear to have been driven along the road without stopping.
About ten minutes later a cream and green single-deck bus stopped near the crossroads and then headed off towards Derby. Steve Conlon walked from the bus stop towards The Jolly Farmer. His journey had been uneventful. By the time the bus had got to Willington, Conlon was the only passenger, and he grunted something vaguely pleasant to the driver as he alighted. It was a dry night with little breeze, but he was thankful he was wearing a jacket, even though it was light and didn’t offer much warmth.
It was only a short walk to the pub. He’d been there before, about a year ago in a failed attempt to impress a girl. He’d heard it was now a bit of a ‘Hooray Henrys’ pub, with customers from the local farms spending money they earned working the land that would eventually be theirs.
Conlon turned left into the car park, stopped, and looked around for the green van the man had said would be there. Then he realised that at that time of night, dark green could look like dirty black, maroon, brown or a whole host of other dark colours. It could be any van of almost any colour.
As he stood alone on the uneven ground his confidence ebbed away. He wanted this whole thing over with, and waiting around was making him nervous, especially in the darkness and gloom and a fair way from home.
Willington and the pub were a bit remote and he didn’t know the area well, but the thought of the money had been, and still was, very persuasive. He was prepared to take a risk by standing around on his own, even though he felt vulnerable. What he was not prepared to do was linger at the bottom of the car park, or certainly in the area that was off to the side of it. He may be involved in a shady activity but he wanted some openness for this transaction, even if the other bloke wanted secrecy. The closer to the pub door and the sound of merriment inside the better. The guy on the phone had sounded OK, but you just never knew, did you?
Apart from that, what if the police turned up? What could he say? How could he explain standing in a pub car park with just enough money to get the bus home but not enough to buy a drink?
Burnham had watched Conlon approach and walk towards the pub entrance. That was not in the script. The mark should not be walking towards the pub. The meeting place was the car park.
Burnham made sure he could not be seen by Conlon, who had his back to him and was walking away, and he waved to Poundall in the van.
Poundall drove into the car park and approached Conlon, who turned as he heard the engine and tyres on the rough tarmac. Conlon moved away from the steps leading to the light coming from the pub’s opaque glass door and walked back a few paces as the van drew closer. His hand touched the shaft of his Scout knife. He’d picked it up before he left his flat. It was a conscious gesture towards self-defence but he’d never used it in anger and didn’t think he had the guts to do so anyway.
CHAPTER 27
Poundall pulled to a halt between the steps to the pub and the man he’d identified as the one he was to meet, Steve Conlon. Conlon had stepped away when he saw the van approach. Poundall opened the van door and swung his khaki-clad legs out. He smiled as his feet touched the ground.
“Is it Steve?” he asked, and noticed that Burnham had used the path the van had taken to run unseen and without a sound up the car park towards the pub entrance. He was now moving towards him and behind Conlon. Poundall nodded almost imperceptibly in admiration of his colleague’s skills.
“Yes. I’m not too happy about these sort of clandestine meetings. Just let me have my money and we can both go our separate ways.” Conlon was beginning to feel nervous. Something wasn’t quite right. His voice had quavered; it was higher pitched than normal.
“It’s not quite that simple,” Poundall said. “We need to have a little chat first.”
As Conlon moved back he noticed out of the corner of his eye a figure running from his left about ten yards away. This was wrong. This was not how it was supposed to happen. There were two of them. The man never said there’d be two. Without thinking, he pulled the knife out of its makeshift sheath – a folded-over handkerchief to prevent the sharp, pointed blade from cutting his leg. In the same movement he lashed out, extending his right arm towards the man in front and feeling the blade cut through cloth.
“You oik,” Poundall muttered, and then called to Burnham. “He’s cut me. Get him. Do it. Now.”
In the instance Poundall turned away, nursing his heavily bleeding upper arm, Burnham, his sprint having given him added momentum to cover the few remaining feet, threw himself on Conlon, knocking him to the ground and sending the knife clattering over the rough, chipped tarmac. Burnham drew his right arm back and crashed his fist into the back of Conlon’s head, just above the neck. There was no movement now and Burnham stood up and looked towards his friend. “How bad are you? Can you help me get him into the van?”
“I need to get this arm wrapped up. It’s bleeding quite badly but we’ve got to get this guy sorted first.” Poundall opened the van’s rear doors with his right hand. His left was already covered in blood and he held it high to try to slow the blood flow. Burnham easily picked up Conlon’s limp body, flipped it inside the van and closed the rear doors, pushing the man’s feet securely inside. As he stepped back, he saw Conlon’s sheath knife on the ground. He put it in his pocket, blade upwards.
There was a brief flash of light from the pub as if someone had opened and closed a door suddenly or drawn back a curtain.
“What’s going on?” a female voice called out from the pub entrance.
“It’s nothing. He’s just a bit drunk. Don’t worry, we’ll look after him.” Poundall put on a friendly voice as he wriggled uncomfortably into the passenger seat while still trying to hold his left arm above his head.
“Just a minute. You look as if you’ve been hurt. Are you sure you’re OK?” The girl, who could not have been more than eighteen, wore a flared pink miniskirt and a cream, floral cotton top. She was both overweight and unsteady on her feet, and walked slowly and deliberately down the steps towards the van, steadying herself by holding on to the wooden balustrade with both hands.
“No, we’re fine. Thank you. Got to go,” Poundall said through the open window as Burnham, who’d slid easily into the driver’s seat, swung the van round, narrowly missing the rear of a new Ford Escort, and headed out to the road.
The girl, now clear of the steps, kept walking unsteadily. She stopped near where the van had been and looked down at a patch of dark liquid. Still unsteady, she waited a few moments, straightened her back, took a couple of deep breaths and then, feeling more stable, bent over and touched the liquid. It was red, a deep, bloody red, and she shuddered.
She lifted her finger close to her face to confirm what she had first thought and then returned slowly to the crowded pub. Walking unsteadily to the bar, she brushed against another girl, didn’t notice her look of distaste, and held her bloodied finger in front of the barman’s face.
“Annie. Take it away. Go and join your friends. I think you’ve had enough tonight,” the young barman said, recoiling from the red digit.
Annie stood back and realised that, probably because of the blast of fresh air, she was incapable of coherent speech. She shook her head, wiped her finger on a bar towel and tottered back to her friends, grasping tables and chairs on the way. She wanted to describe what she’d seen, show her friends her bloodied finger, but looked down and realised that she’d wiped it clean. They wouldn’t have believed her anyway. She slumped into her seat, picked up her glass of white wine and took a gulp. She had seen it, she thought. Or had she? Was she dreaming? They’d laugh at her because she was tiddly. Maybe she was making it all up in her wrecked head.
She took another sip of her drink and shrugged.
Five minutes after leaving the car park, Burnham pulled the van into a layby, got out and opened the rear doors. In a sack hanging on the bulkhead behind the passenger seat he found the attachment he was looking for. He checked to make sure that there were no vehicles approaching and that they were totally alone, and then spun the long silencer on to the barrel of the gun he’d taken from the front seat. Holding it in both hands, the long barrel almost touching the head of the unconscious Conlon, he slowly squeezed the trigger. The sound reverberated loudly inside the van but outside there would have been just a noisy pop. Conlon’s head jerked and was then still.
Burnham put the gun and silencer back in the sack and returned to his seat. “Right. Let’s have a look at this arm.”
Poundall slowly relaxed his grip on his left arm and Burnham, seeing that the blood was still flowing freely, reached under the passenger seat and hauled out the first aid box. He slapped a thick wedge of lint on the open wound and tightly wound a length of bandage round it. Poundall’s shirt was in tatters, the knife blade having almost cut the sleeve away from the shoulder. He was thankful that they had taken field-medic courses as well as combat lessons.
“We’ve got a bit of a problem here,” Poundall said. “The van has been seen and so have we. This is now a damage limitation exercise. Let’s call Lucio and get him to meet us. We can dump the body in one of the water-filled pits round Branston, just down the road. We’ll weight it so it stays under for a good long time. We can get rid of the van by burning it in the woods. It’s fairly remote round here.
“If there’s no body by the time Lucio meets us, then we can say we’ve been hunting. That will explain away the blood, and I can say I caught my arm on some barbed wire. I trust Lucio but it’s a matter of ‘need to know’. This cut is the least of our worries, and financially the client will have to cover all our costs, including a new van.”
“So what do we say about losing the van?” said Burnham. “I think Lucio might notice that we are without transport, especially as we’ve just asked him for a lift.”
“We’ll just tell him it was a little accident. This van is worthless anyway. It’s cost us more to keep on the road than it was ever worth. Just clear everything out.”
***
The operation’s success was relayed back to George Washington, who was satisfied even if the bill was higher than normal. He wouldn’t be paying, so that was of little concern. What really pleased him was that the hit team had said that they would now be out of the country for at least the next six months helping some African leader to quell a rebellion. Washington smiled. Half a year was more than enough to let the ground settle. He trusted his contacts to ensure that there would be no comeback, and certainly nothing that involved him.
