32
10:15 P.M., FRIDAY 23RD MARCH 2012
Holloway police station, London
Mercy was on the phone to Makepeace giving him a recap of the Lomax interview.
‘And you’ve tried calling Charles?’
‘His mobile’s turned off,’ said Mercy. ‘The last I heard from him was the text message he sent early this morning, which started me off on this investigation. I’ve contacted the hospital where his mother is being treated and they said he went to see her this morning, early. I’ve also spoken to his girlfriend, and she says she saw him at lunchtime and he left abruptly in the late afternoon having behaved quite . . . strangely. Since then, nothing.’
‘So, given Lomax’s testimony, you think Charles has handed himself over in return for Amy’s release and that what he’s been doing today is . . . clearing the decks, as it were?’ said Makepeace, finishing awkwardly.
‘Saying his goodbyes is what it feels like to me,’ said Mercy. ‘My concern is that Lomax doesn’t know what it’s really about. They wouldn’t tell him anything beyond that it was a hostage exchange.’
‘An exchange?’
‘That was the original intention.’
‘And what changed?’
‘Amy tried to escape and saw Lomax’s face in the process. He had to report that to his bosses because it presents a risk of exposure to the whole organisation,’ said Mercy. ‘So it seems likely they’re going to renege on their deal to release Amy.’
‘What do we know about Dennis and Darren Chilcott?’
‘Surprisingly little. I contacted the project team in the Special and Organised Crime Command who’ve been tracking Lomax and they’re very excited about it. This is the supplier they’ve been looking for. The Chilcotts were completely under their radar.’
‘This place, the Rowland Estate, do we have access?’
‘Lomax has said he will cooperate fully.’
‘How many people does Lomax think will be involved?’
‘He reckons there’ll be at least one person in the warehouse, possibly two. There’ll be another person outside the basement where they’re keeping the hostages because there’s no phone signal inside and they can’t hear what’s going on outside, especially in the two soundproofed rooms.’
‘Any CCTV?’
‘There’s none in Neckinger itself, except on some council buildings, but there’s two in the yard outside the Chilcotts’ warehouse, but Lomax will help us get around that.’
‘So a four-man firearms unit should be enough for the job,’ said Makepeace. ‘I’ll make my way to Bermondsey with them now. Let’s meet at the Neckinger end of Grange Walk. You bring Lomax and an accurate set of plans and we’ll mount the assault from there.’
The VW Caravelle pulled into the yard from Neckinger and reversed into the warehouse. The driver and Jaime lifted El Osito out in his wheelchair. He propelled himself down the warehouse towards Dennis Chilcott, who was walking up to meet him.
‘We have a small problem,’ said Dennis.
‘Tell me,’ said El Osito, used to problems, relaxed about them now.
‘I agreed to release the girl if Charles Boxer handed himself over,’ said Dennis, ‘but the girl tried to escape and in the process saw one of my dealers’ faces. I’ve arranged to have the dealer terminated, but we don’t know if that’s been successful yet. If we let her go, she can compromise our whole operation.’
‘That is not a problem,’ said El Osito. ‘I will deal with them both, personally.’
Dennis glanced at Jaime, who sent his eyebrows over a low jump.
‘Follow me,’ said Dennis.
El Osito had to restrain himself, constantly braking to stop from running into the back of Dennis’s legs. They reached the steps to the basement. Dennis trotted ahead and opened the door, looked down the corridor, beckoned to Darren.
‘Where’s the girl?’ he said quietly.
‘She’s in a separate room,’ said Darren, pointing to a closed door.
‘You wait outside. I’m going to try and keep this under control,’ said Dennis. ‘Help Jaime bring him down the stairs in his wheelchair.’
El Osito was teetering at the top of the steps, couldn’t wait to get on with things.
‘Good to see you, Darren,’ he said. ‘We need a strong boy like you.’
Jaime tilted back the wheelchair, Darren grabbed the front and they lifted him down, eased him around the corner and sent him along the corridor to Dennis at the end.
Dennis pointed him into the room. El Osito swivelled round, drove himself into the room, nearly rammed the bed, hadn’t expected it to be so small.
‘Cut away his blindfold,’ said El Osito, getting straight down to business. ‘We have to see each other’s eyes. Get rid of the mattress.’ Jaime stepped forward, pulled the mattress out from underneath Boxer, who was cuffed to the four corners of the bed. He was now lying directly on the wire mesh stretched over the metal frame. Jaime cut away the tape over the sleeping mask and stripped it off his face. Boxer squinted against the neon in the room.
‘Cut away his clothes,’ said El Osito. ‘He should be naked . . . just as I was when he came to me.’
El Osito had already seen the wires attached to the bed, which passed through a small box for controlling the current. He was pleased. The Chilean DINA had used this sort of thing, but it was not what he had in mind for Boxer. He had something far more psychologically excruciating for him. The man had inflicted terrible injuries on his legs and would probably be expecting the same from El Osito, but he’d decided to be much more imaginative than that. This was not going to be tit for tat. His intention was to utterly debase Charles Boxer before he sent him into the ultimate darkness.
Jaime cut away Boxer’s shirt, trousers and underpants. He stepped back with the shredded clothes, leaving him naked. Boxer looked at El Osito calmly as Jaime plugged in the bed and placed the control box in his boss’s lap.
‘And so, mi compañero,’ said El Osito.
‘What is it about me, El Osito, that makes you think I’m your compañero?’
‘I use that word just to remind you,’ he said, ‘that you and I are the same. Maybe you think we are different, that you are good and I am bad. Perhaps you see yourself as some avenging hidalgo . . . what is hidalgo in English?’
‘A knight.’
‘Like noche? That is good. The dark night.’
‘There’s a “k” at the beginning, which is silent,’ said Boxer. ‘The silent dark knight,’ said El Osito, nodding.
‘Maybe “nobleman” is more accurate.’
‘You know what I found out today?’ said El Osito. ‘The autopsy they did on the girl you thought was your daughter? It showed that she was not murdered. She had a heart attack from a toxic mixture of alcohol and cocaine. It happens. Just bad luck. Funny, don’t you think, after all we’ve gone through?’
‘More ironic than funny,’ said Boxer.
‘You know, maybe you are too relaxed. Maybe I have to bring some, how you say . . . tension into the game,’ said El Osito, switching on the current.
Boxer’s body spasmed as the electricity spiked into him, tried to arch away from it, but it was all over the bed frame. El Osito turned it up some more so that Boxer started to convulse, had to work hard to stop himself from biting his tongue. His body jerked wildly as the pain shot into his head from his feet and out to his hands, his muscles contracting and contorting against the powerful impulses. El Osito looked at him calmly until Boxer finally shouted out in agony. Only then did he ease back the current.
‘Now we bring in the girl,’ said El Osito.
‘Not the girl,’ said Jaime in Spanish. ‘She’s nothing to do with this.’
‘You bring the girl,’ roared El Osito. ‘Now!’
‘He want you to bring the girl,’ said Jaime, looking down th
e corridor.
‘No,’ said Dennis. ‘That’s not going to happen. She’s not involved.’
El Osito put down the control box, reversed into the corridor. ‘What you say, Dennis?’
‘The girl is off limits.’
‘I’m sorry, Dennis. I don’t understand. You tell me you want me to deal with the girl. I say, no problem. Now you tell me the girl is off limits. What is this off limits? This makes no sense to me.’
‘You do whatever you have to do to him in there,’ said Dennis. ‘He smashed up your legs. I can understand that. But the girl’s got nothing to do with it. You leave her out of it.’
‘But you still want me to kill her?’ said El Osito. ‘That’s what you say to me. The girl has seen one of your compañeros’ faces. She has to die.’
‘Yes, but you don’t involve her in what you’re doing to him.’
‘But she is the reason he is here. Without her being so stupid none of this would have happened. She too has a price to pay.’
‘And she will pay it, but it will be clean.’
‘Now, I think, if I’m not mistaken, that we’re talking about money again, aren’t we, Dennis?’ said El Osito. ‘How much is it worth to you? I know you. You always thinking about the business. So how much do you want?’
‘This has got nothing to do with business.’
‘I don’t agree,’ said El Osito. ‘Let me see now. I give you two months’ free product. How about that? Five hundred kilos . . . free.’
‘Look, Osito. This isn’t anything to—’
‘Three months? How about four? By then you taking the three hundred kilos. So that make eleven hundred kilos free,’ said El Osito. ‘The girl, she is going to die anyway.’
Dennis pushed open the door to his left. Amy was lying trussed up on the floor like a small goat he’d once seen in Mexico waiting to be slaughtered for a lunch party. ‘She is going to die anyway’ resounded through his head as he calculated the street value of the product El Osito was offering. Sixty million pounds. It was too much. El Osito had found his price. Everybody had one. He backed off down the corridor with Jaime’s ferocious eyes on him and left the basement.
‘Now, bring the girl, Jaime,’ said El Osito quietly.
They were sitting in the back of an unmarked van on Grange Walk: Makepeace, Mercy, Lomax and the four men from the Metropolitan Police Firearms Unit. They had gone over the plan several times and were just taking one last look at the map of the warehouse and estate and how they were connected.
Makepeace stayed in the van while Lomax led the firearms unit and Mercy up Grange Walk and into Neckinger. They kept close to the wall of the warehouse. The lead officer of the firearms unit opened the padlock and silently unthreaded the chain. Another officer squirted lubricant onto the gates’ hinges so they didn’t squeak. Lomax went in. The four officers hugged the warehouse wall, weapons ready: Heckler and Koch MP5SF semi-automatic carbines and Glock 17 pistols.
Lomax slid the key into the lock of the small door within the two big wooden gates of the main warehouse and let himself in, flipping the lock onto the latch as he stepped inside. Dennis was sitting in a cheap white plastic chair with his head in his hands while the driver of the VW Caravelle stood over him looking hopeless. The screens showing the output of the CCTV cameras were unmanned.
‘It’s only me, Den,’ said Lomax, seeing the shock on Chilcott’s face.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he said.
‘I just couldn’t take it,’ said Lomax. ‘From the moment I left you, I haven’t been able to get the girl out of my head. I’ve been driving around all over London. Don’t know what to do with myself. I’m desperate, man.’
‘You and him, both,’ said the driver.
‘So what’s going on?’ asked Lomax.
‘You don’t want to know,’ said the driver. ‘She’s in there with the Colombian nutter.’
‘Nobody moves,’ said a voice from the door. ‘Not a finger. Hands on heads the lot of you.’
‘Oh, my fucking Christ,’ said the driver as the firearms unit came in one after the other, spreading into the room. ‘What the fuck have you gone and done now?’
‘Shut it,’ said one of the officers. ‘The three of you stand in line. That’s it. Drop to your knees. Now face down, hands on the back of your heads where we can see them.’
Two officers went over and frisked all three men, before pulling Lomax to his feet. They marched him down the warehouse, leaving Dennis and the driver with the remaining two officers, who taped their mouths shut and cuffed their hands behind their backs. One officer stayed behind while the other called Mercy in before jogging down the length of the warehouse.
Lomax opened the door, went into the alleyway.
‘Hey, Darren, come here. Den wants a word,’ he said.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘I came back because of the girl. Den wants to talk to you about her. Can’t forgive himself. We’re going to get her out.’
Darren walked up the alley, a puzzled look all over his face. He turned into the warehouse, walked straight into a Glock 17 at eye height and stopped dead.
‘The door to the basement, Darren, is it locked?’ asked the firearms officer.
‘You fuck . . . ’ said Darren, staring into Lomax with lacerating hatred.
‘Yeah, all right, Darren,’ said the officer. ‘Answer the question or you’re looking at kidnap and accessory to murder.’
‘It’s open,’ he said. ‘They haven’t locked it.’
‘How many in there?’
‘Two. The Colombian in the wheelchair and Jaime the Mexican.’
‘Are they armed?’
‘I don’t know. I doubt it unless they’ve managed to buy some guns since they arrived from Madrid.’
‘Not a word now, Darren,’ said the officer, who walked him back to join Dennis and the driver on the floor. He beckoned to Mercy, pointed her to the doorway to the alley.
The two other officers marched down the alley and trotted down the steps to the door to the basement. The lead officer eased the handle down.
Jaime cut the plastic cuffs around Amy’s ankles, got her to her feet. She was trembling, barely able to stand. She’d heard the entire exchange between El Osito and Dennis. Jaime put an arm around her shoulder to support her and brought her into the room where El Osito was watching Boxer. He put her in the corner. She was whimpering like a hurt animal.
‘Cut her hands free and take her mask off,’ said El Osito.
‘What’s going on?’ said Boxer. ‘I had a deal with Dennis and this was not part of it. He said she would not be involved and he would let her go. This is between you and me.’
‘Not any more, mi compañero,’ said El Osito. ‘Dennis just sold me the rights to do what I want. You, take off your clothes.’
‘Come on, Carlos, for God’s sake,’ said Jaime. ‘This isn’t right . . . ’
‘Shut up, Jaime,’ roared El Osito. ‘You don’t tell me what is right. Give me a hit.’
Jaime handed him the bag of cocaine. El Osito took two pinches from it, one for each nostril.
‘You strip naked,’ he said to Amy, pointing a thick powdery finger into her face, which had no mask now and revealed the full terror streaming from her eyes. Her lips quivered as the diamond points in his black eyes drilled into her.
‘Don’t do it,’ said Boxer.
El Osito picked up the box, turned on the current so that Boxer started to writhe and buck on the bed.
‘I only stop when you take your clothes off,’ said El Osito. ‘Every second you delay the current goes up.’
‘I don’t know what to do.’ she cried.
‘You do what I tell you,’ said El Osito, easing up the dial so that Boxer started to shout and scream.
She couldn’t bear it any l
onger. In seconds she stripped to her underwear.
‘Naked,’ said El Osito.
Jaime stepped back into the corridor, couldn’t bear to watch this any more, the girl’s terror was too degrading. He gripped his face in his hands, trying to force out this new range of horror images.
Amy was naked. She squatted in the corner trying to hide herself from the monster in the wheelchair. She was crying uncontrollably. El Osito turned the current to the bed off. Boxer’s body flattened on the bed and twitched. He was bleeding from the mouth. There was the smell of singed hair in the room. He stared at El Osito, his heart racing, the blood pinging in his throat.
‘Now you see,’ said El Osito, eyes locking onto his. ‘There are far worse things than some broken knees.’
Boxer realised that nothing was going to stop this now. The monster was out of his cage, no physical or mental restraints. Pure evil inhabited the room. So powerful was its presence that even Boxer couldn’t stop himself from trembling as the Colombian snorted more coke and his face darkened, losing all expression so that anyone who looked into it would know that an appeal for humanity was wasted breath. The Colombian’s lightless eyes fell on the naked and trembling figure in the corner of the room, as she desperately tried to make herself a part of the wall.
‘Now you,’ said El Osito, ‘get on top of your father.’
Boxer, his face contorted with pain and shock, jerked his head off the bed and, straining against his cuffs, roared at the Colombian. What part of this monster’s mind had been so ruined that he could bring such a hideous image to mind? It seemed too terrible for this to be any ordinary hatred, but was rather some dark, ancient, atavistic horror which had been released to take its revenge on humanity.
‘I can’t take this any more,’ roared Jaime in Spanish.
He ripped out the Walther PPK from inside his jacket. Vicente had told him to wait until El Osito had killed the Englishman, but this was too much. He aimed at the back of El Osito’s head, pulled the trigger. The noise was so loud in the hard confines of the room that for a while nobody could hear anything except the high-pitched whine of evil receding.