NATIONAL TREASURE Barry Faulkner (the little red hen ebook .txt) 📖

‘But they’ve no reason to – if Harry knew where the missing money was he’d tell them, he’d want to keep on their good side for future business. He’d have no reason not to tell them, and they’d have no reason to kill him – no reason at all.’

Gold shut the laptop. ‘Which leaves the question, who killed Harry?’

‘And why?’

‘Well, two reasons to kill him. One, the killer wanted information out of Harry that he wouldn’t or couldn’t give them – or two, he knew who the Randall accomplice was who has the money and was threatening to tell the Bogdans, so the accomplice killed him.’

‘It’s a bit of a jigsaw, isn’t it.’

‘Yes, and the final piece is still missing.’

     CHAPTER 15

Outside the Clapham Industrial Estate I pulled up behind two ARVs full of AROs in full attack gear, from their helmets to their boots. Behind them, two minibuses of uniformed officers and a couple of plain cars with OCOs waited silently. Clancy wandered over.

‘The Bogdans’ unit is a single ground floor warehouse, fifty metres by thirty. The windows have strong grilles welded over them and are blacked out. The door is steel with no outside handle – it’s a typical drug factory. I’ve got twenty AROs going in after they blow the door in. There’s a back door, all steel again, so I’ve armed plainclothes round there in case some make a run for it that way.’

‘What if there’s a tunnel?’ I remembered the one at the club in Bucharest.

‘A tunnel? This is Clapham, Nevis, not Colditz. Here, take this so you can follow what’s happening.’ He passed me a radio. ‘And stay here until we’ve got the place locked down and safe. Then you can come and take a look, see if you recognise anybody.’ He walked off.

Gold and I watched as the AROs left their vehicles and moved quickly in single file, their MP5SFA3 semi-automatic carbines clutched to their chests, fingers on trigger. The uniforms followed with the plain clothes OCOs. The line disappeared quickly into the industrial estate. We could hear the instructions through the radio.

‘Line against the sidewalls. When the door goes in, we go in. Be alert, these bastards are probably armed.’ There was a short pause, then, ‘All ready to go, sir.’

Clancy gave the order. ‘In your own time, sergeant.’

There was a silence and then the crack of an explosive charge going off and lots of shouting. ‘Armed police,’ ‘Lay down, armed police’, ‘Stay where you are, armed police’, ‘Armed police’... Then silence.

Clancy’s voice. ‘What’s happening, sergeant?’

‘Place is empty, sir.’

‘Can’t be, surveillance saw eighteen people go in this morning and nobody’s left.’

‘It’s empty, sir.’

Gold and I exchanged knowing glances as I started the car and swung it round in the road, the tyres screeching a protest. I was going to follow the streets that ran along outside the boundary of the estate until we found what we knew would be there. One of the roads was a one way coming towards me; Clancy could pay my fine if a camera caught me. I hurtled down it with the oncoming traffic braking to a halt either side; I could do with a magnetic blue light to whack on the roof, must get one. All the time Gold and I had our eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead; we both knew what we were looking for, and on the fourth turn at a junction we saw it. A hundred metres ahead the road surface was disgorging people from an open manhole; a few pedestrians not quite believing what they were seeing stood looking in amazement. I noticed Gold had her gun out. Two men were stood beside the manhole helping others out. They turned and saw us; when they realised we were not going to stop, they took out guns and started firing at us. They had let go of the person they were hauling out of the manhole who dropped back into the hole, banging his head like a bagatelle ball in play on the rim as he fell. Ouch! I felt that! But I had to smile.

I swerved the car as they loosed off more shots at us and the tyres screamed their pain as I stood on the brakes to bring it to a halt sideways on towards the shooters. Gold was out of the passenger door, and shielded by the car pumped bullets towards our targets; from twenty metres she doesn’t miss. One fell to the ground, blood soaking through his T-shirt from four holes around his heart and one in his neck; his gun fell from his hand and skated away on the tarmac. The other turned to run, but out in the open he had no chance. My first shot took his left leg from under him, and my second entered the back of his head as he fell. We left the car and approached the open manhole slowly from either side, expecting a head and a gun to appear, but it didn’t. The nearest shooter that Gold had taken out was lying on his front. I turned him over with my boot. Avram Cohen’s dead eyes were open but seeing nothing. The second man I didn’t know, but he wasn’t an Asian worker, so I hoped he was a Bogdan.

I heard the sound of metal sliding on the tarmac and saw Gold kicking the manhole cover back in position, blocking the escape route. I hadn’t taken much notice of the radio and had left it in the car, but now I could hear Clancy screaming down it from twenty metres away. I walked to the car and picked it up from the floor.

‘Nevis here.’

‘Where are you, what’s happening? We heard shots, what’s going on?’

‘Somewhere in the warehouse you’ll find a trapdoor leading to an escape