Lavender watched as Dee pulled the rods in opposite directions, opening the silver loop which held them. The three rods came free.
“Lavender, please listen very carefully, we don’t have a lot of time. Handcuffs are not that difficult to unlock. The fact is that the main reason you can’t unlock them is that they are often fastened behind your back. These police style speedcuffs are rigid, which means that your hands are held three inches apart and so you can’t reach the lock with either hand. Do you see?” Lavender nodded.
“Our friends downstairs have overlooked the fact that I can reach your handcuff locks, and you will then be able to reach mine, as your hands will be free. Now, hold out your hands and watch me work.”
Dee took Lavender’s right hand and turned it so that the lock was facing upwards. Taking one of the shorter rods from her necklace, she pushed it into the keyhole until it met resistance.
“Handcuff keys have to be simple and universal, because while one policeman might lock you into them, an entirely different one will probably have to release you. So they usually only have two tumblers. The key will have a space, a ridge, another space, another ridge. Like a tiny house key. The way a key works is that the ridges line up with the levers, and the spaces line up with fixed stays, so that when you turn the key the ridges open the tumblers whilst the spaces pass over the blocking stays. If you put in the wrong key the ridges will hit the fixed stays and the key won’t turn. Now, we don’t have a key but we have these three rods, and we should only need two of them.”
Lavender held her breath, watching carefully as Dee pushed the longer rod into the lock.
“I’m going to use the first rod to slide over the first lever like this.” Dee wiggled the rod until she could move the lever. “Now, this exposes the second lever and we do the same again. If we now push both levers at the same time, they should get to the point of equilibrium.”
“What does that mean?” Lavender asked.
“When you use a key to a deadlock, like the one over there on the door, you place the key in the guide, which we call a keyhole. As you turn the key you feel resistance don’t you?”
“Yes, I’m with you so far.”
“Well, that resistance is the key ridges hitting the levers. They are called levers for a reason. When the levers get to the mid-point, the point of equilibrium, gravity takes over and the only reason you keep turning the key is to remove it from the keyhole. Take notice next time you unlock a deadlock. When you get halfway through the rotation, the lock clicks open.”
Dee used the two rods to push the levers, and seconds later there was a click and Lavender’s right hand was free. Lavender unwound the chain from around the handcuffs and she was free to move around, albeit her left hand was still handcuffed.
It took Dee twenty minutes of patient coaching to teach Lavender how to prise the right hand side of her handcuffs open, but when she did she almost whooped with joy. She was so proud of herself that Dee couldn’t suppress a laugh.
Three minutes later both sets of handcuffs were off. Dee decided there wasn’t time for any more on the job lock pick training, and so released the left hands herself.
***
It was a quarter to twelve and Dee was standing at the open door on the upper level, looking out over the factory floor. There was no-one to be seen. Carefully she stepped onto the steel mesh landing at the top of the stairs.
So far, so good, she thought to herself. Since breakfast and the toilet visits, their captors had not bothered locking the door to their room, assuming the chains and cuffs would be more than enough to hold them.
Dee wanted to protect Lavender, and so she gave her explicit instructions that would ensure her safety. Now she had to act before their captors made the rounds again.
There were two cars in the unit; a Black SUV with EU plates, and a Lexus with UK plates. At the bottom of the steel staircase she could see an open half glazed door leading to a small office, and voices were coming from inside. She counted four separate voices. That was good. They were all together.
Rather than use the metal stairs, which would certainly make a noise, she removed her boots and climbed between the landing and the handrail. She hung on to the steel railings, lowering herself down until she was dangling six feet above the ground. A second later she dropped silently to the floor, landing like a cat on all fours.
The fire exits were at the far end of the factory unit, and so Dee circumnavigated the floor, keeping the bulky printing presses between her and the open office door. A few moments later she reached the fire door and her heart sank.
“This door is alarmed,” the notice read, as did the notice over the fire door opposite. They could not go through either of those doors without alerting their captors.
It didn’t really make any difference, Dee reasoned to herself. The difficulties would be the same. As soon as she exited the building the men would be alerted, and she would have to run over unknown terrain barefoot. She had no way of knowing how far she would have to run before finding somewhere to raise the alarm, but she had come too far to back out of this now.
***
The alarm on the fire door was really more of a buzzer, but it was enough to alert the four men in the office. They ran out on to the factory floor, looking around to try to discover what had set the alarm off.
“You two make sure our guests are secure, and we’ll find out what’s going on.”
Rik and Gregor had their guns at the ready as they ran out of the open fire door.
***
Dee had micro seconds to take stock of her location and try to work out which direction she needed to take. The building was an anonymous looking industrial box, with a car park on two sides and a concrete paved path leading to the front entrance. A fence, perhaps seven or eight feet tall, enclosed the site. The fence posts were concrete, with a galvanised steel chain link mesh strung between them. The top section angled inwards and was threaded with barbed wire, so there was no chance of climbing it.
She ran along the paved pathway towards the front of the building, a distance of some seventy five yards. As she got to the front of the building she heard the sound of the fire door crashing open, and she looked back to see two men in pursuit.
She raced across the car park and through the open gateway onto the deserted road, where she almost knocked over a man with a carrier bag who was walking by. Dee wasted no time.
“Please, sir, will you help me? There are armed men chasing me. We both need to run. Find somewhere safe.”
The man looked rather alarmed, but instead of running for his life he did something she wasn’t expecting. He punched her in the face.
“Shit, there were five of them,” she thought to herself as she tried to get up. Her plan was in tatters, but she had to try to keep Lavender safe somehow.
“Lavender, run!” she yelled at the top of her voice, until the tazer disabled her for the second time in a few hours.
Chapter 71
398 High Rd, Tottenham, North London. Sunday 11:30am.
Number 398 High Road in Tottenham is a huge Georgian red brick building with stone features around the Georgian paned windows and a carved stone portico around the door, into which is carved the word POLICE.
The ornate police station stands on a busy dual carriage way and so we had to wait for a change in the traffic lights before we could turn into the car park. The reason we were being hosted at this location was due to its proximity to the Tottenham Press, which was less than a mile away.