“Stop it! Please, no more! Leave her alone!” She started sobbing, but Dee heard nothing more.
“Go and get her down, Johnny. You too, Dave,” Sonny ordered. “And you three can stop this one bleeding all over my floor.”
***
When they had escaped from the chains, Dee had checked the factory floor below and, finding that they were not being observed, she helped Lavender climb onto the flat roof of the two storey office building. Dee handed up the remaining water and said, “No matter what happens, lie flat and still in the middle of the roof and don’t make any noise at all. Someone will come and get you.”
“Can’t I come with you?” Lavender had pleaded, afraid to be left on her own.
“No, darling,” Dee replied, her voice soft and calming. “We won’t make it far and they have guns. We have to make it look as if you got away. OK?”
Lavender remembered that conversation, and the promise she’d made, but she couldn’t let Dee die just so that she could stay hidden. Dee was the closest thing she’d had to a real friend since school.
Dee now lay on the table on the sleeping bag. She seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness. Sonny had ordered Johnny and Dave to look after the hostages. He didn’t want to leave them with the Dutch thugs. Johnny had cut off the leg of the cat suit to expose the wound. It wasn’t the neat round hole that might have been expected. The wound was ragged. It was black on the edges, and he could see the white fat layer under the skin. It was surprisingly white. He stepped back when he suddenly realised he could see the muscles beneath.
Dave took over. He lifted the leg and placed his hand underneath; he could feel the bullet under the skin.
“It’s not a through and through, mate,” he said to Johnny. “I’m not an expert, but I reckon if it doesn’t come out, by tomorrow night she’ll be in real trouble.”
“What a mess. Can we get it out, do you think?”
“No choice, Johnny. Go and get my toolbox, it’s in the next room.
Lavender listed to the conversation with increasing horror.
“You can’t cut her open! You’re not a doctor. You don’t know what you’re doing!” she sobbed.
“Look, Miss, that isn’t strictly true,” Dave answered. “I was in the army, in Afghanistan, and we often had to do emergency medical on our mates or they would never have made it to the field hospital. I promise I’ll do my best, if you help.”
Lavender shook her head, shrinking back. “I can’t watch you cut her, I just can’t.”
“I know, it’s tough. I’m going to roll her into the recovery position which will protect her if she vomits. It’ll also give me access to the bullet. I want you to roll up some of that leather until it’s about an inch thick and put it between her teeth on top of her tongue. That’ll stop her biting her tongue while I’m working.”
Johnny opened Dave’s bomb making tool kit and wasn’t surprised to see the neatest and most organised tool box in London.
Dave took a Stanley knife, or box cutter, out of the box and took a brand new blade out of its waxed paper. He then picked up a small bottle containing clear liquid.
“This is pure alcohol. I use it to clear residue from the ends of wires before I terminate them. It gives a better connection.”
Dave cleaned the new blade with the alcohol and slipped it into the knife. He swabbed the area around the bullet, which was clearly visible below the surface.
“Right, you both need to hold her down. The squaddies in Afghanistan were doped up with Morphine and they still kicked.”
Lavender took Dee’s head and shoulders, and Johnny took her legs. When he was happy she was restrained, Dave made the one inch cut. The new blade parted the skin with alarming ease. Dee moaned but didn’t struggle.
Dave laid down the knife and picked a pair of alloy pliers with a pointed nose. He had to use non-magnetic pliers when making or disarming bombs, as lots of wires and bomb components would become magnetised during assembly and the last thing you wanted to do was to attract the wrong wire to your pliers.
After dousing the pliers with alcohol and cleaning them thoroughly, he told his helpers to brace themselves. Dave put the closed pliers into the middle of the cut and opened the jaws. The bloody bullet stared out at him. Dee started yelling and trying to move her leg but Johnny held on tight. Realising he didn’t have much time, Dave prayed that his first effort would succeed and fixed the jaws of the pliers around the bullet, then retracted them slowly.
He dropped the bullet on the table and examined it closely. It appeared to be complete. The bleeding was minimal and so, wrapping the jaws of the pliers in a hygienic wipe, he cleaned the wound inside and out. Dee was back to moaning.
Dave would have stitched both wounds if he’d had some means of doing so, but he didn’t have anything close to a needle and thread. Improvising, he securely taped a cotton bud to each side of the wound and had Johnny pinch the sides of the wound together. This caused Dee yet more agony, whilst he taped two more cotton buds across the first two. Satisfied that the framework of plastic cotton bud shafts was holding the wound closed, he reinforced the structure with more medical tape before applying sterile dressings front and back. The task was completed by wrapping a bandage around the leg and tying it off.
Dee was in shock, but there was little they could do about that.
“Will she die?” Lavender asked, her voice trembling.
“No, but she’ll be in bad shape for a few hours. You’ll have to nurse her through it. And make her sip some water. Don’t let her gulp it down, though.” Dave closed the door.
“Johnny, what have we got ourselves into here? We took that girl. We’re responsible her safety.”
“I know, Dave. I felt bad about this from the off, do you remember me saying?” Dave nodded. “Dave, at least one of us stays with the girls at all times, right? When we hand them over tomorrow I want them in good order. I don’t want some mad boyfriend chasing me because we killed his girl.”
“All right, Johnny. Kidnapping’s is one thing, murder is something else entirely. We need to agree to protect these girls, whatever it takes!”
“Whatever it takes,” Johnny repeated, as they closed their fists and touched knuckles.
Chapter 7 3
398 High Rd, Tottenham, North London. Sunday 1:30pm.
Don Fisher and I had been ushered into a marginally more pleasant meeting room, its walls adorned with posters about the collection and disposal of used needles, child abuse and a particularly gruesome one picturing a victim of domestic abuse. Her face was so distorted with bruises, stitches and swelling that she did not look human. It struck me as a little tactless to sit us under that particular poster when Dee and Lavender were in the hands of brutal criminals.
DS Scott joined us in the room.
“Right, gents, we should be moving into position in five minutes or so, but let me update you on where we are.”
DS Scott looked down at a clipboard that had around half a dozen sheets clipped to it. The clip on the top was blue, the corporate blue of the Metropolitan police. The sheets it held were a mix of printed and handwritten, but all carried the police logo.
“At noon Europol launched simultaneous armed raids in The Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels and Strasbourg. Local police forces were also scheduled to hit targets in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania but they won’t report back any time soon.
In The Netherlands there was some armed resistance and five suspects are being treated for injuries. Van Aart instructed his people to stand down, preferring to fight with lawyers rather than guns. In all over one hundred and fifty arrests were made and sixty two young East European girls were freed from a holding camp in The Hague.