Not a gun the man had been reaching for at all. But a badge. He was holding up a silver badge. The man was a police officer and they'd just rammed a Flying Squad car.
Squatting on his haunches, Taffy listened to the police siren getting nearer and nearer. Further off in the distance, the clanging of an ambulance bell. The two sounds converged, competing with one another, loud and clamouring, and then suddenly died away as both vehicles reached the pub three streets from where Taffy was crouching in a vegetable patch in someone's back garden. Reflected on the chimneys and slate roofs opposite, flashing blue and red lights, like the blue and red tracer fire spewing from the machine-gun emplacement the night they took Mount Longdon. Some of the blokes thought it made a pretty display, arcing out of the darkness, until they remembered that between each blue and red streak there were five live rounds, any one of which could have your name on it.
That had been some firefight. Taffy's bowels had become liquid and he'd nearly cacked in his britches. Belly-down in a rocky crevice, cushioned by his bergen, he'd stuck the business end of his L1A1 SLR rifle over the top and pumped the trigger. Didn't matter a flying fuck what you were aiming at, the object was to overwhelm the enemy with sheer firepower. That John Wayne Hollywood crap about picking off individual targets, with your head out in plain view, was strictly for the punters. You kept your finger on the trigger until the magazine was empty, slapped in a fresh mag, did it all over again. There was always more ammo where that came from, there was only one of you.
And yet, for all the bowel-churning fear, it was bloody great. What you'd sweated through years of training for, and never dreamed, in all your wildest hopes and imaginings, to be actually engaged in a live firing attack against a real enemy who were trying to kill you. Suddenly everything made sense. You had a role, an identity, a purpose. You were doing the job you'd been made for, doing it with skill, guts, pride, and total uncompromising commitment, and you were going to show those Argie bastards what it was like to come up against a real soldier.
That's what Taffy had been then, a real soldier, still was, always would be.
A fine chill drizzle settled on his face. Time to get mustered. In FIBUA training – Fighting In Built-Up Areas – he'd had to crawl through sewer pipes as a means of infiltrating enemy lines, but bugger that for a lark. Taffy didn't fancy the Cardiff sewerage system, and besides, speed and distance were the top priorities.
Spitting on his palms, Taffy dug into the soft damp earth and plastered his face, smeared the backs of his hands. He could hear shouts now, running footsteps. He straightened up, and taking a couple of deep breaths, ran swiftly across the garden and leapt at the high brick wall, scaling it with ease, and dropped down into the deep shadow of a cobbled alleyway, light as a cat.
A few minutes after 1.30 a.m. he was standing on the hard shoulder of the ring road that connected with the M4. Probably his uniform helped, because only the third truck he thumbed – a Bristol meat packer's refrigerated artic – slowed down and pulled over.
Taffy climbed on board.
CHAPTER 14
From the holding cell Dillon, tieless, beltless, and with no laces in his shoes, was taken two floors up to the interview room. Little more than a cell itself; a bare table, one metal ashtray, two chairs, a sixty-watt bulb in a green plastic shade that threw a cone of light over the man already seated there, somewhere in his thirties with puffy, handsome features gone to seed and a flourishing head of hair streaked with grey that overlapped his collar. He was smoking a Marlboro, and he offered the packet as Dillon sat down opposite him, more out of icy politeness than as a gesture of friendship. And his voice too had an antiseptic ring to it.
'Mr Dillon. I am Alastair Sawyer-Smith.' He pushed a rather dog-eared card across the table. 'I am acting on behalf of Mr Salah Al-Gharib.'
'Thank Christ -' Dillon accepted a light, sucked in smoke. He had a headache and his eyes burned. It was long gone three and he felt strung-out. 'Look, this has all got out of hand… and I have to call my wife, she'll be worried stiff.'
But Sawyer-Smith wasn't listening, glancing instead to a man staring in through the glass panel in the door, studying Dillon hard. Dillon met his eyes and quickly turned his head away, recognising him as the detective who had followed him and Jimmy the day they delivered the diamonds. Whom Jimmy had clobbered and cracked his skull in the gutter.
'Oh shit,' Dillon muttered, closing his eyes.
'I hope you will co-operate fully, as this has been an exceedingly long night. Firstly -'
'It was all a misunderstanding,' Dillon was at pains to explain.
'My clients have been released,' continued Sawyer-Smith smoothly, 'without any formal charges being pressed. Furthermore -'
'What about me and Steve? We've been here all night – your clients got us into this!'
'No, you are mistaken,' Sawyer-Smith contradicted him gravely, his baggy-eyed stare perfectly level. 'The reason the police followed the Mercedes driven by your associate Mr Steven Harris was because the car is owned by a man currently under police investigation.'
Dillon slowly leaned forward into the light, the scar on his left cheek a thin cruel crevice. 'What…?'
But the lawyer had it signed and sealed, all stitched up.
'Clearly you were working for my clients under false pretences, fraudulently using documents which they believed were from the Samson Security Company – a company that denies all knowledge of either hiring you or the driver of the vehicle, Mr Harris.' Having his man on the floor, Sawyer-Smith put the boot in. 'Mr Harris, who by-the-by has no licence, no insurance, and was given a suspended sentence in January of last year…'
'But…' Dillon's hands came up, clutching thin air. 'I wasn't driving…'
'No doubt the security company will take this matter up personally.' Sawyer-Smith got to his feet, picking up a somewhat shabby briefcase with a broken clasp. He looked down on Dillon. 'As far as my clients are concerned, they have agreed to forget the whole embarrassing episode.'
'But what about the damage to the Merc?' Dillon was half-out of his seat, blinking rapidly. 'It's not mine – who's gonna pay for that?'
For the first time Alastair Sawyer-Smith permitted himself a fleeting chilly smile. 'I would say that is the least of your problems, Mr Dillon,' and was gone, leaving Dillon with a dazed expression and two smoking stubs in the metal ashtray.
A shave, a bath, ten hours' kip, that's what Dillon wanted, but it wasn't what he got. Immediately he entered the flat, Steve shambling behind, it was bedlam. He ignored the phone ringing in the hallway and was confronted with Susie's distraught face as she came charging through from the kitchen.
'Where in God's name have you been?' Susie jabbed at the phone. 'You'd better answer it, Frank, they've been calling all morning – half the night.'
Dillon turned haunted, red-rimmed eyes on Steve. 'Jimmy couldn't know about the Merc yet, could he?'
'Frank, answer it.' Susie gave him a shove. 'It'll be the police!'
'We just come from them, we got bail -' Dillon tried to grab her as she brushed past. 'Don't answer it… Susie!'
Somebody hammered on the front door. Susie held her arms out. 'Don't answer, don't open the door,' she warned Dillon, but it was too late, Steve already had. He took one look and slammed it shut.
'It's Jimmy!'
'Open this door, you bastards!' The door shook under the onslaught of kicks and thumps. 'Open it or I'll smash it!'
Dillon said wearily, 'Let him in…'
Susie shook her head at Dillon, her eyes large and fear-filled, as the phone finally stopped ringing. 'Frank, you should have answered that.'