‘Correct,’ he said, ‘and I don’t often make house calls.’ His voice was deep and slow and heavily accented. ‘But in your case I have made an exception.’ His English was excellent. ‘There is something I would like you to see.’
Mendoza took a step back and shone the torch at the kneeling figure on the ground. ‘Okay.’
Another man stepped behind the man and put a silenced pistol at the base of his skull, angling it upwards slightly.
‘Okay,’ Mendoza said again.
The trigger was pulled. The bullet entered the kneeling man’s head and exited through his left eye socket, taking that side of his face with it. He pitched headlong, writhing and jerking.
The killer stood over him and shot him twice more in the head, making him still.
Mendoza’s big head turned. He smiled at Marty. He had a big mouth, full of white, even teeth. ‘I want you to kneel down.’
‘Oh, Jesus, no,’ Marty gasped. He twisted away and tried to run. Hands held him tight and forced him down to the ground.
Debbie was feeling so weak she could not move. Her limbs would not respond. She felt as though she had been turned into frog spawn, or blubber, or something which had no form or substance. She was caught in a nightmare. In one way it did not feel real, in that, surely, this could not be happening to her. For God’s sake, she was a hairdresser. In another way, she knew that it was real, that she was here and that these events were definitely happening to her.
‘Harry, I feel sick,’ she moaned.
‘Yeah, me too,’ he responded. He had waited long enough to motivate her to move and was becoming irritated by her inaction. He pulled on his jacket and went to the window to look down at the car park. ‘But we need to move, get on, get out of here,’ he pleaded.
‘I know, I know — just give me a moment.’ Debbie rolled on the bed and drew her knees up into a foetal position. ‘I can’t stand up. I feel like I want to spew.’
Dix closed his eyes. He sighed and sat next to her. She grabbed one of his hands between hers and held it tight, transmitting her tremors to him. He stroked her hair.
‘It’ll be all right. We’ll just put a bit of space between them and us, chill out somewhere, make some plans, then go for it. How does that sound?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ she said weakly.
‘I love you, y’know,’ he told her.
She nodded numbly.
Dix tensed. He’d heard a vehicle coming into the car park. He sped back to the window and peered out through the gap in the curtains. It was the van which had taken Marty away. It had returned.
‘Shit, they’re back.’ He picked up the holdall, grabbed her arm and dragged her roughly off the bed. She whinged and he shook her. ‘We’ve got to move — now!’
He started for the door.
She made no attempt to follow him.
‘Now!’ he yelled.
The expression on her face changed as a dawning realization jarred her into action.
‘Come on,’ he urged her.
At the door he turned right down the corridor and headed for the fire escape at the far end. He burst through on to the steps outside, Debbie now right behind him. He closed the door and ducked down out of sight as four hooded men appeared at the far end of the corridor and crashed into room 34.
Ten minutes later the van was back on the car park where Marty was still being held down on his knees. The men climbed out and went over to Mendoza. Marty closed his eyes in desperation when he saw that none of them was carrying the holdall. It meant they had missed Dix. It also meant something far more fundamental.
Mendoza and the men from the van talked in hushed tones.
Marty looked at the body of the man who had been executed. A surge of fear corkscrewed through his intestines. His breath shortened and he swallowed back an urge to vomit.
Mendoza moved away from the men. Marty heard him say, ‘Gracias.’ He squatted down by Marty and lifted his chin up gently with the tip of his forefinger, so they were eye to eye.
‘Your friends have gone.’ There was a sort of sadness in his voice.
‘Give me a chance. He has the money. I can find him and I can pay you.’ Marty was frantic.
Mendoza shook his head. ‘Too late. Too many promises broken. Too much debt.’ Mendoza placed his hands on his thighs and pushed himself up. Marty’s eyes rose with him, pleading. Mendoza nodded at someone standing behind Marty.
The last thing Marty Cragg felt before his brain exploded was the muzzle of a gun being pushed into the back of his neck.
Nine
Henry Christie re-read through the photocopy of the custody records relating to Marty Cragg which had caught his interest previously. Every time a prisoner is brought into custody, they are allowed certain rights which can be delayed, but never totally withheld except under certain circumstances, for example, if the custody sergeant believes the prisoner is too drunk to understand what is being said, or is too violent, or both.
This had been the case on the night about six months earlier when Marty Cragg had been arrested for a fairly minor public order offence outside a Blackpool nightclub. According to the custody record, Cragg had been brought in and had been very drunk and abusive towards the arresting officers and also to the custody sergeant. Most detainees do not realize, particularly when under the influence of alcohol, that to be abusive to the sergeant is a bad move.
In Marty’s case, his behaviour resulted in him spending very little time chatting to the sergeant. He was forcibly restrained and searched and immediately heaved into a cell, the door slamming shut behind him, and he did not get his rights. He banged continually on the cell door and shouted verbal abuse for at least another hour. He urinated on the door, followed this by vomiting around the cell and then fell asleep. He had been arrested at 2.05 a.m. and was deemed to be fit enough to receive his rights, after mopping up his cell, some nine hours later at 11.15. The notes on the custody record said that he was compliant, quiet and apologetic. He was released an hour later following a written caution given by the sergeant. Because of the minor nature of the offence for which he was arrested, he did not have to provide fingerprints or a DNA sample.
Henry shook his head.
How things had changed, he pondered sadly. In his formative years as a young PC, everyone arrested would be charged and go to court and get fined at least. Not these days. Everybody got cautioned to death, or referred to some agency or other. Getting locked up meant little to people and a caution was just a piece of paper to blow your nose on. They only ended up in court for persistent offending.
And Marty Cragg had been fortunate. He had only been arrested once before for that particular offence, so he got cautioned and kicked out.
Henry’s face showed its displeasure. The criminal justice system, he thought bleakly, is fucked.
He re-read Marty’s list of previous convictions, which included several assaults. Henry decided he needed to know more about these, so he phoned down to the brainy people in the intelligence unit and asked the woman who answered to do a bit of research for him. She muttered about how busy they were, but Henry had no qualms in pulling rank for once, moaning bitch.
Then he returned to the custody record and the point at which Marty had been given his rights.
Then he had a thought and picked up his newly issued, state of the art, cancer-inducing (if reports were to be believed) TETRA radio. These new-fangled things enabled any officers in the force to talk to any other officer by simply dialling in their collar number. It did all sorts of other wonderful things, too, except tell you how to do the job. On the off chance that the officer who arrested Cragg was on duty, Henry dialled the number. He got an immediate reply.
‘Hi,’ said Henry affably and introduced himself. ‘Are you anywhere near the nick at the moment?’