The Killing Ground

“I’d say so,” Dillon agreed.

“So let’s go and watch them do it.”

“Why not?” Levin said.

“Well, if you lot are going, I’m going,” Roper a

“Excellent. I’ll travel with you. I never have accompanied you in that contraption. You have your own automatic lift, I’ve observed.”

“We’ll follow in my Mini,” Dillon said. “You can lead the way.”

He and Levin hurried out through heavy rain and got in the Mini. As they waited, Dillon called Billy. “What’s happening?”

“The joint, as they say, is jumping. Lots of punters, no aggravation, and so far we haven’t seen a sign of the two ratbags we’re looking for.”

“Okay. We’ll see you soon. Roper, Ferguson, Levin and I. I’d say we’ll be about twenty minutes.”

“Maybe the bastards have run out on us,” Billy said, but the story was completely different.

DELANEY AND FLANAGAN had spent two hours in an establishment called Festival, where the music rocked and regular visits to the toilet were solely for the purpose of drug taking. By six o’clock, they were out of their heads on cocaine, and the amount of vodka they’d taken with it was lethal. They both had reached that state where they viewed the world with a false belief that it was theirs and that anything was possible.

The car they were in was a Mercedes stolen earlier that day before their visit to the Green Tinker, and Flanagan was driving it with total indifference to everyone else on the road. He scraped three cars, one after another, and narrowly missed a police officer, who raised a hand and then had to jump for his life. Delaney roared with laughter, pulled out his silenced pistol and fired into several shop windows as they passed, then vanished into a warren of back streets leading down to the Thames.

“This is Wapping, man, I know it is,” Delaney said. “The Dark Man, Cable Wharf. Hah, you punched it in right, man.” He pointed at the satellite navigator. “We’re there.”

The Dark Man was ablaze with lights, there was music on the night air, cars parked all along the wharf, a few boats tied up and at the end, Harry Salter’s pride and joy, the Linda Jones, down there.

They swerved into the car park at the side of the wharf just past the pub. “So this is it,” Flanagan said. “So what do we do?” The rain increased suddenly.

“Shoot the place up, man.” Delaney took a half bottle of vodka from the glove compartment and opened it. “Here’s to us.”

He swallowed, then passed it to Flanagan to take a pull, and at that moment, the People Traveller arrived. It stopped and the back opened and Ferguson walked round just as Roper was delivered in his wheelchair. At the same moment, the Mini arrived with Dillon and Levin, and paused a little distance away.

“Christ,” Delaney said. “The guy standing beside the wheelchair. It’s Ferguson.” He pushed open the passenger door, stepped out and fired his silenced pistol wildly at the People Traveller, but Ferguson turned to speak to Roper, leaning. Delaney’s rounds simply hit the vehicle and Ferguson and Roper went down together in a tangle.

Levin jumped out of the Mini and fired at the Mercedes, but it was a difficult shot with Delaney on the far side of the vehicle hurling himself back inside. Dillon put his foot down and rammed the other car’s rear, and Flanagan, in a blind panic, accelerated along the wharf past the Linda Jones and went straight off the end into the Thames. They watched the back end as it tilted and went down to the bottom. They waited, but nobody appeared.

“That’s it,” Dillon said. “It’s forty feet deep around here. Put your gun away. Let’s see about Ferguson and Roper.”

Back at the Dark Man, Harry, Billy and Chomsky were there, with Doyle righting the wheelchair and helping Ferguson up and Roper into the chair.

“We’re fine,” Ferguson told them. “Whoever it was missed us. What’s happened to them?”

“Bottom of the Thames.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ferguson said sarcastically.

“Chomsky was on the door,” Harry said. “He was aware of the shooting, but with silenced pistols, you couldn’t hear a thing in the saloon bar, just the noise of the cars colliding. That’s brought a few out.”

Behind them, some of the punters, glasses in hand, were watching. Ruby came out anxiously, Mary with her, and at the same moment not one police car but three pulled in and a young police sergeant came forward. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Salter. We’ve been chasing a Mercedes over half of Wapping with gunmen shooting at shop windows on the way by.”

“Disgusting, don’t know what the world’s coming to,” Harry said. “Collided with my friends’ vehicle and straight down the wharf.”

“And into the Thames,” Dillon said. “We saw it go down and no one came up.”

“Christ,” the sergeant said.

“We’ll leave you to it and get the Major here inside,” Harry said piously. “I mean with his war record, it’s disgusting that he should be subject to this kind of treatment in his own city.”

INSIDE, BAXTER AND HALL had cleared a couple of booths. Ruby served champagne, Mary helped her. “All in all, I say more than satisfactory,” Ferguson said.

“I should bleeding think so.” Harry chuckled. “Talk about clearing the decks.”

“Volkov can chew on that.” Roper nodded, as the police sergeant came in.

“What can I do for you, Sergeant?” Harry said.

“Just to let you know. A recovery detail’s been booked for tomorrow and a series of reports indicate the people in the Mercedes were a couple of hoods with very bad reputations. They’d stolen the car, spent a few hours at the Festival getting coked up on the way here, and as I told you, shooting half of Wapping up on the way. I don’t know what they intended. Names of Delaney and Flanagan.”

“Never heard of them in my life, Sergeant. A lot of rats around these days.”

The sergeant departed and they all relaxed. “That’s it then, all sorted,” Billy said.

“Except for the question of Hussein Rashid,” Ferguson pointed out.

There was a pause while they thought about it. “Maybe he won’t come. What do you think, Roper?” Dillon asked.

“You know what I think. Now if you don’t mind, I could do with a return to Holland Park. I’m bruised all over.”

THE FOLLOWING DAY, of course, was the day everything came together, the day that the trace element Roper had inserted in his computers came up trumps and that a Citation X chartered by Rashid Shipping departed under a flight plan taking it to Khufra in Algeria. But where to from there?