"Let"s just calm down," said Grimshaw. "We"re in the middle of something here and we don"t want it all to go t.i.ts up."
"As far as I"m concerned, the t.i.ts are already up," said Simpson. "I didn"t sign up for rape. And I sure as h.e.l.l didn"t know that Maloney here had form for it."
"Can we at least stop using names?" said Grimshaw. "We"re not b.l.o.o.d.y amateurs."
"It"s too late for that," said Maloney. "The damage is done. We"re gonna have to top them all. Are you happy now, Simpson? We"re going to have to kill all three of them, however this pans out."
"n.o.body has to kill n.o.body," said Grimshaw. "Look, guys, let"s just put the guns down, get the stuff in the vans and drive off into the b.l.o.o.d.y sunset. Then we can all go our separate ways."
"They know our b.l.o.o.d.y names!" shouted Maloney.
"How many b.l.o.o.d.y Maloneys do you think there are in the phone book, you t.o.s.s.e.r?" sneered Grimshaw. "And a name"s no good without forensics or a face to put to it. We"re cool. Are we cool, Eddie?"
"No, Lex, we"re as far from cool as you can get without falling out of the fridge."
"What? What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"
Simpson waved his shotgun. "I don"t know what it means. I just mean we"re not cool because Maloney"s a vengeful b.a.s.t.a.r.d and as soon as I lower my gun he"s going to shoot me. Aren"t you, Geoff?"
"See?" shouted Maloney. "Now he"s told them my first name."
"Forget the b.l.o.o.d.y names the names don"t mean s.h.i.t," said Grimshaw. He put his hands up as if he was trying to calm a startled horse. "Look, Eddie, tell me what you want to make this right. I don"t want you to pull that trigger and I"m pretty sure you don"t want to either. We can still make a good score here we can all walk away with our heads held high."
"Tell Maloney to go downstairs."
"Sod that," said Maloney.
"Go downstairs, Geoff," said Grimshaw.
"Will you stop using my b.l.o.o.d.y name!"
"It"s too late now. They already know your name."
"So we top them."
"We"re not topping anybody, Geoff."
Maloney waved his gun at Grimshaw. "I"m not going down for this. I"m not going to prison again. Not for you, not for anyone."
"No one"s going to prison," said Grimshaw. "We leaving no forensics. No one"s seen our faces, we"ll all have alibis. Names mean nothing. Now, get the h.e.l.l downstairs and help the guys load the vans."
Maloney hesitated.
"Now!" roared Grimshaw. "Or I"ll b.l.o.o.d.y well shoot you myself."
Maloney muttered under his breath and left the bedroom, pointing a warning finger at Simpson as he went.
"Thank you," Rawstorne said to Simpson. He had rolled onto his back and managed to get into a sitting position next to the bed.
"Don"t thank me," snapped Simpson. "Just keep your mouth shut and let us do what we"re here to do."
Grimshaw picked up the holdall. "What do you want to do, Eddie? You wanna stay here with your new-found friends?"
"This isn"t about choosing sides, it"s about not wanting to get involved in rape," said Simpson. "My sister was attacked a few years back. Got into a pirate mini-cab, b.a.s.t.a.r.d beat her up and screwed her without a condom. She got pregnant, had to have an abortion. Ruined her life. So don"t get in my face about this, okay?"
Grimshaw nodded. "Okay, I get the picture. Fair enough." He put his gun back and pointed at the door. "Time to go."
"Haven"t you forgotten something?"
Grimshaw frowned. "What?"
Simpson gestured with his shotgun at Rawstorne"s mobile phone on the bedside table. "You"re going to leave that there, are you?"
Grimshaw growled and went to pick it up.
Simpson pointed his gun at Rawstorne. "Don"t even think of trying anything," he said. "Maloney"s still downstairs and he"s just looking for an excuse. Stay here and keep quiet. We"ll be gone in five minutes. You wait at least half an hour before you try to get free."
Rawstorne forced a smile. "Thank you," he said.
"I already said don"t thank me," said Simpson. He nodded at Grimshaw. "Okay, let"s go."
Simpson followed Grimshaw out of the bedroom, and closed the door. The two men walked down the landing. The front door was open. Thompson, now wearing a ski-mask, looked up when he saw them coming down the stairs. "What"s going on?" he asked. "Maloney"s as mad as h.e.l.l."
"Screw Maloney," said Grimshaw. "How are we doing?"
"Half a dozen paintings already. The guys are in the library now, fetching the Monet."
As he spoke, Matt Burrowes, dressed in black and wearing a ski-mask, jogged out of the library, holding a large painting sheathed in bubble-wrap.
"Come on, Matt, get a b.l.o.o.d.y move on," said Grimshaw.
"Be nice if you"d give us a hand," panted Burrowes, heading out of the door.
Grimshaw tossed the holdall down to Thompson. "Shove that in the van," he said. Thompson headed outside.
"Come on, Eddie, help load the vans," said Grimshaw.
Just then they heard staccato shouts outside. "Armed police! Hands in the air now!"
"What the h.e.l.l...?" said Grimshaw.
Maloney came running out of the library, holding his gun in the air. "There"s cops outside hundreds of cops!"
Three men in black overalls wearing bulletproof vests and black helmets and pointing Heckler & Koch carbines appeared at the front doorway. Maloney dropped his gun and threw his hands up. "Don"t shoot!"
The three men fanned out across the hall and another five armed officers rushed in through the door. "Armed police, drop your weapons!" shouted one of the new arrivals.
Grimshaw raised his hands. Simpson flicked the safety on the shotgun but before he could throw it to the floor one of the armed police fired. Simpson"s head jerked back and he slumped to the ground as the gun fell from his nerveless fingers.
Two armed policemen dragged Grimshaw roughly across the driveway to a waiting van. "Okay, okay, I"m not resisting," he said, but his captors ignored him.
The three men who had arrived in the second van were all lying face down while six armed officers covered them with their MP5s. Thompson was standing spreadeagled against a wall while an officer in a bulletproof vest patted him down.
A paramedic was attending to Simpson, dabbing at a graze on his forehead where the police marksman"s bullet had narrowly missed splattering his brains across the hallway. Two armed police stood guard over him, cradling their MP5s. "You were lucky," said the paramedic.
"Yeah, well, I"d have been even luckier if the idiot had held his fire for another second or two," sneered Simpson. "I was b.l.o.o.d.y well surrendering." He scowled up at the two armed policemen. "Was it one of you p.r.i.c.ks that shot me?"
The two men stared at him impa.s.sively.
"Yeah, well, you"ll be hearing from my lawyers, you trigger-happy morons." He winced as the paramedic used a Q-tip to apply antiseptic.
There were half a dozen patrol cars in a semicircle facing the house, their doors open and lights off, with two ambulances. Two paramedics in green overalls and yellow fluorescent jackets wheeled Rawstorne out of the house on a stretcher towards one of the ambulances. His wife, a blanket around her shoulders, hurried after them, dabbing at her face with a tissue. Two female police officers, one wearing a bulletproof vest and a black helmet with the visor up, came out with Amy. She was trembling and hugging herself as she stared blankly at the activity around her.
A female detective with a chestnut bob, wearing a beige raincoat with the collar turned up, hurried over to Angela Rawstorne. "Are you all right?" she asked.
"Of course I"m not all right," she said acidly. "I want to go with my husband."
"That"s not a problem, Mrs Rawstorne," said the detective. She nodded at the paramedics and they helped the woman into the back of the ambulance. Mrs Rawstorne looked over at her daughter and held out a hand. "Amy, come on! Come with us!"
"He"s going to be all right," said one of the paramedics, as Amy climbed in after them.
Mrs Rawstorne put a protective arm around her daughter. "Just b.l.o.o.d.y drive," she snapped. "Get him to a real doctor now!"
Two cops pulled Maloney out of the house. He was struggling and two more rushed over to grab a leg each. They lifted Maloney up and carried him to the van. He bucked and kicked but the four officers were big men and used to dealing with uncooperative prisoners. Maloney cursed and spat at them, but his struggling intensified when he saw Simpson in the back of one of the ambulances. "This is all your b.l.o.o.d.y fault, Simpson!" he roared. "I"ll b.l.o.o.d.y well have you for this."
The detective looked up when she heard Maloney verbally abusing Simpson and went over to the four officers who were restraining him. "Put him in with the other one," she said, gesturing at the van that contained Grimshaw. "Cuff him first and, judging by the way he"s kicking, I"d restrain his legs too." The four armed officers had never met the detective before and didn"t know her rank but her tone was enough to convince them to do as she said.
"You"re b.l.o.o.d.y dead, Simpson," screamed Maloney. "When I get my hands on you, you"re dead meat."
"A gag wouldn"t go amiss either," said the woman, as she walked over to the ambulance where the paramedic was attending to Simpson. She pointed at the injured man. "Keep them apart," she said, to the two armed officers guarding him. "Put him in the van over there." A third vehicle was parked next to one of the armed-response vehicles.
The paramedic finished applying a plaster to the graze. "He"s good to go," he said. "It"s just a scratch."
The two armed officers frogmarched Simpson to the back of the police van. The rear doors were already open and they shoved him inside. The uniforms were just about to slam the mesh door on him when the detective told them to wait. "I"ll ride with him," she said, and climbed in.
"Are you sure, ma"am?" said one of the uniforms.
"Don"t worry, boys, I can take care of myself," she said.
The officers closed and locked the mesh door, then closed the two outer doors.
The detective looked at Simpson and smiled. "Well, Spider, that didn"t go as well as we hoped, did it?"
Dan "Spider" Shepherd, undercover operative with the Serious Organised Crime Agency, scowled at her. He wanted to shout and swear but Charlotte b.u.t.ton was a lady and his boss so he just smiled thinly. "I"ve had better days, Charlie," he said. He put his hand up to touch the plaster and winced. "I"ve got one h.e.l.l of a headache."
"Would you like some paracetamol?"
"I nearly b.l.o.o.d.y well died, Charlie. I"m supposed to be one of the good guys and the cops came this close to putting a bullet in my head."
"Moan, moan, moan," said the van"s driver, as he twisted around in his seat. Shepherd grinned: it was his dour Scottish colleague, Jimmy Sharpe. "Where to, m"lady?" he asked.
"Take us back to the safe-house in Bristol," said b.u.t.ton.
"Can I use the siren?"
"No, you can"t," said b.u.t.ton. "Any more backchat and I"ll drive and you can walk."
The safe-house was an office above an estate agent"s in north Bristol. There were two designated parking s.p.a.ces in the yard behind it and Sharpe parked the police van next to his Lexus. He got out, walked around to the rear and opened the doors, then the cage.
b.u.t.ton stepped out, unlocked a green door that was covered by a CCTV camera and led Shepherd and Sharpe up a flight of stairs where she unlocked a second door. They went into a large, open-plan office with two sash windows overlooking the street below and a small kitchenette off to the right. One wall was lined with surveillance photographs of Alex Grimshaw and his gang. Shepherd dropped down onto a faded tartan sofa. "Why didn"t we know that Maloney was a rapist?" he asked.
"I honestly don"t know," said b.u.t.ton, taking off her raincoat and hanging it on the back of the door.
"The victims were interviewed, presumably. Didn"t anyone pick up the signs?"
"Spider, if someone doesn"t want to tell the police they were raped, there"s not much the police can do about it." She picked up the kettle. "Do you want coffee?"
Shepherd nodded. "Please, yeah."
"I don"t get it. What happened?" asked Sharpe.
"You don"t get it because, as usual, you weren"t anywhere near the sharp end," said Shepherd. "No pun intended."
"Hey, it"s not my fault," said Sharpe. "It was hard enough getting you in the gang. Two of us would have been overkill."
"Let"s not argue the point, boys," said b.u.t.ton, as she switched on the kettle.
"I"m sorry, I"m just a bit stressed," said Shepherd. "Maloney was planning on shooting me, I"m sure he was. I could feel him staring at the back of my head and almost feel his finger tightening on the trigger." He grinned ruefully. "I spun him that old tale about death spasms being enough to pull the trigger. Has anyone ever done any research on that?"
b.u.t.ton smiled. "I don"t think they have." She poured milk into three mugs.
"Well, I"m pretty sure that Maloney didn"t believe it."
"Any booze around?" asked Sharpe, sitting behind the one desk in the office.
b.u.t.ton ignored him and carried on talking to Shepherd. "He didn"t pull the trigger, so all"s well that ends well."
"Let"s not forget that the boys in blue went for a head shot because I didn"t drop my gun fast enough," said Shepherd. He put a hand up to the plaster on his forehead. "An inch to the left and I"d be dead, Charlie."
"I know, but you"re not, so let"s be grateful for that."
"Didn"t they know there was an undercover agent in the gang?"
"They didn"t, no. But it wouldn"t have made any difference because you were all wearing ski-masks."
"Well, I hope whoever fired the shot gets his b.a.l.l.s ripped off," said Shepherd. "Even if I had been one of the bad guys, what he did was bang out of order. I was dropping my weapon my finger was nowhere near the trigger."
"Looking on the bright side, no one"s ever going to think you"re working for SOCA," said Sharpe. "Your legend"s well intact."