Unlawfully At Large, page 31
part #2 of DCI Tyler Series
Angela returned with the soapy water and towels. They weren’t exactly clean, but they were the best she could come up with.
After washing and drying the wound, Cribbins set about stitching it up. “We don’t have anything to give you for the pain, I’m afraid, so you’ll just have to grin and bear it.”
“Get on with it,” Winston snapped. “I’m not a pussy. I can cope with a few stitches without crying like a baby.”
“Let’s hope you can,” Cribbins said. Without another word, he removed the equipment he needed from his medical bag and laid it out in front of him.
He was going to be using swaged – or atraumatic – needles. These basically came prepacked with the required length of thread attached.
Cribbins used a technique known as the ‘simple interrupted stitch’. Its name is derived from the fact that the surgical thread is cut – interrupted – after each individual stitch. Cribbins had mastered this over the years, although he had never actually practiced it on anyone who was still alive.
Cribbins had surprisingly nimble fingers and he worked with great dexterity. The sutures were placed in position by mounting the swaged needle onto a pincer-like needle holder. The needle point was then pressed into Winston’s flesh on one side of the wound until it emerged again on the other side and the trailing thread was promptly tied with a surgeon’s knot. Starting at the bottom, he methodically worked his way upwards, humming contentedly as he worked.
Winston’s face quickly contorted with pain, but true to his word, he managed to suffer his way through the procedure in silence.
“Not too much longer now, Mr Winston,” Cribbins said cheerfully.
Winston nodded gratefully.
When he had finally finished, Cribbins tidied up and applied a new dressing. “I’ll leave you to bandage the patient,” he told Angela.
Standing up to take his leave, Cribbins paused for a moment. Then, for no apparent reason, he reached down and touched the tip of Winston’s nose with the back of his hand.
Winston swatted it away. “What the fuck you doing?” he snarled, his patience now completely at an end.
“Just checking to see if your nose is moist,” Cribbins said, staring pointedly at Angela. There was a mischievous twinkle in his eye, and she had to look away to avoid smiling.
Winston was clearly at a loss. “My nose is what? I thought that’s what vets did with animals?”
Horrified, Garston grabbed hold of Cribbins’
arm and virtually frog-marched him out of the room. “Shall we discuss your fee outside?” he said, glancing nervously back over his shoulder at Winston, half expecting him to be reaching for the revolver.
Chapter 24
Wednesday 12th January 2000
The TSG carrier pulled up outside Arbour Square at exactly one minute past midnight. Another carrier was already parked in front of it, along with a marked station van and an IRV. The carrier’s crew, six PCs and a PS, all rushed out and hot-footed it into the building.
“If we’re late for the briefing, Reevo, it’ll be your fault for lumbering us with that useless stop in Commercial Street,” PC Ron Stedman complained. He hated the idea of entering a briefing that was already underway and having every set of eyes in the room turn on them scornfully.
“Sorry,” PC Patrick Reeve said, “but you have to admit it looked like a good stop when I put it up.”
They had just stopped a beat-up car full of scruffily dressed teenagers on their way to the briefing because the occupants were brazenly passing around what PC Reeve thought was a giant spliff, only to find that it was nothing more sinister than an oversized roll up.
“Everything looks like a good stop to you these days,” Stedman said, contemptuously. “You need to get your eyes tested. I reckon all that wanking’s sending you blind.”
Reeve came to an abrupt stop. “What did you say?” he bristled.
Reeve sported a Poncho Villa style moustache that drooped miserably over the sides of his mouth. Whenever he was annoyed, like now, he tended to compress his lips and grate his teeth from side to side, which made his facial hair ripple like something alive was moving around inside.
“It’s obviously affecting your ears too,” Stedman said sarcastically.
“Get a wiggle on, the pair of you,” their leader, Sergeant Bob Beach, shouted from behind.
When they finally reached the conference room, they found the assembled officers standing around chatting, and they were able to slip in without the embarrassment of having a string of people looking at their watches and tutting disapprovingly.
“Talk about cutting it close,” PS Martin Brent said, appearing out of nowhere to join them. Brent was the skipper of the other TSG carrier. “Lucky for you, there’s been a five minute delay or you would have looked like a right bunch of knob-heads.”
“Would’ve been here much earlier if Seventies Cop hadn’t put up a rubbish stop,” Beach said. Everyone on the unit called Patrick Reeve Seventies Cop as he had joined the job in 1979 and all his mannerisms belonged to that era.
At that moment, Tyler, Dillon and Carol Keating entered the room. Locked in conversation, they walked over to Susie Sergeant who was trying – and failing – to reproduce an accurate copy of a road layout on the whiteboard. Holding a red board marker in her right hand and a photocopy of a map in the other, she was desperately trying to get the diagram ready in time for the meeting.
As soon as Beach caught sight of Carol Keating, his face split into a wide grin and he rushed over to say hello.
“Oooh Matron,” he said, tapping her on the shoulder.
Keating’s face blossomed with affection when she realised who had addressed her. “Little Bobby Beach!” she exclaimed, and immediately wrapped her arms around him and gave him a crushing hug. “I haven’t seen you in ages,” she said when she finally released him.
“You haven’t changed one bit,” he told her. “If anything, you look more like Hattie Jacques than ever.”
“Jack, this is Bobby Beach. He used to be on the crime squad with me when I was a DS over at Edmonton, and he’s the bugger who started all this ‘Oooh Matron’ malarkey off.”
Tyler arched an eyebrow. So, this was the culprit. “You’ve got a lot to answer for,” he said ruefully.
Beach belly laughed at that. “I didn’t think it would catch on the way it did,” he confessed.
“Listen, I hate to be a party pooper but I’m afraid I’m going to have to drag Carol away from you so we can get started.”
“No worries, boss,” Beach said. He gave her a little wave. “Catch you later, Carol,” he said with a wink.
Brent sidled up to him the moment he rejoined his colleagues. “Look at you, fraternising with the head suits,” he said, nudging Beach’s arm playfully. “And I think you’re in there, son – with the Hattie Jacques lookalike I mean, not the DCI.”
Tyler’s voice boomed out, stopping all conversation in the room. “Right, ladies and gentlemen, can you all be seated as we’re ready to start the briefing.”
There was confusion and chaos as everyone scrambled to get to their preferred spot, either at the front or the back or in the middle with their mates, before someone else nabbed it. It was like watching a game of musical chairs without the audio. Tyler waited patiently until they had all sorted themselves out and were sitting quietly in the three rows of plastic chairs that had been set out for them.
“Thank you all for coming at such short notice,” he began, looking around the room. There were fourteen TSG officers, four uniforms from Newham Borough, and eight detectives from the murder squad.
“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m DCI Jack Tyler from AMIP. Tonight’s operation is connected to the murder of PC Stanley Morrison, which occurred at the Royal London Hospital on Monday afternoon. He and two colleagues were performing a hospital watch on a drug dealing pimp called Claude Winston, who had been taken to hospital for emergency surgery after collapsing at Forest Gate police station last week with peritonitis. Ironically, Winston was due to be escorted back to Pentonville that afternoon, but before his escorts arrived, a gang of armed suspects burst in and broke him out.”
As he spoke, Steve Bull was walking around the room, handing out briefing packs.
“Of the four people involved in the breakout, one was arrested at the scene, while another was fatally shot by SO19 during the escape. That leaves two suspects outstanding. Tonight, we’re going after the only female in the gang, an IC3 called Angela Marley. Her photograph is in the briefing pack that DS Bull is currently distributing and I would be grateful if you could all study it carefully.”
There was a rustle of paper as virtually everyone started flicking through the document to find the most recent custody image of Marley.
“The information we have is that at approximately eight-fifteen last night, Angela Marley returned to the squat in Vicarage lane, E15 where she has resided for the past few months. The info comes from two officers who are currently conducting surveillance on the venue and is, therefore, reliable. Marley arrived alone, and to the best of our knowledge, she is still inside. The intention is to arrest Marley and search the premises for evidence relating to PC Morrison’s murder. The method will be for the TSG to gain rapid entry into these premises, secure them and everyone inside, and then call the enquiry team forward to search the address in slow time. We have a multi-occupancy Section 8 PACE warrant authorising us to do this. The warrant is with DI Dillon, the big gorilla sitting to my immediate left, and you are all very welcome to have a gander at it before we leave.”
It had become customary to make the warrant available for officers to inspect during briefings so that they could, hand on heart, say that they’d had sight of it before being deployed, should they ever be cross-examined about this at court.
“Before we started the briefing, DI Dillon and PS Brent from 3 Area TSG sat down and discussed tactics regarding the entry. I don’t intend to cover what came out of that here. Suffice to say that PS Brent will conduct a separate briefing for his TSG colleagues before deployment to fine-tune their individual roles and responsibilities.”
Jack walked over to a whiteboard and stared at Susie Sergeant’s handiwork in bewilderment. The road lines were wonky, the junction names were illegible, and a five-year-old with a crayon could have done a better job at drawing the houses.
He glanced down at her and raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t,” she warned.
Tyler turned to face his audience, smiling devilishly. “Now I appreciate that some of you may be looking at this –” he tapped the board “—in confusion and wondering if it’s a work of surrealist impressionism.” A few people chuckled. “Others may have understandably assumed that we left a care in the community patient alone in here, and the drawings on the board are the doodles of a badly disturbed mind.”
Several officers, mainly the detectives who knew Susie, were openly laughing now. Even Susie was giggling.
“Neither of those very reasonable suppositions would be correct,” Tyler continued. “In fact, this strange tangle of lines is actually just a very badly drawn roadmap.”
“I think a care in the community outpatient might have actually done a better job,” Tony Dillon suggested, generating more chuckling.
“Anyway, rather than us being reliant on the board, can I invite you all to turn to page four in your briefing pack, where you will see the actual ordinance survey map this is meant to represent.”
There were more rustles as pages were turned.
Holding the briefing package map up for comparison against what was drawn on the board spawned quite a few more giggles.
“I think we’d better book DS Sergeant an urgent appointment with the force optician,” Steve Bull said in between bouts of laughter.
Susie held up her middle finger and pulled a face at him. “I’ll have you know that it’s not as easy as it sounds to recreate a perfect street map,” she said cattily, but there was no malice in her voice.
The jibes flew in thick and fast after that, but they were all said in good humour.
“Should’ve waited till you were sober to draw it, sarge…”
“I didn’t know you had Parkinson’s…”
“So, I’m guessing you didn’t get an A level in art…?”
Jack allowed them a moment more of laughter and then waved them all to silence.
“Okay,” he said. “As we can just about make out from this amazing illustration, this is the target address.” He pointed to a red square with a tilted triangle on the top and an oblong shape in the middle that was supposed to represent the door. “It’s located in Vicarage Lane, almost directly opposite Hurry Close. According to intelligence, this squat is actually two houses that have been knocked into one, and it’s been awaiting demolition for the best part of a year. I’m told that a TSG unit searched it in late November and helpfully drew the internal layout on the back of the Prem-Search Book 101. Unfortunately, this has been filed on division and we can’t access it until the stores at KF open in the morning.”
Beach held up a tentative hand. He’d thought the address sounded familiar when he’d heard it, but hadn’t realised why until Tyler mentioned that the TSG had recently searched it.
“Excuse me boss, but it was my carrier that spun that address last November. We nicked an Asian prossie called Lola for possession with intent to supply. I don’t know the layout of the whole house, as we only searched the prisoner’s room and the communal areas, but think I can just about remember what they looked like if you want me to draw it.”
Jack considered the offer. “I think it’ll be sufficient for you to just describe the layout as best you can to us, although it might be worth doing a rough sketch for your TSG colleagues when you sit down to go through who’s doing what during the rapid entry.”
“Fair enough,” Beach said. He cleared his throat, aware that everyone was staring at him expectantly. “Feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong,” he said to his crew, who were sitting in a line beside him.
“So, from memory, all the windows and the street door are boarded up. The door is bolted from inside, so to gain entry you have to be let in by someone who’s already there.”
“I take it that means the premises is never empty?” Dillon asked.
“That’s right boss,” Beach confirmed. “This lot are pretty clued in on squatter’s rights and they make sure the house is never vacant so it can’t be repossessed.”
“You wouldn’t think a bunch of drug-addicted hookers would be that well organised,” Carol said, impressed.
“The street door opens up onto a large hallway,” Beach continued. “There are four rooms on the ground floor, two on each side of the hall, and a big kitchen at the rear. The downstairs rooms contain a mix of beds and armchairs, and I get the feeling that this is where the girls bring their punters when they entertain at home. Upstairs, there are seven –”
“Eight,” PC Jay Smith corrected him.
“Upstairs, there are eight bedrooms. Some of these are little more than broom cupboards in which random girls can doss down on a scabby mattress for a night or two whenever they want. Others have been taken over by permanent residents, who have turned them into half-decent bedrooms. Lola, the girl we nicked, had a room at the rear of the house overlooking the garden.”
“That’s very useful,” Jack said. “Am I right in saying that the only way in or out is via the front door?”
Beach shook his head. “Actually, no. The garden backs onto a house in Evesham Road, and there are fence panels missing between the two, so egress into Evesham Road is easily achieved by cutting through the back gardens.”
Jack’s face hardened. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Beach said. “When we went in, a punter saw us and had it on his toes. He went straight out the back, through the missing panels and out into Evesham Road. PC Smith caught him after he’d made a hundred-yard dash. The bloke cried his eyes out when he was dragged back. Turned out he had only run because he was convinced that we would tell his wife what he’d been up to.”
Jack turned to Dillon. “When you’re dishing out the postings, can you make sure we’ve got the back well and truly covered.”
Dillon nodded and made a note in his daybook.
Tyler looked around for Steve Bull. “Stevie, can you just nip out and phone Dick Jarvis for me. Give him the update about there being a back way out.”
Bull raised his thumb in confirmation and slipped out the door.
“Right, as far as the risk assessment goes, the latest update from the officers watching the address is that, in addition to Angela Marley, there are at least two other working girls and four men, presumably punters, inside. They were very boisterous when they arrived. There may be more people inside, but we have no way of knowing. We know Angela’s a heroin addict so there may be exposed needles. There’s nothing to suggest that anyone inside will be carrying weapons, but there may be kitchen knives and other sharps around the place that some idiot might be stupid enough to pick up and use against the officers trying to effect entry, especially if they’re spaced out on booze or drugs.”
Beach said, “Last time we went inside we found a baseball bat hidden behind the door and a kitchen knife concealed under the pillow in Lola’s room.”
“Thank, you,” Tyler said. “Taking into account that Angela Marley is now wanted for murder, I think the unknown risks are high enough that the TSG should make entry in full public order kit, and this has been agreed by PS Brent.”
Tyler looked up as the door opened and Bull reappeared. He shot him a questioning look and was rewarded by a nod that confirmed he had spoken to Jarvis.
PC Stedman raised a hand. “Any suggestion that there will be firearms present?” he asked. It was a reasonable question, bearing in mind guns had been used during the escape.
Jack shook his head, emphatically. He needed to quell this idea fast, before they started giving themselves the jitters. “We’re confident that only the male suspects were carrying guns and there is absolutely no intelligence to suggest any firearms will be present tonight.”
After washing and drying the wound, Cribbins set about stitching it up. “We don’t have anything to give you for the pain, I’m afraid, so you’ll just have to grin and bear it.”
“Get on with it,” Winston snapped. “I’m not a pussy. I can cope with a few stitches without crying like a baby.”
“Let’s hope you can,” Cribbins said. Without another word, he removed the equipment he needed from his medical bag and laid it out in front of him.
He was going to be using swaged – or atraumatic – needles. These basically came prepacked with the required length of thread attached.
Cribbins used a technique known as the ‘simple interrupted stitch’. Its name is derived from the fact that the surgical thread is cut – interrupted – after each individual stitch. Cribbins had mastered this over the years, although he had never actually practiced it on anyone who was still alive.
Cribbins had surprisingly nimble fingers and he worked with great dexterity. The sutures were placed in position by mounting the swaged needle onto a pincer-like needle holder. The needle point was then pressed into Winston’s flesh on one side of the wound until it emerged again on the other side and the trailing thread was promptly tied with a surgeon’s knot. Starting at the bottom, he methodically worked his way upwards, humming contentedly as he worked.
Winston’s face quickly contorted with pain, but true to his word, he managed to suffer his way through the procedure in silence.
“Not too much longer now, Mr Winston,” Cribbins said cheerfully.
Winston nodded gratefully.
When he had finally finished, Cribbins tidied up and applied a new dressing. “I’ll leave you to bandage the patient,” he told Angela.
Standing up to take his leave, Cribbins paused for a moment. Then, for no apparent reason, he reached down and touched the tip of Winston’s nose with the back of his hand.
Winston swatted it away. “What the fuck you doing?” he snarled, his patience now completely at an end.
“Just checking to see if your nose is moist,” Cribbins said, staring pointedly at Angela. There was a mischievous twinkle in his eye, and she had to look away to avoid smiling.
Winston was clearly at a loss. “My nose is what? I thought that’s what vets did with animals?”
Horrified, Garston grabbed hold of Cribbins’
arm and virtually frog-marched him out of the room. “Shall we discuss your fee outside?” he said, glancing nervously back over his shoulder at Winston, half expecting him to be reaching for the revolver.
Chapter 24
Wednesday 12th January 2000
The TSG carrier pulled up outside Arbour Square at exactly one minute past midnight. Another carrier was already parked in front of it, along with a marked station van and an IRV. The carrier’s crew, six PCs and a PS, all rushed out and hot-footed it into the building.
“If we’re late for the briefing, Reevo, it’ll be your fault for lumbering us with that useless stop in Commercial Street,” PC Ron Stedman complained. He hated the idea of entering a briefing that was already underway and having every set of eyes in the room turn on them scornfully.
“Sorry,” PC Patrick Reeve said, “but you have to admit it looked like a good stop when I put it up.”
They had just stopped a beat-up car full of scruffily dressed teenagers on their way to the briefing because the occupants were brazenly passing around what PC Reeve thought was a giant spliff, only to find that it was nothing more sinister than an oversized roll up.
“Everything looks like a good stop to you these days,” Stedman said, contemptuously. “You need to get your eyes tested. I reckon all that wanking’s sending you blind.”
Reeve came to an abrupt stop. “What did you say?” he bristled.
Reeve sported a Poncho Villa style moustache that drooped miserably over the sides of his mouth. Whenever he was annoyed, like now, he tended to compress his lips and grate his teeth from side to side, which made his facial hair ripple like something alive was moving around inside.
“It’s obviously affecting your ears too,” Stedman said sarcastically.
“Get a wiggle on, the pair of you,” their leader, Sergeant Bob Beach, shouted from behind.
When they finally reached the conference room, they found the assembled officers standing around chatting, and they were able to slip in without the embarrassment of having a string of people looking at their watches and tutting disapprovingly.
“Talk about cutting it close,” PS Martin Brent said, appearing out of nowhere to join them. Brent was the skipper of the other TSG carrier. “Lucky for you, there’s been a five minute delay or you would have looked like a right bunch of knob-heads.”
“Would’ve been here much earlier if Seventies Cop hadn’t put up a rubbish stop,” Beach said. Everyone on the unit called Patrick Reeve Seventies Cop as he had joined the job in 1979 and all his mannerisms belonged to that era.
At that moment, Tyler, Dillon and Carol Keating entered the room. Locked in conversation, they walked over to Susie Sergeant who was trying – and failing – to reproduce an accurate copy of a road layout on the whiteboard. Holding a red board marker in her right hand and a photocopy of a map in the other, she was desperately trying to get the diagram ready in time for the meeting.
As soon as Beach caught sight of Carol Keating, his face split into a wide grin and he rushed over to say hello.
“Oooh Matron,” he said, tapping her on the shoulder.
Keating’s face blossomed with affection when she realised who had addressed her. “Little Bobby Beach!” she exclaimed, and immediately wrapped her arms around him and gave him a crushing hug. “I haven’t seen you in ages,” she said when she finally released him.
“You haven’t changed one bit,” he told her. “If anything, you look more like Hattie Jacques than ever.”
“Jack, this is Bobby Beach. He used to be on the crime squad with me when I was a DS over at Edmonton, and he’s the bugger who started all this ‘Oooh Matron’ malarkey off.”
Tyler arched an eyebrow. So, this was the culprit. “You’ve got a lot to answer for,” he said ruefully.
Beach belly laughed at that. “I didn’t think it would catch on the way it did,” he confessed.
“Listen, I hate to be a party pooper but I’m afraid I’m going to have to drag Carol away from you so we can get started.”
“No worries, boss,” Beach said. He gave her a little wave. “Catch you later, Carol,” he said with a wink.
Brent sidled up to him the moment he rejoined his colleagues. “Look at you, fraternising with the head suits,” he said, nudging Beach’s arm playfully. “And I think you’re in there, son – with the Hattie Jacques lookalike I mean, not the DCI.”
Tyler’s voice boomed out, stopping all conversation in the room. “Right, ladies and gentlemen, can you all be seated as we’re ready to start the briefing.”
There was confusion and chaos as everyone scrambled to get to their preferred spot, either at the front or the back or in the middle with their mates, before someone else nabbed it. It was like watching a game of musical chairs without the audio. Tyler waited patiently until they had all sorted themselves out and were sitting quietly in the three rows of plastic chairs that had been set out for them.
“Thank you all for coming at such short notice,” he began, looking around the room. There were fourteen TSG officers, four uniforms from Newham Borough, and eight detectives from the murder squad.
“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m DCI Jack Tyler from AMIP. Tonight’s operation is connected to the murder of PC Stanley Morrison, which occurred at the Royal London Hospital on Monday afternoon. He and two colleagues were performing a hospital watch on a drug dealing pimp called Claude Winston, who had been taken to hospital for emergency surgery after collapsing at Forest Gate police station last week with peritonitis. Ironically, Winston was due to be escorted back to Pentonville that afternoon, but before his escorts arrived, a gang of armed suspects burst in and broke him out.”
As he spoke, Steve Bull was walking around the room, handing out briefing packs.
“Of the four people involved in the breakout, one was arrested at the scene, while another was fatally shot by SO19 during the escape. That leaves two suspects outstanding. Tonight, we’re going after the only female in the gang, an IC3 called Angela Marley. Her photograph is in the briefing pack that DS Bull is currently distributing and I would be grateful if you could all study it carefully.”
There was a rustle of paper as virtually everyone started flicking through the document to find the most recent custody image of Marley.
“The information we have is that at approximately eight-fifteen last night, Angela Marley returned to the squat in Vicarage lane, E15 where she has resided for the past few months. The info comes from two officers who are currently conducting surveillance on the venue and is, therefore, reliable. Marley arrived alone, and to the best of our knowledge, she is still inside. The intention is to arrest Marley and search the premises for evidence relating to PC Morrison’s murder. The method will be for the TSG to gain rapid entry into these premises, secure them and everyone inside, and then call the enquiry team forward to search the address in slow time. We have a multi-occupancy Section 8 PACE warrant authorising us to do this. The warrant is with DI Dillon, the big gorilla sitting to my immediate left, and you are all very welcome to have a gander at it before we leave.”
It had become customary to make the warrant available for officers to inspect during briefings so that they could, hand on heart, say that they’d had sight of it before being deployed, should they ever be cross-examined about this at court.
“Before we started the briefing, DI Dillon and PS Brent from 3 Area TSG sat down and discussed tactics regarding the entry. I don’t intend to cover what came out of that here. Suffice to say that PS Brent will conduct a separate briefing for his TSG colleagues before deployment to fine-tune their individual roles and responsibilities.”
Jack walked over to a whiteboard and stared at Susie Sergeant’s handiwork in bewilderment. The road lines were wonky, the junction names were illegible, and a five-year-old with a crayon could have done a better job at drawing the houses.
He glanced down at her and raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t,” she warned.
Tyler turned to face his audience, smiling devilishly. “Now I appreciate that some of you may be looking at this –” he tapped the board “—in confusion and wondering if it’s a work of surrealist impressionism.” A few people chuckled. “Others may have understandably assumed that we left a care in the community patient alone in here, and the drawings on the board are the doodles of a badly disturbed mind.”
Several officers, mainly the detectives who knew Susie, were openly laughing now. Even Susie was giggling.
“Neither of those very reasonable suppositions would be correct,” Tyler continued. “In fact, this strange tangle of lines is actually just a very badly drawn roadmap.”
“I think a care in the community outpatient might have actually done a better job,” Tony Dillon suggested, generating more chuckling.
“Anyway, rather than us being reliant on the board, can I invite you all to turn to page four in your briefing pack, where you will see the actual ordinance survey map this is meant to represent.”
There were more rustles as pages were turned.
Holding the briefing package map up for comparison against what was drawn on the board spawned quite a few more giggles.
“I think we’d better book DS Sergeant an urgent appointment with the force optician,” Steve Bull said in between bouts of laughter.
Susie held up her middle finger and pulled a face at him. “I’ll have you know that it’s not as easy as it sounds to recreate a perfect street map,” she said cattily, but there was no malice in her voice.
The jibes flew in thick and fast after that, but they were all said in good humour.
“Should’ve waited till you were sober to draw it, sarge…”
“I didn’t know you had Parkinson’s…”
“So, I’m guessing you didn’t get an A level in art…?”
Jack allowed them a moment more of laughter and then waved them all to silence.
“Okay,” he said. “As we can just about make out from this amazing illustration, this is the target address.” He pointed to a red square with a tilted triangle on the top and an oblong shape in the middle that was supposed to represent the door. “It’s located in Vicarage Lane, almost directly opposite Hurry Close. According to intelligence, this squat is actually two houses that have been knocked into one, and it’s been awaiting demolition for the best part of a year. I’m told that a TSG unit searched it in late November and helpfully drew the internal layout on the back of the Prem-Search Book 101. Unfortunately, this has been filed on division and we can’t access it until the stores at KF open in the morning.”
Beach held up a tentative hand. He’d thought the address sounded familiar when he’d heard it, but hadn’t realised why until Tyler mentioned that the TSG had recently searched it.
“Excuse me boss, but it was my carrier that spun that address last November. We nicked an Asian prossie called Lola for possession with intent to supply. I don’t know the layout of the whole house, as we only searched the prisoner’s room and the communal areas, but think I can just about remember what they looked like if you want me to draw it.”
Jack considered the offer. “I think it’ll be sufficient for you to just describe the layout as best you can to us, although it might be worth doing a rough sketch for your TSG colleagues when you sit down to go through who’s doing what during the rapid entry.”
“Fair enough,” Beach said. He cleared his throat, aware that everyone was staring at him expectantly. “Feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong,” he said to his crew, who were sitting in a line beside him.
“So, from memory, all the windows and the street door are boarded up. The door is bolted from inside, so to gain entry you have to be let in by someone who’s already there.”
“I take it that means the premises is never empty?” Dillon asked.
“That’s right boss,” Beach confirmed. “This lot are pretty clued in on squatter’s rights and they make sure the house is never vacant so it can’t be repossessed.”
“You wouldn’t think a bunch of drug-addicted hookers would be that well organised,” Carol said, impressed.
“The street door opens up onto a large hallway,” Beach continued. “There are four rooms on the ground floor, two on each side of the hall, and a big kitchen at the rear. The downstairs rooms contain a mix of beds and armchairs, and I get the feeling that this is where the girls bring their punters when they entertain at home. Upstairs, there are seven –”
“Eight,” PC Jay Smith corrected him.
“Upstairs, there are eight bedrooms. Some of these are little more than broom cupboards in which random girls can doss down on a scabby mattress for a night or two whenever they want. Others have been taken over by permanent residents, who have turned them into half-decent bedrooms. Lola, the girl we nicked, had a room at the rear of the house overlooking the garden.”
“That’s very useful,” Jack said. “Am I right in saying that the only way in or out is via the front door?”
Beach shook his head. “Actually, no. The garden backs onto a house in Evesham Road, and there are fence panels missing between the two, so egress into Evesham Road is easily achieved by cutting through the back gardens.”
Jack’s face hardened. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Beach said. “When we went in, a punter saw us and had it on his toes. He went straight out the back, through the missing panels and out into Evesham Road. PC Smith caught him after he’d made a hundred-yard dash. The bloke cried his eyes out when he was dragged back. Turned out he had only run because he was convinced that we would tell his wife what he’d been up to.”
Jack turned to Dillon. “When you’re dishing out the postings, can you make sure we’ve got the back well and truly covered.”
Dillon nodded and made a note in his daybook.
Tyler looked around for Steve Bull. “Stevie, can you just nip out and phone Dick Jarvis for me. Give him the update about there being a back way out.”
Bull raised his thumb in confirmation and slipped out the door.
“Right, as far as the risk assessment goes, the latest update from the officers watching the address is that, in addition to Angela Marley, there are at least two other working girls and four men, presumably punters, inside. They were very boisterous when they arrived. There may be more people inside, but we have no way of knowing. We know Angela’s a heroin addict so there may be exposed needles. There’s nothing to suggest that anyone inside will be carrying weapons, but there may be kitchen knives and other sharps around the place that some idiot might be stupid enough to pick up and use against the officers trying to effect entry, especially if they’re spaced out on booze or drugs.”
Beach said, “Last time we went inside we found a baseball bat hidden behind the door and a kitchen knife concealed under the pillow in Lola’s room.”
“Thank, you,” Tyler said. “Taking into account that Angela Marley is now wanted for murder, I think the unknown risks are high enough that the TSG should make entry in full public order kit, and this has been agreed by PS Brent.”
Tyler looked up as the door opened and Bull reappeared. He shot him a questioning look and was rewarded by a nod that confirmed he had spoken to Jarvis.
PC Stedman raised a hand. “Any suggestion that there will be firearms present?” he asked. It was a reasonable question, bearing in mind guns had been used during the escape.
Jack shook his head, emphatically. He needed to quell this idea fast, before they started giving themselves the jitters. “We’re confident that only the male suspects were carrying guns and there is absolutely no intelligence to suggest any firearms will be present tonight.”
