Close Call

Chapter 55

Andy, the bald man, yawned loudly. It was almost one o’clock. On the table was a litter of paper plates covered with crumbs, curling sandwiches, sausage rolls and other delicacies provided by the canteen, together with several Thermos jugs of coffee. They had monitored the lorry’s progress for more than four hours as it had worked its way across country from the east coast, come up the M1, then, as if drawn by a magnet, moved west towards Manchester. It had been tailed the whole way by A4 teams.

‘Any news of McManus?’ The Chief Constable had been looking in from time to time during the evening, but now he’d sat down at the table, looking as if he had come to stay. He had been told earlier in the evening about McManus’s text message.

Lazarus shook his head. ‘No, sir. And his phone’s switched off. As is Jackson’s. They may still be at the club, but we don’t know for sure.’

‘Something coming through now,’ Emily, the Detective Sergeant, announced. ‘It’s the Eccles estate.’

On one of the monitors a misty picture came up, showing a stretch of road, some bushes and the outline of a car in the distance, coming towards the camera. Officers Fielding and Pierce from Manchester Police’s CT unit were lying hidden in a shallow ditch that ran along the edge of the estate on the east side. A couple of their colleagues were in similar positions at the west entrance. While Pierce kept a lookout, Fielding lay on his belly and watched through the special nightscope of a videocam recorder he had perched on a low tripod. The feed from Fielding’s camera, displayed on the screen in the Ops Room, showed an Audi coupé slowing as it turned off the approach road into the estate, then driving away from the camera on one of the estate’s narrow roads.

In the Ops Room, Emily said, ‘That’s Jackson’s car.’

‘But where’s McManus?’ asked Peggy.

There was no sign of any other vehicle. Andy was talking into his microphone, and he suddenly held up a hand. He flicked a switch and his conversation was audible on the speaker.

‘Picture’s clear enough,’ said Andy. ‘How many in the car?’

Pierce spoke from the ditch at the estate. ‘Two guys. A black guy – I think it was Jackson. And a white driver. Mid-fifties maybe. Clean-cut.’

‘Thanks.’

The Chief Constable asked, ‘You reckon that’s McManus?’

‘Has to be,’ said Lazarus. ‘Otherwise he would have called us.’

‘Jackson’s no fool,’ said Emily. ‘He’ll be keeping a close eye on everyone around him, and being extra-careful. I’m sure that’s why his phone’s off and probably why McManus’s is off as well.’

They watched the monitor anxiously. From the perimeter where Fielding and Pierce were hidden, you couldn’t see the Jackson warehouse, and the cameras in the warehouse – one on its exterior, the others inside – had so far shown no movement.

Suddenly the camera outside the warehouse came to life as a light went on, and the vast front door of the warehouse began to lift up slowly. Two figures were visible, standing just outside the building.

‘Is that McManus?’ Peggy asked.

‘Yes,’ said a new voice in the room. ‘That’s him all right.’

All heads turned to the door. It was Liz Carlyle, standing just inside the room, wearing her overcoat. Peggy leapt up, knocking her chair over. ‘Liz.’ The relief in her voice was clear. ‘I didn’t expect you back tonight. How are you?’

It had been a hard day by any measure, and it wasn’t going to be over any time soon. But at least she would be concentrating now on something that didn’t drain her emotions, something that called on her professional skills rather than her feelings.

She’d had plenty of time on the journey back to mull over her day’s hurried trip to Paris: Isabelle meeting her at the Gare du Nord; the conversation and the tears on the drive out to Martin’s flat; the realisation, when she stood in the sitting room and looked out of the window at the Square opposite, the trees bare of leaves now on this raw day, of just how much of her life, her emotions and, as she had thought, her future lay there.

Foolishly Liz had imagined she could collect all her belongings in a suitcase and take them back with her, but it took less than five minutes in the flat to recognise just how many clothes, books and odds and ends she had ­accumulated over the few years of her relationship with Martin. After the flat there had been a brief meeting with Claudette, Martin’s ex-wife, who had been civil, if not exactly cordial. And finally a tearful hour with Mimi, Martin’s adored daughter.

There had been no reason to stay longer, since she would be coming back again soon – for the funeral, for the gathering of her possessions, and (this she had promised the girl) to spend some more time with Mimi. So she had headed back to the station and caught a late afternoon Eurostar back to London. She’d gone to her flat, planning to leave the operation in Manchester to the police, but after an hour at home she’d felt so desolate and restless that when eventually she’d checked her mobile and seen the text from Peggy announcing that she was leaving for Manchester, she had decided that she would go to join her.

She’d managed to get what must have been about the last seat on the packed train by travelling first class; she’d fallen briefly asleep, waited in a long queue for a taxi, and now here she was, slightly dazzled in the brightly lit Ops Room but relieved to be able to focus on something that had nothing to do with Martin Seurat and the grief that flooded through her in unpredictable waves.

Peggy said, ‘Zara’s been at his mother’s house in Eccles. We’ve just heard from the A4 team there that he’s gone out. He’s in the car he rented in Birmingham.’

‘Are they still with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Here’s the lorry,’ Andy announced as the grey, wavy picture from the night-vision camera at the gate appeared on the screen again. The images from the camera outside the warehouse were showing on another screen. The lorry drove into the picture, made an enormous 180-degree turn, and stopped, facing out on the hard standing where Jackson and McManus stood waiting. Jackson waved it backwards and the lorry reversed slowly into the warehouse, gave a belch of exhaust, and stopped.

Jackson and McManus went in and attention in the Ops Room switched to the pictures from the cameras inside the warehouse. After a moment the driver jumped down from the cab. He was a short, stocky man in a thick dark pea jacket.

‘You made it at last,’ said Jackson, his voice clearly audible in the Ops Room.

‘Ya. That was one good long hell of a drive.’ His English was heavily accented and quite difficult to make out on the microphones. ‘We had to stop a lot for fuel.’

‘I bet you did,’ said Jackson knowingly. ‘Everything all right with the cargo?’

‘Yeah. You want to see?’

The man made to go for the rear of the lorry, but Jackson put up a hand. ‘Wait a minute. Tell me about the journey. Any problems?’

‘The journey? It was difficult, especially in Germany. Snow has come early this year.’

‘I’m not asking about the weather. I meant, when you got to Harwich. Were you stopped at Customs? Have they been through the cargo?’

‘No. I expected them to open the doors, but they didn’t.’

Jackson turned to McManus, who was standing beside him, before turning back to the driver and asking, ‘Do they usually look inside?’

‘Always. In my experience. But not tonight.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

McManus said, ‘Could just be shortage of staff, weight of traffic, Christmas spirit – anything. I wouldn’t read much into it. And he got here, didn’t he?’

Jackson’s eyes stayed on McManus. ‘Yeah, but what I’m wondering is if anyone else came along for the ride.’

The three men in the warehouse now moved outside to the tarmac forecourt, and all the microphone could pick up was the faint sound of voices.

‘What are they waiting for?’ asked Andy. He sounded cross.

Before anyone could answer, the three men started walking back into the warehouse. The driver was gesturing at the back of the lorry. ‘I should open it up now?’ His voice came through loudly.

‘Not yet,’ said Jackson curtly.

The driver was insistent. ‘I have done. Let me unload and then I can be gone. I have mattresses to go to Glasgow by tomorrow. And there is a breathing cargo here that needs some air.’

Jackson laughed harshly. ‘“A breathing cargo”. I like that. Don’t you, Jimmy?’

McManus shrugged. ‘I hope you haven’t dragged me out here for a bunch of tarts.’

‘You’ll see soon enough.’ And Jackson walked to the front of the warehouse again, while McManus stood still, half in shadow, and the lorry driver lit a cigarette.

Back in the Ops Room, Emily asked, ‘Why doesn’t he want the lorry opened up?’

‘Because the main customer hasn’t arrived,’ said Liz.

‘If he ever does,’ said Andy.

‘He will. Zara’s come all the way from London,’ Liz said. ‘I don’t think it’s just to see his mum.’

Fielding’s camera had picked up another car coming into the estate, a dark Ford S Max. Peggy looked at Liz. ‘That’s the car Zara hired.’

Thirty seconds later, as the S Max appeared on the monitor parking on the tarmac outside Jackson’s warehouse, Lazarus was on the radio to the armed police team. ‘Target has arrived.’ Turning to Liz, he said, ‘Time to go in?’

‘I think we should wait a bit.’

‘You sure? If the guns are in the lorry we’ll find them. We can strip the bloody thing down to nuts and bolts if we have to.’

‘We still don’t know where the others are.’

‘You think they’re coming to the warehouse?’

‘Possibly. I’d like to hear what Zara and Jackson say to each other.’

‘I make Jackson as just the middleman.’

‘I think you’re right, but don’t we need to hear them make the transaction if we’re going to be sure of a successful prosecution? Otherwise we haven’t got much to stick on Zara. He can say he’s come to collect mattresses, and without more evidence a jury might give him the benefit of the doubt.’

The Chief Constable broke in. ‘We’ll take the risk, George. Bring the armed team forward but hold off going in for a bit.’

Lazarus nodded and radioed some orders.