Kashmir Rescue

‘When do you reckon we’ll be ordered to move?’ Colin asked.

Paul shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

They had been carrying out a series of surveillance tasks in their assigned area, but after their last one they had been directed to their present location to await retasking. It looked a prosperous residential street. The houses were mostly large, with trim hedges, large front gardens and no doubt even larger gardens to the rear.

At the end of the street he saw the large, white shape of a Transit turn towards them. It cruised slowly closer, stopping some thirty yards away. With the water coursing down the windscreen it was impossible to see it distinctly, but he wasn’t bothered. It was probably just a plumber or decorator arriving early for a job in one of the houses.

However, the next moment he made out the vague outline of figures bundling from the back of the van and running towards one of the larger houses.

‘What do you make of that?’

Colin grunted, not lifting his eyes from the nude in the paper. Her lips were peeled back in a provocative smile, eyes half-closed, breasts thrust out as if someone had just shoved her hard in the small of the back and she was about to topple downstairs.

‘Colin, I’m fucking talking to you. Look.’

Reluctantly Colin made his own peep-hole with his sleeve and peered through it at the house. He was just in time to see one of the men kick his way through the side gate.

‘Fucking hell!’ He dropped the paper. ‘It must be another part of the bloody exercise. That bastard! He sent us here for a break and then hits us with an incident. What the fuck do we do?’

Paul thought for a moment. ‘Hang on,’ he said, playing for time while he ordered his thoughts. ‘They’re probably supposed to be terrorists. It’ll be a safe house or something.’

‘Don’t be daft. They wouldn’t go bundling in like that, kicking in doors if it was a safe house, would they?’

Paul cursed himself silently. He liked to think of himself as the brighter of the two, but for once Colin was right.

‘Then they’re probably seizing the house to use as a base for the duration of an attack on the airport.’

‘Yeah!’ Colin chirped, becoming enthusiastic. All of a sudden their fatigue was forgotten and they sat up and kicked aside the debris littering the floor of the car as they tried to work out how they were expected to react.

‘Perhaps they’re planning to fire a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile from the back garden, or something?’ Colin said, his tongue hardly able to keep pace with his ideas.

Paul thought about it and rubbed his chin. ‘Could be. We’re right under the main flight path all right. Yeah, that’s probably it.’

‘So what do we do then?’ Colin blinked at him, lost for a solution.

‘There’s too many of them for us to do anything. I reckon we report in and wait for backup.’

‘Good thinking. Will you do it or shall I?’

Paul reached for the radio. ‘It’s my turn. You bogged up the last one.’

He pressed the transmitter switch and spoke slowly and clearly, reporting the incident and requesting support. The message was acknowledged and when he had replaced the handset he sat back with a self-satisfied smile.

It was a couple of minutes before the radio buzzed into life again and the voice of Don Headley rasped into the stagnant air of the car.

‘Echo Two, what’s all this about a van? Over.’

Paul and Colin swapped grins. ‘He’s playing dumb,’ Colin whispered, as if Don himself were actually in the car.

Paul repeated his report. There was another pause before Don came back and said, ‘It’s nothing to do with the ex.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Paul crooned easily. ‘Look, just log it down that we did the right thing and asked for backup. I know a bunch of terrorists when I see one.’

Don sounded amused. ‘If that’s the case I suggest you get the hell out of there. I repeat, there are no exercise activities planned in your area for the rest of the day. Out.’

The line went dead. Paul and Colin sat staring at one another.

‘Reckon they could be decorators or something? Builders perhaps. They looked fit buggers.’

Paul laughed uneasily. ‘They can’t be terrorists, can they? Can you imagine it? Here in the middle of bleeding Southall?’

Colin nodded and scrabbled around on the floor for his discarded newspaper.

Suddenly, from inside the house they heard a muffled crack. They stared at each other again, but this time their faces paled.

‘Did you hear that?’

‘What the fuck was it?’

There was a second crack, and then a third.

‘Oh, shit. That’s a bloody shooter.’

Colin opened his door and started to pull himself out of the car. Paul snatched at his sleeve and tugged him back.

‘Where do you think you’re going, Humphrey sodding Bogart? In case you’ve forgotten, we don’t carry firearms.’

‘Well, we can’t just sit here.’

Paul grabbed at the radio and called the station where the exercise control had been established.

‘Get me the guv. And be quick about it!’ he snapped.

‘He’s in a meeting. He told me he was not to be interrupted,’ the duty operator replied.

‘Listen, you tit, I don’t give a fuck. We’ve got a real incident here. There’s shooting in Bramley Road. Tell them to get some armed assistance here on the double. Got that?’

There was a pause before the operator asked nervously, ‘This is part of the exercise, right?’

Paul almost slammed the handset against the dashboard in frustration. ‘No, it fucking isn’t! This is for real. Now do as I say or I’ll crawl down the sodding air waves and rip your throat out!’

‘So it’s not part of the ex?’

Colin swore and started out of the car again.

‘No,’ Paul persevered with all the self-control he could muster. ‘Now pass my message, right?’

‘Roger. Out.’

He looked up to see that Colin was almost at the driveway, then quickly got out and rushed to join him. It was only when they were opening the gate that they noticed the man still standing beside the dirty white van. He appeared to be unconcerned by the gunshots from inside the house and when they caught his eyes he smiled pleasantly.

‘Hang on, let’s ask the geezer what’s going on. Maybe it’s nothing.’

They went towards him and as they drew near Colin whispered, ‘It’s a Paki.’

‘Brilliant, Watson. Any more deductions?’

The man stepped towards them. ‘Can I help you?’

They were taken aback by his Oxford accent.

‘Excuse me, sir, but is this your van?’

The man turned round as if to check it was still there. ‘Yes,’ he said, then, as an afterthought, ‘May I enquire who’s asking?’

Remembering procedure and feeling suddenly a bit stupid, Paul fumbled in his jacket pocket and produced his identity card. ‘Police,’ he said.

The man smiled. ‘Splendid. How can I help you?’

Becoming impatient, Colin said, ‘Was that a gunshot we heard just now?’

The man’s eyes widened theatrically. ‘A gunshot? I certainly hope not.’

‘Well, what was it then?’

‘I really couldn’t say. I didn’t hear anything.’ He turned to the driver, who had got out of the van and joined him. In contrast to the two policemen they were both tall, lean and fit.

Paul glanced back at the house. ‘Would you come with us, please, sir?’

The man shrugged. ‘If you insist, officer.’ He said something quickly to the driver in a language that the policemen could not understand.

Keeping the man in front of him, Paul walked down the driveway towards the house. As the front door was shut they veered towards the side gate. ‘After you, if you don’t mind, sir,’ he said. Again the man shrugged politely, still smiling.

A window showed into the kitchen and although the room itself was empty they could hear something being smashed elsewhere in the house. Before they could ask any more questions the man turned and explained, ‘We’re doing some construction work, you see. A really wealthy fellow, the owner. He wanted all sorts of alterations done.’

Colin relaxed, whispering, ‘I thought so. Sodding builders. The boss is going to roast us alive when the heavies turn up and find out. We’ll be the laughing-stock of the whole bloody force.’

They reached the back of the house and saw a large, well-kept garden stretching down to a tall hedge at the bottom.

‘Come on,’ Paul said miserably. ‘Let’s get this over with.’ He turned to the man. ‘We’d better check it out if you don’t mind.’

For the first time the man’s calm smile faltered and a second later it died altogether. His eyes chilled and narrowed and he sighed heavily. ‘Of course. I understand. I very much regret the inconvenience to you though.’

Paul chuckled pleasantly. ‘It’s no bother, sir. Just a peek and then we’ll leave you in peace. So as we can say we did our duty.’

‘Naturally. Duty,’ the man said, his voice low and matter of fact. He seemed to be searching for something in his pocket and when he pulled out a small automatic pistol Paul and Colin stared at it dumbly, the shock not even registering.

‘We all have our duty to perform,’ the man said. He took a single step backwards, widened his stance and shot Colin in the solar plexus with a rapid double tap. Colin staggered against the wall, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish out of water, and then sank to the floor. Paul watched in mesmerized horror as the smoking muzzle flicked on to its new target. Behind it, the man seemed almost apologetic for what he had just done, and, more particularly, for what he was about to do.

‘If only you’d stayed in your car and minded your own business. But you know what they say about curiosity and the cat.’

Paul held out his hand as if ordering a car to stop, as the first of the bullets spat straight through his palm and hammered into his ribcage. He clutched at the wound and his knees gave way.

‘You bastard,’ he muttered, his words sounding distant and garbled. He didn’t seem able to get his tongue around the syllables he had used so often in the past. ‘You fucking…’

He fell on to his back and stared up at the foul grey sky. Rain stung his face but it was strangely refreshing, a counter to the ache he was just beginning to feel. Suddenly the sky filled with the man’s enquiring face looking down at him. Then he saw the muzzle again, lowering, getting monstrously large until he felt its warm metal pushing into his mouth. He tried to speak, to plead, but the cold muzzle was being forced upwards, pressing into the roof of his mouth, the line of the short, hard barrel aiming directly through the slim bone and into the brain.

There were words in his head, something about being so terribly sorry. Wrong place and wrong time. The man’s voice was calm as if talking about the weather. The weather. It was a shit-awful day to die, Paul thought, as the pistol flinched at the sudden pressure being applied to the trigger.

2

By the time Don Headley received the news the phones in the ops room were already buzzing with enquiries from the press. At first he couldn’t believe what had happened. Reality had broken into the middle of his exercise and two men were dead.

As soon as he could he got away from his desk and drove to Bramley Road. It was mid-morning and the traffic was heavy. On all sides drivers drummed their steering wheels in frustration as the long queues edged slowly forwards. The rain had stopped and a harsh winter light percolated through the thick layers of cloud, muting the colours into one continuous semblance of grey. It was a part of the country Don particularly hated, the dense belt of urban wasteland spread thickly around central London. Successive decades had added to it, pushing it out ever further until towns that had once counted themselves lucky to be outside the city now found themselves being sucked in, not enjoying full membership but rather taken on board as second-class citizens in a dubious club.

Hounslow, Isleworth, Sunbury, Feltham – the names rolled past, each representing an identical sprawl of little red houses and car-packed residential streets. It wasn’t so long ago that such roads would have boasted hardly a single vehicle parked at the kerbside, but increasing prosperity had combined with thoughtless marketing by the car manufacturers, whose eyes were solely on profit, and it had resulted in nearly every household owning at least one vehicle. Along either side of every road parked cars were jammed in nose to tail. It struck Don as a case of suicide by self-strangulation on a national scale. No one individual was prepared to sacrifice his car, not even with the prospect looming of the next generation gassing itself. Public transport was overcrowded and stank, so what was the incentive?

For an incentive to work and change a lifestyle it had to produce a more immediate threat. But then with smoking even that hadn’t worked, Don reflected as he waited impatiently behind a lorry that was belching obnoxious blue fumes. It was almost possible to predict to a smoker the year in which his habit would bring about his agonizing death, and yet nine times out of ten he would continue. What was the answer? Don was buggered if he knew. Perhaps the species was on track for extinction and it was as simple as that. Self-destruction had replaced self-preservation as the prime motivation in the human psyche, and no one had even noticed. He grinned sardonically. They had probably been too busy watching Gladiators.

It was another half hour before he drew up outside the house. A policeman came to his window to wave him on but he produced a pass and was allowed to go in search of a parking space. The curtains in the neighbouring houses twitched as inquisitive eyes followed him out of the car and down the driveway. The couple in the house on the opposite side of the road were less circumspect and stood at their open doorway, mugs of tea in their hands, interested to find their mundane existence disrupted by something as exciting as a murder.

Chief Inspector Rod Chiltern met Don at the front of the house.

‘The SOCO’s round the back with his lads. Be careful not to touch anything.’

Don scowled at him, resenting the caution. Nevertheless, he was only there as an observer. It was police business and had nothing to do with the SAS. So far.

He followed Chiltern down the narrow path. The first thing he saw when he emerged at the back outside the kitchen door was the body of Colin Field. It was propped up against the wall as if he had just sat down for a rest. His legs were splayed, the scuffed trainers out of sync with the portly figure of their owner. His head was cocked heavily to one side, the eyes open a slit, lips pursed. A trickle of blood had dried to a crack of dark purple running from the corner of his mouth to his chin, but the real sign of damage was the blood on the red brick of the wall, splashed liberally as if a child had flung a can of paint at it.

A couple of yards from him, Paul Robins lay on the crazy-paving terrace. Don noticed the shattered hand and could imagine how Paul had received the wound. The wound in his chest was bad but he judged it had probably not been fatal. That had been reserved for the head shot.

He moved carefully round to the far side.

‘Jesus,’ he whistled.

Chiltern nodded. ‘Not much chance of giving him the kiss of life, is there?’ he said.

The explosion of the gun in the confined space of the mouth had blown out most of the teeth, propelling them through the thin wall of the cheeks. But where the bullet had exited through the top and back of the skull there was a gaping hole. It had taken the larger portion of the brain with it and slammed it in a rough fan shape on the paving stones.

‘How well did you know them?’ Chiltern asked.

Don shrugged. ‘Reasonably. They’d been on my course for a while and you get to know the guys quickly that way.’

He was being polite, tempering his opinion because he knew that Chiltern had worked with both the dead men for several years. In truth Don had found them to be a couple of no-hopers, overweight, inefficient, dim-witted and bungling. Just the stupid sods, in fact, to walk straight into the middle of an armed gang without so much as a catapult. But no one deserved to die like this, he thought. Not even these two.

He crouched down beside them and looked around. The scene-of-crime officer had done a thorough sweep and everything that might be needed as evidence was circled with a thin chalk line. Principal among these items were several cartridge cases. Don asked if he might have a closer look at one of them and the SOCO nodded.

‘Don’t bugger up the prints, and put it back where you found it,’ he snapped, busy with a measuring tape, marking the distance from Colin’s body to the point where he estimated the firer must have been standing.

Don took a pair of gloves from his pocket and slipped one of them on. Carefully, he picked up the nearest of the cases and examined it. It was 9mm calibre. Powerful enough to silence a full-grown man, especially at almost point-blank range. No wonder Colin had been flung against the wall with such force, he thought.

But there was something unusual about it and a moment later Don realized what it was. He had come across its kind only once before. Several years ago he had been on secondment to the Sultan of Oman’s army. The Sultan’s quartermaster had done some shopping around on the open market for ammunition in an effort to cut costs. British ammunition had proved the most expensive, and he had finally opted for a batch of Pakistani-made rounds, both 7.62mm and 9mm. They hadn’t performed as effectively or as consistently as the British-made ammunition, several of the rounds misfiring and causing stoppages owing to an insufficient charge of powder in the brass case. But they had done the job and Pakistani ammunition had been used a great deal thereafter.

Turning the cartridge case in his fingers, Don was convinced that this was from the same source. He replaced it in its white chalk circle, where it looked as if it was about to be part of some Satanic ceremony.

He voiced his opinion to the SOCO, who grunted and said, ‘Right now I couldn’t give a stuff. But thanks all the same. I’ll get the lads on to it back at the lab. If you’re right they’ll be able to tell you the exact factory it came from, right down to the postcode.’

Don went into the kitchen, where Chiltern was receiving a report from one of his men. He looked up as Don came in. ‘Nice mess, isn’t it?’

‘That’s what happens when you get in the way of a 9mm bullet or two.’

‘Well, there’s another two dead upstairs,’ Chiltern added, shaking his head. ‘Right sodding blood-bath this is turning into.’

He led the way into the hall and up the stairs. Everywhere were signs of the intruders’ recent presence. Furniture had been overturned, pictures ripped from the walls and ornaments smashed.

‘It looks like my own place after the kids have had a party,’ Chiltern said, grinning.

They found the next body sprawled on the landing. It was the body of a middle-aged man of Indian appearance. A bullet wound in the back of the left leg indicated that he had been brought down trying to run away from his attackers. Thereafter someone had made a crude attempt at interrogating him. A heavy metal file had been applied to the surfaces of his teeth until they were almost completely rubbed level with the blood-soaked gums.

‘That’s an old Spetsnaz trick,’ Don said in amazement.

‘Who?’

‘Spetsnaz. Soviet special forces.’

Chiltern winced at the gruesome spectacle. ‘What the fuck would they be doing in Southall?’

Don shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but during the Cold War they sent training teams abroad, just like we did.’

‘Passing on their techniques, you mean?’

‘Exactly.’

The man’s eyes were wide open and staring, bulging out of their sockets with the agony. A cloth had been stuffed at the back of his mouth to prevent him screaming and he had been finished off with a bullet to the back of the head.

‘Who was he?’ Don asked.

‘Just a guy who ran a chain of curry restaurants in the area,’ Chiltern replied. ‘I’ve ordered takeaways from them myself. Bloody good they were too.’

‘Any idea why anyone would want to do this to him?’

Chiltern shrugged. ‘Not a clue.’ He smirked. ‘Perhaps someone got Delhi belly after his vindaloo.’

Don ignored the wisecrack. ‘You said there were a couple of bodies?’

The policeman pointed to an open door. From inside Don could hear the click and whirr of an automatic camera. He stepped over the dead man and went on down the corridor. The bare legs were the first thing he saw, protruding from behind the bed. The police photographer looked up.

‘Nasty. Very nasty. It’s as clinical as an execution.’

He moved aside to allow Don a clear line of sight to the body. It was a woman. Presumably the man’s wife. They seemed to Don to be of a similar age. She was dressed in a bright-blue sari trimmed in gold. Expensive. He studied the room. It was obviously the home of a well-to-do family.

Unlike her husband’s, the woman’s eyes were tightly shut; clenched, as if trying to shut out some unpleasantness. One hand was clasped to her throat in shock and the other held a candlestick.

‘Looks like she tried to defend herself,’ Chiltern said.

A single bullet between the shoulder-blades had thwarted any such attempt, ending her life immediately.

While Chiltern spoke to the SOCO, who had now finished in the garden and climbed up the stairs to start work in the house, Don wandered out on to the landing again and explored the other rooms. There were two bathrooms, a guest bedroom, tastefully decorated but unlived in, and a large room clearly belonging to an older man. There were smashed photograph frames on the floor, and a walking stick snapped in two.

But it was the last room that caught his attention most. Posters hung off the walls, pictures of pop stars and horses. The furnishings were in pinks and pale, gentle shades, and the clothes torn from the ransacked drawers were those of a young woman. More interestingly, there was a single small stain on the carpet close by the door. Don stooped and examined it. The next moment he shouted down the landing to the SOCO.

‘I think you’d better take a look at this.’

The SOCO and Chiltern padded down the corridor towards him.

‘What is it?’

Don pointed at the stain. ‘Looks like blood, if you ask me.’

The SOCO sighed in exasperation. ‘Is that all? The whole sodding house is awash with blood, and you raise the alarm over one tiny stain.’

‘Yes, but look at the room. Someone’s been in here recently.’

‘Brilliant! I can tell you’re army.’ The SOCO shook his head.

But Chiltern saw what Don was getting at. ‘Don’s right.’

‘Thank you,’ Don said. ‘Have you found the body of a girl yet?’

The SOCO blanched. ‘No.’

‘Then I suggest you start looking for her because there was a girl in this room less than an hour ago. Look.’ He pointed at the dressing table. ‘The make-up’s open. Don’t tell me the intruders wanted to touch up their lipstick.’

‘Shit,’ Chiltern hissed. ‘If they’ve taken her we could have a hostage crisis on our hands as well as a quadruple murder. What the hell’s going on here?’ He turned on his heel and marched back to the stairs. ‘Don, you come with me. This is police business now. I shouldn’t have allowed you in here in the first place. Your assistance and interest are much appreciated, but I’ll handle things from now on. Oh, and by the way, I suggest you end that exercise of yours. Reality’s got in the way. Thanks for everything, but you can return to Hereford. Send me a report on the guys you think might have passed when you’ve got a moment to write them up.’

He led Don to the front door and ushered him out into the front garden. It had started to rain again and as he sauntered back to his car Don turned up the collar of his jacket and hunched his shoulders against the sharp cold. He had seen more than his fair share of action, but the sight of the murders had shocked him. There was something particularly repulsive about the sight of a dead body in an otherwise normal setting. It was bad enough on the battlefield, but in a comfortable house in the middle of suburbia it smacked of the most appalling decay. Two of the men on his course had been butchered in cold blood and in a way he felt responsible for it. They had radioed in to report their sighting of a van and although it had been a police responsibility to dispatch assistance, Don had noticed that there had been little sense of urgency. No one had really believed Paul’s message, assuming it to be just another part of the exercise programme. Because of the delay they were dead.