Tom radioed the constable who had driven the van on to the plot — the location of the operation — and told him to come and pick them up. The officer, who had been watching television and drinking numerous cups of tea with an elderly couple who lived ten doors away from the target house, walked up the street. He wore blue tradesman’s overalls and carried a canvas tool bag. He climbed into the van without acknowledging the others in the back, started the engine and drove away from the high street, around a bend and out of sight of number fourteen.
‘Right, let’s go,’ Tom said, when the driver switched off the engine.
The back door of the van swung open and Tom, Steve the Anorak and Harry, who seemed to have forgotten his bursting bladder, climbed out.
‘Not too fast, now,’ Tom said. He looked up and down the street, which was deserted.
Tom wore jeans and a thick black roll-neck jumper, with a duffel coat over the top. It was cold out, a chilly November evening, but the jacket’s other purpose was to conceal his weapon. He carried a tool bag, though, like the driver’s, it was more for show than anything else. The tools of his trade for this job — his set of lock picks — were in his pocket.
Tom led them back up the street, then along a side path to the semi’s back door. Within three minutes they were inside. He didn’t need to tell the other two to be quick or quiet, but he reminded Harry, ‘You stay here and watch the back. I’ll go with our friend.’
The house smelled musty and unloved. He checked the kitchen. Tea bags and a kettle, no plates in the sink or evidence of home cooking. These boys ate out every night and their routine would be their undoing. With more people, more resources, they could have conducted a detailed search of the house, but tonight they had the Anorak, so the computer was their highest priority, and protecting the information technology expert was Tom’s.
He took up position in the front room, peering through a crack in the curtains so he could watch the front street for activity.
The computer was in the front room as well, on a cheap flat-pack desk. Apart from the machine and the second-hand office chair in which the Anorak sat, was a tatty velvet couch and a mismatched armchair.
Tom glanced back over his shoulder and saw Steve’s pimply young face bathed in a blue glow as he booted up the computer. Fingers encased in latex gloves tapped furiously at the keyboard. He heard a dog bark and the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. ‘Everything okay back there?’ he radioed Harry.
‘Dunno. Something’s spooked the dog in the yard behind us. Should I go take a look?’
‘No, stay where you are, but keep watch.’
‘Fuck,’ the Anorak said. ‘You should see this.’
‘What is it?’ Tom asked, his eyes still on the street.
‘Porn!’
Tom shook his head. ‘Bloody hell. Just get on with it, will you. You know what we’re after — emails, names, message traffic. I shouldn’t have to tell you your job.’
‘No, but, Jesus, you should see this. It’s some sick shit, man.’
Tom was about to say something when Paul Davis’s voice hissed in his ear. ‘This is Four-two. Targets are turning back. Just walked into the shop then came straight back out again. There’s an argument going on, by the look of it, and one of them is searching his jacket. Looks like he might have forgotten his wallet. Repeat, they’re heading back.’
‘Shit,’ Tom said. He looked over at Steve, who stared fixedly at the screen. Tom noticed, for the first time, the black leather billfold on the computer table.
‘Shut it down, we’re going.’
‘But this is gold!’
‘Leave the fucking porn alone and close down. They’re on their way back, so we’re moving.’
‘No way, man, we can’t leave this. I’m taking it with me. This is more than just porn.’
Tom shook his head. This was turning into a monumental fuck-up. ‘You know as well as I do we can’t nick the computer. Can’t you save whatever it is onto a disk or something?’
Steve fumbled in the pocket of his overcoat and fished out a USB jump stick.
‘Movement!’ Tom heard the word in his earpiece and drew the Glock from his holster with practised ease. He kept a spare magazine of bullets in the right-hand pocket of his jacket so that when he reached for his pistol the added weight helped swing the tail of the duffel out of the way.
‘What is it?’
‘I thought I saw a man’s head, moving along number twelve’s side fence, on the other side,’ Harry answered.
‘Keep a watch. But get ready to move. The targets are on their way back.’
‘Shit.’ Harry drew his weapon.
A dog barked and Tom’s peripheral vision registered lights being turned on in neighbouring homes. A baby screamed in the house next door, through the communal wall. It was a good reminder there were innocents all around them.
‘We’re going.’ Tom reached out and grabbed Steve by the collar of his coat, but the IT expert brushed his hand away with more strength than he’d expected. ‘Leave me alone, Furey! This is bloody important.’
‘Shit, there’s definitely someone moving on the other side of the back fence,’ Harry whispered, his voice barely audible in Tom’s earpiece. ‘I can see him through the fence palings. What should I do?’
‘Move now, out the front door. No arguments,’ Tom said to the man behind the computer, then repeated the instructions to Harry.
‘Two minutes, that’s all I need,’ the Anorak pleaded.
Tom swore. He looked out the window, down the street, and saw the two targets walking towards them, a hundred metres away.
Harry came in through the back door. ‘Lost sight of the geezer.’
‘Tell me this is worth blowing the whole operation over,’ Tom said to Steve.
Steve looked up at him, his already sun-deprived face ghostly in the wash of illumination. The man swallowed and Tom watched the overly large Adam’s apple bob. ‘Yes.’
Tom opened the front door and strode onto the pavement, raising his Glock and cross-bracing his firing hand on top of his left wrist. ‘Armed police! Get down on the ground, now!’ Harry was beside him, mimicking his stance.
The man on the right reached into the pocket of his vinyl bomber jacket and Tom started to squeeze the trigger. Before he pulled it all the way, however, the man was falling, knocked sideways by an invisible sledgehammer. There was no sound of a shot fired, so it wasn’t Harry who had downed him. Silencer.
Tom turned and registered a dark shadow moving by the corner of the house. The falling man had drawn not a gun but a set of keys from his pocket. Tom saw he held a small black plastic remote in his hand, the kind used to activate a car alarm, and presumed he pressed the button as he fell. Before he hit the ground his companion was also knocked over. Tom dropped to one knee and looked left. He registered a running man, dressed in black, a pistol in his hand. Harry shifted his aim and opened his mouth to speak.
Before either of them could order the stranger to stop, the house exploded.
2
A fireman found Steve the Anorak’s body after the blaze had been extinguished. Harry sat with his feet in the gutter, his head in his hands. There was the smell of fresh vomit near him.
Tom sat on the bonnet of a police Mondeo, his hands wrapped around a takeaway tea in a Styrofoam cup. The local residents had long since foregone their television sets — in fact, some of them were on TV now, fodder for the reporters who roamed from person to person, looking for the neighbour who could describe the conflagration in the most graphic detail. He tenderly fingered the cut above his left eye. A shard of flying glass from number fourteen’s front windows had sliced a furrow parallel to his eyebrow, but the ambulance paramedics had been able to close the wound with adhesive butterfly stitches. Despite the crusted blood down his cheek he would be okay.
