Lead Me To The Slaughter (Tommy Fox Book 2)

  Lead Me To The Slaughter

  Graham Ison

  © Graham Ison 1990

  Graham Ison has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1968, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1990 by Macmillan London Limited.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  For more information about Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher, please visit www.endeavourpress.com

  For weekly updates on our free and discounted eBooks sign up to our newsletter.

  Follow us on Twitter and Goodreads.

  Chapter One

  There was a patch of blood on the road. It was quite a large patch and had seeped into the pleasant pink-coloured surface. Someone had chalked a circle round it.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Blood, sir.’

  ‘I can see it’s blood, Jack. Whose blood?’ Tommy Fox studied it as he walked carefully round the perimeter of the chalk circle. He always walked carefully. Fox was a man who set great store by his appearance and his rivals suggested that such care was to preserve his expensive shoes and his immaculate suiting. Those who did not know him were inclined to describe him as a dandy... which was a mistake. Despite his cockney raffishness, Fox was a thorough man. It was one of the factors that had been considered when he had been elevated to the rank of Detective Chief Superintendent and, later, given operational command of the Flying Squad. The other factor was that he held the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for disarming a violent criminal.

  ‘One of the security guards, sir.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Decided to be a hero. Got two cartridges in the legs. Reckon they’ll have to amputate one of them.’

  Fox shook his head. ‘They will do these things,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d got all this buttoned up, Jack. Sounds to me as though your snout needs a good smacking.’

  Gilroy shook his head. ‘Got the job right, sir. Got the place wrong. He reckoned they were going to blag them at the bank, not on the hoof.’

  ‘Hope you didn’t pay him, this reliable snout of yours.’

  Gilroy grinned. ‘That’ll be the day,’ he said.

  ‘Anyway, what’s the score?’ Fox looked around, at the security van, a gaping hole cut in its side, then at the abandoned chain-saw that had done the cutting, and at the two cars, one in front of the armoured van, the other behind.

  ‘Brought it to a stop here, guv’nor.’ Gilroy waved a hand broadly across the whole scene.

  ‘I’d more or less worked that out for myself,’ said Fox. ‘Sawn-off shotguns, chain-saw — ’

  ‘How many in this little team, Jack?’ Fox interrupted again. ‘Four, apparently. Plus the wheelman in the getaway car. Well, van actually.’

  ‘Van?’ Fox raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Yeah, a transit.’

  ‘Any details?’

  Gilroy hesitated. ‘There’s a witness, sir. P’raps you’d like to talk to him.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘That’s him, over there.’ Gilroy pointed to a man walking back and forth in the ditch.

  ‘What the hell’s he doing, Jack?’

  ‘Looking for his car keys. He pulled up behind this lot when they were at it. One of them shoved a shooter up his nose, took his car keys and slung’em in the ditch.’

  ‘Fetch him over.’ Fox turned to a uniformed PC leaning against a police area car. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘go and find that gentleman’s car keys. He’s assisting the police with their enquiries... which is more than you’re bloody doing.’

  The PC didn’t know Tommy Fox but recognised authority when he saw it and promptly took off.

  ‘This is Mr Deacon, sir.’

  Fox shook hands. Deacon was about sixty, with wispy grey hair and a worried expression on his face that looked as though it lived there.

  ‘My inspector tells me you saw this robbery, Mr Deacon.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I came from down there.’ Deacon pointed. ‘As a matter of fact I was just popping down to the village to get some tobacco. I didn’t realise I’d run out until I went to — ’

  ‘Just the details, Mr Deacon, please,’ said Fox patiently.

  ‘Yes, well as I say, I came round the bend in the road and there was this van, where it is now. There were some men pulling boxes out through the hole and loading them into their van. Two of the security men were lying face down over there with their hands on their heads. The other poor fellow was there...’ Deacon pointed to the drying patch of blood now being photographed by one of the team from the Yard’s S03 Branch. ‘I wanted to help him, but one of the men ran over to me and put this gun against my head. I didn’t even get a chance to get out of the car.’

  ‘What was he like, this man?’

  ‘A big chap, wearing a Balaclava. You know, like you see the IRA wearing on the telly.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Yes, he said something like, “If you know what’s good for you, grandad, you’ll have seen nothing.” Then he took my keys out of the ignition and threw them in the ditch.’

  ‘What sort of accent did he have?’

  Deacon gave that some thought. ‘None really, not that you’d notice.’

  Fox nodded. That usually meant that they’d got London accents. ‘How many of them were there, altogether?’

  ‘Four, I think, all wearing Balaclavas. Oh, and one in the van, the getaway van. He was just sitting there with the engine running.’

  ‘This van,’ said Fox. ‘Did you get the number?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Deacon looked pleased with himself. ‘I wrote it down and gave it to this gentleman.’ He indicated DI Gilroy.

  ‘False plates, guv’nor,’ said Gilroy. ‘We’ve checked. And those two are nicked.’ He pointed at the abandoned cars that the robbers had used to stop the security van.

  ‘Anything else about the van?’

  Deacon shook his head. ‘Nothing that I can remember, no.’ Fox turned to Gilroy. ‘We’ll have this little team, Jack. I want everyone on this. D’you hear? Everyone!’

  ‘Right, guv’nor.’ Gilroy turned away, unhappy. It was unfortunate that Fox had been out and about in his car when the call came through and had been close enough to reach the scene and interfere. Gilroy, as a competent DI, was quite capable of doing what was necessary, and didn’t need his detective chief superintendent breathing down his neck. But Fox loved mixing it, as he called it, and refused to stay at his desk. Most detective chief superintendents found that die paperwork attached to their job tended to keep them away from the cut-and-thrust of crime. Fox would have none of it, and frequently upset his commander by overlooking the administrative demands of his post.

  Tommy Fox appeared in the doorway of the Flying Squad office at New Scotland Yard and scowled. ‘Where’s Mr Gilroy?’

  ‘Out, guv,’ somebody said.

  ‘Out where?’

  A detective stood up. ‘I’ll have a look in the Duty Book, sir.’ He walked across the office to the A3-sized binder that was kept permane
ntly open on a central table and ran his finger up the page. ‘Meeting informant in the Walworth Road, guv... on Carter Street’s ground.’

  ‘I know where the Walworth Road is,’ growled Fox. ‘What time’s he supposed to be coming back?’

  ‘“Back cone”, it says here, sir.’ The detective looked up and grinned. It was the recognised and invariably used abbreviation for ‘back at conclusion’.

  ‘Doesn’t it always,’ said Fox irritably, and made his way down the corridor to his office.

  Twenty-four hours had elapsed since the raid on the security van at Cobham, just two hundred yards inside the Metropolitan Police boundary. But that was not all. Exactly an hour later, fifteen miles away — and again just inside the boundary — another cash-in-transit van belonging to the same security company had been attacked. But on the second occasion there had been no independent witnesses, and both guards had denied seeing a transit van similar to the one used in the raid at Cobham. Tommy Fox had to admit that for the team to have used the same van a second time would have been chancing their arm just a little too far, but apart from that the MO was identical. The only conclusion that Fox drew was that the team must have an inexhaustible supply of chain-saws.

  The robbers in the second heist, the guards had said, had fled in a Ford Granada which the police had later found abandoned in a lay-by near Heathrow Airport. Altogether the thieves had netted over three hundred thousand pounds in the two raids.

  ‘These cash-in-transit people are getting a bit slovenly,’ said Fox when Gilroy eventually returned from his sortie into south London. Gilroy had a coterie of informants, most of whom could usually be found in the pubs in or around the Elephant and Castle. ‘What’s the word, Jack?’

  ‘Not a dicky-bird, guv’nor. Nobody’s saying anything.’

  Fox moved his hand slowly across the top of his desk and flicked a fly into eternity. ‘They’ve had three hundred grand off, Jack. The bastards have got to have put it somewhere. There’s no way they’re going to be able to launder that lot in a hurry.’ Gilroy nodded. ‘From where they did the hit, there’s a thousand places they could have picked for a slaughter.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not going looking for it, Jack.’ Fox stood up and walked across to a framed map of the Metropolitan Police District on his wall. It was one of the few old ones still remaining and showed all the divisional letters of the force as it had been for nearly a century before a new commissioner had decided to mess it all up and impose eight administrations where previously there had been only one. ‘They’ve certainly got plenty of scope. Lots of nice country there for a slaughter.’ It was one of the perversities of criminal slang that a slaughter was a place where stolen goods were secreted; a slaughter had nothing to do with killing. ‘I think we’ll have to set a trap.’ Fox carefully lifted the collar of his jacket and then smoothed it back into place. ‘But first we’ll have to find one member of this team. That’s down to you, Jack.’

  Detective Inspector Jack Gilroy was as unlike a Hying Squad officer as it was possible to imagine. Just touching six feet tall, he was a youthful-looking man who wore rimless spectacles and for most of the year affected a waistcoat. What made him valuable to Tommy Fox was that for the last three years he had been a member of the Yard’s Criminal Intelligence Branch and had only recently been transferred — following lengthy negotiations between Fox and Murdo McGregor, Gilroy’s previous commander — to S08, as the Hying Squad was officially styled.

  ‘This team, Jack,’ said Fox, ‘that’s had these two tickles on this so-called security firm...’ He blew gently between clenched teeth, an eloquent criticism of a company that seemed to have failed in its primary duty. ‘Should be done under the Trades Description Act. Bloody cowboys, they are.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I want these villains, Jack.’

  Gilroy took off his spectacles and carefully wiped them. ‘Are you sure it was the same team, sir?’

  ‘Got to be, hasn’t it?’

  Gilroy shook his head. ‘I’m not so sure.’

  Fox looked surprised. ‘Come on, Jack. Look at the facts. Same company owned both vehicles. Same MO. And both just inside the MPD. Probably an inside job.’

  Gilroy knew the signs: Fox was thrashing about. ‘But the van, sir...’

  Fox frowned. ‘What about the van?’ he growled.

  ‘Wasn’t used in both jobs, sir.’

  ‘Would you have used it in both? The moment they’d pulled the first one, they’d have known that every copper in London would be looking for it. Well,’ he added reflectively, ‘every copper in London had better be looking for it. No, mister, that bloody van’s not come to light in twenty-four hours. It’s got to be holed up in a slaughter somewhere. And I want it... and the little firm that goes with it. Get among them, Jack.’

  ‘Getting among them’ had a rather different meaning for Gilroy than Fox visualised. Tommy Fox was one of the old school of detectives who firmly believed in making frequent visits to the pubs, clubs and racecourses he knew to be haunts of the wicked. And it worked. The sight of the operational head of the Flying Squad in some low boozer south of the Thames would cause a severe outbreak of astonishing introspection and an uncharacteristic interest, by the patrons, in the inside of their glass of beer. A similar visitation to, say, Kempton, Sandown, Epsom, or, worse, Wimbledon, Haringey or White City would create a paroxysm of activity among the less honourable tic-tac men.

  Gilroy was unimpressed by this. Apart from anything else, he had been trained as a criminal intelligence officer and was a committed computer man. It usually meant that when he and the team of detectives he led eventually paid a visit, someone was going to get nicked... for something that would stick. But just because he often worked with a computer didn’t make him a soft touch. He was a hard man, and could play villains at their own game. He simply liked to be certain of his facts first, rather than play a hunch. Fox would never admit it, but it was more effective than his method.

  Sometimes, of course, events called for a combination of both methods. And this seemed such an occasion.

  Gilroy started work. The record of every criminal who had ever been involved in a payroll heist was brought up on the computer screen and examined. Those who were in prison were eliminated, as were others known to be in exotic places for health reasons. One or two others were ruled out too, like those who operated only outside the Greater London area. Finally, Gilroy was able to present Fox with a list that contained a mere nine names.

  ‘We’ll play this low-key, Jack,’ said Fox. ‘Get the hounds out. Find out where they are and what they’ve been up to. Nothing direct until we’re certain we’ve got one of them. And then...’ He smoothed Gilroy’s list with his hand and smiled, serenely.

  Needless to say, Fox had a plan and he had explained it carefully to the Flying Squad in a short briefing. Fox trusted his men and credited them with still possessing the intelligence and unscrupulous cunning for which they had been selected in the first place.

  There is an element of live and let live in the unceasing war which is waged between the police and the forces of evil, but this undefined discretion is, from time to time, suspended. And Fox had just suspended it. From now until the security van robbers were apprehended nothing and no one would move. Search warrants would rain like confetti and be executed relentlessly until the occupants of the Flying Squad’s targets were dizzy. In short, London’s villains were in for a hard time... harder than usual. And they would be squeezed until someone squeaked.

  It is in the nature of things that this uncomfortable atmosphere — like a hot and humid summer’s day — will make tempers short, and the sort of hooligans whose profession is to relieve others of their property and wealth will eventually become so frustrated that word will go out to give the Old Bill whatever it is that they want so that relations can be restored to some semblance of normality.

  The upshot of this carefully conceived and executed stratagem was the arrival of Detective Inspector J
ack Gilroy in a public house in the Rotherhithe area of London — a public house much frequented by persons known to the police. Gilroy was alone. The sort of business he had in mind to transact was such that he preferred to do so in the absence of witnesses.

  The pub was gloomy. The woodwork — which was a dominant feature — was blackened with the grime of years, and the ceiling, once white, was brown with several generations of exhaled cigarette smoke.

  ‘Hallo, Dancer.’ Gilroy perched himself on the leather-topped stool next to a foxy-faced little man with shifty eyes.

  ‘Dancer’ Williams shot a nervous sideways glance at the policeman. ‘Mr Gilroy! What you doing in here?’

  ‘Same as you were doing at Epsom last week,’ said Gilroy. ‘I’m on business.’

  ‘I never went nowhere near Epsom last week, Mr Gilroy, so help me.’

  Gilroy grinned at Williams’ reflection through the tarnished mirror at the back of the bar. ‘Saw you there myself,’ he said. ‘Had your hands in more pockets than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.’

  ‘Play it straight, Mr Gilroy. You know I wasn’t nowhere near there.’

  Gilroy took a packet of cigarettes from his jacket, lit one, and dropped another on the bar in front of the anguished Williams. ‘And who d’you think the magistrate’s going to believe, Dancer? You or me?’

  ‘You’re after something, Mr Gilroy...’

  ‘Now you’re getting a bit shrewd. Yeah, sure I’m after something. The little firm that did two security vans the day before yesterday and — ’

  ‘Christ, Mr Gilroy, don’t ask me that — ’

  ‘Don’t interrupt, Dancer, it’s rude,’ said Gilroy. ‘As I was saying, the firm that did two security vans and had it away with about three hundred grand.’

  ‘I don’t know nothing about it, Mr Gilroy, so help me, I don’t.’ Williams looked depressed and studied his beer with a consuming intensity.

  ‘Well then, Dancer, p’raps you’d better start listening around. Really listening, I mean.’ Gilroy slid off the bar stool and grinned at Williams’ reflection. ‘Be lucky,’ he said.