The First Stella Cole Boxset Page 16

  “What about Heathrow?”

  “They unload the cargo, and it has to go through customs just like your bags when you come back from holiday or whatever. You give your invoice for the Glocks to the clerk and then wait in the receiving dock and basically sign for them when they come through. Then straight back here, please. They’re a grand a pop, even with our discount, so I’ll feel a lot happier when they’re booked in.”

  The traffic out of London on the A4, and then the M4 motorway, was slow. Driving an unmarked car with no lights or siren made Stella realise, once again, just how shit most of the general public were at driving. Behind the wheel, her heart was pounding and her palms were clammy, but even in this heightened state of anxiety, she was still sharper and more observant than ninety-nine percent of the fuckwits on the road around her. Between Paddington Green and Hammersmith, where she planned to join the westbound A4 and out to the M4 motorway, she counted five near-misses, one involving a family of tourists in a rented estate car almost killing a young woman pushing a baby in a stroller. She screamed, “No! Lola!”, then she was past them. She glanced fearfully in the rear-view mirror: the young mum was on the pavement, and the tourists were receding down the Cromwell Road.

  It took an hour to reach the front gates of Frame Security. It occupied one whole end of a space signposted “Europa Business Park” down a concreted access road split and cracked with thick-stemmed weeds growing up through the gaps. On her way through what she couldn’t help thinking of as an industrial estate, despite what the developers had named it, she passed units housing a car customiser, an outfit selling reconditioned tyres, a builders’ merchant, a paint wholesaler and, bizarrely, an evangelical church – “The Devil Makes Work For Idle Hands: Come Inside And Get Busy!!”

  Frame Security itself was kitted out like a fortress. Coils of glinting razor wire topped a nine-foot, spike-topped steel fence. A white-and-red plastic sign on the double gates announced “OUR GUARD DOGS BITE!” above a photo of a clearly very pissed-off German Shepherd showing yellow incisors and canines.

  Stella switched off the rattly diesel engine and stepped out of the cab, easing a knot of tension in her right hip with a clenched fist that she pushed into the flesh there, over the bone. Immediately, the sound of dogs barking raised the hackles on her neck. It was a primitive response eased not even slightly as two monstrous beasts careered round the corner of a building and raced towards the gates before skidding to a stop, their slavering muzzles poking through the rough grey steel bars. Their barking continued until a tall security guard in thick navy trousers and matching uniform jacket strode over to greet her. He was wearing Ray-Ban Aviators with mirrored lenses despite the lack of sunshine. The effect, though clichéd, was disturbing. Stella decided to take control of the situation before rent-a-cop could go into whatever act he had planned.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Cole, from Paddington Green Police Station,” she stated, in the official voice she’d been taught at Hendon. “I’m here with a D61 from the armourer. Please get those dogs under control, then remove your sunglasses and let me through.”

  18

  Concealed Carry

  The security guard smiled. “Sorry, yes, of course,” he said, whipping the glasses from his face and squinting. “Light sensitive. My eyes, I mean.” Stella looked up into his eyes. They were rimmed with a deep pink: the lids looked inflamed. His mouth was wide and when he smiled, as he did now, she saw he had plenty of laughter lines etched into the tanned skin.

  He looked down at the dogs and issued a command.

  “Quiet!”

  They whined once, then tucked their tails between their legs. He pointed back towards the main office building, a two-storey affair in sand-coloured brick with red-brick strips below each set of barred windows.

  “Away.”

  The animals, meek as lambs now, slunk away, casting what Stella was sure were remorseful glances over their shoulders. The guard punched a code into the control box on the gatepost, and the doors clanked inwards on hydraulic pistons.

  “You can put them on again,” Stella said, walking up to him.

  “What?”

  “Your shades. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you needed them. Your dogs are just a bit full on, you know?”

  He replaced the sunglasses. “Yeah, they’re pretty impressive, aren’t they? I trained them myself. The company likes us to do that so we work with animals who totally trust us.”

  “Trust? That’s a funny word. I’d have thought that was fear they were showing.”

  He shook his head. “Not really. They were just embarrassed they’d been caught out in a mistake. They wouldn’t normally react quite as bad as that. Maybe they smelled something on you. You got cats at home?”

  “Nope. No pets.”

  “They can pick up on a person’s fear. You know, through the sweat, if you’re nervous.”

  Me, nervous? Now why would you say that? “Maybe that’s it. The sign did make me a little edgy, to be honest.”

  “There’s no need. Once they know I approve, they’re like puppies really. Look, I’ll show you.” Before Stella could protest, he whistled – a sharp rising and falling tone – and the two dogs came scampering back towards them, rumps and shoulders dipping like seesaws as they ran. They arrived in a few seconds, but this time their jaws were hanging open and their long, pink tongues were lolling from their mouths.

  “Gem, Skipper, sit,” he said.

  The dogs sat immediately, their tails sweeping the tarmac behind them.

  “Paw.”

  The dogs lifted their right forepaws off the ground, heads cocked to one side. “Take Skipper’s,” he said to Stella. “He’s nearest to you.”

  Stella extended a hand, ready to snatch it back if the dog’s head moved a millimetre towards her. But nothing happened. It waited, paw trembling slightly. She took it and, not knowing what else to do, gave it a little shake before letting go. The pads under its foot were rough, like sandpaper. It replaced its paw on the ground. Stella straightened.

  “Okay, so you’ve won Crufts, and I’m not nervous any more. As I was saying–”

  “You’ve come from Danny Hutchings with a consignment for decommissioning. It’s all right, me and Danny go back a long way. He and I served together, if you can believe that. Iraq. He went into the police; I went into the rent-a-cop business.” Stella felt her cheeks flushing. “Don’t worry, we call it that too. The management like to talk about ‘security solutions’ but that’s just for investors and the press.”

  “Do you want the paperwork?” she asked. “He told me to ask for Maurice.”

  He held out his hand. “Please. If you don’t mind me asking, how come you’re doing a D61? I mean that’s pretty low-grade work for a detective inspector, isn’t it?”

  Stella smiled as she handed over the despatch note, registering a small scar on the guard’s chin, just to the right of a cleft darkened with grey stubble.

  “We’re investigating a possible gun-running operation. Albanians. Kosovans. Turks. Kazakhs. You name it, they’re in on it. I’m familiarising myself with all the possible supply routes.”

  He scanned the front of the sheet.

  “That’s all in order, twenty-four Glock 17s for decommissioning, cleared and checked.” He pulled a biro from his breast pocket and added his signature to the form. “You won’t find anything wrong here, DI Cole. Place prob’ly has better security than your nick.” Then he stood back and pointed to a loading bay. “Park up over there with your doors against the ramp. You don’t actually need to see Maurice; the warehouse boys’ll unload the weapons for you. Then you collect a receipt and another signature on your despatch note, they make a copy, give you the original, and you’re done.”

  Stella climbed back into the transit, started the engine and moments later was standing by as a couple of brown-overalled storemen unloaded four holdalls from the back of the van. They placed them on the concrete floor of the loading bay, unzipped them and pulled o
ut the Glocks one by one and laid them out.

  In four neat rows of six.

  One man – beautiful olive skin, maroon turban, black moustache and beard – came over with a sheet of computer-printed stationery. He pulled a biro from his breast pocket and added the make, model and quantity of weapons in three blank boxes, the date and his signature, then handed it back to Stella. She held the despatch note out to him, wordlessly. He seemed a man more inclined to silence than his garrulous friend on the gate. He signed across the bottom, then spoke.

  “Be back in a minute, yeah?”

  She watched his back as he stuck the sheet of paper under the lid of a photocopier, then grabbed the original and the copy and brought the former back to her. “Yours,” he said. As she took it, she heard a high-pitched, metallic shrieking.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Grinder, innit? We’re doing some assault rifles. Shame really, pretty nice weapons. They’ll be in school furniture or a motorway bridge a month or two from now.”

  With that bizarre image in her head, Stella thanked him and turned on her heel to leave.

  The ex-soldier on the gate saluted with a grin as she passed, his mirrored lenses obscuring what she felt sure were eyes crinkled in amusement, and she waved in return, smiling as she left for Heathrow and the cargo terminal.

  She looked over and down, into the footwell of the passenger seat. There, almost invisible, was the fifth black holdall.

  At Heathrow’s cargo terminal, the digital display in the waiting area informed her that the plane bringing in the new Glocks had been delayed by thirty minutes. The room was furnished with hard plastic chairs in a shade of industrial grey that would never have passed the design committee for the passenger terminals. Low tables scattered with magazines bearing such titles as Airfreight, Cargo and Freight Forwarding dotted the room. Thinking that working for Reg the Veg might actually be more interesting than reading one of these, she wandered over to a pair of vending machines against a wall.

  She returned to a seat by a table and winced as she burnt her mouth on the coffee. Her tongue, now roughened by the scalding liquid, couldn’t tell her what it tasted like, which may have been a blessing. A KitKat eased the pain as she sat there, sucking the chocolate from the wafers and checking emails on her phone. One jumped out at her. It was from The Model.

  Stella. Would love to catch up when you have a moment. Looked for you in the exhibits room this morning, but couldn’t find you. My office, five thirty this evening please. Adam.

  Shit! What does he want? Well, she’d just have to play it calmly. Reg had been taken ill a few days earlier, and she’d been running the exhibits room. He’d shown her the ropes, so no major issues, and she’d just really needed a change of routine. That would do. It would have to. Wouldn’t it, Lola? Mummy’s getting closer now. Little by little.

  Around her was the low buzz of conversation, and the beeping of electronic signatures being given as couriers came to collect shipments, mostly dressed in the branded uniforms of the big companies. Red and yellow for DHL, navy and purple for FedEx and Pullman brown for UPS. She noted a few drivers from local firms – no uniforms – and a handful of bike messengers in scuffed and scraped leathers. One rider had fashioned running repairs on his jacket with silver duct tape.

  Finally, her name was called. A young guy with thick-rimmed glasses and a wispy black beard took a few details and had her sign in a box through a scratched screen protector on his silicon-clad tablet. Then he pointed to a gap at the end of the counter. “Yours is just coming out. Do you need a hand loading them?”

  Stella turned to her right. A uniformed Heathrow cargo terminal employee was bringing out five cardboard cartons stacked on a bright-red hydraulic pallet lifter. Each carton was about a metre long, forty centimetres wide and thirty centimetres deep, and sealed along the top seam by a length of silver duct tape, just like the stuff holding the biker’s leathers together. Despatch notes were affixed to the sides inside clear plastic envelopes. No other printing, though. What did you think, Stel? They were going to bang bloody great Glock logos on the sides? Why not go the whole hog and put, “Contains handguns – please steal”? She grinned, despite her nervousness.

  “No, thanks. I’m fine. Can I borrow the trolley?”

  “Sure,” he said, with a smile. “Just bring it back when you’ve finished. You can leave it at the edge of the loading bay by the door.”

  Then he was dealing with another courier, and Stella had clearly disappeared from his mind. She took the handle of the pallet lifter from the storeman and tugged the clanking contraption around until she could pull, rather than push it.

  “Here you go,” an incoming UPS guy said, holding the door open for her.

  She thanked him and dragged the load out into the loading bay and over to the transit van. The boxes were heavy, but not impossible, to lift, more unwieldy than anything else. She was glad of her weights work, though, as she hefted them into the back of the van.

  Having arranged them in a flat rectangle, she took a moment to get her breath back, sitting on the nearest carton with her feet dangling over the edge of the loadspace. She reached for her cigarettes but then frowned as she saw a No Smoking sign on the wall next to a couple of fire extinguishers. She wondered whether the sign had been placed there with ironic intent.

  This was a big moment, and she felt butterflies flittering in her stomach as she contemplated the firepower all around her. But she had a problem. One she hadn’t considered until the cartons had been delivered to her. The guns were all stashed away behind duct-taped, and probably glued, cardboard cartons that appeared to be almost bullet-proof themselves judging by the weight of them. Then she thought of the biker. The solution presented itself in a flash.

  Twenty minutes later, she pulled up outside a rundown hardware store on a dreary parade of shops in Hounslow. Planes roared overhead about every ninety seconds, so close to the ground she felt she could reach up and run her fingertips along their gleaming silver and white undersides. She could certainly smell the stink of them, the burnt aviation fuel raining down on her as a cloud of invisible particles that would probably give her lung cancer or asthma if she stayed for very long.

  She pushed the door and entered the shop, looking over her shoulder. The thought of leaving twenty-five grand’s worth of brand-new and virtually untraceable semi-automatic pistols in an unmarked transit van had brought her out in a sweat. Now she wished the van was emblazoned with as much fluorescent yellow-and-blue Battenburg livery as would fit on its sides. Even a “no tools left in van” sign would be better than nothing.

  A few minutes later, she was walking back to the van with a flimsy red-and-white-striped carrier bag dangling from her left hand. She fished out her keys and swung herself up into the cab.

  “Now to find somewhere quiet, Lola,” she said. “Mummy’s got some makey-do to be getting on with.”

  She found the perfect spot after swiping around on Google maps on her phone. She identified a little river called the Crane, and she could see a road that ran alongside it, with what appeared to be an access spur running almost down to the water’s edge. She slammed the van into gear and found the access road after a few more minutes’ driving. It must have been something the council had built for workers sent to clear the river: a single-track road bordered with rosebay willow herbs. She drove down to the end and turned round in the circle of concrete thoughtfully built just before the riverbank. Through the windscreen, she had a clear view of the track coming down from the main road. The rear doors faced the river, which was choked with reeds taller than she was, which wasn’t saying much, admittedly, but they provided a thick screen from any prying eyes on the far bank. Grabbing the holdall from the passenger footwell, she got out and walked round to unlock the rear doors.

  In the back of the van, Stella pulled one of the cartons closer. She took a box-cutter from the carrier bag and slid it under the edge of the duct tape holding the top flaps closed. A f
ew minutes of careful sawing of the blade back and forth and she was able to lift the tape away from the cardboard. The flaps were glued as well as taped, as she’d suspected, and she eased her fingers under the flaps to break the seal with a series of sharp cracks. Then she was in.

  Each pistol was individually packaged in a charcoal-grey, blow-moulded, plastic carrying case. From appearances, a member of the public might expect the cases to contain socket sets or some kind of cordless power tool. She lifted one case out by the handle, placed it on the lid of a second carton and unsnapped the catches.

  A whiff of gun oil curled into her nostrils.

  Snug in a shaped cut-out in the grey foam “egg box” padding was a brand-new Glock 17.

  Unfired.

  Unchecked.

  Unregistered.

  She could shoot whoever she wanted to with it, and nobody would be any the wiser about the murder weapon. As far as the entire world, bar some technicians in an Austrian factory, was concerned, this pistol didn’t even exist.

  Next to it, in another tailored compartment cut into the foam, was a spare box magazine. A small plastic ziplock bag containing a pale grey cleaning cloth, a tiny bottle of gun oil, and a black-bristled bottle brush completed the hardware.

  From the nylon holdall by her side, Stella withdrew the Glock she’d brought from Paddington Green for decommissioning and then saved from the grinder and the furnace. One of twenty-five on the original paperwork but now, essentially, a gun with no documented existence.

  Its overall condition was immaculate. The underside of the barrel was marred by a few tiny scratches, and she found a minute nick on the rear of the grip, but other than these imperfections it looked box-fresh. Silently, Stella thanked the engineers and designers at Glock for their dedication. The firm’s much-vaunted quest for the perfect handgun had resulted in their products being manufactured from incredibly tough polymers that resisted damage better than most metals. Only the essential working parts like the barrel were still made from steel. She rubbed it down with the cleaning cloth and a little gun oil and then switched it for the new gun, which she placed into the holdall.