48 Hours - A City of London Thriller (33 page)

“
What are you doing?” Lavender asked, clearly
puzzled.

“
If they want to keep us subdued for the day they may try to
drug us. The easiest way is to inject a sedative into our drinking
water.”

“
Oh.” Lavender was beginning to realise how dangerous this
situation really was.

Dee broke the seal on the water and handed it to
Lavender.

“
I think this is safe, but just in case we’ll have only a
mouthful now, just to take the edge off our thirst, and if we’re
both still OK in an hour we’ll be able to drink as much of it as we
want. All right?”

Lavender took a mouthful thankfully. She passed the bottle to
Dee and asked, “Do you think we’ll get out of here
today?”

Dee didn’t want to crush her hopes. “Only if we escape, but
that may not be as unlikely as it seems. I’ve got an
idea.”

Chapter 69

Vastrick Security, No. 1 Poultry, London. Sunday,
8am.

I had managed to snatch five hours’ sleep on a bed set up in a
small room at the back of the offices. Obviously the Vastrick staff
stayed overnight regularly because there were two such rooms. Don
Fisher had retired to the other room.

DCI Coombes and Inspector Boniface had gone home after a
raging argument with their superiors. They had both wanted to go
into the printing press ‘hard and heavy’, in the early hours of the
morning, but they were ordered to hold off for twelve hours after
an intervention from Europol. Tom, Don and I were livid.

We were told that Europol would be taking down Van Aart and
his organisation in a coordinated series of raids spanning the
Netherlands, Belgium and Northern France. Van Aart’s home, offices,
brothels and drug dens would all be hit by a variety of well-armed
national police and security forces.

The Koninklijke Marechaussee, the Dutch Military Police, would
also hit two industrial units where East European girls were held
until they could be transported to a place where they could earn
money by selling their bodies. Europol were tracking a container
lorry from Bucharest, which they believed was heading for one of
the units in Pernis on the outskirts of Rotterdam. It would arrive
within the next hour and disgorge its cargo of teenage
girls.

At twelve noon, European time, or one o’clock in the UK, the
raids would begin. Unbeknown to either DCI Coombes or Inspector
Boniface, the Metropolitan Police had been secretly planning to
coordinate raids on the Holloways’ premises at the same time. The
secret plans had been codenamed Operation Tango, and we couldn’t
act until the raids were over. The Assistant Commissioner had
explained that almost four hundred officers would be involved in
the raids in four countries, and that they couldn’t take the chance
of Holloway or Van Aart’s men reporting back to Amsterdam that the
police were onto them.

Despite the Assistant Commissioner’s pleas, Don Fisher still
had to be threatened with a night in the cells before he accepted
the decision. I had serious qualms about the idea, too, but we
reached a compromise that I was able to live with.

The police now had three men watching the Tottenham Press
building; they had taken up their positions at four o’clock in the
morning, and were in constant radio contact. One was in a highly
specialised vehicle parked in the car park of the factory across
the street, and the remaining two were concealed where they could
see the two personnel doors that also served as fire exits. Nobody
would go in or out of the printing press without being
observed.

In less than an hour we would be meeting with DS Scott, DCI
Coombes, DS Fellowes, Inspector Boniface, Tom Vastrick and a new
face, Geordie Lowden, who would lead Vastrick’s assault
team.

Geordie, as his name suggested, was travelling down to London
from Tyneside on a chartered helicopter, which should have landed
by now at London Heliport in Battersea. Given that the roads would
be quiet, as they usually are early on a Sunday morning, I reckoned
that the car journey from the heliport would take twenty minutes or
so. I managed to pull myself away from my bed and head towards the
shower.

Chapter
70

Commercial Road, Tottenham, North London. Sunday
11am.

Piet entered the room where Dee and Lavender were secured and
removed the coffee cups.

“
I’ll be back in an hour with your famous British roast beef
dinner, or another packet of sandwiches.” He sniggered and left,
closing the door behind him.

So far they had been provided with water, coffee from a
vending machine and sandwiches. In each case the food had been
delivered on the hour. Dee was working on the theory that they had
an hour until the next visit.

“
Lavender, our hands have only about nine inches of movement,
and so I need your help. I’m going to lean forward, and I want you
to unfasten my necklace.”

Dee leaned over the table so that her nose was almost touching
the table top. Lavender reached over and unclipped the necklace.
The necklace was sterling silver and consisted of a thin chain and
a loop which attached just below the throat, from which hung three
sterling silver rods. The outer two rods were the same length,
which was around an inch, but the middle rod was slightly longer,
perhaps by half an inch. Their diameter was about three sixteenths
of an inch.

Lavender watched as Dee pulled the rods in opposite
directions, opening the silver loop which held them. The three rods
came free.

“
Lavender, please listen very carefully, we don’t have a lot
of time. Handcuffs are not that difficult to unlock. The fact is
that the main reason you can’t unlock them is that they are often
fastened behind your back. These police style speedcuffs are rigid,
which means that your hands are held three inches apart and so you
can’t reach the lock with either hand. Do you see?” Lavender
nodded.

“
Our friends downstairs have overlooked the fact that I can
reach your handcuff locks, and you will then be able to reach mine,
as your hands will be free. Now, hold out your hands and watch me
work.”

Dee took Lavender’s right hand and turned it so that the lock
was facing upwards. Taking one of the shorter rods from her
necklace, she pushed it into the keyhole until it met
resistance.

“
Handcuff keys have to be simple and universal, because while
one policeman might lock you into them, an entirely different one
will probably have to release you. So they usually only have two
tumblers. The key will have a space, a ridge, another space,
another ridge. Like a tiny house key. The way a key works is that
the ridges line up with the levers, and the spaces line up with
fixed stays, so that when you turn the key the ridges open the
tumblers whilst the spaces pass over the blocking stays. If you put
in the wrong key the ridges will hit the fixed stays and the key
won’t turn. Now, we don’t have a key but we have these three rods,
and we should only need two of them.”

Lavender held her breath, watching carefully as Dee pushed the
longer rod into the lock.

“
I’m going to use the first rod to slide over the first lever
like this.” Dee wiggled the rod until she could move the lever.
“Now, this exposes the second lever and we do the same again. If we
now push both levers at the same time, they should get to the point
of equilibrium.”

“
What does that mean?” Lavender asked.

“
When you use a key to a deadlock, like the one over there on
the door, you place the key in the guide, which we call a keyhole.
As you turn the key you feel resistance don’t you?”

“
Yes, I’m with you so far.”

“
Well, that resistance is the key ridges hitting the levers.
They are called levers for a reason. When the levers get to the
mid-point, the point of equilibrium, gravity takes over and the
only reason you keep turning the key is to remove it from the
keyhole. Take notice next time you unlock a deadlock. When you get
halfway through the rotation, the lock clicks open.”

Dee used the two rods to push the levers, and seconds later
there was a click and Lavender’s right hand was free. Lavender
unwound the chain from around the handcuffs and she was free to
move around, albeit her left hand was still handcuffed.

It took Dee twenty minutes of patient coaching to teach
Lavender how to prise the right hand side of her handcuffs open,
but when she did she almost whooped with joy. She was so proud of
herself that Dee couldn’t suppress a laugh.

Three minutes later both sets of handcuffs were off. Dee
decided there wasn’t time for any more on the job lock pick
training, and so released the left hands herself.

***

It was a quarter to twelve and Dee was standing at the open
door on the upper level, looking out over the factory floor. There
was no-one to be seen. Carefully she stepped onto the steel mesh
landing at the top of the stairs.

So far, so good, she thought to herself. Since breakfast and
the toilet visits, their captors had not bothered locking the door
to their room, assuming the chains and cuffs would be more than
enough to hold them.

Dee wanted to protect Lavender, and so she gave her explicit
instructions that would ensure her safety. Now she had to act
before their captors made the rounds again.

There were two cars in the unit; a Black SUV with EU plates,
and a Lexus with UK plates. At the bottom of the steel staircase
she could see an open half glazed door leading to a small office,
and voices were coming from inside. She counted four separate
voices. That was good. They were all together.

Rather than use the metal stairs, which would certainly make a
noise, she removed her boots and climbed between the landing and
the handrail. She hung on to the steel railings, lowering herself
down until she was dangling six feet above the ground. A second
later she dropped silently to the floor, landing like a cat on all
fours.

The fire exits were at the far end of the factory unit, and so
Dee circumnavigated the floor, keeping the bulky printing presses
between her and the open office door. A few moments later she
reached the fire door and her heart sank.

“
This door is alarmed,” the notice read, as did the notice
over the fire door opposite. They could not go through either of
those doors without alerting their captors.

It didn’t really make any difference, Dee reasoned to herself.
The difficulties would be the same. As soon as she exited the
building the men would be alerted, and she would have to run over
unknown terrain barefoot. She had no way of knowing how far she
would have to run before finding somewhere to raise the alarm, but
she had come too far to back out of this now.

***

The alarm on the fire door was really more of a buzzer, but it
was enough to alert the four men in the office. They ran out on to
the factory floor, looking around to try to discover what had set
the alarm off.

“
You two make sure our guests are secure, and we’ll find out
what’s going on.”

Rik and Gregor had their guns at the ready as they ran out of
the open fire door.

***

Dee had micro seconds to take stock of her location and try to
work out which direction she needed to take. The building was an
anonymous looking industrial box, with a car park on two sides and
a concrete paved path leading to the front entrance. A fence,
perhaps seven or eight feet tall, enclosed the site. The fence
posts were concrete, with a galvanised steel chain link mesh strung
between them. The top section angled inwards and was threaded with
barbed wire, so there was no chance of climbing it.

She ran along the paved pathway towards the front of the
building, a distance of some seventy five yards. As she got to the
front of the building she heard the sound of the fire door crashing
open, and she looked back to see two men in pursuit.

She raced across the car park and through the open gateway
onto the deserted road, where she almost knocked over a man with a
carrier bag who was walking by. Dee wasted no time.

“
Please, sir, will you help me? There are armed men chasing
me. We both need to run. Find somewhere safe.”

The man looked rather alarmed, but instead of running for his
life he did something she wasn’t expecting. He punched her in the
face.

“
Shit, there were five of them,” she thought to herself as she
tried to get up. Her plan was in tatters, but she had to try to
keep Lavender safe somehow.

“
Lavender, run!” she yelled at the top of her voice, until the
tazer disabled her for the second time in a few hours.

Chapter
71

398 High Rd, Tottenham, North London. Sunday
11:30am.

Number 398 High Road in Tottenham is a huge Georgian red brick
building with stone features around the Georgian paned windows and
a carved stone portico around the door, into which is carved the
word POLICE.

The ornate police station stands on a busy dual carriage way
and so we had to wait for a change in the traffic lights before we
could turn into the car park. The reason we were being hosted at
this location was due to its proximity to the Tottenham Press,
which was less than a mile away.