Читать книгу: «Paul Finch Untitled Book 2», страница 3

Grumpily, all previous concerns forgotten – because one thing you could never do was challenge Harry Hopkins in his own home – he unlocked the back door and stepped out. The garden light came on, and there was no mistake: a large, dark vehicle was parked just the other side of his back wall. He stumped along the path, Milly trotting inquisitively behind him, undid the bolts and yanked the gate open – to find a vehicle there so large that it literally filled the alley. Though its rear end was close to his gate, perhaps a yard to his left, there was minimal room to manoeuvre; less than a foot’s clearance separated its offside flank from his wall, which meant that he could only move along it if he slithered sideways.

But none of that mattered as much as the kind of vehicle it was.

A van.

A black transit van.

Fleeting pinpricks of sweat appeared on Harry’s brow; it was several seconds before he could even engage his voice.

‘Okay … okay,’ he grunted to himself.

This was a challenge, and no mistake – but there was no need to get jumpy. He’d already worked out what the problem was here: the Rodwells and their inconsiderate friends.

Thankfully, he hadn’t changed his shoes for slippers yet, so the fact there’d likely be lots of dirty puddles out there wasn’t a problem. He stepped from his gate and, as the rear of the van was nearest, edged in that direction first. For some reason, Milly hung back in the gateway. But Harry barely noticed, his temper continuing to fray as he thought more and more about the Rodwells and their loutish, snot-nosed pals. He noticed that the van wasn’t parked across their gate. When he reached the back of it, its rear doors were both closed, doubtless locked.

Moving to the vehicle’s nearside and finding that the passage on that side was wider by several inches, he sidled along it more quickly, though his feet sloshed through inches of mucky water. When he got to the front, there was nobody inside the cab. Both the front doors were also probably locked, but when Harry put his hand down to the radiator grille, warmth exuded from it. As he’d suspected, the damn thing had only recently arrived.

The more he looked at it now, the more he thought it was dark-blue rather than black, which was a relief in a silly kind of way. But that didn’t stop it being any less of a nuisance.

He was now well positioned to view the rear of the Rodwells’ house. There were no lights on at the back, but there could be at the front. Harry would need to go back through his house to check.

His slid along the vehicle’s nearside, circling its rear end towards his own gate – and there stopped in surprise. The left of the van’s two rear doors now stood open.

Harry was stumped.

Could it have been the wind? No, that was preposterous. There was the odd gust tonight, but nothing like sufficient to open a vehicle door, even if that door had been left ajar, which he was damn sure this one hadn’t.

So – had someone inside this van just climbed out?

He glanced over his shoulder, but the alley dwindled away in a straight line until it joined with the next street. There was no one there.

‘What the bloody hell?’ he muttered.

He leaned forward, poking his nose into the van’s interior. It was too dark to see anything, but now he wondered if that was a faint rustle of cloth he was hearing.

‘Is someone … someone in here …?’

Two hands in black leather gloves shot out of the darkness, gripping him by the cardigan collar.

He was yanked forward with tremendous force, smashing both kneecaps against the van’s rear bumper. The material of his trouser legs hooked on jagged metal, briefly anchoring him in place, allowing him to splay his arms out and grab at the door-frame on one side and the closed door on the other, wedging himself. As his shock ebbed, he began resisting, pushing backward, but those gloved hands were strong, and they dragged at him all the harder. Harry travelled forward again, feet leaving the ground, the material of his trousers ripping, along with the flesh underneath.

As he shouted in pain, one of the hands released his collar and slapped palm-first across his mouth. Then there was a thundering impact on the back of Harry’s head.

His world spun as his hands slipped loose and he slumped forward. Somewhere, there was a frantic yipping – was it Milly?

Whoever had hit Harry from behind now wrapped both arms around Harry’s thighs, and lifted him bodily, feeding him forward into the van’s interior. The person already in there continued to lug him.

The next thing Harry knew, though he was too groggy to make sense of it, he was lying in oily darkness, face-down on corrugated metal. As if that wasn’t enough, someone knelt on the middle of his back, pinning him with their full weight. And still that yipping went on, though it turned into a squeal of fright as a bundle of fur and paws was flung in alongside him. With an echoing CLANG!, the door slammed shut, and blackness descended.

The back of Harry’s head throbbed appallingly; hot fluid leaked through his thinning hair. Milly grizzled and snarled alongside him. When he attempted to speak – absurdly, it was to try and calm the dog – it came out a spittle-clotted burble. His captor responded by shifting one of his knife-like knees from the middle of Harry’s spine to the back of his head, pressing it down sideways, which intensified the raw, stinging pain. The old man yelped aloud, but it was lost as the vehicle rumbled to life and, with a shudder-inducing growl, accelerated away along the Backs.

Chapter 1

The men began arriving shortly after ten o’clock that night. At least, Lucy assumed they would all be men. The intelligence suggested that, and while she wasn’t so naïve as to believe that casual cruelty was solely a male preserve, this particular business, as well as being totally disgusting, just seemed so childishly laddish that she couldn’t picture any of the female offenders she’d arrested over the years participating willingly.

‘All units, we’re on,’ she said into her radio. ‘But sit tight … wait for the order.’

From where she was concealed in the woodland hide, just beyond the cover of the trees, Lucy had a clear view of the rutted track leading to the farm cottage. Over at the point where it joined Wellspring Lane, the gateman was busy admitting a succession of vans and cars, which now passed within seventy yards of her position, travelling slowly in cavalcade. Already she could hear the yipping and yelping of the dogs caged in their boots.

Geraldson, the RSPCA inspector, dabbed with a handkerchief at the sweat glinting on his brow. He was young and nervous.

‘Is there a black van out there?’ His voice was querulous.

‘Even if there is, it won’t necessarily be the one that’s been abducting pets,’ Lucy replied. ‘These are all paying participants. They’ll have their own animals.’

‘So … when do we move?’

‘Not until it gets going.’ Lucy – Detective Constable Lucy Clayburn – continued to watch through her night-vision scope but reached out a hand and squeezed his shoulder with a firm, hopefully reassuring grip. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got this.’

‘There’ll be some rough customers.’

‘That’s why we’ve got the Tactical Aid Unit with us. They’re mostly ex-military. They like nothing better than a ruckus.’

Geraldson nodded and smiled, eyes gleaming wetly as more headlights rolled across the hide, shining fleetingly on his face.

By Lucy’s estimation, about fourteen vehicles had now arrived at the cottage. Each one would likely be carrying more than one dog. So that would be twenty-eight animals at least, not counting any that were already being kept on site. The RSPCA were anticipating thirty-two in total, which would provide a straightforward knock-out contest. The members of this ring were clearly anticipating a long night.

As the vehicles pulled up haphazardly in the farmyard, a bulb sprang to life outside the ramshackle building to which it was attached, and a man slouched out. He was heavy-set and bearded, in a ragged green sweater and khaki pants. One by one, the parked vehicles opened, and men disgorged from them: generally at least two, sometimes as many as five. Like the guy from the cottage – whom Lucy had already identified as Les Mahoney – they mostly wore outdoor-type clothing: khaki, camouflage fatigues and such, though there were a few leather jackets among them, and a bit of oily denim.

‘Christ,’ Geraldson breathed. ‘There’s more than I expected.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Lucy replied.

As a rule, when you were facing big numbers, quite a few of them weren’t looking for legal entanglements and would scarper at the first opportunity. That was when they were most vulnerable; all you had to do was pick them off. Though, looking at these guys – and she turned the super-zoom dial on her scope – there might be as many fighters as runners. She saw shaved heads, scarred faces, scuzzy tattoos. For once she was glad the sixty officers from the TAU were parked in a layby in their troop-carriers a little way down Wellspring Lane.

She continued to observe the men as they greeted each other with high fives and bear-hugs, before swaggering over to Mahoney and thrusting at him the wads of banknotes that made up their admission fees.

Another cop came into the hide behind her. It was PC Malcolm Peabody, once Lucy’s probationer when she too had been in uniform. He was still only young, but a tall, rangy lad, with short red hair, a freckled face and jug-handle ears. Currently, he wore heavy-duty body-armour, plus a ballistics helmet with its visor raised and strap tight under his chin.

‘Sergeant Frobisher says everyone’s in position,’ he said quietly.

‘Everyone except you, Malcolm,’ Lucy replied, thinking that if it suddenly kicked off, she didn’t want handy lads like Peabody anywhere other than the front line. ‘There’s not enough space for all of us in here. Go back to your LUP and stay sharp.’

Peabody nodded and stooped back out through the low, narrow entrance.

None of them knew what the hide had originally been constructed for. It might indeed have been a wildlife observation point in the past. But it made a perfect OP for today: a flimsy, flat-roofed wooden hut, partly dug into the ground so it had an earthen floor, its exterior covered with vegetation, which, at the tail-end of summer, partly obscured the horizontal viewing port at the front – partly, but not completely.

Its interior was so restricted that it could only contain two with any comfort. But it gave an excellent view of the farm cottage, some fifty yards beyond the trees, and the open grassland to the east of it, where at this hour nothing stirred save a couple of tethered ponies munching the cud.

An increasingly excited canine yelping drew Lucy’s attention back to the cottage, where the rear doors to vehicles were now being opened and muzzled dogs brought out on chain leashes. Even through the zoom-lens of her scope, and with the whole of the farmyard area lit up, many of them were already so horribly scarred from battles past that their breeds were unidentifiable, but by their lean, squat, muscular frames she reckoned they’d be fighting species of old: pit bulls, Staffies and the like, an impression enhanced by the thick muzzles they wore, and their steel-studded leather harnesses.