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One of them was so high he wouldn’t have noticed if a spaceship had landed. The second was deep in conversation with a girl who was offering him sex in return for a joint. The third had been overpowered before he realized what was happening, but the fourth saw them coming, and had time to contact Pete Donoghue, who was sitting by the lift listening to Pink Floyd on his radio.
“Raid, raid, raid!” came crackling over his intercom, and Donoghue was suddenly back in the real world. He was reaching for the FOP button when the sprinter dived head first as if reaching for the try line. He hit him squarely in the stomach, knocking the radio out of his hand. Donoghue fell backward, but quickly recovered and caught the sprinter with a well-aimed knee under the chin that sent him into touch.
The two front row forwards were only yards away when the sprinter came tumbling back out of the lift, clutching on to the radio. Donoghue staggered to his feet and quickly jabbed at the top button. The doors slowly closed, clamping shut with the two props only a yard away. Their sole task that night had ended in failure. One of them punched the closed doors in frustration, but could only watch helplessly as the lift indicator passed the second and third floors. The other knelt down beside the sprinter, who was writhing in pain. “Officer down!” he shouted into his radio. “I need an ambulance immediately! Repeat, officer down!”
The last of the eight counter-terrorism officers landed on the roof moments later, as the twelve armed officers on the stairway reached the sixth floor.
By the time the lift passed the seventh, Donoghue could hear the sound of heavy footsteps thundering up the stairs. He looked around for his radio, but it was nowhere to be seen. He cursed, but he was still convinced he could reach the slaughter and raise the alarm long before the Old Bill got there.
As the lift was passing the twenty-first floor, the counter-terrorism unit began abseiling down the side of the building, confident that no one in the slaughter would have thought it possible an intruder could appear from above, not least because every window on the top three floors was covered with tightly fitted black mesh blinds to make sure even a passing pigeon couldn’t see what they were up to.
When the lift reached the twenty-third floor and the doors began to slowly open, Donoghue ripped them apart, leaped out, and banged frantically on the small metal grille in the front door with a clenched fist. The gatekeeper peered through the grille, and when he saw the sweat pouring off Donoghue’s face, he quickly undid the three locks and wrenched open the heavy door.
“We’re being raided!” Donoghue screamed at the top of his voice as he barged past the gatekeeper and began looking for the one person he was responsible for, just as the Specialist Firearms Command reached the fourteenth floor.
Rashidi was stacking piles of cash into wads of a thousand pounds, before placing them into a sports bag, when the door of his private office was flung open. The moment he saw Donoghue’s face, he didn’t need to be told a raid was in progress. He’d rehearsed for this moment several times, knowing that one day they must surely come.
Rashidi followed Donoghue into the boiler room, where he was confronted by something he hadn’t been able to prepare for: pandemonium. While his workers streamed in panic toward the front door, he moved swiftly in the opposite direction, accompanied by Donoghue and two armed guards, as the SFC passed the nineteenth floor.
Rashidi quickly reached the door that led to the walkway and the safety of his flat in Block B, but it soon became clear that, despite the three heavies’ best efforts, their escape route had been blocked. There was now only one way out. While those around him continued to panic, Rashidi remained calm and headed quickly back toward the front door in the hope that he could reach the lift and be on his way down to the ground floor before his nemesis appeared. His lawyer had told him that although it was the less desirable alternative, once he was in the lift it could be argued in court that he was simply an innocent resident caught up in the cross fire, and that he’d never taken a drug in his life. The last part of the prepared statement had the virtue of being true.
Back in the boiler room, Rashidi found his pr
ogress blocked by workers all struggling like lemmings to desperately cram through the same narrow doorway as they attempted to reach the stairwell or the lift. His bodyguards and Donoghue began hurling them aside to make a gangway for their master, and he was within a few feet of the door when the first of the counter-terrorism officers came crashing through the window, knocking Donoghue off his feet. Moments later a second intruder crashed the party and threw a stun grenade into the middle of the room, shouting, “On your knees!”
Rashidi had just reached the front door when a third paratrooper took out one of his armed guards. He could only watch helplessly as the lift doors began to close. His last remaining protector thrust an arm into the gap in a vain attempt to hold up a lift, which was built to accommodate no more than eight passengers but already had at least a dozen desperate escapees crammed inside, jabbering away in several different tongues. Rashidi spotted the first of the armed officers emerging from the stairwell below, and immediately fell back on the “plan of last resort.” He made his way back into the boiler room, where he threw off his jacket, put on a discarded face mask and a pair of rubber gloves that he found on the floor, and joined the workers who were meekly kneeling, hands behind their heads, passively accepting their fate. He, too, was prepared to accept their fate.
The first of the armed officers reached the top of the stairs, and with one movement he disarmed the last of Rashidi’s remaining bodyguards by thrusting the butt of his Heckler & Koch into his jaw. Only Donoghue was still putting up a fight, but the police light heavyweight boxing champion put him out for the count, then handcuffed him and read him his rights—not that he could hear a word.
Armed officers continued to pour into the slaughter, and began to round up what was left of Rashidi’s workforce, while half a dozen policemen dragged Donoghue and the two bodyguards unceremoniously down the stairs to the ground floor, where the first of a row of Black Marias was waiting to accommodate them. William was disappointed to find that the last of the resistance had already been dealt with by the time he reached the twenty-third floor.
He strode into the slaughter as one of Rashidi’s lieutenants was being led away, shouting and cursing, but not before he was able to throw a punch at William that landed a passing blow and stunned him for a moment. He quickly recovered as another officer slapped a pair of handcuffs on his assailant. As the smoke from the stun grenade attack began to clear, he turned to survey the carnage of what was left of Rashidi’s empire. A dozen or so menial workers wearing face masks and rubber gloves were kneeling on the floor. No doubt most of them were illegal immigrants who hadn’t been working there by choice, and who might even be relieved to have been rescued. The lower ranks of the drugs world always ended up carrying the can for their masters, and they knew they could never open their mouths. There was always another Tulip, always another gouged eye.
William was sure he hadn’t passed Rashidi as he came up the stairs, and Jackie had informed him on the radio that he wasn’t among the frightened passengers in the lift who had been rounded up as soon as they reached the ground floor. As there was no other way out, he began to look more closely at the pathetic rabble who remained in the slaughter. And then he noticed a couple of them were stealing fearful glances at one particular worker. William took a closer look, but could see no difference between him and the others kneeling in front of him. But he tapped him on the shoulder and told him to stand up. He didn’t move.
“Probably doesn’t speak English, sarge,” said a young constable, yanking the man to his feet.
“I think he speaks several languages,” said William. He removed the man’s mask, but even then he couldn’t be certain.
“What are you looking for, sarge?”
“The Viper,” said William, but not a flicker of recognition crossed the man’s face. “Take the glove off your left hand,” he said slowly and clearly. Again, no response.
The constable ripped the man’s glove off, to reveal that part of the third finger was missing. “How did you know that, sarge?” he said.
“His mother told me.”
The man continued to stare blankly at William, as if he didn’t understand a word he was saying.
“If you hadn’t hugged her, Mr. Rashidi, I might never have known you were her son.”
Still not a flicker of comprehension.
“I wonder how she’ll react when I visit her in The Boltons tomorrow morning to tell her what her son really imports from Colombia, and then exports onto the streets of London, not from an oak-paneled office in the City as the respected chairman of Marcel and Neffe, but from a depraved drugs den in Brixton, where he’s known as the Viper.”
The man continued to stand there impassively, not even blinking.
“The attentive son, who never misses an appointment with his mother on a Friday afternoon but doesn’t care how many young lives he destroys, as long as he makes a profit week in and week out.”
