Sleaford Noir 1 Page 3

CHAPTER 3.

   

  You're never properly asleep and I was awake, although unmoving, at least ten minutes before my BlackBerry's alarm shrilled into life. I stretched and rubbed my chin. At least I didn't have to shave. I rolled out of the diner's parking lot at three a.m. precisely. About the quietest time of the night. I turned the Audi's front towards Sleaford and a few minutes later I was driving through its deserted streets.

  I'm from the city myself and I can't take these sleepy little towns where nothing happens from one year to another. It would drive me crazy. What was going to happen tonight would make the headlines. Give them all something to talk about how the world was going to hell in a hand-cart.

  Maybe that's true, maybe the world has sold its soul for money, but Wheelan was about to find out a little about hell.

  The other side of Sleaford, on East Road, I pulled up opposite a complex of mid-sized industrial units. You've seen the sort of thing – they've sprung up all over the country like mushrooms over the last few decades. Several huge metal hangars clustered together all spray coated a sort of greyish green. Maybe whoever built it thinks that will help the estate blend into the countryside. Or maybe they just don't care and greyish green is the cheapest option. Nothing to me either way.

  One of these sheds was Wheelan's. The units were fenced off from the road with a sliding electric gate at the front controlling the access road. Next to the gate stood a little fibreglass security hut. I closed my Audi's door as quietly as possible and crossed the road. Inside the hut, a radio tuned to BBC Radio 2 finished playing a song from the 1980s I hadn't heard since the 1980s and then the distinctive voice of Alex Lester himself came on.

  The guard was tipped back in his chair, his feet up on the desk and with his arms folded over his chest. I tapped on the glass. The guard jerked awake, his feet dropping to the floor. He blinked and then peered at me, his eyes taking a moment to focus.

  "Help you?" he muttered, thickly as I held up a large padded envelope.

  The guard slid his glass window panel to one side and leaned out into the night air. He blinked again in the chill.

  I took my Beretta 92 from out the envelope and showed him the gun. That grabbed his attention.

  "Unless your hut's bullet proof; open up," I said.

  The guard blinked and thought. Not easy when you've only just woken from sleep and someone's threatening your life.

  "Hurry," I said, tightening my finger on the trigger.

  The guard pressed a red button on his desk and the electronic gate slid along its grooves. I walked past and opened the security hut's door. The interior was cluttered with a bank of CCTV monitors attached to obsolete looking computer terminals. Next to them stood his Tupperware lunch-box, Thermos and radio. Alex Lester's voice was going on about his cross-dressing truckers.

  "Doesn't anyone ever clean this place? It's filthy," I said to him. The guard backed away into a corner. Pointing to his swivel chair I told him to sit. He did so.

  From my pocket I took a roll of duct tape and ripped off a length. This was the dangerous part, when I was up close and personal with the guard. He might take it into his head to fight back and catch me when I was more vulnerable. Admittedly, he didn't look like he could put up much resistance being in his mid-fifties and overweight from a diet of late night comfort eating. His uniform was scruffy, ill-fitting and well washed with a frayed shirt collar. He smelled of cheap deodorant. No, I didn't think it likely he'd risk his life over a dead-end, minimum wage job.

  I dragged the guard's arms behind his back and taped them to the chair back. Now I felt much safer, I taped his ankles to the chair base.

  The guard glanced up at the clock. "The wagons start coming in at five thirty or so," he told me. "The drivers'll see me tied up when they can't get in."

  "Thanks for the tip. But I'm not here to rob the place so I'll only be a few minutes." I thought for a moment. "Can you open unit number three from here?"

  The guard shook his head. "No. The owners of the units all have their own keys and things."

  "Can you silence the alarm?"

  "No, that's independent as well."

  I thanked the guard for his help and then taped his mouth closed. I gently pulled his chair over and laid him flat on the floor out of sight of the hut's window. If any early arriving truckers – cross-dressing or otherwise – showed up they might think the guard was in the attached toilet. I left the hut, returned to my Audi and collected what I needed.

  Earlier, McTeague had told me unit three belonged to Wheelan. It wasn't in his name, of course, but held by an offshore shell company. That much, Wheelan had learned from McTeague; that it was wise to keep yourself several steps away from anything dodgy. The directors of the shell company were probably a couple of residents in an old folks home who'd sign anything that was placed in front of them in return for a litre bottle of Bristol cream sherry each.

  A few minutes later I stood in front of unit three. It was identical to the other five units in this part of the industrial complex except for the shell company's sign above the door. There were two doors – a large one for vehicular access with a smaller one for pedestrians set into it. The pedestrian door's lock was nothing that couldn't be picked.

  So I guessed Wheelan was relying on the fencing and guard to provide security. If that was the case, he was making a big mistake. I crouched on the damp tarmac before the door, pushed in my L shaped pry I'd brought with me and after thirty seconds or so I heard a click as the door unlocked. I stood, brushed my suit pants down and then I was in.

  As I expected, a row of light switches were on the wall by my right. Closing the door behind me, I snapped one row of lights on. The overhead hi-watts flickered on, dimmed and then came onto full brilliance. All the illumination I needed. Near the bank of light switches was the alarm panel's keypad. The number in the display scrolled down every second: 180, 179, 178... I took no notice after that.

  Looking around, I saw the unit was far larger than Wheelan needed. Unless he was stupid enough to think that McTeague was a busted flush and was about to roll over and give up all his Lincolnshire and East Midlands operations. And it would take someone way stronger than Wheelan to grab them from McTeague's hands. 167, 166, 165...

  The unit smelled like a distillery. Which wasn't surprising as that's exactly what it was. An illegal distillery producing hundreds of gallons of moonshine vodka to supply the needs of the thirsty ill-paid East Europeans in the towns all around the East Midlands. However, there was a nasty undertone of industrial alcohol, similar to the nail polish remover I'd smelled in the Beauticians earlier.

  To one side I saw a wash still standing over an unlit furnace. An angled swan neck from the wash still led down to a condenser and that in turn led onto a spirit safe. The units were cold and dead at the moment. Looked like Wheelan didn't have enough custom yet to justify taking on a night shift.

  Me, I wouldn't let a drop of it pass my lips but maybe the East Europeans' stomachs were much stronger than mine. I remembered reading about a teenage girl who was found dead in a Grantham park after drinking a bottle of this stuff. The papers were full of it for a couple of days until the next scandal came along. Then it was quietly dropped and the dead girl faded back to obscurity missed by no-one except her family.

  The sweet smell of fermenting potatoes was mixed in with chemical undertones. Over by one wall were crates of empty bottles next to a bottle-capping machine. Wheelan might as well have sourced the bottles from the local recycling bottle banks rather than buying them in. That's all his rot-gut was fit for, I thought as I walked over to the bottle-capper.

  Next to the capper was a box filled with printed labels – the labels marked up as Goo$$e Lake. There were plenty of differences between these labels and those of a high end vodka of a very similar name. Maybe Wheelan thought he'd get around trading standards that way. I doubted it but you never know. But if you're a Pole or Lithuanian wanting to get blotto after a long day's graft on the minimum wa
ge, then Wheelan's knock-off rot-gut did the job. Anything to dull the misery of working in this wretched rain-soaked country.

  I put the labels back.

  If it hadn't been for the click of it's claws on the painted cement floor, it would have been on me before I could react. I spun round, fast as a spinning top as a Hell-hound trotted round the corner of the fermenting vat. It must have been attracted by the lights or my scent.

  So Wheelan wasn't just relying on the contract security guard.

  The dog was a huge tan and black rottweiler with huge bone crunching hyena-like jaws. It took one look at me and I'm sure it grinned. Me being here must have made its day. The guard dog tensed, coiled its back legs like a spring and then raced towards me. Slobber and foam dropped from its gaping jaws and I saw its evil red eyes like fire lamps. Its simple doggy brain had visions of blood on the floor. Mine.

  Unfortunately for the hell-hound, it wasn't up against some teenage punk or crack-head junkie looking for something to rob to score their next fix. It was up against me. McTeague's top enforcer.

  With one fluid motion I drew my Beretta 92 and shot it. The hollow point Parabellum nine millimetre bullet slammed into its chest. The gunshot echoed around the vast space of the unit, bouncing off the metal walls, multiplying its loudness making it sound as if an army of gunmen had pulled the trigger. For a moment, the tang of cordite killed the sweet smell of booze.

  The hollow point ripped into the rottweiler's broad chest. The dog spun backwards, almost head over heels and crashed onto the cement floor. Its fore legs twitched beneath it as the dog tried to stand. It raised its great hyena like head and barked fiercely but after a moment gave it up and howled piteously.

  Its legs were scrambling, no longer strong. Its eyes no longer evil and red looked up at me. The dog's brain couldn't understand what had happened except that it was in a lot of pain and couldn't move its body any more. Blood spread out to form a pool under its body. The hollow point must've ripped through its insides – the bullet expanding and mushrooming as it travelled through the dog's body, devastating everything in its path.

  I would have liked to put the rottweiler out of its misery but I didn't want to risk a second bullet on the animal. Once I'd finished here, I didn't think the police forensics unit would notice one tiny lump of molten lead under the dog's body but two? Looking around I spotted the brass shell casing lying bright in the open so I stooped to pick it up.

  And then the alarm sounded – its shrill bray adding to the dog's howls of pain and fury. The noise was deafening. I'd wasted too much time already but I thought I still had enough. We were on the edge of town. And after all, Wheelan wouldn't have linked this factory's alarm system to the local cop shop. Not with what he was producing here.

  Nearby were two stacks of pallets all loaded with cases of vodka awaiting distribution. The pallets had all been mummified in layer after layer of shrink-wrap. A forklift was connected up to its charging unit just next to the stack. I smiled to myself. This was getting better and better.

  So I jerked out the electrical lead, dropping it onto the floor and then engaged reverse, raising the forks to waist height. I backed away from the stacks, then threw the gear into forwards. The forklift crashed into the first stack of pallets. It swayed and then toppled over. The stack crashed to the concrete floor, the bottles smashing into a million pieces, the shrink-wrap holding its shape for a moment before deflating and collapsing in on itself. For a moment, the crash drowned out the alarm's bray.

  After the noise of the crash the place sounded quiet for a moment until my ears picked up the alarm again. A lake of booze spilled out from the shrink-wrap flooding out from the impact, spreading out over the floor towards the injured rottweiler. It opened its jaws and howled. A trickle of blood leaked from its mouth, mixing in with the moonshine vodka staining it pink.

  Again I reversed and knocked over the second stack. This crash seemed even louder than the first. There's something deeply satisfying about making a lot of noise destroying crates and crates of bottles. The floor was an inch deep in moonshine washing around the furnace's base, the poor rottweiler trying to back away, the fumes of cheap moonshine vodka filling my nose and making me gag.

  I stepped down from the forklift and walked through the lake of vodka. The rottweiler didn't even bother snapping at me as I passed. As if it knew what was coming its way. I walked to the entrance and looked around at the scene of devastation before me. At the door I lit the tampon wick of my first petrol bomb. I paused for a second, enjoying the feeling of power, of destruction in my hand. I felt like some malevolent god.

  Then I lobbed the Molotov straight into the lake of booze. It caught with a dull whoompf. Blue flames licked up from the vodka as the alcohol started to burn. The rottweiler howled and desperately tried to scrabble away as it felt the heat and flames spread towards it. I watched the fire take hold until the heat became too much. Only then did I step outside of the unit and closed the door behind me.

  Jogging past the security hut, I crossed the road and a moment later was back inside the safety of my Audi. No rest for the wicked, I thought, as I dropped the handbrake, engaged first and drove out of the industrial estate. Shortly after, I was back in Sleaford's town centre.