Chapter 22 Battle of the Giants
Martin had not recognized the fact that there were seven other policemen working at the hospital in several guises, three as patients, two cleaners and two male nurses, fully trained first aid persons who just walked the corridors with pieces of paper in their hands.
He was only aware of his friend and colleague at work, so it was better to be ignorant about the others who admittedly were not all from his station. Everything was tight on security. He needn’t have worried about that side of things with the exception of the policeman that his friend had not recognized. There was something about him that shouted out – bogus but without some sort of evidence it might be difficult to prove.
* * *
Chan was furious, in fact he was seething underneath his calmness when he spoke to his bodyguard. To be told that he was forbidden to see Joanna again through a third party was an insult and he decided that Luigi Stefan was going to pay heavily. He knew that a deal was going through with a large consignment of drugs. He drew the line when it came to drugs, cigarettes were fine, but drugs out on the streets were too dangerous. He had some moral standards. He knew the time when this was going to happen as he was to be involved, but his involvement with Joanna had soured the agreement between the two gangs. Charlie was going to be the “fall guy!” – but as he was out of the picture, someone else was going to be the patsy. Stefan’s second in command who had ideas above his station was going to take the lead in this escapade – he wanted to make a good impression and win the rest of the gang over to his way of thinking that he was far better and a fair person, whereas the Godfather was cruel as shown when he shot one of his own men for what he thought was a trifling mistake.
Chan could impersonate most people and over the phone it was difficult to identify who was speaking. The heist was set for 11pm. Chan took much relish in ‘phoning and spoke. ‘The time has changed to 9pm!’
Chan smiled, he often thought his mimicry of the Godfather was rather excellent! No-one was going to question that voice.
Chan’s men were ready and their ambush of the large articulated lorry was easy. The driver was unharmed, but tied up and gagged. He hadn’t seen anyone’s face because they all wore masks and no-one spoke a word, it was done in complete silence.
The lorry was driven to the nearest sea port. The ferry was hi-jacked and the lorry was driven onto the vehicle deck. Halfway across the ferry came to a halt and the driver’s cabin was detached with the container and extra trailer. Holes were bored into both trailers and with the aid of the ferry’s pulleys it was eased back into the water. For a moment it floated away from the ferry’s sea lane and then as it sunk a bit deeper, the holes began to take in water and then it disappeared from view.
The ferry started to continue with crossing to the other side and the lorry driven off and the driver still tied up and blindfolded and placed in the driver’s seat.
Chan’s men boarded the ferry and it went back the way it had come. By the time the balloon had gone up. Chan and his gang were safely at home in bed.
Chan thought there might be reprisals from the Mafia gang, but there was no proof of them having been involved.
Chan smiled as he read the read the daily paper. “Mystery of Driver found tied up in truck” When questioned by police – he stated: ‘He was asked to deliver some machinery to blah, blah, blah. But was flagged down and dragged from his cabin and tied up and blindfolded.’ He knew nothing else. When asked where his cargo was, he didn’t know. ‘He is still helping the police with their enquiries.’
Chan said to himself ‘Most satisfactory!’ He hadn’t asked for Martin Church to be on the heist as he was suspicious of how easy it was for him to get hold of the information from the hospital. Why he felt this betrayal in his mind he didn’t know why.
Chapter 23 Suspicion
Martin Church felt he had overstepped the mark with Chan, being too clever about how he had got all the information that Chan had asked of him in one visit to the hospital. That was a bit careless on his part. How to make amends was going to be difficult especially as Martin knew he was being followed and also that there were members of Chan’s gang at the hospital, or were there. It could have been a bluff and that Chan had been the one person who had followed him into the hospital. But it might have been difficult for Chan to enter, because of his recent escapade and surely the police who were visible as well as invisible might have recognized him from the description given by the injured police officer. Martin’s intuition was correct as he was summoned to Chan’s office for a meeting with some other members of the gang.
Martin knocked on the door of his office, but went in without waiting for the customary ‘Come in!’ Chan was just closing a door to an otherwise hidden cupboard and Martin spotted a few wigs on a few plastic heads. Martin turned towards the door and shut it as he didn’t want Chan to think he had seen something he shouldn’t have. He turned and walked towards the desk and by that time Chan was sitting writing.
‘Ah! Martin – I see you’re the first to arrive, please take a seat!’ Voices could be heard and shortly the office door opened and members of the gang came in and sat down. Chan distributed pieces of paper out to his men and one to Martin. He smiled at Martin. ‘I want you to take charge of this raid, Martin.’ To the others he said, ‘You will see by my instructions, you will obey Martin to the letter. Martin read his piece of paper which gave instructions that he was to lead the gang to one of Luigi Stefan’s warehouses, gain access and place dynamite and blow everything up. Martin tried to hide his feelings, being once a member of the elite SAS, who at one time did this kind of thing as part of their duties. As he was now a member of MI5, it was going to be difficult to extricate himself out of this raid as all eyes were going to be on him. One pair of eyes especially were going to be trained on him out of all the gang members to make sure he went through with the raid.
‘When are going to do the raid?’ Martin asked.
‘Tonight.’ said Chan. ‘In two hours time and no-one is to leave the premises, for any reason.’
Martin was stymied, there seemed to be no way out. Martin was kind of escorted back to his room, but it wasn’t his usual room. He was asked if he minded using this room as his was going to have some decorating done. He found that all his outer clothing had been carefully placed in the wardrobes and his other things such as shirts and pants were neatly folded in the drawers. The new room had two windows and faced another building just three feet away and he hadn’t realized that he must have travelled in almost a circle, because he found that looking through the window, it was opposite Chan’s office window. Chan smiled and waved.
Martin gathered by this time that Chan definitely was suspicious of him and knew it was going to be a two headed coin that was going to be used against him. Martin tried to open the windows. They didn’t budge! The telephone rang and Chan apologized about the windows. ‘The last decorator had sloshed so much paint on that they couldn’t get them unstuck, many times they had tried to free them, but they hadn’t moved and they had been so busy lately they never got the chance to do anything about it. Sorry!’ said, Chan.
Martin went into the bathroom and decided to have a bath. He thought he would go out of this world cleaner. He appeared to undress himself and wrapped a large bath towel round his waist and disappeared from Chan’s view.
Martin knew there were hearing devices round the room and probably close circuit television in the main area of that room and was hoping that the bathroom was excluded. There it was, someone had overlooked a possible way out and Martin thought he could squeeze himself through the small trapdoor in the ceiling, but he had to convince Chan and whoever was listening in, that he was there. He undressed fully and climbed into the bath. ‘Oh sod it! Forgot the soap. Martin got out of the bath and water glistened on his naked body and dripped over the floor as he traipsed into the room and picked up a bar of soap that he had left on purpose on the chest of drawers. He rushed back into the bathroom and it seemed by the noise that he had plunged into the bath. Before leaving for his escape, he poured a whole bottle of bubble bath in. He dressed without drying himself and using the bathroom stool, managed to lift up the trapdoor lid. He tested the sides of the trapdoor to make sure it was going to take his weight. He hoisted himself up and using the surrounding ledge of the door was able to lever himself through the aperture. Unfortunately it was a metal tunnel with a fan at the end. It was the bathroom’s fresh air that was supposed to come on when the light went on, but had long been defunct. Martin crawled along the metal tubing to the edge of where the fan was situated – it was the opposite way to Chan’s office and with the aid of his nail cutters that turned into a spanner and screwdriver he was able to dismantle the fan unit. As the hole was too small for him to get out he wrote a note that fluttered down into a court yard. It was the best he could do that way – but he decided to use the fan unit to send a message by utilising the electrical components as a morse code message. There was no room for him to turn round so going backwards along the tubing was noisy. He just managed to get back to the bathroom, replaced the trapdoor lid, undressed and slid into the bath noiselessly when three men burst into the room, each of them with a gun in his hand.
Hanging from the rim of the trapdoor lid were the nail cutters which had probably come out of his pocket as he came through the hatchway. The men stood in a group as they witnessed Martin in the bath. The nail cutters decided to fall and hit one of the men and bounced off his shoulder onto his clothes heaped on the floor.
‘What was that?’ said the one whose shoulder was hit.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I thought something hit me!’
They each looked around the bathroom and saw nothing and one of them pulled the plug out and as the water drained away the intruders could see he was naked through the bubbles, that didn’t quite cover his dignity. Martin refilled his bath and enjoyed a further half hour of being clean.