Dancing to a New Beat 67

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CHAPTER 67
That night, as with so many others, I lay with my husband trying to sort the day out while taking so much comfort from the simple fact of his presence beside me. Sammy’s moodiness was niggling away at me, however, so my relaxation was nowhere near absolute.

“Penny for them?”

I chuckled at that one.

“Clichés now, love?”

“OK. What is up?”

“Oh, it’s Sammy, isn’t it? Something not right with him, and I am wondering if there’s something else going on”

“With the Merthyr job?”

“Don’t know, love. I mean, he doesn’t really bring his home life to work, does he? Had all sorts of thoughts today, but I don’t think it’s anything like that”

“Yeah. He did get twitchy when he was talking about seeing Bev Williams. I had a thought or two myself, aye? Had a word with Sean, on the quiet”

“Oh? How is he? Time we had him over for a meal again”

“He’s fine. I was actually thinking about a night out, once this one’s over. Round the Smugglers, rather than the Eli, I’d say”

I smiled into his shoulder.

“You are definitely hitting the clichés, love. What did you ask him?”

Blake drew a long, slow breath before letting it out as a sigh.

“Call me paranoid, Di, but this is so different to the other big jobs. Think of the work we had to do just to get the first breaks with the Evans crowd, and that stuff-up with the Culhwch. I had a word with Sean about it being so easy to get into this one, and he laughed at me!”

“Why?”

“Oh, it was in a nice way, but he told me a story… East End of London, aye? Kray twins country, same bloody street they lived in, and they finally knock off the organisers of what the papers call a bootlegging ring and Sean calls thieving, smuggling bastards. One of the organisers has never done a job in his life, not one he ever paid tax on, at least, never run a business, spent all his life on benefits. So they search his house, and in the base of an armchair there’s some money, and they ask ‘What’s this, then’ and he says ‘Mind your own etc’ and ‘Proceeds from my business, isn’t it?’ and that’s the thing: he’s never run any official business, and the cash is in Scottish notes, and it is one hundred and four fucking grand”

“Shit!”

“Aye, and that’s just part of it. He and his mate had a whole string of runners, van drivers, you’ve seen the things, and some of them were going two and three times a day, and they were so cocky they used to wave at the Customs lads as they drove past”

He gathered his breath to him again, and I felt another long sigh.

“They really thought they were untouchable, love. Thing is, they pissed off a lot of Sean’s mates, so every time one of the cocky ones tooted and waved, someone would note his name, number, description of vehicle and what they could see of the load. Trial took two weeks in the end, so many Cussers more than happy to stand up in the Box and reel off hundreds of grins and waves. Main men got eleven years each”

“What are you saying? This lot think they’re Teflon?”

He squirmed round to look me in the face, a wry smile just visible in the faint glow leaking through the curtains from the street lights outside.

“In essence, yes. Geoghegan and the rest, with their Yank four-bys and their big dogs, they think they are the same as the bloody Culhwch, perhaps even as untouchable as some of the Irish lot. I asked Sean what he thought about this being a false front, and he just laughed and told me some more stories. No, love: it’s something else with Sammy. We’ll just have to watch and wait”

Suddenly, he was laughing. All I could do was wait until he had it under control.

“Tell, husband of mine!”

“Oh, sorry, love. Just that money, aye? The hundred and four K? Well, it got the sod banged away for money laundering, and then they seized it all as proceeds of crime, and then…”

I waited for the last of his shakes to end, and he didn’t disappoint me.

“Proceeds of his business, he says, and ‘That’s fine’, the Revenue say, ‘We’ll have forty percent of that in tax, thank you very much, but not from that bundle under the chair because that belongs to the Queen now’. Then the Benefits people come after him for fraud as well. Wasn’t his year at all!”

That left me laughing with him, and eventually we both drifted off, my last memories still of worry about our boss.

The rest of the week passed by all too quickly, Sammy insisting we all take Wednesday and Thursday as reschemed rest days in anticipation of a very full weekend. Saturday morning finally arrived, and a briefing at eleven hundred hours. I hadn’t seen so many coppers in one place since Cwmbran, and there were shoulder numbers from all over the force, as well as from the Gwent lot. It was their turf, after all, and while our unit worked across all Force areas, I suspected that there was more than a little resentment of our ‘poaching’ and probably a tussle for overall control and hoovering up of any kudos while keeping a route open to transfer blame. Nothing changes.

Bev Williams stepped up onto the packing cases arranged at one end of the hall, covered maps behind him, microphone in hand and arm raised for silence.

“Morning all!”

A brief pause to let the laughter drop away, and he was off.

“Our apologies for the cloak and dagger stuff today, but needs must. This is a major operation with some serious objective risks attached, but the target location is containable. Gold Commander in this case will be the Gwent Chief, but his office will be patched through our operations centre as we have the intelligence in situ here. Silver Commander is myself, Superintendent Bevan Williams, and lead Bronze, on the ground, is Inspector Samir Patel, who is over in the corner—make yourself known, please, Sammy? Ta.

“Our Serious Crimes Review Unit has identified a number of illegal drinking establishments whose stock is obtained in the usual way via the white van trade--- no, whoever that was, this is not a bootlegger knock. Much more, I am afraid. The other business here is dog-fighting”

That brought a much more positive reaction from the uniforms, and I noticed what were obviously dog-handlers exchanging angry looks. Bev carried on.

“Acting on information received—well, that is the standard line, but trust me, we have very specific intelligence on this one, as well as the results of both static and mobile observation, and some very specific communications intercepts. Our information is that there will be a fight this evening, and it will be a series of death matches. Dog deaths, that is. To that end, we have allocated Bronze responsibility to specific roles. When this initial briefing is over, there will be secondary unit sessions, for firearms, dog teams, entry team and what I do not want to call ‘support’. We will need consummate teamwork and inter-unit cooperation to ensure this operation does not go down the route politely described as messy. I am sure you all have other words you would prefer to use. Sammy? Your team’s work; please talk us through it”

Bev stepped down, but Sammy stayed off the makeshift podium, pulling the covers off our maps and other info after a quick look towards the door.

“This is who we believe to be the main man, one Ivor Eammon Geoghegan. This is his vehicle, which we will expect to find on site. There should also be a number of Volvo estates and Mazda or similar pick-ups. It will be important to secure those vehicles for forensic purposes, as we believe they are the ones used to transport the dogs”

He grinned, a Cheeky Sammy one.

“Leave the pick-ups in particular for proper recovery, rather than driving them back. Several seem to lack things like insurance, MOT, tax…”

He paused just long enough for someone to raise a hand, most definitely to point out the law re seized vehicles driven by Police Officers, then added his punchline.

“… and working brakes. Now, this is the target site”

Smoothly and efficiently, he ran through a description of the place we had spent so long stagging, listing potential exit points as well as the way in we would be using.

“The gate is full-height, steel grating, with barbed wire on top. We will be removing it in one go with a tow-truck--- no, you with the grin, we will NOT be ramming it. The Big Red Key is useless, so the truck will simply hook on and pull. That leaves us with two other entry points: a door next to the front roller shutter…here. One entry team with the BRK, and then we have the fire doors at the back, which open outwards. Three big lads with crowbars, but extreme caution there. They’ve been using the back door to bring the dogs in, so you might just find yourself face to teeth with a pit bull. FULL PPE will be worn, body cameras on, and I want a dog team and firearms Officers there to first-foot the place. The good thing is that I do not anticipate the door will be locked, for specific reasons. Any sensible questions before your unit Commanders give you your detailed briefings? Yes, you in the front?”

Some sergeant I didn’t recognise, from the Gwent force.

“Inspector, from the way you have described the site we will have zero view on whatever is going on inside. How do we know it is really happening, and what will trigger entry?”

Sammy’s face fell, and I saw the expression that had worried me so much. His sigh was as loud over the PA system as Blake’s had been in my ears.

“Sergeant, that is a very good question, so much so that we actually ran the scenario past a brief from the CPS before we started detailed planning here. There are no suitable ways to observe events inside the warehouse, so we need a positive trigger”

My boss, my friend, looked green, and I saw Candice starting to rise in reflex from her chair to ease his distress, but she caught herself just in time, as Sammy shook himself.

“We brain-stormed it, and there’ll be barking, shouting, people, men, coming out to get rid of used beer against the fence. None of that gives us a dead cert that want we are looking for is going on. For a dead cert, according to the CPS lawyer, as well as an entry trigger, we need a bin liner or whatever. With a dead dog in it”

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Evidence

While I recognize the need for probable cause and not just hearsay, it gnaws at me that a dead dog needs to be seen/retrieved/whatever before legal entry can be made. I do realize that lawfully obtained evidence is needed for conviction but am very hopeful that some "street justice" can be applied during the entry and arrest phase of this operation. Lainey and her backhand come to mind!