Fisher and I leaned forward and observed as two men wearing overalls with a logo on the back appeared from the gap between Tottenham Press and the building next door. Their overalls looked bulky and I guessed they were wearing protective vests.

When I looked closely I could see the older man working quickly whilst the younger man was constantly looking around. He was holding a handgun.

The next few minutes were going to seem like an eternity.

***

Ben Tyler should have been at home snoozing on the sofa with a stomach full of Sunday lunch while his grandkids ran wild in the garden, but instead he was in Tottenham working. Ben couldn’t remember when he had been more scared. The presence of an armed policeman, intended to make him feel secure, achieved exactly the opposite result.

Nonetheless, he had to concentrate. This was a tricky job. For a start, the system was live and electrocution was a distinct possibility. Fortunately, the wiring to this unit passed through the steel column that took the weight of the door and the roller mechanism, and would remain concealed until the front plate was completely removed. Whereas house wiring was simple three core cable with a plastic coating, this cable was copper sheathed and mineral insulated. The copper that wrapped the cores, or wires, was packed with magnesium oxide, an inert chalky substance which insulated the wires from one another. In order to keep the chalky substance in place when the cores were exposed, the wires had to be terminated with small aluminium pots. Had this not been the case, Ben would not have been able to carry out this operation on a live system.

Now they were in the third minute and he was just now exposing the cores. He loosened the terminal screws and the switch with its key control came off in his hands. Ben had to ensure that he did not touch either wire on any metal parts of the switches. He also needed to make sure that the two wires did not touch, or the roller door would try to open. The electrician tucked the key operated switch inside his overalls and extracted a much simpler switch. This unit was plastic and had a simple red switch on and off. Very carefully Ben attached a tiny crocodile clip to each exposed core, inserting a plastic spacer between them to ensure they did not touch, and allowed the plastic switch to hang suspended from the copper MICC cable.

Ben nodded to his guard who signalled a ‘thumbs up’, and whilst he was leading Ben away to safety another man ran towards the door.

***

We had been watching nervously as the electrician did his job, but the man deserved a medal in my opinion. Under extreme pressure he took less than four minutes.

As he was led away Geordie from Vastrick, armed with bolt cutters, appeared from behind a green telephone junction box and ran towards the door. In ten seconds he had removed the padlock and was heading back to his hiding place.

The telephone landline had been cut off over an hour ago, and the mobile phone jammer had been in action since before the Europol raids. We had noticed during the short journey from the police station to our current position that the people in the van, and the few we saw on the streets, had all lost their phone signals.

I found it amusing that almost everyone with a mobile phone did the same thing. They saw the message, ignored it, pressed a few buttons and held it to their ear. Seconds later, realising that they were not connected, they looked at the message again and frowned. Finally, the majority of them shook the phone and looked again to see whether the signal had been restored, because of course everyone knows that sometimes the electronic signal gets trapped at the top of the phone and a good shake will loosen it allowing the phone to work. At least it took my mind off the seriousness of what was about to happen.

A few seconds passed, and six battle clad men ran to the roller doors carrying deadly looking rifles. The policeman in the headset held up three fingers, counting down by bending one finger at a time. No sooner had all of his fingers closed than there was a muffled explosion.

Chapter 74

Tottenham Press, Commercial Road, London. Sunday 1:30pm.

Dee had been awake for a while now, albeit in some pain. The man who tended her wounds had given her a foil of painkillers which he had found in the secretary’s desk drawer downstairs. Dee had taken two, but as yet they hadn’t made a lot of difference. She concluded that she would need something a bit stronger than over-the-counter aspirins to tackle this amount of pain. Nonetheless, she thanked him for his help, and she thought that he might be blushing under his ski mask.

Before he left the room, he closed the door behind him and spoke to the two girls in hushed tones.

“I realise that you think of me as the enemy, but I’ve never hurt a woman in my life, and what happened downstairs was out of order. We certainly didn’t agree to any of that. My mate and me will be watching you from now on from the office at the other end of the corridor. If you need the toilet just go, but please don’t give them a reason to hurt you again, all right?”

He began to leave, but as an afterthought he added, “If we’re not up here, or if we’re asleep and anyone worries you, yell for help and we’ll come running. We just want you to get home safe. We’re in enough damn trouble as it is.”

Dee was standing up and trying to walk using the fixed table to lean on. If she was being honest it was no more painful than it had been lying down. At least the bullet had missed the artery and the bone. The muscle would repair itself, in time.

***

Rik stood at the office door on the lower floor of the little building, and looked around. Piet was sitting halfway up the stairs to his right, and the soldier was upstairs making sure there were no more escape attempts.

Gregor was asleep in the passenger seat of the Lexus, which was parked next to the Subaru 4x4 with Dutch plates. He would be glad when this was over and they were back on the other side of the Channel. Rik always felt uncomfortable on islands. They were surrounded by sea and too easy to close down if you wanted to escape. No, Rik preferred the mainland where, if you needed to run, you could go thousands of miles whilst avoiding manned border crossings.

Holloway and his friend Johnny were in close conversation at the back of the factory unit, almost halfway between the emergency exit doors on either side of the building.

The factory unit had too much wasted space, in Rik’s opinion. The printing presses and machines were in the middle third of the floor, like an island. On the far side of the unit, opposite the offices, were huge steel racks filled with giant paper rolls and box after box of paper in smaller sheets. Next to the racks stood a heavy duty steel walk in cupboard with a built-in fume extraction box above. Presumably that was where they store or mix ink, he thought.

At the rear of the unit, where the two Englishmen stood talking, there was more open space which housed a few lockers, a coat rack and a few mismatched tables and chairs.

Had it not been for the cars parked just inside the roller shutter doors, that space too would have been empty. They could be paying half the rent and still have plenty of room, he thought to himself.

His musings were disturbed when he heard a click. It appeared to have come from the shutter doors. He looked quickly at the two Englishmen. They had heard it, too. Sonny Holloway shouted over to Rik.

“Don’t worry Rik, it’s probably kids. Johnny’ll go out and scatter them in a minute, before they start spray painting their gang tags on my doors.”

Rik leaned against the door frame and polished his Sig Sauer P226 handgun, specially adapted for left handed users, by rubbing it on his trousers. The two tone Sig Sauer was a compact yet powerful pistol, known to be used by US Navy Seals, and more importantly it was easy to conceal.