Breaking Point (32 page)

Grim-faced, Trowbridge shook his head. ‘We don't know,' he said tightly, ‘because we've heard nothing from him since this morning, and there was no indication at that time that plans had changed.'

‘Could it be some sort of dress rehearsal?'

‘Not a chance. That's exactly what they were doing the night young Newman almost blew the whole operation by snooping around and getting caught.'

‘And losing his life,' Paget reminded him.

‘Yes, well, these things happen, don't they? None of us could have done anything about that. What we have to concentrate on now is making sure we don't bugger up what is probably the only opportunity we will ever get to break this ring.'

When Paget had answered the phone shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Ben Trowbridge had wasted no time on pleasantries or introduction. ‘If you want to be part of this operation, you'd better get over here in the next twenty minutes,' he'd said. ‘Kellerman's jumped the gun. We think he's running the auction tonight, and our people are scrambling to get into position now.'

‘Where is “here”?' Paget asked.

‘Erdistone Cross camp grounds. It's less than half a mile across country from Roper's farm, and it's about two hundred yards up the hill from the crossroads. There's a “Closed for the season” sign at the gate, but we're in a caravan behind the trees. So get your skates on, because we could be on the move at any time.'

In fact there had been no need to hurry, because they had been sitting there now for the best part of an hour and all was quiet.

The inside of the caravan had been stripped of its regular furnishings to make way for the communications equipment, not unlike a smaller version of the mobile incident room Paget had used on a number of occasions. A tall, rather gaunt-looking man, whom Trowbridge introduced as ‘my field officer, Mike Bell', sat with an operator equipped with a headset and mike in front of a screen on which short bursts of text messages would appear from time to time.

‘We're trying to keep voice traffic down to a minimum,' Trowbridge explained. ‘Our spotters were able to get close enough to identify Skinner and McCoy as the two people who stayed behind tonight to meet the RangerContinental, and they're still there, but there's no sign of Kellerman. We don't know how he proposes to get to the farm but he probably won't arrive until the very last minute. What worries me most of all, though, is that we haven't heard anything from our man. We've always known that security would be tight and there might not be an opportunity to call us once things were under way, so we made it as simple as possible for him to send us a “go” or “no go” signal in the event that he isn't in a position to talk to us.

‘It's very basic,' he went on. ‘All he has to do is press a button once to tell us the auction is a go; twice for Kellerman's arrival, and so on. It's simple and almost impossible to detect; in fact he could be standing talking to Kellerman himself and still send a signal without anyone being aware of it.'

Trowbridge drew a deep breath and let it out again slowly. ‘We've monitored that frequency 24/7,' he continued, ‘but we've heard nothing since this morning, so I hope to God we've got it right, and this isn't some scheme of Kellerman's to find out if we're on to him.'

The operator spoke without turning round. ‘Unit Two reporting, sir. The vans are leaving. He has two men down there closing in on the barn. There is no light coming from the barn, but their heat sensors are picking up more heat than they would normally expect to see, even assuming the lights are on inside.'

‘Which probably means that the entire cargo has been transferred to the barn,' Trowbridge said as he picked up a second mike. ‘Unit Four, report,' he said quietly.

‘The vans are in sight now,' he was told. There was a pause, then: ‘They're going back the way they came, but two cars have taken up positions off-road inside farm gates about a quarter of a mile on either side of the entrance to the target. Flankers. Possibly armed. Over.'

Unit One reported seeing the vans as they passed, and Unit Three reported that RGS appeared to have shut down for the night. Skinner and McCoy had driven off together toward town.

‘So now we wait,' Trowbridge said.

‘For the buyers?'

‘That's right. They should be coming in soon.'

‘How do you know they're not already there?' Paget asked. ‘They could have come in with the vans.'

Trowbridge shook his head. ‘The buyers won't be taken anywhere near RGS,' he said. ‘They'll be met by some of Kellerman's men at pick-up points well away from there. They'll be searched to make sure they have no weapons or electronic tracking devices on them, then brought here in vans or SUVs with the windows blacked out so they will have no idea where they are. Once we know everyone is there and the auction is under way, we move in and close the net. Timing is crucial, because we don't know when Kellerman will appear, so unless we regain contact with our man very soon, we are going to have to go in blind and hope for the best.'

‘But from what you told me the other day, Kellerman will have to be there personally as a guarantee for the safety of the buyers, and if I were one of them I'd want to see him there when I arrived.'

‘I agree. And I'm still hoping for a signal when he does arrive,' Trowbridge said worriedly. ‘But it's beginning to look as if we've lost contact with our man. The last time we spoke everything was on schedule, and there was no indication that anything had changed, so I have to assume that Kellerman kept everyone in the dark until the last minute. We don't know if our man has been cut out of the loop and doesn't know what's taking place, or if something has happened to him.'

‘A man like Kellerman wouldn't be going ahead if he discovered a spy inside the camp,' Paget pointed out, ‘so I don't think you have to worry on that score.'

‘That's what I keep telling myself,' Trowbridge said. ‘On the other hand, that might be why he's brought the auction forward by a day. There's a huge amount of money at stake, and the last thing he wants is to scare off the buyers, so he may feel he can get away with it.'

He turned to Bell. ‘What's happening now?' he asked.

‘Not a thing. There is nothing moving on the road at all, so everyone, with the possible exception of Kellerman and the buyers, could be in place.'

‘So we wait,' Trowbridge said.

With eyes flicking to the time every few minutes, they waited.

Bell sat beside the operator, eyes steady on the screen, but Trowbridge was restless. If the space had been big enough he would have been on his feet and pacing. Instead, he swung back and forth, back and forth in his chair as he watched the minutes tick by.

‘Perhaps he's in a dead spot,' he said suddenly, referring, Paget guessed, to his undercover man. ‘Are you sure you're on the right frequency?' he asked the operator.

‘Quite sure, sir,' the man replied. He tapped his headset. ‘And his signals have been coming through quite clearly up till now, so I don't think that's the problem.'

Trowbridge stood up to lean against the wall, folding his arms in such a way that he could keep his eyes on his watch.

Five more minutes went by. ‘Perhaps Kellerman and the buyers
did
come up in one of the vans,' Bell suggested. ‘In fact the auction could be under way right now.'

Trowbridge shook his head. ‘I doubt that very much,' he said. ‘Kellerman will come in separately, as will the buyers.'

‘Unless he's there already,' Paget offered.

‘We'd know if he was,' Trowbridge said testily.

‘What do you know about the actual site itself?' asked Paget. ‘It seems such an unlikely place to hold the auction.'

‘Which is why Kellerman chose it, I imagine,' Trowbridge said. ‘The man is something of a showman, and as I told you the other day, this is supposed to be the first of several auction houses around the country, so while the place
was
a barn, and looks like a barn on the outside, he had the inside completely gutted. It now contains a changing room, showers, a bar, and a raised runway with overhead and side lighting similar to the sort of thing you'd see at a fashion show, except the buyers won't be looking at clothes.'

A shadow crossed his face. ‘It also has several cubicles,' he concluded, ‘where customers can “sample the goods”, so to speak, if they choose to do so. Something similar has been going on in Eastern Europe for years. Kellerman picked up the idea when he was over there, and decided to improve on it.

‘They've been working on this for months,' he continued, ‘and as cover to account for the delivery of materials and the comings and goings of the workers, Roper let it be known that he was having renovations done to the farmhouse. Kellerman sent in his own people to do the work, and if it hadn't been for the fact that one of their carpenters had an accident and had to be rushed into hospital, we wouldn't have had the balls-up we did with Newman.'

He shook his head. ‘Kellerman is not an easy man to work for,' he went on. ‘He doesn't like excuses or delays, and when he wants something done he wants it now! So the people in charge at this end got a bit panicky and decided to take a chance on hiring Mickey Doyle to finish the job. Doyle is known locally to be a bit of a chancer, so they thought they'd be all right. Doyle must have known that there was something dodgy about the job, but they were paying good money, so he wasn't going to ask too many questions. But then one of the electricians, who'd been sent up from London, and didn't realize that Mickey wasn't one of their own, talked about what was
really
going on.

‘The trouble was, Doyle just couldn't keep his mouth shut, especially when someone was plying him with drink, and that's where young Newman came in. He was looking for a story that would give him an in with the local paper, and Doyle couldn't resist the opportunity to tell him that he knew something no one else knew.'

‘How long have you known all this?' asked Paget.

‘Ever since it happened,' Trowbridge said candidly, ‘but I'm sure you understand why we couldn't say anything to anyone, not even to you, for fear of jeopardizing the operation.'

Paget eyed Trowbridge narrowly. ‘I
think
what you're telling me is that your man was probably present when Newman was being tortured, but kept silent in order to maintain his cover? Was he there when they killed him, Ben? Was he one of the men who picked up Doyle, then killed him, too?'

‘That is
not
what I said,' Trowbridge snapped. ‘But even if it were true, I'm sure you can see that the future and perhaps the very lives of God knows how many women and children had to be weighed against trying to save the lives of two people who put themselves at risk.'

‘But there has to be some—' Paget began, only to be interrupted by Bell.

‘Vehicles approaching the farm. Two of them. SUVs. Both capable of seating six or seven people, but impossible to say how many are in there.' Bell fell silent, eyes fixed on the screen. Then: ‘They're on their way up to the farm,' he said quietly. ‘Unit Two should be able to see them any minute now.'

A single row of words flicked across the screen and Bell spoke again. ‘Two says they're continuing on to the barn. Probably the buyers, sir.'

‘It
has
to be them,' Trowbridge muttered as he leaned forward to read the words himself.

Diverted momentarily from what he'd been about to say, Paget found himself caught up in the moment. ‘How many are you expecting?' he asked quietly.

Trowbridge grimaced. ‘That's one piece of information Kellerman kept to himself,' he said, ‘but what we do know is that he doesn't deal with anyone but the top men, so our estimate is somewhere between six and ten. They will almost certainly be from Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, but there could be others we don't know about.'

He glanced at his watch, then sat down. ‘We'll have to give them time to get settled in,' he said quietly, ‘so we might as well relax ourselves until it's time to go.'

G
eorge Kellerman was there to greet them at the door. He was a short, heavy-set man with a pudgy face and a Cupid's bow for a mouth. A baby face with watchful eyes set deep in folds of skin the colour of dough. But tonight he was all smiles as he greeted his guests and offered them drinks. There were nine in all. Six men and three women, and this was his chance to impress every one of them.

He'd been supplying them for years in one way or another, usually on contract. They would put in an order (minimum advance notice ninety days) for certain ages, certain types, and he in turn would fill the order, usually from illegals already in the pipeline. In the case of special orders, he would put the word out to his contacts in Eastern Europe, and they would make sure that a particular girl or child would be moved up to the head of the line.

Most of the girls who ended up in Kellerman's hands believed they were coming to a better life as waitresses or nannies, earning enough money to send back home to impoverished parents or young children of their own. They were persuaded by glib ‘selectors', who painted a glowing picture of jobs awaiting them in the UK. But in some cases – always when young children were involved – a boy or girl who matched the special order profile was simply kidnapped off the streets of Sarajevo, Tirana, Vilnius, or wherever he or she could be found.

As far as the kidnappings were concerned, Kellerman liked to think that what he was doing was no different to the way the press gangs used to operate in the old days. Men and boys were literally kidnapped off the streets to go to sea for king and country, some of them never to be seen or heard from again. Whereas he would argue that his girls and boys would have a roof over their heads and three square meals a day, which was a damned sight better that the king's sailors ever had.