Cover

Dedication

To celebrate the centenary of female officers in the Metropolitan Police Service

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

It was a rainy and overcast April morning as the brown 1976 Mark 4 Ford Cortina saloon parked up on the offside of Aylmer Road, a few metres down from the junction with Leytonstone High Road. The four men in the vehicle sat in silence as the engine slowly ticked over and the windscreen wipers swept away the rain. The men were dressed in blue boiler suits, heavy black donkey jackets and leather driving gloves. The heat from their bodies was making the windows mist up and the musty odour of sweat filled the car. The man in the back opened his window a couple of inches and the two men in the front used their jacket sleeves to wipe the condensation off the windscreen, so they could get a better view of Barclays Bank on the far side of the High Road. The bank manager was holding an umbrella as he opened the large wooden front doors for business at 9.30. Smartly dressed in a three-piece grey pinstripe suit, white shirt and tie, he stood to one side to let two customers in, and looked up the High Road, which was quieter than usual for a Thursday morning, due to the bad weather.

As the manager turned and walked back inside, the driver of the Cortina put a cap on and opened the car door. He hadn’t seen the elderly lady pulling a canvas shopping trolley along the pavement, and narrowly missed hitting her with the door. The lady swore at him, but the driver ignored her and pulled the peak of his cap down, before walking towards the bank.

As the old lady moved off, one of the men in the back of the Cortina reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out a twelve-bore, double-barrelled, sawn-off shotgun. He pushed the unlocking lever to one side to ‘break’ the gun, then placed a cartridge in each chamber. Holding the wooden stock of the gun with one hand, he snapped the barrel closed with a well-practised upward flick of his wrist, then slid the shotgun into a home-made pocket inside his jacket.

*

Jane drove up and down Rigg Approach twice, but couldn’t see a police station or blue lamp anywhere. She was becoming frustrated and beginning to wonder if she’d got the right place, as she appeared to be in an industrial estate with a variety of different businesses. She parked her yellow Volkswagen Golf opposite a mobile burger van, and got out to speak to the owner. Pulling her coat up over her head, to protect her hair from the rain, she ran across the road.

‘Excuse me, is there a police station near here?’ she asked.

‘There’s no nick around here, luv . . . the nearest are Stoke Newington or Hackney – a couple of miles away, but in opposite directions.’