Jinx looked at his reflection in the rear view mirror. He wiped blood and brain matter from his face and tried to catch his breath. His huge pectoral muscles were rising and falling rapidly as his lungs struggled to supply oxygen to his massive frame. He was shocked and frightened by what he had witnessed. The gunman had splattered David Lorimar all over the inside of his car and set his body alight. Jinx had to find out what was happening. There was one man in the city who knew most of what was happening, Gus Rickman. Jinx turned his car stereo off and called him on the hands free system the manufacturers had built into his Mercedes SLK as standard.
“Jinx,” the gruff voice answered. “Are you still breathing, then?” The voice had no joviality to it.
“Just about,” Jinx tensed his neck muscles and shook his shoulders. He was in no mood for jokes.
“What can I do for you?” Gus growled. “I’m busy just now.”
“I want to know what the fuck happened to Dava, Gus.” Jinx snapped. He was still shaking from the incident.
“I’m assuming he’s dead?” Gus asked in a matter of fact manner.
“Yes, he is dead. Some motherfucker blew his head apart with a sawn-off and then torched him.” Jinx tried to keep calm.
“What was he doing, Jinx?” Gus retorted.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I’m saying,” Griff chuckled. “What was he doing when he was blown away?”
“You know that Leon put a hit out on me?” Jinx bounced a question back.
“Yes,” Gus replied. “And it sounds to me like you returned the favour.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“Exactly what you did, Jinx,” Gus laughed again. “What did you expect Leon to do when he realised you were planning to take out him and his boys first?”
“So it was Leon who whacked Dava?”
“To be honest, I don’t know, but if I add up two and two, then I get four.”
“Who was the hit man?” Jinx asked. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to hear from Gus. In the cold light of day, what had happened had been in retaliation.
“I have no idea what his name is, but I’ve heard on the grapevine that he was an associate of David’s. Sounds to me like he sold out to the highest bidder.”
“What happens now?”
“That’s between you and Leon. It has nothing to do with me, but I will tell you one thing, Jinx.” Gus turned serious.
“What?”
“Where do you think Leon is?”
“He’s in the smoke meeting with the Turks, why?” Jinx shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Wrong,” Gus said. “He knows you’re tracking his car. He’s back in the city, watch your back.”
“How do you know?” The news rattled Jinx.
“I know he travelled north with the old man, Zamir Oguzhan.” Gus revelled in how powerful his informer network was. “The old man is coming to sort out funeral arrangements for Salim. You heard they dragged him out of the Mersey?”
“Fucking hell, when?”
“A couple of days ago, it’ll be all over the news later on today.”
“Why are you telling me that?” Jinx asked. He couldn’t trust anyone. If Gus was giving him a tip, then there was a reason.
“You know that Leon is importing meth with the Turks now?”
“I heard he’s buying direct from them, but I didn’t know he had wormed his way in that far, what about it?” Jinx grabbed something from beneath his seat.
“He has a massive shipment coming in, and when it lands, it will give those slimy bastards control of the city, Jinx. They’ll flood the market and slash prices to make sure their dealers clean up.” Gus went silent to allow the information to sink in. “We can’t allow that to happen. If they corner the market, all hell will break loose, and we’ll all struggle. No one will be safe. Things run just fine the way they are, do you know what I mean?”
“If I hear anything about it, I’ll let you know. If you’re interested, that is.”
“I’ve put the word out that I want to know where and when it’s going down. Let me know if you hear anything, Jinx, and I’ll owe you one. That shipment would be better off in my hands than theirs, if you know what I mean.” Gus cut the call dead.
“Yes, I know what you mean,” Jinx said to himself. If Leon was back in the city, then everything had changed. Jinx reached for his satellite-tracking device and checked the details. The map showed that Leon’s vehicle was in the Kensington area of London. It was obvious that Leon was on to him and wanted Jinx to think he was out of the city. He must have driven to London, left the car and come back. Jinx changed the programme to check where Dean Hines was. His vehicle was moving along the main ring road around the city. Jinx opened the glove box and took out his gun. He would follow Dean Hines until Leon showed up, and then he would end it.
The scream echoed from the basement, and the gathering in the hallway was stunned into silence. Alec looked toward the front door, and the armed officers ran toward the basement door instantly. They drew their weapons and headed down the stairs. Alec didn’t wait until they called the basement clear. He was right behind them. “We need a paramedic down here!” one of the officers shouted.
“Get me a paramedic!” Alec called from halfway down the staircase. “What happened?” He shouted, leaning over the banister rail.
“The bastard has booby trapped this stuff,” a crime scene officer replied. “The side panels and underneath the appliances are lined with razor blades.”
“Ah! Get my fingers!” A SOCO lay screaming on the floor of the basement. It was the annoying officer Alec had had the altercation with earlier. Blood covered his paper suit. He held his hands across his chest and his colleagues held cotton gauze to the stumps of his fingers. “My fucking fingers! Pick up my fingers!”
“Put them in this bag.” His colleague opened a specimen bag and they carefully picked up the severed digits from the stone floor. The tips of the rubber gloves still covered the bloodied appendages. “He grabbed the bottom of the freezer and tried to drag it out, guv. The razors took his fingers off before he realised they were there. The bastard has left us some nasty surprises.”
“Keep the pressure on the bleeding and hold his hands up in the air.” Alec swallowed hard. He felt a twinge of guilt for giving the order to pull everything out. “The medics are on their way in. Don’t touch anything until you’ve checked it thoroughly, understand?” The officers in the basement nodded in response, but they remained silent.
“Can we get through there?” Two paramedics squeezed past Alec on their way to treat the injured officer. Alec made his way back up the stairs with a knot in his stomach. The officer was a nuisance, but he didn’t wish that on him.
“Guv.” An armed response officer followed Alec.
“Yes.” Alec rubbed his eyes again. He felt drained.
“The boss has told us that you want us to clear the surrounding houses, guv.”
“Yes, please.” Alec composed himself. “The fire brigade are going to break down the doors. When they have, I need them clear for my detectives to go in. Keep your eyes open, son. Howarth is a nasty bastard.”
“We’ll start with the houses either side, and then move outward to the ends of the terrace?”
“Yes.” Alec looked thoughtful. “Double-check the attics and cellars.”
The armed unit filed through the cellar door with a purpose. Alec went back into the hallway where there was a buzz of alarmed chatter. Superlatives and expletives resounded off the walls. “Right, everyone!” Alec clapped his hands together to get their attention. “Howarth screwed razor blades around the appliances in the basement. He didn’t want us to move them, obviously.”
“Bastard,” Smithy said between his teeth, and the officers around him murmured agreement. “I hope I find him first.”
“Let’s just concentrate on finding Kisha first, Smithy.” Alec splayed his hands in a calming motion as he spoke. “If Howarth has rigged traps around the house, then that is because he wanted to slow pursuers down. I think he planned an exit strategy using the empty houses next to his.”
“You think he’s still in the vicinity, guv?” Smithy asked.
“Maybe,” Alec nodded. “We know there’s a campervan parked in the back alleyway. It isn’t registered to him, but no one else lives here, right? If he realised Kisha was a police officer investigating the murder of Louise Parker, then he must have worked out that we wouldn’t be far behind her. She had her radio on her, so he could have heard our communications. If he did, then he knew we were on the way with armed backup. He needs somewhere to lay low, and a way of getting past the cordons at the end of the street once the initial incursion is completed. If he is here, find him, but be careful.”
“Guv,” they replied to the order as a unit.
“Smithy,” Alec called to the big ginger detective. “I want you and four of your team to follow the armed units into the neighbouring houses. The rest of you rip this place to pieces and find me the way he took Kisha out of here. If we find that, we find Kisha and the boy.”
The information that John Tankersley had brought to light astounded Will. He wanted to investigate it thoroughly before informing the superintendent. Alec had his hands full with developments at Shankly Way. Will contacted the detective in charge of investigating the death of Nate Bradley’s son. She was a detective sergeant with the drug squad.
“Chloe, it’s Will Naylor at MIT,” he said when she answered her direct line.
“Hi, Will, I got your message, and I’m curious why you’re interested in the Bradley case.” She sounded a little frosty. A senior officer from a different department picking through the details of your investigation was never welcomed. “How can I help?”
Will leaned back in his chair and loosened his tie. “I need you to confirm some details for me,” he began. “What can you tell me about Nate Bradley senior?”
“Why?” She asked. “What has he done?”
“We don’t know yet,” Will laughed. “I just need to see if he’s linked to one of our cases.”
“Care to expand?” She toyed with him. They had met at a charity ball once and she recalled that he was a good-looking detective with a reputation for liking the ladies.
“Not at the moment, Chloe,” Will kept the conversation formal despite her flirtations. “I need as much information as you can give me, and I need it yesterday.”
“Okay, where can I start?” She could sense the urgency in his voice. He wasn’t fishing. This was a serious enquiry. “You know that his wife died shortly before his son Nate?”
“Yes,” Will replied. “Were there any recriminations from him when his wife overdosed?”
“Plenty,” Chloe scoffed. “He called me every day, twice a day sometimes, asking if we had found the dealer who supplied her.”
“Did you find the dealer?”
“Are you having a laugh, Will?” It was Chloe’s turn to be serious. “She was a grown woman with a serious drug problem. The autopsy showed evidence of drug abuse going back years and she was using a cocktail of drugs. It was heroin that killed her eventually, but it would be quicker to tell you the drugs she didn’t use than the ones she did.”
“I get that, but did you investigate the dealer?”
“Where would you start, Will?” She laughed. “If we started at Lime Street station at nine o’clock in the morning, I could show you thirty dealers within five hundred yards of the place by half past nine. We couldn’t identify the dealer who supplied her if we tried, and if we did, do you think they would cough?”
“Did Nate Bradley think you were investigating the supplier?” Will could see her point, but he didn’t think she had considered it from Nate Bradley’s side.
“I told him I was making enquiries into her supplier.”
“So you fobbed him off,” Will said sarcastically.
“I guess so, it was to placate him, that’s all,” she replied morosely.
“What was his mental state?”
“What is this about, Will?”
“I need to establish how Nate Bradley reacted. Were the dealers involved his main focus?” Will tried another tack.
“Without a doubt,” she responded affirmatively, “Especially when his son died.”
“Did he make any threats?”
“No, not exactly,” she said slowly. “He made a lot of noise and we know that he spoke to some of his son’s friends about it. He intimidated them with his questions and the way he asked them. They were genuinely scared and their parents made complaints, but under the circumstances, we didn’t pursue it. We spoke to him several times about it.”
“Then what?” Will took his tie off. It seemed that John Tankersley was right in his assumptions.
“He came to me with the name of the boy who had
allegedly
given his son the ecstasy. Carl Lewis was in the same year at college,” she answered irritably. “Look, inspector, there wasn’t a shred of evidence that the boy had supplied the drugs, and when we interviewed him about it he denied all knowledge of the tablets. What am I supposed to do?”
“I’m not criticizing your investigation, Chloe,” Will tried to calm her angst. “I need to know the facts.”
“Sorry,” Chloe sighed. “Am I being sensitive?”
“A little. The boy he thought had supplied the drugs, Carl Lewis, is he still missing?”
“I wondered where this was going,” she snapped. “We spoke to Bradley about the boy and he had an alibi. Then Carl made contact made with one of his college friends.”
“What type of contact?”
“The kid is on Facebook every few days. He has run away, but from what we can see, he is alive and well. He has a junior savings account which is keeping him going.”
“What about the older lad?” Will carried on.
“Same, we think they’re together. They posted pictures from a beach in Cornwall a week ago. The local uniform boys are looking for them, but they keep on moving from place to place.”
Will was beginning to get a picture of what may have happened. It would not be difficult to make it look as if someone was still alive using the internet, especially if you had extracted their passwords before they died. An interrogator would have no problems finding out that information from teenage boys. “Do you know Nate Bradley’s history?” Will asked. He wondered what the military had put on his files.
“Some kind of records clerk in the army,” Chloe replied. “Why?”
“He was an intelligence officer and worked in Special Operations,” Will dropped the bomb.
“What?” She sounded incredulous. “Bollocks, we checked that ourselves.”
“I believe you, but the military are hardly likely to let anyone know that he was a spook, are they?” Will replied calmly. “Trust me, I have it on good authority that Bradley was a spook, and I believe the source. I don’t believe those two lads are alive, Chloe.”
“Fucking hell, but what about the bank account and the Facebook stuff?” She inhaled air as she spoke.
“Come on, Chloe, how hard would it be to blag that if you had their information?”
“Where are you coming from, Will? What the hell are you looking for?”
Will stood up from the desk and looked out of the window. He could see the big wheel, a new edition at the Albert Docks. It seemed like every city in the UK needed a wheel since the success of the London eye. “I want a reason why Nate Bradley would turn vigilante and set out to take out drug dealers. I think he has a good one, don’t you?”
“Oh my god,” Chloe moaned. “I’ll open the search for the missing boys immediately. I’ll have to speak to my governor about making it a homicide investigation.”
“Look, Chloe.” Will didn’t need self-flagellation right now. “The older lad, Paul Grebe, was it?”
“Yes, that’s his name, or should I say was his name? Fucking hell, I don’t believe this.”
“Did you look at him?”
“Of course we did, but there was nothing to charge him with. He had a caution for possession, but that is hardly proof, is it? We had his mother on our watch list and her boyfriend was a real scumbag, but we couldn’t find any evidence that he even knew Nate Bradley.”
“Who was the boyfriend?” Will asked.
“What?”
“You said the mother had a scumbag boyfriend?”
“Yes, Jackie Benjamin,” Chloe said. “You may remember him. He was topped on the Bluebell Estate a while back.”
“Thank you, Chloe.” Will sounded excited. “You’ve just given me my link. That is the connection between Nate Bradley and our case.”
“You think Bradley topped Benjamin?”
“Yes, I do,” Will smiled. “Chloe, can I give you some advice?”
“Yes, please.” She was baffled and shocked by the entire conversation.
“Get the technical guys onto your case. Find out where your Facebook posts are coming from and where that savings account is being used, because I don’t believe those boys are alive, and thanks again for your help.” He hung up before she could respond. He was about to call Alec when the telephone rang as soon as he had put it down.
“DI Naylor,” he answered the call irritably. He needed to speak to the superintendent.
“Morning, Will,” Chief Carlton said. “I have some news which might impact your case.”
“Well, this case is just getting better and better, chief,” Will laughed. “There has been some significant information come to light this morning already.”
“Really, what’s happened?” The chief sounded surprised. “Have you found Howarth?”
“No, sir, but we think we have the name of his accomplice.”
“Superb, well done, there,” the chief chirped. “What have you got?”
“It’s early days, chief, and I’m still checking it out. So if you don’t mind, I’ll check out my facts and then make a full report to the Super, but we need to talk to a man named Nate Bradley.”
“Do you need our help?”
“Yes, sir,” Will made the call to bring him in. “I think we need an APB on Bradley, and we need to call him armed and dangerous, Sir.”
“Get his details to me immediately, Will. I’ll have the alert and his description distributed this morning at shift changeover. Where has this information come from?”
Will didn’t want to end up with egg on his face, so he chose to keep it in the department for now. “Do you mind if I make a few more enquiries before I start speculating, sir?”
“No problem, I’ll wait until you have briefed Alec.”
“Thanks, sir. What have you got for me?”
“Oh, yes, the reason for the call,” the chief stuttered. “Two things of interest. Early this morning, we were called to a vehicle fire-up near the Royal. Once the fire boys had extinguished it, witnesses reported hearing a gunshot before the fire started. We recovered the body of a male. He was wearing military dog tags which identify him as David Lorimar.”
“He was one of the men at the poker game?” Will wrote the name on his list of things to relay to Alec.
“Correct,” the chief confirmed. Dr. Libby says that the skull was severely damaged before the fire started, probably a shotgun. There are pellets in the doorframe.”
“That’s one less to interview, I suppose,” Will mumbled. “Any idea what happened?”
“It’s all a bit cloudy at the minute. One witness reported seeing a man leaving the scene on the back of a motorbike and others are telling us that a tall black male ran away from the vehicle in the direction of the hospital car park. We’re still taking statements now, and we have the CCTV discs from the hospital security room. They should have a decent view of the car park. Once I know anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Sounds to me like the mobs are kicking off again,” Will scribbled on his pad. It hadn’t been long ago that they had been killing each other for fun, until the assassination of the Neil brothers had brought things to an uneasy ceasefire. “Do you think it’s related to the robbery at Connections?”
“God only knows, Will,” the chief sighed. “There is another incident. It won’t throw any light onto this at all, however I think it is connected.”
“I need another pen,” Will joked.
“You and me both,” the chief made light of it.
“I feel like Stevie Wonder trying to complete a Rubik’s Cube.” Will took his jacket off and placed it over his chair as he spoke. Sharon Gould tiptoed up to the desk and placed a note in front of him. She smiled and walked away without speaking, aware that he was talking to the chief constable. Will picked it up and tutted loudly. “Fucking hell, it never rains, it pisses down.”
“What?”
“Sorry, sir, another challenge has just dropped into my lap.”
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down, inspector,” the chief chuckled. “Listen, I know you have a lot on your plate, but we had a call yesterday to a flat in Toxteth. One of the residents reported that his neighbour’s door looked damaged and there was a cleaning company warning sign outside the flat. He thought it looked dodgy. When my officers arrived the flat was empty, but there were signs of a struggle and they found a handgun. Turns out the flat belongs to a chap called Jackson Walker. Do you know him?”
“Yes, we’ve crossed paths a few times.” Will read the note again. Zamir Oguzhan was waiting in the reception area downstairs. “He’s one of Leon Tanner’s crew.”
“That’s what I’m being told, although I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him.”
“I think there was more to the robbery at Connections than we first thought,” Will forgot who he was talking to.
“We thoroughly investigated it, inspector,” the chief’s tone changed. “At the time, there was nothing more to do. There was no crime committed.”
“I wasn’t having a go, chief.” Will stuck two fingers up to the phone. “I meant there is more coming out every day, that’s all.”
“Yes, quite. Well, keep me posted, inspector.”
Will didn’t think the apology had been accepted, but he had more important things to worry about. He decided not to drag the call on any longer and hung up.
Will needed to speak to Alec to see if he wanted him to interview Zamir Oguzhan whilst he himself dealt with the search at Shankly Way. The third time Alec’s phone clicked to voice mail, Will grabbed his jacket and his tie and headed for the lifts. He would tackle the mobster himself.