Fogarty: A City of London Thriller

FOGARTY

A City of London Thriller

J Jackson Bentley

As usual, with the City of London Thrillers, I have kept real events, locations and places exactly where they appear in reality, at home and abroad. Obviously in any work of fiction it is necessary to have fictional locations but where this has been done the fictional locations are situated on real streets or in real areas of London and elsewhere. Where fictional businesses are mentioned they are sited in real buildings.

I have taken very few liberties with the transport arrangements mentioned in the book, and most journeys can be travelled as described.

I am grateful to the News of the World journalists who took time to explain their feelings and experiences at what must have been a difficult time for them. Thanks also to the local people who witnessed the Tottenham and Croydon carnage, your stories were very helpful to me.  Finally, thanks to the policemen from around the country who were seconded to the Met to help with the London Riots who freely gave their time to help me maintain authenticity.

I reserve my most grateful thanks for Sue W, my editor, who has proof read and improved all of my books since Macmillan published my first book in 1994.

Finally I acknowledge the assistance given by Fidus Books on taking the
City of London Thrillers
into electronic format for the Kindle.

If you have a comment, criticism or just want to email me about this specific book you can also email me at
[email protected]

J Jackson Bentley, London.

July
2012

Prologue

News of the World, Wapping, London 9
th
July 2011; 8pm.

The newsroom was still bustling as Max checked over his last ever copy for the old newspaper. If anything there were more people in the building than was usual for a Saturday night. The sadness in the room was palpable as journalists came to finally accept that the phone hacking scandal had brought down the one-hundred-and-forty year old Sunday newspaper, the one which had scandalised society and had intimidated the powerful since Victorian times. Tonight they were preparing the last ever edition and world-weary reporters were walking around the offices with tears streaming down their faces. The newsroom was quiet but emotionally charged.

Max pressed the button on his keyboard
, sending his story to the sub editor for a quick review before it went into its allotted slot in the finished paper.

Max had been lucky to have a story in the last ever edition. Many solidly researched and hard-hitting stories had made way for retrospective pieces and sentimental goodbyes to the readership. The paper had usually been put to bed by now, but people were reluctant to leave early and so the current plan was that all the journalists, editors and support staff would leave the secure premises as a group, in an hour or so. The editor would act as spokesman to the gathered TV cameras
, announcing that the paper had been put to bed and that everyone was off to the pub as usual. Max knew that he was expected to be in the midst of the melee, but he had no intention of being seen, interviewed or photographed.

Max had been an undercover reporter for almost ten years and, thanks to his editors, very few people knew what he looked like. Apart from his relatives, friends and colleagues
, no one in the media or even Max’s own readers would have recognised him. The reason for this was that, whenever a photo was required to accompany an article written by Max, a stock photo of an American male model was used in place of Max’s own likeness. Likewise, when Max broke a major news story, he never appeared on TV, always preferring the anonymity of radio.

Without thinking, Max had arrived at the Editor’s office. His
boss and old mentor appeared haggard and drawn, but he still had a smile for Max as he beckoned his favourite investigative journalist into his office. Max sat down in the padded captain’s chair that faced the editor’s desk and stared at the portrait of John Browne Bell, an austere looking Victorian fellow who had founded the newspaper all those years ago. In the same style of walnut frame hung a facsimile of the very first front page, showing that the price of the paper was three pence, just over a penny in decimal coinage. Allowing for the value of money in 1843, at today’s prices 3d would be the equivalent of £1.03. Ironic, really, given that the final edition was to be sold at £1 and the original edition was sold at 3d.

“Max, I’m sorry about the North London Crime investigation piece. We’ll never get to publish it now,” the editor said, sadness adding a quiver to his voice that Max had never noticed before.

“Don’t worry, someone will print it. I still have a lot of research to do, anyway.” Max paused while he thought. “Trouble is brewing in Tottenham, I can feel it in my bones.”

“A repeat of 1985, do you think?”

“Maybe, may even be worse. There are more guns circulating out there now and we’ve got a whole generation of disenfranchised teenagers mooching around looking for trouble, not to mention the gang culture. The powder keg is already there with the fuse set; it just needs someone to light it. I’ve spent weeks undercover on the Farm, with the drug dealers and the gang members who would normally be at each other’s throats. For now they’re observing what you could call an uncomfortable truce, but tomorrow.... who knows?”

“Keep writing, Max. The News of the World may not survive but journalists like you have kept this paper and others like it alive in the digital age
, and in spite of twenty-four hour TV news. We need the type of journalists who can niggle at the underbelly of society, real reporters who can still dig out a hard hitting exclusive.” The editor paused and reclined his chair. “We got lazy, Max. We stopped investigating and started following celebrities around. Look where it got us.”

“It got you the highest circulation of any English language Sunday paper!” Max interjected.

“It’s true, but we lost our soul along the way, Max. People don’t buy papers without a soul.”

Max stood and shook his editor’s hand, knowing that the older man had no job to go to.

“I’m going to head off. Don’t want my ugly mug appearing on live Saturday night TV.”

The editor nodded his agreement
. Without another word Max walked out of the office, along the corridor and out of the external door where the warm, moist evening air hit his chilled body. The sky was still light. As he passed through the security turnstile a gaggle of TV reporters turned towards him, looked at the shaven headed yob with a tattoo and a backpack, dismissed him as unworthy of comment and then turned back to the cameras.

Disguise was easy for Max Richmond these days, because no one really looked beyond the surface appearance any
more.

Tottenham High Street, London. Sunday 7
th
August 2011; 9pm.

The night was warm but not as oppressively humid as it had been just a week earlier. Darkness was falling quickly now and the streets were filling with people, young and old, determined to protest, riot and loot. The sky was alive with the red and orange hues which signalled raging fires somewhere close by. The occasional whiff of burning was discernible as spots of soot settled on the clothing of anyone walking around outside.

On Myddleton Road, four boys from a local housing estate were throwing bricks at a catalogue shop window with varying degrees of failure. As the bricks hit the laminated glass the immediate area around the impact crazed and frosted, but the bricks merely bounced off and began to clutter the pavement. The hooded youngsters increased their efforts, throwing harder and eventually taking to battering the window with anything they could find. The window was beginning to fail in one or two small areas now, as small indentations formed around the sites of intensive and focussed attacks. The feral youths swore through the scarves they wore across th
eir faces to hide their identities. So intent were they on their fruitless task that they barely noticed two older and larger men approaching them.

“Stop that, you bloody lunatic!” the first man shouted. The feral youth turned around, looked at the covered face of the hooded adult and spat out his fearless response.
“I don’t take orders from no one round here, man. I’m with the TH Crew and we are tooled up.”

The man stepped forward and grabbed the boy by the throat of his hoodie as his friends gathered around menacingly, wielding bricks and tyre irons. The man was unperturbed by the bravado displayed by the skinny youths in front of him. He slowly pulled down the scarf covering his face to reveal a pockmarked complexion, grey stubble and wrinkling skin. The youth in his grasp blinked in sudden recognition.

“Sorry, Psycho, man. I couldn’t have known it was you, man. No way I would have said that, man, not if I know it was you, Den. No way!” the boy blabbered, fear written deep in his eyes. His companions lowered their weapons and each one unconsciously moved his centre of gravity onto his front foot. They were ready to run.

“Get Metal Mickey on your phone now!” Dennis ‘Psycho’ Grierson demanded. The boy acquiesced and in a few moments another equally uneducated youth was on the phone.

“Mickey, what the hell do you think your bloody kindergarten troops are doing out here? Do you want them all arrested? We’re outside Preston’s. Get your whole crew here pronto.” Den’s tone was angry and commanding. A wary Mickey replied.

“We don’t take orders from no one, Psycho; dis is every man for hisself, man.”

“Mickey, get your boys here in the next minute or two and make yourself some real money, or piss away your effort for a colour telly and spend six months inside. I’m waiting.” Den hung up, knowing that despite ‘dissing’ Mickey, the leader of the TH Crew, he would still come running.

***

Den Grierson, Mikey Bateman and ‘Metal’ Mickey Lynch stood in the centre of a group of thirty agitated youths, talking tactics, although Mickey was doing most of the listening as Den laid out the plan for his little army.

“If you loot the shops around here the Old Bill will be around, sirens blazing, in minutes, and they’ll pick you off one at a time. We need to take the ‘black enamel bastards’ out of the picture first. Understand?” The boys nodded, although they had no idea what he was talking about.

“The main riots are half a mile away where all the big chain stores are. We’ve been watching this area for an hour and a patrol car comes around here every ten minutes to make sure the looting doesn’t spread. Well, we’re going take that car out and make this a no go area, OK?” This time the young white, black and Asian faces of the TH Crew grinned in anticipation.

“Multiculturalism at its best,” thought Den, wisely choosing not to voice his thoughts out loud.

***

Constables Marisa Letterby and Greg Samuels were listening to the chaos on the police radio as they drove the police Vauxhall
Astra around the quieter streets. Less than a mile away, buildings were ablaze, two police cars were burned out and passengers were being ordered off a bus by masked teenaged thugs who were presumably going to hijack it or set fire to it. Luckily, this end of Tottenham was quiet; it would have to be. The whole criminal population of North London seemed to be looting the top end of the high street.

The two police officers’ orders were clear but unbelievable. Keep your eyes open and report in. If you see criminality report it, do not intercede or incite the looters. ‘Report and get out of the area, we don’t have the resources to arrest, only to contain’ was their last instruction from control. But
, according to the police band, even the containment strategy wasn’t working as the riot squad were retreating under a hail of bricks and petrol bombs, leaving the streets to the mobs who were looting shops and taunting the police with their stolen trophies. The radio was alive with comments such as, “Let us go in with batons, Guv, we can take ‘em.” The reply was always the same. “Orders are orders, we observe only; we can pick them up later using CCTV.” The last plaintiff cry they heard before the radio went to static was, “But, Guv, this is our patch and they’re burning it to the ground!”

Constable Letterby turned off the High Street and took the police
Astra into Myddleton Road. She drove at walking pace as the two constables looked around for signs of trouble. Out of nowhere came a crash and the sound of glass breaking, as flames shot across the hood of the car where a Molotov cocktail had exploded. The two constables began to panic. PC Samuels called in their position and said they were under attack, but he had barely completed his sentence when his window disintegrated under attack from an iron bar. Glass shards cut his face and hands as he tried to protect his eyes.

Almost simultaneously Marisa slammed the Corsa into reverse and the car spun into an emergency two point turn, but her efforts to shift back into first gear were thwarted when her window disappeared in a hail of laminated glass and a fist crashed through the opening into her temple. Dazed and feeling slightly nauseous, she let her foot off the clutch and the car jerked forward and stalled.

“I should have just kept reversing back into the High Street,” she thought to herself, but too late.

Mikey Bateman dragged PC Samuels from the car, where he and three members of the TH Crew began laying into him with fists and makeshift weapons until he was so bloodied and beaten that he fell to the floor, to be kicked senseless. On the other side of the car, Marisa Letterby was pulled from the vehicle by Metal Mickey and his crew, but she fought back with venom, plunging her thumb into one hoodie’s eye, making him scream for his mother. Enraged by her defence, the others pressed in and she launched a powerful head butt into the face of a vicious fifteen year old who had just punched her in the face. His nose collapsed under the assault, spraying blood into the inside of his mask. In agonising pain, he pulled off the mask so that he could breathe, but his cheek was so badly fractured by the blow that his eye socket had collapsed and his left eye hung precariously against the skin of his cheek. One of the younger boys started crying as he witnessed the devastating damage to his older brother’s face.

Den Grierson pushed the useless hoodies away and then crashed a gnarled fist into the jaw of the brave policewoman, and she finally crumpled. Once she hit the floor he aimed a few well-aimed kicks to her upper torso and face. Soon she was so bloody she was unrecognisable.

The vengeful blood lust of the TH Crew would have meant the deaths of the two officers, if Den and Mikey hadn’t dragged the semi conscious police constables well away from the car. They had bigger plans, and the murder of two police pigs would serve only to incense the force
. When the riots eventually died down, life on the estate would be hell as the police sought revenge. Pushing back the youths who were planning to kill the police officers, Den turned to face the snarling gang.

“Stick to the plan, you little bastards!” he yelled, realising that at some time during the fracas his scarf had fallen away and his face was now in plain view. Readjusting his face covering, Den, with the assistance of Mikey, pushed the car into the middle of the road, blocking it, before throwing in two petrol bombs.