Slow Burn (26 page)

“Fucking hell!” Ashwan whispered to himself. He stared at the giant head as he set off running toward the motorway. A half a mile ahead of him, a constant stream of traffic roared past in either direction. Ash could see a steep embankment leading up to the road, and he assumed that the footpath would run parallel to it. The noise became louder as he neared the motorway, but he was sure that he could hear sporadic bursts of automatic gunfire in the distance. Whatever had happened near the `Dream`, he was convinced that Malik and his men were not coming. He was alone. Whoever had Mamood was completely in charge of the situation, despite Malik`s superior firepower. They`d picked the perfect spot to separate the money from his escort. Ashwan could only guess that the explosion he had witnessed was a booby-trap, designed to deter anyone from following him further. The rain became a downpour as he set off across the farmland.

 Twenty minutes on Ash saw the field was angling down away from the motorway. To his right hand side the six lanes of traffic climbed away from the fields as they spanned a canal and a railway track. To his left were miles of agricultural land. He walked forward until he reached the perimeter fence, which marked the junction of the famer`s land, and the railway embankment that carved through it. Ash climbed between two strands of barbed wire, catching the rucksack as he stumbled through. He tripped and fell into the long wet grass, cursing the rain and the darkness. His breath was coming in deep bursts as he climbed up on his feet. The motorway was deafening above him, and he could see the dull train tracks below him, disappearing miles away into the darkness. The embankment opposite separated the railway and the canal. He couldn’t see the water, nor were there any narrow-boats moored nearby. The mobile vibrated in his pocket.

 CLIMB BENEATH THE BRIDGE. WAIT ON THE LEDGE NEXT TO THE CENTRE STANCHION. TOUCH THE PHONE AND HE DIES.

 “Fuck you!” Ash whispered. He peered into the night and looked at the embankment to his right. There was a steep concrete wall, supported by the stanchion that held up the arch. He headed along the embankment to the point where it met the bridge structure. From the distance, he could hear another noise, different to the engine noises on the motorway. Ash paid no heed to it as he looked for the ledge. He ducked low as he walked beneath the bridge, and escaping the rain was a relief. The darkness was different there, and his eyes struggled to adjust to it. Above him, a concrete beam spanned the railway, but it was smooth. There were no lips or ledges on it. Ash wondered if there was anyone lurking the blackness that engulfed him. Was his son nearby, tied up and gagged, cold and frightened? He moved deeper beneath the bridge as the traffic roared overhead. Progress was difficult as the huge concrete slab that he was edging along was set at such a steep angle. One wrong footstep and he would be tumbling toward the rails at high speed. He wasn’t convinced that he could climb back up the slab if he were to fall.

Ashwan reached the centre of the bridge supports, and he could see a ledge about two feet wide. He stepped onto it where it met the embankment, and began to sidestep his way beneath the structure. His progress was steady, and he looked down. He was directly above the rail tracks. The distant engine noise was becoming louder by the minute. He looked to the east and he could see the lights of an approaching diesel tractor unit. The engine noise was booming, louder and louder as it neared. Ashwan couldn’t understand why the train carriages that it pulled were in darkness. He could see the train behind the engine, yet it was black. The train seemed to be moving in slow motion, sluggish and certainly in no rush to keep to a timetable. The mobile phone beeped and vibrated. He reached for it and looked at the screen.

DROP THE BAG ONTO THE FIFTH CARRIAGE. TOUCH THE PHONE AND HE DIES

 “What about Mamood?” Ashwan shouted in the darkness. His voice was lost as the diesel locomotive trundled toward the bridge. As he stared at the train, he could see that the carriages were open and piled high with a black substance. “Coal? The train is full of coal.”

Ash laughed nervously in the dark. His mind raced through his options at a million miles an hour. The engine roared beneath him and his mouth and nostrils filled with fumes.

“Where is my son?” he screamed into the night. The second wagon went by. If he dropped the money then it was irretrievable, and the kidnappers hadn`t told him where Mamood was. If he didn’t drop the money then his son would be killed, he had no doubt about that. The third wagon full of coal roared beneath him. He slipped the rucksack off, and lowered it toward the train. “Where is my son?” Ash shouted as he dropped the bag of money onto the fifth wagon. It disappeared from his sight in a second, and he was left alone in the darkness as the train rattled on into the night.

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Lana Pindar

Lana twisted her wedding band and turned off the flat screen television with its remote. The wind and rain hammered at the bedroom window. The howling wind intensified the feeling of emptiness and loneliness that she felt. Mamood was missing and Ashwan was out there trying to find him. The death of his business partners was still sinking in to her already befuddled mind. They had known each other since their school days, and stayed together through their adult lives, with Malik as the lynch pin. The police arrived at her front door looking for Ashwan yesterday morning. They had an arrest warrant, but they wouldn’t tell her why they wanted to talk to him. She told them he had gone away for a few days. She didn’t know why she lied, but she did. She knew that he was with Malik, that`s where he always was. Ashwan was the only hope she had of getting her son back alive, and he was no use to her in a police cell.

 If that wasn`t bad enough, they returned with bomb squad officers and searched her car for explosives. They even checked her mobile phone for a bomb. They looked for a bomb in her car or her phone; what was going on? Whoever Ash really was, she wanted nothing to do with it. They were finished, of that she was absolutely certain. She planned to see a solicitor and file for divorce.

`Why do you want a divorce Mrs Pindar?`

`Oh, that`s an easy one to answer. I`ve just found out my husband is a gangster. He sells drugs, pimps prostitutes, smuggles arms, and he can also have dead teenagers removed from our lawn.` She thought.

 She checked her mobile for the tenth time in as many minutes. There were no missed calls or messages. Mamood was missing, her husband had been questioned by the police, and his business associates were being systematically blown up. A tear ran down her cheek as she put her head on the pillow. She lay fully clothed on the bed that she had shared with her husband for nearly twenty years. The man she loved and respected, once, but no longer. He was an imposter, a liar, a murderer even?

 The doorbell rang and she sat up so fast that she felt dizzy. Her stomach tensed and filled with butterflies, and her throat felt dry suddenly. She looked at her watch. It was an Armani, a present from Ashwan for her wedding anniversary one year. The time was three in the morning. Ash still had his keys. She could tell that he had been home that afternoon sometime. His dirty washing was in the laundry basket. Would the police call this late at night? If they had bad news, they would.

  Lana jumped off the bed and headed for the bedroom door. Ashwan`s dressing gown was hanging from it. The smell of Aramis drifted to her as she walked by. She switched on the lights in the hallway and looked toward the front door. There were no silhouettes or shadows there. She ran down the stairs and looked through the glass. Her heart sank and she felt weak at the knees. She wanted to cry out but she couldn’t. Her throat restricted and she felt nauseous. Lana pulled the bolt on the door and threw it open.

 “Mamood,” she screamed, eventually finding her voice.

“Mum,” he said. He stood with a blanket wrapped around him. He was soaked to the skin and the wind threatened to rip it from his shoulders.

“Are you hurt?” She held his face in her hands, and pulled him inside out of the elements.

“No, Mum,” he sobbed. He was still in shock. “They said bad things about my dad.”

 “Where is he?” Lana asked herself. “How did you get back here?”

“They put me in a van and then dropped me off down the road.”

 “I wonder where your father is?” Lana didn’t think that she should care anymore, but she did. She looked across the lawns and down the road, but Ashwan wasn`t there.

CHAPTER FOURTY FOUR

ASHWAN

Ashwan Pindar climbed out of the tunnel and he looked at the mobile phone the kidnappers had given to him. There were no messages to tell him where his son was. The money and the crack were gone, but there was no sign of his son anywhere. They had stuck to their part of the deal, and delivered the money and drugs. Where was his son? He had to get out of there quickly. The rain drilled into him as he emerged, and he climbed up the steep embankment toward the motorway. He couldn’t stumble back across the fields, it was too far and too dark. Exhaustion had caught up with him. The motorway above him was the easy answer. He reached the barrier and tumbled over it. Headlights glared at him from both directions. The traffic was relatively light but the noise of the engines was still deafening.

Ashwan knew that the next exit was about a mile away to the west. That was the nearest point that he could be picked up. He dialled Malik.

 “Where are you?” Malik answered. He sounded annoyed.

 “I am on the hard shoulder of the motorway, about a mile from junction nine.”

 “Why didn’t you tell us where you were?”

 “They said they would kill him if I touched the keypad.”

 “Where have you left the money and the drugs?”

 “I had to drop it onto a coal train from under a bridge. It must be headed for Fiddlers Ferry power station.”

 “Did you get Mamood?”

 “No.”

 The line went dead as Malik smashed his i-phone to pieces on the dashboard of his BMW. He wasn’t angry about the money and the drugs; it was the fact that they had been tricked again, and they`d missed the opportunity to trap his tormentors. 

 Ashwan put the handset into his pocket and headed west toward the exit. His own mobile was inside his jacket, and it began to vibrate. He pulled it out and checked the screen. It was his wife, Lana.

 “Lana thanks for ringing,” he began to waffle. He took the fact that she`d called as a sign that she was coming to terms with the situation, but he was wrong.

“Mamood is home, Ash, and I want a divorce. This will never happen again,” Lana had never been more determined in her life. The safety of her son was paramount.

 “He`s home?” Ashwan looked to the sky and said thank you. His relief was indescribable. “Lana I can make this right.”

  “Your son was kidnapped because of who you are and what you do. Your partners are dead. What will happen next, Ashwan?”

  The line went dead and he stared at the screen for a while before trying to redial her. It clicked straight to answer phone. He tried again, same thing. Ash clicked Malik`s number and dialled him, at least the news that Mamood was safe might calm him down a bit. The call didn’t connect because Malik`s handset was smashed to smithereens in the foot-well of his BMW. He would have to deal with Malik when he returned. Mamood was his priority. Mamood and Lana. He had to try to rebuild things back to the way they were. He jumped as a horn blared loudly behind him. Headlights approached him, but they weren`t on the main carriageway. They were on the hard shoulder. The vehicle slowed down as it approached and he squeezed against the barrier to let it draw level with him. It was marked with green chevrons down the side panels, and Highway Patrol was printed above them. It was a transit van, with a crew cab at the front and a sliding door at the side, which accessed a van section. The passenger window went down and the driver touched his peaked hat as he spoke.

“Are you okay, Sir?”

“I`m stranded, it`s a long story.”

 “Breakdown?”

“Something like that,” Ashwan replied.

“Do you want a lift to the next exit?”

“Yes please,” Ashwan was relieved. He opened the passenger door and climbed in to the van. The driver was fat. “Thanks for your help.”

“Oh, it`s my pleasure,” Richard Bernstein put the vehicle into first gear and pulled away from the hard shoulder.

Chapter Forty Five

MIT

“Sorry to wake you at this time in the morning, Guv,” Will Naylor sounded like he had just woken up too. His voice was thick with sleep. “We`ve got reports of another explosion.”

 “Where?” Alec reached for the glass of water that he kept on the bedside table and he checked the time on his watch.

  “Up at Sutton Manor colliery. They think it was near the site of the Dream, Guv.”

  “What the bloody hell is going on?”

  “That`s not all, Guv. I`ve called the DI at the scene, Tom Chance from the St Helens nick,” Will paused.

  “I know him.”

 “They got reports of an explosion from residents nearby and several calls from drivers on the sixty two, reporting a fireball shooting into the air above the statue.”

  “Well, it sounds like an explosion.”

  “They are bringing in portable lights to help search the area.”

 “Have they found anything?”

 “Not yet, it`s too dark and the rain isn’t helping, but there is a Porsche parked in the car park at the bottom of the hill, Guv. It belongs to Ashwan Pindar.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” Alec tried to make sense of the pieces of the puzzle, but it was a mess. They were missing something. His wife moaned and sat up. She was used to these late night phone calls. It was one of the downsides of being married to a police detective. She climbed out of bed and pulled on her towelling robe. Alec noted that her legs were still in good shape, and her behind was still firm. All that time and effort in the gym had paid off. She went down stairs and put the kettle on. Alec wouldn’t go back to sleep now that he had been disturbed. His mind would be too active to sleep. She grabbed two mugs and made decaffeinated coffee for her and a strong regular brew for Alec.

 “There`s no sign of him yet, but listen to this. We put an officer on the Pindar residence today. In the early hours of this morning, he called in that a teenage boy walked into the front garden, and knocked on the front door. He was soaking wet and wrapped in a blanket.”

“Pindar has a son, right?”

“Right, Guv. Mamood Pindar.”

“Did he speak to the mother?”

“She wouldn’t speak to him, Guv. She said everything was fine and slammed the door in his face.” 

 “None of this makes any sense, Will.”

 “What time are you going in?” Will asked, already knowing what the answer was.

“I`m on my way to the Dream, It`ll be light in an hour or so.”

“I`ll meet you there, Guv.”

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

Nick

Nick waited patiently as the coal train approached. It was taking fuel to Fiddlers Ferry, a huge coal powered electricity-generating station, situated on the banks of the River Mersey. The rail track was dedicated to keeping the furnaces burning. The coal train slowed down as it neared, and the brakes squealed as they struggled to stop a thousand tons of moving steel. The wagons clanked as they rolled over the points. A signal showed red. The power station was fed by a single rail track. That meant that there was a siding where arriving trains, fully loaded with fuel parked, so that departing empty wagons could be shunted away. Nick waited for the train to stop completely before making his way to the fifth wagon. He reached into the long grass, which grew on the embankment, and retrieved an aluminium ladder. The ladder was hidden months earlier when they were prepping their plan. It took mere seconds to retrieve the haversack, and hide the ladder back in its place.

 Nick climbed halfway up the embankment, and disappeared into the long grass. To anybody watching it was as if he`d been swallowed up by the grassy slope. He ducked low and walked through a concrete tunnel, which led to a storm drain under the embankment. The huge drain ran through concrete pipes four metres in circumference for a half mile where it joined the river beneath the colossal cooling towers at the power station. The water ran fast, but it was only a metre deep. Nick slipped a head torch on and switched on the light. He slipped the haversack on and dragged a plastic resin canoe toward the water. Twenty minutes later, he was in the Highway Patrol van with the Bernstein brothers. The unconscious body of Ashwan Pindar was layed out and handcuffed in the back of the van, and there was a faint whiff of chloroform lingering in the air.

CHAPTER 47

The Dream

Alec Ramsey pulled into the car park that serviced the old colliery. A uniformed officer stood guard at a yellow tape, trying hard to keep back a growing throng of reporters. The Shah Corporation bombings had hit the news, and every satellite channel and red top newspaper in the country was carrying the story. It was fast becoming the hot story across the globe, as the press blamed right wing extremists for the anti-Muslim bombing campaign. Alec was under growing pressure from the Commander to come up with a line of enquiry that he could communicate to the press. Right now Alec didn’t have one to give him. Malik Shah was the victim in the press, yet Alec knew that he was the cause of the problem, everything revolved around him. As he crawled through the reporters, camera flashes made strobe light in the dawn glow. The sun was coming up. 

 Alec ignored the questions shouted at him through the glass, and he waved at the constable as he lifted the tape. Across the car park he spotted Pindar`s Porsche. Forensic officers were crawling all over it, and a white gazebo was in the process of being erected above it, to shield it from the prying cameras. At the top of the hill, `The Dream` hung above the trees, almost floating in the dawn mist. Alec sighed as he brought his Shogun to a halt. Whatever the missing pieces of this puzzle were, he needed to identify them quickly. The case was getting away from him. Will pulled up in his Audi TT convertible. It suited him down to the ground.

 They exited their vehicles and DI Tom Chance spotted them and headed toward them. He grabbed a couple of paper suits from a crime-scene support vehicle and jogged over to them.

 “Superintendent,” he greeted Alec with a handshake.

 “DI Chance,” Alec returned the greeting. Will and Tom exchanged handshakes and nodded a silent hello. The detectives struggled into their protective clothing while DI Chance briefed them. “The Porsche belongs to Ashwan Pindar, as you know. We`ve spoken to his wife this morning, and she says that he isn’t home.”

Alec looked up the hill and wondered if Ashwan Pindar was up there somewhere. Was it his teenage son that arrived back at the family home in the early hours of the morning wrapped in a blanket? Why would Pindar visit the statue at night, unless he was meeting somebody subversively? What was he doing there in the first place, and why would anyone plant a bomb there? They walked toward the Porsche.

 “There`s nothing untoward about the Porsche so far, except the driver`s seat was left forward. Either a passenger climbed out or the driver removed something from the backseat. It`s a different story up the hill though.”

 “What have you got so far?” Alec was keen to start slotting the evidence into the relevant boxes in his mind.

“We`ve found one fatality, but we can`t identify him yet because of his injuries.”

  “Is there any ID on the body?” Alec asked.

  “We haven`t found the body yet, Guv. Well not all of it.”

  “What have you found?” Will pressed the issue. He was as frustrated as the Superintendent was about their lack of progress. Every avenue they went down was a dead end.

  “We have an arm, and a left foot. The skin is dark, probably Asian or Middle-Eastern ethnicity.” Tom Chance pointed to the Porsche as they climbed the hill. “At first I thought the chances are that it`s Pindar, but now I`m not so sure.”

 “Why?”

 “See the markers there?” Tom pointed to numbered yellow markers that were dotted along the path. “There are nine millimetre shell casings all over the place.”

  Alec stopped and looked around. There were dozens of markers, clumped in six or seven different parts of the hill. It appeared that multiple gunmen stood still and fired up the hill at an unseen enemy. As they reached the clearing, the markers became more numerous. The giant bust towered above them as they neared it. The white face was scarred with a black scorch mark the shape of a candle flame. It stretched from the chin to just above the forehead.

“The base of the statue is where the bomb was planted, and we found the limbs twenty yards away, over there. If you look back down the hill, you can see how the shell casings are concentrated into seven areas.”

“With our dead man, that makes at least eight people that were here, the victim and seven shooters.”

 “I agree, Guv.” Tom Chance nodded his head.

 “What were they shooting at?” Will asked.

 “As far as we can see up to now, they hit nothing. They were firing blind, and probably panicked by the explosion,” DI Chance surmised. “It would have been pitch black here last night, and the weather was terrible.”

 “Why would you come up here without artificial light of some kind, a torch or something?” Will said. “Unless, you didn’t want to be seen, of course.”

 “DI Chance!” A voice called from the tree line to the east. A forensic officer waved a gloved hand to attract his attention.

“Looks like they have found something,” Alec nodded.

They walked toward the officer. In the bushes that lined the clearing, the head and torso of a man lay face down. He was dressed in dark combat clothing, the remnants of which were reasonably intact. The forensic team lifted the body gently and photographed its position, and the injuries. The face was gone, only red mush remained. They searched the body with gloved hands.

  “We`ve found a wallet in his trouser pocket,” the forensic said. He flipped open the tan leather wallet. There was about a hundred pounds in twenty-pound notes, and a visa card. He pulled out the credit card. 

  “Dipak Pindar, Guv.”

 Alec and Will exchanged glances. Pindar had driven to this site, followed by at least seven heavily armed men. A bomb was detonated and a firefight ensued, but why?

  “We need to speak to Pindar`s wife, Will, and we need to do it now.”

CHAPTER 48

Lana Pindar

 Alec pulled up his vehicle next to the driver`s window of a Vauxhall. He didn’t know what model it was as they all looked the same to him. They spoke to the Commander on the way to Lana Pindar`s home, and the Commander was happy to authorise an arrest warrant if she failed to cooperate. The situation was becoming desperate, and desperate measures were required to deal with it. Lana Pindar wasn’t a suspect in any investigation, but she was withholding information, of that Alec was certain.

 “Has there been any more comings or goings?” Alec asked the detective that was assigned to watch the Pindar residence. The Vauxhall was his home for the foreseeable future. He was new to the team and looked surprised to see the Superintendent at his stakeout. He consulted his notebook before he replied.

“No, Guv.”

“Take a break for a few hours; get some breakfast and a few hours’ kip.”

“Thanks, Guv.”

Alec steered the Shogun across the road, and he parked on the driveway in front the Pindar residence. The curtains were closed in the windows.

 “The answer lies with Malik Shah, and Ashwan Pindar, Will. They know what is going on, and so does Lana Pindar,” Alec switched off the engine and opened the door. Will Naylor did likewise. “I am not leaving here until we have answers.”

 “Are we going to tag team them?” Will referred to a technique of interrogation were two people were questioned at the same time. It caused confusion and led to mistakes being made. It wasn’t something that they could employ in a formal interview with legal representation present. They had to make the most of this opportunity.

 “Yes, whatever it takes,” Alec replied. He reached the front door and rang the doorbell. He stared at his shiny brogues while he waited long seconds for a reply, but none came. His fist rapped four times loudly on the door. He waited only five seconds or so and then banged on the door again. They heard the bolts being drawn and the door opened an inch.

 “What do you want?” Lana asked. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“We need to speak to you, Lana, it`s urgent,” Alec pushed the door open with his right hand. “We can do it here, or we can do it at the station and get social services to look after Mamood while we talk, it`s up to you.”

She opened the door in silence, and looked at them suspiciously, as they entered. Alec spotted Mamood sat on a leather settee in the living room area. Lana walked toward the kitchen away from the living room, tying to steer them away from her son.

 “We`ll talk in here if that`s ok. We need to speak to Mamood too.”

Lana tried to protest but Will gently took her arm and guided her toward where her son was sitting. Mamood looked like a frightened rabbit. He had dark circles under his eyes and his face looked gaunt and drawn.

 “Hello, Mamood,” Alec said. “Sit down, Lana.” He pointed to an empty armchair. “Did you have a late night, Mamood?”

 Mamood looked at his mother for help. She twitched her head slightly, almost imperceptibly. She told him to be quiet without saying a word to him.