Authors: John Macrae
There was a long pause. She seemed non-committal.
"Are you a reporter?”
“No. I’m not. But I can sort out your little problem for you…”
“How? What problem. I mean, it's a bit late, isn't it, now? What can anyone do to help now?"
I took a deep breath, then committed myself. "Did you mean what you said - in the papers?"
"About what?"
"Getting your own back. Revenge?"
Her response shook me. She actually laughed. "Oh, that. I suppose you say funny things, don't you, when you're angry, I mean. It's too late now. Bill wanted to get him, and Wayne still says daft things, but the police have warned us not to be silly. Well, it would be, wouldn't it? And it wouldn't bring Sandra back."
Bill was the husband, I assumed. She sounded a pretty sensible woman to me. Nevertheless, I persisted.
"No, it wouldn't bring Sandra back, but if someone else were to fix this bloke, Spicer, the one who did it, would you still say that? At no risk to you, mind? Or Bill?" There was a long pause.
Then she said, "Who are you?" Her voice had gone quiet.
“No-one, Mrs Meekin. I'm just a friend. Alan Smith; and I'd like to help - if that's what you want."
This time the pause was even longer. "What do you mean,
fix
him? What could you do?" She almost whispered.
"What would you like me to do?"
"Would you ... well ... get into trouble?"
I laughed; after everything I'd done in the service of HMG, and everything she'd gone through, she was still worried about getting someone into trouble. But who could blame her?
"No, I won't get into trouble."
"But why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do it for me? Why do you want to do it for us?"
"I thought you wanted to fix this bloke. Get revenge for your Sandra. That's what the newspapers said."
“We ain’t got no money.”
“I don’t need money. I just wanted to give you a bit of justice. Revenge, if you like.”
This time the pause was so long, I thought the line had gone dead.
"Are you still there, Mrs Meekin?;'
"Yes ... " Then her voice cut in again, ven
o
mous and different. "Yes, I'm still here."
She was angry now. "Yes, Mr Smith. Or whatever your name is. Oh yes, I want revenge. Someone should get that bastard." The voice was shrill and bitter. "Fuckin’ fix him good. Sort him out. If you're really serious, get him; leave him with something he'll remember till his dying day. So he'll remember what he did to my little girl - to Sandra." She broke down crying, and I hung up quickly.
I'd got my answer.
Spring, London
Disposing of human rubbish isn't as simple as many people imagine.
By human rubbish, I mean
people
, of course.
First of all you have to find them, then identify them - a mistake in identity can be embarrassing to all concerned - and only then can you go into the gritty business of deciding what to do with the customer, target or mark: call him what you will. I know; that's what I do.
Spicer was no exception. Like Mrs Beeton said, 'First catch your hare.'
I rang Directorate Special Forces' official liaison officer at the Met in Scotland Yard, and asked for a trace, purely in the line of business, of course. Harry Plummer was a grizzled sardonic copper who wouldn't let his right hand know if his left hand was cut off. He and I had had a few beers on odd occasions in the past, and we got on well. At least,
I think
we got on well. With Harry Plummer it was hard to tell...
He didn't know I was on leave, and between jobs. Group is forever running checks for the security people in the Kremlin down at Headquarters 22 SAS, or Counter Revolutionary Wing's database, so he didn't think it was odd. Harry Plummer did the devilling with the police national intelligence computer at Hendon and MI 5, and a couple of days later came back with the usual list. I'd taken the trouble to embed Spicer's name in a list of others and when he passed me the print-out in his office, he was quick to point out Spicer's form.
"This one's interesting. It's that bloke Spicer, the one who was in the papers for molesting that twelve year old. You know, her old man's waiting trial for doing him. Weird business."
I affected surprise. "That's odd. Not our usual run of business. Are you sure you've got the right one?" I made a play of checking through my notebook. "Here we are. Spicer, Alfred Charles, born 22 November 64, at Rugby."
"No." Harry Plummers's honest policeman's face contorted into a mixture of puzzlement and contrition. "No, this one's Spicer,
Albert
Charles. And he was born at Chelmsford ... date - um - 14 April 50."
We looked at each other, he genuinely puzzled, I pretending incomprehension . I let him work it out; this sort of thing was always happening with the new Hendon computer and NCIS. The Home Office and Security Service went bananas over duff lists about three times a week.
"We've given you the wrong one." ,
"Never mind." I drew a line through the computer entry for Albert Charles. "It was probably our fault. Can you double check ALFRED Charles Spicer?"
He took down the details and we parted amicably. Harry was only really content when he was one up on the department, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and Hendon. Since the new computer had arrived, he was usually a very happy man.
I took the computer sheets back to my flat and deleted the 'erroneous' entry with a thick black felt pen after copying the details into my notebook. Then I put the rest into a special delivery envelope addressed personal to me at Group, with a note asking for them to be brought forward on my return. Thanks to the Hendon computer's print out I could now read up on what the NCIS Database had to say about Spicer in great detail.
He made depressing reading. Albert Charles Spicer was a typical child molester, if there is such a thing. Not that I'm any authority. But I’d checked it all out in an Internet café. In his forties, he had achieved little, and failed at much.
He was married, childless and according to the crib sheets, had received treatment for clinical depression on-at least two occasions. He had twice been questioned about unsavoury sexual incidents in the past, and was given to buying pornography. One alert copper in Kent had even described him as a potential paedophile. But of course the Met hadn’t listened to that. I noticed grimly from the press summaries on the internet that Spicer had taken his last holiday in Bangkok. He lived in a council house and worked as a warehouse supervisor for a supermarket chain.
It wasn't much to go on, so I devoted the next three days to working on him. That wasn't easy, as he'd left his Dagenham council house abruptly - which wasn't surprising - and had moved elsewhere. Normally, finding his new address would have been child's play, but I didn't want to draw any attention to myself, so I was deprived of the usual resources. Eventually I picked him up by broken cardboard crates in his old council house's garden which had a local removal firm's name on the side. One quick telephone call to them elicited his new address and I could stake him out.
Next morning I did just that. I dressed the part.
The only way to disguise yourself in England is to be conspicuously ordinary as a working man. A pair of blue overalls and an oyster tool bag did the trick. I gummed on a scruffy moustache, stuck a plaster on my cheek and walked with Spicer to the train.
We rode all the way to the office together and I got a good look at him.
He
looked
like a child molester. He was thin and ferrety, with slicked back hair. The eyes slid around all the time like fried eggs in the pan, evasive but staring, and his narrow lips were wet from constant licking. He was obviously a smoker, and the bitten nails added nothing to the charm of his nicotine-stained fingers. At one point he gazed fixedly into the next carriage. He couldn't tear his eyes away and I
manoeuvered
myself round to follow his gaze.
A group of school girls had got on at the last station and were giggling silently through the glass. Spicer was rivetted and his lip-licking had gone up by about fifty per cent. In my business you meet some unpleasant characters, but I don't think I've ever met anyone quite as slimy as Albert Charles Spicer.
As we got off, my distaste increased. He shot out so fast that he actually brushed past me, and as we walked down the platform I could see why. He was following the school girls closely and as I caught him up was speaking to one of them. The nasal East London vowels whined as he pretended he didn't know the way locally.
The girl looked scared, then rushed off to her friends, who giggled behind their hands and disappeared up the steps. Spicer loved it. The bulging, muddy coloured eyes followed them and his lip licking was now off the scale. It was pretty obvious that he intended to start his little games again and had learned nothing from the court case.
Out of the blue, I felt sorry for his wife - how could she still live with the creature?
I gave him the tail on and off for another two days. It was a hell of a way to spend my leave, but it was interesting. A bit of practice really, like one of those exercises at the Manor, years ago. He was a totally predictable hare, and I formed a good idea of his habits. Twice more he stopped and talked to school girls. On one occasion he tried to put his hand on a girl's shoulder as she pointed out the route to him. I was on the other side of the road and couldn't hear what was said, but I had a fair idea. She dipped her shoulder and backed away and as they parted Spicer leered. It's the only word to describe how he looked. He'd have to go, I decided. It was clearly only a matter of time before he tried it on again with another girl, less wary than the rest. He really would have to go.
By now I'd given up a good chunk of my post-Heinemann leave to faffing about Spicer. Now I had to make a key decision; how, where and when? The where and when weren't difficult, but the how was. I didn't want to exceed my mandate; Mrs Meekin didn't want him topped. That would probably be easiest. Much as the greasy bastard deserved it, the guy hadn't killed anyone directly. So I had to devise something that would 'make him think about young Sandra every day for the rest of his life'. Over a cup of coffee in my flat I hit on the answer. It was unorthodox, but would make the point more effectively than anything else. Besides, it could give a whole new twist to the saying 'an eye for an eye'. It actually made me laugh out loud.
Smiling to myself, I pulled out a clean sheet of paper and drew out a standard special forces target appreciation. It’s not secret – you can buy whole books on how to be an undercover SAS man now, thanks to some of the gobby bastards who had left the Regiment to pursue literary careers - or to show their long-suffering editors how to make loadsamoney out of a gullible public. If everyone who claimed they were in the SAS had really been in the regiment or had done half the stuff that they claimed they’d done, we’d have a surplus of SAS hard cases. UK would have no defence problems at all. It still makes me piss myself every time I see some second rate ex-SAS corporal asked his opinion on British defence policy in some place he’s never served. Even if he had, it was just as a lowly grunt, however medals they hung on him. And he’s commenting on what the government should do? But that’s TV and books on the SAS for you…
At the end of an hour I had confirmed what my instincts had already told me. Spicer was most vulnerable on his way to work, where his route and timings were unvarying and I could make best use of the next ten hours, provided that he wasn't missed at work. By mid-afternoon I had it all worked out, and next morning I did a walk-through rehearsal. It all fitted, and Spicer's days of child molesting were short; he was due for his come-uppance in four days' time.
Like all plans, it was the administration that caused the difficulties and took the time. Hiring a van under a work name was no problem. Like all our Group, I've acquired two or three illegal extra work names over the years. Rigging it out and getting the other odds and ends together took more time. When it was fitted out, I paid one last round of calls to the garden centre for a plant mist spray and then to three separate chemical suppliers for some essential supplies.
By 'R' - for Revenge - day minus one I was ready, and, carefully parking the van where it wouldn't be interfered with, I left it. Then it was a hire car to Folkestone, where I took the Shuttle to Calais. I booked into an hotel about half an hour down the Lille road, at Bailleul, that was small enough to remember me, but big enough not to miss me for a while. I made my number at reception with a girl with dark eyes. The long eyelashes fluttered over her cheeks like black moths and my gentle flattery in dreadful French as I filled out my
affiche
for the police ensured that she remembered me. Then I wrote three postcards and got them into the post box for today's last post franking date. One of the post cards was a series of cartoon jokes about 'The Perfect European' for the office and was bound to be remembered.
After a good dinner, I retired to my room, warning them I'd be going to Ghent the next day so I'd be getting up early. From then on it was easy. I messed up the bed, washed and shaved, and slipped out, un-noticed by reception. I drove like hell to Calais, and leaving my hire car on the dock, just made the late ferry as a foot passenger. Entry into the United Kingdom was easy. I was through the sleepy EU immigration channel on a Belgian ID that no-body knows I've acquired, and is normally well hidden behind a bad print of Köln cathedral in my hall, and was on the train for London barely three hours after leaving the French hotel. Now I was committed to my first private operation.
It was a hell of a way to spend my leave.
Sorting out sex criminals, I mean. I’d never thought that was ever going to be my destiny in life…