by Ted Tayler
CHAPTER 8
At a few minutes before four o’clock in the afternoon, Giles Burke entered the control centre in the ice-house. Artemis had been on duty since her lie-in with Rusty was interrupted by the summons from Athena.
“I’m sorry yet another Saturday has been ruined,” smiled Artemis. “Events in London have caught us unawares.”
Giles shrugged.
“Maria Elena struggles to understand. She appreciates that the Project is important, but none of us has ever told her the full story. So far, she’s so engrossed in looking after Hope that she hasn’t questioned what she knows about the charity. We’ll get through it, don’t worry. This relationship is strong enough to survive the odd crisis. At least, I hope so.”
“Rusty and I are comfortable with things too,” Artemis replied. “He had to be one hundred per cent sure I was committed to us being together before he uncovered the truth concerning Larcombe Manor. That was an interesting evening, I can tell you.”
Artemis updated Giles on the events that had unfolded since last evening. He had seen various news reports and connected the dots back to Wednesday’s trial verdict.
“What does Athena want me to work on first?” Giles asked.
“Find out where Maurice Kelly, and his wife Dierdre, were moved to in the witness protection scheme. We have to get to them before Hanigan and his hired assassins. We need your hacking skills this afternoon, Giles, and your superior knowledge of the dark web.”
“Right,” said Giles, “time to get my hands dirty.”
He went to his workstation, fired up his computer, and started work.
*****
In a flat in Lewisham, Melissa Sanders awoke. At first, she wondered where she was. The room was unfamiliar. The hands-on her watch showed five o’clock, and the date told her it was Saturday. As her head cleared, the horror of what had happened over the past fifteen hours came flooding back.
Melissa remembered leaving the club, to get a taxi home. She had been alone, with no sign of a taxi and she had started to get anxious. A man she had seen in the nightclub had approached her. She thought his accent was Turkish, but she couldn’t be sure. He asked her if she needed a ride home. She had moved away from him, saying she was waiting for a taxi. The man continued to pester her, telling her his friend was picking him up, and it would be no trouble to drop her off at home. What happened next was a blur. Melissa wasn’t sure whether she had been drugged, but a car pulled up at the kerb, and they bundled her into the back. A man got in beside her and his colleague drove them to a house in a part of the borough she never visited. There were nice parts of the area in which she had lived all her life, but places better avoided too. This flat was in one of the rougher parts of town.
The details of the first hour of her ordeal were easier to remember. What came next was something Melissa wanted to push to the farthest corners of her mind. Somewhere from which it could never escape. Once they got into the flat, rough hands grabbed her, and the men stripped her of her clothing. Melissa resisted as long as she could. She had then been punched and kicked. She was semi-conscious while the first man raped her. As she fought back again after he withdrew from her, he had then pinned her arms to the bed, while his colleague took his turn. They spoke in a foreign language. Melissa had feared for her life.
They left her on the bed, curled up in a ball. She had been in pain and crying. The men sat laughing and drinking on the floor beside her. They had continued to take it in turns to rape her until morning. The driver of the car had fallen asleep. The other man had tied her hands to the bedstead and continued drinking until he passed out. She had struggled with her bonds, but it was no use. Melissa couldn’t remember when she had fallen asleep, but it was now five o’clock, and she was alone.
Melissa worked away at the ties that secured her. Her arms felt tired, her body ached, and her lips and eyes had been cut when they had hit her last night. It was six o’clock when her efforts were rewarded. She got herself free, gathered her torn clothing from the floor, and dressed. A mirror on the dressing table told her she looked a mess.
She listened by the bedroom door to hear if the men were in the flat. She crept to the window to see if she recognised their car in the street. If it wasn’t there, maybe they had abandoned her, and she could creep downstairs and find her way home.
Melissa opened the door. Facing her was one of her attackers. He held a gun and pointed it straight at her head.
“Thanks for last night,” he smirked, “but my boss doesn’t want you to see tomorrow.”
Melissa realised her nightmare was over. She slipped to the floor. The last thing she saw was a bright orange cushion pressed to her face. She didn’t hear the gunshot that ended her life.
*****
In Bromley, a fire crew still worked at the scene of the blaze they had attended at the home of a local dentist. Members of the Metropolitan police had just arrived.
“What do we have here then, gents?” asked DCI Geoff Titmus.
“We received an emergency call from a neighbour at three o’clock this afternoon. They had seen flames up to the ceiling in the lounge. There was a lot of smoke too, by the time we arrived. We got delayed by traffic. The lounge was totally destroyed. There’s considerable smoke damage to the rest of the ground floor. The first floor, loft space, and roof escaped relatively unscathed.”
“Why am I here, then?” asked the senior policeman.
“Unless my twenty-eight years fighting fires in London counts for nothing, we have what’s left of two dead bodies in the burnt-out lounge,” said the fire chief. “You can check for yourself. You’ll do well to hang on to your lunch, though. It smells crispy in there.”
“Not another one,” groaned Geoff Titmus. “We were alerted by our control centre that the address of your fire was familiar to us. This home belonged to one of the jurors in the O’Riordan trial, Grenville Benjamin. He’s been butchered, the same as Simon Greaves and Peter Downs. That’s five deaths in total inside the past eighteen hours. Three of them from the jury. There’s another one missing too. A young girl, but she could have pulled a bloke. If we’re lucky, she’ll creep home in an hour or two.”
“I don’t envy you your job,” said the fire chief.
“Yeah,” said Geoff. “Saturday afternoons are not just writing out speeding tickets, and keeping sets of football supporters from tearing each other’s throats out.”
“We’ll stay here for an hour or two,” the fire chief added. “Your people will be able to get inside the building first thing tomorrow, to carry out the forensics you’ll need.”
“There was me thinking I might go to church,” grumbled Geoff, “it looks as if I’ll be working.”
*****
Sunday, 27th April 2014
Phoenix and Rusty were up early. They were en route to Beaconsfield later to check out the Finkelmans’ home in Forty Green. They didn’t want to escort the family from the nearby aerodrome this evening, only to watch them blown to smithereens as soon as they walked through the door.
There were plans to make. Details to discuss. Phoenix always enjoyed this part of any mission. Before they concentrated on the Judge, however, there was another matter that they needed to consider.
“Yesterday afternoon in Bromley made this personal,” said a grim-faced Rusty. “Even if we can’t strike at Hanigan, for now, I need to find the bastards who murdered our boys.”
Phoenix nodded.
“Giles is combing through every CCTV feed that exists within a five-mile radius of the dentist’s house. I called him before I walked across to meet with you. I disturbed Hayden Vincent too. I don’t see why we should be the only buggers up this early.”
“Our procedures on surveillance need immediate revision,” agreed Rusty. “A nosy neighbour in Ruislip spotted one team, and it’s clear the Bromley killers identified the other. They also crept up unseen to break into their car and capture our agents. It was sloppy. We’re short-handed, we can’t afford to lose pe
ople without a shot being fired in anger.”
“Whoever killed our men in Bromley, will pay,” said Phoenix. “You can take that to the bank.”
“Did Giles make progress yesterday evening on hacking into the witness protection programme,” asked Rusty.
Phoenix smiled.
“What do you think? He’s almost there, from what he said this morning. The Crown Prosecution Service don’t have firewalls robust enough to keep Giles at bay for long. Money is tight in these times of austerity. The CPS has cut the number of staff it uses to look after witnesses by over half. Only around forty Witness Care Units now remain in England and Wales. The police were supposed to take on greater responsibility for support, but their own numbers had reduced by twenty per cent. Their system isn’t wide open, but with each successive round of cuts the framework just gets weaker.”
“So, we might have an address by the time we’ve wrapped up our babysitting duties later?” said Rusty.
“We live in hope,” said Phoenix. “Although, don’t count on us being sent to cover Maurice Kelly and his wife. I want to persuade Athena to let us catch up with the killers of our friends from Bromley.”
“Amen to that,” said Rusty.
“The more I read of this CPS shambles, the more frustrated I get,” said Phoenix. “Victims’ rights are at the heart of the modern criminal justice system. With the current voluntary set-up, that will never happen. On top of what I said earlier, the CPS’s legal teams have seen their numbers cut by a third. As a result, the number of occasions where key evidence isn’t shown to the defence teams has shown a dramatic rise. So trials are jeopardised. Criminals often walk free to offend again.”
“Two steps forward, and three steps back,” said Rusty. “That’s progress in this modern world for you.”
For the next thirty minutes, the two friends made their plans for the safekeeping of Judge Finkelman. From the second his helicopter touched the tarmac at Denham, to watching him take his place in the courtroom at the Old Bailey.
Both of their mobile phones rang.
It was Athena. She summoned them to the meeting room.
“Hoping for good news, but steeling myself for another tragedy,” said Phoenix.
He and Rusty trotted back to the main building. They caught up with Henry, Giles and Artemis, who had just returned to the surface.
“Any clues why Athena called this meeting?” asked Rusty.
“Another body,” said Artemis.
Minos and Alastor sat with Athena when they reached the room. The TV was on, and as they took their seats, a reporter was speaking: -
The body of a young woman has been found dumped by the side of the A21 on the outskirts of Bromley. She had been severely beaten and shot in the head. DCI Geoff Titmus, the officer in charge of the investigations into the deaths of jurors from the Thomas O’Riordan case has just issued this statement from outside New Scotland Yard,
“Melissa Sanders has today become the fourth juror from last week’s murder trial to be killed since Friday night. Six people have died in total in the most brutal attack on the criminal justice system in living memory. The remaining members of the jury and their families are now under the protection of the Metropolitan police. We will hunt these killers with all the resources we have available. In the past hour, eighteen members of the O’Riordan gang were taken into custody for questioning. We ask the public to co-operate with us in finding and arresting the groups of men responsible for these killings. At this time, we believe separate teams of two, or three men were responsible for each murder. My own team will be reinforced from today by the team led by DI Jonathan Barclay from Kilburn. DI Barclay arrested Tommy O’Riordan in Marbella. His team bring specific detailed knowledge of gang structures within the local community from which these hit squads will have come. The message I send to those criminals is, that we will find you. You will be brought to justice. There’s no hiding place for people who commit crimes as heinous as these. Thank you.”
There will be further reports throughout the day, the reporter continued. I have just received a message. The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister are due to issue statements within the hour.
Athena turned off the television.
“That poor girl,” she said, “we couldn’t protect her.”
“Let’s concentrate on what we have learned from that report,” said Phoenix. He was acutely conscious of his wife’s emotional state. Athena may be in charge here at Larcombe Manor, but she was also a woman and a new mother. Phoenix knew she would soon rediscover the resolve which had first attracted him to her. She was vulnerable for the moment. He had to step into the breach and spearhead the fightback against Hanigan and his network of thugs.
“The police have realised the deaths were linked to the murder trial, and have assumed responsibility for protecting the remaining jurors. We can order our teams to stand down. They can be reassigned to other duties. Rusty and I will leave soon to reconnoitre the Judge’s home, then start getting him and his family home safely. The police don’t appear to think the Judge is in danger, nor the only person to give evidence against O’Riordan. We must find where the latter is and get teams to protect him whatever the cost. Giles, and Artemis, we’re relying on you.”
“The police could be loath to show their hand,” said Henry Case. “They may have protection details in place, but don’t wish to reveal that to the criminals. The deaths this weekend will have alarmed the public. Every murder in these boroughs leaves the police facing a wall of silence. Even when cases reach court, witnesses are often too terrified to speak. This won’t help matters. Jury service is never popular. Many try to avoid it. After this weekend, the vast majority will wonder whether they’re risking their lives by answering the call to do their civic duty.”
Athena wiped a tear from her eye. She was ready now to continue.
“I have requested an emergency meeting with Zeus, to discuss this crisis. I shall go to London on Tuesday. It’s hoped that as many Olympians as possible will attend at such short notice. We need to present a united front against Hugo Hanigan and this gang network. They have murdered two of our people. We must take direct action.”
“Will this be the only item on the agenda?” asked Minos.
“I intend to give him your report on the four candidates, Minos, and our thoughts on how we might increase the numbers of our home-based agents. We have a desperate need for more personnel.”
Phoenix outlined the approach he and Rusty had discussed: -
“The second Giles and Artemis discover the whereabouts of Maurice and Dierdre Kelly, we will send at least two teams to supplement their protection. The police have re-housed them somewhere in the UK, but their resources are stretched to the limit. If an assault was carried out by a team similar to those operating in London in the past forty-eight hours, then they will be overwhelmed. The orders to our teams will be to eliminate any hit squad, regardless of the potential risk of a trail leading back to Larcombe. The authorities need success. If Reuben Finkelman and Maurice Kelly are added to the list of those killed, the rule of law could creak under the pressure. One big push by Hanigan could see it demolished. Every criminal in the country would think they were free to commit any crime they wish. Nobody would speak out against them, no juror would be safe from their reach, and money might even secure a High Court Judge’s murder, if necessary. The possibility of that horrific scenario ends here. Is that clear?”
“Crystal,” said Rusty. “Phoenix, will we be travelling alone today?”
“With Athena’s permission, I want to ask Kelly Dexter, and Hayden Vincent, to come with us,” said Phoenix. “They’ve got stacks of experience in the field. Tonight is our first opportunity to achieve that first success we need. If one of Hanigan’s teams strike between Denham and Beaconsfield, or from there to the Old Bailey, we need to be ready.”
“Kelly and Hayden have offered to help in any way they can, Phoenix,” said Athena. “Their aim is to step away from the front
line, which is why they became our lead trainers, but this weekend has affected everyone. Hayden served in Afghanistan with an agent murdered in Bromley. He wants an opportunity for revenge.”
“Thank you, Athena,” said Phoenix. “We’ll pick them up on our way to the ice-house. As soon as we’re tooled-up for the trip, we’ll get up to Beaconsfield. We should be there in two hours with less traffic on a Sunday afternoon.”
“I think that’s it for now,” said Athena, “Giles, good hunting this afternoon. Contact me the minute you find our witness. I’ll see most of you in the morning. Phoenix, could we can talk before you leave?”
“Sure,” said Phoenix. “We’ll go to see Bazza and Thommo first to collect the guns, ammunition, and equipment we need. Then I’ll come to the apartment to say goodbye to you and Hope.”
The room emptied, and Athena sat alone with her thoughts. Phoenix and Rusty were going into danger yet again. Every time he left her it seemed the risks grew greater than ever. Hanigan was the greatest threat Olympus had had to face. If only Erebus was still here to advise her on what she should do. Athena turned on the television. There was still no good news.
The latest news report on Melissa Sanders was uncomfortable to hear: -
Miss Sanders suffered severe internal injuries. She was covered from head to toe in bruises and had two fractured ribs. The police say she sustained, a prolonged degrading attack by two men. They have issued e-fits of the men they wish to interview. They were created from the CCTV images captured both inside the nightclub Melissa visited in Lewisham town centre on Friday night, and nearby, where she waited for a taxi. This from DI Barclay with the investigating team: -
“These e-fits are a good likeness of the two men. They are of Turkish, or Turkish Cypriot origin. They are in their mid-thirties, both around six feet in height, and of muscular build. Anyone with information on this attack and any of the others in this investigation is urged to contact Crimestoppers on the number on the screen.”