by Ted Tayler
“Throw it in a skip, in the river. Get rid of it today. Aleks has been told the next job must be carried out tomorrow night.”
“What do we do with the guy who saw me?” asked Januz.
“We sort it ourselves. Aleks can never find out, do you understand?”
Januz nodded.
*****
Henry Case was entertaining Simon Gonzalez on Level 3 of the ice-house. Rusty had collected him from Lewisham and returned to Larcombe by late-morning. Henry passed the afternoon talking with the computer hacker.
To Simon, it was a friendly conversation. He was asked his motives for trying to hack into the charity’s systems. Why was he interested in the rehabilitation of the nation’s servicemen? Didn’t people such as him play war games, or use their skills for financial gain?
Simon found it easy to talk to the man. That was odd because he had never been a sociable individual. He had protested at being dragged from his bed by a red-headed giant and bundled into a van with his hands tied. This man waved a dismissive hand and told him not to worry. Then they shared a pot of coffee. He even offered him biscuits.
Henry was a patient interrogator. This Gonzalez character would tell him everything before tonight. The drugged coffee was working its magic.
*****
Friday, 31st October 2014
The media’s attention focussed on Westminster. Public outcry over the railway station bombings was not abating. People saw terrorists everywhere, and the Muslim population suffered as a result. It was irrational. A tiny minority was responsible for the attacks, but the mobs in the streets were not dissuaded.
The government may have managed that situation if it was the only problem. The in-fighting between organised crime gangs and the slaughter of over twenty people left many fearing for their safety. There seemed to be little progress in combating organised crime.
Then there was the jewel robbery. Only a week ago, in one of the biggest hauls recorded in the UK, a gang had stolen between forty and fifty million pounds worth of cash and gems. The police had spent hundreds of hours hunting for clues but getting nowhere.
Questions were asked in parliament. The government was under pressure. In the media, the opposition parties received as much criticism as those in power. The public had lost confidence in the authorities’ ability to keep law and order.
At Larcombe, Athena opened the morning meeting.
“Events in the capital could turn nasty,” said Minos. “Whether or not the Home Secretary survives this, is debatable.”
“You reap what you sow,” said Rusty, “we’ve taken too many steps backwards with this softly, softly approach to policing. This was inevitable.”
“We will keep a close eye on how it develops,” said Athena, “but we must carry on with Olympus matters now. What have you to tell us, Henry?”
“Our guest provided us with the information we required,” said Henry, “he carried out duties for Tyrone O’Riordan as we suspected. Gonzalez handled the drones and the cyber- attack. He traced the van that returned from London after the moped gang incident. The most worrying aspect of his work related to magazine photos from the Dorchester event the Olympians attended. Tyrone O’Riordan knows you represented the Olympus Project that evening and now knows Larcombe Manor is the cover for more than a charitable organisation.”
“Where is Gonzalez now?” asked Athena.
“En route to the pet cemetery,” said Henry, “we couldn’t allow him to return to his employer.”
“Understood, Henry,” said Athena.
Giles and Artemis updated the agents on the ongoing hunt for the jewellery gang. Alastor and Minos told Athena the background checks on Byron Paterson, Raymond Ferreira, and Lily Chan would be completed by mid-November.
*****
In the stable block, Orion watched the clock tick around to twelve noon. It was time for lunch. He wondered what delights Erica had given him today? As he tucked into his tuna salad sandwiches his mobile phone rang. It was his wife. Incoming calls were frowned on by Hayden Vincent. It must be urgent.
“What’s the matter, love,” he asked, “are the kids all right?”
“I’m watching the lunchtime news, Phil,” she said. “There was a fire last night, in London. A café on Kilburn High Road was fire-bombed. Wasn’t that where your friend Wayne lived?”
Orion ended the call and went into the corridor. Hugh Fraser was in his quarters. He knocked.
“What can I do for you, Orion?” asked Hugh.
“Can you switch the TV on, please, Hugh? My wife thinks a friend of mine may be hurt.”
“No problem,” said Hugh, and soon they were watching the report together.
“This was the Wishing Well,” said the reporter. “the scene of a tragic fire that ravaged the café and adjoining units. Fire appliances arrived at two this morning to find the café ablaze and tried to gain entry. The heat of the flames drove them back. When they reached the flat, they found the body of a female, believed to be the proprietor, Bridie Carragher, and that of an unidentified male. Neighbours say Bridie was popular and friendly, without an enemy in the world. She was in a relationship and happier than she had ever been.”
“Oh, no, Wayne,” said Orion, “I warned you not to get involved.”
“The man was your friend?” asked Hugh.
Orion explained how they met at Glastonbury and then worked together before he came to Larcombe.
“Wayne called me yesterday lunchtime,” said Orion. “He spotted something fishy, thought it was related to the jewel robbery. He asked if Olympus was interested. I told him to be wary.”
“Did he tell you what made him suspicious?” asked Hugh.
“Nothing,” said Orion, “I want to help, but he told me nothing.”
“I’ll pass it on,” said Hugh, “there may be clues we can follow with the right surveillance.”
“Thanks, Hugh,” said Orion. “Wayne was a good friend, and Bridie was his soul mate.”
*****
Aleks Bogdani had left to call Tyrone O’Riordan. He wanted to know when the first stage of the robbery began. The Halloween disguises they would use tonight had been shop-bought. JK was out of the country, destination unknown. Zamir and Januz waited in the van while Aleks rang the boss.
“Did you do as I said, Januz?” asked Zamir.
“Yes, I threw the necklace into the Thames from Chiswick Bridge,” he replied.
“Pray it never surfaces again,” said Zamir.
Aleks returned to the van. They drove to Maida Vale. The house they were visiting was owned by Stan Kenworth. Stan was at work tonight, but his wife and daughter were at home.
“Trick or treat?” asked Aleks, as the daughter answered the door. She was fourteen.
“Don’t care,” she replied, closing the door.
Aleks, Zamir, and Januz barged inside the house. Zamir clamped a big hand over the daughter’s mouth as she tried to scream. In the lounge, Stan’s wife was watching TV with a glass of wine in her hand. Aleks and Januz had grabbed her and made her secure before she could get out of the chair.
With the security officer’s family in the back of the van, Aleks drove to the compound where Kenworth worked.
“You each have the photo,” said Aleks, “when you see him doing his rounds, shout.”
Five minutes later, Zamir spotted him. He was strolling from gate to gate, checking the locks were secure.
Aleks drove the van towards the fence at speed. Kenworth stopped and shone his torch on the van. Aleks turned at the last second, and Januz threw open the side door.
Stan Kenworth saw his wife and daughter in the doorway, bound and gagged. A man held a gun to his daughter’s head.
“Do as we say, and they live,” said Aleks.
“Don’t hurt them,” said Kenworth, opening the nearest gate. Januz jumped from the van and zip-tied Kenworth’s hands.
Aleks used the security officer’s keys to gain admittance to the next compound.
“What’s the seque
nce on the security cameras?” asked Aleks.
He knew the security officer set the timings. Once they had the sequence, they could watch and work out how to avoid being caught on camera by the guards inside the vault.
Kenworth was unwilling to co-operate at first, but Aleks pointed to the van. Zamir struck the wife across the face with the back of his hand. He learned the sequence straight away.
With help from Zamir, Kenworth told Aleks that on Friday nights the vault was open due to the vast sums of money being transferred to thousands of ATM’s in the capital.
“How many guards inside the vault?” asked Aleks, “and if you lie, your daughter dies.”
“Four,” Kenworth had told him.
Zamir then took Stan Kenworth to the van and locked him inside with his wife and daughter. He rejoined Aleks and Januz. The keys gave them access to an office building. Kenworth’s three security guards stopped for thirty-minute breaks at one, one-thirty, and two o’clock. As each man came to the office block for the only coffee machine on site, they were overpowered by Zamir. They could move on to the second stage now.
Aleks lowered the bag slung over his shoulder onto the ground. He opened it to reveal a Skorpion machine pistol, two handguns, smoke canisters and stun grenades.
“No mercy,” he said, “orders from the boss.”
The three men reached the vault doors undetected and scattered the grenades inside. Each man entered the vault with their gun raised. The guards were quick to react but were hit by sustained bursts from Aleks’s Skorpion. Zamir and Januz finished off anyone still breathing after the initial assault.
Aleks backed the van into the vault. The Kenworth’s were dumped on the floor next to the dead guards. For the next ninety minutes, the three men loaded cash boxes into the van. There was nothing left to steal. Aleks was ready to leave.
“What do we do with these three?” asked Zamir.
“I can help you get away if you let us live,” begged Kenworth.
“What do you know that’s so valuable?” asked Aleks.
“I can tell you where the security camera recordings are kept in the office building. You may have missed a sequence. Take tonight’s with you, and you’ll be home and dry.”
“Take them to the office building, put them with the others. Fetch the right recordings, and we can leave.”
Five minutes later the van left the compound. Four men died, but the two hostages and the four security guards escaped with their lives.
As the van pulled into a lock-up garage in Walthamstow, Aleks sent a text message to Tyrone.
‘Message delivered. All good.’
EPILOGUE
News of the robbery broke at six o’clock on Saturday morning with the shift changeover at the compound. The streets soon filled with police officers and reporters. This was a further nail in the coffin for the authorities. No matter how much money had been stolen. Four men died.
When the first TV broadcasts were beamed into homes around the UK, the ambulances had parked in the external compound. The crime scene investigators had much to do before they could be removed. One vehicle had arrived for each body. The scale of the enterprise was being revealed to the waiting media.
Reporters covered the basic details given by the first police officers on the scene. When extra ambulances arrived under blue lights, it emerged that six people had been discovered alive in a separate building. The first responders on the streets around the compound were joined by the public. When the security guards and the Kenworth family were brought out on stretchers, the crowds surged forward.
“How much more do we have to take?” one man yelled at a camera.
“Where’s the Mayor of London, and the Home Secretary? Enough is enough,” shouted another.
“The situation here is volatile,” said the besieged reporter. “People are angry these crimes continue to happen, and yet there are no arrests. Representatives from the company operating this site have arrived in the past five minutes. They drove into the compound under police escort. We hope to learn later this morning how much was taken. For now, it’s back to the studio.”
Athena and Phoenix were asleep when the first reports aired. As they began what they hoped to be a quiet family Saturday morning, events in London caught their attention.
“Here we go again,” said Phoenix, “here’s the big crime I forecast.”
“What is this company responsible for?” asked Athena, “how much could they have stolen?”
“They’re the major firm topping up cash in ATM’s across London and the Home Counties. When the public learns that, there will be mass panic. Every machine will be empty by lunchtime, and those at work, or had a lie-in will be out of luck. I dread to think how much they hold in one of those places. Do they empty them every Friday and replenish stocks before the next delivery? I’m not sure. If this vault has been swept clean, the sum could be huge.”
As the days of the month flicked over on the calendar, one by one, the full scale of the robbery and its impact on the country was clarified. At Larcombe Manor, events were monitored, possible retaliations considered, and the scheduled celebrations went ahead as planned.
In the week beginning the third of November, the amount stolen in the robbery was confirmed at a record sixty-five million pounds. Stan Kenworth told the police he had feared for the lives of his wife and daughter. That was why he not only opened the gate to let the gang inside the compound but also told them how to avoid leaving behind any incriminating filmed evidence.
The three men were masked throughout the kidnapping and the robbery. None of the six survivors could identify their attackers due to the Halloween masks they wore. Each witness said the men spoke with an Eastern European accent but could not say from which country they may have come.
The cash stolen had been in standard denomination notes of twenty, ten, and five pounds. It was untraceable. Experts estimated the gang’s van was carrying boxes weighing over two tonnes in total. CCTV film from streets surrounding the compound was studied, and the van traced to the outskirts of Walthamstow.
No van was ever located, but a lock-up garage was reported as being destroyed by fire late on Saturday afternoon. Kids were blamed for what seemed another incidence of anti-social behaviour. The police now believed the garage had been used by the gang.
Pressure on the authorities increased day by day.
*****
At the Glencairn Bank, Tyrone O’Riordan had transactions to handle throughout the first fortnight in November. Once he received the message from Aleks Bogdani, he sent teams to Walthamstow. The boxes were collected and distributed to Grid leaders across the south-east. Cash deposits were banked in Gresham Street from Monday the third onwards. The operation was slick. It raised no suspicions.
Aleks Bogdani kept nothing back on this occasion. He and his accomplices had gained enough from the jewellery raid to return to Tirana as millionaires. Tyrone spirited them out of the country on his private jet on Wednesday, the fifth.
Aleks thought it was poetic that the boss had chosen Bonfire Night. Parliament had been the target for Guy Fawkes. History was repeating itself as those in power stood on the precipice. His colleagues Zamir Tanush and Januz Goga were relieved at not having to worry about the police investigation into the fatal fire at the Wishing Well café.
*****
On the eighth, Maria Elena Urbano and her fiancée Giles Burke flew to Malaga. An hour later they arrived in Estepona. Henry Case and Giles’s family flew out on Friday in time for the wedding on the fifteenth.
Maria Elena’s grandmother was well enough for the church ceremony but too tired to stay long at the lavish reception that followed. As the bells pealed at Our Lady of the Remedies, the happy couple already thought of their return flight to Bristol. There was only a week before Giles was to return the favour and be best man at Henry’s wedding.
In several cities across the UK, demonstrations took place where tens of thousands congregated to protest at the apparent
collapse of law and order. Colleen O’Riordan decided a tiny push was required to fuel the fire. She sent Grid members on looting sprees in shopping centres from Glasgow to Portsmouth.
*****
On Monday, the seventeenth Minos and Alastor delivered their report on the three candidates for the Olympus top table. Each one received a clean bill of health. It was in the lap of the Gods to decide which two they wished to select in January.
Phoenix and Rusty urged Athena to sanction direct actions against the Grid. She continued to be cautious. Athena wanted to wait until she believed Olympus could attack with impunity. The hacker had revealed Tyrone O’Riordan’s interest in the organisation. However, the Grid’s resources were massive. She had to be sure they weren’t exposed to another threat.
*****
Henry Case and Sarah Gough were married in Larcombe Manor’s St Michael’s church on Saturday the twenty-second. Giles Burke was best man. Athena and Hope were the maid of honour and flower girl. Phoenix sat in the congregation with most of the estate’s staff.
The bell-ringers from Sarah’s new parish set the tone for the coming days as the six bells were heard at an estate wedding for the first time in decades. The rest of the weekend was spent celebrating the happy event.
*****
Geoffrey Fox moved into his Burnham bungalow on Monday, the twenty-fourth. The first thing he saw on TV when he sat in his lounge for the first time was a news flash.
“Following recent unrest in the country, and the failure of the government to produce any meaningful response, a motion of no-confidence has been tabled. It has cross-party support and reads ‘that this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government’. The vote will take place next Monday, the first of December. This will be the first such vote in thirty-five years.”
Geoffrey switched channels. He wanted entertainment; he’d spent enough of the past weeks being miserable. It was as if everyone in the country held their breath. Both sides of the House of Commons rallied their supporters. Different factions within the main parties were hard at work. New faces were emerging; either to sound a note of caution or to herald the opportunity for radical change. The result was on a knife-edge.