Alan Richards
Recompense
First published by Basset Publishing 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Alan Richards
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
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Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Twenty Nine
Thirty
Thirty One
Thirty Two
Thirty Three
Thirty Four
Thirty Five
Thirty Six
Thirty Seven
Thirty Eight
Thirty Nine
Fourty
Fourty One
Fourty Two
Fourty Three
Fourty Four
Fourty Five
Fourty Six
Fourty Seven
Fourty Eight
Fourty Nine
Fifty
Thank you for reading Recompense
About the Author
Also by Alan Richards
One
The only sound in the car was Alexa’s nervous breathing. She was trying to control it but her nerves were getting the better of her even though she knew exactly why she was so nervous. What she was about to do was wrong in so many ways and went against everything she had dedicated her career to. She caught criminals for a living but what she was about to do would make her one. She had been planning this for months, the brutal murder of her best friend Tracey had forced her hand. Alexa and her team had tried to investigate her murder the right way, the way they always did. It hadn’t worked, she had come up against a wall of silence when trying to gather evidence and find witnesses to Tracey’s murder. This was London, how could there be no witnesses. The wall of silence was because of fear - fear of Martin Fenner. He was pure evil. The head of a notorious drug and human trafficking ring who had eluded conviction by eliminating anyone who dared to cross him or act as witness against him. She had reached the end, her desire to see him pay for his crimes outweighed any reasoning that what she was about to do was against the law she would normally uphold. She had to take control. She had to do what she came to do. She opened the car door and stepped out into the empty car park. She collected her rucksack from the passenger seat and started the short walk to the Fenner house.
* * *
Gaining entry to the Fenner house had been simple. The house itself covered a large expanse of land on Forest Lane and had a state of the art alarm system but one of the advantages of locking up criminals for a living was that you also learnt a lot from them. She had bypassed the alarm, picked the lock to the front door and walked into the house with ease. She was now stood in the kitchen that was at the back of the house. It overlooked a large garden which was well looked after and ended with a fence that adjoined the Chigwell golf club. The kitchen itself was large, an American style fridge/freezer in the corner surrounded by bright white units and cupboards. The marble worktop was as black as night with a mottled effect that imitated the night stars. She took a bottle of vodka from the rucksack she had brought with her, placed it on the worktop and started to look for two glasses. She found some in the central kitchen island. She poured two fingers of vodka into the glasses and emptied the contents of a small sachet of white powder into them.
She had finished mixing in the powder as the door bell rang. She took a deep breath, walked to the door in the hallway and opened it.
“Mrs Fenner?” Caterina asked.
“Yes, come in,” Alexa replied.
Alexa had relied upon the fact that Caterina had never met Felicia Fenner. The Sig P320 she was hiding behind her back would have persuaded Caterina into the house if she had resisted but Caterina walked in without any argument.
“I am a bit confused why you asked me to come to your home Mrs Fenner,” Caterina asked. “Is Mr Fenner not happy with my work.”
“No, Caterina, your work is excellent.”
Alexa turned to the two glasses, picked one up and offered it to Caterina.
“Drink?”
“Thank you,” Caterina said as she took the glass from Alexa and drank the contents in one large swallow.
“I am afraid though that I’m not actually Mrs Fenner.”
“But...”
Alexa brought her right hand from behind her back and pointed the Sig at Caterina.
“Bedroom,” Alexa stated as she pushed the Sig into the shoulder of Caterina.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You will do exactly as I say. Your drink, as well as being vodka, contains scopolamine. You will do what I ask you to do.”
Alexa could see that Caterina was started to feel the effects of the drug, she would be losing her grip on reality. Alexa told her once more to go to the bedroom, this time she complied. Alexa guided her up the stairs and into the bedroom.
“Remove all your clothes and lie on the bed.”
Caterina did as she was told.
“Why?” slurred Caterina.
“Your employer is a human trafficker, you must know that and from what I know you are his recruiter. Frequent trips abroad, selecting his next batch of innocent women.”
“I ...”
“He also killed a friend of mine, so this is recompense for that and all the other girls lives he has ruined.”
Caterina was becoming even more unsteady as she undressed. Alexa helped her remove her underwear and onto the bed.
“I’m afraid you are a means to an end, think of it as your way out.”
Caterina was on the bed, conscious but no longer in control of her limbs. Alexa made sure she was lay exactly as she needed her then returned to the kitchen, washed the glass and returned it to where she had taken it from.
Alexa looked at the clock, it was now eleven-thirty AM, she had thirty minutes before Felicia Fenner arrived home.
Two
Alexa had spent weeks shadowing the Fenner’s, mapping their every move, learning their habits. Today was Friday, Martin played g
olf until twelve noon, had a drink in the nineteenth hole and was normally home by one PM. Felicia, Fenner’s wife went out the same morning and got home at twelve, and hour before her husband returned. She wouldn’t want her husband to know she had been out. The rumours about Martin Fenner’s temper were a badly kept secret, the rumours said that he was a very possessive man who would use his fists when Felicia stepped out of line. It would be more than a beating though if he knew who she was with on her morning out. Alexa had followed her to the flat of a young lady, the ladies name was Jessica, but that didn’t matter. What happened behind those doors played into Alexa’s plan perfectly. When the police came to investigate what was about to happen, they would discover exactly thew same about Felicia that Alexa had and come to the same conclusions.
Alexa went about her work, staging the room with empty vodka bottles. It needed to look like the ladies were having fun. She staged the room and made sure that Caterina’s prints were on the bottle. It was eleven-fifty five when she finished. She heard a car pulling up onto the drive, the home owners wife was back from playing with her girlfriend. She looked out of the window of the bedroom and watched as Felicia got out of her car. Alexa quickly moved downstairs to meet her at the door. Felicia opened the door and let out a squeal as she saw Alexa standing in front of her.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?” Felicia asked.
“I just came to say hello, and frame your husband for your murder.”
Felicia took a step towards her, but was stopped dead in her tracks as Alexa raised the Sig P320 she was still holding in her right hand. Alexa beckoned her into the kitchen. She took the glass from the kitchen worktop that she had readied with vodka and more of the white powder, a smaller dose though than she had administered to Caterina.
“Drink it,” she said as she offered the glass to Felicia.
She refused. Alexa held the gun against her forehead and spoke softly and slowly to Felicia.
“I really don’t care if you don’t, either way this is going to end the same way. You will feel a lot less pain if you drink the vodka.”
Alexa could see the fear in Felicia’s eyes, it was the same fear she saw in Caterina’s eyes minutes ago. She didn’t like to instill fear into people but she had been pushed to her breaking point with the loss of her friend and she had decided to act. Felicia drank the whole glass.
“Upstairs.”
Felicia climbed the stairs, closely followed by Alexa, the pistol pointed at her back. As they reached the landing Alexa beckoned her into the bedroom. Felicia stopped as she turned into the doorway.
“Why is this woman in my bed?” she asked of Alexa.
“Is she dead?”
“No she isn’t dead,” replied Alexa. “Not yet anyway.”
“Who is she?”
“She works for your husband. Organising his tarts. But for now she is your lover.”
“She is drugged just enough so she can’t move for now. That will start wearing off in about twenty five minutes. Just enough time for you to undress and lie with her.”
“Why would I do that?”
“You like women don’t you? You certainly find Jessica very interesting.”
Felicia looked at her, how did she know about Jessica, she had been at pains to make sure no one knew, especially her husband.
Alexa looked straight at Felicia, her blue eyes cold and piercing.
“You will end up on that bed whichever way you choose to do this.”
The small dose of drug in the drink that Felicia had taken was now starting to take effect, she felt dizzy.
“You had the same drug in your drink that poor Caterina has been given,” Alexa explained, pointing at the bed. “You only had a small dose, so it will only last for about twenty minutes and will make you very suggestible. You need to undress now.”
Felicia tried to stop herself but she started to undress.
“Lie on the bed, right up next to Caterina.”
Felicia did as she was told, she lay down with Caterina.
Alexa had work to do. She made sure the window to the bedroom was shut, she wanted to make sure no one in the vicinity of the house heard what was coming next. She spent the time she had left making a sweep of the house to make sure she had left nothing that could be traced back to her and that every window in the house was shut tight.
Now she just had to wait.
Three
It was seven minutes past one as Alexa heard the car pulling up onto the drive. Martin was a little late, but that shouldn’t matter. The scopolamine was wearing off now and Caterina and Felicia were starting to move on the bed, not enough to ruin her staging but enough that if they ran a toxicology on their blood they wouldn’t find anything but the alcohol.
She waited for Martin to open the front door and then emptied the contents of the Sig into the two ladies on the bed. She was an excellent shot and she wasn’t happy that she was just spraying bullets into the two on the bed, but expert pinpoint shots were not what she needed at this moment. She made sure the bullets hit the women but also sprayed some around the bed and wall to make it look like they had been fired by someone who was angry and couldn’t control themselves. She needed it to appear that Martin Fenner had come home, found his wife and her lover and snapped. This needed to look like a crime of passion. The gun clicked as she emptied the mag. She needed to get out.
The bedroom was at the front of the house, she couldn’t go out the window but she already knew that. She had planned her exit route when she had visited the house the week before when the occupants were at their respective Friday morning pursuits. She dropped the gun in the doorway, the gloves she had put on before entering the hose ensured she didn’t need to worry about prints. She moved quickly to the back of the house where there was another set of stairs that led to the kitchen. Alexa descended them just as she heard the sirens approaching from the main High street. Three minutes she thought before they arrived in the drive, it would be an area car and an Armed Response Vehicle. She had reported the sound of gunshots using a burner phone at one PM. Plenty of time for the local police to arrive and for her to be gone.
She descended the stairs two steps at a time into the kitchen. She quickly moved through the kitchen into the utility room and left by the back door. She ran the length of the perfectly manicured lawn to the fence at the bottom of the garden that adjoined the gold club. She clambered up the fence and over into the grounds of the golf club and found herself in the trees that ran the length of the course that backed onto the houses.
She kept close to the fences, keeping the trees between her and the actual course. She moved slowly to the end where the exit was and exited the golf club onto High Street as the two police cars sped past. She walked slowly back to her car, and got into the drivers seat. As far as she was concerned her plan had worked perfectly.
* * *
Martin looked around him, where had the shots come from.
Upstairs.
He quickly ascended the stairs that led off the marbled floor of the grand entrance hall.
Martin reached the bedroom door as the two police cars slid to a halt on his gravel driveway. At first he was taken by surprise. Felicia and another woman were on the bed in the master bedroom, both covered with blood from the gunshots littering their bodies. He suddenly recognised the other woman, he moved through the doorway to get a closer look. He didn’t even notice the gun that Alexa had discarded on the floor.
Why was Caterina in bed with his wife.
Why were both of them dead.
Who had done this.
“Armed Police.”
The ARV team started clearing the rooms as they moved upstairs. They reached the top of the stairs as Martin came out of the bedroom.
“On your knees.”
“On your knees,” louder this time.
He heard them the second time and dropped to his knees.
“On the floor, face down, hands behind your head, interlock your fingers be
hind your head.”
Martin did as he was told.
The ARV team moved in and zip tied his hands behind his back.
Four
Frank Trainer was an old style policeman, he had been in the force for thirty years since he was in his twenties. He had grown weary of all the paperwork and posh graduates coming into the top jobs that had no idea about policing. His current boss was one of those posh graduates. He suddenly realised, as he thought about how much he disliked his boss, that he didn’t know where they were. The office at the end of the room was empty and had been all morning. Just as his mind started to wander, his phone rang.
“Trainer.”
The voice on the phone sounded flustered, it was the rookie on the front desk.
“Reports of shots fired on Forest Lane in Chigwell, ARV and area car have been dispatched.”
Trainer immediately put the phone down and shouted across the open plan office.
“Shots fired, Forest Lane. I want forensics on route and the area sealed off once the ARV team have cleared it. MOVE EVERYONE.”
The officers around the room sprung into action, picking up phones to organise forensics and then moving through the office to their cars to get to the scene. Trust the boss to be out of the office, where the hell was she. Trainer walked to his car, noting the time of the call in his notebook one PM. He knew Forest Lane well. It had been a nice street, full of old money, but over time it had been taken over by bankers, drug dealers and some of the worst east end scum you could imagine.
He started his car and drove out of the station car park, heading up through Barkingside main high street and turning left at the traffic island to take Tomswood Hill. The area car and ARV were already out on patrol and would be coming in from the direction of Epping, past the Chigwell Golf Club and turning right into Forest Lane. They should arrive just before he did. He got to the brow of Tomswood Hill and turned right onto New Forest Lane, he could hear the sirens of the ARV and area car, they were close now. As he crossed over Manor Road onto Forest Lane, he could see the ARV and area car pulling into the house. A minute later he was pulling onto the gravel drive just behind them.
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