Assassins

by Ray Timms

  Holyrood.

  Ten in the morning, DI Guardo having been told he couldn’t talk to the First Minister because Parliament was in session was leaving the Parliament Building.

  He had wanted a word with her about the tanks incident. Frank couldn’t get out of his head the notion that people high up in the Scottish Administration knew more than they were letting on.

  Ten fifty, carrying the cheese and onion toastie and a polystyrene cup of black coffee that he bought in the cafe on the ground floor of the Parliament Building, Frank went outside and chose a table bathed in spring sunshine. Nibbling the edge of his toastie, because it was very hot, Frank was worried he was not going to catch the killer. Assassinations like these ones were notoriously difficult to solve. Most times the killer would have gone abroad possibly before the body was even found. If, as he suspected, the King was the real target then there was a very real possibility the killer was still in town. That being the case, Frank was not only chasing shadows, he was also playing catch-up with a very determined individual and running out of time. Frank needed to walk.

  He jammed his thinking pipe between his teeth and got up from the table and set off. After two hundred yards Grandpapa’s luck pipe did the trick.

  D.I Guardo had arrested Jimmy Ross on many occasions but not for a couple of years. Frank heard the petty thief had finally given up crime and settled down. Which was good because he quite liked the guy. Maybe it was because they both grew up in London. The only difference was, Jimmy was raised on the rough streets of the Elephant and Castle in the nineties and Frank grew up in the relative peaceful suburb of Kingston upon Thames in the seventies.

  It had been a while since Frank needed to call in on Jimmy who has since moved out of his mums flat and now lived on the notorious Warrender Park estate.

  Rather than risk having his car broken into or have his hubcaps stolen, Frank parked his Alpha Romeo Spider a few streets off the sprawling barrack-style council estate with its bleak rendered walls and the magnolia paint peeling and yellowed.

  It was a five minutes walk to 17 Berlinie Close. The knee-high weeds, the half buried couple of kids bikes, the rusted Citroen Cleo and the broken washing machine in the front garden, testified Jimmy’s landscaping classes had been a waste of prison resources and a waste of public money.

  Looking up at the house, Frank saw that all the curtains were drawn. Frank pressed the doorbell and when he didn’t hear any chimes he opened the letterbox and peered through the narrow opening. He could see a pram in the hall. The stairs had a baby gate. Last time he met up Jimmy Ross he didn’t have any kids. So what were the pram and the stairs gate all about? Could it be, Jimmy Ross, the ex-London, cockney wide-boy, had found someone to rein in his bad ways? That would explain why Frank, hadn’t had Jimmy in his cells for a couple of years.

  Although Jimmy was a thief, Frank considered him an honest one, if that was logical?

  Frank took a few steps back up the garden path and looked up at the windows. He saw a curtain move. Shouting through the letterbox Frank called up the stairs.

  ‘Jimmy, you’re not in any trouble. I just need a word. Come on down. I want to buy you breakfast.’

  No joking, the cafe on the corner of Marsh Road was called: “The Greasy Spoon.” Frank followed Jimmy to a table by the window. The only other diners in here were half a dozen binmen wearing hi-viz jackets. Frank had spotted the refuse collection wagon parked on the zigzags of a Zebra crossing. A few years back he’d have nicked the driver. That wasn’t what he did these days.

  Jimmy ordered the: ”Monster English." Frank having checked out the menu, chips with everything, settled for a coffee.

  Looking at Jimmy stuffing baked beans and black pudding into his mouth, Frank saw the man hadn’t shaved or had a haircut in months. He looked better the day Frank paid the habitual thief a visit in HMP Edinburgh, better known as Saughton Prison. Then of course, Jimmy would have had nothing better to do than work out in the gym or do squats in his cell.

  Speaking past a mouthful of sausage, Jimmy was keeping his voice down.

  ‘Thanks for the brekkie Frank, but this isn’t a social call and I swear to God I had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘You had nothing to do with what Jimmy?’

  ‘Whatever it was you think I did. I swear to God, on my muvvers life I don’t do that stuff anymore. I got a lady now, and two saucepan lids.’

  Frank had to smile at the way the guy still talked like he was living on the council estate in the Elephant Castle. Jimmy had once told Frank: “I only left London because some geezers wanted to shoot me in the legs.” Jimmy had said, “Those geezers don’t forgive or forget Frank. If I were to ever show my face on my old manor again, I swear I’d be brown bread within a week.”

  Frank doubted that still held true. Jimmy was talking about twenty years ago. All those gangsters, the people that he once feared would be long gone retired to Margate, most likely.

  Frank’s mother was Scottish and his father was second generation Italian. Frank was born and raised in London and aged twenty-one Frank joined the Met. As a wet-behind-the ears young copper he wanted to clean up the streets of his beat in Soho. In the same way that Jimmy was never going back to live in England, Frank too had his roots in Edinburgh. Over coffee, Jimmy became nostalgic, talking about London as if it was somewhere he yearned to go back to, then a lot of people did that but you can retrace your footsteps but you cannot roll back time.

  ‘It wouldn’t be the same you know?’ Frank said, with his thumb examining the familiar grooves carved by his Grandpapa in the olivewood pipe. ‘What’s in the past stays in the past.’

  Jimmy nodded as if in agreement and then said.

  ‘You still got that old pipe then Frank?’ Jimmy was making a rollie, mostly dust. ‘It was your dad’s wasn’t it?’

  ‘My Grandpapa’s.’ Frank corrected him. ‘All them pubs, the snooker halls, the dog tracks have all gone Jimmy, all them old boozers are now trendy wine bars serving Gastro-pub food on slabs of wood at prices that’ll make your eyeballs spin.’ Frank was looking out the steamed-up window when he said, ‘Jimmy, how old were you when you left London? My guess is you were in your twenties?’

  Jimmy said, ‘I was twenty-two. Did I ever tell you I grew up in a Boys home? I ever tell you that?’

  He had.

  Frank said. ‘Yeah you told me the staff there used to beat you up. You had a shit childhood Jimmy.’

  When Jimmy laughed Frank didn’t hear any mirth in it.

  ‘You and me, we had some times eh Frank?’

  ‘Yeah Jimmy, we had some times.’ Guardo said, thinking about some of those times. ‘You know how many times I nicked you Jimmy? Eighteen. I nicked you eighteen times! Can you believe that? And you know what was the best one?’

  Jimmy grinned. He said, ‘It had to be the time I burgled the bungalow on the Cadogan estate.’

  Frank laughed and then finished what Jimmy Ross was about to say, ‘you stole the old woman’s savings and when you read in the paper the money was to pay for her husbands funeral you broke back in and put the money back, only you left your prints all over the notes.’

  Jimmy gave a wry grin and then said, ‘when I broke in the first time, I never knew the old lady lived there alone. You know me Frank, I only ever stole off them that could afford it.’

  Although Jimmy liked to talk about the good-old days, growing up in London and naming the boozers that he would hang out in and name-dropping the villains who usually ended up doing life in Wandsworth, or Belmarsh prison, Jimmy was now happily settled in Scotland. Of course his regular all-inclusive holidays in Saughton Prison, hadn’t given him a lot of scope to move around.

  When Frank heard Jimmy say his long-term partner was Sheryl Barnes and that she was the mother of his two kids, he recalled that like Jimmy Ross, she had had a similar abusive upbringing. Her childhood was spent rattling around the Childrens Services merry-go-round of Foster Carers and Children’s Homes. Frank was a r
egular Sergeant when he first met Sheryl. A concerned neighbour on the Craigh Council Estate dialled in the 999 call. When Frank and his partner got to the address he saw Sheryl had been badly beaten up by her partner, big ol’ local bruiser, Carl Davis who was a thug with a history of violence towards women…. never men. Frank had told his partner, ‘you take Sheryl outside and get her in the car and wait for the ambulance. I need to have a quiet word with Carl.’ Frank’s partner saw him wink.

  In Carl’s arrest report it stated Davis’s injuries came about after he had attacked Sergeant Guardo who used proportional force to apprehend the abuser. Carl spent a couple of days in hospital and then several weeks on crutches, before he was handed a three months spell in Saughton.

  ‘How is Sheryl? You had better be taking good care of her.’ Frank said, feeling obliged to say that, although he knows Jimmy Ross could never hurt a fly.

  ‘She’s good you know.’ Jimmy said, stirring five spoons of sugar in his tea. ‘Sheryl’s the best thing that ever happened to me. She keeps me on the straight and narrow.’ Jimmy said. ‘She hasn’t forgotten how you helped her out that time. She always tells me, “Jimmy you ever get into that thieving malarkey again I will go straight to DI Guardo. And she would too.’

  Frank nodded and got to the point. ‘Jimmy, I need a favour.’

  Jimmy sat back in his chair and looked about him. Outside the street was quiet. The binmen had left. Danielle, behind the counter, was playing Pokémon on her phone. Jimmy, sounding worried said, ‘Frank, you know I aint no grass.’

  ‘That’s ok Jimmy, ‘Frank said, ‘I don’t need you to snitch on anyone. What I need is a pair of sharp eyes. Now, do you own a mobile phone?’

  When Jimmy took his iPhone out of his pocket he saw the look on Frank’s face. ‘What? It’s kosher Frank. It’s a rented phone. I don’t touch anything that’s iffy these days. Not since I got…’

  ‘I know, since you got a lady and a couple of saucepan lids.’ Frank interrupted him. ‘That’s good Jimmy. I’m happy for you. But listen, I need you to do a little snooping around for me. I will pay you twenty a day.’

  ‘What kind of snooping around?’ Jimmy said, worried.

  ‘I take it you heard about the hotel shootings?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jimmy said slowly. ‘A couple of eyeties got shot. What about em?’

  ‘I believe the shooter is still in Edinburgh and possibly staying in a hotel. I want you to hang around a few hotels and be on the lookout for anyone that stands out.’

  ‘Stands out in what way?’

  Guardo shook his head. ‘I can’t say Jimmy, but I reckon if anyone can spot a dodgy character it’s you.’

  ‘Thanks for the compliment Frank, but a score a day for tailing a killer! You’re aving a larf. It’s got to be worth forty a day.’

  Frank nodded. ‘Ok, it’s a deal, but if I catch you skiving off, you don’t get a bean. Understood?’

  ‘Plus expenses,’ Jimmy said draining the tea from his chipped mug. ‘I am going to need a new whistle.’

  Frank eyed up Jimmy’s clothes, baggy jeans frayed at the hems, a faded Tee shirt and a grey hoodie.

  ‘Don’t worry about this clobber,’ Jimmy said with an easy grin, ‘I’m not daft enough to dress like this in an ‘otel. You give me, say, sixty quid, and I’ll nip into the British Heart Charity shop on Brent Street and get meself suited and booted.’

  Guardo took out his wallet, pulled out two twenties and laid them on the table. ‘That’s for a suit, a shirt and tie and a pair of shoes.’

  ‘Huh!’ Jimmy scoffed. ‘You’re kidding me right?’

  ‘You said a charity shop.’

  Picking up the notes, Jimmy shrugged, ‘Ok, what about me expenses? I reckon forty a day is fair.’

  ‘What expenses?

  ‘Frank, use your noddle. How long do you think I would last hanging around hotel bars not buying a drink or getting a bite to eat? I’d be out on me ear-ole in two shakes of a lambs tail.’

  ‘Thirty a day.’ Frank said, taking out his wallet again.

  ‘Done deal,’ Jimmy said, thinking this is a nice little tickle and eyeing up the wedge of notes tucked inside Guardo’s wallet. ‘I want one weeks pay in advance and for that I promise you Frankie boy, if the geezer is on our manor I will find him… guaranteed.’

  Frank was thinking it was a good job he thought to stop off at a cash machine. He peeled out the notes and before Jimmy’s eyes fell out of their sockets he put his wallet away.

  Stern now. Frank said, ‘Jimmy, the guy I am looking for is dangerous. You don’t take any chances ok? Frank took out his business card with the Edinburgh Police logo. He dug out his pen and wrote on the back: “Jimmy Ross, £40 a day- plus £30 a day expenses- paid - one week in advance.” The DI laid the card flat on the table next to the bottle of HP brown sauce ‘If you think that you have seen him I want no heroics Jimmy. You don’t approach him. You call me on my works mobile number, straight away, day or night.’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘Sure thing Frankie.’

  ‘And one other thing,’ Guardo said sounding pissed off, ‘don’t ever call me Frankie. Only my wife is allowed to do that. To you I’m DI Guardo or just Frank. You got that?’

  Feeling reprimanded Jimmy said, ‘whoa, easy there, Columbo. Keep your Alan Whicker’s on.’

  ‘I don’t wear knickers,’ Frank said, feeling weird having to once again interpret cockney rhyming slang. ‘You help me get this man and you get an extra one-fifty, but most of that goes to Sheryl, right?’

  ‘She gets most of my dosh anyway,’ Jimmy said with a shrug. ‘‘Who’d have thought it eh, Jimmy Ross, working for the old bill?’

  When he got back to his car, Frank was relieved to find it hadn’t been vandalised and all his hubcaps where still there.

  Even though the two heavily armed coppers at the Palace gates recognised him, Frank was expected to show them his ID. Holyrood Palace was in lockdown.

  When Frank found him in his suite of offices, for someone with one foot in the grave King Robert looked quite relaxed.

  ‘Good morning Your Majesty,’ Frank said. ‘Could I have a word with you about your security?’

  ‘Please. Call me Gavin,’ the King said. ‘Look around you Inspector. There are armed police everywhere. I feel quite safe thank you.’

  ‘Let’s not be complacent Gavin,’ Frank said, perhaps a little to sternly. ‘Edinburgh at the moment is like a wild–west movie. Let me tell you where I am coming from. Following your Mother’s abduction, her kidnapper was found shot dead in a hotel bedroom… ‘

  ‘I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with that?’ Gavin said, alarmed.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Frank said, seeking to reassure the King, ‘because whoever killed him also shot dead another Italian and a hotel waiter. When you then factor in the witnesses that state three British tanks had their guns trained on the Café where you were conducting a staff meeting, it is clear to me that someone, possibly more than one person with a lot of clout seems determined the new laws that you plan to bring into force this coming Friday don’t happen. And if this doesn’t convince you of the dangers you are in, you should reflect on the fact only this morning the body of the woman was found beneath your bedroom window. There is no doubt in my mind she fell whilst in the process of trying to get into your bedroom. I believe she planned to kill you whilst you slept.’

  Gavin reflected on this for a moment and then said.

  ‘Whilst I fully understand your concerns Inspector and please believe me when I say I am truly grateful to the Edinburgh police for the work you guys do, I am not quitting. I am not running out on the Scottish people who have entrusted me with the job of reforming the Scottish economy. Right now Inspector, I don’t know who my enemies are.’ Fixing a steady glare on the DI, Gavin said. ‘You could be one and I wouldn’t know.’

  Guardo was stung by that remark. He came back. ‘I don’t take sides Gavin and I am not the least bit interested in politics. I don’t give a tos
s about Scottish Independence, or Brexit. My job is to try and keep the streets of Edinburgh safe.’ Guardo stopped talking when he saw Penny Braithwaite come in the door.

  ‘Gavin, Sheik Ali-bin-Lina is waiting for you in the throne room.’

  ‘Thanks Penny.’ Gavin said. ‘Tell the Sheik I’ll be right there.’

  Coming round from behind his desk Gavin shook Guardo’s hand.

  Frank was surprised at its firm grip.

  ‘Sorry detective, I didn’t mean that to sound as if I don’t trust you, because I do.’ Gavin looked at the door. ‘I have to go. The sheik and I are in the middle of a possible arms deal.’

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ Frank said. ‘It’s not exactly a well kept secret, however, you may like to reflect on the fact, this controversial deal is likely make you more enemies. Would you not consider suspending these talks and maybe slow down the pace of the changes you are proposing?’

  Gavin paused at the door. The King eyed the policeman with suspicion.

  ‘Frank, I am disappointed in you. Like the others, you are waiting for me to buckle under pressure and deny my destiny. I wish you goodbye detective.’

  Then he was gone, heading off down the corridor for his meeting with the Sheik. Heading back to his car Frank was thinking, the guy is either very brave or he is a mule-headed fool. Hey, it’s not your problem. There are plenty of other people around employed to keep him out of trouble. You got the hotel murders to work on. Even so…

  Walking back up Royal Mile, Frank was wondering how Jimmy Ross was getting on. He was thinking: I must be mad trusting the petty thief to do any work? He could have taken my money with no intention of checking out the hotels. Even more worrying, Jimmy could get hurt… killed even! He’d rather not have to explain that to Sheryl?

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Edinburgh.

  Under the name of Mark Lawson and using one of his false passports, Gent booked into the Grand hotel on Waterloo Place. He chose a room with a window that overlooked the busy Princes road. He approved of the fact thirty paces from his door there was a set of stairs next to the lift that led down to a fire exit that opened out onto Calton Road. Out of the tall Georgian window Gent watched the build up of morning traffic. Under normal circumstances Gent was a patient man, given his profession he needed to be. However, Number 10 and his handler were on his back expecting results within 48 hours. With the King having gone into virtual hiding he could only hope that the people guarding the King would slip up. In the meantime, should he need them, Gent went shopping for a few disguises.