“Are MI5 tailing him?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t have thought so but there’s no reason not to. He’s entitled to go about his business until he steps out of line, then he’ll be picked up and bundled out on the first plane.”
I thought for a few moments. Looking out at the view of the park from the seventh floor always helped me concentrate better.
“We need to find out why Gant’s in the country,” I stated. “How you going to do that, ask him nicely perhaps? ”
Flippancy from Smitherman?
“Not just yet. I’m going to do some digging around. Someone must know him. Also, I’m going to check out the Phipps brothers, see what they’ve been up to. Maybe there’s a link there.”
“Until we’re told otherwise, this is a straightforward murder case which CID will handle. We’re not involved. What about the rest of your holiday?”
“Yeah, what about it?” I flashed him a knowing look.
I went to my desk. Actually it was the first desk available. I wasn’t aware if the term ‘hotdesking’ was still part of current management-speak but, whatever, nobody had their own assigned desk any longer. Wherever there was a space was where you planted yourself.
I powered up my laptop and entered my password and code. I logged onto the Branch site that kept details of anyone known to the security services and entered the names Louis and Paulie Phipps. I drew a blank. Whatever nefarious misdeeds they’d committed were deemed unworthy of entry onto Special Branch records. I then went onto the Police National Computer and hit the jackpot.
Louis Phipps had been in and out of trouble his whole life. He had convictions in the Juvenile Court for theft, criminal damage and taking and driving away of motor vehicles and convictions in the Magistrates’ Court for assault and being in possession of a small amount of marijuana. Paulie Phipps had only two convictions as he was with Louis when he’d stolen a car and also when Louis had been caught shoplifting in a West End branch of WH Smith, trying to steal a packet of coloured pens and a magazine. What a pair. The Phipps brothers were to virtue and integrity what a dog was to a tree.
I was puzzled. This was all penny ante stuff, the things punk kids do as teenagers before either they grow up, mature and leave trouble behind them or, in the case of people like Louis Phipps, use them as stepping stones to more serious, more organised criminal activity. Someone like Louis would probably have remained a punk forever had he not been killed.
Either way I could see nothing whatever on their records indicating even the smallest reason why a killer like Phil Gant would be on their tail. Most of his known associates were people of a similar ilk: losers, wasters and other lowlifes destined for a long stretch in a prison cell or the grave before their mid-twenties. On what I’d seen Gant wouldn’t even look in their general direction, yet someone was paying him a lot of money to remove these two slimeballs from the planet. Why? I needed someone who knew Gant and would be prepared to talk about him.
Which is how, later that same morning, I came to be sitting opposite Richard Rhodes in a café off the Tottenham Court Road. I’d phoned a journalist I knew, Richard Clements. He was someone I’d known when I’d been a student at King’s, London. We hadn’t been friends; in fact I’d thought he was some left-wing lunatic spouting the usual clichés and mouthing the correct platitudes about all the ‘right-on’ causes the good radical supposedly believed in. But I’d come into contact with him again last year when looking into a murder case. We’d struck up some kind of almost mutual interest and I’d fed him pertinent information concerning that case, which I knew he would take to other journalists who had the right kind of connections and sources in the secret world, and this had led to journalists in the mainstream press taking a closer look at the case. When they decided to publish the results of their investigations, lawyers for the Government had gone to the High Court seeking an injunction, but this had been refused and The Observer published its story about the case and its suspicions that some kind of cover-up had occurred, which was why the full report was never published.
Clements himself still worked for the New Focus, a fortnightly left-wing publication for the intellectual leftie, and his standing in the profession had risen as a result of the leads he was able to give to senior writers who had contacts with MI5, which led to the High Court hearing. Clements said he didn’t know any mercenaries or hired killers, and none of the crime correspondents he knew would have access to that kind of information.
However, he knew an ex-journalist, a man in his mid-sixties named Jerry, who used to be a war correspondent who’d covered conflicts all over the world and had extensive knowledge of and contacts in the world of the mercenary soldier. He’d given me the contact details and I’d visited the man at his flat by Regent’s Park. He readily agreed to talk and, through this, I had details for Richard Rhodes, whom the writer was convinced knew Gant as they’d worked together in the Middle East. He’d interviewed Rhodes once because he was writing an article about mercenaries for the Sunday Times and used what he’d said as background. Jerry had contact details for Rhodes on his mobile, called him and told him who I was and what I wanted to talk to him about, though I wasn’t too specific, and Rhodes agreed to meet in a café he knew near to Goodge Street Tube station, behind the Tottenham Court Road.
Richard Rhodes was an ex-marine who, after his time in the service of Queen and Country was up, had enlisted to fight as a mercenary in Southern Africa and, since then, in other theatres of war on more than one continent.
Actually, his time in the army had been curtailed rather suddenly as he’d fought a sergeant in his regiment who was widely regarded as a thug and a bully. Rhodes had refused to obey the orders of the sergeant when he’d given him a menial and humiliating task to do. A fight broke out and, after a bloody and epic brawl, Rhodes beat the sergeant into submission, and the sergeant would carry the scars from that brawl to his grave.
Rhodes was given the choice of resigning from the army with immediate effect or face a court martial and very likely a dishonourable discharge. As his contract was near to being completed, he chose to resign. Since then he’d become a soldier of fortune.
I pulled his security file before meeting him. He was a man who liked to fight, with or without weapons, in armed conflict or on the streets. He was completely amoral and would fight anyone for any reason. This had led to recent accusations of being involved in killing women and children, something he had strenuously denied when interviewed by an MI6 officer. He’d been arriving back in the UK from a tour of duty in the Lebanon and MI6 had taken him to one side and grilled him about his involvement in recent deaths in that country after complaints from the Lebanese Government about the involvement of foreign nationals in Beirut. Rhodes admitted involvement in the fighting but not in any action that had led to the deaths of women and children. No action was taken against him.
Currently between wars, the most recent intel available suggested he was working as a bodyguard for a Colombian who was suspected of being something high up in one of the main drug cartels that bedevilled that country but, on this day, when contacted by Jerry, his services had not been required so he agreed to meet up for a drink and a chat, especially when told it concerned his friend Gant, though I didn’t spell out exactly why.
I was waiting in the café when he arrived. Even if I’d not seen his picture, I’d have known it was him the second he entered. He looked combative and physically imposing. He stood six foot two, weighed about sixteen stone and carried himself with all the nonchalance of someone who was sure he could put you on the ground if he had to. Only the crazy brave or the desperately suicidal would want to take him on in a one-to-one fight. Mickey was a skilled fighting man but I doubted even he could go up against Rhodes with any realistic chance of success.
He was wearing a combat jacket, black jeans, army issue boots and a black beret. His face was weather-beaten from the time spent in sunnier climes and he exuded an aura of ‘do not mess with’ as he moved.
He looked at me and I nodded. He sat at my table. The young waitress took our tea and coffee order and went away. He reached out and we shook hands. His right hand was the size of a small shovel and, even with minimal force, he almost broke two of my fingers.
“So, why does Special Branch want to talk to me?” he asked after saying how cold it was for the time of year and how he couldn’t wait to get back to somewhere warmer after his work in London was up. His voice was raspy, as though he was still suffering the after effects of flu. The waitress brought our drinks.
“Your friend Gant,” I replied.
“Why should I talk to you about him? What makes you think I even know him?”
“You agreed to meet up when I suggested it. Look, let’s not insult each other’s intelligence, eh? We both know you and Phil Gant are friends. I know for a fact you worked together on a hit in the Lebanon and, on your return to this country, MI6 grilled you about it at Heathrow, which means you’ll probably be closely watched and monitored every time you come and go. I simply want to know what he’s currently up to. I’m not looking to arrest you, I just want to talk. This simply has a bearing on a case I’m involved in. I’ll file it as background. Gant doesn’t have to know about it.”
Rhodes took a bite of his biscuit and a sip of coffee whilst he thought about how much he wanted to tell me.
“Yeah, okay, Gant and I know each other,” he said, still sipping his coffee.
“He stays at your place in Shoreditch occasionally, doesn’t he?”
“You know about that place?” He looked surprised.
“I’m in Special Branch. You really think I couldn’t find your address?” I smiled.
“Yeah, I suppose so,” he nodded.
“So, Mr Phil Gant. What’s he currently up to?”
Rhodes leaned forward slightly, almost conspiratorially.
“The word on the street is he’s been hired to go after a guy who’s trying to blackmail someone prominent in the Government.”
“What, the Government here?” My eyes opened wide at the news.
“No, in Uzbekistan,” he snapped sarcastically. “Where do you think? Of course it’s here.”
“What do you mean by ‘Prominent’? How high up are we talking?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are we talking someone in the Cabinet? A minister? Secretary of State? An Under-Secretary of State? Someone with his finger on the political pulse? That kind of prominent.”
“That I don’t know. I just heard it was someone prominent.”
“So, what’s the blackmail angle?”
“Don’t know that either. I just heard Gant had been hired to do a job of work in this country involving someone high up.”
A job of work which had cost two people their lives. He made it sound as though Gant was going to be doing some painting and decorating.
“The two people Gant was after were a pair of losers, street punks who probably couldn’t blow their own noses without someone directing it. I just don’t see someone like Gant going after them. The idea of these two as part of some blackmail scheme . . .”
I let the sentence tail off.
“If Gant was hired, it’s a safe bet whoever did it was certain of who he was after. Someone like Gant doesn’t get hired mistakenly.”
I thought for a moment. It still defied belief that a professional hitman like Gant was after two people like the Phipps brothers. Gant looking to eliminate someone who was supposedly trying to blackmail someone in, or close to, Government would make sense in his world. How could the Phippses be a part of this? They were both as thick as railroad spikes and yet they’d been killed by one of the world’s best assassins. I was bemused.
“I’m also surprised Gant has been hired,” he continued. “Government has its own people to do this kind of work. Why bring in outsiders?”
“That would suggest this is some kind of private arrangement between whoever hired Gant and Gant himself. No official involvement, it would seem.”
“Could be.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Oh, come on, you know how it is. People know people, who talk to other people. In my world, it’s known what’s going on. Word gets around. You might not know exact details but you usually know the outline of what’s happening.”
“How did Gant get hired? He doesn’t advertise in Yellow Pages and doesn’t have a website that I know of, so if it’s someone in Government circles, it’s clearly someone with enough know-how to get in touch with the sordid world of the paid killer. Not everyone has that knowledge.”
“Well, clearly whoever hired him does have, doesn’t he?” He sat back in his chair taking in the surroundings, which were bland and mostly cheerless.
I thought for a moment.
“Let me tell you why I’m asking this.”
Over the next few minutes I told Rhodes about the events of the previous evening, culminating with the two shots which killed the Phipps brothers. I reiterated my disbelief that someone like Gant could possibly be after punks like the Phippses and my astonishment that they could possibly have done anything to get a top-notch killer like Gant involved.
“A target’s a target, irrespective,” he said airily after I’d finished. “Doesn’t matter whether they’re punks or not. Someone wants them dead, they get removed. Come on, you’re Special Branch; you know how people like Gant operate. They get contacted by a potential client who wants them to take out someone, and they agree or disagree. Gant wouldn’t be concerned with the morality of it or whether they’re just a pair of punk scumbags. He thinks the job’s feasible, he takes it on if offered the right price. Same as I’ve done in his position.”
“You’ve done jobs like this?”
“You’d be surprised at what I’ve done.” He smirked. “But it wasn’t in this country. My old granddad used to say you should never shit on your own doorstep.” He laughed at his aphorism.
“So, how much is Gant getting paid for this heroic act?”
“No idea. Fees we don’t discuss, but it’s a fair bet it’d be worth his while,” he said, grinning.
“When did you last see Gant?” I asked.
“Couple of nights back. Had a couple of beers with him. He gets in touch when he’s in town, which isn’t all that often now as I’m not always here either. But we keep in touch.”
“He’s staying at some hotel over Park Lane way, isn’t he? Why isn’t he staying at your place?”
Rhodes sipped his coffee.
“I’m away working a lot of the time. Also, I sometimes have others staying there, and it wouldn’t be conducive for Gant to be there, given who these people are, you know?”
“Yeah, just imagine, Gant meeting up with a bunch of Colombians planning out wholesale distribution strategies for their cocaine imports. Can’t have that now, can we?”
“You know what I’m currently doing?” He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Yeah, and who for. Really honourable work, isn’t it, making it safe for some Colombian drug lord to put even more cocaine on the streets of London. Bit of a comedown after fighting in the Lebanon and wherever else you’ve been, isn’t it?” I smiled at him sarcastically.
“Beggars can’t be choosers, eh?” he replied airily. “Anyway, you know how much I get for this? Couple of grand a week, tax free, everything thrown in, plus I get to stay in their flash hotel over Knightsbridge way, and when it’s finished, I’m promised a bonus.”
He sounded as though he was bragging. I ignored it.
“So, according to you, if I heard you correct, there’s no mistake here. Gant was definitely after the two he killed last night.”
“Gant’s only a suspect. You can’t prove he killed them. It could just as easily be me who did it.”
“Unlikely. Too good a shot for you. Whoever killed them took the shot in the dark and from quite a distance. That’s top quality marksmanship. I doubt you qualify.”
From the subtle shift in his posture, his b
ody language told me he’d not been impressed with my last comment. I sipped my tea.
“You gonna arrest him, then?”
“I suspect I won’t get close enough. Anyone as well connected as he seems to be will be seen by MI5 rather than me. Besides, arrest him for what? I didn’t see anyone pulling a trigger. All we have is two dead bodies but no official suspects, and I suspect he’ll be alibied up to his ears at the time of the deaths, so we’re effectively screwed for the moment. Besides, given who the victims were, the Branch hasn’t been called in. It’s being treated as an ordinary murder by CID. Unless we can get evidence pointing the finger at Gant, we probably won’t be either.”
“In Gant’s world, people who hire him tend to be quite high up and very well connected, if you know what I’m saying. Some of the kills he’s carried out have been at the behest of people right at the heart of power, quite prepared to pay him a lot to eliminate someone,” Rhodes stated.
“Enemies of the state are one thing but, as I said earlier, I don’t see where the Phipps brothers fit into this moral equation.”
“The only morality in the world Gant and I work in is paying someone on time after they’ve done what they were contracted to do,” he said whilst smiling. “Someone deserves to die, they get removed. That’s how it works.”
“And who decides that one? Who makes him the moral arbiter of life and death?”
“The employee. An offer’s made,” he shrugged, “you decide whether it’s worth doing or not. It’s black and white really. I don’t concern myself with other considerations.”
It dawned on me to ask whether that included situations similar to the one in the Lebanon last year when twenty women and children had died in a gun battle between Government forces and rebel fighters, but there was nothing to be gained from debating morality with someone like Richard Rhodes. He was comfortable in his own skin about what he and Gant did, and he probably thought ethics was a county north east of London. But at least he’d given me something to follow up on. He’d confirmed Gant had been after the Phipps brothers. I still wanted to know why.
Gant! Page 4