The Boardman Files

by Gus Ross

  “Thanks for that.”

  Sternie knew it would make little difference, the driver would follow procedure regardless, but he wanted him to know that he was good at what he did and that he had done his part to ensure he had not been followed.

  For the first time in his life Charles Hanson felt vulnerable; he had lost men before, some good ones at that, but he had never screwed up an intercept like this one and certainly not in full view of the general public. And as a result, things were now set to get really ugly. Firstly he had the old man to deal with, after all it was his home turf he had just taken a piss on, then he had his own boss, who was liable to go off the chart with rage, and last but by no means least, there was Big Old Reliable Mac.

  Added to that, there was no simple way to contain the London Met fiasco; it was all over the news. Of course it would be attributed to gangland turf wars again, fuelled by greed and drugs and money, but the body-count was mounting and he was pretty sure there was more to come, and the gangland story was liable to run a little thin before long; already the hardened hacks could smell the stink, they just didn’t know where it was coming from.

  With immaculate timing his desk phone lit up and he knew who was on the other end before he had even answered it.

  “Hey Charlie, how’s it hangin’. All that palaver down at the Met have anythin’ to do with you and your boys?” Mac Howison knew it had CIA written all over it, the Brits were always a bit less obvious.

  “Nice of you to call Mac. How can I help you?” He was in no mood for his strings to be pulled and despite the fact that these days it was Mac who did most of the pulling, he wasn’t about to roll over and let his private parts get tickled.

  “Just checkin’ in with ya’ Charlie. Got yer’selves that little missy yet, or has she high tailed it out of dodge?” Mac was only mildly interested in the answer to that question; he had what he wanted and she was no more than another loose end to him, although one he suspected would not be around for much longer, but he wasn’t about to let Charlie know that. The less Charlie really knew about what was going on the better for everybody.

  “We have her under surveillance Mac, she has not made the drop yet, I can assure you of that.” Charlie was lying through his teeth and he knew just how dangerous that could be when dealing with Mac Howison. Shit, he didn’t even have a clue where she was, never mind whether she had passed on the merchandise.

  “That so Charlie? My, she is a tough little cookie.”

  Charles Hanson had been part of Big Mac’s ‘secret’ payroll for more years than he could remember and to be fair, he was no longer sure where his loyalties lay; most of the time he felt that the organisation and his big oil benefactor were on the same side, or at least the same pitch, but this one had him worried. Even if he did know where she was, he had still not figured out how he could ensure the merchandise reached Mac and not his superiors, or even worse the Brits. And there was something in the voice at the end of the line, something he did not like.

  “Well Charlie boy, you keep up the good work d’ya hear. And soon as you have her, jus’ let me know.”

  The line went dead.

  Pug was on his way into London; he wanted to meet face to face with DI Bright, and he was still not sure who he could trust. The coroner’s report on a Mr Lucian Hendrick; the stiff that had recently been pulled from the River Churn, but who was currently not of immediate concern to him, had arrived and was sitting on his desk. It would be the next day before he would read it. That trail had gone a bit cold; the post-mortem details had not come up with any leads and there had been no reports of a missing person, plus his mind was very much preoccupied with the death of Buckfield. But now there was a positive identification just waiting for him to discover, and when he finally read about Lucian Hendrick, and more importantly his role at the Conseil Europeen pour la Recherché Nucleaire, Pug would have a number of pieces of the jigsaw. The challenge would be to start to pull them together into something meaningful.

  It wasn’t just all about the game for Mac Howison. Sure enough he did like to mess with the minds of the people he came in contact with; playing games within games and sometimes without even knowing it, but most of all he liked to be right, needed to be right. Some clever psychoanalyst would probably have traced it back to a deep routed insecurity as a child, or some significant failure that penetrated a little too deep, whatever it was it drove him, sometimes beyond all reason. He just had to be that little bit smarter than the rest and of course he would lie down and die to protect what he had built up. He had ego in abundance, but like few men in his position it had not yet surpassed his abilities. He had lost count of the fools in high places who thought they were invincible, or failed to listen to those around them, and he knew exactly where Charles Hanson sat on the scale of competence.

  Keeping someone like Hanson close was always a smart move, but he was already calculating how to discredit him if the need arose, and if this was all going to play out to plan then he would need to distance himself. But of course there was now also the small matter of finding and silencing the operative that had betrayed him, not to mention that poor old sap Dave Richards.

  “So what brings you into the city Sergeant?” DI Bright was his usual composed self, but he was more than a little interested in what Sergeant Watt had to say.

  His team had scoured the C.C.T.V. from the car park and surrounding streets, but had come up blank. Whoever had planned the murder of DC Buckfield, and there was no doubt in his mind that it had been murder, had been very careful, perhaps too careful. And then there was the phone link between Buckfield and the recently deceased Stanley Osram, and he already had a pretty good idea where that might lead. He did not want Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary getting involved, and so far there was not much for them to get their teeth into, but he had a hunch that this particular meeting might just change that.

  “Thanks for seeing me at such short notice Sir, I do appreciate it.” The old Pugster sounded like someone who had taken a huge chunk of humble pie with his cornflakes, and not in the least bit like the obnoxious fool I had taken him for.

  “Not at all. Always delighted to cooperate with the rural force where we can.”

  “I’ll cut right to it, if that’s ok Sir.” Pug’s words met with an inviting expression, so he continued. “This is not easy for me as I had a lot of respect for the man, but I think there may be good reason to believe that DC Buckfield was on the take.”

  “Is that so Sergeant Watt? Please, do continue.”

  “There are some files I think you should look at. Protected files, I can’t get into the properly, but each one of them throws up the same name, Stanley Osram. I thought you might have the resources to get into the detail of them.” Pug waited and watched for the expression on DI Bright’s face to change and was not disappointed.

  “Now that is interesting. Clearly you’re aware that we have been trying to pin something on that bastard for some time now. Only someone beat us to it.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Watt.

  “They pulled Osram from an R.T.A. ‘round about the same time as your colleague was found dead in the car park.” Watt’s mind was already in motion but there was little need, Bright had not finished yet. “Took us a while to identify him, nasty little accident and the boys over at forensic didn’t have a lot to work with, but lucky for us he had some pretty fancy dental work, and his mobile survived. And guess who the last number he called was?”

  “Buckfield.”

  “Go to the top of the class Sarge. DC Buckfield. I think I would like to take a look at some of those files of yours.”

  Watt had not missed the intonation around the word accident; clearly DI Bright had not been convinced. He had wanted to meet Bright and look into the whites of his eyes, needed to, just to be sure that whatever Buckfield had been involved in had not permeated its way into the man he was now talking to. He was a damned good judge of character and he was pretty sure he could trust Brig
ht.

  “You have my full cooperation Sir.”

  “Thank you Sarge. I am not sure what we have stumbled onto here, but already I don’t like the feel of it. If one of yours has been in Osram’s pocket then it might go a long way to explaining why we haven’t been able to pin as much as a parking ticket on him and his crew. And if they got to Buckfield then god knows how deep it might run.” Bright was thinking out loud and stopped himself before he went any further. “Let’s keep this between the two of us for now, as I said, we don’t know how deep this might go.”

  “My thoughts entirely Sir.”

  “Good. I’ll be in touch.” With that Bright offered his hand and Watt shock it firmly before leaving.

  The tube hurtled its way to its final destination, Heathrow. She had no intention of going that far, but for now was welcome of the thinking time. The compartment was not overly busy, the usual business drones, the obvious tourists and a scattering of the just plain weird looking folk who, in her previous life, she would have spent the entire journey trying to guess what it was they actually did for a living. But there was nobody that concerned her and that was good.

  She reached into her coat pocket and took out a mobile. This one had been deactivated and it remained switched off. She held it in the palm of her hand for more than a minute before removing the back, replacing the SIM she had taken from it earlier, and then holding down the on button. The phone bleeped into life and spent the next thirty seconds or so initialising; thirteen missed calls, the first half dozen or so from her husband and the rest from Alex Boardman.

  She had expected as much, in fact she was surprised there were not more, but the missed calls from her husband were the hardest part; she could not forgive herself, did not really want to forgive herself. In some strange way, especially as time had passed and her life in England had become so settled, she had started to entertain thoughts that perhaps things would never come to this. She knew it was not reasonable to think that way, but perhaps she would be one of the lucky ones; the sleepers that just sleep and are never called into action, or perhaps if she were to be given an assignment that it would be a fairly routine one, if there was such a thing in the SVR.

  She checked the call log, nothing in the last twenty four hours from her husband and suddenly she was worried. Worried for him. Worried for me. She turned the phone to off again.

  Interview room 2 was a rather dull affair. It reminded me a lot of that ‘picturesque’ little police station that I would love to have never frequented. The wooden table that sat in the middle was bare and plain and looked like it had been designed by someone who clearly had little regard for aesthetics. The chairs were a damned site more comfortable than those in Pug’s cop shop though and for that I was grateful. Sternie sat opposite me with his legs crossed and a face with no discernible expression to speak of.

  “So this is where all my tax pounds go. Good to see they are not wasting it on frivolous decor and furnishings.” I had recognised the building at 85 Albert Embankment and which some people referred to as ‘Legoland’, for what it was, but my attempt to lighten proceedings either went over Sternie’s head or, more likely, was simply ignored. And then the door opened and soon my life, which to be fair was well on the way to being totally fucked up, really did start to fall apart.

  “Stern, good to see you. Sorry we had to call you in, but this thing’s growing arms and legs. And you must be Dave Richards, my name is George Thomson.”

  I smiled what I am sure was a weak attempt at a smile, and sat patiently.

  “Righto gentlemen, I am pretty sure one of you has no idea what this is all about and the other perhaps only has a snifter of it. Unfortunately there is only so much I am at liberty to discuss, classified you understand, but I do have some questions, as I am sure you probably have for me, so why don’t I start by filling in some of the blanks. Dave, can I call you that? Good. As I said, my name is George Thomson, and I work for MI6. Stern here is one of our operatives, as I am sure you have probably guessed by now.”

  Ok, so now I was officially caught up in a real spy game; I must admit I was taking it all quite well actually; in some ways it was a bit of a relief to finally hear that this was all official government business, although I had kind of reached that conclusion based on where we were rather than the fact that this Mr Thomson had just told me he was MI6. On reflexion, no one had actually told me this was all above board spying (if that is not too much of a paradox). Anyway whatever it was, at least I was in the hands of the good guys. But my questions could not wait.

  “But why me? What possible interest could MI6 have in me?”

  “All in good time Dave. Please bear with me and hopefully things will become a bit clearer as we go.”

  It wasn’t as if I had anywhere to go. My wife was gone, my house was presumably a smouldering ruin and I was only still breathing thanks to the Sterminator and my trusty golf brolly. I sat back and waited expectantly.

  “Without going into the details, it is actually your wife that we are really interested in. She has, shall we say, obtained some rather sensitive information and we need to get hold of her rather quickly before she does something regrettable with it.”

  Thomson was a master at the understatement and he knew full well that the sensitive information he referred to had most likely already been passed on. What he could not be certain of was exactly who it had been passed to and to what extent.

  He was fully aware of Hanson’s misdemeanours at the Met, something he would take great pleasure in dealing with when the time came, but he was also aware that the body of the sniper recovered from the scene was SVR and he hadn’t expected that. Why silence your own operative if she continued to follow orders? Sure, the stakes were high, but this little complication had him already working on the various permutations. She was still at large, having now slipped his boys, Charles’s, and now presumably the SVR. What he was now banking on was the fact that any agent worth their salt would not hand over the full goody bag in one go and that he would be given a second chance. And he was certain that she fitted that bill perfectly.

  Ok, so now I really wasn’t dealing with things anymore. My wife? My wife? What could she possibly have gotten hold of? She worked for a bank for god’s sake. Fair dos, they were a bunch of shysters and had pretty much brought the country to its knees, but I was struggling to keep up with how that could be of interest to MI6. My lost expression was all too obvious.

  “Dave, you understand I can’t explain the detail behind what it is or why it is that we need to find your wife, but I am sure by now that you understand the type of people we are dealing with. She is not safe out there and I need your help to try and locate her.”

  Sternie had sat motionless to this point and I shot him a glance across the table, as if to say ‘did you know about this?’ but his countenance remained cold and hard. If he had known, he was doing a pretty good job of keeping it close to his chest.

  Thomson continued, “Your wife Dave, do you have any idea where she might be?”

  I was still partly stunned by what I was hearing, but also that I suddenly realised I had not so much as tried to call her in the last day or so. There were extenuating circumstances, even the harshest jury would have given me that one, but I was still shocked by my actions.

  “No. She was away on business. I tried to call her but her phone was dead.” And there it was, suddenly, somewhere amongst the garbled junkyard that served as my brain, a light bulb had sparked to life. “Oh my god! Do you think something has happened to her? Her phone was completely dead and the number wasn’t even being recognised.”

  “She is ok for now, I can assure you of that, but I cannot assure you for how much longer that might be. We suspect she may be laying low. Is there anywhere special that you would go together, or perhaps somewhere she might talk about? A friends house, or somewhere quiet, rural perhaps?”

  I thought of home for a brief second and then realised that I no longer had a home. “I don’t kn
ow. Does it have to be somewhere quiet? Sorry, why are you asking me this?”

  “Dave, your wife currently has pretty much every government agency looking for her right now. If I was her I would be trying my best to act like a ghost. Do you still have your mobile with you?” Thomson had a pretty good idea of what I had been through and it wasn’t out-with the realms of possibility that I may have come detached from modern man’s best friend somewhere along the line.

  I reached inside my trouser pocket and pulled out my mobile. “Still got it. Do you want me to call her again?”

  “By all means. Please do.” Thompson did not expect for a moment that one simple phone call would be all that was required, but there was always the slight chance that she might try and contact her husband.

  Before I had completed thumbing her contact details onto the screen, Eva Richards’ mobile phone had presented its owner with the obligatory goodbye message.

  “Nothing. Not even a peep.”

  “Never mind. I think that was to be expected. But let’s just keep your phone charged, in case she tries to contact you. I will get some of my team to ensure that if a call does come through to you, we can trace it.”

  The thought to call her had not so much as crossed my mind in the last twenty four hours. At first I had been more than frustrated at not being able to reach her, but then my own personal predicament had kind of overtaken things, and if anything I would have expected the shoe to have been on the other foot and for her to have been trying to contact me. But of course she hadn’t. Now it was my wife who was the primary concern, yet it sounded as if she was the one holding all the aces. But Eva? How could my Eva be mixed up in all this? Every agency looking for her! I needed to know more, much more, and really wasn’t in the mood for all that ‘official secrets mumbo jumbo’.

  “Mr Thomson, I have been through a hell of a lot in the last two days: I have seen a body thrown into a river, been as good as accused of being involved in its death by Starsky and Hutch, had my house ransacked and burnt to the ground, been abducted, saved, almost killed and almost killed again. Now you tell me my wife has some sort of information and is on some kind of most wanted list. You need to give me more, I can’t play ball blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back.” I was pretty damned proud of myself for that diatribe and fixed Thomson with the hardest stare I could muster. I was pretty sure my cahoonas were now the size of two small grapefruits and out of the corner of my eye even Sternie looked like he was impressed. Of course, I had failed to notice both men’s reaction to the body in the river revelation; this was news to both of them, but they would park it for now.