The Boardman Files

by Gus Ross

  They had been at a rather swanky do that evening and the wine and spirits had flowed just a little too easily for Boardman, that plus the little extra boost she had courteously added to his final Jack Daniels. He was out for the count and she was more than thankful that she had managed to get him in a taxi and home before the full effects of the drug took hold; he was a big man and she found herself very grateful that this particular mansion came with its own lift.

  She laid him across the bed, fully clothed with his smart Barker brogues pointing to the ornate ceiling. His breathing was shallow but not concerning, he would wake the next morning with a stinker of a headache, but she would be by his side and he would have no recollection of the last few hours of the evening, much less any reason to think anything untoward had happened to his precious findings.

  Once in the basement it was not hard to locate what she needed. Laptop security was a joke, and she was downloading file after file within minutes.

  She removed her dress and laid it, alongside the neat pile of clothes she had removed from Boardman, on the chaise lounge and slipped into bed beside him.

  It could not have been easier and already that was setting off her internal alarm.

  If this was as big as he had led here to believe then she would have expected a damned sight more security.

  She would need to be careful.

  In a small, lightless room, some fifty or so yards down the street from Boardman’s apartment, Rory McAdam removed his earphones and slid them across the table, almost knocking over the tall polystyrene cup that contained the dregs of the umpteenth coffee of the shift.

  “Careful mate. Nearly had that one all over me.” Chris O’Reilly removed his eye from the telescope as he spoke. He had seen all there was to see and the lights were out now, for Alex Boardman both literally and metaphorically. “Man, I don’t blame the guy. She could have a whirl on my pogo-stick anytime she fancied.”

  “Yeah Chris, only yours is more like a tooth pick and there is more chance of me fancying your ugly mug than a women like that finding you anything less than repulsive.”

  “Ha, at least when I piss in bottle it’s not through a straw. I heard you went through a pack of sixty on your last stakeout.”

  “While you’re stuck on toilet humour old pal, can you make sure the next time you deliver a Yuletide Log like the last one that you at least remember to flush? Too many of those and they’ll be sending a frogman down the sewers to see what is blocking them.”

  Both men laughed at the one. They has been keeping a careful eye on Boardman’s place from the moment he has started seeing her and had been working the night shift on this one for almost three months now. Only their humour, coupled with the more voyeuristic moments of their surveillance, got them through such a long stint. There were at least half a dozen, shall we say, compromising photos, pinned to the cork board hung on the far wall from where they sat. There were considerably more currently in the bedside table of Chris O’Reilly.

  “She take the bait?” asked Rory.

  “Yip, you’d better give the big boys the nod.”

  A man like Boardman was always under surveillance, whether he knew it or not, and anyone new on his scene was very quickly put through the ‘database’. In her case this had not been necessary; there had been an intercept of comms’, the type of which were reserved only for the sleepers out there, and they were all too aware of Ulyana Lyalyushkin, long before she had become involved with Boardman.

  Thomson had come under pressure to bring her in more than once but had resisted, the situation had presented him with too many opportunities and he wanted to play it out. This was real high stakes gambling; what was at stake if he ballsed it up was more than just the end of his illustrious career, but he had considered it all very carefully and he had assured his lords and masters that all bases were covered.

  Something as big as A.P.R.I.L and what they had discovered there was never going to be kept under wraps; sooner, rather than later, something would get out and when it did, he wanted to be the one to control just what it was that ‘got out’.

  The actual existence of the place was not the real issue; all the major players were already well aware of it, even if it was a highly classified secret and never openly talked about. But the finer details of what it was they had discovered was something entirely different, and something that could not be allowed to be leaked, at any cost.

  But there was a major issue; somewhere, either in his team or in Charles Hanson’s, there was a mole. A mole that had been feeding someone sensitive information with regards to the program at A.P.R.I.L.; information that had most likely gotten one of his team killed trying to protect Boardman, information that if it continued to leak, would put the whole operation in jeopardy. The gap had to be plugged and the mole flushed out. Whoever it was that had a sieve for a mouth, they were a bigger risk than any Russian agent snooping around Boardman might pose.

  He had a short list of suspects but no proof, and now he had the golden opportunity to flush out whomever it was that had sold out Boardman on a particularly wet and miserable night some eighteen months earlier.

  There was always the slightest chance that Boardman had staged the whole thing and that he was the mole trying to deflect attention from himself, but that was a long shot, Thomson did not see him as any form of risk. But he was wise enough to know that sometimes it is the ones we trust the most who hold the dagger behind us. At least this way, if he set the game up to play to his rules, then the mole would find its way to the surface and he would be waiting with a dirty great spade to whack it on the head when it finally did.

  He would dangle the carrot and see if there were any takers.

  Yip, he had all the bases covered.

  The fact that the woman currently sleeping beside his most prized asset was already concerned as to the ease with which she had obtained the information would have been enough to make him think again. When the time came, and it turned out his men had fumbled before the end zone, he would begin to wish he had taken the easy option.

  The next morning, after helping nurse Boardman’s exquisitely sore head, she made her excuses and left. As she closed the panelled door behind her and stepped out from the pillared entrance, deep within her black Chloe handbag sat a small high tech memory stick; one which contained the most explosive information she would ever come across. As she exited Boardman’s apartment, another surveillance team kicked into gear.

  The tube doors opened and closed again, but Eva did not notice, she continued to think through the options. The answer would be there in front of her, she just had to find it. Clearly something had gone wrong with her drop on the bus, she was positive she had not been tailed, but her contact at C.E.R.N. had gone quiet, so it was a reasonable assumption that he had been intercepted. The million dollar question was whether this was before or after she had passed the information. The ‘who did it’ question was not one that particularly concerned her. It had to be the Brits or their friendly uncle from across the pond; the little welcoming party at the Met confirmed it.

  She had been so deep in thought she had not even noticed that the train had now arrived at Heathrow. She got off amidst the sudden throng of passengers and suitcases and bags that suddenly seemed to be coming from all angles, all determined to be first in the queue for the lift or escalator, everyone’s rush just that bit more important than the next. She let the jostling settle in front of her then stepped onto the escalator. She would park the thought as to the timing of the intercept, but her gut was telling her what she already knew to be true. The whole thing had been too easy from the start.

  She had not intended to go all the way to Heathrow, but now she was here, it seemed as good a place as any. She would grab something quick to eat; one of those burgers that look so good on the over-counter displays and then came out looking like they have been made with last week’s lettuce and then sat on by a fat man for good measure.

  She would be able to think better with
something in her stomach, even if it was not high on nutrition.

  Chapter 14: Cleaning up the Loose Ends.

  Sergeant Watt had no good reason to stop off back at his station, it had long gone 6 pm, his meeting with DI Bright had taken up most of the day, but he liked to make sure things were in order, even if his idea of order was my idea of chaos.

  He had decided to stop for a quick brew and a chat with two of his officers who should really have been out on patrol by now, but who had been shooting the breeze in the small canteen area for a bit longer than they had realised. Watt did not mind a bit of flexibility here and there, as long as people didn’t take the piss, but when he had finished the pleasantries he only had to look at his watch once before his men were on their feet and out of the door.

  He lifted the brown jiffy bag marked ‘Coroner’s Report’ from his in-tray and pulled the door shut on his office. No doubt there was an email with the same information attached to it sitting in another kind of in-tray, but Watt preferred to read the hardcopy. He threw the report onto the back seat of his car before finally leaving his beloved ‘cop-shop’ and heading for home.

  Back in his flat, Watt flopped the report onto the cheap IKEA table in front of his sofa, almost burying it amongst an untidy mess of the previous weekend’s newspapers; complete with their accompanying clutter of tv guides, weekender pullouts, and endless cheap glossy flyer advertisements (each promoting an array of the most useless, unnecessary junk he could imagine, all at bargain basement prices!).

  He would not read it immediately, but when he finally tore open the brown bag and started on its contents it would lead to a rather impromptu night in front of his laptop, by the end of which Sergeant Watt would have a much better idea of what the institution that went by the name C.E.R.N. was all about.

  Of course he still had no idea why someone would clinically put a single bullet in the head of Lucian Hendrick before tossing him into the River Churn. He also had no idea who had put the bullet there and, perhaps most importantly of all, who had sanctioned it. What he did know however, was that he had no further need for a certain clown named Dave Richards.

  If I had known I was completely off the hook for the body in the river, I would have bought the old mongrel a box of Boneo as a thank you present. Although I am fairly sure I would have bottled out of that.

  When Watt finally did start to put the pieces together, courtesy of the ballistics report on the bullet that the same coroner had removed from the skull of Lucian Hendrick, he would soon find himself involved in something that had far wider consequences than he could ever have imagined.

  It was getting late and I had been stuck in interview room number 2 for most of the day, save for the odd visit to the loo. One of the kind spooks at MI6 (at least I imagined she was a spook, rather than a simple pen-pusher, or valued member of the admin staff, which in reality she most likely was), had been kind enough to bring me lunch and dinner and I had whiled away the time creating various little scenarios in my head.

  In my favourite, I was now an MI6 agent and had successfully tracked down my spy wife (I was still having great difficulty with that concept, but had given the role to Jessica Alba, so all was forgiven), convinced her to defect, shot the bad guys, delivered the merchandise to a rather attractive Ms Moneypenny type, and was heading for Monte Carlo in my private yacht (Ms Alba in tow).

  My coping mechanism really should have led me to a life as an author, but on reflection, even if I could have somehow written down the events I was currently part of, I don’t think I would have got past the front door of any credible agent, never mind publisher.

  But all the nonsense in my head helped drown out the real stuff, the stuff it would take years of therapy to put right. I was just beginning to think I would need to find a comfortable way of arranging the chairs in interview room number 2 into some kind of bed for the night, when the door opened once more.

  “You alright Dave?” It was Sternie who entered the room and he wore the look of a man who had spent most of his day being thoroughly debriefed. Not that I had any idea what a through debriefing would do for a man’s complexion, but he looked both tired and worn.

  “Just tickity boo. A full day without having a gun pointed in my direction is like a holiday in the Bahamas.”

  “I’m sure it probably feels that way.” Sternie was smiling from the side of his mouth which made him look a bit like a second hand car salesman who had just given away all his margin on the little beaut’ he had just sold you, because he really liked you and wanted to be your best pal.

  “How about you? Been wired up to a polygraph all day and threatened with torture until you spilled the beans?”

  “Something like that.”

  I had grown to kind of like my abductor, saviour, bodyguard, and it was good to at least have some company again. I was about to ask him, for what seemed like the umpteenth time, what happens next, but clearly we had been spending too much time together as Sternie had already read the expression on my face.

  “We wait,” he said with finality.

  I simply raised my eyebrows.

  Like all well contested chess games there comes a point where everything seems to stop, a hiatus in the intellectual warfare, the moment where both parties need to carefully consider not just their next move, but that of their opponents, and most often it is the one who can see multiple moves ahead that will ultimately kill the king.

  Thomson had reached that point and it was the point he loved the most. It almost didn’t matter to him what the game was all about, in fact there were times he would gladly have saved all the time, effort, and expense involved in one side spying on the other, and just boiled it all down to a definitive chess match, the game of gentleman, and a final handshake. Of course it would never come to that, but in some ways it was not really that much different. Waiting, while the clock ticked, was one of the hardest parts, but he knew it was not his move.

  When the next move did come, it was not one he had even considered.

  The night had passed without incident, we (myself and my new best friend Sternie), had been whisked away to yet another safe house, only this one really was safe. There was more security than Buckingham Palace and I managed a pretty satisfactory night’s sleep and even my overactive imagination had decided that it needed to recharge its batteries.

  Sergeant Watt had not managed quite the same level of rest; he had been up half the night trawling the internet, fascinated about C.E.R.N. and the murder of Lucian Hendrick. He had already decided to place a call to that organisation in the morning and the thought had kept him awake for the remainder of his evening.

  It would be a Mr Stephan Meyer who would ultimately take the call and his shock at the revelation as to the whereabouts of his colleague would soon be closely matched by Watt’s own reaction to the ballistics report on the bullet that had been removed from Hendrick’s skull.

  “DI Bright please.” Watt held the phone tight to his ear, as eager as a bitch in heat to run off the lead, as he waited to be connected.

  “Sergeant Watt, good to hear from you....” Bright did not even have a chance to finish as Watt cut him short.

  “Sir, I’ve got something. I’m not quite sure what it means yet. But we need to meet.”

  “Ok Sarge, can you get yourself over here?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  A dark van pulled up on a scrappy, overgrown piece of land outside an industrial unit that looked as if it had not been used for some considerable time. A worn sign clung just above the corrugated steel door, announcing that this was the home of Patterson Electrical Contractors but, judging by its age and condition, the Pattersons were long gone. Disillusioned, raggedy weeds extended reluctantly out of the remains of the guttering, as if they too would happily vacate to somewhere more pleasant, given half a chance.

  The majority of the visible outside wall space had been reclaimed by someone who went by the name of ‘Tointy’ and was affiliated to ‘Tongs’, who were no
doubt all dab hands with an aerosol. Just another of society’s countless inner city gangs, who spread fear into the hearts of the remaining ‘decent’ folk, and yet were all probably no older than twelve and whose biggest crime to date was pilfering the odd bag of sweeties from the local corner shop.

  The individual who was currently sitting inside this decrepit shell of a building was a different matter, and so to the other who had just silenced the vans idling engine and was about to announce his arrival. From inside the unit came a rattling of chains and that familiar screeching, clunking sound as the steel door began to rise from the ground.

  “Alright matey. You not got rid of that piece a junk yet?” Tommy Burrows was not pleased to see the dark van parked outside and raised his hand as if to cuff the man who had brought it on the side of the head. “Fought I told y’er to dump ‘er. Fings are hot out there man. Someone got to Oz’. He’s dead.” Burrows took a few steps forward as he looked at the van before turning to face his friend.

  Pete White, or ‘Stinky Pete’ as the lads liked to call him, gave Tommy a look that said “Fuck Off”. “I ‘eard ‘bout Oz, but what ’ma supposed to use as a motor? Alright fir you and yer fancy brief.”

  “Jesus, do I need to spell it out for ya? We whacked the guy. What’f someone sawr us? What ‘bout that motor that went by when we was tossin’ him over? The Old Bill will be crawlin’ all over Oz’s stuff by now, and that could make fings very tricky.”

  “Cam’ on T, we had ‘im well wrapp’d up. Nobody would ‘ave sawr nuffin’ and there’ll be nuffin’ to find. That stiff ‘ill be well gone by now.”

  “What if it’s not? You never ’eard of forensic? Those fuckers could find that Lord Lucan geezer if they put their minds to it. Anyhows with yer stinky butt it’s little wonder that van don’t just get up an’ walk away all by itself. We need to dump ‘er, pronto.”

  Tommy Burrows was still shaking his head disparagingly when the first bullet ripped through his temple, sending blood and brains and soft tissue in all directions. Pete White hardly had time to register the warm sensation of his friend’s fresh blood on his face but, like the bad guy who’s about to taste lead in all good spaghetti westerns, he still managed to grab the gun from his pocket and was now waving it wildly in all directions.