SHADOW OF THE BURJ
An Emirate of Dubai Thriller
J Jackson Bentley
First published by Fidus Publishing at Smashwords 2012
Second Edition 2014
Copyright 2014 Fidus Publishing
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Author’s Note
In this book and other set in the Emirates there will be issues with your preconceptions of spelling. This arises because Arabic words do not translate into English easily and many words have no English equivalent. An example is the ubiquitous Burka or Burkha or Burqa or Burqua. Another example is Sheik, Sheikh or Shaikh, the spelling differs from country to country. Simply put these words originated when an Arabic speaker would say the word in Arabic and a Westerner would write it down as it sounded in their own tongue (mostly English, French and German). Hence the differences in spelling.
Even place names change, is it Nad Al Sheba, Nad Al Shebba or Nadd Al Sheba, all appear on maps and on road signs. In many instances where Western dictionaries show a K the Arab English spelling will have a Q.
The same problems arise when translating English to Arabic. Much of this English is transliterated and not translated because there is no traditional Arab word for ‘cheesecake’ for example. So the Chilis Restaurant chain does not use the Arabic words for Chilis, it simply copies the style of the logo in Arabic text. If you then read the Arabic word out loud it sounds like Chilis.
I love to receive comments from readers and I am grateful when errors are pointed out but it is almost impossible to satisfy everyone. I already had two dictionaries on my computer, UK English and American English, so imagine the fun I have translating Arabic words and phrases.
Dubai is a wonderful and exciting place but it is small, the Ruler can often be seen in local restaurants, Crown Princes turn up at TGI Fridays and Sheikh’s of all kinds abound in business. This is a much more integrated society that we are used to in the West where our leaders are often distant and well protected.
Enjoy the book and let me have your comments at [email protected].
Chapter 1
Harringford, Oxfordshire, England:
10th February 2012; 6.00 am GMT.
The black, custom painted motorcycle coasted into a clearing in the trees and its rider shut down the engine. The ground crackled as the rider rolled the big bike over the frozen mud. It was still early, and the frost lay thick on the ground.
The Harley Davidson looked dated but was in fact a recent model. The Sturgis Dyna FXDB, like all Harleys, looked a little old fashioned because it was low slung and the rider sat upright close to the road. The bike appeared dirty and neglected on the surface, but beneath the film of road salt and mud lay a powerful and well maintained road machine. The white and red decals on either side of the six gallon petrol tank declared it to be ridden by a “Warrior”, the Warriors being a violent offshoot of the British Hell’s Angels.
The rider maintained his distance from the shabby trailer park that was home to the Warriors’ Oxford Chapter. He didn’t want to wake anyone in the camp; at least not yet. He removed a thick leather glove and raised his left hand to look at the cheap gothic styled watch on his wrist. Each knuckle bore a letter, crudely drawn in blue ink; the letters spelled out the word HATE. His hand was grubby and unwashed. Black oily deposits outlined his long fingernails. It was almost 6am, and the camp across the clearing was dark and silent.
Bricko, a nickname name derived from a crude comparison of his build to a well-constructed outside toilet, reached into his battered leather jacket and retrieved the tabloid newspaper he had purchased just minutes ago from a nearby corner shop. He unfolded the red top newspaper and reread the headline; “Bikers’ Underage Sex Ring Exposed”. The words and pictures were credited to a journalist named Max Richmond. The sordid story was accompanied by grainy pictures and claimed to expose the activities of the “Warriors, a notorious motorbike gang who modelled themselves on the “Hell’s Angels”. The big biker did not need to reread the article, which started on the front page before continuing over four more pages in the centre of the paper. He knew what it said by heart.
Standing at around six feet two inches tall, and with a solid stomach hanging over a straining studded belt, Bricko would have looked like eighteen stones of menace to any opposing biker gang. His long oily hair and unkempt beard did not detract from the menacing message his cold ice blue eyes sent when he frowned, and he was frowning now.
Bricko had been living in this run-down mobile home park for three months, but now knew that the time for him to move on had arrived. He knew that if he removed the Warrior motif painted on his black leather jacket and replaced it with a target he couldn’t be in more danger than he was already. With a back story that linked him to the five most wanted biker gangs in the country, Bricko would have been considered the archetypal violent and transient biker. Once he had set things in motion this morning, he would have to be out of here and on the road again within the hour.
The aging biker reached into his pocket and removed an ancient and battered ‘pay-as-you-go’ mobile phone. The phone registered only a couple of bars, and so he climbed off his bike and walked further into the clearing. When more bars appeared he dialled the number listed in the newspaper as being the ‘Crimestoppers’ confidential helpline. It took some time for the phone to be answered and, when it was, he heard a young woman’s voice on the other end of the line. She sounded bored and tired as she announced her first name. In fairness, she had probably been manning the phones all night, dealing with drunks and hoax callers. Nonetheless, she perked up noticeably when she heard the deep base voice with a thick Black Country accent. She had heard it a number of times before.
“This is Bricko; you might want to take notes.” The biker knew that the call was likely to be recorded anyway. “I’ve just seen the newspaper article about the motorcycle gang we talked about before, and I can tell you that the Warriors are living in an old mobile home park outside Harringford Village off the B436.” He paused while the operator took notes. “But the pigs had better be quick or the camp will be empty when they get there. Tell the paper I’ll be calling for the reward money; remember the name ‘Bricko’”. He spelled it out and ended the call.
Having made the call, he knew he could expect the police within the hour. Bricko removed the battery and SIM card from the phone and threw them deep into the undergrowth. Not that there was anything on the card that could lead the police to him. Then, quite deliberately, he placed the phone under the wheel of the bike and climbed back on. The engine roared into life - there was no need for quiet now - and he rode over
the mobile phone and into the camp.
***
UK biker gangs had proliferated in the craziness of the 1960s when their reputation for violence and disorder preceded them. Each successive summer their standing had been enhanced, as they were blamed for terrorising seaside towns and quiet villages across the country. But, as with most worries and concerns, the fear of biker gangs was largely unwarranted, fuelled as it was by anecdote more than by fact. The truth was that the bulk of the violence associated with bikers was internecine, one gang targeting another; only rarely did this tribal conflict spill over and trouble the general population.
By the end of the millennium the majority of Hell’s Angels weren’t dissimilar to the aging hippies who were conceived at around the same time. The bikers tended to be jaded, middle aged men and women who simply refused to move on and who insisted on clinging to old habits and outmoded ideals. By 2010 most gangs or chapters of the British Hell’s Angels consisted of part time members with homes, jobs and families, who rode together only at weekends. After fifty years of roaming the country in gangs, most bikers had succumbed to the luxuries of Middle England and were more likely to be found raising money for disadvantaged children, or some other charity, than raising hell. Some disillusioned Angels broke away into smaller, more extreme factions, continued to live the biker ideals and considered their ex comrades to be sell outs. That was a view held by Jonty Jackson.
Jonty, christened Jonathan Derek Latimer, was raised in a bungalow in a leafy suburb of Oxford and had been a pillar of middle class young adult society until his final year at University. Celebrating the completion of his final exam and his last edition of the OSH “Oxford Student Herald” as editor, he had spent the night participating in a student drinking game and had drunk so much it was a wonder he could stand up, let alone walk home.
Jonathan was close to the digs he shared with fellow students when he spotted a young girl sitting on the kerb crying. It turned out that it was her birthday, and she had got drunk and become immobile so her friends had abandoned her. She sat forlorn in torn tights and a black dress that concealed little. The new graduate helped her to her feet and together they stumbled towards his lodgings.
Even now, fifteen years later, he couldn’t remember the details of what happened that night. He recalled, inasmuch as he could recall anything, that they had consensual sex and that he treated her well, but the bruises on her thin body and the invisible tears to her young organs told a different story. By the time he had sobered up the girl had been interviewed by the police and admitted to a hospital, where she had been subjected to a rape test, whilst her mother and father waited outside, bemused and confused.
“She was supposed to be at a friend’s house…… we didn’t even know she owned a dress like that,” they were later quoted as saying.
Jonathan had fully recovered from his hangover by the time he picked up the local evening newspaper; he had even managed to attend his final tutorial. The lead story shook him to the core, and he knew at that moment that his life was over.
Even through his drunken stupor he had appreciated that the girl was slightly built, not yet a fully developed woman, and somehow he had liked that about her, but never in his wildest imaginings had he thought that she was a virgin and had just turned fourteen years of age. As he read the article he swore out loud, to the consternation of a crowd of tourists walking by. He forced himself to read on. The police had his fingerprints on her handbag and the girl, Olivia, recalled that she had been raped on a college campus with historic buildings but was confused as to which one it might have been. Any scintilla of hope about evading justice that Jonathan might have held on to evaporated when he turned to the inside pages.
The sketch was masterful; his mother would have loved it on her living room wall. It might just as well have had his name written underneath. The girl had obviously spent the wee small hours awake and staring at his sleeping face before making her escape. If there had been any doubt about who the sketch portrayed it was removed by the description of his tattooed shoulders, a colourful eagle whose wingspan reached from shoulder to shoulder with the words “Freedom from Tyranny, Freedom from Government” inked below. It could only be a matter of time before the police spoke to Inky the tattooist and came knocking at his door. When they did, he couldn’t be there.
Since that day, and for the intervening fifteen years, Jonty had stayed one step ahead of the authorities. He changed his appearance, he made money where he could and now he led an ever decreasing band of hapless bikers who lacked the imagination to break free from the “Warriors” and their less than charismatic leader.
But today all that was about to change. Today, Jonty was about to rejoin civilised society. Today Jonathan Derek Latimer would emerge from the shadows and face the music.
***
Bricko propped up his Harley and walked purposefully over to the trailer which housed Jonty and his latest girlfriend. He tried the door and found that it was locked, but he pressed his shoulder to the centre of the door and pushed until the thin metal bowed and the door sprang open. The door crashed against the trailer wall, and Bricko stepped into the bedroom.
Jonty was awoken by the crashing door and assumed the worst, that the Angels or the Predators were mounting a revenge attack. He flung back the covers and made a grab for the old gun he kept by the bed. Bricko yelled at him.
“Put it down, Jonty! It’s only me, you prat!”
Jonty was standing naked beside the bed, holding his chest.
“Bricko! Dog, what are you doing? Couldn’t you have knocked?” Jonty pulled the covers from the bed and covered the bottom half of his slack, pallid torso, and in so doing left Dani, his girlfriend, naked on the bed. Bricko looked at the girl and snorted with disgust. Her pubescent body was thin, almost emaciated and undeveloped. Bricko wondered whether the girl was even a teenager.
“This,” spat Bricko, “is what’s going to send us all to prison.” He looked purposefully at the young girl, who looked terrified. He walked over to Jonty and slapped the newspaper into his bare chest. Jonty took the paper and looked at the front page before dropping the covers and abandoning all thoughts of modesty.
“Not again,” he wailed, to nobody in particular. “Not again!”
***
Ten minutes later Dani and Jonty were partially clothed. The girl was sobbing pitifully and Jonty sat ashen faced on the bed, looking at newspaper pictures of himself and the other Warriors selling dope, getting stoned and partying with very young semi naked girls.
Bricko had been sitting on the edge of the bed trying to comfort the distraught girl, while Jonty watched his future unravel in newsprint before his eyes for the second time in his life. Bricko stood up and walked towards the trailer door.
“You know, Jonty, you really are a moron. We had a good thing going here and you’ve blown it with your appetite for girls barely in their teens. You must have seen this coming.” He shook his head and pushed his way through the crowd of confused bikers who had gathered in the doorway to see what the commotion was all about.
Bricko was in his trailer, throwing a few personal items into a scruffy holdall, when Jonty appeared in the doorway.
“Bricko, mate, don’t let it all end like this.” Bricko continued his packing without answering or even so much as looking up. Jonty covered his face with his hands and asked, “What are we going to do now?”
The other biker zipped up his case and moved towards the door, where he finally looked him in the eyes and answered him. “Well, Jonty, I don’t know about you, but I’m leaving. If the newspaper and that Max Richmond bloke have told the scuffers where we’re living, we can expect a visit from them tomorrow at the latest.”
“I guess it’s time to move on, then.” Jonty gazed around the camp. It wasn’t much, but he had lived here for almost five years, off and on. “I’ll have the Warriors out of here by morning.”
Bricko knew it was already too late for the rest of them, but he smiled a
mirthless smile and squeezed Jonty’s shoulder as he passed. Jonty placed his hand over Bricko’s and asked solemnly, “Brothers?” Bricko looked into Jonty’s eyes and replied with a conviction he didn’t feel, “Always, Dog, always!”
The customised black Harley was heading away from the camp on a rutted farm track when Bricko heard the sirens a mile or so away. He looked at his watch.
“Forty five minutes,” he said to himself. “That has to be some kind of record.” Two minutes later he was on the A34 and heading towards a lock up workshop on the outskirts of Newbury.
***
Bricko pulled the Harley into the lock up workshop and closed the door. There was a lot to do if he wanted to keep one step ahead of the police, who by now would have Jonty and his gang in custody.
The biker took off his jacket, pushed it into a large cloth laundry bag and sat on an old easy chair. He unfastened his boots, slipped them off and stood up; he was a good two inches shorter without the steps in the boots. Slipping out of his leather trousers and grubby black tee shirt, he revealed the webbing that held the bulky latex body suit in place. Relieved to be free of the constricting latex, he stuffed that, too, into the bag.
Standing in front of the stainless steel sink the shorter, thinner biker adjusted the shaving mirror before reaching for a set of Wahl hairdressing shears. Setting the guard at number four, Bricko pushed the shears across his scalp from front to back until his long greasy hair lay on the black plastic sheet on the floor beneath his feet. With his hair sticking up in an impromptu crew cut no more than three quarters of an inch long, Bricko was already beginning to disappear.
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