Dead Money
by Teresa Hunter
Also by Teresa Hunter
Julia Lighthorn Series
TAKE A THOUSAND CUTS
What they said:
Taut pacy thriller, compelling and bloody
Emma Simon
Fast-moving tale of crime and tragic romance
Terry Murden
Brimming with tension – a page-turner with a twist. Devoured at one sitting,
Nic Cicutti.
A word from the author
Welcome to my novel Dead Money. I hope you find the story entertaining, exciting and thought-provoking. If you enjoy the plot, characters and twists, please spread the word.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter `11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
PROLOGUE
Midnight Wednesday, October 3,
Bearsden, Glasgow
“Stand back, stand back,” a paramedic shouts at the crowd of photographers, television crews and ghoulish onlookers gathering in the rain, outside a modest semi in a town called Bearsden. By breakfast, this respectable home will be immortalised in the minds of the nation as a ‘House of Horrors’. The family who live here, no longer mother, father, son, daughter, but copy fodder for headline writers.
The mob parts to let the stretcher out. Chief Inspector Pitcher of the Met waits while the doors of the ambulance slam shut. Lights pump in the darkness as the vehicle departs.
Feet crunch on the gravel path, as he steps towards the entrance.
“Hope you had your tea early,” says the officer guarding the front door, giving the inspector’s ID no more than a cursory glance. He is expected.
Pitcher enters the hall. Scenes of crime officers, already working in the lounge, do not stop to acknowledge the outsider. Three men kneel around the rim of a pool of blood, soaking its way through a beige carpet. Another is zipping up a body bag.
He steps out through the open patio doors into the garden, and sees a bold red streak visible in the distance. Sleet rain is draining blood into tiny rivulets, glowing red under the police incident lighting. Pitcher has an uncontrollable urge to spit.
“The fourth?” he asks, as he steps back into the lounge. He means body, of course.
Without looking up, one officer taking samples from the carpet points back to the hall. “Second on the left,” he says.
Pitcher finds the study. More police are working there, silently, apart from the swinging ‘clack-clack’ of an office ball game someone has accidentally knocked. He doesn’t notice the immaculate decor. He doesn’t open the three filing cabinets, so couldn’t admire their wonder of order and efficiency. Only later will he remember not a single piece of paper is out of place on the desk.
His eye are drawn straight to the wall behind it, splattered red.
“Blew his brains out, bastard,” says one of the officers, as the inspector stares at the sticky, sickly substance, clinging to the wall.
“Wish I’d got there first,” the officer adds.
Midnight Wednesday, October 3, Edinburgh
Fifty miles to the East, the stillness of an office is broken by the shrill ring of a telephone. Alexander Ross starts, and rubs his eyes. He flicks his wrist to check the time.
“Midnight...” he hadn’t realised it was so late. Closing a buff file on his desk, he reaches for the receiver.
“Who can this be?” he wrinkles his handsome intelligent face into an irritable scowl.
He knows the voice at the other end. As he listens, his heart begins to race, quietly at first, then louder, until it thumps against his rib cage.
The line goes dead. He lets the receiver drop, cradling it in the crook of his neck.
“No, no, dear God, no. It was only money, Ken,” he says, slumping down in his chair.
“Dear God,” he repeats over and over.
Midnight, Wednesday October 3, Black Top, Glasgow.
The room is cold and dark, but the child is too afraid to switch on the naked bulb. The dark is infinitely preferable to what the light might bring. A tear slides down her cheek. He had promised to help them. To set them free.
“Just a couple more days,” he promised.
How she had dreamed of it... and then the nightmare began...
Chapter 1
9.30am Friday, September 28,
Whitechapel London
“Bad news, I’m afraid, Jules,” Omar Khan greeted me, with what just about passed for a smile. “They won't drop the case.”
I was disappointed, but not exactly surprised. I had always doubted that getting me sacked would satisfy Kane National Savings Bank. No, I had to be permanently ruined.
“We had hoped that now...”
“Now they’ve dropped the action against the Examiner...” I finished for him.
“We understand they’ve withdrawn the writ against the newspaper...”
“But not against me personally?”
He shook his head slowly. “The Examiner are such cowards. They would have walked it in court. Victor Kane didn’t have a leg to stand on.”
“It’s my fault, me and my sharp tongue. When will I learn?”
Omar smiled despite himself. “What was it you wrote? Kane but not able.”
“It was a joke.”
“Not everyone shares your sense of humour.”
He was right, of course, and so was the Examiner.
“The legal bills would have crippled them. There were a thousand jobs at stake,” I said.
“Which bullyboy Kane knew full well...straightforward thuggery.”
For a lawyer, Omar could be endearingly injudicious, but try as hard as I did, I couldn’t bring myself to hate my former employer for giving in to the bank’s blackmail.
“And it worked,” I said, which was the hardest bit for both of us. “It always works. The deepest pocket always wins.”
Our eyes met across the desk of my office in Whitechapel.
“Don’t you ever get tired of it all, Omar? All the slippery characters, the crooks who get out with their millions just before the whistle blows.”
“It’s your millions, I’m more worried about right now.”
“Millions?” I laughed. “You can’t get blood out of a stone.”
It was laughable. Only a few short months ago, I was the proud possessor of an office overlooking the Bank of England, a senior editor with the City Examiner. Then I tweaked the nose of KNS’s Victor Kane, forgetting he had learnt his business survival strategies in the playgrounds of Glasgow’s East End.
“Come on,” Omar wasn’t having any of it. “You’ll live to fight another day.”
I shook my head.
“It’s over.”
“Not at all. It’ll never get to court. There’s no case to answer. Kane’s lawyers aren’t idiots. They know they’d be slaughtered, and hammered with costs for wasting court time.”
“I wish I had your confidence.”
“It’s a simple game of who blinks first. And it won’t be us.”
I knew he meant well, but the time had come to walk away.
“I can't fund a fight,” I pleaded. “I need all my money to pay my bills while I crank start my career.”
“Money’s no problem,” he said deadpan. “We do loans. We can mortgage your flat.”
He threw back his head and laughed.
“Your face…a picture,” but when his chuckles subsided, he turned serious. “Dad says our family owes you, so you’re not to worry about a thing.”
My spirits had improved by the time he left, but not for long. My next visitors were two trade unionists, convinced they had been robbed by their employer.
I felt sorry for them. Truly, I did. They had never asked anyone for anything, and now they were asking me. But there was nothing I could do to help them.
“You’re our last hope, Julia,” said the Glaswegian. “We’ve been to the polis and the fraud office. We’ve even been to government, but nobody wants to know.”
I’d known Ken Strachan for years. He was a good man. A good trade unionist, and a good friend to me. Given me some cracking leads in the past. Indeed, my first big break. He was straight and he was sound. But my mind was made up. I had to stay out of trouble until this court case was settled.
“I’m sorry Ken. Truly sorry. But there’s nothing I can do. You’ll never prove fraud. Even if we did, it won’t get your members their money back.”
“Maybe. But I’d be happy seeing somebody behind bars.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “That won’t happen either.”
“It might.” He slammed a newspaper cutting on the desk and stabbed at the picture of a dark-suited man, wearing a trilby hat on top of iron grey hair.
“Here’s a good place to start. We need you. We can’t do this ourselves.” He spoke in short sharp bursts, agitation rising along with his frustration. “You got the folk at English Life their money back. Helped those mugs, who bought dodgy bonds. You’ve helped tons of people, whose savings vanished. This thing’s bigger than all that. Bigger than you ken. Why will you no help us now?”
I looked Ken straight in the eyes. “We can’t win, we can’t beat them.”
“Nay, lassie, nay,” defeatism was not in his vocabulary.
“We never have. Not really.”
He flinched.
“It can’t be right. You graft all your life, put a wee bit by for when you’re old, then just as you’re ready to hang up your boots you’re told your pensions been lost.”
Of course, it wasn’t right. It had nothing to do with right or wrong. It was business.
“Lost, they say,” Yorkshireman Jim Sugden joined in. “Lost, like you were careless, or summat. Somehow mislaid a fortune.” His thumbs twitched erratically across his palms. “I paid my money in every week for 40 years. That was my money. It isn’t lost. It’s been stolen.”
Ken had warned me about the breakdown, when he called to arrange the appointment. Sugden’s nerves were shot to pieces. I had tried ever- so -gently to put them off, but they wouldn’t be waylaid.
“It came as a terrible shock,” Sugden continued. “Don’t worry, we were told. At least, your pension’s safe. They can’t touch that. It was all lies. At nearly 58, I was out of work without a penny to live on. I had a nervous breakdown with the shock. Under psychiatrist for three months. Then I had to find work…..”
“What work can you get at 58? Tell me that?” Strachan interrupted.
“Ended up as a baggage handler at an airport, humping heavy cases,” Sugden’s lips were trembling.
“First his back went,” Ken was angry. “Then his knee. He was told to use one of those metal frames by the doctor.”
“Couldn’t,” Sugden’s voice quivered. “Had to keep working. Nothing to live on. Had to keep doing the lifting job.”
Ken leaned across my desk and took my hand pleading.
“Help us Julia and I’ll give you the best story you’ve ever printed.”
He was asking for the impossible. I had just been sacked in humiliating circumstances and had a writ for a million pounds hanging over my head. There was no way I could start heading into more trouble right now. Even if I did investigate and come up with a decent story, who would print it?
He dropped my hand, and slammed a tight fist hard onto the desk.
“How come nobody listens?” he shouted furiously. “Tell us, Julia, just tell us. How do we get folk to listen?”
Sugden had one more try. “You will help us, won’t you?”
I did not respond.
Chapter 2
1pm Friday, September 28,
Whitechapel London
When they had gone, I switched the television on to catch the 1 0’clock headlines. Another teenager stabbed in London; engineering firm collapsed with loss of 500 jobs; students drowning in debts; and the stock market down a further 20 points. Not much joy there. I killed the screen.
Meanwhile, I had to get on with my life, and my first priority was finding work. I had an office, a desk, a TV, a telephone and a PC; everything I needed to embark on a new career as a freelance journalist. There was only one ingredient missing...commissions.
I had spent weeks trying, since Marsha offered me space in the community project, she ran on the Whitechapel Road.
There was nothing for it. I began calling and emailing every contact I could think of.
“Josh, it’s Julia Lighthorn, how are you?” I bubbled down the line to the financial editor of the Weekly City News. I’d know Joshua Bailey for 20 years.
“Jules, how good to hear from you,” he responded, before cursing, unconvincingly, “Oh, damn...”
How did I know this was coming?
“My other line’s going. Can I come back to you?”
“Sure,” my heart sank.
“Email me your number, I’ll get back soonest,” and he was gone. He wasn’t the first old friend to cut me dead and he wouldn’t be the last.
But I wouldn’t give up. I would never concede defeat. If I allowed Kane to destroy me, his victory would be absolute. Evil would emerge triumphant. I couldn’t let that happen. So I kept calling, as the weak autumn sun seeped out of a darkening sky. Call after call was either cut short on some lame excuse, or simply tolerated in non-committal silence. My inbox was empty. Emails unanswered.
At 5pm, I decided to call it a day. Mina, Marsha’s reluctant receptionist, put her head round the door, and plonked a coffee in front of me, announcing her departure for the evening.
“Tell her ladyship, if she wants anything tonight, she can get it herself.” Quomina, to give the former bag-lady her full title, pronounced the ‘her’ with a huff. She had never quite forgiven Marsha for rescuing her from Waterloo’s cardboard city, and making her respectable.
I stood sipping coffee for a while at the window, watching the busy world go by below. The offices, above a Bangladeshi supermarket, were squeezed between silks and spice outlets, discount stores and betting shops; the stalls of the Whitechapel market a wash of colour opposite the severe Victorian hospital across the road.
Traffic,
both human and petrol-driven, poured ceaselessly by, twenty-four-seven. This tiny corner of London was a beacon and sponge for all the world’s weary; the dispossessed and the outcast. Its capacity to absorb, integrate, and expunge refugees through the centuries knew no limits. They came and they went, but the market lived on, vital and vibrant.
As soon as there was a London, they had come. Those persecuted by religious wars had found a safe haven in its filthy streets; the Huguenots, Irish and Jews. After them, Asians, fleeing tyranny, came in search of asylum. Many, like Omar’s family, the Khans, flourished. Three Khan brothers fled a war-torn Kashmir in the 1940s in the hope of a better life. An uncle encouraged them towards the law, and paid for their studies, even though he could ill afford it. They each held a two-foot by one-foot brown attaché case, into which were neatly packed all their belongings, when they emerged out of Whitechapel tube station, looking for that uncle’s house. Each Khan brother had three sons, and those three sons spawned dozens of sons and daughters, almost all of whom became lawyers.
Now Khans had grown to become one of London’s most powerful law firms. They moved out of Whitechapel long ago, into prestigious offices in Docklands. Not quite the City, but no longer the East End either. A bridge, maybe, between the two.
Now, it was the time of the Afghans and the Kurds, the Romanians and Somalis. They scuttled by on the street below; children, who never seemed to be at school; women in their yashmaks; the elderly, tired and crumpled by their experiences, old beyond their years. Young stallholders, mobile glued to ear, exuded energy, hope and enterprise. Soon, they too would be gone, in the search for their first million.
Next came the student nurses and doctors jogging towards the pelican crossing, heading back to their rooms at the Royal London for a quick bite and change before the night shift.
The phone rang. I seized it hopefully, but it was a wrong number. So I returned to the window, where I saw Marsha running in haste to get back to the office. She was returning from a meeting with the probation service. Marsha exuded everything that was good about London. Born and bred in Tower Hamlets, just like her parents, and their parents, she loved every smell and brick, every hope and disappointment of this deprived borough.
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