Dark Angel: a fast-paced serial killer thriller (The James & Sandersen Files Book 2)

by P. J. Nash

  Smichov Police Station, Prague

  ‘The Face of the Dark Angel,’ exclaimed Jezek, while thumping the newspaper. After several weeks of eye-straining work clicking frame-by-frame through the video footage, a reasonable image of her face emerged. Playing around with specialist software, the Czech police had produced a series of images of the suspected killer with different hairstyles and eye colour.

  ‘This will put the wind up the bitch,’ said Jezek.

  ‘Yes, but as Sandersen said, it could also put her over the edge,’ replied Jiri.

  ‘Fuck all that. You might buy all that psychobabble about her being a victim. But I don’t. She’s a mad bitch who needs catching.’

  Jiri smiled at his colleague. Jezek still regretted the end of capital punishment when murderers and rapists had regularly met their premature end on the gallows within the grim walls of Pankrac prison in a suburb of Prague.

  ‘Whatever happens, the freaks and ghouls will jam the lines,’ said Jiri.

  It was inevitable, given the level of media coverage, that it would bring in hundreds of calls from the mentally ill, the lonely and genuinely concerned but misguided who really thought their neighbour, partner or wife was the killer.

  ‘Of course, we can also hope our baited hook does its job,’ added Jiri.

  ‘Crazy Englishman,’ said Jezek.

  ‘He’s not that crazy. He’s getting paid to drink,’ said Jiri. Both men laughed.

  Police HQ, Melbourne

  It was midmorning by the time Police Commissioner Brent Matthews had finished reading the crime reports over his morning coffee after a brief lull in the days following the mawkish funeral of Bain. But nature abhors a vacuum. Spinks had ascended the vacated throne with some success. The majority of the Redback’s soldiers had stayed loyal, but some had splintered off. Spinks was in the process of mopping up these deserters via a policy of buying them off or via the barrel of an enforcer’s gun. This had caused a spike in violent crime in the city. A spate of fatal shootings, bashing’s, kidnappings and pistol whippings had broken out.

  In the cynical world of the police officer, Matthews knew that most of the victims were people who had nailed their colours to the mast of crime and were no innocents. He also knew that, sad as it was and beyond his power to control, someone or other had to sit at the top of the crime apex. From a policing aspect, Bain had been a gift. His policy was business first and bullets as a last resort. The fracturing of the “peace” that he had maintained led to more violence as smaller factions vied for turf to sell their drugs on.

  The journalists of The Age and the Herald Sun sat in their ivory towers writing sanctimonious editorials about how the once peaceful city was “teetering on the brink of anarchy”. What they seemed to understand is, like any major Metropolitan area, Melbourne would always have people who wanted drugs and money to buy them. And while that remained the case, there would always be someone willing to supply them.

  To further compound the situation, a number of smaller gangs had dared to try to muscle in on Redback turf. More worrying yet were the reports of incursions by outlaw motorcycle gangs who were probing into the city, keen to push their crystal meth, known as “Ice”, on the street. Faced with a slew of bad headlines, Matthews had ordered the formation of a new anti-gang taskforce. Worryingly, he yearned for the days when underworld was under the iron fist of Cyrus Bain. He picked up his phone and dialled Adrian Marsh.

  ‘Hi, Adie, tell me, what happened to Lawrence James? Is he still living high on the hog with that blonde in the back of Bourke?’

  The George & Dragon Pub, Old Town Square, Prague

  Despite the best efforts to show them some of Prague’s best watering holes, Jaroslav, the stag parties’ guide from Chaos tours, had given into their wish to get to a “proper pub like back home”. So here they were, swilling Guinness in a fake English bar, paying around five times the rate of what a Czech beer cost. But they were happy, and after they were well oiled on the black stuff, he would move them onto a strip club where he got a wad of Euros for each party he bought in.

  James was feeling queasy after his eighth pint and staggered outside for a smoke. As he was tamping down a bowlful of Squadron Leader, a woman approached him.

  ‘Hey, please, do you have a light?’ James’ wooziness disappeared in an instant.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. He pulled out a lighter, but not before pushing the button on his concealed radio to alert the others. She sucked in the smoke and blew a plume into the air. James reckoned her to be in her thirties. Small but with a great body shape and an oval face with those high cheekbones and clear complexion that made Czech women the eighth wonder of the world. Her long blonde hair had been died black and cut shorter, but James had a great memory for faces. She was a dead ringer for the e-fit in that morning’s paper.

  ‘So, you are British?’ she said nonchalantly.

  ‘For my sins,’ James retorted.

  ‘You come here for a good time before you take a wife?’

  ‘Something like that.’” said James sending a huge plume of blue smoke into the frigid air.

  ‘My daughter is ill, and I need money. Would you like one night with me for one hundred Euros?’

  She unzipped her coat to reveal a T-shirt barely restraining her pert breasts. James couldn’t help but feel aroused, and she saw it in his eyes. The wolf-like flicker of carnal lust she inspired in men.

  ‘Well, that’s a tempting offer. You got a place?’ he replied, not removing his eyes from what was on offer.

  ‘Five minutes by tram, Mr Sherlock Holmes,’ she replied, zipping up her coat and winking.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said. His radio was now on open broadcast, and its GPS tracker would give his movements to his trackers in real time. He followed her into the narrow, winding streets of the Old Town.

  Supermax, HM Prison Barwon, Nr Geelong, Victoria

  A few miles from Geelong, the prison built in the nineties is the place where the State of Victoria keeps the worst of the worst, not just off the streets but away from each other. Feuds that begin on the street still smouldered behind high concrete walls and high wire fences. That’s why Tucker Watson had been held in the Olearia section of the prison – well away from the rival Comanchero’s bikies who wanted to even the score. Watson, the leader of the Plantagenet’s motorcycle gang, had bashed their leader to a bloody pulp in a bar fight over who parked their bike where. Tucker Watson was eighteen stone of muscled, multi-tattooed meanness coupled with an agile mind and animal cunning. Three years in a supermax hadn’t been easy, but a crippling regime of weights, sit-ups and push-ups and a series of smuggled mobile phones had left him physically fit and the Plantagenet’s motorcycle gang firmly in his grasp.

  He hefted his duffel bag of belongings over his shoulder and strode out into the morning sunlight. The prison gates clanged open, and he paced into the morning sunshine, a free man. Whoops and screams greeted him. A full complement of patched riders had taken over the carpark in front of the prison. The sun glinted off the chrome of the assembled bikes. From a watchtower, Victoria cops were videoing the gathering. Watson decided to humour them. He undid his belt dropped his trousers and waggled his pale arse at the cops in the tower. Applause broke out. It was soon drowned out by the throbbing of bike engines. Chuck Masters, his sergeant-at-arms, came forward and embraced him in a bear hug and pointed to a Harley on which a young girl swathed in leather sat beckoning to him. Watson kissed the girl and swung his legs over the bike.

  ‘Long Live the King!’ the bikes shouted in unison as the cavalcade of bikes roared out of the carpark and headed for Melbourne.

  Office Suite, Andel, Smichov, Prague

  Not wishing to impose on Jiri’s squad or make it appear that professional cops couldn’t cut the mustard with a serial killer investigation, James had hired a nondescript but functional office suite in a serviced office building in the Andel or “Angel” area of Smichov. Secure and discreet, it was only a few tram stops from Sm
ichov Police HQ where the criminal police investigation team was based. There was a main room with a couple of desks on which Quecus had installed banks of computers. In the kitchenette off to the side, a filter coffee machine burbled away, filling the office with a tempting aroma.

  Quercus looked from screen to screen as he charted James and the woman, who’d been named “Jane Doe” for ease of purpose, made their progress from the city to the suburbs. They’d crossed the river on a tram, and Quercus watched its stately progress on the left screen which displayed a real time GPS feed from the trackers of James and those of Walters and Smith, who had been following them at a discreet distance. They were two trams behind James.

  On the right-hand screen, he looked at the live feed from the drone which was currently circling over Smichov. Quercus had checked the Prague Transport DPP site to find the route of the tram. Much as Sandersen had predicted from her behavioural profile that she drawn up. The locus of most of the killings had been around the south-eastern suburbs of the city, predominantly in the Prague 5 postal area. That was apart from “the spectacular” on the Nusle bridge.

  As Sandersen had noted, this change in behaviour marked a downward turn in the mental stability of the killer. And while this made the killer more unstable and unpredictable, it made them more likely to make mistakes. Sandersen thought the e-fit in the media would act as a catalyst in this happening. From her brazen daylight approach to James, it seems as if this was now occurring.

  Police HQ, Melbourne

  ‘Well, Adie, tell me what you know about bikies?’ said Commissioner Matthews.

  Marsh wiped bagel crumbs from his mouth. ‘Well, they used to be disgusting beardy, beery oafs who liked to chain whip gays and greenies. Pretty bad news, if you were gay or a greenie. But mostly low-level crime and nuisance, maybe a bit of dope peddling”,’ said Marsh. He took a sip of coffee. ‘But now, they’re a different kettle of fish. Well-funded from protection and extortion rackets. Making big bucks off selling automatic weapons and methamphetamine or as we more often call it on the street “Ice”.’

  The two men were seated at a conference table in the commissioner’s office. Marsh had been to town on a book tour when he’d received a call from Matthews. He’d checked his diary, and they’d agreed on a breakfast meeting. This wasn’t two old friends meeting. Marsh knew Matthew’s had come fresh into the job on the ticket of clamping down on organised crime. His predecessor had departed under a cloud after the high-profile escape of Bain.

  ‘But they’re strictly wholesalers. They’re not interested in pushing penny wraps on street corners to meth heads. What’s probably the most frightening thing is, they’re not afraid to spill a lot of blood to protect their business. They’re tooled up with AK-47s and possibly even have RPGs and plastic explosives. In Europe, they went in for armed robbery on security vans in a big way. And because they’ve got fellow bikie brothers in Russia and Eastern Europe, there’s always as pipeline of guns and ammo available to them,’ Marsh added.

  Marsh was on the board of Alchemy Investigations and was its chief investigator. The company was on a retainer from the Victoria Police. Its role was to provide information on organised crime trends and strategic advice to tackle it. The company had picked up the role after the Armed Offenders Squad had collapsed in public disgrace after countless allegations of backhanders, beatings and the disappearance of hundreds of kilos of seized drugs from supposedly secure evidence rooms. Some officers had been jailed for their parts in this. But mostly they were allowed to quietly resign with their reputations and police pensions intact. Lawrence James had been the lynchpin of bringing down the squad. The former members of the squad had reformed as a semi-legal investigation company called Ronin Investigations. Top of their list was lining their pockets. But killing Lawrence James was also on their list. A bounty of one hundred and fifty thousand Aussie dollars was still on his head.

  ‘So, we know they’re top-notch bad boys. But what do you think we should do to take them down?’ asked Matthews.

  ‘Two words for you,’ said Marsh. ‘Lawrence James.’

  Office Suite, Andel, Smichov, Prague

  Quercus shrieked in horror as James’s tracker blip disappeared from the screen. ‘Houston, we have a problem!’

  Sandersen span around in her chair to face him. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He’s gone off the screen somewhere in the tower blocks,’ replied Quercus.

  ‘Hello, Mobile One. Do you have visual?’ asked Sandersen with a palpable tremor in her voice.

  ‘Mobile One to Eyrie, Negative. They got off a few seconds in front of us and disappeared into the estate. Some babushka got in front of me getting off the tram, and they had gone. It’s a fucking rabbit warren out here,’ said Walters into his radio, as he scanned the vista of uniform sixties tower blocks. The area was empty, save for a mother pushing a pram and an elderly couple pulling a shopping trolley.

  ‘Bugger!’ screamed Sandersen. ‘Looks like he’s on his own,’ she said resignedly.

  Apartment, Barrandov

  The five minutes had actually been twenty. With hindsight, James would see this as strange. Normally, a sex worker has a nearby bolt hole to their pitch or takes the punter to a hot sheet hotel. But he would come to see her MO. It was to keep her victims away from witnesses and CCTV camera that would form a trail of possible evidence. While on a bone rattling ride on ancient tram that had seen better days, the tall buildings of Andel had soon given away to a former industrial sprawl of closed down factories and more active railway sidings. The gentrification hadn’t quite reached this hinterland.

  James had thought they must be on the very edge of the city when he nearly fell over the woman as the tram sped forward and began ascending a steep causeway.

  ‘Hey, Mister Sherlock, you don’t get to get on top of me till you give me money,’ she smirked, putting a hand on his chest and lightly pushing him back.

  The tram ascended the causeway, and the land dropped away. Looking down, he saw a small village nestling in the valley.

  ‘That’s Hlubocepy, we are going to Barrandov. This causeway makes us part of civilisation now,’ she joked.

  The ground reappeared, and the tram levelled off. A series of tower blocks appeared, and James saw this was not some hamlet, but a fair-sized suburb. The tram halted, and she beckoned him off and out into a square surrounded by a large supermarket, a chemist and a café. On the other side of the square, she approached the front doors of a tower block and opened a door. They took the stairs to the second floor.

  The apartment was sparsely furnished but comfortable. A number of top-notch electronic devices, a stereo and plasma TV looked like recent purchases.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she asked.

  ‘Beer, if you’ve got it, please.’

  She pulled a bottle from the fridge. He nodded his thanks, twisted off the cap and took a long pull. James leant against the large window, noticing it opened the whole way inwards.

  Standing back, she undid her blouse and pushed out her bust. ‘You like?’ she asked.

  ‘Very good,’ he nodded.

  Her hand slid to his crotch and then across to his hip pocket. ‘One hundred Euros for me first,’ she said.

  James pulled out his wallet and slipped a slim wad of notes onto the kitchen counter. His phone vibrated in his pocket. Quick as a fox, she whipped out the phone and turned it off.

  ‘You won’t be needing this, Mr Englishman, I will distract you for a while.’ She took off her bra and slid out of her jeans.

  ‘This way to the Pleasure Zone,’ she smiled coquettishly. He followed in a cloud of clashing desire and duty.

  Tolson’s Tow N’ Scrap, Melbourne

  The massive Rottweiler snarled and barked on its long chain as the two Range Rover Sports sped into the junkyard. Skidding to a halt they raised a cloud of dust that blew across the row of parked up motorbikes.

  ‘Shuudupp, ya bastard,’ a slab of muscled beard said to the dog,
giving it a deft boot. Two men dressed in jeans and jackets exited the first vehicle. Handguns appeared in their hands like magic. The first poked his gun into the bikie’s chest.

  ‘Mr Smith wants us to check the venue before he enters,’ said the first man in a manner which brooked no argument.

  ‘Be my guest,’ said the bikie with a sweep of his arm.

  The first man moved past him and walked up the steps of the portacabin that acted as an office. Peering past the second guy who stood with his gun poised at his vital areas, the bikie saw that the second Range Rover had five occupants behind the shaded glass.

  The first man returned. ‘All good,’ he said. He nodded to the second vehicle, and the doors opened. Two men clutching MP5 sub machine guns stepped out shielding another man who appeared to be packing no artillery. He did, however, have a peculiar bulge under his shirt.

  ‘Welcome to the Ponderosa,’ said the bikie.

  ‘What a shithole,’ said the bulge man with a wince of pain. His acolytes assisted him inside.

  Tucker Watson sat overfilling a swivel office chair. Flanking him were two bikies clutching shotguns.

  ‘Mr Smith, I presume,’ said Watson, extending a beefy hand.

  ‘The one and fucking only,’ said Smith, meeting his with a clammy hand. ‘I suggest our friends put down the artillery and maybe we can talk a bit less formally.’