Vengeance

by Donald Phillips

Chapter 25

  Boxing Day was proving to be as quiet as the grave and Jackie Ward wondered if the new Guv'nor had called her into his office for a pep talk just to pass the time of day or because he was bored sitting around waiting for something to happen on this unusually quiet Christmas. It was a funny thing, but it didn't matter how often she saw Peter Grinton there, she could not get used to some one else sitting behind what to her mind, would always be MacAllister's desk. Detective Inspector Peter Grinton wasn't a bad Guv’nor compared to some she had known, even if he was a bit of a book soldier, but he wasn't MacAllister, although he had given in to them calling him Guv’nor. Perhaps Marcus Lomax had been right all along. Perhaps she had had a bad case of boss fixation and had been too blind to realise it. She pulled her attention back to what her new boss was saying with some difficulty. That was also a part of the problem. This one did bang on a bit before he came to the point, by which time her mind had gone back to the case he had just called her away from. She made another effort to take in what Grinton was saying. Today he was going around the houses more than normal and he looked a bit embarrassed.

  “So as they all come from Bristol they have asked me if we could look through our records and see if we could come up with anything that might throw some light on the subject.”

  As she still didn't have a clue what he was talking about Jackie decided to force the pace.

  “Let me see if I have got this right, Guv. A rock band gets assaulted in Birmingham and you want me to check and see if there is anything on them at this end?”

  Grinton nodded.

  “Well if I knew what they were called it might help me.”

  “Oh yes, sorry, Jan. They are called Metal Heaven.”

  She forgot to be angry that he insisted on calling her Jan instead of Jackie, as her head came up with a jerk.

  “Where did you say they were beaten up, Birmingham?”

  “Yes and I didn't say beaten up. I said assaulted.”

  His eyes refused to meet her face and she got mad.

  “Look, Guv'nor. I am a big girl and I don't have to be protected from the bloody world. In eight years on the force I have seen murder, rape, sodomy, arson, perversion and armed robbery, so I know what it is all about. What you are doing is treating me as the little woman who needs protecting and that is just bloody chauvinism. And while I am at it, the name is Jackie and not Jan. Now what happened to these guys?”

  Grinton waved his hands in surrender at her outburst and the fire from the big eyes.

  “All right, Jackie, Sergeant, I apologise. Lets start again from the beginning shall we?”

  He looked at his note pad.

  “In the early hours of Christmas morning Metal Heaven were returning to Bristol from a late night recording session in Manchester. Just to the south of Birmingham their bus was waved down by a police sergeant in a dark blue Transit van who told them their rear lights were defective. Being Christmas the police sergeant offered to take them back to the police motorway depot and get the mechanic there to have a look at the lights instead of calling out a breakdown service and the driver of the bus gratefully agreed. He didn't fancy waiting hours for someone to drag themselves out to the motorway on Christmas morning.”

  He waved a hand towards the notepad.

  “It seems that while all this was going on, the rest of the band were asleep in the back of the bus. However, where they ended up wasn't a police motorway depot, but at a derelict farm. Here, the transit driver, who wasn't in uniform, joined the so-called police sergeant, who had stayed on the bus to give directions, and weapons were produced. The four band members were then woken up and led away to one of the farm buildings.”

  He checked his notes.

  “The coach driver was then handcuffed to his steering wheel and didn't see anything else, but what happened was that the second man,” he looked down again, “identified as one Samuel Cullings, an unemployed dock worker from Liverpool, systematically sodomised all four band members who had been tied across a crash barrier that had been installed in an old cowshed just for that purpose.”

  Veteran of CID or not, Janet looked shocked.

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Yes Jackie, bloody hell. So you see Birmingham are rather anxious to know we can give them any help with this one.”

  She nodded.

  “Martin Jenson.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His daughter was involved with the band and claimed they raped her. It happened last August. Her father is, or was, a Royal Marine and he beat up one of the band quite badly after the affair, a West Indian called Rasta Fairbrother. Not content with that, Alison Jenson, the girl who claimed she was raped, stabbed him through one of the testicles with a boning knife and he later had to have surgery to have it removed.”

  “Bloody hell” It was Grinton's turn to be surprised. “And you think they are now having another go.”

  “Not the girl, Guv. She got six months in Pucklechurch for stabbing Fairbrother and isn't due out for some weeks. But her father was all fired up about her being put away and is easily capable of doing this. Two of the members of that band have black blood and Jenson hates blacks. Probably thinks they have sullied his daughter permanently.”

  Grinton sat back and rubbed a hand over his face. He gave a deep sigh.

  “All right, Jan, sorry, Jackie. Can you let Birmingham have all the details, but I don't know if it will help them that much. The man who posed as a police sergeant was black himself.”

  She looked surprised. Then she brightened.

  “Can't we pick up this Sam Cullings if we know he was involved? Surely that is our best bet.”

  “We did pick him up, Jackie, but unfortunately it was in a body bag. Our black friend the phoney police sergeant booby trapped the Transit with a sawn off shotgun before he left and Cullings got a hole blown in his chest you could put a rugby ball into.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “As you say. Bloody hell.”

  She duly rang Birmingham with her information and three hours later she heard from them that the local police in Martin Jenson's village confirmed that he had spent Christmas in the Hebrides with a cousin and could not be connected with the crime in any way. However they thanked her for her help. She shrugged and forgot it. She had enough problems on their own patch without getting involved with other peoples.

  Jason Howlett opened the Garage door and then spent some thirty seconds just letting his eyes enjoy the sight of the 250cc Kawasaki motorcycle resting on its stand. Since the court case his father and mother had been like putty in his hands. It was like magic the way they did what he asked now that he had learned how to handle them. The secret had been to stop confronting his father head on. That only got his male pride going and sent him into his leader of the pack act. No, the way to handle Howlett Senior was to be contrite and then go quiet and sad for days. Mope around the house giving big sighs, but denying anything was wrong. It was what his mother always did and she got everything she wanted so he had tried the same thing. The result was sitting before his eyes. It was his birthday being so close to Christmas in early February that had really swung it. The bike was an expensive present even by Rex Howlett's standards, but by asking for it as a combined birthday and Christmas present he had managed to get it. He had passed his test at the first try just two days after his sixteenth birthday, after his dad had given one of the clerks in the Testing Centre a discount on a new Focus to push him to the top of the waiting list, and here he was. Three days after Christmas he still got a thrill from just looking at the machine.

  He reached up, took down his crash helmet from its peg, and donned it before pushing the bike from its stand and wheeling it out onto the drive. The helmet was a trifle loose because he normally wore it on his Go Kart with a fireproof Nomex balaclava underneath, but his hair would soon grow enough to fill it. Leaving the garage door for some one else to close he climbed aboard the bike and pressed the starter. The engine rasped into life. He
revved it gently until all the gauges showed the right readings and then he snicked it into gear and letting in the clutch went down the drive and along the lane like a bullet.

  The Howlett home was placed on the outskirts of Bristol and only just came within the city boundaries. To reach the city centre and his mates, Jason had to traverse some five miles of winding lanes before joining the motorway in the vicinity of the Polytechnic. It was the part of the journey he liked best. Head down behind the fairing with the headlights making a bright tunnel in the darkness, he would take the bike through the lanes as fast as his nerves would let him, the race bred engine howling like an angry bumble bee beneath him. In an even five minutes he reached the main road and dropped his speed to the authorised fifty miles an hour.

  The Bristol police had not forgotten Jason and he already had one speeding ticket hanging over him that had been given to him by a spitefully gleeful motorway policeman for doing just seventy six miles an hour. Until the man had read his name on his license Jason was sure he was just going to give him a bollocking as he had been quite friendly until then, making jokes about some one called Geoff Duke and admiring the bike. When he read Jason's name that had changed and he had written out a ticket in stony silence, only the sneering smile when he handed it over showing how pleased he was to be able to do it. Jason would remember PC Bob Evert.

  A minute and a half later he was on the M5 and back up to seventy miles an hour. He never saw the car that hit him, just caught sight of a black shape out of the corner of his eye before the world somersaulted around him, followed by a brief moment of searing agony, followed by blackness. The impact had sent him and the Kawasaki across the hard shoulder, down the steep embankment and into the five-barred wooden fence at the bottom. A herd of cattle that had been chewing the cud in the field on the other side of the fence reared about a bit as the bikes headlight momentarily illuminated them as it somersaulted down the slope. Then they settled and came back to stare at the boy and the bike for some moments, in the curious manner cattle have, before going on with their eating. It was seven o'clock on the twenty ninth of December. Jason regained consciousness briefly some two hours later in great pain, the constant stream of headlights cutting through the night above him and the bitter cold the only things letting him know it wasn't a bad dream. Eventually he slipped back into a semi-conscious doze.

  It was a motorway gang that found him the next morning just as daylight was breaking. By this time there was an all car alert out for him as his frantic parents bombarded the local police station with calls and then visits before Rex Howlett finally elected to camp out in the waiting room. It was more by luck than judgement that they found him as the gang were putting cones out in piles ready for road works scheduled to start in early January. Jason's leathers were in the dark green and yellow colours of his sponsoring oil company to match his Go Kart, but fortunately the Kawasaki was painted red, blue and white and showed up even in the long grass at the bottom of the bank. One of the crew scrambled down the steep bank to have a look and came back shaking his head and they called in on their mobile telephone. His headshake was premature for when the paramedics arrived they found Jason still alive, if not exactly well. They lifted him gently onto a stretcher and hauled him back up the bank to the hard shoulder where they could examine him properly. Once they had administered the various drips and injections to counteract the shock they cut away the leather from his shattered right leg. One look was enough for them and they loaded him aboard and headed for the city centre with lights and sirens on full bore. By seven o'clock that night he was out surgery, out of immediate danger and tucked up snugly in a private ward sleeping off the anaesthetic, his doting parents by his bedside. They were relieved to have their son returned to then alive, but were wondering how they could break the news to him that for the rest of his life he would have to manage with only one leg.

  Jackie Ward was in the Canteen when she heard about the accident to Jason Howlett. Bob Evert had been on the motorway patrol that morning when they pulled the boy out of the ditch and ever mindful of his desire to join CID he made a beeline for Jackie with his information when he saw her having her coffee in the canteen. She thought it over as she walked back to her office and concluded there may be a God in heaven after all. She wondered if MacAllister had heard and decided she would ring him and tell him. It would give her an excuse to pick his brains about a couple of other things that were puzzling her and MacAllister had been in CID so long he could think like a villain now. She rang his number, but got the disconnected signal. She rang Directory Enquiries and they confirmed that the number had been disconnected. Curious she rang post office telephones and after she told them who she was they revealed the information that the house still had a phone, but a new number had been issued when its new owners had moved in. MacAllister had sold it then. She felt strangely sad with the thought that she would only ever again have contact with the Guv’nor if he wanted it. He really was finally gone.

  In his rented flat MacAllister was just tipping the baked beans over the toast when the mobile phone rang. The voice on the other end was cold, clear and to the point.

  “MacAllister?”

  MacAllister had only given the number of this phone to one person, but he was cautious anyway.

  “Who is this?”

  Khorta's voice grated in his ear.

  “Don't fool with me, MacAllister. The job's done and I want what I've got coming. That's ninety thousand pounds and a certain item of equipment you are holding, and I want it now.”

  “All right, Mitael. Why don't I meet you in the car park of the motorway service station at Lee Delamare at around six? What car will you be driving?”

  The return voice was hard and angry.

  “Don't piss me about, MacAllister. There is a lay-by on the Portway just after the suspension bridge, the one with the mobile cafe in it. I will be there at ten o'clock tonight. I hope you will be there as well or I may just start killing people for pleasure as well as money.”

  “OK, Mitael. Ten o'clock.”

  There was a grunt on the other end and then a click and a buzz as the connection was broken. MacAllister gave a grim little smile and went back to his beans on toast. When he had eaten that he had some things to do. The place that Khorta had mentioned was on the busy main road that ran from the city centre down to the motorway and the docks, but the meeting place was right under the cliffs. At that time of night the mobile cafe would be locked and in darkness and they would be far enough from the road to attract any attention from the traffic on the Portway. He wondered why Khorta had picked such an out of the way place, but felt he probably knew the answer.

  He spent the next hour or so packing all his clothes into two new, large suitcases and generally tidying up the flat. He spent several seconds looking at a family photo. It had been taken on Kirsty's eighteenth birthday and the four of them were standing in the back garden holding up glasses of champagne with silly grins on their faces. Blinking rapidly he packed it away with the rest of his things. He had rented the flat and paid two months in advance so the agents would not be sad if he left it earlier and they could let it again. He had a bad moment when he took down from the mantle shelf and packed the last family picture of all of them, taken when they were celebrating in a restaurant because Gavin had just passed his “A” levels, but he fought it off.

  After carrying the suitcases and a large black briefcase out to his hired car and locking them in the boot, he went back into the flat and checked again that the gas and electricity were both switched off and all the windows properly closed and then he locked it and put the keys in an envelope. He had two hours until his appointment with Khorta, but first he had to find a phone to make tomorrow's travel arrangements. He also had to drop off the keys through the estate agent's letterbox with an accompanying note and then pick up another item from an acquaintance from his police days, a man who a couple of months before would have avoided MacAllister like the plague. However, he himse
lf was now in the same position as the villains he had spent most of his life trying to put away. The driving licence he had produced when he had hired the car and the name inscribed on it were both forgeries. That wasn't the only item he had obtained and he was grimly amused at his use of the highly illegal facilities the city boasted. Facilities he had previously spent so much time and energy pursuing and trying to close down.

  It was nearly half past ten when MacAllister drove the hired Ford Focus into the lay-by; he had got rid of his old Vectra some time before, practically given it away to the young couple that had bought his house. Perhaps it was because the price was right or maybe it was because they just did not know about Jean's suicide, but they had bought without a mention of it. He was now some fifteen minutes late for his appointment with Mitael Khorta because he had driven up and down this part of the Portway, the city's main connecting road with the docklands area and the M5, several times to make sure that Khorta was there and alone. The dark blue BMW that sat in the lay-by alongside the now closed tea and sandwich stand looked identical to Khorta's, but MacAllister knew that it wasn't his from the registration number. Therefore, Mitael Khorta was up to some nastiness and he, MacAllister, was to be the recipient. Winding his passenger window fully down he drove into the lay-by and pulled up alongside and so close to the drivers door of the BMW that it was impossible for the other to open it. The driver’s window of the BMW hummed down and Khorta's hard, ebony face looked out.

  “You're late, MacAllister”

  MacAllister grinned.

  “Just making sure I wasn't going to get any nasty surprises, Mitael. You're not exactly number one on the list of people I would trust with my life.”

  “You got my money?”

  MacAllister held out the red nylon sports bag and Khorta reached out into the Focus and took it. He unzipped it and briefly examined the contents. Satisfied he zipped it up again and put it on the passenger seat and MacAllister noticed that he too was wearing gloves.

  “What about my gun?”

  MacAllister held out Khorta's pistol at arms length in his gloved fingers and Khorta reached out and took that also. He checked the action. MacAllister grinned.

  “Its not loaded, Mitael.”

  Khorta gave him a smile that would have put a tiger to shame.

  “Then it’s a good job I brought another one.”

  A large automatic pistol had appeared in Khorta's hand as if by magic. It had started to swing round towards MacAllister and was half way through the one hundred and eighty degree arc required when MacAllister lifted and fired the shotgun he had been holding across his knees in his gloved hands. The barrel had not been cut down very much and over the small distance it had to travel the shot remained in a compact group of not more than three inches in diameter. It hit Khorta in the neck, severing his spinal cord and literally blowing his head off before taking out the far window of the car in a shower of blood, bone, flesh and glass. Blood from severed arteries spurted everywhere, turning the inside of the BMW a sticky purple/black in the light from the sodium street lamps. MacAllister looked at the headless carnage he had created for some three or four seconds before he spoke.

  “You have had that coming a long time you evil bastard.”

  The voice was flat and without much emotion. He threw the shotgun like a javelin through the open window of the BMW and starting the engine put his car in gear and drove off without a backward glance.