Slow Burn (2010)

by Conrad Jones

  He lifted the phone and pressed a button to connect the line.“Commander.”

  “Detective Superintendent, how are you Alec?” Alec and the Commander went back years. Alec had always been a few rungs down the ladder, but the two men had a mutual respect that can only grow over decades. Alec had been pulled out of a few close scrapes during his years on the force, and though he was never certain, he had a hunch that the Commander was his guardian angel.

  “Not so bad, Bob. How`s Sally?”

  “Fine thanks, and how`s Gail?”

  “Still trying to poison me with organic everything. I`m still not sure what organic actually means, but I`ll live forever at this rate.” Alec was force fed a healthy diet by his long-suffering wife, whether he wanted it or not.

  “Heaven forbid! Why would you want to do that? By the time we retire our pension funds will have been invested in an Icelandic bank. It`ll be worth peanuts.”

  “Probably, but as long as they`re organic, the boss will be happy.” Alec Ramsey had been married twenty years, and he`d never strayed once, which he was proud of. He`d had plenty of offers over the years, a mixture of power and personality made him attractive to his female colleagues, but he`d never succumbed to the temptation.

  The Commander laughed and then said seriously, “All joking aside, Alec, how`s the investigation going?”

  “It depends on where you`re looking at it from,” Alec rubbed his chin as he replied thoughtfully. “What are CTU saying?”

  “They have nothing solid worth shouting about. You know what they`re like, cards very close to their chest and all.”

  “Do they think it was an extremist attack?”

  “I`m assuming from that comment, Superintendent, that you don’t,” the Commander batted the question back.

  “No, Commander, I don’t.” The two old friends slipped into their professional standings comfortably. “Have you seen the preliminary forensics?”

  “Yes. What do you make of it?”

  “Did you pickup on the mixture?”

  “I did indeed, Superintendent.” The Commander had spent a number of years in Belfast. “Echoes of our Republican friends?”

  “Without a doubt, Commander, I haven’t seen or heard of a cooked mixture since our time across the Irish Sea.”

  “You`re ruling out any Irish involvement, I presume.”

  “I can`t say for definite, but what would their motive be?”

  “I agree, so where does that leave us?”

  “I think it`s a hit, Commander.”

  “The Patels being the possible target?”

  “It`s a possibility that needs to be investigated. Patel has some very dubious business associates.”

  “Malik Shah, I believe,” Alec thought the Commander sounded like the bulldog from the car insurance adverts on the television. “That man has been a thorn in my side for as long as I can remember.”

  “It could be a coincidence, Commander, but the extremist tack doesn’t sit right. It`s a hunch, but the evidence tells me it`s a hit.”

  “Was Patel of value to Malik Shah?”

  “According to Smithy, the drugs squad had him down as the bookkeeper for the entire operation, but they could never follow the money trail to anything solid.”

  “Do you think Shah could have taken him out, maybe he was skimming off the top?” The Commander speculated.

  “Who knows, it`s way too early to tell, but my money is on a link to Shah, rather than right wing extremists, Commander.”

  “I tend to agree, but if it is, then the ball will be in your court.”

  “Yes, Commander, I thought as much.” Alec swept his hand across his mouth and eyes, rubbing them.

  “I think the joint departments meeting will iron out where we go with this.”

  “We`re working our way through the possible options, Commander. If it falls to us then we`ll hit the ground running.” Alec swallowed hard, and loosened his tie. It seemed that that case was about to drop into his lap.

  Chapter Eleven

  LANA PINDAR/ PRESENT DAY

  Lana floated in and out of a troubled sleep. Her dreams were real and worrying. She dreamt of a lake and a rowing boat. Mamood had fallen into the water, and no matter how hard she rowed, the boat drifted further away from him. Lana called his name and shouted for help, but he was being carried away by an unseen current. There wasn’t anything she could do to help him. He became a spot on the horizon, just before he disappeared beneath the dark waters. She awoke with a start, out of breath and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. The red glow of their digital clock told her that it was past three in the morning, and she hadn’t heard Mamood coming home. She didn’t make a fuss when he was late, but she didn’t sleep soundly until she knew that he was home safe. Lana thought that maybe he`d sneaked in quietly, while she dozed, but she dismissed that as wishful thinking. She knew when her son was home, and when he wasn’t. It was a mother`s intuition. Lana lifted the quilt and slipped out of bed. Ashwan murmured and turned onto his back. He could sleep through an avalanche without waking. She tiptoed across the thick white carpet to the door, where she removed her dressing gown from its hook and pulled it on.

  Lana moved quietly down the landing, thick carpet cushioned her footsteps. She hoped she was overreacting as she pushed open her son`s bedroom door. Amir Khan, the Asian boxing hero from Bolton snarled at her from his place above Mamood`s bed. His Manchester United quilt cover lay unruffled. There was no sign of a sleeping teenager beneath it. Lana bit her lip and her stomach twisted and sank. She felt physically sick with worry. He had been home late from parties before, but never this late. Midnight was his allowed time, and he never pushed the deadline much past half-past. Mamood had been so full of life and excitement when he`d left that evening. The thought of his prospective date had made him high and giddy.

  Maybe he`d got lucky, she thought, remembering what he`d said before he left, but then maybe he was in trouble. Lana was his mother, and she was bound to worry about her only son for the rest of her days, that`s what mothers do. She sat on his bed and touched his pillow. He was growing up so quickly, and staying out late with girls was something that she would have to get used to, whether she liked it or not. Lana thought about waking up Ashwan to tell him, but he would probably laugh and say, “That`s my boy,” or something equally macho and crass.

  Lana crept downstairs and walked down the long, wide hallway into a large open kitchen area. Their home was huge, and the kitchen was bigger than most people`s gardens. The floors were tiled with Egyptian white marble, and it felt cool beneath her feet. She opened the American refrigerator and took a glass from the cupboard, filling it with milk and then sipping it as she debated what to do. She leaned against a granite worktop and chewed her manicured nails as she debated in her mind. Finally she decided to ring Mamood on his mobile, after all that`s why he had it. To let them know where he was, and to keep in touch. If she was worried then it was his own fault for not letting them know that he would be late.

  Lana dialled the number from memory. It clicked straight onto answering machine, voice mail. She tried again, just in case, voice mail. She bit her lip as she replaced the handset, remembering the nightmare she`d had before she woke. Lana tiptoed back to bed and slid gently under the warm covers, next to her husband, scolding herself for being overprotective of her child. She tried hard, but she could find no peaceful dreams that night.

  Abdul/ PRESENT DAY

  Chapter Eleven

  Abdul Salim ground a cigarette butt into the pavement. A steady evening rain had started to fall, but he did not go inside to shelter. Salim was a teenage drug dealer and there were customers to serve, rain or shine. He was tucked between two empty shop units, which were situated beneath a gargantuan tower block. A service alleyway snaked between them, connecting the lockups to a delivery bay behind them. The tower blocks were once the architect`s solution to overcrowding and a simple method of providing state housing, but they actually became vertical human zoos. T
he tenants either were unemployed or in low paid jobs, easy pickings for drug dealers and loan sharks.

  Across the street, two police cars passed by and their uniformed occupants strained to look out of the steamed-up windows. Salim watched as they drove off down the street. The police knew what he was doing. Sometimes they left him alone, sometimes they didn`t. He always carried just enough drugs to qualify as being for personal use, never more. The rest of his stock, his takings and his weapon he kept stashed with a young runner.

  Like his parents before him, Salim was an Asian pioneer, but instead of settling down to the hard-working toil of previous generations of Asians, Salim and others had blazed a new trail into the violent world of drug dealing. Hard drugs had arrived in Britain's Asian communities, and were rapidly creating a social problem of spiralling crime rates and increased numbers of addicts. It had led to the emergence of Asian drug gangs who were willing to use violence to carve out territories and defend the enormous profits the trade can bring. On the streets of some northern towns, gang shootings had led to public killings, executions, and a climate of fear that the drug dealers were only too willing to encourage.

  Salim knew that it was not a problem confined to the North of the United Kingdom. The previous year, police in London smashed a huge crack and heroin dealing operation in the East End of the capital city that controlled a trade worth millions of pounds. The gang, based on several large Asian families, had run a twenty-four hour operation supplying drugs to thousands of the capital's users. Tower Hamlets, which has a large and deprived Asian community, had slowly become the 'heroin capital' of the country. If he could progress through the ranks of the organisation, and make money for his boss, then he would eventually be given his own area to manage. Drugs were everywhere, and where there are users, there is money to be made.

  Successful Asians left the rundown areas, as did the educated ones. Once they achieved a degree course at university, they up and left for pastures new, using their qualifications to escape the ghettos. What they left behind were poor, vulnerable and isolated communities: places that were easily invaded by gangs. They brought with them a culture of extreme violence and ostentatious wealth that seemed more at home in the ghettoes of Los Angeles. Salim knew who his role models were, and they were not his parents. They spent their lives slaving away in a small corner shop, which they called their family business. Salim could make more money in one night than they did in a week. His role models were the gold-chain wearing drug traffickers with their new BMW cars, souped-up hi-fi systems and latest designer sportswear. The only way he could achieve his material aspirations was through crime.

  Salim was a street dealer, near the bottom rung of the ladder, but he was highly thought of and he would soon reach the next level. The 'next level' is a violent place, where the culture of 'saving face' among drug gangs can lead to the slightest perceived insult being punished with horrific violence. Salim wanted to be as rich as his boss Ashwan Pindar was. Aspiring to be at that level, was like standing at the bottom of a mountain, and looking up at the peak. Malik Shah was the man at the top of this particular mountain. He controlled several successful crime families across the country. His gangs were highly organised and stretched from the inner cities of Britain to the poppy fields of Afghanistan. At the bottom of the pile were the 'runners', usually young teenagers who make drug deliveries on specially bought mountain bikes. Then come street dealers like Salim, supplying runners and customers with their fixes. Above him were the murky upper echelons of the gang world, often using family ties with Pakistan to arrange the courier routes that bring the drugs back to Britain.

  The callousness of Malik Shah was staggering. He groomed girls as young as thirteen to be mules, bribing their families to be complicit. He sought the financially destitute people of his communities, and pressed them into service. Malik would offer them loans at impossible interest rates, and then force them to act as mules in order to repay their debts. Those that refused were terrorised. As his gangs grew, they became more sophisticated. Over the past months, Salim noticed crack cocaine make its first appearance among the Asian gangs. It led to friction with other drug gangs, but the potential profits were just too great to ignore.

  “Salim,” a voice behind him disturbed his train of thought. He turned to see one of his young runners approaching from the blackness of the alleyway on his bike. He was a skinny Bangladeshi kid known as Rozzo. Rozzo looked up to Salim in the same way Salim respected his superiors, hoping one day to be working in his shoes.

  “What?” Salim was angered by the fact that Rozzo had arrived unannounced. The rules of the business were clear. The runner sent a text message first, and then came for the drugs, carrying the buyer`s payment. Rozzo had broken the protocol. “What the fucking hell are you playing at, Rozzo?”

  “A weird looking bloke has been asking questions in the park, Salim. Questions about you, I`ve never seen him before. Don`t think he`s a dealer. He`s not a pig, no way!”

  “Take it easy,” Salim lowered his voice to try to calm his frightened associate. “What was he asking about?”

  Rozzo spat on the floor, and a string of saliva hung from his chin. He wiped it excitedly away with the sleeve of his black tracksuit before answering. “He was asking who worked for Ash, but he`s not a pig. I swear he`s not a pig.”

  “When was this?”

  “Five minutes ago, Salim. I came straight here!” Rozzo smiled a toothless smile. He had lost his front teeth to an angry customer who wanted credit for a hit, but was refused. His line of credit was revoked when he failed to pay his debts on time. It was one of the hazards of the job. Rozzo was convinced that he had done the right thing by alerting his boss immediately. Salim was smarter, and he knew it was a mistake. Rozzo had led the inquisitor straight to him.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing, Salim!” Rozzo pulled a three hundred and sixty degree wheelie on his bike. “I told him to fuck off!”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He`s a fucking weirdo, mate! Army pants and boots, and he`s a real ugly motherfucker! Massive head like a caveman!”

  “Did he follow you?” Salim reached into his white Nike windbreaker for his phone. White was his colour of choice. Salim thought it made him stand out from his colleagues, who always opted for black hooded shell-suits. He dialled quickly, looking left and right along the empty street. It was time to acquire his weapon. A young voice answered the call.

  “Bring me the ten, and bring it fast,” Salim spoke quickly, trying to keep his cool. His runner kept a reactivated Mac-10 machine pistol in a duffle bag. He kept the weapon safe, constantly circling the area on his bike, in the event that Salim would need it for protection. “Have you seen anyone wearing combats?” He asked the runner on the telephone. Salim nodded his head at the reply and ended the call with a stab of his finger.

  “Could he have followed you?” He asked turning back to Rozzo.

  “No way, Salim, I`m too fast,” Rozzo bragged proudly, pulling the bike into a wheelie again. He was about to speak again when a nine millimetre hollow-point smashed into his back. It was as if he had been hit with an invisible sledgehammer. Salim thought that he had tumbled off his bike for a moment, but as a dark pool of blood spread quickly from beneath his body, realisation hit home.

  Salim froze to the spot in panic, it was every dealer`s worst nightmare. He was under attack, and unarmed. He couldn’t tell which direction the bullet had been fired from, because Rozzo had been spinning the bike when he was hit. Salim flattened himself against the wall and scanned the area for his attacker`s possible hiding places. The street was empty. He reached down and touched Rozzo`s neck, checking for a pulse. There was none, he was long gone. Salim looked down the alleyway, which ran between the tower blocks. The darkness was impenetrable. His mobile vibrated and he looked at the illuminated screen. It was his runner. He was a minute away, bringing Salim his machinegun. The sound of rubber tyres approached, a splashing drone as rai
nwater sprayed up from the tarmac. A mountain bike approached at high speed. The young runner was standing as he pumped the pedals as fast as he could. Salim felt adrenalin pumping through his veins now as his weapon neared. The Mac-10 would even things up. Whoever this clown was, he would be sorry that he crossed paths with Salim. He was destined to be a famous gangster. Malik Shah and Ashwan Pindar would be impressed when they heard that Salim had taken out a rival. He could taste the street-cred a kill would bring to him.

  Salim broke cover and sprinted to meet the runner. The runner reached inside his black hooded top, and pulled the weapon out. He lifted it out in front for Salim to grab it. A silenced shot spat from the darkness, and a nine-millimetre dumdum hit the cyclist straight between the eyes. A jagged black hole appeared in the runner`s face and the back of his skull exploded as the bullet exited carrying lumps of grey brain matter with it. The mountain bike carried on without the rider, and it clattered to a halt at the entrance to the alleyway. The runner was blasted backwards off the bike and he dropped like a dead weight onto the pavement. The Mac-10 clattered away into the night, lost in the shadows.