Slow Burn (2010)

by Conrad Jones

  “I stare at you.”

  “You`re allowed to.”

  Rasim smiled as he placed the phone to his ear and accepted the call. The fingers on his right hand were blown clean across the room, and his skull exploded like an egg being hit with a sledgehammer. Crimson fluid splattered the wall and ceiling and his body stayed vertical for a few seconds, as if it could function without its head, then it fell forward and knocked the onyx lamp across the room.

  OMAR

  Chapter 35

  Omar woke from a dark dream. He was stuck fast in a muddy field, no matter how hard he tried to free his legs he couldn’t get out of it. As soon as he freed one, the other became trapped. The more he struggled the deeper the mud was. He needed help but he couldn`t find his phone to call anyone. Then it started to ring, but he couldn’t see it. The ringing became louder and more real as he drifted back from sleep land to reality.

  “Will you answer the fucking telephone,” Lindsay Morgan nudged him hard in the back with her knee. “Omar, answer the phone, for fuck`s sake!”

  “Do you have to moan from morning until night, have a day off will you?” Omar rubbed his eyes and yawned. He was sick of Lindsay and her foul mouth. She did nothing but whinge, morning noon and night. The only time she was happy was when she bought shoes or handbags with his money. He put up with her bad attitude because she was a looker, and the sex had been good at first. It was still good, but she rarely wanted it now. Omar had the feeling that she was getting it somewhere else, but Malik told him to stop being paranoid. When they first met, she bought red satin sheets and she would dress sexy for him, suspenders, and fishnet stockings, whatever he wanted. Now she came to bed in a tracksuit. What he didn’t know was that she had been sleeping with Malik for nearly six months. She enjoyed his dominant rough bedroom manner. He used and abused her body in ways that Omar would never think of, and she enjoyed the thrill of feeling like a hooker. They met at hotels, had rough sex, and Malik would chuck two hundred pounds at her as he left, more shoes, happy days, sex and shopping in one afternoon.

  “I will stop moaning when you answer the phone!” Lindsay shouted at the top of her voice. She pulled the quilt violently over her head and turned away from him.

  Omar paused a moment before picking it up. The landline was ex-directory, only his close friends and family used the number, and that was usually if his mobile was switched off. He opened his bedside drawer and looked at his mobile. It was on silent, and he had twelve missed calls.

  “Shit,” he muttered as he answered the landline, hoping the missed calls weren`t from Malik. “Hello.”

  “Omar, Ras is dead!” Shelpa was hysterical. She could hardly speak for sobbing. He heard her wretch and cough, almost choking. “He`s dead, Omar, help me please!”

  “Shelpa, what are you saying?” he shot out of bed and grabbed for the trousers he`d discarded the night before. “Shelpa, have you phoned an ambulance?”

  “Yes, but his head is gone, and there`s blood everywhere. Omar, please help me!” She wailed like a banshee, and her words were almost inaudible. She didn’t make any sense. “Have you phoned an ambulance?” he repeated.

  The telephone clattered at the other end, as if she had dropped it on the floor. Omar thought that she might have fainted. “Shelpa, Shelpa are you okay?”

  “What does that silly bitch want at this time in the morning?” Lindsay moaned from under the quilt.

  “Shut your mouth, Lindsay, she`s hysterical.”

  “She`s always fucking hysterical.”

  “Shut your mouth, you stupid bitch!” Omar yelled. He was struggling into his clothes as fast as he could. He grabbed his mobile and forced his feet into his shoes without undoing the laces. The backs collapsed and clung to his heels.

  “Where are you going?” Lindsay poked her head from under the cover. “You`re not running to their house because that fucking drama queen is having an episode are you?”

  Omar couldn’t think of a response worthy of delivering, although if he`d had a gun at hand he would have shot her right there. He slammed the bedroom door as he left, and hurtled down the stairs at a million miles an hour. He reached the hallway where a key rack hung above an overflowing shoe rack. His car keys weren`t there.

  “Keys, keys keys,” he turned full circle checking the furniture nearby, in case he had plonked them down somewhere. Nothing.

  “Where are my car keys?” he shouted up the stairs.

  “How the fucking hell should I know?” Lindsay shouted back.

  “Have you moved them?”

  “Fuck off!”

  “Lindsay, this is an emergency!” He screamed. His face was flushed red and his blood was reaching boiling point.

  “Fuck off!”

  Omar ran into the kitchen and searched frantically along the worktops. He moved his diary, nothing, on top of the microwave, nothing, under the newspaper, nothing. His coat hung on the back of the kitchen door. Omar squeezed the pocket and his keys were there. He sighed loudly, snatched them out and ran for the front door. The chain was fixed, and the bolts were thrown, and it took him what felt like an age to open the door. He stepped outside onto a gravel driveway, and it crunched as he ran to the silver Lexus. The indicator lights flashed as he opened the door with the key card. He climbed in and slipped it into the dash. The supercharged engine roared into life, and the rev counter flicked into the red zone. Omar clicked his mobile into its cradle, and pressed the number two as he selected first gear. The mobile searched its speed dial memory and found the number for Malik Shah. Omar pressed dial and released the handbrake. He heard the line click as it began to dial, and he heard the gravel crunch beneath the wheels as the vehicle surged forward at speed. What he didn’t hear was the mercury slosh in a glass vile as it made the connection between the detonator and the explosive that was packed around his fuel tank. The Lexus was lifted three yards into the air by the force of the blast and the interior became a blazing inferno in a millisecond. Omar didn’t have time to be confused, or to contemplate what was happening to him. His brain registered the dreadful pain as his skin was peeled from his body by the intense heat. He felt his lungs sizzle as he breathed in the flames. Mercifully, death came for him quickly.

  Chapter 36

  MIT

  Will Naylor sat at his desk and ploughed through the information that he had for the fifth time in as many hours. He had the police and MI5 files on Malik Shah stretching back to his late teens. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Many of his business associates, including members of his family, had died in mysterious circumstances. He`d been investigated numerous times, but nothing stuck to him. He was like Teflon. His businesses were legitimate, and profitable, even the overseas ventures looked genuine. Finding an obvious suspect was impossible. The Superintendent acquired arrest warrants for Ashwan and Malik, on the back of the Lucky Dragon murders. He also brought in two of the other known crime lords from the city, hoping someone would have the information that would give them a lead.

  “You still staring at that?”

  “Yes, Guv.” Will smiled and pushed his chair back from the desk. “Do you want a brew?”

  “Why not,” Alec looked at the screen thoughtfully. “You found anything useful in this lot?”

  Will disappeared into the small kitchen area, which consisted of two cupboards, a sink, a microwave and coffee machine. The coffee pot was half-full or was it half-empty, Will couldn’t decide. He filled two cups with black liquid and the aroma of stewed coffee drifted up to him.

  “I can`t see anything in there that is relevant to our investigation,” he passed the cup to his boss as he walked back to his desk. “There`s plenty of accusation and speculation, but nothing we can use to hold him.”

  “Smithy and his team are trawling through his finances, but there`s nothing untoward there either,” Alec sipped the stale coffee and grimaced. “Uniform have picked them up, they were both at Shah`s residence. When they knocked at Pindar`s home the wife was ver
y cagey, said he`d gone away. The officer said she looked like she`d been crying.”

  “Domestic maybe?” Will smoothed the creases in his trousers. His navy blue suit looked immaculate, and his shirt was crisp and white.

  “I`m not sure what to think, Will,” Alec sensed that there was an undercurrent somewhere beneath the recent events. Something that they didn’t know about yet, something that would explain what was going on. “We`re going to question Shah, and then you take lead with Pindar. We might get lucky.”

  “Have they asked for lawyers?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Grenade and associates,” Alec used the force nickname for Grenace and Associates. They had a formidable reputation for representing bad guys, and getting them off. The force detectives called them `Grenade` for obvious reasons.

  “Great, I love a challenge,” Will crossed his legs and put his feet up on the desk, sipping his coffee loudly. His trousers rode up above his ankles to reveal shiny black Chelsea boots.

  “Nice boots,” Alec smiled sarcastically.

  “You wouldn’t understand, Guv, fashion you see?”

  “I had a pair just like them when I left school.”

  “Really?” Will looked concerned.

  “Exactly the same.”

  “Retro, Guv,” Will scrabbled for some credibility. “Vintage clothing, it`s all the rage.”

  “Vintage?” Alec teased. “You mean second-hand.”

  The telephone on Will`s desk rang. He picked it up. “DI Will Naylor.”

  His face darkened immediately, and he grabbed a pen and began to scribble notes. Alec could see the shocked look on his face.

  “When was this?” Will put his hand to his forehead. “Unexplained?”

  “Jesus Christ! Okay, keep me up to date.”

  Alec raised his eyebrows as he looked at the scribbles. He could make neither head nor tale of it. “What is it?”

  “I don’t believe this,” Will put the phone down and shook his head in disbelief. “There has been two emergency calls made in the last thirty minutes, a Lexus exploded which belongs to one Omar Patel, and the other is the unexplained death of Rasim Shah.”

  “Unexplained, why?”

  “The ambulance crew that responded couldn’t be specific as to the cause of death, but the first officer on the scene said his head had been blown off.”

  “By what?”

  “We don’t know yet, could be a high velocity bullet?”

  “Maybe, and the Lexus?”

  “He was dead before his girlfriend made the call.” Will chewed his index fingernail nervously. He was thinking over the shocking information that they had just received. “They are both on the list of Malik Shah`s directors, right?”

  “Yes,” Alec replied. Someone was upping the stakes, but why. “Could this be a retaliatory strike for the Richards murders?”

  “What about the rest of Shah`s business associates?”

  “Get the team onto it now. Warn them not to use their cars and to stay away from their windows, there could be a sniper out there.”

  “I`m on it, Guv.” Will dashed across the office barking orders as he went. They could be too late already.

  Alec called the armed response unit, and communicated the name and addresses of the other directors on the list. “Get me a response team to each address, and dispatch the bomb squad to check every vehicle they own.”

  “Guv!” Smithy shouted across the office. Alec put his hand over the mouthpiece to block the office noise. “Graham Libby on the telephone, Guv, says it`s urgent.”

  “Thanks, Smithy, put him through.” Alec turned back to the first call. “I`ll keep you informed of any developments, let me know if anyone is unaccounted for,” he switched the line from the armed response unit to Graham Libby. “Doc?”

  “Superintendent,” he sounded out of breath. “Look, the crime scene at the Shah fatality is like something from a Bourne movie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The victim has no fingers on his right hand, and his head has been blown off his shoulders, completely. I couldn’t understand what had happened until his wife said that he was taking a phone call.”

  “I don’t understand, Doc?”

  “I think his mobile exploded, Alec.”

  “You think someone put a bomb into a mobile phone?”

  “There is no other way to explain the injuries, until we begin to recover pieces of the bomb, but for now that`s my theory.”

  “Shit!” Alec realised what Will and the team were doing, calling the potential targets, on their telephones. “Will!” he bellowed across the office.

  “Guv?”

  “Don`t call any of them, one of the bombs was in a mobile phone!”

  Chapter 37

  Ambush

  “My client and I have been waiting here for nearly two hours, Superintendent Ramsay,” Nigella Nielsen removed her glasses and greeted Alec with an icy glare.

  The Superintendent ignored the remark and slotted two cassettes into a battered recorder, which perched on a shelf above the only table in the square room. The table and chairs were screwed to the floor through metal brackets, to prevent them being thrown by violent suspects. Will Naylor stepped into the room behind him and Alec pressed the machine into life.

  “Detective Superintendent Ramsay, conducting an interview with Malik Shah, represented by,” Alec remained silent to allow the brief to respond.

  “Nigella Nielsen,” she tapped her fingers on the table angrily. The table was scored with scratches and doodles. Someone had carved a love heart with an arrow through it, declaring their love for `Soggy`.

  “Also present,” he remained silent again.

  “Detective Inspector Will Naylor.”

  “Interview commencing at eleven fifteen AM,” the detectives took their places at the table. The room was small, almost claustrophobic, and the walls were scared with graffiti. “Malik, I can call you Malik can`t I?”

  “Could you tell me why my client is here, Superintendent?” Nigella put her glasses back and opened a notebook. Malik didn’t respond to the question, but he met the Superintendent`s gaze and held it.

  “Do you know this man?” Alec flipped a mug shot of Kenny Richards out of his file. The black and white picture had been taken years before when Kenny was lifted for a vicious assault. Alec knew they had nothing on Shah, but he was hoping that he might be able to give them a lead.

  “That is Kenny Richards,” Malik sneered. “How is Kenny?”

  “Oh, he`s dead, Malik, but then you know that don`t you?” Alec placed a second picture onto the table. Kenny`s body was sat upright in a chair, garrotted and shot through the head. His cheekbone and jaw were exposed, and the top of his skull was blown away.

  “That`s not his good side, is it?” Malik looked at the picture and then looked at Alec in the eye. He was stone cold. There was no reaction to the picture at all. Alec had dealt with more killers than he cared to remember, and Malik Shah had the same dead look in his eyes. There was no emotion in them.

  “He was shot dead last night, along with his brothers, and two of his business associates,” Alec maintained the eye contact. Malik hadn’t blinked yet. “Can you see the garrotte?”

  Malik looked down at the picture, but he didn’t reply. He smiled at the Superintendent, but it was an evil smile. There was malice behind it.

  “All the other victims were shot in the back. Why do you think they garrotted Kenny?”

  Malik yawned and put his hand over his mouth. Alec could see why nobody had broken through the ice cool exterior. He pressed on with the questioning, hoping that something would press the right button.

  “You see I think somebody wanted to ask Kenny some questions, before they killed him obviously. So they shot his men, and then strangled him while they asked him questions.”

  “I really don`t have time for this,” Malik turned to his lawyer.

  “Are you actually going to question my
client, Superintendent, because if you`re not then let him go,” Nigella looked over her glasses as she spoke.

  “I think someone wanted information from Kenny Richards, and I think it was you, Malik,” Alec tilted his head and waited for a response. He ignored the protestations of Nigella Nielsen for now, but he knew that he would have to let Malik walk very soon. They had nothing, and he was giving nothing away.

  “My client has an alibi for last night.”

  “Oh yes, I`m sure he does,” Alec replied, turning to the brief. “I don`t think for one minute that he did this with his own hands, because that`s not how you work, Malik, is it?”