Soft Target 01 - Soft Target

by Conrad Jones

  Tank excused himself from the office and left the old cleric to drink his coffee alone. He was glad to see his friends alive and well. He spoke briefly to a junior officer and told him to arrange for the holy man to be returned to his mosque. He could be of no more help to them, and Tank wanted to keep him as much on side, as was possible. “Hello, ladies. I really do like the bandaged head look. It suits both of you.” Tank hugged them at the same time, one in each of his big arms. He smiled at Timms over Faz’s shoulder. “I believe you probably saved their lives, Sir, well done. I really think you two ladies should go home and get some sleep.” Timms agreed with Tank. None of them had slept much for the last forty eight-hours. The raids had netted several key pieces of information and experts were interrogating all the men arrested. “I think that we should call it a night and meet bright and early in the morning. Go home and get some rest.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Yasser / Liverpool

  Yasser and Yasmine parked the Honda Blackbird next to a metal railing in front of a four storey Victorian town house in Anfield, Liverpool. They had travelled without incident along the M62 Motorway from Warrington. The town house was part of a terraced row of similar buildings. There were four large stone steps leading up to a huge wooden front door. The ancient gloss paint was cracked and peeling, exposing the layers beneath. The steps themselves had ornate iron railings on either side, which were also cracked and rusted. Another set of stone steps went down to a dingy basement apartment whose door was beneath the stairs above. The building was old and covered in green moss. The wide arched windows were covered from the insides with blankets and dirty net curtains that belonged in a skip. Either side of the tall house, the properties were boarded up ready for renovation, or more likely demolition.

  This part of the city was not a desirable area to live in any more. Unlike the days when the port of Liverpool was in its heyday, merchant ship men would have owned these once ornate Victorian buildings, but now they belonged to the drug addicts and prostitutes that infested the area, the area was rife with crime.

  Yasmine fastened a thick safety chain around the motorbike and locked it to the rusty metal railings. Yasser led the way down the dark slippery stone steps to the small door at the bottom. The steps and the area below were littered with old fast food cartons and empty beer bottles. The whole area smelled of rotting food and garbage. He opened the door and went inside, shutting the door behind them. Yasmine was surprised when he switched on the light how deceiving outside appearances could be. The basement apartment had two bedrooms that led off the living area and an open plan kitchen. Two big black sofas dominated the room. The laminate wooden floors had sheepskin rugs scattered randomly about making the flat feel warm and comfortable. It smelled of saffron and spices.

  Yasser took a mobile phone from a worktop in the kitchen and switched it on. It started to vibrate in his hand and beeped noisily. He opened the text messages and read them. They were from one of his affiliates, Nassir. Nassir was the Egyptian pillion rider who had escaped the police in Warrington after shooting one of them dead. Yasser rang him immediately and was informed of the evening’s events, the distribution centre shooting and the raid on the mosque. They were of little concern to him. The warehouse containing the ice-cream vans was undetected, and none of the men who knew of its existence had been taken in for questioning; not alive anyway. Yasser was amused by the fact that the police had raided a mosque with armed police. Actions of this nature just widened the gap between Christians and Muslims. The old cleric that had been arrested knew nothing of his whereabouts or his plans. The man they had used from the mosque, Tariq, was dead; Yasser had slit his throat himself. His body had been weighted down and dumped into the River Mersey with the hands and head removed to hamper any efforts to identify him should he be found. Nassir had escaped with his life, which was also good, because Nassir was his Scuba diver. He was making his way to him now by train, to Lime Street Station in the city centre. It was a short taxi ride from there to Anfield.

  Everything was still going to plan, except that was, for his property owner. Members of his group Axe had rented the apartment for two years. Several fugitives from the law had sheltered behind its inconspicuous facade. The problem was that property values in the Anfield area had doubled when Liverpool was awarded City of Culture status. It entitled the city’s property owners to apply for a whole raft of grants that were now available. They could be used to demolish and renovate run down parts of the city. Yasser’s landlord owned the whole block above him and he wanted them to vacate the basement, so that he could demolish the ramshackle buildings and build new, more lucrative ones in their place. The rental agreement had now expired and the landlord had threatened legal action to evict them from the apartment. He had threatened to call the police in if they did not vacate. Yasser needed this location for his plans to work. He could not risk a visit from the police at any cost. In a last ditch effort to keep the property, Yasser had offered to buy the whole block from the landlord at an inflated price. Yasser did not intend to complete the deal; he was just stalling for time. Yasser had arranged to meet his landlord at the apartment tonight, to talk business.

  There was a knock on the door. Yasmine opened it and a little weasel of a man stepped in wearing a crooked grin and a cheap black suit. His suit trousers were too short so they exposed the soiled white socks that he was wearing with his slip-on loafer shoes. His name was Paul Tomas. Tomas, who was originally from London, had been a crook and a fraudster all his life. Even as a schoolboy he made money from his fellow pupils by wheeling and dealing. He would sell anything that he could get his sticky little hands on; out of date potato crisps, second-hand porn magazines and single cigarettes. As he got older he progressed to drugs and stolen property, but he crossed some dangerous men along the way and had to leave London in a hurry. He moved North to Kingston-upon-Tyne and started up a franchise business; he called it Cleani-Kingdom. He invested a great deal of time making sure the advertising was glossy and slick. The advertising made it look like a genuine business venture and it persuaded people to invest huge sums of money into cleaning contracts that were unprofitable and useless. He was responsible for hundreds of financially ruined lives.

  With his ill-gotten gains he had started buying properties around the Liverpool area. He was taking the gamble that the prices would boom if the city won the culture award. It had worked, the city won its valued award and his portfolio of property would eventually make him a millionaire. He was an odd-looking little man. He had started to go bald at an early age, which made him look much older than his years. In the early 1990’s he’d taken out a bank loan to pay for what was then, a pioneering hair transplant. The surgeons had removed plugs of his own hair from the back of his head and transplanted them to the top. It had left him with a wide ugly scar on the back of his scalp were the hair plugs had been removed. He looked as if he had been hit with an axe from the rear. His new transplanted hair had the appearance of a child’s doll; the clumps of transplanted hair looking ridiculous on his bald head. Yasmine disliked the grinning little weasel instantly.

  Yasser put on a warm coat and walked toward Tomas, ushering him back out of the door. “I thought that you could show me the condition of the surrounding properties. I am intending to renovate and restore them rather than demolishing them,” Yasser lied convincingly. Paul Tomas looked disappointed. The buildings were just empty shells that had been boarded up to keep the junkies out. He did not really feel like playing at estate agents in the dark. The problem he had was that this Arabian man, Yasser someone, had offered twice the asking price for the whole block. He also remembered that when Yasser’s affiliates had signed the original two year rental agreement; they paid the whole amount in cash upfront. ‘Wherever there is oil, there is money’, he thought.

  He sighed and walked back up the dark steps to his car. He opened the boot and took out a flashlight and a large bunch of keys. Yasser walked toward the far end of the terrace and stood e
xpectantly in front of the building. Tomas fiddled around with a large bunch of shiny silver keys, finally coming up with the correct one. He fumbled with the lock and opened the metal grill that covered the entrance; the original wooden door was long gone. Yasser moved in front of Tomas and headed straight up the rotten staircase, the property owner tried to keep up with him, the flashlight cast dark shadows in the dank building. Yasser could smell damp and vermin; the stench was overpowering, but he turned the corner and climbed up the second flight of stairs anyway. “Listen, Mr. Yasser we really shouldn’t be using these staircases. I am sure you can get a reasonable idea of the condition of the buildings from what you have seen so far.” The weasel landlord shone the beam around the room at the top of the stairs, but Yasser was gone. He thought that he must have taken the third flight up to the top floor, so he shone the beam up the stairs into the pitch-blackness. No daylight at all could penetrate the boarded windows; the darkness beyond his torch beam seemed almost solid.

  Yasser stepped out from an empty bedroom further down the corridor, making the little man jump with fright. “I am sorry to keep you, Mr. Tomas, but I need to be certain in my own mind that the properties are reparable. Am I keeping you from your wife and family?” Yasser enquired, his answer would dictate which direction this encounter would take.

  No, the bitch left me last year and took the kids with her. They moved back to London. I am living the bachelor life again, I’ve never been happier. I have a different woman every night.” Paul Tomas didn’t realise he had signed his own death warrant. “I am sure that you have to pay for the women to be with you. They would not do it freely I am certain.” Yasser goaded the weasel. Paul Tomas looked offended and a bit confused; he couldn’t understand why this Arabian man had suddenly decided to insult him.

  Yasser moved quickly and his hands were imperceptible in the torchlight. He stabbed his middle and index fingers into the landlord’s eyes, blinding him. Paul Tomas dropped to his knees; his hands instinctively covered his throbbing eyeballs. Yasser stepped behind the little bald man and slit his throat with the box cutter blade that he always kept hidden up his sleeve. The jugular vein was severed completely and Yasser could smell warm blood as it sprayed from the artery. Tomas opened his eyes in total bewilderment as all the years of defrauding people flashed before him. He clutched at the massive gash in his throat and his blood soaked into his cheap suit and ran down his arms. Paul Tomas fell to the floor and thrashed about for a few minutes as he bled to death. All he could think about as he choked on his own blood, was the people he had ruined and the overpowering smell of rat urine.

  The blood seemed to disappear into rotten wooden floorboards as Yasser pulled Tomas’s body by the legs into the bedroom he’d been in earlier. Someone had pulled up the floorboards to salvage the copper central heating pipes that once warmed the house. Yasser stuffed the body down into the void between floors, and hurriedly placed the rotten floorboards over him. He had taken the wallet, cell phone and car keys from the body already. By the time the body was discovered, the rats would have made him unidentifiable. Yasser doubted that anyone would report the nasty little man missing for weeks. By that time, the building would have served its purpose and Yasser would be gone. Yasser would have the dead man’s vehicle hidden for now. The little fraudster had finally been shafted himself, permanently.

  CHAPTER 34

  At Home

  Major Stanley Timms stood in his living room. He had a thick crystal glass in his hand, which was half-full of Jack Daniels. He sipped the amber fluid and relaxed as he felt the warming sensation descending to his stomach. When he had arrived home earlier, he had showered; the hot water soothed his bruised body. His muscles were beginning to stiffen and become sore from the impact of the bomb blast. He had donned his favourite dressing gown and slippers and then joined his long-suffering wife in their living room. They had been married for thirty-years. Ceria, his wife was a French Vietnamese national. Born in Vietnam to Vietnamese parents, she had been orphaned at a young age and was then adopted by French parents. They had met when the Major had completed a tour of duty in war-torn Cambodia. He had been on two weeks leave in neighbouring Vietnam and had met Ceria in an art gallery. She was a beautiful oriental woman with stunning dark eyes and a smile that lit up the room. Timms had fallen in love the first time he laid eyes on her and they married shortly after.

  Ceria passed her husband the crystal glass with his favourite tipple in it. She could see that he was troubled by the events of that day. They chatted a while about what had taken place, Stanley was always sad when he lost a man. He looked from his window out over the River Mersey. They had lived in this house for twenty-years; the views of the estuary below persuaded them to buy it. Helsby Hill was six miles from Liverpool City centre. The views from the hill were spectacular. To the left were open fields and river marshes, and the rolling peaks of North Wales rose in the distance. In front and to the right, the Mersey estuary twisted its way to the Irish Sea. The river at this point is some three miles wide. The right hand bank of the river was the home to a huge chemical processing plant. I.C.I. manufactured fertilisers and paint ingredients. The chemical processes involved the use of thousands of gallons of water necessary for cooling huge tanks of chemicals. Hence its site on the bank of the river where there was an endless supply of water. The plant took on the appearance of a small city at night, thousands of lights illuminating the metal structures that stood on the riverbank.

  The left hand bank was the home of another large industrial plant called Stanlow Oil Refinery. Dozens of large white metal tanks stood in geometric rows housing millions of gallons of crude oil, petrol, diesel and high-octane jet fuel. Tankers from all over the world sailed in and out of the Mersey estuary delivering their precious black cargo. At the centre of the oil refinery was a tall white metal chimney that stood over 100-feet tall. From the top of the chimney a permanent flame could be seen from miles around. Timms looked from one riverbank to the other slowly and sighed, shaking his head. There were ‘Soft Targets’ everywhere he looked and he couldn’t guard them all.

  What is the matter Stanley? What are you thinking?” Ceria walked to him and hugged him tightly, hurting his bruised ribs. He winced sharply and laughed.

  You don’t want to know what I am thinking, my love, it really doesn’t matter.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Grace Farrington

  Faz put her coat onto the back of a kitchen chair and sat down. She rubbed at the bandage on her head; the stitches that she had received for the wound on her scalp were starting to itch. She stood and walked over to the fridge. She opened the door and took out a cold bottle of Pinot Grigio. Grace always bought this type of wine because it had the twist open top. She hated trying to use a corkscrew. She poured herself a large glass full and headed for the bathroom, taking a big sip of the cool wine on the way. She picked up the remote control for the stereo system and pressed play, Oasis started playing through speakers that were wired up all over the house. She took another sip of wine and looked at her reflection in the mirrored tiles that covered one wall of the bathroom. She chuckled to herself when she saw the bulky dressing on her head. `That is just so not cool, Grace’, she thought. She turned her head to the side and peeled the bandage gently from the wound. The blood had started to form a scab already and she had to pull a little harder than was comfortable. Grace dropped the bloody dressing into the small stainless steel waste bin that lived beneath the sink. She looked at the neat stitches and decided that any scaring would be minimal.

  Grace turned and reached into the glass shower cubicle and switched on the hot water. She let it run for a while so that it could reach the perfect temperature while she undressed. She stood naked in front of the mirrored wall and looked at her body, turning one way, then the next. Grace liked her body, she was lean and muscular, her breasts stood up on their own. Her black skin accentuated her physique; she narrowed at the waist and then curved at the hip. Her stomach was flat and define
d with a small diamond piercing through her belly button. She ran her hands down her smooth lean body, feeling the firmness of her breasts and the softness of her skin. “You’re looking good for your age, Grace Farrington,” she said as she stepped into the shower. She let the water run onto her skin, soothing the troubles of the past few days away.

  Grace heard the front door being opened with a key and then shut again. She heard heavy footsteps heading toward the bathroom and she froze, holding her breath. The door opened and the man stepped into the room. She smiled and said, “What took you so long?” she arched her body provocatively.

  CHAPTER 36

  Sian and Mustapha

  Why didn’t the cleric from the mosque recognise you?” One of the agents that had been assigned to protect Mustapha asked. “He must be relatively new to the mosque; he wasn’t there when I lived in Warrington,” Mustapha said. The agent nodded silently and looked out of the window of the Jeep. They were driving through Toxteth - an area of Liverpool that had suffered huge race riots in the 1970’s - on the way to a safe house. Sian squeezed Mustapha’s hand in support; he looked tired from the hours of questioning that he had received. Sian had been asked by the fat controller to keep Mustapha positive about helping the taskforce to capture his brother. She would have to use their relationship to manipulate him if needed; she decided to stay in Liverpool with Mustapha for a few nights. It would not be a very romantic experience staying in a safe house with two goons hovering around all night.