Larcombe Manor

by Ted Tayler

  “Giles must continue to cover our tracks as much as possible,” said Athena. “Phoenix and Rusty will make their strike on the car gang in Ilford by ten o’clock. They wanted to pursue the Heath twins, but I persuaded them these missions should go ahead as planned. I authorised one amendment. Only three key personnel were due to be targeted this morning. I suggested that anyone connected to the gang was now fair game.”

  “Did we trace the whereabouts of the twins, after they escaped from the lay-by?” asked Minos.

  “The lorry went to the old Aust services complex near the first Severn Crossing,” said Artemis, “it’s still there this morning. The brothers weren’t inside the buildings when they were searched, but a high-speed motorcycle was seen leaving the area. Giles is trawling through CCTV images from the motorway network to locate it. They both lived in the Midlands. Graham had a place in Sutton Coldfield, and Paul lived in Burton upon Trent. They’ll turn up.”

  “When they do, they’ll be dealt with,” said Athena. “There’s a queue of teams standing by to take the mission. Andy Walters was very popular.”

  “Hugh was a valued member of the Larcombe team too,” said Henry. “I was impressed by his work in the few months we shared in the stable block. I can’t imagine how Ambrosia took the news of his death.”

  Athena sighed.

  “I’m afraid I passed the responsibility for that onto Zeus and Hera. Hera and Ambrosia were close. There was always a tension between Ambrosia and myself and Phoenix. She was ambitious. From her first visit here we felt she considered us as opponents rather than allies.”

  The sombre meeting ended before ten. Artemis was needed in the ice-house to help Giles. Phoenix and Rusty would be on the move. Athena returned to the apartment. She wished to spend time alone before tackling the pile of paperwork that awaited her.

  Maria Elena tended to Hope in the nursery, so Athena went to the bedroom to gaze out of the window. In time, she thought, I hope we can heal the rift between us. It was obvious Ambrosia and Hugh were very much in love. Hugh had been married before, but for Ambrosia, it was possibly her only chance of true happiness. To spend last night alone in her house in Leeds after hearing the heartbreaking news must have been awful. She had to have known of the close call only hours before near Sheffield. What a rollercoaster day for the poor woman’s emotions.

  Athena’s tears rolled down her cheeks. Where was this going to end?

  CHAPTER 9

  “All set?” asked Phoenix.

  Rusty and the three team leaders replied in the affirmative.

  He and Rusty had been stunned by the news of the death of so many agents yesterday afternoon. When it transpired that an Olympus agent had been responsible for killing Hugh Fraser, it stirred memories of the treachery of Thanatos.

  Thanatos had been one of the Three Amigos that Phoenix made fun of while Erebus was alive. There was something ugly in the hearts of those who betrayed their friends. Phoenix had only made real friends since his arrival at Larcombe Manor. He valued them above anything else and would never betray them.

  The drive to the Chiswick safe house this morning had been sobering. Rusty wasn’t in the mood to talk. Phoenix didn’t want to listen to his favourite music channel. There was a job to do. Athena’s words yesterday still rang crystal clear.

  No matter who they found in the garage workshop today, nobody walked away unscathed.

  *****

  Collen O’Riordan was right. Tyrone had a sore head this morning. But not entirely due to the excellent red wine they shared with their meal last night. It had been months since the two of them spent an evening together. In truth, she preferred her own company these days.

  Tyrone preferred younger women. The type he could guarantee he took to bed after spending lots of money on them. It seemed odd to be dropped at their respective homes by a taxi driver. It was so bloody normal. Perhaps, she should give that Tinder a try?

  It was the news he’d received this morning that annoyed Tyrone. She had only surfaced ten minutes earlier. Her first strong cup of coffee was going down a treat. Her phone had rung. She didn’t care who it was; it was too loud and far too early.

  “What?” she asked.

  “They only set the bloody cars on fire, didn’t they?” Tyrone spat into the phone. Colleen held the device away from her ear. She knew it was impossible, but she felt something, despite a check with her finger telling her different.

  Tyrone was still shouting.

  “They got the bodies out and away, doused the interiors with petrol and torched them,” he yelled. “Not a bloody thing for the police to find when they waltzed up, late as usual.”

  “What? You’re telling me the police don’t know who was killed, or even how many?” said Colleen. “Nothing? Can’t they identify the cars, even though they’re burnt out? What about the motorway cameras? Surely they can help?”

  “Would you believe they were out of action? No, nor do I. Olympus must have hacked into the systems and erased any incriminating footage. They’ve not said as much on the news yet this morning, but my informant fed me this half an hour ago. Those bastards are as slippery as an eel.”

  “Take the positives, son,” said Colleen, trying to reach the coffee percolator. It would take another cup to get over this. Heaven knows what Tyrone needed.

  “Yeah, you’re right, mum. We put eight into coffins, didn’t we? It wasn’t a total loss. I thought we had a great chance of opening the lid on what goes on at that bleeding headquarters of theirs. I’m going to have a think. There has to be another way.”

  *****

  In his office in Bath, Callum Wood had half a dozen new cases to tackle. His trip to London yesterday had been on his own time. Although crimes in the Roman city were fewer than in the capital, villains didn’t take the weekend off, despite their beautiful surroundings.

  He saw the news last night when he got home. Ronnie was tucked up in bed. Callum and Debbie had been shocked at the level of violence and the total disregard for members of the public.

  “It makes you wonder who’s running this country,” said Debbie. “These gangs have no boundaries they won’t cross.”

  “Warfare between rival gangs has been going on for decades,” Callum replied, “but it never used to be carried out in public. Their chances of getting caught are low. When they are the sentences are often a joke. It’s no surprise they think they’re untouchable. We’ve brought it on ourselves.”

  This morning, as he read through reports on a spate of burglaries on a rundown estate in Twerton, his mind drifted. This was old news, even the name of the road concerned conjured up images of old freezers and sofas cluttering the estate’s car parks, rather than the properties themselves.

  He tossed the report aside. This was a job for one of the kids. He spotted the newest recruit to the squad of detectives he supervised.

  “Damien,” he called, “this one’s got your number on it.”

  The laughter from poor Damien’s colleagues in the outer open-plan office convinced the young DC his parents did him no favours when selecting first names.

  Callum watched Damien strolling back to his desk with the report. The slumped shoulders told their own story. As soon as he’d read the location, Damien knew he had been given a shit job. We all had to do our fair share, thought Callum.

  Before he picked the next report from the top of the pile, he thought of Erica. The funeral was still a week away. Shaun and Tracey were due back at school this morning, but Callum imagined they were at home with their mother. Compassionate leave, or whatever schools called it these days. Something bothered him from his conversation with Dinesh yesterday, but he couldn’t get a fix on it. Time to switch focus. He should call Erica, to remind her everyone at Manvers Street was thinking of her.

  The phone rang half a dozen times before Erica answered.

  “Hello,”

  “Erica, it’s me, Callum. How are you? How are the children?”

  “Hello, Callum,” replied Er
ica, “as well as can be expected, I suppose. The neighbours have popped round with offers of help. The vicar is due tomorrow morning to go through the order of service. I’ve got so many sympathy cards to open, it’s unreal. The postman hasn’t even delivered yet. Cars pull up outside and the letter-box opens and closes.”

  Callum let her ramble. None of that stuff mattered, but while it occupied your mind, you avoided facing reality. The man you loved, the father of your children, had been murdered. He was never coming back.

  Erica was in limbo. She had dealt with the shock of discovering Phil’s body hanging in the hallway. There was no point denying it happened. People dealt with grief in different ways. Callum decided that because of Phil’s police background, Erica believed she could rely on people such as him to provide answers. Why was he killed? Who did it? Will they ever leave prison?

  “Have you got any leads in the case, Callum?” asked Erica.

  “We’re pursuing several lines of enquiry,” he replied.

  “Nothing then,” said Erica, “there’s no point kidding me. I’ve heard Phil trot out that excuse a hundred times.”

  “How was he getting on at Larcombe Manor,” asked Callum, “did he enjoy the work? What did he do, can you tell me?”

  “He was busy, I can tell you that. He didn’t go into detail. It was great to have him home at a sensible time in the evenings, and the kids loved having him here at the weekends.”

  Callum didn’t think this was leading anywhere.

  “It made a change from his security services firm, I guess? Phil travelled a fair bit with that business, I remember.”

  “Phil only had one job that took him away from home,” said Erica. “Out of the blue, they sent him up to Edinburgh. He was searching for a missing person. Phil reckoned she was dead.”

  “When was that?” asked Callum. “Did he have any luck?”

  “The last week in October,” said Erica, “well, it wasn’t lucky for the woman. Phil said he’d been proved right.”

  Callum made a note. Dead body discovered, near Edinburgh. Female. Late October. How did that relate to what he had imagined the charity handled? It didn’t gel, somehow.

  “I suppose he made new friends, even in the short time he worked there,” Callum continued to probe. “Phil got on with most people.”

  “You-know-who worked there, of course,” said Erica, “but apart from that Phil said he was on a short leash. A man called Hayden was his supervisor. The chap in the next office, Hugh was friendly. Other than that he was isolated from everyone else who worked there. There was a strict timetable for when he should arrive and leave.”

  “Who do I know that works there?” asked Callum, caught unawares by the comment.

  “Zara Wheeler,” said Erica, “didn’t you know? She’s not Wheeler now. I don’t know her husband’s name. She went to Larcombe straight from Portishead. Phil had a shock when he bumped into her on his first day.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Callum. “Look, I’ll keep in touch. If you want Debbie and Ronnie to drop in, give them a call.”

  “Thanks, Callum, you’re a good friend. We need to keep busy. It’s the long hours in between that are the worst. Especially at night.”

  Callum sat at his desk, staring at the notes he scribbled. What was that Scotland trip for? Why didn’t Zara tell him she and Phil worked at the same place? They had been so close. Lovers, if the rumours out of Portishead were believed. Why was Phil denied access to parts of Larcombe Manor? His copper’s nose twitched. He was onto something, he knew it.

  *****

  “I wonder why other businesses on this street haven’t reported what’s going on here?” asked Rusty.

  “Afraid of having their place torched?” suggested Phoenix.

  The garage workshop they targeted stood on a corner lot of a street on the trading estate. Its external workspace was surrounded by high fencing and razor wire.

  Teams closed in on the garage workshop. Scaling the fences would have been tricky. Phoenix had decided to burst in through the front doors. Olympus wasn’t after the car thieves who kept providing a steady supply of high-performance cars for these villains. They wanted to shut this part of the organisation for good.

  The teams entered through the side door, next to the roller door running the width of the premises. A steel enforcer separated the door from its hinges. Phoenix, Rusty, and twelve Olympus agents ran through the gap.

  Twelve vehicles lay in varying states of disassembly in the centre. Multiple vehicle parts such as engines, transmissions, fuel tanks, seats, doors, wheels, and tyres were stacked against the outside walls. There was heavy lift equipment such as hoists being used in several spots. Rusty wasn’t surprised it took several seconds for the men inside to realise they had visitors.

  The noise inside the workshop was loud and constant. Music blared from speakers in the roof space. Many of the mechanics in the centre wore ear defenders. Those using the acetylene cutting torches wore masks. This was a slick operation, which Rusty knew went on twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It must pay well. These guys weren’t skimping on Health and Safety.

  Phoenix reckoned the men inside the main building thought they were being raided by the authorities. The Olympus uniform confused them long enough that they offered no resistance. Some even carried on working.

  He kept running through the workshop. A team of four agents followed him. They headed for the offices. The Portacabin was situated in the car park at the rear. That’s where their documentation lay, the vital links in the chain from the initial theft to the eventual destination of the car, or its parts.

  Behind him, Phoenix heard the shouts and screams as punishments were administered. None of the men would die, but they wouldn’t be much use in this line of work for months.

  As the agents ran out of the rear entrance, they saw the rest of the gang emerging from the Portacabin. There were five men, three carried baseball bats, one carried a machete. The man bringing up the rear looked the sort who thought he didn’t need a weapon. He was a giant of a man.

  “The Grid’s killers showed no mercy to your colleagues,” Phoenix reminded his team.

  Weapons were raised. The chop shop gang leaders were stopped in their tracks. A series of staccato bursts from the automatic weapons of the Olympus agents cut them down. Even the man-mountain crashed to the ground. The sound echoed around the enclosure and then there was silence.

  “Rusty must have turned off that music,” said Phoenix.

  The team leader by his side grinned.

  “Good job too. I can’t stand that electronic UK garage stuff, can you?”

  Phoenix led the team into the Portacabin.

  “Everything in here needs to go. Files, laptops, mobile phones. It will give you leads to pursue in both directions. Along the supply chain to the thieves that lifted them off the streets. Then you can follow the cars on their onward journey to Africa and the Far East, or trace who’s in the market for these spare parts. It will keep you guys busy for a while. With luck, Larcombe will reward you for your efforts and you will get the nod to carry out the direct action against the rogues you identify. Good hunting.”

  “Cheers, Phoenix,” said the team leader. “Not a bad morning’s work. A few scores settled.”

  The other teams rounded up the crew in the workshop when they arrived.

  “Take them outside and lock them in the Portacabin,” said Phoenix. He watched as the men hobbled and stumbled their way towards the roller door. They wouldn’t get any sympathy from him. After the agents returned the door was closed.

  “We’ll leave the rest to you,” he said. “Every piece of kit in here needs to be put out of action, whether it’s hand-held or on wheels. The Grid will get another team to keep this trade going, but this site must need a fortune spent on it to get it up and running again.”

  “Understood, Phoenix,” said a team leader. “Come on lads, let’s do some damage.”

  Phoenix and Rusty returned to their
van. Time to head back to the Chiswick safe house.

  “We should be there in an hour,” said Rusty. “Do we have time for a bite to eat, or do you want to drive straight on to Kettering.”

  Phoenix checked his watch.

  “We’ve no need to rush,” he said. “I vote for a visit to that takeaway we’ve used before. You never know when we’ll get the chance of a decent meal again. The next mission won’t be as easy as this.”

  Rusty smiled at his mate’s idea of a decent meal, but he was hungry and a large pizza would satisfy that hunger just as well as a slap-up meal.

  “A trading estate that size would have security, don’t you reckon?” he asked.

  “I saw a kiosk on the corner when we drove onto the estate,” said Phoenix. “No more than a token presence. I know what you’re thinking. Loud noises of people using machinery at inappropriate hours. Vehicles that enter a location but never leave. All those high-valued cars covered over in the lot at the rear of the garage and big cargo vans or trucks coming and going throughout the week.”

  “Yeah, security here leaks like a sieve,” said Rusty. “We drove four vans onto the estate and nobody took a blind bit of notice.”

  Phoenix called the team leader he left ransacking the Portacabin.

  “When you finish there, visit the security guy in the kiosk on the way out. Lose any record he may have of our van registrations.”

  Rusty heard the guy on the other end ask a question.

  “Don’t hurt him too much, just enough to convince him not to mention having seen anything unusual today. He’s used to it.”

  Rusty parked the van outside the row of shops that housed a string of fast-food outlets.

  “What topping do you want?” he asked, as he got out.

  “We’ve got to start eating healthier foods if we want to reach fifty,” said Phoenix. He pointed to a new place two doors up from the pizzeria that had opened since they were last in Chiswick. “I’ll have a grilled chicken Caesar salad wrap, please. There are plenty of options on the menu, I’m sure. Don’t bring back any rubbish for yourself.”