Three (Detective Alec Ramsay Series Book 7)

by Conrad Jones

  Alec sighed and shrugged. He felt like he had been punched in the guts. “His wife?”

  “It’s important that they know exactly where he’s at,” the doctor nodded and removed his glasses. “He’s been shot in the head for heaven’s sake, she’s not stupid. If there’s any change, I’ll let you know immediately.”

  “Thanks.” Alec sighed again. “How is Kayla Yates doing?”

  “The lady in the safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s not my patient but I believe she’s in a fragile condition at best,” he replaced his glasses and blinked. “They resuscitated her in surgery and made her comfortable. She’s stable but she’s very poorly.”

  “Thanks, Doctor.” Alec shook hands with him and walked away. He took the lift to the ground floor and wished that he had some cigarettes. His on and off affair with tobacco was in an off phase again. The lift dropped without stopping. When the lift doors opened, he stepped into the lobby and saw Maxwell standing outside of a newsagent studying the front page of a redtop. The shops and cafeterias were busy with patients and staff. Alec stepped aside to allow a porter to go by with a patient in a wheelchair. The woman in the chair looked old, almost reptilian in appearance. Her head lolled from side to side, saliva dribbled from the corner of her lips. Alec debated if it was better to grow old and become completely reliant on others to feed you and wipe your backside, or to die while all your facilities were still intact. Annie and Stirling would know what was happening to them. The old lady didn’t. They would feel fear and pain. The old lady wouldn’t. Which one would he be given the choice? Neither, he hoped. Thinking about them suffering could drive him insane if he allowed himself to dwell on it. He checked his watch and made his way across the reception area to where Max was standing.

  “Hello, Guv,” Max said holding up the newspaper. “Have you read this?”

  “Not yet.” Alec shook his head and scanned the headlines. A photograph of the mules being shepherded by men in balaclavas dominated the front page. The headlines screamed at him from the paper.

  THE REAL PRICE OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING

  Beneath was another photograph from the mill. Alec flushed red and walked to the newsstand. Four of the national redtops were sporting pictures taken on Antonia Barrat’s camera. At first glance, they looked the same but each one was slightly different.

  “Jesus Christ!” Alec snapped. “How the fuck did they get hold of these pictures?”

  “File sharing, Guv,” Max suggested. “It’s fairly common practice nowadays. If the photos were uploaded, it makes sense that someone where she worked could access them.” He paused. “Look at pages two and three.”

  TRAGIC LIVERPOOL REPORTER KIDNAPPED FROM AN ARMED POLICE CONVOY

  “I didn’t realise that Toni Barrat had such a colourful past, Guv.”

  “Bloody marvellous,” Alec moaned. “As if things weren’t bad enough.” The story went into grim detail about her becoming an orphan at a young age and it also placed the blame for her kidnap squarely on the heads of the Merseyside force. He turned over again.

  EVIL LATVIAN GANG, ‘THREE’, RESPONSIBLE FOR HUNDREDS OF MIGRANT DEATHS

  “Where are they getting their information from?” Alec shrugged. He felt defeated. They hadn’t mentioned Annie’s disappearance, which was a relief for now but it was probably destined for the later editions. He glanced over an abbreviated version of the history of Latvian occupation and the rise of the organisation Three. He handed Maxwell his newspaper. “The brass will be shitting their pants about now and I know where they will apply the pressure.”

  “On us, Guv.”

  “Correct,” Alec nodded. He changed the subject. “How did it go at the Fletcher place?”

  “Just like you said. It’s a total pantomime. The Fletchers were sitting in the front seats of a classic Alfa. There was a hosepipe attached to the exhaust pipe and the engine was running. It looks like a double suicide at first glance but Kathy Brooks isn’t convinced. She found an untreated injury on Peter Fletcher’s skull. He was admitted to hospital with a head wound but that had been stitched earlier. The other wound was fresh. She thinks that he was knocked out and then put into the Alfa and suffocated. His brother Paul has signs of being restrained before his death. I think they silenced them, Guv, but proving it is another thing.”

  “I agree,” Alec nodded. “The Latvian woman?”

  “There are no signs of foul play. She just opened the window and jumped. The other fellah died in a coma. If they didn’t, we have nothing to prove otherwise.”

  Alec checked his watch again. “We’d better get back to HQ and bring everyone up to speed.”

  “With a bit of luck someone will have dropped on some information that will lead us to this mob, Three.”

  “Fingers crossed, Sergeant,” Alec replied. Although he thought it would take considerably more than a bit of luck. “Listen, I want you to have a word with Google.” Google was the nickname of an MIT detective, affectionately called so because of the vast amount of trivia he could store in his brain.

  “What about, Guv?”

  “I’m stuck on the company that owned the Aigburth property,” Alec said with a sigh. “I know that we have searched Companies House but I think we looked in the wrong place.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “We traced them to a shell company in the Caymans, right?”

  “Yes, Guv.”

  “That’s where we should be looking. Ask Google to crosscheck his searches with companies registered in tax havens. Tell him to start with Bahrain, Jersey, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Luxembourg. I want him to search for Latvian directors. If he finds any, tell him to run the companies against the land registry going back, say five years.” Max made a note of the havens. “Tell him to do it today.”

  “Yes, Guv.”

  “I’ll see you back at MIT,” Alec said with a wave. He had a hunch that the Latvians owned more than just a Victorian terrace. If they did, Google would find it.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Ivor looked much older with his glasses on. He smoothed his faded jeans as he finished reading one newspaper and then angrily slammed it down onto his desk. Marika sat beside him and stroked his hair. Six of his men were sitting on a three piece suite on the opposite side of the room. They listened to him ranting as he read the news and commented when he asked for an opinion. Everyone was aware that Ivor had a violent temper. He could move from irritated to psychotic in the space of minutes. Marika knew that nobody made him as angry as his brother could, but this time Andris had surpassed anything that she had seen before. He had always been careless and arrogant; complete opposites to Ivor but this time his crimes were all over the British press.

  “Can you believe what they have done?” Ivor threw the question to the room. Ivor was a smart boss. He was crafty, cunning and inventive. He employed scientists to explore new ways of transporting drugs so that they couldn’t be detected. Everything was about being smart. Ivor wanted Three to be invisible, not even on the radar. In the beginning, Three was a mythical organisation. Their reputation was built on whispers, fables and the exaggerations of drunken old men. They were legends but no one was absolutely certain that they existed, bar the members themselves. Secrecy was sacrosanct. Their power was due to their obscurity. Ivor lectured Andris a thousand times, ‘The other gangs fear us because they can’t attack what isn’t there, brother, and the police fear us because they cannot capture ghosts, but he didn’t listen.

  “He has ruined decades of our work,” Ivor bellowed. He stood up and slammed his fists onto the desk. He pointed to his men. “You get it, don’t you?”

  “Of course, Ivor,” one of them answered and the others nodded their heads enthusiastically.

  “We have always blended into the background,” he looked around at them in turn. “That has been our strength.” They nodded in agreement. “He doesn’t get it, does he?”

  “He doesn’t want obscurity, Ivor,” Marika agreed. “
He wants to be known as a big man, a gangster. He wants everyone to know how much power he has, how dangerous messing with him can be; he is an idiot!”

  Ivor shook his head and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “The police here will not stop looking for us for a century.” He slammed the table again. His black shirt was tight around his muscular shoulders. “One detective dead, one shot in the head expected to die and a female Inspector kidnapped from her home.” He held up his hands in question. “How am I supposed to bring us back from that?” Marika shrugged in answer. She thought that the less she said the better. “This is without mentioning the civilian deaths and...” he tapped his index finger on the desk to emphasise his point. “And I haven’t mentioned killing one of the Karpovs. They know who did it and they will want payback. What can I do with him?”

  No one answered. There was no useful answer.

  “As for Letva,” he snapped. “I trusted him to oversee things. He has as much to answer for as Andris. Where is he?” He turned to his men.

  “He is at the recycling plant,” one of his men answered. “He took the journalist there.”

  “Fucking idiot. Call him and tell him to wait there. If he breathes without permission I will rip his heart out!” Ivor growled. “Take me there now and find out who is with Andris. Whoever is with him needs to bring him to the plant immediately, by whatever means possible. If he gives them any shit, tell them to kill him.”

  CHAPTER 54

  The recycling plant was on the outskirts of the city near to the river. Ivor and his men arrived in a discreet convoy of three cars. Marika turned to him and said, “Your little brother would have us travelling around in shiny black four by fours with bodyguards running alongside.”

  “And machineguns on the roof in case we get spotted,” Ivor laughed dryly. He looked at her and squeezed her knee gently. “You know that this is the end for us don’t you? We will have to leave Europe for a long time. I can leave men in charge here and there. Some things will tick over but others need my direct supervision. If I leave, they will be swallowed up by other organisations and once they smell weakness, they will move in and take everything.”

  “You really think that it is that bad?”

  “It is worse than bad. There is no way back from this. We cannot hide from this kind of exposure. The police will hunt us down. We will be target number one.”

  “We have enough money to do as we please. Maybe it is time to move on,” she shrugged and touched his hand. “As long as I am with you, I don’t care.” He leaned in and kissed her lips. “We can go wherever you like, whenever you want to,” she whispered. “I love you and whatever you think we should do is all right by me.”

  “I want you to go back to the hotel and sort out travelling arrangements. Make sure that we can leave unnoticed at short notice.”

  “I’ll make sure we have a couple of options, yes?”

  “Yes. None of the men must suspect we are leaving.”

  “Okay,” she whispered in his ear. “Leave it to me.”

  Ivor opened the door and climbed out. He tapped the driver on the shoulder, “Take Marika to the hotel. Stay with her until I call you.” The driver nodded and pulled off. Ivor looked around the plant. It was built when recycling was a buzzword and people’s enthusiasm to save polar bears made them believe that it was financially viable to separate society’s waste. The plant owners found out very quickly that it wasn’t. Ivor bought the site via a broker and an untraceable umbrella company. The real estate on the land was worth fifty times what its business value was. He would have to grease the right palms to change the land use to get permission to build houses but that wouldn’t be difficult and the profit would be in the millions. In the meantime, it was useful for storing vehicles and occasionally running operations. He looked east towards the river. Bales the size of cars made from crushed aluminium cans were stacked four high and three deep. To the west, cages of corrugated cardboard covered several acres and offered an excellent sightscreen and a wood shredding machine had turned tons of waste branches into a huge hill of sand coloured sawdust.

  “Letva is inside,” one of his men said. “He’s a bit upset that we’ve told him to remain here. He doesn’t know that you are here yet but he’s pissed off.”

  “Is he now?” Ivor said, his face darkening.

  They walked up a concrete ramp built to give access to forklift trucks and then used a side entrance into a warehouse facility. Skips full of green bottles lined the wall on his right and a mountain of newspapers climbed almost to the ceiling six metres above them. Open girders supported a corrugated plastic roof and long fluorescent tubes bathed the building in cold harsh light. Letva was arguing with another man when he saw them coming in. Ivor spotted the hunched figure of a female tied to a chair. Vomit pooled around her feet and Ivor could smell urine. She had wet herself, either through fear or desperation. It was one of the reasons that he sent Marika back to the hotel. He didn’t need her to see everything that went on. Sometimes his business required unsavoury methods to be employed. That part of the operation needed to be kept quiet. The other reason he had sent her back was the newspaper articles he had read.

  “Ivor, what is going on?” Letva asked. “You are back in the country. I thought that you would ring when you arrived. Why have you brought these new men here?”

  “They are not new, Letva,” Ivor corrected him. “They have been with us for a long time but they usually work elsewhere.”

  “Even so, there’s no need. We can handle things.”

  “It looks like it,” Ivor handed Letva a newspaper. Letva looked at it and blushed. Ivor noticed the woman’s head snap up and focus on the headlines. “Don’t pay any attention to the press. They exaggerate everything. It is not as bad as it looks. Andris and I have done our best to clean up. It might look messy for now but things will settle down again soon. You’ll see.”

  “Clean up?” Ivor said with a chuckle. “It might look ‘messy’?” Ivor emphasised the word. “Do you have any idea how much damage you have done?”

  Letva could see how annoyed Ivor was. He was holding back but his experience told him that it wouldn’t last long.

  “I have to be honest with you,” Letva softened his tone. “I know he is your brother but he is a liability. I warned Andris what he was doing was madness. I told him a hundred times that we shouldn’t attract attention to ourselves. He is out of control, Ivor.” He paused while his words sank in. “As for Oleg and Raitis, they encouraged him to be reckless. Oleg especially. You know how crazy he can be,” Letva pleaded with Ivor. It was time to employ plan B, which was blame everyone else. “Andris is responsible for all of this shit,” he continued with the wave of an arm. “When the handover went wrong, he panicked. He doesn’t think things through.”

  “You stepped back and thought things through, did you?”

  “I was trying to identify the leak. You said it was the priority.”

  “I also explained that the UK is not a warzone.”

  “Things got out of control.”

  “That is an understatement.”

  “Andris is the source of your leak, Ivor,” Letva dropped a bombshell.

  Ivor appeared to be genuinely shocked. He opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out at first. Long seconds ticked by as he mulled over the situation.

  “You had better be able to substantiate an accusation like that.” Ivor looked at his men and they stared in silence. All eyes were on Letva. To accuse one of their own of being an informer was one thing, but to accuse their leader’s kin was unheard of. “Explain yourself.”

  “How long have I worked for you?” Letva asked. Ivor shrugged, his face flushed with anger. “Do you think that I would speak of such a thing unless I was sure?” Ivor put his hands into his pockets and waited for him to continue. He was in no mood to waltz around the facts. “She is my proof, Ivor. Ask her where the information came from yourself,” Letva pointed at Toni. “Go on, ask her.”

 
“Are you telling me that my brother is talking to a journalist?” Ivor frowned and looked confused. Anyone found leaking information to the mainstream press was dead. Three had manipulated underground publications many times but the nationals were their enemy. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Ask her who called her with the information about the mill,” Letva stabbed his index finger towards her, his face twisted in anger. “Ask her.”

  Ivor looked at Toni and lowered his voice to speak to her. “Did my brother call you with information?” Toni shook her head. His eyes went to meet Letva’s.

  “Ask her who called her,” Letva insisted.

  “Who did call you?”

  “Richard Grainger,” Toni said hoarsely. Ivor’s eyes flickered with recognition. He didn’t look pleased to hear the name.

  “You have checked this information?”

  “Of course,” Letva answered. “The call is logged on her phone. We checked his number.”

  “Richard Grainger?” Ivor looked at Toni again. He seemed to be struggling with the information. “You are sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he tell you where he heard the information?”

  “No. I wouldn’t have asked and he wouldn’t have told me anyway.”

  “Did you pay him?”

  “One hundred for a tip and another hundred when the story was substantiated. You can check my PayPal account if you like.”

  “All this for a few hundred pounds?”

  “I told you,” Letva said smugly. “This is down to Andris.”

  Ivor looked at his watch and the put his hands onto his hips. He blew air from his cheeks. “And this Grainger character is dead?”

  “Andris flattened him with a Range Rover.”

  “And a detective too I believe,” Ivor added. “What was he thinking?”

  “The copper was collateral damage.”