Tommy had handed him Petrovsky on a plate. It was the perfect Win-Win scenario. McKenzie bags one of the biggest criminals in Scotland, and Tommy takes over his business empire.
Perfect.
Or at least it should have been.
The problem was that he knew that McKenzie was overstepping the mark. He was looking to take them both down at the same time.
Caroline, beautiful and sexy though she was, was turning out not to be as reliable and efficient as he had hoped she would be. Thankfully she was not his only source of inside information in St Leonards. There were others.
Unfortunately, their news this evening had not been good.
McKenzie was getting even closer.
If the search tomorrow did reveal the route they had taken to get Urqhart into the Park that night, things would get messy.
All it would take would be one CCTV camera picture. One witness.
One mistake.
McKenzie was getting hot. Too hot.
He had to be stopped.
At all costs.
Tommy never left anything to chance.
It was time to take back control before he lost it all.
Opening his eyes, his mind resolved, and his plan now determined, he pressed the button under his desk which released the panel in the floor behind him.
Spinning around in his chair and kneeling down he pulled back the panel and remove one of the three guns which were hidden beneath.
Examining it, a Glock 17 British Army issue pistol, he smiled. Of all the small arsenal of weapons that he owned, this was his favourite.
Many a time he had fantasised about putting the barrel against the back of McKenzie's head and pulling the trigger. A quick and simple end to a big problem.
Life however was not so simple. Tommy needed to be smarter than that.
His plan would ensure that the threat posed by McKenzie would be removed, and Tommy would never be associated with his demise.
Laying the gun on the desk and removing the laptop from his safe, he switched it on and opened his anonymous Skype account.
Selecting Caroline's number he sent her a quick text.
"Hi Beautiful. Let's 'S'."
Picking up the Glock from the desk, he rested the barrel against his cheek and closed his eyes, planning the evening ahead while he waited for Caroline.
Tommy wasn't stupid. He had always been very careful how he communicated with Caroline, or any of his employees.
He knew that his phones were probably bugged, and that he had to be careful how and what he ever said. Which is why he made most of his serious communications across Skype, or using other online media. For criminals like him, modern technology was a godsend.
In the old days, the police or the secret service could intercept emails and phone calls and easily find out what criminals were doing by listening to their conversations or reading whatever they had written.
Nowadays the internet and smart phones gave people like him a million different ways to talk to or share information with anyone they wanted. Thanks to the stupidity of the general public who demanded so much privacy, most communications and messaging platforms today were encrypted, making it impossible for law enforcement agencies to ever track criminals and find out what they were doing. Even if they knew a criminal was using Skype or Facebook, thanks to the warped business models and values of the internet giants, they actually protected the criminals who used their services and often refused to help the police monitor their communications. The internet, smart phones, social media apps and encryption were the best thing to ever happen to the criminals and arguably one of the most dangerous things to happen to society.
In short, today's criminals were a million light years ahead of the police who were almost powerless to keep up with them.
A small beep brought Tommy back to the room. Caroline was calling him on Skype.
"Hi Beautiful. How are you?" he asked, smiling at her. She looked like she had just got out of the shower.
"Fine. Just got back from work. I was wondering when you'd call. I've been waiting for you. I've got some important news."
"Good. I was hoping you'd be able to explain just what the hell was going on? What was this morning all about? What the hell is going on?"
"Tommy, I don't know.McKenzie is acting weird. He's cutting me out. I do know one thing though. He's getting desperate. He's clutching at straws."
She went on to explain all about the search that he had organised the next day, and the conversation she had had with him earlier on.
"Oh, that's better, I can see you much better now. You suddenly got much clearer on my screen...Anyway, Tommy, DCI McKenzie is determined to get you. At present, you're still in the clear. But I don't like the way things are going. And if he connects you to the deaths in Galashiels, you're screwed."
"Obviously," he replied. Tommy already knew all of this, but he was relieved to hear it all coming from Caroline.
"Did you make your statement?" she asked. "I was busy and didn't get a chance to swing by whilst you were there."
"Don't worry. It's cool. Laurie was with me, and she's not worried. Neither am I."
He smiled at her.
"Caroline, do me a favour... Let me see your exquisite breasts! Drop your dressing gown. Let me see them for a minute? It's been a hell of a day, and I could do with seeing something nice..."
Caroline smiled.
Then shook her head.
"Actually, not tonight Tommy. I don't feel comfortable..."
Her voice trailed off.
Tommy frowned, biting his lip. He wasn't used to people saying no to him. True, Caroline had been getting away with it for years because she was special. But things were getting out of control, and Tommy needed to get a grip of everything that was happening to him, and around him. Perhaps he had been too lax. Things had to change.
He had to remember that Caroline was an asset. That's all. Business always came before pleasure. As did survival.
"Caroline, there's something I need to talk to you about. There's something I need you to do for me."
Chapter 35
Andheri
Near Mumbai, Maharashtra
India
Thursday
03.10 a.m. India Standard Time (IST)
Anand opened his eyes. The alarm on his laptop was going off.
It took him a few moments to come to, and for him to overcome the exhaustion which sought to drag him back into unconsciousness.
Pulling the laptop towards him he looked at the screen to find out which of the alerts he had set up had been triggered, each of which would alert him to a variety of activities taking place on the webpages, servers or devices that he was monitoring.
The moment Anand realised what he was looking at, his adrenaline started pumping and he was quickly alert.
Picking up the laptop and checking that his family were okay, he snuck out of their bedroom and into his 'office' on the floor of the main room in the flat.
Crossing his legs and placing the laptop on his knees, he focussed his concentration on the screen.
The alarm that had gone off was one that he had set up on one of Tommy McNunn's devices, - presumably one of his laptops - via some malware which had been downloaded onto that device when McNunn had opened an attachment to an email which Anand had sent to his email account.
Thanks to the malware, Anand could take control of the inner functions of the laptop, giving him the ability to view everything that Tommy could see on his screen, to see everything that the camera in the laptop could see, and enabling him to hear any sound that the microphone captured, or any sound that was produced by the laptop's loudspeakers.
In other words, he could see and hear everything that Tommy was doing on his laptop.
One of the functions of the malware was to set off an alarm on Anand's system which alerted him that the laptop had been activated and that it was being used.
The second thing it did was to start recording everythi
ng that happened, and automatically download it to a remote Dropbox account that Anand had set up.
If McNunn had a slow broadband connection there was a possibility that he might notice that his system was running really slowly, and some of the functions that the malware had been designed to spy on may actually not work... but Anand was pretty sure that McNunn would have the best of everything. With high-speed broadband McNunn wouldn't notice a thing, and Anand would be able to record everything he did in glorious technicolour.
Anand took a few deep breaths and connected over the TOR network to the device which had just triggered the alert.
The malware which he was using was something that he had bought on the Dark Web from a malware shop. It was a great tool, with a rather simple but brilliant user interface.
Within seconds of connecting to the device at the other end, the malware program was showing him several different options for automatically controlling functionality on the remote device.
Anand selected the sound, the camera and the keyboard, the basic options most hackers would select.
Three small windows opened on his own screen. One showed him the text that was being typed on Tommy’s keyboard, the other showed him what the camera which was embedded in the remote device could see or was looking at, and the other showed him controls for the microphone on the device that Tommy was using.
Anand immediately had second thoughts and went back to the user menu and additionally selected the ability to see what was actually being seen on the screen itself by whoever was using the device.
Anand mentally thanked the other hackers in the world who had developed the malware. A few years ago, everything had been so much harder. Nowadays certain aspects of hacking were almost child's play.
From experience Anand knew it took a couple of moments for everything to start working and for the images to start streaming, but once they did, everything would hopefully work.
He wasn't wrong.
A face suddenly filled one of the small windows on his screen. Anand immediately recognised him. It was the same face that Anand had seen on the driving licence he downloaded from the DVLA in the UK: Mr Tommy McNunn.
The image was a little dark, so Anand adjusted the resolution of the camera - which was now fully under his control - and soon he could see his face better.
"Oh, that's better, I can see you much better now. You suddenly got much clearer on my screen," a woman's voice said from the speakers, "DCI McKenzie is determined to get you. Right now, you're still in the clear. But I don't like the way things are going. And if he connects you to the deaths in Galashiels, you're screwed..."
Suspecting that this was potentially a really important conversation he quickly started to record the live feed from McNunn's laptop to an external hard-drive which was attached to his laptop for exactly this purpose, thus saving him from having to scan the Dropbox recordings later.
As he listened to the conversation he also started to scribble down some notes.
"...DCI McKenzie... Galashiels..."
He was soon drawn into the conversation, and within minutes knew that he had hit the jackpot.
After a while he stopped scribbling down the notes and just stared at the image of Tommy McNunn on his screen. He could always listen to the conversation again afterwards.
McNunn was not a bad looking man. His eyes seemed tired, and the man looked exhausted. His left eye was twitching, often a sign of lack of sleep...or was it his right eye?...He had to think about that for a second...which way round was the image he was seeing?
Anand stared into the man's face. He saw coldness there. Inhumanity. And perhaps evil.
Anand shuddered.
Then, the next thing Anand was looking at was the image of a gun barrel resting against McNunn's cheek. Anand bent closer to the screen.
Wow. McNunn was actually rubbing a gun barrel against his cheek as he spoke to the woman over Skype!
Anand quickly hit Print Screen on his laptop, capturing the image of McNunn with his gun for later.
What happened next, Anand almost couldn't believe...
-------------------------
The Dockside Casino
Edinburgh
Wednesday
10.24 p.m. G.M.T.
"Caroline..." Tommy McNunn's voice changed, his tone somehow becoming a masterful combination of being somewhere between serious, commanding and seductive, the same tone which Caroline recognized Tommy used whenever he wanted to manipulate her into doing something for him.
"Caroline... you know how much you mean to me, and how important you are to me?" he asked, moving closer to the screen.
"Tommy, what do you want, exactly?"
"What makes you think I want anything?"
"Enough Tommy, what is it that you want?"
Tommy hesitated. Caroline was getting far too clever nowadays.
"DCI McKenzie has to be stopped. We must take him out of the equation as soon as possible. If we don't, it's probably only a matter of time before he discovers something and takes me down. I'm not an idiot - as much as I try to be clever and try to continuously outwit him, my success in evading him so far is as much down to luck as anything else. But it's going to run out one day, and that man is obsessed with arresting me and having me locked up for life. He's made it his number one personal goal for years, and I'm beginning to get a bad feeling about this. Somewhere at the back of my brain there's an alarm bell going off, and the only way to stop it is to get rid of McKenzie."
"Get rid of him?" Caroline interrupted him "What do you mean? Kill him?"
"Ideally, yes, but that would be too risky, and raise too many eyebrows. I'd quickly come under suspicion. No, your way is much better."
"My way?"
"Yes. Your idea to get all high-tech and modern and stitch people up by putting their DNA at the scene of a crime was brilliant. How many times have we done that now? Ten times? Eleven? With a conviction every time. I probably owe more to that simple idea than anything else."
"So, what do you want from me?" Caroline asked, not responding to the praise as she normally would.
"I need to get some DNA from McKenzie. I thought I might have had some already, when I took a cup from the coffee shop a while back, which McKenzie had been holding and drinking from, but the lab boys said there wasn't anything they could really use on it."
"So, how can I help you Tommy? Please, just spell the bloody thing out will you!"
"I want you to sleep with McKenzie. Make him fuck you with a condom on. And then give me the condom with his semen in it."
There was a slight moment of silence after Tommy finished his sentence, during which he scrutinised Caroline's face for her reaction.
She blinked a couple of times, and her head shook slightly.
Then she spoke.
"What? What did you just say? Sorry... what...?"
"I want you to get a sample of McKenzie's sperm for me. For his DNA."
"WHAT? Shit Tommy, are you serious? What the hell... WHY? What will you do with it? Why do you want it?"
"It's perfect Caroline. It's a brilliant plan. You give me his sperm. I kill a prostitute from Leith. Or a police informer... I might even know one...then I fake a rape and insert McKenzie's sperm into her. I call the police and give an anonymous description of McKenzie leaving a hotel room where I claim to have overheard what sounded to be like a rape taking place... The police come...They do an autopsy on the body which they find and establish that she was raped after all. They find McKenzie's sperm inside her. Another anonymous phone call identifies McKenzie somehow, - I'll work that one out later- and they question him and then match his DNA to the fresh sperm inside the murdered woman...
"Fuck off, Tommy."
"What do you mean 'fuck off?' It's brilliant. Once McKenzie is arrested and locked up for the murder, you get his job, and everyone is quid's in!"
"Do you think I'm a bloody whore? Is that all I am to you? A bloody whore? You shit. I can't believe you're ask
ing me to do that for you. I can't believe that you'd even think that I would!"
"Whoa! Stop!" Tommy waived at the screen, trying to get her to calm down. "I was only joking...you know, just thinking aloud.. .it sounded funny that's all. But, hey, you never know, it might work? And if you did it for me, I promise you, you could have anything you want. Anything!"
"Tommy, you're insane. Mad. And I can't believe you think so little of me that you'd want me to sleep with another man like that? Why me? Why ask me?"
"Because I've seen the way he looks at you Caroline. The man's crazy about you. He stares at your tits whenever he can. And he looks at you when you're not looking with bloody sex-starved-love-sick eyes..."
"You're joking! You think McKenzie fancies me? Tommy, you've lost the plot."
"Listen honey, I'm a man and I know what I'm talking about. That man would sleep with you at the drop of a hat. Which means that he'd definitely sleep with you if you dropped your knickers!"
As soon as he said the words, Tommy knew that he'd made a mistake. Caroline's eyes opened wide, she shook her head several times, and then he saw her hand lifting towards her laptop.
The last thing he heard her say was "Fuck you, Tommy!" and then the computer screen went black.
For a few moments, Tommy sat staring at the blank screen.
Rather strangely, anger was not his first emotion.
Instead, he felt a sudden feeling of emptiness. Maybe even of loss.
Caroline had never behaved like that before. This was serious.
Stupidly, really bloody stupidly, Tommy had over stepped the mark and he knew it.
There was a certain finality in the way she had said those last words: "Fuck YOU, Tommy!"
For a moment, he thought about calling her straight back and begging for forgiveness, but as soon as the word 'beg' entered his subconscious he reacted against it. What the hell was he thinking about? He never apologised to anyone. Ever.
Say You're Sorry: A Gripping Crime Thriller (A DCI Campbell McKenzie Detective Conspiracy Thriller No 1) Page 28