Say You're Sorry: A Gripping Crime Thriller (A DCI Campbell McKenzie Detective Conspiracy Thriller No 1)
Page 33
Whether Tommy actually heard the words ‘you are not’ is dubious. It was more likely that by the time the words were issued from the phone, it was already travelling at thirty miles an hour in the direction of the nearest wall, where it suffered the same fate as all its predecessors that week.
Tommy’s men watched from a discreet distance as he sat down cross-legged on the ground and rubbed his head with his hands.
For a few minutes, Tommy simply stared at the sky, showing no further expression or feelings.
Then slowly he stirred, stood up and stretched.
Ramsay, the smaller and the clever of his two new monkeys, walked across to him and stretched out his hand, offering him a new mobile phone.
“It’s the last phone, Boss. I’ll need to go and buy some more.”
Tommy took it, walked across to the wall and retrieved the old SIM card from the wreckage on ground.
No sooner had he inserted the card and switched it on, than the by now familiar message appeared on its screen, instructing him to say he was sorry.
Tommy immediately went for the option on the left, refusing to admit any liability or say he was sorry to anyone.
-------------------------
Unfortunately for Tommy, he didn’t realise that by clicking on the icon with the message on the left of the screen, he automatically launched malware onto the new phone which immediately gave Anand full control of its operations.
As Tommy moved from phone to new phone, Anand’s malware followed the SIM card. Each time the new hardware registered with the network with the old SIM, fresh malware was delivered to the phone, and a vicious circle of command and control signals were exchanged between Tommy’s phone and a server somewhere in Brazil, which Anand also controlled and from where his malware was remotely launched.
Within seconds, Anand could once again hear everything that was said anywhere near the latest phone. He could also ‘see’ through the camera on the smartphone, and monitor every keystroke Tommy typed on its keyboard. Furthermore, and sometimes this was the most useful bit, Anand could remotely access all the Apps on the phone. Occasionally, this would come in very useful. For example, the mapping app and lifestyle apps on a smartphone would often record exactly where on the planet the phone was. By recording this information Anand could tell exactly where the phone - and therefore Tommy - was at any point of the day. Fortunately for McNunn, most smartphones today gave the user the option to switch off the geo-location functionality of the phone, which meant that the information was not made available. Unfortunately for McNunn, once Anand had access to the smartphone, Anand could simply change the settings and switch the geo-location back on. Which Anand did whenever McNunn remembered to customize the settings on any new replacement phones and switch it off, thus giving McNunn a false sense of security which Anand happily exploited.
All this information, and more, would be regularly compiled by the malware into a data file which would be automatically and regularly transmitted to another server in Zimbabwe. Every couple of hours Anand would remotely access the file and copy across any information that he thought was of use.
These could include recordings of telephone conversations, emails, records of websites visited…anything and everything.
It was rather incredible, but all true.
Tommy McNunn’s life centred around his smartphone, and now Anand controlled his phone, Anand had access to almost every aspect of Tommy’s life.
Only Tommy didn’t know that.
And Anand had no intention of letting him find out.
-------------------------
“Can you give me a few moments in private, boys?” Tommy said quietly. “I’m going to go for a walk in my back garden. I need to think. Help yourself to coffee or tea in the kitchen… actually, forget that. There’s no electricity. And the milk in the fridge will be off. And there’s no water in the tap. If you’re lucky, you might find some non-alcoholic beer in the drinks cabinet, but lay off the booze. I need you both to be clear-headed. Got it?”
Ignoring the fact that house and the garden seemingly no longer belonged to him, Tommy let himself out his backdoor and started to stroll around the lawn.
His dog came bounding up to him, salivating and seemingly genuinely happy to see him. “At least someone is,” Tommy thought to himself.
“So, when was the last time you were fed? I bet you're starving!” Tommy said, kneeling down and stroking him.
Returning to the kitchen quickly he got some tinned dog food and filled up the dog’s bowl, shouting at his men to make sure that one of them came by the house each day to feed him if Tommy was still staying at the casino.
The light was beginning to dim when Tommy returned to the garden and sat down on his favourite chair at the bottom of the garden underneath the towering chestnut tree.
He had a lot on his mind. Too much. He was worried that if he wasn’t careful, he might begin to lose perspective on everything that was going on. Whatever happened, he had to remain objective. To retain the ability to think clearly. To avoid irrational thoughts and above all else, avoid falling prey to fear.
If that happened, Tommy would lose everything.
Although, from what was becoming apparent, he had pretty much lost it all already. Everything was being taken away from him. Bit by bit.
Everything legal that was.
So far, whatever was happening to him had not impacted his illegal businesses.
For some strange reason, they had not yet been affected.
Surely there must be a clue there which could help him find whoever was behind all this?
Tommy’s mind began to search frantically through all the possibilities, desperate to find something that might give him a clue as to who was really behind it all.
One by one, he started to examine the possible culprits.
The old man? No. He was dead. But if he was dead, who was sending him the stupid ‘Say you're sorry’ messages? And why? It made no sense.
Was it Petrovsky? Again no. Everything he had learned from interrogating Blair in the bunker genuinely seemed to indicate that Petrovsky was not behind it.
Wessex? Could it be her? The possibility that it could be her jumped into his mind without him expecting it, catching him completely by surprise. The thought shocked him. Could it really be her?
This realisation was extremely worrying. Until that moment, Tommy had not really considered just how much power Caroline now had over him. She knew all about him. If she wanted to, it would be easy for her to destroy him. All she had to do was tell the police – her ‘colleagues’ – only a small fraction of what she knew about him, and they could basically lock him up and throw away the key.
If it was her though, she must have started this before she had split up with him. Had she already been planning to dump him for some time?
It seemed unlikely. He had really trusted her.
Either way though, he couldn’t take a chance. Although Tommy concluded that she probably wasn't behind everything that was happening to him, he did now realise that Caroline knew too much. Something would have to be done about that. She had gone from being an ally and lover to a threat.
Which left him only with two other real possibilities, no, - three - that he could realistically think of.
The first was, his wife. Could she be behind it?
No. She was too stupid. Which was actually fine: her intelligence was not the reason he had married her.
Which now left only two others, the first of whom was McKenzie.
DCI McKenzie.
The man Caroline had just slept with.
The problem was however, that although McKenzie certainly had ‘the motive’, he was actually a senior serving police officer and as such, would receive a ‘Go Straight to Prison’ card, if he was in any way partially connected to anything or everything that was happening to Tommy privately.
Barring it being one of many old enemies whom he hadn’t seen in a while, or a relative of someone he
had killed at some point, Tommy couldn’t think of anyone else, apart from one person.
Mr Andrew Burns. His accountant.
“Shit,” Tommy swore to himself, with the realisation that it had to be him.
After all, he just started to sell Tommy's house, having stolen it from Tommy right under his nose. It had to be him.
“BASTARD!” he swore again, this time louder. If only he had killed him just as he had wanted to a few days before. If he hadn’t answered his mobile phone and let Mrs McNunn talk him out of it just before his accountant had got home that night, he would have shot him in the head, and maybe none of this other stuff would have happened.
Then, having spared his life, the bastard had somehow managed to convince Tommy that he was still loyal to him, and that he wasn't in any way responsible for what was happening to Tommy.
Which was now obviously all lies.
Nevertheless, Tommy had fallen for it.
Tommy knew that it was only a fool that did not learn from his mistakes, and Tommy was not a fool.
There were three things that he had to do now. Today. Tonight.
The first one was to take care of the accountant. Once and for all. Although not before forcing him to reverse all the shit he was obviously responsible for.
The second and the third things were closely related.
Caroline and McKenzie.
And as if to prove that he wasn’t a fool, Tommy had just thought up a way how he could kill two birds with one stone.
Tommy stood up and headed back towards the house.
There was a lot to do, and it was getting late.
As he emerged from his house accompanied by his two boys, for the first time in ages, he was smiling.
Chapter 41
Hillside Farm
Threipmuir Reservoir
The Pentland Hills
Edinburgh
Thursday
6.15 p.m. G.M.T.
Andrew Burns sat on the chair in Tommy’s office in his farmhouse in the Pentland Hills, shaking.
He was scared.
Only half an hour ago, he had been finishing up some work in his office in central Edinburgh when three of Tommy’s men had walked in, taken him firmly by the arms and bundled him into a parked van in the mews at the back of his office.
“Mr McNunn wants to see you,” was all the explanation he had received.
With no windows in the back of the van, Andrew had had no idea where he was being driven. He knew that things were serious because of the rough way he had been handled. In the past whenever he had been summoned to meet with Tommy, he was always afforded a pleasant drive in the back seat of a BMW or a Mercedes. Never before, simply bundled up and thrown topsy-turvy onto the cold floor of a van.
After about twenty minutes the van had seemingly left the main road and started down a dirt track. The van had bumped and rattled, and Andrew was pretty shaken up and bruised by the time the van came to a stop and the back doors were flung open.
Two pairs of rough hands found him and dragged him out, escorting him from the van to a small house beside a loch on the side of some hills.
Andrew immediately knew where he was. He was the one who had managed to purchase Hillside Farm for Tommy all those years ago, and had been there several times since, although always in more salubrious circumstances.
Tommy’s men pushed him roughly through the farmhouse until they got to the room Tommy used as his office when he was out of Edinburgh. Opening the door and switching on the light, they pushed him inside.
“Mr McNunn will be here soon. Sit tight. Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be waiting in the kitchen.”
As Andrew brushed himself down and tried to control his breathing it occurred to him that things could be worse.
They hadn’t taken him to the Bunker, and they had left him alone, seemingly without a guard outside the door.
Perhaps things weren’t as bad as they seemed.
If he wanted to, he could maybe make a break for it through the window, or sneak outside the backdoor which was on the other side of the building away from the kitchen. Although he knew he would only discover what this was all about if he stayed put and waited for Tommy to get there.
Sitting down in the chair behind the desk, he settled down to wait, all the time trying to figure out what on earth it could be about. Was is something to do with the car? The bank accounts?
Andrew had already explained to Tommy that he had nothing to do with any of that. Tommy had been angry. Furious. But he had eventually seemed to accept what Andrew had said.
Something else must have gone wrong. But what?
He didn’t have long to wait before he found out.
When Tommy arrived, it was like a tornado had just burst into the room.
Andrew had never seen him so angry.
When he heard the first words come out his mouth, Andrew knew that he had made a mistake. He should have run for it while he'd had the chance.
-------------------------
“You BASTARD!” Tommy screamed at his accountant who was sitting calmly behind the desk as if he hadn’t got a care in the world.
Tommy stormed across the room, slammed his mobile phone down on the desk in front of Burns, and then grabbed him by the collar with both hands.
“What the fuck did you think you were doing? Did you honestly think you could steal my house from me without me finding out? You stupid fuck…” Tommy swore at him, followed swiftly by a head butt into Andrew’s forehead.
Tommy released his grip and the accountant fell backwards, slumping back into the chair.
“Stop!” The accountant shouted. “What are you talking about?”
Tommy immediately slapped him hard across his cheek.
“You don’t fucking talk until I tell you to, do you understand?”
The accountant nodded.
Tommy leant towards him, his eyes only centimetres from Andrew’s head.
“I’m going to give you a choice, Andrew. And I want you to think carefully about it before you make it.” Tommy clicked his fingers in the air, and one of the two men who had accompanied him into the room dropped a laptop on the table.
“It’s your laptop. I got Jimmie to pick it up when he visited you in the office earlier. And here’s the wireless password for my office.” Tommy said, scribbling some letters on a post-it note on his desk and then sticking it on his accountant’s forehead.
“I know what you did Andrew. I know you transferred my money into your accounts. You swore you hadn’t done it, that it was a mistake, but I know you fucking did it, okay? And now I know you transferred the deeds of my house into your name and that you’re now trying to sell it. Are you fucking crazy? Have you gone mad? How long did you think it would take me to find out once I saw the ‘For Sale’ sign go up?”
The accountant opened his mouth to speak, but Tommy slapped him again before he uttered a word.
“Listen, you twat. Fucking don’t speak. I’ve had enough of your excuses. I don’t know how you've done what you did, but like I said, I’m going to give you a choice. Either you choose to put everything back where it belongs, - to give me my house back, - to give me my LIFE back, or I'll take you to the Bunker and fucking rip you apart with my bare hands. Do you understand? You’ve got until midnight to sort this shit out, or you’re dead. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
Just for good measure, and to emphasise the threat, Tommy punched the accountant in the face.
“I’ve got some other business to attend to now. I’ll be back later. Whatever it is you need to do to give me my life back, you’d better do it quickly. If everything isn’t sorted by the time I come back, I’m going to make you suffer, a lot, before I finally put a bullet through your brain.”
Tommy leant forward and pushed his finger into the middle of his accountant’s forehead.
For a moment, their eyes met.
Tommy pressed his finger harder against the man’s skull.
“A single bullet. Right her
e.” He whispered.
Then he picked up his phone, turned and hurried out the room.
-------------------------
India
Anand had listened with fear and trepidation to the conversation that was going on in Scotland.
It was all going horribly wrong.
Something terrible was happening.
The man whom Anand had identified as Tommy McNunn’s accountant was getting all the blame for everything that Anand was doing. McNunn was going to kill him later that evening unless in the next few hours the accountant could reverse everything that Anand had spent weeks completing. And all of Anand's activities were only made possible with years of hacking experience that the accountant couldn’t possibly possess.
On top of that, the accountant didn’t even have the faintest idea what Anand had actually done.
There was no doubt about it. Tommy McNunn’s accountant was a dead man, and unless he did something soon, it was all going to be Anand’s fault.
-------------------------
Hillside Farm
Threipmuir Reservoir
The Pentland Hills
Edinburgh
Thursday
6.35 p.m. G.M.T.
Returning to his car, Tommy took out the SIM card from his phone, and swapped it for a new, unused one, using up one of the new supply of SIM cards and phones that he had acquired on the way up to the farm.
Jumping into his car, he switched on the ignition and let the clutch out. Tommy was banned from driving, but tonight was an exception and he had work to do. Alone.