High Mead, Chigwell , London.
Monday 22nd August 2011; 7:30pm.
Gavin Mapperley yawned as his sleek green Jaguar turned off the A113, just after the Chigwell Hall exit, and onto High Mead. High Mead was an exclusive development of imposing Georgian styled houses, built in the early part of the twentieth century to house rich City workers. At one time Chigwell had a reputation of having a predominantly Jewish population, but that was less true today.
Mapperley’s driver came to a T junction and turned left along a concrete estate road which ended in a large turning circle. On the left had side of the road stood a curtain of greenery provided by tall fir trees, and on the right were the large houses only the very well off could afford. The Mapperleys’ home had cost £310,000 fifteen years earlier, and was probably worth well over a million pounds now.
The driver turned the Jaguar into the curved driveway of Fir View House, crunching loose gravel under the tyres as the car came to a halt in front of a triple width garage. The garage was always occupied by his wife’s Range Rover, his son’s Audi, a jet ski and an array of surfing and skiing equipment, and so the Jaguar spent its nights on the white gravelled driveway. Martin Gosling exited the car and opened the door for his passenger, Gavin Mapperley, to get out.
“Take the car, Martin. I don’t need it tonight, and it will save you taking the bus home. Just be sure to come and collect me at seven in the morning, OK?”
The driver answered with a brisk ‘Yes, sir.’ Mapperley’s driver then drove the car out of the semi circular driveway and back onto the concrete road paving of High Mead.
Mapperley’s phone rang before he could unlock the front door, so he set down his briefcase and walked from under the stuccoed white colonnaded canopy to ensure a good mobile phone signal. The number on the display belonged to the Boss.
Gavin Mapperley’s day had been close to a disaster, and he wasn’t relishing this call, but he knew he had to take it. He had been leaving messages on the Boss’s phone all day without any response, which was highly unusual, but then he remembered something about a hospital appointment and some brain scans and he understood why his call was being returned at seven thirty in the evening.
“Gavin, do I employ you to destroy my business, have me imprisoned and generally ruin my life?” The initial intemperate volley continued before he could answer. “Tell me, Gavin, what kind of morons work for us? As I recall, those morons were instructed to quell a possible rebellion in the flats by intimidation, and a bit of property destruction, if necessary.” There was a pause, but Gavin knew better than to interrupt. “But what did we get instead? Big moron kills a little old lady pensioner, and lands us with a murder investigation, continuous police presence and a community up in arms, whilst little moron looks on. What the hell was he doing, Gavin?”
“The old lady attacked him. She stabbed him, and he lost it.”
“What? She had a knife?”
“No, it was actually a hatpin, but maybe he thought it was a knife.” There was an ominous silence on the other end of the phone. “, are you there.”
“Oh, I’m here, Gavin. I’m all here, which is more than can be said for that brain dead goon who killed the old lady because she pricked him with a hatpin. What the hell would he have done if she’d punched him? Burn down the estate?” The Boss was screaming now.
“Try to calm down, Boss. We have a plan to give Rafe up as a sacrifice to Bob Radlett, who will wrap the murder case up quick and try to take the uniforms off the estate as soon as possible.”
“I hope that this plan revolves around the sudden and violent demise of that cretin Rafe Patterson.”
“It does, Boss.”
“It had better. He has cost us a lot of revenue, a lot of hassle and to cap it all he almost beat my grandmother to death!”
***
Ashley Morgan slammed down the receiver and swore violently to the empty room in a creative outburst of blasphemy and cursing. She paused before she continued muttering out loud, the thin veneer of sanity scraped away, even if temporarily.
“Damn Gavin, damn Rafe bloody Patterson, damn them all! They’re all weak bloody men, overdeveloped little boys whose only claim to being the superior sex is that they have a set of balls and a surfeit of testosterone. God, what a way to ruin a world! Put bloody men in charge of it! If only I‘d encountered one man in my life who was worth anything, just one man who could come close to being my equal. But, no. The cast list of men in my life is filled with egotistical fops like my real father, weak mummy’s boys like my step dad and crazed sexual animals like Dennis Grierson. Even Lawrence, who seemed intelligent, well educated and tough at first, was soft in the centre. He had cried like a baby when the Rectory started to go wrong, afraid his daddy would find out and be disappointed. Didn’t you, Lawrie,” she said, lifting a silver frame which held a picture of her smiling late husband. “I slapped you so hard that day I loosened a tooth, and from then on I took charge and your days were numbered.” She kissed the image in the frame and laughed for a good minute.
Eventually, Ashley set down the picture frame and pushed back in her office chair, forcing herself to relax and calm down, but it was difficult. She was now regretting not terminating Ben when she’d had him at her mercy in the basement of the Rectory. That had been her plan when she’d placed the thought of revenge in Dennis Grierson’s addled brain, suggesting that she could be used to lure her twin brother to the Rectory on the night of her feminist affirmative action.
Ashley felt little regret for the murders of Dennis, Lenny and Lawrence. Dennis was a pervert, plain and simple, so stupid that he believed he alone ran their little criminal enterprise. It was Dennis who made pennies with his petty crimes, whilst she made the real money in the boiler house boom, large scale forgery and her deal with the Belgians, which moved Grierson’s crew several steps up the food chain. She could import the drugs through third parties, distribute through third parties and take the lion’s share, and if anyone got arrested, well, it wasn’t going to be her. No, Ashley stayed well away from the product, except for her own personal supply, of course.
As for Lenny, he had been collateral damage and Lawrence stupidly thought she was eliminating her purported father to save him. Poor misguided Lawrence. She smiled when she remembered the look of horror on his face as she killed him. It was classic. But Ben - at first she had thought he would be her alibi, her defender. She spoke again to the picture of Lawrence on her desk.
“Sorry, darling, you were a means to an end. But the script was already written.” Imitating Vivien Leigh’s southern belle accent in Gone with the Wind, Ashley spoke to an imagined audience.
“A poor defenceless woman loses her beloved husband, and is nearly raped and killed in a shocking attack on a quiet country Rectory. Enter stage left, hulking man of men and ex All Blacks rugby hero, Benjamin Ambrose Fogarty.” Ashley cheers and leads the imagined applause. “Oh, Ben, you have come to save me! At last, a real man! What a pity you are my brother, but then again...”
A smile played across her lips. The phone rang again, the third time tonight; it was a call from the USA.
“Ashley Morgan speaking,” she purred into the mouthpiece, all of her demons vanishing as she spoke. Her dark alter ego was now banished to the recesses of her troubled mind. She had business to attend to, and in an instant she was Ashley, the perfect businesswoman once again.
Chapter 41
New Scotland Yard, London.
Monday 22nd August 2011; 8pm.
DCI Trevor Griffiths, team leader in charge of Operation Bilbao, sat in front of the AC’s desk as she tried to absorb the information in the report she had just received.
“Let me see if I have this right. Sorry, Trevor, but I have only really had time to skim your report. You appear to be saying that the murder of Mary Akuta could be related to the Rectory murders?”
“Ma’am, if it isn’t then it’s one hell of a coincidence.”
“OK. Give me the highl
ights; I want to get home before midnight.”
Trevor Griffiths, as honest as the day was long, had been seconded to the Yard almost ten years earlier from Cardiff when Sir Ian Blair was Commissioner. He was seen as being independent, a good solid Detective Inspector who could root out corruption in the Met without being tainted by fear or favour. As a result he was admired by some but abhorred by others. He relaxed into his chair and his mellow Welsh tenor voice told the story calmly and quietly.
“Bob Radlett picked up the Mary Akuta murder this afternoon, from the Superintendent. It seems he canvassed for it; said that he had a confidential informant who could bring in the murderer in forty eight hours. His Super wasn’t going to turn down an offer like that, obviously. I heard about it and insisted on tagging along to keep my eye on Bob, as you had asked. Radlett told me to get my ‘Taffy Welsh arse’ out of his case. I think he may need some cultural and ethnic orientation training, Ma’am,” Griffiths joked. The AC frowned; she was aware that some policemen did not take her equality initiatives seriously. Her subordinate saw the frown and continued.
“I tagged along with him and that bloody insolent DS of his, Grant Pearson, when they went to the hospital. They weren’t happy, but I told them I’m still in charge of Operation Bilbao, and the Trafalgar flats are my domain until the operation is over.
We spoke to the doctors about Mary Akuta and saw the body. It was bad, Ma’am, very bad. She’d been beaten to a pulp. We then interviewed a lady who introduced herself as May Fogarty, who had also been badly beaten in the same flat.”
The AC’s eyes widened. “Why do I know that name, Trevor?”
“Because, Ma’am, May Fogarty is the grandmother of Ashley Garner, who was born a Fogarty, and of Ben Fogarty, the only two survivors of the Rectory massacre.”
Penny Thomas took a sharp intake of breath, and Griffiths could see her mind was racing. He waited until she asked him to go on.
“May Fogarty told us that the man who beat Mary Akuta had been called ‘Rafe’ by his companion, but she had no idea what either man looked like because they wore ski masks. She described ‘Rafe’ as white, around six feet, quite slim, maybe two hundred pounds, with brown eyes. She then said something quite alarming and also quite interesting. She said that they had called the Operation Bilbao hotline the day before to report new criminal activity in the flats, and to request help in resisting a new criminal take-over of the flats. She said that the attack, coming so soon after the call, was not a coincidence.”
“That is alarming, Trevor, but why did you use the word interesting?” the AC asked.
“Well, I thought it was quite important, and I said so in the car on the way back, but Radlett said that old biddies like May Fogarty were always ringing our hotlines about lost cats, noisy kids and so on, and that we should follow the evidence and look for Rafe. This evening I printed off the case file, the one on your desk which has notes of the interview typed up by DS Pearson, and guess what? No mention of the phone call.”
“So Radlett is hiding something?”
“I believe so, Ma’am. Anyway, just before I came in to see you I spoke to Tanya, the Operation Bilbao hotline supervisor, and she confirmed that a very specific call was made on Sunday afternoon to the hotline. Mary Akuta, May Fogarty and three others were on a conference line, asking us to meet with them at the flats as soon as possible to discuss some new criminal activity they had witnessed.”
“Presumably the call was logged?”
“It was, Ma’am, by an operator who is not due back on duty until tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, we won’t know who, if anyone, he passed the message on to until tomorrow. The transfer paperwork is missing.”
“Missing or deliberately removed?” the AC asked pointedly.
“Don’t know, Ma’am. All we can say is that a data transfer slip was allocated to that call on the log, number 0017 from memory, but neither the paper record, nor the detective’s acknowledgement, is in the file.”
“You need to speak to this operator as soon as you can. Do it under caution, let him know this is a criminal matter, not a job related matter. Let’s scare the truth out of him.” The AC was a little taken aback when she realised what she had said, but she saw Griffiths smiling and let it go.
“I’ll have an answer on that by nine in the morning, Ma’am.”
Derek Clegg was clearly covering for someone, and If Trevor Griffiths wanted the truth from him he would have to make himself more fearsome than that someone.
Chapter 42
Metal Tokens UK Ltd, Wandsworth Road, London.
Monday 22nd August 2011; 11pm.
The cabbie had looked puzzled when two men dressed in dark clothing and carrying a black holdall had asked to be taken to the New Covent Garden Flower Market. The Flower Market was nowhere near Covent Garden any more but was now situated in Wandsworth, on the south bank of the Thames just beyond Vauxhall Bridge.
“You do know it’s closed, right?” the cabbie inquired, with an air of suspicion.
“Course it is,” Max replied in yet another of his accents; this one was vaguely Eastern European. “We just the maintenance men. Hot weather, no air conditioning, flowers wilting, yes?”
The cabbie grunted affirmatively. The cab crossed the river on Vauxhall Bridge and turned down Wandsworth Road. As they closed in on the flower market, Max asked the driver to drop them by the side of the road. Max gave the driver a ten pound note for the £9.50 journey. The two men waited until the taxi was out of sight before crossing the road to their real destination.
***
After their dinner at the pub, Max and Ben had come up with a plan. They were plotting a daring escapade that would, hopefully, hit Gavin Mapperley where it hurt; in the pocket.
Max took Ben to a lockup garage in a part of London Ben wasn’t familiar with. Inside Max had stored lots of boxes, files and a Harley Davidson motorbike. Ben couldn’t make out the model. It was concealed under a dust cover. As Max gathered tools for the night’s work he told Ben what he knew about their target.
“In 2008 Metal Tokens UK entered administration. They produced metal tokens for slot machines, vending machines and the like. They make these, too.” Max held out his hand. In it was a pound coin sized token with a supermarket logo on it and a hole punched near the milled edge. Ben looked puzzled.
“You keep this token on your key ring, and when you need a supermarket trolley you don’t need a pound coin, you use the token, retrieving it later when you return the trolley. As you can see, apart from the logo, the token is the same size and weight as a pound coin. It even has milled edges.
In December 2008, Metal Tokens Limited was bought by the Cresty Group, based in the Isle of Man. It’s based at an accommodation address, according to my agent in Douglas. The premises carried on making tokens and fulfilled their ongoing contracts under their new owners, but in 2010 it was rumoured that a ‘boiler room’ was operating out of the upstairs offices. That turned out to be true. I checked. By the time I broke my story they had gone, and the offices were virtually empty, but the metal token production continued.”
Ben wondered where this story was leading but, before he could ask, Max sensed a question coming.
“So, to cut a long story short, since then the premises have been raided three times by police looking for forged one pound coins. On each occasion they found nothing, probably because the forgers had ample warning of the raid. You see, whilst the tooling and the pressed tokens are difficult to conceal, there was no need for the forgers to do so. They claimed to be legitimately producing ‘blanks’, the trade name for these tokens, and no-one could prove otherwise. But according to Laslo, my source inside the company, they would turn out pound coins at night with a different crew, and they would remove the stamps that had the impressions of the Queen’s head and so on before the day shift came on. All of the police raids were carried out during the day. If Laslo is right, then the night shift should be turning out pound coins by the thousand as we speak.�
��
“What does a forged pound coin look like, anyway?” Ben asked. Max dipped into his pocket and pulled out four pound coins, putting them down on the table. Ben did the same at Max’s behest. Max sorted through them until he came to a well worn specimen. He picked it up and examined it closely.
“I think we have a winner. The Treasury estimate that as many as one in six pound coins circulating today could be forgeries. Look closely at this coin.”
Ben looked. The pictures front and back looked a bit flat, but that could have resulted from general wear and tear.
“Look at the edge,” Max invited. Ben noticed that the words etched into the milling were indistinct and were not parallel to the face of the coin. Max took the coin and walked over to the rough block work wall.
“Now for the final test,” he said as he rubbed the coin vigorously back and forth against the block wall. He held the coin up for Ben to examine. The gold colour had gone and silver base metal was showing through.
“Bloody hell! A forgery! Who’d have thought? I had a forgery in my pocket.”
“Most of us will have one somewhere, don’t fret.”
Max collected a small aerosol that looked like it might contain perfume and then he opened a wooden box and took out a handgun. Ben stared at it.
“Whoa! Hold it right there. I’m not going anywhere armed.”
“Don’t worry, it’s a starting gun. It only fires blanks. Mind you, we still wouldn’t want to be caught carrying it around. It’s against the law here.”
***
That had been two hours ago, and now the pair stood outside a three storey town house on the corner of Wandsworth Road and Miles Street, looking across at the modern brick mini industrial unit which housed Metal Tokens Ltd. Metal Tokens occupied the unit on the corner. The walls were light coloured brick and the widow frames were formed metal and painted bright blue. The ground floor windows were covered with security shutters that looked as though they were rarely lifted. Facing the main road was one of the three exits, the fire exit. The single blue door led from the factory onto a path behind a wall and a decorative wrought iron security fence, also painted blue. The path was around three feet wide.
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