The Dead Lie Down (Adam Lennox Thrillers: Book One)

by G I Tulloch

  The Dead Lie Down

  G I Tulloch

  Copyright 2012

  The right of G I Tulloch to be identified as the author of this work is asserted by him.

  Cover photography by Alison Tulloch.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead is coincidental.

  All rights reserved.(XV) No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means without the prior consent of the author.

  This is dedicated

  To my long-suffering wife Alison who has tolerated my disappearing for hours on end without warning

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  The City of London lay almost silent, shortly before 11pm on a cold December night. Office blocks stretched menacingly into the sky, silhouetted against the city lights like modern day stalagmites. The roads glistened with recent rain, the street-lights reflecting pools of life amongst the quiet of the deserted businesses. In the distance there was the dull roar of traffic as the night lived on elsewhere, but here you could almost hear the traffic lights change, if only there had been traffic around to respond to them.

  A few of the buildings still showed some office lights ablaze, mimicking Christmas tree lights in a darkened room. The Bartlett Building showed significant activity, testimony that the shipping business never totally slept, but dozed off, most things keeping until the bustle of the morning. One of the exceptions was the radio office on the south-west corner of the building, which never slept when ships were abroad, and with 50 ships at sea Bartletts was always on the move abroad.

  In the stillness, movement caught the eye as a figure, hastily wrapped up against the cold, emerged from the Bartlett building like a cork from a bottle, and trotted down the forecourt steps as quickly as her high heels would allow on the slippery surface . A closer look would have revealed her agitated manner. An attractive face framed by blonde hair but distorted by an expression of fear. She had reached the road now and stopped briefly, undecided on the next move. She took the opportunity to bring a mobile phone out of her pocket then moved on quickly across the road, glancing behind her as if expecting to see baying hounds in pursuit.

  As she continued down the broad pavement, her agitated fingers attempted to dial the mobile, desperation causing fingers to fail her as faster she made ground from lamplight to lamplight. The backward glances came more frequently now, as if there was an inevitable that had to happen. It was just a matter of when.

  What should she do with her new found knowledge? She felt its danger percolating through her mind. What would Adam do? The thought of him calmed her a little. He would know what to do. When she got home he would open the door and everything would be all right. Even in her fear she smiled at the thought of his reaction and in her mind's eye saw him reach out his arms to make everything safe, saw his face laugh as he pulled her to him. With him everything would be safe, everything secure. 'In sickness and health, for richer for poorer, until death us do part'. He'd wanted to miss those bits out but the vicar had insisted. Damn. Why wouldn't the phone manage to get a signal? Ah there it was now. Dial again. Yes, there it was ringing. Pick up Adam, pick up, pick up. She needed to share this knowledge with someone. It was too important to keep to herself.

  Behind her, in the shadows of an underground car park a car crept at walking pace and in virtual silence. Emerging finally into the light it came to a halt at a junction as if in indecision. It continued out of the side turning almost sedately as if unsure of directions but at the last moment accelerated as quickly as a leopard spotting its prey. She turned at the sound of screaming tyres and, almost in resignation of the inevitable, made no attempt to run. She held out her arms in front of her as if to ward off the approaching evil but the last thing she saw were white knuckles on the steering wheel as at the last moment the car mounted the pavement. The roar from the car engine masked the sickening sound of metal on flesh as her body hung momentarily on the bumper before, like a life-size rag doll, bouncing off bonnet and windscreen and landing once again on the pavement, life snuffed out, silence ensured, danger eliminated. The shape, no longer human in form but a bundle of forgotten clothes carelessly dropped on the way to the laundrette.

  The car, having achieved its purpose, pulled urgently to a stop. A door swung open and the driver, darting across to the body, searched hurriedly for something they knew was there. Within seconds it seemed the search was complete, and regaining the car they wasted no time in taking off, to be enveloped once more in the darkness. Silence, dropping like a blanket, once again shrouded the scene, granting anonymity to the car and, for the moment, to the blonde rag doll lying alone on the glistening pavement.

  Chapter 1

  The short stocky figure heaved himself out of the bunk and carefully checked his footing on the deck of the cabin. This wouldn't have caused any comment from other crew members, but for the fact that he was dressed entirely in black and an attempt had been made at blacking out his lightly tanned face with what smelt like boot polish. He moved off, resembling something out of The Famous Five with a torch that had been carefully masked with black tape to leave only a small pinhole light.

  Despite the fact that he had been invited onto the ship by the captain himself, he didn't appear keen to be seen, as he cautiously made his way out into the companionway. The smell of diesel invaded his nostrils like a bus depot on overtime. To his relief his rubber soled shoes made no noise on the matting that covered the internal decks. He knew his way around but only on paper, having never actually set foot on the Hermes before. A mixed cargo vessel with a capacity of six thousand containers, she was designed to carry bulk or container cargo in her holds and plied trade between Europe and the States, not a route popular with the crew as it didn't give as much scope for contraband profit as the South American or Far Eastern routes. Of the seven crew only three were permanent, the remainder being temporary crew taken on for each trip.

  On this night crossing of the North Sea only two of the crew were out of their bunks and up on the bridge. With the lights turned down there was a ghostly glow from the instruments that lit the helmsman's face like a Halloween mask. The First Officer out on the Bridge Wing was checking that the radar wasn't telling lies, no one wanted to hit another v
essel in the busiest shipping lanes in Europe.

  Two decks down and in the shadows the pin prick torch moved steadily down deck by deck from the crew's quarters toward the holds. There was a purposeful edge to it now as he moved closer to his goal. Although he obviously knew his way around there was something in the way he moved that gave away the fact that he was in an alien environment. That and the fact that he had already hit his head on three overhead pipes, cursing quietly each time and feeling his forehead for evidence of blood.

  He knew what he was looking for, he just didn't know where to find it and now began to doubt the wisdom of his expedition. He was also disappointed at the state of the ship, after all he owned the bloody thing and you would have thought they would take better care of it. He stopped briefly and considered the absurdity of the situation. Here he was, the owner of the ship and skulking around like a thief in the night. In the darkness he shook his head and moved on. He had thought long and hard about how to conduct this search. Of the three holds, number two was regularly used for bulk cargo and he discounted it as he was unlikely to find what he was looking for under three thousand tons of Flemish coal. He had flipped a mental coin and decided to start with number three hold, which coincidentally was the closest to him. In the dim light of his torch he checked the painted sign on the watertight door, and knocking off the latches stepped through into the dark cavern.

  On the Bridge the helmsman, tired of sweeping his tired eyes across the wide expanse of the bridge windows in front of him, dropped his eyes to the vast control panels in front of him. Long gone were the dials and chunky controls of old, replaced by computer screens giving the status of everything from the current course to the state of the crew quarters air conditioning plant. Had the light been higher you would have noticed one eyebrow raised as he gestured for the First Officer to come over. They both watched the indicator screen that monitored the status of watertight doors and hatches whilst at sea. Normally a bank of green lights, the forward hatch door of number three hold was showing red, standing out like a beacon. They watched as it changed colour back to green and glanced at each other before the First Officer picked up the bridge intercom and made a call. It might have been a faulty micro-switch but they couldn't afford to take any chances, and it wasn't the risk of taking in water that they were worried about.

  Number three hold had proved a disappointment to Pinhole Torch and he made his way briskly but carefully to number one. He was beginning to become accustomed to his surroundings and it had been a full five minutes since he had hit his head on anything. He stepped into number one hold and flashed his torch around. Even in the relatively calm seas with which they had been blessed, the cargo was groaning as containers and crates moved gently against the steel plates, assaulting the senses along with the smell of oil and wood. Knowing roughly what he was after, he ignored the larger containers and concentrated on the wooden crates that had been used as the filling for the gaps between them. Conscious of time he moved quickly around them with some semblance of logic, although in the dark and with the noise all around him it would have been easy to become disorientated. A set of four identical crates aroused his curiosity and with the aid of a crowbar, which he had acquired on his travels, he set to and levered open the first crate. The screech of the nails protesting, sounded loud enough the raise the dead and he paused to listen. Satisfied that he was undisturbed he pulled the lid off the crate and peered inside. German porcelain was what it claimed to be and it didn't tell lies. He hammered the lid back on and moved on to the second. Even before he had applied the crowbar he heard the distant crash of a hatchway closing with force. He stopped to listen. Once again he began to doubt his wisdom and briefly debated aborting his plan. A mental coin came down heads and he put all his weight behind the crowbar. Despite the cold down here in the hold he realised he was sweating, his hands slipping on the greasy bar. The second crate was not as honest as its colleague and his heart plummeted as he recognised what he saw, confirming his information, the vindication of everything he had come for. The lid was swiftly back on and with a desire for haste he checked the third crate for honesty and integrity, only to find it also sorely wanting.

  There was hardly a need to check the fourth as he had already found what he had come for but something in him felt the need to complete the task and he jemmied off the fourth lid. At the sight of the contents his head whipped back involuntarily and he emptied the contents of his stomach on the deck of the hold. After a moment or two he raised his head and found the courage to look again. The body in the crate was that of a tall man, European he guessed but thankfully a stranger to him. The man's throat had been cut to the point that the head had almost been severed when the body had been folded into the crate.

  Now he was on new ground. He had not encountered death like this before and this had been unexpected. His mind fled in several directions at once and he suddenly felt a desperate need for fresh air. Avoiding glancing inside the crate again he quickly hammered down the lid. An illogical thought crossed his mind, asking the forgiveness of the body inside for returning him to his tomb, as if it cared, before clambering his way out of the hold and up the first of many ladders to the open decks above.

  The First Officer and the Captain watched the lights change colour. The former looked at the latter, who nodded, and picking up the radio-telephone handset he made the call.

  Chapter 2

  Adam watched with some amusement as the elephant carefully leant down and proceeded to eat the camera.

  Well, that's not strictly true. The elephant leaned down, picked up the camera from the photographer's hands and with a deft flick of its trunk sent the camera spinning in a high and graceful arc over the high fence into the tigers' enclosure, the strap flying out behind it for all the world like a kite's tail. The photographer stood paralysed, still in shooting stance, stunned and speechless, as if fully expecting the camera to miraculously reappear in his hands.

  A scantily clad, if well endowed, young brunette lost no time in enveloping herself in a duffel coat and the man in the suit lost his temper.

  London Zoo had rarely seen such excitement and it was difficult to tell who was the more surprised, the elephant or its keeper, for they both seemed to be having trouble controlling themselves. The giraffes leaned out of their enclosure to ascertain the cause of the neighbourhood disturbance.

  "This is all your fault Lennox," bellowed the man in the suit, his double chin quivering with indignation as he turned and pointed an accusing finger at the indicted individual. His eyes narrowed as if he hoped by the power of concentration to cause a bolt of lightning to issue forth from his finger and strike the individual down. If he did he was disappointed. Perhaps his rimless glasses diffused the power thought Adam.

  The small group stood in one of the open public spaces created by recent improvements to the zoo, which had been carried out in the hope of encouraging the public to come in and fill the spaces. Close by were the large animal enclosures with their lofty fencing and ditches as appropriate, whilst concrete had been replaced with more aesthetically pleasing materials. Whether they were more pleasing to the public or the animals wasn't clear in the publicity material.

  The elephant had been intended as an active participant in the photographs, something that had caused the brunette to hurriedly insist on injury protection clauses in the contract, although no one had anticipated the activity it had decided to indulge in.

  Adam Lennox stared for a moment in apparent disbelief, shaking his head slowly in wonder whilst his business partner Gerry attempted to conceal a wide grin without a great deal of success. None of the party appeared in the slightest bit interested in attempting a foray into the tigers' enclosure to recover the £5000 worth of camera, least of all its owner who was starting to shake slightly at what he would later describe in the pub as 'a brush with death'. The tigers for their part seemed uninterested, either in the proceedings or in the camera, beyond a slightly disdainful look at what was after all an
invasion of their privacy. Adam looked up at the grey April sky above London Zoo and decided it was too gloomy a day to shoot publicity photos anyway, which was all right for him to say, but it wasn't his camera, was it?

  "Nothing to do with me Stan", he grinned. "It was you insisted we do the promotional shots here. I told you it was a risk but you knew better. Animals and children and all that."

  Adam Lennox stood his ground in a casual jacket and jeans. Five foot six, or seven on a good day, fair hair that would have blown in the breeze if it wasn't kept short, partly out of laziness, partly his old Army habits. As a tank commander in the 1st Royal Tank Regiment you didn't want hair getting in the way. His face still showed the remnants of long days in the desert sun, left over from the Iraq campaign, whilst a fading scar from ear to chin across his left cheek was a further memento, as was the missing small finger from his right hand. He still maintained that he was lucky to get off so lightly but didn't like to talk about it much.

  Stan Hollis, a good three inches shorter, and advertising manager for Colores Skin Products, attempted to get in Adam's face, which was when the three inches proved crucial. Nor could they be offset by the expensive suit or the camel hair coat that went out of fashion when they finally took Minder off the TV.

  "I'll sue you for every penny if I have to, Adam."

  Adam made a point of looking down, and smiling fondly at his old adversary, gave him a metaphorical pat on the head.

  "No you won't Stan. You'll go home, have one of your wife's delicious beef stroganoffs and wrap your hand around your favourite single malt whisky, because you and I know that the publicity business is fickle. And next week I'll call to set up a more appropriate venue to advertise your skin cream."

  He looked around him at the continuing mayhem, the curvy brunette disappearing over the horizon, the photographer still hopping from foot to foot and the elephant keeper still struggling with his charge.