SAVAGE PAYBACK (Jack Calder Crime Series #3)

by Seumas Gallacher

  “It’s slow, sir. The lab tests confirm Semtex-loaded devices. There’s no way in hell to trace where they came from.”

  DCI Bob Granger placed the folders on his side of Alan Rennie’s desk.

  “The bomb squad people say they were professionally rigged and it didn’t need too much on the doorways to blow them.”

  “What about the casualties?” said his boss. “Did the survivors give us anything to go after?”

  “Nothing sensible. The teams hitting the stores did their homework. Each pair had one guy to take care of resistance while the other smashed the display cases to grab the jewellery. Smooth as hell, sir. The noise from the blasts deafened the staff. No-one recalls voices. Here’s some photos of the damage.”

  Granger spread a few coloured glossies on the desktop. The Assistant Commissioner walked round to join him, peering at the montage of devastation. The sickening images of mangled shop interiors and bodies pictured some of those killed while others bore the bullet wounds from close-range pistol shots.

  “What else’ve we got?”

  “Only three of the CCTV cameras give us clear images. The explosions blew the rest off-screen. Nothing shows except the animal masks, white coats and doctors’ bags.”

  “Is Interpol linked in if the stuff turns up abroad?”

  “Yes, sir. The usual wires. We’ve made progress on descriptions of the major pieces, lots of them, but the trade guys think the stones’ll be broken out and peddled that way. Nothing’s surfaced yet.”

  “Okay, good work. I’ve got the Anti-Terrorism chief, William Lang, due in a few minutes. Stay with me for that.”

  As he finished speaking, the intercom buzzed on his desk.

  “Yes?” he said, pressing the interconnection button.

  “Mister Lang for your ten o’clock appointment,” the voice announced.

  “Thanks. Send him in.”

  Some people have the ability to rub others the wrong way, the capacity to unsettle, to appear aggressive without the vocal edge often accompanying the trait. Alan Rennie had met with Lang on three or four previous occasions; the incidents involving the threat of terrorism in London. Each time resulted in the same feelings in the Assistant Commissioner, an instinctive sense of distrust, a nervy, creepy feeling at the back of his neck. The language was always civil, almost too polite. Rennie was old-school police officer, a straight talker, a ‘get to the point directly’ sort of cop. Lang had risen very quickly through the streamed channels in the bomb squad and special incidents units, due largely to political string-pulling. The early gossip mill tied Lang’s career to a half-uncle in the upper levels of government, a persistent if unproved rumour. The fact remained; the dapper William Lang shared little in common with the current Assistant Commissioner.

  “William, good morning,” Rennie greeted his visitor, knowing he’d never be addressed as Bill or Willie. William it was. “This is Detective Chief Inspector Bob Granger. I think you two’ve met before?”

  “Yes, the other day in New Bond Street. Good morning, gentlemen.”

  Rennie gestured towards the sitting area away from his desk. Lang placed himself in the middle seat, brushing imaginary crumbs from his trouser leg.

  “I have to confess I’m getting considerable pressure from our lords and masters at the Home Office to get some early wins on this,” said Lang smoothly, sounding like the least pressured person imaginable. “The Minister is taking a direct personal interest. As you can understand, the press and the Government Opposition party are playing merry hell.”

  The Home Office was the arm of the Government responsible for internal security and Anti-Terrorism. Lang reported directly to the Minister.

  “He’s wondering why it’s taking so long for any significant leads to surface. Of course, I tried to tell him these things aren’t as easy as he thinks, but with a dozen shops blown open and the deaths and injuries splashed all over the newspapers, the public outcry is getting louder by the hour. He’s growing quite uncomfortable.”

  Alan Rennie struggled to appear calm, but seethed inside.

  “I’m glad you relayed to the Minister how complex this is. We’ve already established the use of Semtex explosives and we’re checking every piece of CCTV film still usable. A long process, I’m afraid. Your instant wins for the Minister may not be possible. Would you like to share with me what, if anything, your Anti-Terrorist team has achieved so far?”

  Bob Granger suppressed a smile at the emphasis his boss placed on the words, ‘if anything’.

  Alan Rennie wasn’t about to let this slime ball mess with him.

  “We’re combing the usual lists at the points of entry, airports, cross-channel ferries,” said Lang, not taking Rennie’s bait. “Plus the suspected cells and possible feeders in-country. You don’t need to concern yourself with my patch, Alan. I’m only trying to protect you from unnecessary nastiness from those feeding information to the Minister.”

  Like hell you are, thought the Assistant Commissioner.

  “Much appreciated,” he said with a half-smile, standing up and offering a handshake. “Let’s keep in touch on progress.”

  The meeting over, Granger was pleased.

  His boss still held control, showing the upstart it was time to leave, time for Alan Rennie to get on with his own programme.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mac accepted the long-standing invitation to come to London for dinner with ISP. This provided quality time for him to give the team feedback following the telephone chat with Jules. Not all of the squad were able to be there. May-Ling had flown to Hong Kong to attend the funerals of the murdered Chinese guards while Donnie Mullen undertook a similar mission in Germany.

  The former commandos were always pleased to have Mac around, but the mood was sombre as they sat down to eat in their private salon in the Army & Navy Club in Pall Mall, not too distant from the terrible events of the previous week. Jack and Malky flanked their ex-colleague-in-arms, sitting opposite Jules and Paul Manning. Mac placed his squared file-box attaché case on the right hand side of his chair, next to his good arm. The perfectly ordered notes and files came from a precision born not of cleverness, but of necessity, as any other process proved impossible for him to work with. A one-man division, he had a genius of memory coupled with an innate sense of how facts and events connected. His findings would be invaluable to ISP.

  The history of achievement and heroism in naval and military engagements stretching back for centuries spilled from the portraits stacked along the club’s corridors. Many of the staff came from families with service backgrounds. The forces look after their own. From several previous visits Jack recognised the two waiters serving their salon and exchanged friendly nods with them. Even within the club’s rankings, special respect attached to the SAS.

  The usual, excellent dinner fare preceded the main agenda of the evening, the briefing from Mac. The waiters topped up the coffee and liqueurs and left the room, closing the door behind them. Mac snapped the attaché-case lock open and withdrew several sheets of paper and a couple of photographs.

  “Gentlemen, as you know, I asked Mac to have a dig through his treasure troves to help narrow down a few things he and I discussed the other day,” said Jules. “From the look of his luggage, I believe he’s brought his usual magic to bear. Am I right, Mac?”

  “I’ll let you be the judge when we’re done, but, yes, some success, I think,” he said. “First of all, the optimal positioning of the Semtex packages on the doors is general manual stuff for any professional saboteur. You guys got that in your own training courses. However, there aren’t too many organisations with a similar sort of grounding, and most of them would be black-operational military units. Maybe the Israelis, the American Seals and one or two others in Europe, but limited, yes.”

  The nods around the table showed complete agreement, including from Paul Manning, who’d dealt with incidents involving explosives during his time with the Bomb Squad in London.

  “Determining
the intermediary source of the Semtex is almost impossible with so much available on the black market if you know where to go,” said Mac.

  He looked around at his dinner companions and found no disagreement.

  “One distinguishing element stands out, however, in what happened last week. I understand the packages colour-coordinated with the doorways they were planted on. That little detail is the most important clue of all.”

  Jules met a murmur of recognition from Jack and Malky with a knowing smile.

  “Rikko Duval,” the Scot and the Irishman said at the same time.

  “Go to the top of the class, gentlemen,” said Mac. “Rikko Duval, indeed. Born Frederick Pierre Duval to a French mother and English father. Came through similar training to yours. SAS commando, tough as nails. A genius with explosives. The colour camouflage is his own specialty. His fingerprints may not be on this lot, but his stamp certainly is.”

  “He’s in the SAS?” said Paul, his face showing surprise.

  “Used to be in the SAS,” corrected Jules, no longer smiling. “He went rogue many years ago. There was a nasty double-murder involving a girlfriend and another man. Duval reacted badly to being thrown over for the new guy. The pair were blown to pieces starting the guy’s car outside a cinema in Barnet. The signs pointed to Duval, but he disappeared before any arrest could be made. The authorities never found him.”

  “I remember now,” said Manning. “Before my stint in the Bomb Squad. Some of the senior guys still talked about it a few years later.”

  Malky turned to Mac. “D’ye think he’s still around then? Why would he be involved in this caper?”

  “Not around in England perhaps, but alive, yes, despite unconfirmed reports of his death a long time back,” said Mac.

  “Rumours said he hired out as a high-priced mercenary. Is that right?” Jack asked.

  “My records have several incidents involving a guy who’d more or less fit Duval’s description. All highly-specialised situations, and most of them with explosives, although not always exclusively so. If it was Duval, the story went sour for him in Lesotho. A hit on a school bus carrying a couple of dozen kids on a day-trip. Most of them died in the blast, those who survived suffered dreadful injuries from a simultaneous double-detonation, front and back of the bus, maximum impact. The target was the daughter of a local politician, the contract financed by an opposition candidate.”

  “How did it go sour?”

  “The cops didn’t take long to patch together the thread and arrested the bomber at the airport. The name Duval wasn’t mentioned, but it’s unlikely to have been anybody else. We made enquiries from our end, but the silence from Lesotho was deafening. The local boys wanted to deal with things their own way. A couple of months later, the guy vanished into thin air and whatever they’d done to him in prison left him with a badly damaged leg.”

  “These photographs, Mac. Duval, I presume?” said Jules, pointing to the glossies.

  “Yes. A much younger version of course. Here.” Mac handed them across the table. “He overlapped with you in the force, didn’t he? Two years, as my files tell me.”

  The librarian extraordinaire never made mistakes.

  “Yes,” said Jules. “He and I seldom saw eye to eye. No outright disobedience in the chain of command, but always an undercurrent with him. He served under me for almost two years, then transferred to the explosives specialist team. Sharp as a pin mentally, constantly on edge, maybe a hidden chip on the shoulder.”

  The piercing dark-grey eyes of a young man gazed directly into the camera from a face with no distinguishing features. Jules handed the photographs across to the others.

  “We’ve no idea where he might be now,” said Mac. “If he’s working under contract, it’d be a better tack to try to nail down who’s hired him.”

  “Geez. That could be anybody, couldn’t it?” said Malky.

  “Not just anybody,” said Jules, “It’d be somebody who’s either very greedy, or pressed for a huge amount of money.”

  “Well, put me at the top of yer names,” said Malky, laughing. The others joined in the laughter, including Jules.

  “If we cut you out of it, Malky, it leaves a short list of possibles,” said Jules. “Who’s lost a ton of money recently?”

  Jack answered the question for the rest of them. “My God. Bluudy obvious, isn’t it? The lad who’s shipment we scorched last year. Right, Jules?”

  “He’d be top of my guesses. He lost half a billion dollars street value in heroin in one hit, enough to make anybody in a hurry to get that back somehow, don’t you think? The drugs business thrives on cash. Cash is money, or goods easily convertible to money. That’s what we’ve got here.”

  Jules leaned back in his chair.

  Malky blew out his cheeks in pretence exasperation.

  “Why am I the only eejit in the room wi’ no brains? How do ye think like that, Jules?”

  “A working theory for now,” he said. “Another bit of the jigsaw makes me believe Duval’s involved.”

  “Let me guess,” said Paul, putting his coffee cup back on its saucer. “The attacks on our own people are linked with this, right?”

  “The thinking of a policeman,” said Jules, nodding his head. “Cause and reason, followed by effect. Yes, I think it could be tied in, and probably is.”

  “Bejeezus, will yeez slow down. Ye’ve lost me,” complained Malky, looking from Paul to Jules.

  “You might be right,” said Jack, picking up on the train of thought. “But I don’t think they were payback killings. They’d have come after us if that was the case. They could’ve been meant as distractions, red herrings.”

  “Precisely,” said Jules. “Intended to ensure ISP was otherwise preoccupied while the main game goes on unhindered.”

  “Do you think the drugs lad would be so clever?” Paul joined in again.

  “No. But Rikko Duval is that smart. If it is him, he’d know we’d be involved. He’s an intelligent thinker, a bit of a twisted genius. The invisible hand playing chess with other people’s lives. My guess is he’s also got payback on his mind, but not the same as the drug chief. He’s still pissed at the SAS. He might be having a go at us, and getting paid handsomely for doing something else at the same time.”

  “How do we fight this, then?” Jack asked.

  “We do what Mac advised. Find the man with the money and trace backwards, maybe not such a needle in a haystack. Alan Rennie’s sure to have the Met plugged in to the Interpol guys. Something’s bound to surface on the jewellery. This mob needs cash, fast. My bet is the gems’ll be in the market sooner than you think.”

  The dinner conversation lapsed into lighter issues. Malky continued to shake his head, admiring the thought processes Jules Townsend never failed to display.

  If this Rikko character wanted a deadly game of chess, he’d more than meet his match in my man, Jules.

  CHAPTER 11

  The first whispers surfaced ten days after the heists. Feelers for takers of stones in Russia, Turkey and Switzerland sent small ripples into the gems markets. The trade was aware of the sheer volume of the merchandise stolen from New Bond Street and, as in every walk of life, the industry people liked to gossip. When a few identified polished diamonds turned up in Istanbul, the merchant who’d bought them pleaded innocence with the Interpol agents. The threat of prosecution produced a name of a well-known intermediary in the black market. The intermediation in all kinds of stolen goods in this vibrant crossroads between the East and the West made up a significant part of the economy. Most of the activity was too small to have the authorities waste resources and time on the individual players. Medium and large-size illegal business was supported by bakshish, regular bribe money payments to multi-levels of police. The same pay-off system blanketed the constant flow of illicit drugs, mainly from Afghanistan. The intermediary dealt on behalf of several principals, the main one being Ahmed Fadi. The undisputed drug king was a recognised name, but not a familiar fac
e to the authorities, as he always worked exclusively through middlemen.

  The underworld’s Turkish police protection made enforcement difficult for the Interpol team. A raid on the intermediary’s home without alerting their local counterparts yielded the agents more of the stones. While grilling the broker, the lead Interpol man mentioned Ahmed Fadi as a possible principal, prompting a startled reaction. An instant look of fear accompanied by too vehement a denial of even knowing his name indicated the strongest pointer to Fadi’s involvement, although not sufficient to take it further at that stage in the case. In the meantime, the intermediary was not arrested, the strategy being to let the man back into the mainstream and tracking him undercover to find out where he’d lead them.

  The information fed to Alan Rennie in London, then relayed directly to Jules Townsend.

  “Thanks, Alan. Appreciate your keeping us posted. How’re the investigations going?” Jules asked.

  At the other end of the secured line, the Assistant Commissioner sounded under pressure. “Slow, I’m afraid. Apart from this heads-up from Istanbul, nothing’s showing anywhere else yet. Are you familiar with this guy, Ahmed Fadi?”

  “The name means nothing to me, but I think he may know us.”

  “Oh?”

  “He might’ve been the top lad whose shipment we nabbed last year. We’re gonna have to do some digging on him.”

  “Well, that’d certainly open up a whole new dimension to this. I’ll have the Interpol people in Turkey ask around a bit more. Right now I’ve got the bug of all bugs chasing my ass. Lang from the Anti-Terrorist outfit, plus the Government banging at me for results. Anything you can find for me would be a big help.”

  “Understood. I’ll get back to you soon. Goodbye,” said Jules, putting the phone down.

  CHAPTER 12

  The early morning hours, lying awake with the dawn not yet near, always nagged the worst. The painkillers gave relief for a while, before the gnawing ache took over. The reconstructed knee functioned perfectly well except for the limp, but the restorative work on the ligaments and nerves, operated on too long after being smashed up in the prison yard, made fully-painless recovery impossible. The spasms bit deeper and he relived over and over again the attack which had left him unable to walk for weeks. Understanding the mental post trauma syndrome came easily, handling it not so simple. At first, the absence of rational thinking scared him, until he realised it was an exaggerated fear response. These initial recall sequences reinforced a flood of paranoia until eventually he determined to overcome them by reprogramming the memories. The irrational reaction gradually subsided, replaced with a resolve to exact a bloody payback for the betrayal and abuse he suffered at the hands and boots of the guards in the prison. This morning, as with many others, he began the flashback of events, knowing this therapy gave him the sense of regaining control over something that had terrified him at the time.