“Perhaps the background music is affecting your ability to hear what my friend is saying. Perhaps if we all step outside the premises I can explain it to you more clearly?”
Surprise lit the man’s features before quickly returning to their mask of arrogance. “Are you quite sure, my man? There’s three of us?”
Ravil noticed people on the veranda and around the pool honing their attention on the scene. He remained seated. He’d watched a few derivatives of this scene before and knew Makar was in no danger. He felt a mild excitement warm his belly. Makar placed his thumb and forefinger on his chin and furrowed his eye brows.
“You’re quite right chap,” mimicking the man’s accent “the numbers do appear to be unfair…perhaps you would like to call upon the rest of your friends?” indicating to the other three men looking on from the far side of the pool.
Bemusement, then anger befell the men’s faces. Makar hit the one closest with a crunching right elbow to the jaw. A pulverising left hook fired into the point of the next opponent’s chin. Both men fell away into untidy heaps. He stepped toward the original protagonist. The man’s feet made a step as if to run away before stopping themselves. He lashed out clumsily with his right hand, the liquid from the glass arching into the air. Makar slipped inside the blow, grasping the wrist with his left hand. The crook of Makar’s right arm smashed up underneath the man’s left arm pit. His hips whipped underneath with violent torque as the Englishman was spun like a rag doll into the air. The eyes bulged with the thudding landing. Ravil noticed Makar’s hand underneath the man’s head—the only reason he didn’t lose consciousness. Makar’s knee pressed into the side of the man’s face. The on lookers stood in silence including the slack jawed women. He quickly found the man’s wallet and removed a driver’s licence.
“OK, Mr Malone of Number Two Virginia Water in Surrey. Has your hearing improved now?”
“Yeh…ye…yessssirrr,” he croaked.
Connor drove ‘up the line’ in a six-year old Audi on the motorway towards Leeds. He wasn’t far away now. He smiled as the M62 parted in two and washed around Stott Hall Farm. The myth was that during the motorway’s construction in the 1960s, the stubborn owner refused to sell his land to make way for the development. Therefore, the engineers built around it. However, Connor knew it was due to a geological fault beneath the Farmhouse. He also grinned at the memory of himself and Liam as eighteen-year-olds hurtling past the Farm in a Porsche Boxster. This one, they had not stolen.
Liam had visited Connor in a Pub he bartended at in the small nearby village of Hipperholme. The man who owned the bright yellow Porsche was a regular in his forties, and Connor had overheard he was going ‘through a midlife crisis’ and liked to ‘flash his money’. At the end of his afternoon shift, Connor called out to the man jokingly, “Phil, fancy swapping cars for a bit?” Connor had driven a two-year-old Golf at the time.
Phil laughed. “Well…are thee insured?”
“Yes,” came the unflinching reply. Connor hadn’t been sure if his insurance covered another person’s vehicle.
“Well, I guess ye can take it for a spin for half an hour,” said Phil in an avuncular tone, and nonchalantly threw Connor the keys. “Just half an hour mind.”
He and Liam could barely contain their excitement when they climbed in, and the engine growled. The monster violently coughed, bucking the pair forward as Connor stalled it.
“Fuck sake mate, couldn’t you have done that further down the road? He looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm,” Liam had said. He indicated with a jut of his chin to Phil’s anxious mask peering behind one of the pub’s curtains.
“Trust me, all he cares about is for us two to come back gushing about how awesome his car is to everyone, so he doesn’t have to,” Connor had said. “Fuck me, it feels like a Go-Kart with how low it is.”
“Well make sure we do come back…alive! Because it’s not a Go-kart and my IQ must be low getting in with ya, you’ve only just passed your test your mad bastard.”
“Stop being melodramatic. Yer like an old woman.”
After weaving through the residential areas, passing the disconcerting looks of pedestrians and fellow motorists alike, they had hit the motorway. When Connor pressed his foot down, it reminded him of the ‘Star Trek’ scenes when Captain Pickard ordered ‘Warp speed’. Within seconds the digital dial read ‘163 mph’ with Liam’s exertions of, “Fucking slow down!” getting louder as Stotts Farm blurred by.
He and Liam had swapped seats after the Saddleworth turn off, and the car was driven back with more care. They both laughed about the incident afterwards. More so because they’d been deliberately nonchalant about the vehicle’s performance in the pub later, which had visibly pissed off Phil.
Connor now felt a ripple of melancholy spread through his chest as he thought about his deceased friend. The main reason Liam got into that car was to make sure Connor didn’t kill himself. He was heading to Leeds to visit Rayella, and he hoped to lift her spirits.
13
Bruce felt a warm glow in the presence of his two nieces, Millie and Sarah, within The Honours restaurant. He took them to the famous Edinburgh restaurant whenever the chance arose. The Honours had soft yellow lighting warming the polished timber walls. A zebra crossing of light and dark wood made up the floor mirroring the white shirt with black waistcoat attire of the pleasant waiting staff. The food was always full of flavour and well presented.
Millie, the younger of the sisters at eighteen, had taken this opportunity to introduce her new, older boyfriend, Richard. The foursome sat at a corner table at the end of the room. Bruce faced the door, a habit which he shared with everyone he knew in his profession. The girls were his younger sister’s children or ‘weans’ (pronounced ‘waynes’) as they said in the west of Scotland, and Bruce spoilt them whenever he got the chance. He knew this was in part because he didn’t have any children himself to spoil. Still, he was also proud, and a little relieved, of how they’d both turned out. Sandra, his only sibling, suffered from a bipolar disorder that he thought she handled heroically. Their mother Kathleen had had a bipolar disorder which hadn’t ended well.
McQuillan ran background checks on any new boyfriend the girls brought home. He did with this current one earlier that day before arriving to meet the girls. McQuillan didn’t even have to access ACRO for criminal record information before being perturbed.
Typing ‘Richard Eric Dowling’ + ‘Kilmarnock’ into Google and reading the ‘Daily Record’ article made him pinch the bridge of his nose.
One of Kilmarnock’s primary drug dealers was jailed by the High Court in Edinburgh this week. Richard Dowling, 26, of Sidlaw Place, Kilmarnock, was sentenced to four years and two months after a Police raid on his house resulted in over £37,000 in cash and a large quantity of heroin found.
Mr Dowling, who has previous convictions for assault, aggravated burglary and theft; pled guilty to possession with the intent to supply class A drugs.
The sentence was welcomed by prosecutor Marie Taylor.
She said: “This is positive news for the local community. Drugs and the resultant crime it brings are a misery to the area. The sentence is a warning that drug dealing will not be tolerated.”
Bruce still held hope that maybe Dowling had been rehabilitated. He knew many a criminal who had. Nevertheless, he was aware of many more who would never be. Bruce made a call to Derek Hammonds, the Director of Investigations at the National Crime Agency. It was a professional relationship only, and calls were abbreviated to the necessities.
“Hello.”
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Giving or wanting?”
“Wanting—information on a Richard Eric Dowling of Kilmarnock. Out of Barlinnie a couple of years ago after a stint concerning the supply of class A drugs. I want to know of any charges that he hasn’t been convicted of, and if he’s gone straight since coming out of prison.”
“Give me half an hour.” And the line went dea
d.
Thirteen minutes later Bruce’s phone vibrated.
“Hello,” Bruce answered.
“He had a charge of sexual assault as a twenty-year-old dropped due to lack of evidence. The alleged victim withdrew her statement. Currently subject of a surveillance investigation into the supplying of class A drugs throughout Ayrshire. He has links to our favourite Gorbals crime family, but he’s relatively small time. He’s still a player to answer your question. Get all that?”
“Aye.”
“It’s a long-running investigation, and the boys downstairs want him kept in play for a while, if you don’t mind.”
The line went dead.
And now Bruce sat across from the thickset, expensively shirted thirty-three-year-old Richard Dowling and restrained any outward sign of distaste for him.
“How’s Uni life?” Bruce asked Sarah. She was in her final year of her social work degree.
“Naw too bad, the end is in sight, so it makes it easier.”
“That it does,” he answered before asking Millie. “And you?” She’d just started her HND Graphic design course at Glasgow Clyde College.
“Aye, good thanks. Excited. I ken that’ll wear off after a year or two in,” she replied, with a toothy smile.
“Was o’time if ye ask meh. Thir’s nae dosh in’it,” piped up Richard.
Bruce pressed his toes into the ground while keeping a neutral expression on his face. Sarah glanced nervously at her uncle, and he knew she was expecting him to lambaste Richard. He didn’t—he needed to gain the man’s confidence. Hiding his aversion for the man became a small challenge as the evening wore on. Bruce didn’t like the way Dowling shied away from eye contact, laughed too hard at his jokes and how sugary his compliments were. On top of this, he had a strong regional accent. Bruce was proud of his Glaswegian heritage and was happy to allow his accent to return when in his native Scotland. However, he felt a lot of Scots from areas around Glasgow blindly wore their thickly accented slang as a badge of patriotism.
Bruce felt a little disappointed that he hadn’t influenced Millie enough to see through Richard’s façade. He knew women almost always, especially when they were young, allowed their emotions to cloud their good sense. The male libido had the same effect on men.
The atmosphere had an undercurrent to it, and he noticed that the elder Sarah treated Richard with indifference—at least one of you has your head screwed on.
“Millie tells me you’d like tae go beating,” Bruce said to Richard, referring to the sport of using dogs and people as beaters to flush out birds for shooting.
“Aye, ah wid like tae wan day.”
“Well, am going the morra if you’d like to come?”
“Aye, that wid be guid, cheers,” Richard nodded enthusiastically.
“I will pick you up from Balmoral Road around eight, OK?”
“Aye, cheers,” said Richard looking bemused as Millie smiled next to him.
Bruce smiled too. He knew Richard was trying to work out how Bruce knew where he lived but didn’t want to ask.
The Jaguar XKR glided up to the third floor of the multi-storey car park under Makar’s deft driving. It slid up and halted before an athletic man with soft brown hair. The man wore a lightweight, black leather jacket over a white t-shirt with dark jeans and brown boots. Only reasonably sturdy looking under his attire, Makar knew the man to be hugely muscular underneath. The muscularity befitted his years as a gymnast of international standing from a teenager into his early twenties. Makar had seen him in competition years ago at Crystal Palace on the rings. As Roderick held the Maltese cross, his shoulders reminded Makar of a bunch of bananas.
Roderick Smith—or Rod Smith—now in his early thirties, still moved with a feline grace—like a leopard embodied in human form. The English-schooled Russian climbed into the purring piece of engineering, and it pulled away.
“I was able to source a significant amount of information on the subject but it had to pass through more than one pair of sensitive hands, hence the fee sir,” said Roderick in English that sounded like he was a native. He had lived in England since he was seven years of age.
Makar gave a slight nod. He knew this information wouldn’t come cheap and good intelligence was always worth its weight. Roderick was an ex-undercover SVR agent who maintained close links with the organisation. Makar had known him for the better part of a decade.
“Give me the highlights first,” said Makar in the same tongue while he merged the vehicle into the midday London traffic.
“Carl Wright. Born October 1983 in the Dearborn area of Detroit. His father was murdered in a street robbery by a gang of Lebanese descent in 1999 when Carl was sixteen years of age. Enlisted in the 75th Ranger Regiment at nineteen years old. Passed 1st of his class and specialised as a sniper.”
“Were the gang caught? And if so what happened to them?”
“Three found not guilty and two convicted of aggravated manslaughter, paroled after six years.” answered Roderick, “Wright joined Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and made several confirmed kills as a sniper, including a shot of 900 yards or metres, whichever you prefer.”
“A yard is 0.914 of a metre. A significant difference when there’s 900 of them.”
Roderick nodded and continued. “He came to the attention of our friends at SAD’s SOG mainly as a sniper and other surveillance tasks. Over the next eighteen months he saw action not only in Afghanistan but Pakistan too. I couldn’t obtain the specific details of the missions without attracting suspicion but after eighteen months he was accepted for formal training at The Farm. Despite not having a Bachelor degree.”
Makar absorbed the information as they waited at the traffic lights. Roderick remained quiet.
The SAD was an acronym for the CIA’s Special Activities Division, responsible for the Agency’s more delicate covert operations. It was made up of SAD/PAG (Political Action Group) and SAD/SOG (Special Operations Group).
Two things had struck Makar while listening. Firstly, it was the first time he’d heard of an individual not of the SEALS or Delta Force being recruited. SOG was a highly elite paramilitary group and thus recruited almost exclusively from these two ‘Tier One’ units. The Army Rangers, while highly respected, were considered a level below them.
Secondly, it surprised him that the American had been selected for training to become a Paramilitary Operations Officer without a Bachelor degree, which was usually a requisite.
“Did he succeed?”
“Top six of an initial annual intake of 79. Only a third completed the course.”
“The full eighteen-month course?”
“Yes.”
Makar said nothing.
“In the next fifteen months he completes missions in Nigeria, Iraq and back to Afghanistan before resigning from the CIA,” stated Roderick. “Again, I could not obtain details on any of the missions.”
“Any indication of the reasons why he resigned?”
“No sir, other than it was his decision.”
“Then what?”
“It appears that he spent two years travelling the world before turning to his current employ. He’s been off the radar for the last three years until his dealings with the Frenchman.”
“I have some specific questions,” said Makar, freeing the Jaguar from the shoal of city centre traffic onto the carriageway. For the next twenty minutes, Roderick answered them all.
Connor had turned up unexpected but was warmly received as always by the Scott family.
“She seems to have perked up a bit since you last visited, but she’s still not herself like,” Mrs Scott told him in the living room as he nursed a cup of tea. “It’s not healthy her spending so much time in her room. Thought it was that school at first but she says she likes it.”
Rayella had passed her Eleven plus exams and now attended the local Grammar school. Connor was terribly proud of her for preserving with her academia given what she had been, and was, going through.
>
“She’s just becoming a woman that’s all Ann. Stop mithering all the time,” said Mr Barker gruffly.
“It’s no wonder she doesn’t comes down to talk with us with an attitude like that.”
Connor couldn’t make out what Mr Scott mumbled under his breath. He thought him a wise man not to antagonize an upset Ann Scott.
“I’ll go and speak to her,” said Connor as he polished off his cup of tea and made his way to her room.
Connor gently wrapped on Rayella’s door.
“Yes?” Rayella called out.
“It’s Connor.” The door opened, immediately revealing a smile that although sincere, didn’t quite reach the eyes. He stepped in and closed the door.
“Take a seat. I have something to show you.” She stared numbly at him and sat on her bed. He sat next to her, taking out his android phone.
“Try not to get too upset until I’ve finished OK?”
“OK...I won’t,” she replied meekly.
He felt his heart lurch. He knew enough to know that what had happened to her was going to affect her, in one way or another, for the rest of her life.
He flicked on to his Google Chrome and pulled up an article on Hardcastle’s suicide. He saw her flinch when the MP’s picture came into view at the top of the screen and he put his arm around her. She stiffened but after a moment, cuddled into him.
“Do you want to read it or shall I read it for you?”
Her answer surprised him. “I’ll read it.”
He handed her the phone. Seconds later, she quietly sobbed. “Was this you?”
“All that matters is that he got what was coming to him. He died in agonizing pain. He got justice.”
After a while, in a quiet voice she said, “I love you, Connor.”
He could feel the moisture creep under his eye lids and he blinked rapidly.
“Well you’re not a figure eleven,” he said and then, ignoring her quizzical look said, “Look at me Rayella,” he said, and when she did he continued. “Listen, tomorrow I want you to tell your Mum what’s happened. You need to be brave. You can’t keep carrying this around by yourself. She will get you the help you need, OK?”
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