TURKISH DELIGHT: Ben Nevis and the Gold Digger book 1

by Barry Faulkner

  I had written down what I wanted; people like Gilbert are always under some sort of surveillance. The Organised Crime Squad know as well as I do that Gilbert’s skills are more in demand today than ever before, and will often slip a hidden microphone into premises in the dead of night. I’ve done it myself. So you never know who’s listening.

  Gilbert took the list I passed over and read it. ‘I think we can accommodate you, sir,’ he said with a big smile. ‘Please take a seat whilst I check the stock room.’ He pointed to a pair of fake antique chairs at the back of the shop. I sat down on one and he disappeared into the back room, returning five minutes later carrying a shoebox-size box printed with his fake Gilbert Charles family monogram which he slid into a ‘Gilbert Charles Country Sports’ bag and handed to me over the counter. ‘I’m happy to say we had your requirements in stock, sir.’

  I pulled out a small wad of twenty pound notes, five hundred pounds total. Gilbert counted out three hundred and gave me back the rest. ‘I’ll put it on your account, sir,’ he said loudly; he’d cottoned on to my reservations about a bug. ‘Thank you so much, I do hope you find everything satisfactory.’

  We smiled at each other and I left the shop.

  **************************

  Gold was already there when I took the service lift down to the car park at midnight carrying Gilbert’s box. She slipped out of her Lexus and into my Honda CRV. She was in dark mode, black jeans and sweater – so was I. She carried her Burberry shoulder bag; no doubt it held a variety of tools we might need.

  Twenty minutes later we were parked in a dark back alley beside the city office block where Reynolds’s dealing room took up all the top floor. The whole building was in darkness. I knew there was no night security – strange really seeing that most of the offices in the block were company dealing rooms and full of computers and IT hard and soft ware, all very much in demand in both the honest and not so honest secondhand market. One raid with a large van and a dodgy trader could keep himself going on eBay for a year.

  Gold rummaged in her Burberry and gave me a head torch, earpiece and clip-on microphone. She would stay put and keep watch for any security patrols whilst I was inside; the City of London streets can be very busy at night with security companies doing their rounds, and if any of the other tenants of Reynolds’s building had a contract with one I didn’t want to bump into them inside.

  Entering was easy; on my first visit to do a bug sweep Reynolds had given me the keypad numbers to the staff side door. I took the stairs up, my Gilbert Charles monogrammed box under my arm; lifts make a noise and maybe somebody was working late in one of the other floor’s dealing rooms playing the markets in a different time zone – you can’t be too careful.

  When I got to the top floor I checked carefully through the double glass door just in case; it was empty, all in darkness – no computers flashing stock movements and currency trades; their screens were asleep, their pixels waiting for the surge of electricity that would wake them up for another day of frenetic work. It was a large open plan room the size of a tennis court arranged in four long rows of joined desks; each had computers and plasma screens of all sizes stacked on them with banks of telephones sitting in front. Reynolds’s glass office was positioned off the back of it, set a couple of feet above the dealing floor level with three wide steps up to it. He could see everybody was working hard from his desk in there.

  I used my key, went inside and stood for a moment, sizing up my options. The suspended ceiling was a favourite; I knew from working on the security sweeps that the light polystyrene tiles slid out of their metal frames easily to give access to the original roof above. The cavity between was about four feet high. I opened the Gilbert Charles box on the nearest desk to me and took out a dozen split second LED timers, then very carefully pulled out a block of C4 plastic explosive. I like C4 as you can mould it and chuck it about a bit without it exploding – it needs an electric charge sent through it to set it off; it’s the demolition man’s choice of weapon. I pulled off pieces and rolled them into twelve six-inch sausages, then putting them and the timers back in the box I walked through the dealing room and into Reynolds’s office. Standing on his large desk shifted a ceiling tile aside. I set a timer for 7.10 a.m., pushed it into a C4 sausage which I wrapped around one of the metal ties that strung the suspended ceiling framework up to the original concrete ceiling and roof above it and then put the tile back in place. I repeated the operation another eleven times in the dealing room moving along on top of a row of desks, one sausage with timer above every sixth tile in a row towards the double entrance doors, each timer set ten seconds after the one before. This was going to be one hell of a firework display! The amount of C4 wouldn’t bring the building down, but there wouldn’t be much of Reynolds’s dealing room or computers left standing after they’d gone off, and with a bit of luck not much of him left either. I had set the first one to go off at 7.10a.m. as I knew Reynolds got in his office at 6.30a.m., and his staff arrived at 8a.m. – I just hoped nobody had decided to make an early start.

  I left the floor and started down the staff stairs when Gold came through on the earpiece.

  ‘Company.’

  I froze. ‘Go on?’

  ‘Cleaners, two of – coming up from the staff entrance.’

  I could hear them now – foreign voices, and they were coming up the stairs, why hadn’t they taken the lift! I retraced my steps up to the top floor, listening and hoping they’d move off the staircase into an office below; they didn’t. I let myself back into Reynolds’s floor – surely he hadn’t hired night cleaners? As far as I remembered he had a company come in every day at close of business at about five o’clock and do a clean. I checked the waste bins nearest to me – full of shredded paper, a bad sign; he must have changed things. I hit the fluorescent light switches and the floor was bathed in a white light. I sat at a desk halfway down the aisle and hit all the hardware switches; screens flickered into action and the pixels danced, showing graphs and bars and flashing red and green stock prices from God knows where in the world at that time of night.

  The two cleaners came in and stopped, surprised the lights were on and even more surprised that some fool was working at this time of night. I gave them a friendly wave and smile; they nodded back.

  ‘Just finishing up,’ I shouted.

  One of them smiled and laughed. ‘We can go – can come back later.’

  ‘No, no, I’m off now,’ I replied.

  He translated to his friend and they started emptying the waste bins into plastic refuse sacks. I switched off the hardware and made towards the door. ‘Have a good night,’ I shouted.

  They both nodded and I left the floor, took the stairs two at a time and rejoined Gold.

  ‘Hungry?’ I asked her. I was.

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to a rib-eye steak, salad and chips.’

  Ten minutes late we stood beside an all night burger van on the Embankment off Battersea Bridge, chomping through cheeseburgers washed down with some of the best coffee you can get in London.

  ‘You really know how to impress a lady don’t you, eh?’ Gold said between mouthfuls.

  Well, it was either that or a jellied eel and whelk stall down the Commercial Road. Some people are never satisfied.

  ***********************************

  CHAPTER 23

  Jameson Reynolds felt good. There was a definite spring in his step and a smile across his face as he walked through the dealing room and sat in his office, putting his Costa coffee on the desk in front of him. He didn’t know why he stopped at the coffee shop every day on his way in for a take-out of the tasteless drink at three quid a cup when there was always plenty of decent coffee pods and milk in the dealing room where he had three Barista coffee machines for the staff to help themselves; but the other city high-flyers seemed to do it, so he did. Good for the image was how he viewed it. His smile broke into laughter as he flipped off the lid and took a sip. He raised the cup as though toas
ting a deal.

  ‘Here’s to you, Ben – so predictable and so gullible. Shame to lose you, but that’s life. Winner takes all.’

  He switched on his screens and checked the Reynold-Rambart stock price. He was the major shareholder and would have his dealers buy as much as they could before announcing Rambart’s retirement and his own elevation to chairman – his people on the board would nod that through. He had checked the papers and the BBC News website both days since the warehouse episode to see if there was any mention of it; there wasn’t. The Foreign Office was probably keeping it quiet with a DSMA-Notice whilst they cleared things up. They wouldn’t want a spat with Iran if they could avoid it. ‘Well done, Rankin. I wonder what you did with Nevis’s body? Not that I particularly care.’ He checked his watch; it was coming up to ten past seven. The daily papers should have been left in the building foyer by now; he read them all closely every day, looking for any indication of something happening to companies of countries that could move a share or currency market – early bird gets the worm. He stood and stretched, took another sip of coffee and walked out of his office.

  The explosion behind him startled him and shook him rigid as he turned and saw the ceiling crashing down, covering his desk with burning ceiling tiles, plaster, twisted metal frames and concrete. The desk he had been sitting at moments before. He made for the main door where a row of powder fire extinguishers stood, but in front and above him the ceiling exploded again bringing him to standstill; he covered his face with his arm and started running towards the doors but he was running under a storm of crashing ceiling, twisted metal and broken concrete. The roof was straining against the explosions that were ripping it apart above and in front of him as he ran showering him with bricks and concrete, until the debris on the floor piled up blocking his path and the constant hammering of falling broken concrete falling on him sent him half unconscious to the floor a few feet from the doors. Computers and screens were toppling as the rows of desks gave way under the weight of the debris landing on them and Jameson Reynolds was becoming buried. He lifted his head, wiping blood from his eyes, and the only thing he could see as the debris piled on top of him was a battered shoebox-sized box with the Gilbert Charles coat of arms printed on it. He knew Gilbert Charles from his organised crime days and of course he knew the one person who would use him. The last thing Jameson Reynolds said before the rest of the roof came down and crushed the life out of him was: ‘Nevis, you bastard.’

  THE END ***************************************

  If you enjoyed this book please leave a short review on Amazon or Goodreads. Much appreciated.

  Coming in June 20121 book 2. The National Treasure.

  The daughter of a respected stage actress a national treasure disappears. Drugs, Romanian crime gangs and people who aren’t what they appear to be emerge from the shadows. Can Ben and Gold get the girl back? Is the ‘national treasure’ maybe a little bit tarnished?

  Check out Barry Faulkner’s other crime books here...

  www.barry-faulkner.com

  _______________________________