A Killing Place in the Sun

by Robert F Barker

  'A road accident. They died.'

  Her hand found his. He didn’t return the squeeze but appreciated the gesture.

  'Afterwards, you finished whatever work you were doing then came back to settle here. But by then this Russian had arrived and moved into your house. You asked my father for help but he says it is not a criminal matter and he cannot do anything.' She took up her glass again. 'That is as much as I know.'

  He nodded. About what he’d expected.

  'Now, it is your turn.'

  He remembered their bargain, yet still he hesitated. There were still things he had never told anyone, not even Kathy.

  'Before I tell you what you want to know, may I ask a question?'

  'Go on.'

  'I’m sure your father warned you against having anything to do with me.' The slight lift of her eyebrows confirmed his suspicion. 'So what is the Chief of Police’s daughter doing, meeting with someone her father thinks is a criminal?'

  She put on a determined look. 'My father is a policeman. He thinks like a policeman. I however am a woman. I think like a woman.'

  He frowned. 'What does that mean?'

  'Dironda has known you a long time, yes?'

  'My father was in the army. We were stationed here when I was young. I have been coming here for many years.'

  She gave an affirming nod. 'Dironda says she knows about you.'

  'About me?'

  'Dironda has a way of knowing about people. You understand what I mean when I say, 'know'?'

  His eyes narrowed. 'I think so.'

  'And she is always right. She knew about my sister-in-law before she married my brother. The rest of us only realised later.'

  Murray thought it best not to ask.

  'And she knows about you. She said you would not do anything….' She hesitated, searching for the right expression.

  'Against the law?'

  'Ummm… not quite. She said you would not do anything… bad.'

  'Er, wouldn’t stealing be bad?'

  'If you stole something and were caught, that would have harmed your family. Dironda says you would not do such a thing.'

  He nodded. He’d never realised Dironda gave him so much thought.

  'Now, you tell.'

  He thought about where to start. Eventually he said, 'Alright, but on two conditions.'

  'Yes?'

  'First, you must not repeat what I say to anyone. And that includes your father.'

  'Of course. And?'

  'When I’ve finished, I will ask you if you feel you can trust me and you must answer honestly.'

  She gave him a quizzical look. 'Agreed.'

  He told her.

  CHAPTER 15

  He didn’t tell her everything, they’d have been there all night and into the morning. He told her what she needed to know. He started with Rowan Grantham.

  Grantham was a low-level drug dealer around London’s Streatham district when Murray was attached to the Metropolitan Police Plain Clothes Branch. Murray busted him for possession and some minor supplying. It turned out Grantham was an ex-squaddie who had served in Cyprus. He also had links into the London drugs scene that Murray thought he could use. Though a junkie, Grantham was still managing to hold down a job with a national transport company which he stood to lose if he was convicted. Unusually for someone with a habit, he was surprisingly desperate to hang onto his position. On realising Murray was also ex-service, he offered to become a street informant if Murray could cut him a deal. Murray agreed. In return for regular cash payments, Grantham began putting Murray onto other, higher level dealers, as well as some of the Capos running street-gangs in the areas south of the Thames who had long been a cause of so much trouble.

  For nearly a year it remained a mutually-beneficial arrangement, one of several Murray and his team were managing. Then, one evening, Grantham turned up at Murray’s station fearing for his life and begging protection. He told Murray he had, 'A story to tell. Something big.' Murray took him to an anonymous Travelodge beyond the M25. There he began to coax the terrified dealer to spill.

  The transport company Grantham joined on coming out of the army specialised in placing ex-servicemen. The reason soon became clear. It turned out it was the London end of a smuggling operation between Europe and the Middle East. Lured by the promise of big rewards and a never-ending supply of opium - Grantham became addicted to heroin soon after his discharge - he allowed himself to be sucked in. For two years everything ran smoothly. But two weeks before, a big deal had gone south when the product was intercepted, en route, by a rival gang. Word went round that Grantham was responsible, having taken a bung to set up the intercept. The night before, Grantham had learned there was a contract out on him – something Murray was able to confirm was true. Such was Grantham’s paranoia about not trusting anyone, not even other policemen, it took Murray three days to get all the details out of him. When he eventually did, he understood a little better Grantham’s assertions that the smuggling operation was too big for even the police to tackle. For the gang behind it was, the British Army.

  In telling Gina the tale, Murray glossed over most of the secretive enquiries he later carried out with a select group of police and army investigators - Murray was himself, ex-SIB - he knew he could trust. Grantham’s contention that the operation involved people in senior positions – perhaps even within Special Investigations Branch itself - meant that everything had to be kept especially tight. But eventually Murray uncovered enough to show that Grantham’s story was substantially true.

  Grantham’s company had contracts with NAAFI, the official trading organisation for all UK Armed Forces. A consortium of British and mainly Saudi gangsters, working with a network of corrupt servicemen, were using army supply routes between the Middle East and the UK as cover to smuggle in everything from drugs, to stolen art-works, to counterfeit retail goods. Officials and clerks on army payroll in bases around the Med had been bribed or threatened into supporting the operation, which had been going on for years using Grantham’s company’s drivers, especially planted for the purpose.

  It was immediately clear to Murray that uncovering the full extent of the operation and bringing those involved to justice would require a great deal more than the sort of routine anti-smuggling operation usually carried out under the joint auspices of the Police, National Crime Agency and HM Customs. It was decided, at the highest Police, Home Office and Whitehall levels, that a joint operation was needed in which a police investigation could be supported by the Army know-how necessary to identify those involved.

  A special unit comprising Police and Army investigators, as well as carefully-chosen, for the most part ex-Special Forces, was formed to work out of Cyprus to investigate the gang’s activities and bring them to justice. From the beginning, it was recognised that given where they would be operating and the risks involved, it would be dangerous work. For that reason, the team was given survival and combat training both at the SAS Regiment HQ in Hereford, and in Saudi. Grantham’s information was always going to be vital and, being the only man he would talk to, as well as having the right Police, Army and Cyprus background, Murray was given a lead role. At that time Grantham was still in touch with some of the smugglers, though secretly as the contract on him was still, ‘live’. The Operation was code-named ‘Priscilla’. Its brief was to work in utmost secrecy. Even the Head of British Armed Forces - Cyprus, wasn’t brought into the circle - something that would later have repercussions for Murray and his team.

  Unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on the way of looking at it - the unit arrived in Cyprus around the time ISIL was finally being crushed in Syria - thanks largely, to the bombing missions carried out by UK and US forces. Grantham reported to Murray murmurings of a major gear-up in smuggling operations. Those running things had sensed what might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take maximum advantage of the chaos everyone knew would accompany the build up of British and Allied Forces in Cyprus and the intensification of milita
ry intervention in Syria.

  Murray’s team went undercover immediately. With only the barest preparation, they embarked upon a series of hectic and often dangerous surveillances, infiltrations and incursions in and around army bases, as well as Syrian and Iraqi towns and villages where those known to be involved in the operation lived and worked. The fall of ISIL proved a defining moment. Using information bought or extracted from ISIL fighters, as well as British military sources, the smugglers had arranged to use disaffected Syrian soldiers and mercenaries to intercept a convoy containing art works originally looted from Baghdad during the Iraq war and which high level officials in the Syrian Government were trying to spirit out of the country. Thought to be part of Syrian President, Bashar Assad’s contingency planning in the event he ever had to flee the country, the convoy was being guarded by members of Assad’s elite Republican Guard.

  Having been tipped off what was to happen, Murray’s team were on hand to witness the Guards’ unusually swift capitulation to the smuggler’s ‘ambush’ - money was seen to change hands – as well as the subsequent dispatching of those who remained loyal to Assad and who tried to mount a belated resistance.

  As those in the pay of the smugglers carted the twice-stolen booty away, Murray’s team began the nerve-racking task of tracking it through the various links in the chain. The operation was to last for six months with the likes of Murray, and his team, which included Red and Kishore, living amongst the bands of deserters and roving mercenaries who at that time were swarming all over the region. At one stage they even found themselves being dragooned into helping the smugglers load part of the haul onto trucks to be taken to a secret cache on the Saudi-Iraq border. Twice during this period, Murray came close to being exposed as a British agent. Luckily, Red was on hand both times to pull him out - once under heavy fire.

  A few weeks after the war ended, Murray and his team had all the information they needed. In a series of co-ordinated raids in the UK, Cyprus, and several Arab states, members of the ring - army and civilian - were rounded up. Many were charged and/or extradited and later appeared before British civil and military courts and given lengthy sentences. Others were dealt with in ways Murray never learned of and preferred not to know about. At this point, Murray paused in his tale to take a drink. He could see Gina was fascinated. But now his mood darkened.

  'It would have been a good result, but for the missing gold.'

  Gina started. 'Gold? My father spoke of money.'

  Murray shook his head. 'When people start talking 'gold', the wrong sort of people become interested.'

  'What happened?'

  'Part of the haul consisted of a consignment of gold bars, looted from the Bank of Iraq just before Baghdad fell. We were led to believe it was amongst the consignments we were tracking, but it never surfaced. After the gang was arrested, no-one would say what happened to it. Some tried to muddy the waters by pointing the finger at us. Some of the military high-ups at that time were pissed off they’d been cut out of the chain of command and embarrassed about the army’s role in the affair. They insisted there ought to be an ‘independent investigation’ into what happened to the gold.'

  After another drink Murray continued. 'It was politics and bullshit really, but they got their way. Westgate was brought in and put in charge of an SIB enquiry to look into it. He was out to make a name for himself and I guess he decided we could be his meal ticket. He found a couple of ‘witnesses’ who spun him a story about the trucks containing the gold being stolen in the night by Englishmen disguised as Arabs – which pointed to us. It was a load of balls of course, but it was enough to get everyone thinking. We were all pulled in for questioning, detained for weeks, but they never found anything – not that there was anything to find. We were eventually exonerated, but it left a nasty taste. Some still believe it was us. Westgate is obsessed with it. He swore that one day he would prove we were responsible. I thought he’d moved on until he showed up at your father’s office.'

  'So what do you think did happen to the gold?'

  Murray refilled his glass. He was feeling more relaxed now, surprisingly so, given he was talking about things he’d thought he would never reveal to anyone. 'Who knows? Hidden away by some of the gang themselves maybe. Or Assad loyalists. Personally, I’m not convinced it ever existed. There were a lot of crazy rumours circulating around that time. Everything was blamed on deserting ISIL fighters but there were all sorts of factions operating in that area at the time. Even if it did exist, any one of them could have taken it.'

  His tale finished - for now - Murray sat back, awaiting her reaction.

  Her gaze stayed on him a good while. Eventually she shook her head. 'What an incredible story. But what happened to you after? You obviously left the army, or the police, or whoever you were working for.’

  His face darkened.

  'After everything that had happened, good and bad, I felt I couldn’t go back to Police work. Not in England at least. I heard reports about some not-very-nice things being spread around back home. Mud sticks, you know? We-.' He breathed deeply. 'Kathy and I - Kathy was my wife - we had a son. He was six. They hardly saw me while all this was going on. We’d always loved Cyprus so we decided to settle here and start over. I’m a carpenter by trade and we thought we might be able to get a small furniture business going. We still had all the money and savings from my time in the Army and those of us involved in the Operation were entitled to some fairly generous allowances. We heard there was a plot of land for sale and went to see the developer, Klerides. The rest… I think you know.' As he fell silent, he could almost see the question forming in Gina’s mind. She was a woman.

  'Can I ask what hap-.'

  'After Priscilla, the Army let us stay on Episkopi while the house was being built. I had to return to Saudi to tie up some loose ends. Kathy and Jack, that was his name, Jack-' Gina gave a sad smile - 'They’d been out for the day to Kurium beach. The way home took them along the road that runs through the base. You know it? The cliff road?' She nodded. 'Some local farmer was driving his broken-down truck towards them when his steering went. The truck veered across the road and when Kathy tried to avoid it she lost control. They went through the crash barr-.' He stopped, unable to finish. He reached for his glass and took a long drink. Gina said nothing, letting him recover.

  When he eventually looked at her again, he saw the candle’s flame reflected in the dampness in her eyes and had to take another drink. After what seemed a long time, during which neither of them spoke, Irena appeared at Gina’s shoulder, hovering as if she needed to speak with her. But after a moment’s hesitation she left without asking. Eventually Murray pulled himself round.

  Too much of this. Not why I came.

  'I said that after I told you, I’d ask if you still feel you can trust me.'

  'Yes….'

  'And that you had to be honest.'

  'I will be.'

  'So, do you?

  'Yes.'

  'In that case….'

  But before he could continue her hand came up and her gaze slid away over his shoulder. Her face changed to one of recognition and she forced a smile to cover the bad timing. Before he could turn there was babble of Greek from behind.

  'Yasoo, Ileana,' Gina said.

  Murray looked round just as the girl arrived next to him. She was younger than Gina but he saw the similarity at once. Her hair was darker and longer and she still retained the slimness of youth, but there was no doubting who she was.

  'Mr Murray, this is Ileana, my sister. Ileana this is Mr Murray.'

  Conscious of Gina’s formality, Murray smiled up at the young woman. 'Call me Peter. I’m very pleased to meet you, Ileana.'

  The appraising look that came into the pretty face matched the one Gina had given him at Dironda’s. After a couple of seconds’ hesitation, the smile that broke suggested he had passed scrutiny.

  'You too, Mr Murray, Peter. And I am sorry to interrupt your dinner, but I must speak with my sist
er.'

  He waved the interruption away. 'Be my guest.'

  As he eased back in his chair, Ileana and Gina spoke together. It involved much hand waving and what Murray assumed was the Greek equivalent of ‘tushing’, from both women. A sisterly argument, though he had no way of knowing how serious. It ended with Gina getting up, the raised eyebrows signalling her exasperation. Sisters!

  Ileana followed her to the bar where Gina took some notes from the till and passed them to her sibling. After a brief acknowledgement from Ileana that Murray assumed was meant to pass as gratitude she was about to leave the way she’d come in, through the rear, when she stopped and turned back to him.

  'Nice to have met you Mr M- Peter.’

  'And you, Ileana.'

  As she left, the younger woman threw her sister a look that was full of meaning as well as mischief. Gina ignored it and Murray knew he would have to pretend not to have seen it. Then she was gone. A whirlwind, like her older sister.

  'I am sorry about that,' Gina said as she sat down again. 'Always she comes out without money. Crazy.'

  'But you love her all the same.'

  Gina smiled. 'Of course. I have to. Apart from being sisters, we share a house.'

  He paused to let things settle, then: 'Now where were we? Oh yes, I was about to-.' But like so many times before, she didn’t let him finish.

  'You don’t have to say anything else. How can I help you?'

  CHAPTER 16

  Major Glyn Westgate of the Royal Military Police SIB rose from his temporary office’s wooden desk and went through to the meagre kitchen. Opening the ancient fridge-freezer he grabbed some ice, dropped it into a tumbler, then poured over a generous measure of the doubtful Bombay Sapphire he’d picked up, cheap, at a Cava in Pafos harbour. Satisfied it was as much as he could do to trick his brain into thinking he was back in his more conducive, Berlin surroundings, he returned to where he’d left off, perusing the photographs the Base Adjutant had brought, twenty minutes earlier.