THE VIOLIN MAN’S LEGACY (Jack Calder Crime Series #1) Read online

  The Violin Man’s Legacy

  Copyright 2008

  Registration number 293839 (UK Copyright Service)

  THE VIOLIN MAN'S LEGACY

  By Seumas Gallacher

  CHAPTER 1

  Ang Chu was good. He knew that. Killings were the least difficult of all the initiations expected of a good man and being an enforcer for the triads marked a step up the ladder. He’d served the customary five years as a soldier in the mob, running the streets, making the savage slums combat a way of life. Two years later, the pickings on the side from the collections of enforced protection money helped to feed his growing drug habit. Chasing the dragons became easier with money to pay the beast supplier. The handover to the Mainland mandarins remained a few years away yet in 1997, but until then a lot of triad harvesting would have to be done.

  Tonight was a milestone. A summons to meet with the big boss. The top guy. A high honour indeed. From here on, richer living beckoned. This night he would become a lieutenant. A triad to reckon with.

  The warehouse backed on to the dockside by Kowloon harbour. He paid off the taxi two streets away and walked the rest as always. Care in everything, caution the watchword. The constant bustle and din of boat traffic on the waterways in Hong Kong made silence a non-existent concept.

  A sliver of yellowing light sneaked from underneath the large, dirty, wooden doors. The noise of a slat rattling across the inside of the door-frame followed his coded rap. A tattooed arm held one lopsided piece of the door ajar for him as he stepped from the dark into the marginally lighter gloom of the godown.

  He counted around a dozen triads, some of whom he knew from the streets, others he recognized as higher-ranking gang members. At the rear of the warehouse three men sat behind a large wooden work-table. The one in the middle looked up at Ang Chu and beckoned him forward. The big man. The boss.

  The half moon birthmark on the supremo’s forehead was barely visible. The magnificent adrenaline surge was even better than he got from the Grade A stuff he was using lately. No seats cluttered this side of the table. Nobody ever sat down in front of the boss. Nobody ever expected to. Chu moved forward with two men on either side of him. He bowed his head in salute, as did his companions.

  Despite himself, he felt his body shake a little. He hoped they wouldn’t notice. It was kind of dark anyway, so no worries. What a night.

  The boss addressed him. “Ang Chu. I bid you warm welcome to our meeting. I’ve heard much about you.”

  Chu bowed again, no conversation expected unless prompted.

  “Tonight is a special occasion for you and for us. Your friends here have reported fully to me on your activities. I’m a great believer that all action deserves its due reward. Please step forward and place your hands flat upon the table in front of me.”

  Now for the ritual. Now for the glorious moment. Chu did as instructed. His hands flattened in supplication before the boss. The shaking had gone.

  On either side of him, one man each took hold of an arm. Two others stepped forward swiftly and acted in concert. Two meat cleavers flashed and thudded through the flesh of both arms, imbedding in the solid wood beneath his fingers. The speed of their movement beat the signal of pain to his brain. His limbs severed at the wrists, he opened his mouth to cry out but the blackness engulfed him before the scream could begin.

  As the dying triad was folded into the tarpaulin, the man in the middle seat spoke.

  “Please remove this scum and park it with the fishes. Show the hands that stole my money around the streets to the rest of our people.” His voice was quiet. “Remind them how much I value their honesty.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Roddie Bell had been a highly efficient SAS commando in his day. Ugly situations and fire-fights featured regularly in his years of duty and all handled with exemplary professionalism. After his retirement, it didn’t take long for offers to surface from the private sector. The security company, Securimax, beat off several competitors to secure his services as Chief of Operations at their European hub in Rotterdam.

  The warehouse situated down near the seaport, close to all the major shipping clients. Activity started around five-thirty each morning. Roddie always clocked-in first on site, believing the best way to run a team was to lead from the front, be involved, not be scared to get his hands dirty with the rest of them.

  The half-light of dawn yielded to a grey overcast day. The early shift prepared to load a shipment of gold bullion for ABN AMRO Bank in Rotterdam. Bound for the centre of the city, not too far a trip from the warehouse, the bars waited on the rolling wooden pallet next to the security truck. Wrapped in the usual black plastic containers, the gold itself not showing.

  As they opened the armoured vehicles doors, ready to receive the forklift’s load, all hell broke loose. A gang of six players wielding AK 47s appeared, the element of surprise total. Two shots were fired into the ceiling.

  “Lie down! Lie down!” screamed one of the attackers. The loaders instantly did as ordered. Roddie Bell heard the shouts and his instinctive reaction kicked in to overdrive. He sprinted towards the on-going heist, drawing the gun from his side holster. He hardly had a chance to get it out. Two of the gunmen blasted at him, ripping out his throat and lower stomach. He was dead before his body hit the stone floor.

  A dark van backed up to the warehouse door and transferred the bars in just over a minute. The attackers knew what they were after. It was clear any movement from the loaders would invite the same deadly result inflicted on Bell. In the dim light a second van waited a few metres away with its engine running, the exact colouring difficult to identify. More shots fired into the roof to keep heads down. Then the gunmen disappeared. The action took less than three and a half minutes.

  Value taken a touch over four point two million dollars.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jack Calder wasn't a guy who got drunk easily.

  He and Malky McGuire had been shooting the breeze in The Crushed Grapes bar since just after opening time a couple of hours earlier. They’d been hammering the Glen Grant. Jack wasn’t sober but he wasn’t really drunk either. His head and the cloying, sour feeling in his throat told him he’d drunk a lot but not enough to get him to the point he wanted. Close to going home time, the noise from the few tables around them became a dull buzz.

  Malky and he were frequent customers. The Crushed Grapes is a regular watering hole for middle-level executive spenders. Public relations managers, store-merchandise buyers, and neighbouring restaurant owners mingled at its tables. No art-deco trappings. No fancy furniture from the pages of the fashion magazines. A small finger-food menu meant no expensive kitchen to maintain. Drinks prices ranged higher than most of the competing bars in the area and whether intended or not, this filtered out the undesirable younger set. Trendiness stretched merely to a good sound system never turned up to a level to drown out conversation, with music such as The Commodores' 'Three Times a Lady' playing now, more likely than rock numbers.

  The London offices of International Security Partners Limited situated a couple of streets from the bar. For the past ten years, Jack and Malky had shared the operational load for the specialised security services company. In their highly-focused arena, success measured more not by what happened but by what they prevented from happening. The pair ranked among the best teams in the business. No clients taken down by aggrieved competitors. No overt losses. A stream of repeat engagements. ISP had become a known and respected abbreviation in the security industry.

  ISP was the brain-child of their former SAS commanding officer, Major Julian 'Jules’ Townsend. He’d demobbe
d from the service a couple of years before them. By the time Jules asked them to join him, ISP was already established with a select clientele across Europe and he needed reliable intelligent operatives to sustain its growth. In the late eighties and early nineties, well-paying opportunities for demobilizing elite professional soldiers were few. The money Townsend put on the table exceeded anything they could have earned elsewhere. They accepted the offer and their roles without blinking an eye. Jules trusted them as he had in the murky times in Northern Ireland and other darker spots, where often only intuition kept a man and his sidekicks alive.

  The brotherhood of fighting commandos survived long after demobilization. That morning, word flashed across the invisible security grapevine their former buddy, Roddie Bell, had died, murdered during a heist in Rotterdam. Jack and Malky were having their own private wake, as many others would do when they heard the news. The funeral would be a more public ceremony in a few days time.

  CHAPTER 4

  The armed robbery and killing of Roddie Bell in Rotterdam was the first of its kind in Holland in over twenty years. A few days later a second, seemingly unrelated strike shocked the country.

  Guardwell Inc, a top name security company, had carried valuable cargo for more than three decades throughout Holland and neighbouring countries. A shipment of diamonds to the cutting firm of Grussweld Inc in Utrecht was a standard run.

  The armoured van drew up opposite the firm’s offices and parked across from a wide plaza fronting the main entrance to the building. The driver, the courier - with the gems shipment chained to his wrist - an accompanying escort from the diamond company, and a Guardwell security officer occupied the van.

  The doors opened and the escort alighted, followed closely by the courier and security man together. The plaza was clear for the full thirty yards or so to the entrance, until, from nowhere, five men, clad in black, wearing Halloween-style masks, charged at the detail. Four of them brandished automatic weapons which the Guardwell man later identified as Uzi sub-machine guns. The mule’s escort tried to turn back only to be hit by a burst from the leading attacker. The courier stepped forward to help him. The second round of bullets brought him down. Both men died instantly.

  Faced with four weapons, the security guard lay down on the pavement as commanded. The fifth assailant moved to the dead courier with a set of bolt cutters, cutting from the man’s wrist the chain securing the attache case containing the diamonds. Several bursts from the machine guns, fired into the air, made sure everyone kept their heads down.

  As the raid progressed, five motor-cycles arrived together, the riders also dressed in black and masked. Each of the robbers took a pillion seat and in seconds sped off in different directions.

  Three million dollars worth of gems and two lives taken in less than one minute. Very precise. Very organized. Very fast.

  CHAPTER 5

  The entire week, the sun struggled to fight its way through a perpetually clouded sky. A drab and grey day greeted the Thursday service.

  Saint Margaret the Blessed replicated hundreds of similar stone structures around the countryside, neither ugly nor something to catch the eye or invite a casual visitor. Local pride in the church maintained the grounds which boasted neatly trimmed grass and borders of flowers.

  Jack counted no more than a couple of dozen people inside. They grouped in bunches in the front two pews and at the rear. Annie Bell sat in the middle of the first line of seats across the aisle from where Jack accompanied Malky and Jules. By tacit mutual desire, no words were exchanged. A clutch of what appeared to be local family friends and four or five other former SAS guys made up the congregation.

  Jack stared at the white coffin sitting astride the centre aisle where the minister stood, the book of service already opened in his hand. Several bouquets of flowers adorned the casket. Jack caught the strong floral scent as he took his place. The only other sensation he registered was in response to the solemnity of the organ music. It just seemed loud. Not sad - loud. God, I hate this stuff. He tried to stifle an involuntary shudder.

  The grey, stone walls of the church amplified the stentorian voice of the minister as he led them through the service. For an older man, his tone resonated, not much in the way of eulogy, more a lament for "such a vital spirit, taken from us all too early."

  Jack heard him speak and realized he hadn't been listening to him. The ex-soldier had attended dozens of funeral services in the course of a decade in the SAS. After a few of these, the words rarely ever captured the depth of human loss, each service special to only a handful of those present at any of them. Right now, Jack felt nothing. He wanted this over with as soon as possible.

  The time came for the casket to be moved outside. Jules led Jack and Malky forward as pallbearers with another youngish-looking man. Jack recognized him as Roddie’s brother, but he couldn’t remember his name. Together they paced as military men do, precisely, neither slowly nor quickly, to the graveside. The formalities continued until finally the funeral director moved forward with the workmen and their spades. More words. More noises. God, let this get finished. The mounds of pre-dug earth piled on either side of the grave, wet and muddied.

  The sound of the clods thudding on to the wood caused Jack to glance up and around him. A short distance away Annie Bell stood beside her daughter, neither of them talking. Then he caught it. It was on the widow’s face. It was in the eyes. In the set of the mouth. In the cast of the head. He recalled vividly where he’d seen the look before. And memories of the Violin Man came flooding back. And another reminder why he detested funerals.

  Tommy Calder knew nothing but life in the Glasgow slum area of Govan.

  He grew up as one of seven sisters and brothers, all of whom attended basic school only until they could legitimately leave and find some sort of work to contribute to the family income.

  His father was a long-serving cooper at the Fairfields shipyard on Clydeside. In line with many other fathers, he managed to install Tommy and his three brothers as apprentices in the craft guilds. Money was tight, but at least there was always a meal on the table.

  Govan was a rough and ready dockside neighbourhood, forged in the shadows of the heavy industries associated with the shipyards. Life was uncompromising. A mix of Scots lowlanders and Irish immigrants bred a harsh reality. A man worked or his family went without food, any quality of life a direct result of holding down a regular job.

  Entertainment was home grown. The Calder men played football on the common park green in teams of up to twenty or thirty a side, often for long hours, even when the summer evening light faded past ten o'clock. Sometimes on weekends and holidays families arranged communal outside parties and dances, commandeering the street, with chairs placed at either end to close off what little motor traffic may have dared to intrude. Whoever owned an instrument was absorbed into an assortment of music providers, the main centre-piece usually an accordion player.

  At one of these street dances, Tommy, by now in his mid-twenties, met Jenny Cafferty after an awkward introduction from one of her brothers. For all the rough and ready masculinity Tommy represented, being at ease with womenfolk didn’t count as part of the deal. Jenny liked the look of the gauche Tommy Calder, and soon had him relaxed enough to get up and try a few dance steps. To his amazement, he found he enjoyed dancing. By the time the night ended they were planning when to meet again.

  Four months later, their friendship had blossomed into a true depth of caring for each other.

  After another month or so, Jenny tearfully confided to Tommy she was pregnant, which came as a shock to both of them. The course of action was clear to Tommy. With no thought of ducking the issue, he told Jenny's parents if her father would accept him as a son-in-law, he would be proud to husband their daughter.

  After some tough talking, both families came to terms with the situation, blessed the union and began planning for the marriage a month ahead. Jack Calder was born five months later, a big baby with beautiful eyes
and lungs like a foghorn, but with a smile to melt the moon. A small one-bedroom unit in a tenement building became home. Within three years Jack had as many siblings, all sisters, sharing the family pushchair. For the Calder brood, like thousands of such families in the neighbourhood, money was always scarce, but Jack recalled there was always a warm bed, food and clothing. Somewhere along the way, Tommy acquired a second hand gramophone record player from a pal in the shipyard. Whenever he could scrape together a little spare money, he started buying long-playing records. Soon, a strange assortment of music filled the cramped Calder household most evenings, often far beyond midnight. Dance-band music and noted crooners and ballad singers of the time topped the favourites. The man from the shipyards disliked the modern style of rock and roll or country and western productions.

  Perhaps the oddest part of the collection was a long-playing record of the violin prodigy, Yehudi Menuhin, playing Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Tommy told his family Menuhin was the greatest violin player the world had ever heard. No one thought to ask him how many other violin players he had actually listened to, but the sounds scraping from the old gramophone were hauntingly beautiful. The grace of Menuhin's music enveloped the small slum and Tommy seemed to drift away on the air with it. Jack remembered clearly often being told to listen. At five and six years of age he couldn't fathom why his father needed him to listen, but listen he did.

  The nickname, ‘Violin Man’ stuck to Jack’s father. Nobody ridiculed the man from the shipyards for the escape valve the violin music provided. Lord knows, they all needed something.

  The turning point for the Calder family came when Tommy lost his job. Austerity hammered Scotland’s big cities and he joined hundreds of his workmates whose pay-packets no longer salved a tough week. Making ends meet became increasingly difficult. With money even scarcer, Jenny held down as many as three different cleaning jobs at one time. Tommy picked up what little work was available in the slums for men desperate to keep themselves and their families alive. Lots of crying from his sisters, caused by hunger, haunted young Jack. Tommy's dogged determination to keep things going faded as the months passed. Casual jobs became scarcer and the unemployment queues longer. Frequent fist-fights erupted among the contenders for the scarce amount of work available. Jack's father was well able to look after himself physically but he began to grow desperate on the days with no work. No work meant no money. No money meant no food.