KILLER CITY: Jack Calder Crime Series #4 Read online




  KILLER CITY

  A Jack Calder Novel

  Seumas Gallacher

  Copyright 2015

  UK Copyright Services

  Registered number 284695683

  ISBN 978-1-910262-04-7

  About the Author

  Seumas Gallacher was born in Clydeside, Govan, in Glasgow and spent his formative teens in the idyllic Scottish Hebridean island of Mull.

  His career as a banker took him from Scotland to London for ten years and thence on a further twenty-five-year global odyssey through Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines in Asia. Along the way he metamorphosed into a corporate troubleshooter and problem solver. He moved to the United Arab Emirates for a month in 2004 and has remained in the Middle East ever since.

  Seumas has become a strong proponent of the use of the social networking channels to reach and engage with a global readership market. He is a sought-after speaker and lecturer on how to develop productive online relationships.

  He was voted Blogger of the Year 2013. Follow Seumas at www.seumasgallacher.com

  The Jack Calder Series:

  The Violin Man’s Legacy

  Vengeance Wears Black

  Savage Payback

  Killer City

  Killer City

  A Jack Calder Novel

  CHAPTER 1

  The smell should have given it away in the first place.

  In the old days, they worked directly for the local council. Nobody ever called them anything but bin men. Until the elected officials decided rubbish collection was better handled by private contractors, bin men they remained. Then the title changed to solid waste removal officers. The money they earned was more or less the same as when the council ran the pay packets. Nothing much else differed. The street rosters, the squad team, the early morning shifts, all as they were before. The expensive new trucks had modern hydraulic lifts with fluid cylinder hoists, making it easier to tip the wheelie bins into the back of the crusher. The machinery didn’t handle everything. They still had to manhandle the wheelies from outside the household gates to the vehicle.

  The chill morning air clouded with their condensed breath as they progressed their way down Mulberry Street. This was Oldham, a large town in the Greater Manchester region in the north of England. Once a thriving textile area with tens of thousands of inhabitants, the economic depression hit hard in the latter part of the twentieth century. Work for professional craftsmen decreased year after year. Many families drifted away, searching for other towns and cities able to provide the kind of earnings the region once enjoyed. Few of these homes were owner-occupied now, the majority rented by a spread of immigrant communities and younger couples with limited budgets.

  The gaffer and his mate on this patch were a good pair. They moved the same-sequence colour bins in methodical rotation for each gate, just as they’d done for the past twenty years. The grey wheelie at number 3 didn’t move on the first attempted lift.

  “Geez, that’s damn heavy,” said the gaffer. “Feels like a ton of bricks.”

  “Ach, you’re getting weak in your old age, Pete,” said his mate. “Let’s have a decko.”

  He lifted the lid and slammed it back down again.

  “Bloody hell!”

  He moved to the gate and steadied himself on the wooden post before retching heavily and throwing up into the bushes.

  “What?” said the boss.

  His pal waved his hand and retched violently again.

  The gaffer gingerly prised the hard plastic flap open a little and rammed it shut again.

  The body of a naked woman lay crammed on top of the rubbish. The slashed throat and mutilations on her chest clogged with buzzing flies. The stench of early decomposition hung in the air. Both men would have nightmares later about the lifeless, staring eyes.

  The smell should have given it away in the first place.

  An anonymous tip-off to the local newspaper meant a photo shot to accompany the next day’s headline story of the man resident at number 3, arrested for murder an hour after the corpse was discovered.

  CHAPTER 2

  Nothing ever stays the same for long in the specialist security industry. Most changes are the natural progression and development of a security firm’s business. Tragic circumstance had impacted more forcibly on International Security Partners, known globally by its initials ISP. The founder and former chief executive of the company, ex-SAS major, Jules Townsend, had been killed two years earlier in a booby-trap explosion at the left-luggage lockers in King’s Cross Station in London.

  Seriously injured alongside him had been May-Ling Calder, an ISP partner, and wife of Jack Calder. Jack and Malky McGuire, two former fellow officers in the Regiment were also full partners in the company. Despite being in the early stages of pregnancy when hit by the blast, May-Ling had recovered well enough to deliver a healthy baby son some months later. The residual effects of her injuries had made it impractical for her to continue as a field operator alongside the other partners. A unanimous decision to elect her as successor to Jules as the head of the firm had been ratified by the fourth remaining partner, former top cop, Donnie Mullen.

  The organisation had grown across four continents, with a deserved reputation for unrivalled protection of high-value goods and personnel. The current primary functions of the four partners dealt more with strategy and oversight than black operations fieldwork as the client base grew.

  In his office in the West End of London, Jack was into the second coffee mug refill of the morning. A four-sequence knuckle rap at the half-open door interrupted his reading of the branch reports from Europe. He looked up to see a familiar face peering in at him.

  “Ron Barnett. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Jack rose from his chair and strode toward the visitor.

  “Come in.”

  The men embraced in a comrade soldier’s bear hug. Both men stood six feet two inches tall and crammed the space in front of Jack’s desk.

  “Have a seat. Geez. It must be what?” said Jack. “Eighteen, nineteen years? That wee performance over in Senegal? Right?”

  “Twenty years, buddy. Twenty years,” said Barnett. “I was sorry to hear about Jules and what happened to your Missus.”

  “Aye. We still can’t believe he’s not in here every day, second-guessing what we’re up to. May-Ling’s okay, though. We made her chief executive. She’s got more brains and nous than the rest of us put together. What brings you across our doorstep?”

  The smile left Ron Barnett’s face.

  “Something’s going bad for my boy, Jack. I need some advice, and maybe a bit of help.”

  “Hang on a second,” said Jack. “Malky’s next door. Malky McGuire. You remember him? You want him here to listen too?”

  “That Irish terrier? Great. The more the better,” said Barnett.

  Jack crossed the couple of yards of hallway to Malky’s office and stuck his head through the doorway.

  “An old mate of ours is here. Ron Barnett. Come and join us.”

  Malky was glad to put aside reading papers with business figures and data for a while. He could understand them well enough, but poring through that stuff wasn’t his favourite pastime.

  The man hug repeated as the courtesies were exchanged. At four inches smaller than the other two men, Malky did nothing to ease the congestion in the room as he straddled the chair next to Barnett.

  “You said something about your boy,” said Jack. “What’s up?”

  Ron flexed his shoulder blades and gave a sigh of tension release. He looked first at Jack, then Malky. The half-smile returned.

  “It’s come to this. Asking a bloody
Scotsman and a mad Irishman to help a townie Englishman from Manchester. Like some kind of lame joke.”

  He spread his hands forward, trying to find where to start.

  “There’s a long story version and a short version. I’ll try the short one,” he said.

  Malky brought over the coffee pot with some mugs and poured for all of them.

  “A year after you guys de-mobbed, I left and decided to put my SAS experience to use in consultancy work. Nothing too heavy, but enough to keep my hand in if needed. I’m now a full time security advisor to the powers running the airports around Greater Manchester. It’s steady work. Most of the job’s behind the scenes really, checking the other guys are staying honest. The union lads, the baggage handlers, and sometimes the other security firms.”

  “Have ye a problem there needin’ fixed, then?” asked Malky.

  “No. Nothing I can’t handle work-wise. It’s my boy, Alex. He’s in big trouble.”

  “Alex? I recall that wee fella when he was four,” said Jack. “How old is he now?”

  “Twenty-eight. He’s married now with two daughters. My Missus passed away from cancer ten years back. These grandkids are just the joy of my life.”

  “What’s happening with Alex?” Jack leaned forward and tipped more coffee into his mug.

  “He’s been framed for murder. My son wouldn’t harm a fly. Given my background, I’ve kept him away from all forms of violence. Of course he knows my history, but believe me, the lad’s a walking saint. He’d help anybody who needed a hand.”

  “Go on,” said Jack.

  “You might have seen the headlines a few weeks back. The Wheelie Bin murder, they called it. The woman’s corpse was found stuffed in my boy’s rubbish bin. Dumped in there, right outside his front gate. Somebody made sure the newspapers were there when the cops turned up to arrest him. That’s not a coincidence.”

  “Shit,” said Malky, holding his coffee mug away from his mouth. “I remember seein’ that and thinkin’ how dumb could sumb’dy be to leave a stiff in their own wheelie bin?”

  “There’s more, Malky. When he was in the holding cells, his lawyer was allowed in to see him at the very last minute, before the habeas corpus thing ran out. I asked to see him. I’m his dad, for fuck’s sake. They only let me in once, for ten minutes. Since then, I’ve been fobbed off with excuse after excuse as to why it’s not possible to visit. I smell a rat. A whole stack of fucking rats.”

  “How so?” said Jack.

  “Here’s how so. My Alex works in a wholesale warehouse over in Trafford Park, the industrial part of the city. They import all sorts of gear, mainly from Europe. There’s a bunch of men who handle what they call special shipments. Alex overheard them talking one morning. They were bragging about how much money they were making, handling ‘this shit from overseas’. They didn’t say it was drugs, but I’ll leave you to wonder what else it could be. Alex went to his boss and told him what he thought. He was told to forget about it. The men were probably joking, the guy said. Two days later, the dead girl ends up in his rubbish bin.”

  Jack leaned back and took a large sup at his coffee.

  “Isn’t this something you should take to the cops?”

  “That’s part of the problem, Jack. I was given the run-around, chasing my tail and sent packing with a pat on the back. ‘Thanks’ and ‘we’ll look into it’, nonsense. Nothing’s happened. My follow-up calls get lost in telephone tag.”

  “Could be they think they’ve got a killer’s Da pleadin’ innocence for his son? Not botherin’ with the detail too much?” said Malky.

  “No, Malky. Like you guys, I’ve been around the block too many times not to know when somebody’s covering up. That’s where the stink’s coming from.”

  Ron Barnett sat back and his shoulders slumped. The pursed lips gave away his frustration. For several moments, nobody spoke.

  Jack broke the silence. “How do you think we, or ISP, can help?”

  “I heard you’re close to Alan Rennie. Maybe he could have somebody take an independent look at this. Alex is innocent, Jack. On my life, I swear my boy is innocent.”

  The former commando looked near to tears.

  Ron Barnett’s reference to ISP’s strong relationship with Alan Rennie was correct. The London Metropolitan Assistant Commissioner of Police had grown up in the force alongside ISP’s own Donnie Mullen, both products of Dundee’s formidable police training programs in the East of Scotland, before each had carved premier reputations as crime fighters and gangbusters in the English capital. ISP and Rennie had cooperated more than once in thwarting major international criminal organisations.

  “I’ll have a word with Alan, but no guarantees,” said Jack.

  “That’s all I can ask for, and I’m grateful,” said their guest, rising from the chair.

  “What about yer own personal security?” asked Malky. “If ye get proved right on this, ye might be wakenin’ a nest o’ snakes.”

  “That’s the least of the issues I’d have to deal with, Malky. I can still take care of myself. It’s my boy I’m worried about. Let me know what Alan says, eh, Jack?”

  “You have my promise,” said the Scotsman.

  Jack relayed to Donnie Mullen the conversation with Ron Barnett.

  “First thing, I suppose, will you have a quiet word with Alan?”

  “Sure, no trouble. What else?” said Donnie.

  “What’s your opinion on this? Ron’s bound to say his son’s innocent. He’s his dad, after all. What do you think?”

  “Some of the murderers I nicked in the past looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths,” said the former cop. “But it’s a bit strange they didn’t let him have access to his boy. That doesn’t sound like normal practice. At a minimum I’d expect the mention or hint of drugs would’ve warranted at least a cursory look. Maybe they did check it out and found it all a cock and bull tale from young Barnett.”

  “Ever the cynical doubtin’ cop, eh?” said Malky.

  “Yup. Sometimes the facts get in the way of a good story,” said Donnie. “I’ll give Alan a call now and see what he has to say.”

  Ten minutes later, Donnie came to Jack’s office.

  “Alan took my call and I told him the story. He asked if we could go see him at the Met. Maybe Ron’s got something after all.”

  “When is he available?”

  “He said now’s as good a time as any.”

  “Interesting. Ask Malky to join us. I’ll drive.”

  CHAPTER 3

  A lot of little makes a lot.

  Georgia Douba had learned well from her father. His picture sat in a silver frame on the dressing table in her bedroom. A strong jawline set off piercing eyes in the sepia photograph. A shock of black hair cleaved with a middle parting. Her mother peered at the camera lens in a quizzical frown. Petras Douba in his prime stood six feet five inches. His muscles stretched the cheap jacket that matched the plain, drab clothing of his spouse and his three-year-old daughter. Set in front of their rented farmstead home the picture, taken fifty years earlier, didn’t capture the tuberculosis which claimed his wife’s life three years later. Nor did it reflect the family’s impoverished circumstances. The village on the outskirts of Vilnius held no profitable future for Douba. The promise of labouring work in the north of England attracted many others from Lithuania, and he joined the search for a better life for his daughter and himself in the UK.

  The environment back then was difficult enough for the native working classes, but many times rougher for the immigrant workforce. Georgia never heard the full story of how her father had progressed from the streets around Manchester, starting as a minder and payment collector for loan sharks. His reputation as a hard man grew rapidly, but he made sure his heavy leaning on debtors never caught the attention of the local police. It was only a matter of time until his own loan-sharking business among the Lithuanian community began to flourish.

  Formal UK state schooling for Georgia lasted until
she was fifteen years old. Her father wanted her close to him and taught her the basics of cash flow in everything he touched. His astute investment in bricks and mortar businesses spread into areas where he reckoned there would always be demand. Laundrettes, small shop units, always rentable at reasonable rates, and ultimately, nightclubs. The step up to running prostitution, money-laundering and drug trafficking was a natural progression.

  A lot of little makes a lot.

  On her twenty-first birthday, Petras Douba put his offspring in command of the entertainment outlets, but ensured she had a couple of bodyguards with her at all times. Competition began slowly, but at the time of his death, when his daughter was barely thirty, other immigrant factions vied for the lucrative portfolio, covering top-line clubs, strip joints, and drug parlours dressed as middle-class and working-men’s drinking holes.

  Despite several eyewitnesses, the police had scant interest in trying to solve the murder of Petras Douba, shot multiple times at point blank range in a supermarket car park in broad daylight. Similar disinterest applied when two Nigerian criminals floated in the Manchester Ship Canal a week later.

  Georgia Douba had inherited her father’s ruthlessness and sense of retribution.

  The same picture of her parents adorned the desk in her office. She placed the crucifix back across the top corner and sat back. Her fifty-fourth birthday approached but she had no thoughts of retiring. Never married, the business gave her most of what she wanted and now was no time to think of quitting.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Assistant Commissioner met his guests in the reception area and motioned them to his office.

  “Thanks for seeing us at short notice like this,” said Donnie Mullen.