The Phoenix Series Box Set 3

by Ted Tayler

  Hugo sat open-mouthed. Sean Walsh had more of a grasp of things than he believed.

  “Go on, Sean,” he said, “I’m listening.”

  “The way I see it, the Grid is a jigsaw of interlocking pieces. You haven’t got the pieces to complete the picture. In an ideal world once you get the last piece and insert it that will lock the Grid together into one cohesive unit.”

  “That’s my dream, Sean,” said Hugo.

  “There’s a problem, boss,” said Sean, hesitating in case Hugo snapped, “each of the pieces is interlocked by activity, not by culture. Some nationalities major in human-trafficking, others in drug dealing, some favour contract killing, others make their money ripping ATM’s out of walls. Different nationalities, different religions, different skills. A few of the gangs try to cover every one of the bases. Others only have one line of business and do anything to protect it. The common denominator is money. You’ve got everyone who’s with the Grid feeding the money through the Glencairn Bank to cleanse it.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, the money is the glue that holds it together. There will be ties between businesses that share a common interest, but there will be rivalries too.”

  “Exactly,” said Sean, “you need to ask these questions. Did these guys get killed, or taken by members of a rival gang outside the Grid? If so, they wanted that slice of the action. It may only affect a tiny percentage of what that area’s gang covers. Were they killed by our own people? Was it part of an internal power struggle?”

  “We should make an example of those who try to steal a share of our business, Sean,” said Hugo, “no matter how small. The internal slimming of our operations doesn’t concern me as much. Thanks, Sean, I feel happier now. I need to get to the bank, I’ll see you on Friday morning.”

  Sean was happy to leave. As he walked to the lift, he called back to Hugo.

  “There is one other possibility, boss if it’s not inter-gang rivalry or in-fighting. It’s far-fetched, but what if it’s an outside agency?”

  “What? MI5, or the United Network Command for Law Enforcement? You were doing so well, Sean. That’s the sort of daft idea I’d expect from Seamus. I’ll see you on Friday.”

  *****

  While Hugo Hanigan and Sean Walsh met in London, in the West Country the Olympus agents were hard at work. Phoenix and Rusty arrived home to Larcombe at five o’clock yesterday afternoon. Phoenix searched out Athena and brought her up to date on a successful mission.

  Rusty had found Artemis asleep in a chair in their apartment. Her shift ended at four. Ten hours of fine-tuning items of misdirection aimed at Portobello and Portsmouth, and gathering valuable data for future missions.

  This morning’s meeting started at nine o’clock sharp.

  “I’m sure we’re pleased to see Phoenix and Rusty home, safe and sound,” Athena began.

  “Yesterday’s mission avenged the deaths of those two poor undercover agents,” said Artemis. “Our losses have been small by comparison to the casualties we’ve inflicted on the Grid.”

  “Long may that continue,” said Minos.

  “Can you bring us up to date, Giles,” asked Athena. “What’s the situation in London?”

  “The autopsy report on Dawn Prentice will be available from noon today. The minute I see what it says, we’ll prepare our response. Our misdirection relating to the Portobello Road affair has had a positive impact so far. Simon Garrett and his team are in the clear.”

  “Thanks, Giles,” said Athena, “and Park Royal?”

  “We had a slice of luck there,” said Giles, “or rather, the police did. It appears the visit planned by Adam Kovacs was to prepare for a delivery. The emergency crews were clearing glass and debris in parts of the site outside the police cordon in the early evening. A Dutch-registered truck pulled up, and the driver asked directions. One of the firemen alerted a police officer, and they blocked him in with a patrol car. The officer wasn’t happy with the driver’s answers to his questions. He appeared agitated, and anxious to phone his employers. The officer relieved him of his mobile phone. He suspected he had something to hide and made sure he couldn’t warn his bosses back in Holland.”

  “When questioned later, we’ve learned the driver admitted he was carrying raw materials that could be used in the manufacture of legal highs,” Artemis continued. “Officers entered the warehouse from the rear, in those natty paper suits, even before they received our anonymous tip-off. The equipment they discovered inside and the traces of chemicals on the floors and tables sealed the deal. They arrested the driver and seized his vehicle’s tachograph. They hope to trace the origins of the journey and close that supply route for good.”

  “That could be an even better result than we hoped. It was a bigger bang than I would have liked,” said Phoenix, “and we were lucky nobody else was killed.”

  “The collateral damage was superficial,” said Rusty, “the businesses would be insured. Kovacs and Nagy are dead. Our job now is to persuade the police that a rival drug gang was responsible. We’ll leave that to Giles and Artemis.”

  “Zeus is pleased with our progress,” said Athena. “He wanted Kovacs to pay for Dawn Prentice’s death. I must call him after the meeting to pass on the good news from the Portsmouth mission.”

  They completed the morning’s agenda, and Athena closed the meeting at ten fifty. She asked everyone to reconvene at twelve-thirty, and they would discuss what the autopsy report held.

  As they were back earlier than usual, Maria Elena was outside in the garden with Hope.

  “We should plan for an early lunch,” said Athena. “I’ll chase up Maria Elena and we can eat at twelve. Do you have anything to do between now and then?”

  “I’ve got plenty of catching up to do,” said Phoenix, “the past weeks have been filled with meetings, planning, and direct actions. I need to browse through those reports Giles produces about current events. If I can spare five minutes, I’ll drop in on Minos and Alastor. It’s a while since I spoke with them. I’d like to see how they’re tackling the background identities for the agents on the retraining course.”

  “You didn’t call them the Two Stooges for once,” said Athena, “do I detect a newly found respect?”

  “It was always in jest,” replied Phoenix, “these days I think of them as the Two Amigos, because they are true friends of Olympus. No matter how much work you pile on them, they get their heads down and get on with it, without complaint. We couldn’t do this without them.”

  “Everyone works hard at Larcombe,” sighed Athena. “As long as people like Kovacs, and Elizi and his gang are out there, that situation is unlikely to change. I’ll see you as soon as I can round up our nanny, and daughter.”

  Athena and Phoenix left the apartment together. She went downstairs, past the kitchens on the ground floor, and out into the gardens. Phoenix carried on along the corridor on the first floor to the administration offices. He looked at the growing pile of reports on his desk in the corner. The slight sheen of dust on the desk’s surface told him how long it had been since he’d been in here.

  He flicked through folder after folder. Subject matter in the reports near the bottom was history. That could go into File B, for Bin. Phoenix chose two more recent reports at random. They concerned the Government and the Prison Service. He could always use a laugh.

  “I wonder what fool ideas they’ve dreamt up now?” he said.

  He opted for a quick read through these two reports and a longer session with the Amigos in the next-door office. Giles had highlighted a report in April on twenty-five schools in the Midlands where it was alleged teachers and governors in secular state schools were being ousted so they could be taken over and run on strict Islamist principles.

  Phoenix cast his mind back to the days he spent with his wife, Sue in The Gambia. He kept in touch with events in the UK via his laptop. He gathered data which would later be used in Operation Streetcleaner when he returned home four years ago. Phoenix recalled a head
teacher in Yorkshire who complained of coming under pressure to quit by a few influential, hard-line Muslim governors. If his memory didn’t fail him, a decade had passed since then, and in the following months the press reported on anonymous assertions that claimed boys and girls were segregated in classrooms and assemblies, sex education banned, and non-Muslim staff bullied.

  Giles had updated this file in the past twenty-four hours. Something must have hit the fan, thought Phoenix. The Prime Minister had given two cabinet ministers a hefty slap on the wrist. They couldn’t agree on the way extremism should be tackled in schools. Phoenix put the file to one side, maybe he would return to it later. It seemed ironic to him that a decade had already passed without a clear policy being agreed upon and implemented.

  His own education had been cut short by his mother, and he left school in 1984. In thirty years, our kids had fallen further down the league tables. Even Oxford and Cambridge University played outside the Premiership these days. Phoenix chided himself. I must be getting soft, he thought, using a football analogy. He turned to the next report.

  All thoughts of seeing Minos and Alastor in the next few minutes were put on hold. Category A criminals were being moved around the country yet again. Phoenix smiled at the memory of those terrorists and extremists they transferred to HMP Wakefield. They got lost in transit. Someone could have made a film about that. They must be mad to try it again. He read the report from cover to cover.

  Phoenix made a note to ask Giles to investigate further. Who was going from HMP Belmarsh to HMP Durham? How many did they expect to transfer, and when was this due to start? He hadn’t been back to Durham since he dealt with Neil Cartwright. In two weeks’ time, it would be the fourth anniversary of avenging his daughter Sharron’s death. He wondered who might be among the faces selected for transfer. He set the folder aside. That might be worth a second look, depending on what Giles dug up.

  He looked at his watch. Noon, time to head back for lunch. As he passed their door, he popped in to say hello to Minos and Alastor. They were taking a break.

  “We grabbed the chance of a sandwich before we went back into the meeting room, Phoenix,” said Alastor. “What can we do for you?”

  “Keep chasing me to spend time with you,” he said. “I’d love for you to take me through the background stories you’re preparing. It’s valuable work. I’m sorry I haven’t been available much this past month.”

  “No problem,” said Minos. “our door is always open. We’ll catch up with you after this next meeting.”

  Phoenix made his way back to the apartment. Noises from the kitchen told him lunch was almost ready, and Hope banged her high chair table with her little fist when she saw Daddy enter.

  “Warning the ladies of my arrival, are we?” he asked, tickling Hope under her chin.

  Athena and Maria Elena emerged from the kitchen carrying plates of snacks. All four of them tucked into the food.

  “This is fun,” said Athena.

  “Far too brief, I’m afraid,” said Phoenix, looking at the clock, “our meeting awaits.”

  Hope got plenty of kisses and cuddles before they left, and at half-past twelve the agents gathered in the meeting room to learn the news from Giles.

  “Dawn Prentice died from a drugs overdose,” he began. “There were a series of marks on the right-hand side of her neck that suggested she received injections over an extended period.”

  “Any chance they were self-administered,” asked Henry, “given her history?”

  “Not a chance,” said Artemis. “The injuries to her wrists and ankles showed she had been held in that room for weeks, against her will. The final injection was designed to end her life. Either Kovacs, Nagy or one of the gang members killed her. That is clear.”

  “What is also clear from the main body of the autopsy report is that Dawn Prentice had traces of different chemicals in her system,” said Giles.

  “What type of chemicals?” asked Athena.

  “Benzodiazepines and cannabis, for a start,” said Giles, “they stay in the system for a month. It could not be established which chemical combinations were injected when because of the passage of time. So, I can’t detect which legal highs they used. What I can deduce from the list of drugs manufactured by Kovacs, and her needle mark scars is that Dawn Prentice was being injected on a daily basis.”

  “They used her as a guinea pig,” said Rusty.

  “Testing different combinations on her to see which gave the best result,” said Phoenix. “Cynical bastards. Well, that car bomb put a stop to that.”

  “That still doesn’t answer the other question,” said Athena.

  “Which one,” asked Rusty.

  “Why did Kovacs kidnap her? He blackmailed her into financing his drugs operation. He risked losing that regular income if she disappeared, or if she died because of the treatment they subjected her to, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “I may have an idea on that, Athena,” said Artemis. “Remember what Kovacs used as a lever to get her to pay him the original fifty thousand. It was hush money. Dawn worked as a prostitute in the months before she resolved to clean up her act. Who did she work for? Adam Kovacs? He continued to hold parties at his place, with drugs and girls on offer to the friends he invited. We found evidence of that. Maybe he wanted to renew their acquaintance in that area too? Dawn knocked him back, and he made her work for him another way.”

  “That makes sense,” said Phoenix. “He probably didn’t set out to kill her, but when the money flow stopped, he lost his rag.”

  “OK, Giles,” said Athena, “we’ll let you two get back to the ice-house. I’m sure you’ve got loads of ammunition for your next gems of misdirection.”

  “We’ll be fine with the Portobello case, Athena,” said Gile,s “and Portsmouth won’t pose too many problems. I’m still fabricating links between potential foreign gangs and the bomb attack at Park Royal.”

  “Can we identify any additional men from the gang who may have dealt with Dawn in the cellar?”

  “The CCTV detail is sparse, Athena,” said Artemis, “but we found images of Nagy in Notting Hill Gate, so it may be possible to find others. We would need to plant evidence suggesting these thugs planned to get rid of Kovacs, and Nagy. Their motive would simply be greed. If that works, then we would have got rid of everyone involved in Dawn’s death.”

  “Brilliant,” said Athena, “you’ve got your work cut out. Off you go.”

  “Hang on, Giles. Is that everything for today Athena?” asked Phoenix.

  “I think so,” said Athena.

  “In that case, Rusty and I need Giles to do more work for us too. Sorry to add to the workload mate, but can you look at this, please?”

  Phoenix handed him the notes he made on the prison transfer saga.

  “Delegate as much of the misdirection as you can, Giles,” said Phoenix, “this has to be a top priority.”

  “Is this something new?” asked Athena. “I wasn’t aware of any fresh developments.”

  “It was something I stumbled on before lunch. The lunatics have opened the doors to the asylum.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Colleen O’Riordan had been a busy woman. There were black bin bags lined up by the kitchen door ready to go to the recycling unit. The last few pieces that belonged to her husband Tommy were stacked alongside much of her own wardrobe. She could afford to start afresh.

  Yesterday, she made the trip to Belmarsh to visit Tommy. She had gone through the now-familiar rigmarole, to spend an hour in the company of the man she now despised.

  Tommy didn’t change the record. It was the same every week. He rambled on about the appeal. Colleen decided it was time to be blunt. She told him to forget it.

  “The lawyer says he’s wasting time and effort. You won’t get time off your sentence, and the guilty verdict is set in stone.”

  Tommy let that pass. He switched tack and asked after Tyrone and Rosie. Colleen was on a roll. She told him they were old enough to stan
d on their own two feet. They wanted independence. Tyrone had told her his friends joked behind his back about his family being a load of criminals.

  “Give me their names,” Tommy said, “I’ll send some of the boys to sort them out.”

  “You don’t have any boys anymore, Tommy,” Colleen told him. “If we do get you abroad next week, you’ll have to keep your head down. Not draw attention to yourself by dishing out beatings to anyone who speaks out of turn.”

  She watched the stuffing being knocked out of her husband as he took on board what she was saying. After he had no luck mentioning the appeal, and his children, he then moaned about her brother, Sean.

  “I spoke to Sean this morning, told him about the transfer. He didn’t seem convinced it was possible in such a short space of time,”

  That made Colleen jump.

  “What do you mean? Last week it was a maybe, now it’s a definite, is that what you’re telling me? What do you mean by a short space of time?”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry, I thought I told you. They confirmed that twenty of us are to be moved north to Durham. I’m being transferred on Tuesday.”

  “That doesn’t give us enough time,” Colleen complained. “Can’t you appeal? You should tell them it’s a long-distance for me to have to travel. I won’t be able to do it nearly every week, Tommy.”

  “They’ll tell you to move to Durham,” he shrugged, “it’ll be on your doorstep then.”

  “No, I mean appeal so Sean has more time to put a team together to help get you away.”

  “I can’t change the date, sweetheart, they’ve got twenty names on the list. Four go each day, Monday to Friday. I’m on the list for Tuesday. End of story.”