Motive

by Alan McDermott

  Of course, he couldn’t point that out. If he did, they would know he’d been sneaking around the workshop, or at the very least, assume he’d guessed the reason for the trip.

  “No problem.” Ryan got in the van and started the engine. “Where do I meet you?”

  “Ashford International,” Terry told him. “I already put it in the satnav. We should be there by five.” He handed Ryan a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Smoke one of those. If you get stopped, it’ll look bad for a non-smoker to have cigs in the back.”

  The two men threw their bags over their shoulders and walked towards the rail terminal. Ryan lit one of the cigarettes and blew the smoke out without inhaling. It smelled disgusting, but Terry’s logic was flawless. Once he’d burned through it, he tossed the butt out the window and pulled away, following the electronic map on the dashboard to the ferry.

  All the way across, Ryan wondered how many others had been made to play patsy on the Albania run. There must have been a few over the years, but he’d never seen anything on the news about vans with secret compartments being discovered by customs officers. That was a good omen. Also, it was unlikely Marsh would try it if any of his other shipments had been intercepted.

  That thought helped him relax a little, and as he drove off the ferry he was convinced he just had to get out of the port and he’d be home free. He joined the queue at customs, watching as officers picked random vehicles to inspect. He smoked another cigarette as he crawled forward, turned on the radio and found a song he could sing along to. It took his mind off what lay ahead, and he was belting out a Blondie track when the young officer at the checkpoint pointed for him to pull over to the right. Ryan flicked him a mock salute and did as instructed.

  “Turn the music off a second,” another customs officer said, a man in his fifties.

  Ryan hit the button.

  “Where have you travelled from?”

  “Here and there,” Ryan said. “France, Italy, Albania,” He’d considered this answer on the ferry, and the truth was the best option. Although his passport hadn’t been stamped, there would be a record of the van on the ferry between Bari and Durres. If they checked, it would leave him with some explaining to do.

  “What was the purpose of the visit?” He was looking around the inside of the cab, breathing deeply. Ryan knew he was looking for signs of drug use.

  “Just a holiday, pick up some booze and fags.”

  “Can you open the back please?”

  Ryan got out and walked around to the back of the van.

  “Why Albania?”

  “I know someone from Tirana,” Ryan said. “I used to work with him. Name’s Bashkim,” Ryan answered with the name he had read on the hotel bartender’s name tag. He opened the rear doors of the van and the customs officer looked inside.

  “How many cigs have you got?”

  “Twelve hundred,” Ryan said, “plus six crates of beer.”

  The man climbed in the back and moved things around, looking for anything hidden among the cases of booze. He looked at the sleeping bags. “You sleep here?”

  “Yeah. Cheaper than a hotel and lets me keep on the road.”

  “Why two bags?”

  “The other one’s for my mate. He pulled out at the last minute and I couldn’t be bothered taking it out before I set off.”

  With one last look around, the officer climbed out. “Off you go, “he said. “Sorry to keep you.”

  “No worries,” Ryan smiled, his stomach churning.

  The official moved on to the next vehicle in the queue, and Ryan got back in the van and drove out of the terminal. After a week on the road, all he knew for certain was that something was concealed in the frame of the vehicle. He hoped he didn’t have to wait too long to discover what it was.

  Chapter 17

  Karen spotted Bobby Waterstone as he walked along Pitshanger Lane towards his flat. He was late, but that was a good thing. There were fewer people around at midnight, and those at home would be tucked up in bed, not staring out of a window.

  She let him get ahead a few hundred metres, then started the car and slowly set off after him.

  He was quite a big man, but like her previous victim, it was mostly fat covering his bones. Unlike Sean Conte, though, she wouldn’t have to get physical with him. The method she’d chosen tonight called for subtlety and relied on his animal urges.

  Waterstone was unsteady on his feet, which was normal for a Saturday night. In fact, he spent most evenings at a nearby pub, and afterwards he always bought a takeaway kebab before walking home. It had been the same routine for the five weeks she’d been watching him.

  Five weeks since her last kill.

  Time to strike again.

  Karen eased up beside him and pressed the button to wind down the passenger window.

  “Hi. Could you tell me how to get to Clarendon Road?”

  Waterstone walked over to the car and bent over to look inside. He clearly liked what he saw, and so he should. She’d spent hours on her make-up and choosing the right clothes, tight-fitting jeans and a snug woolly jumper. Her hair hung provocatively across one side of her face, and she was giving him her best come-hither smile.

  “No problem, darling. I’m heading that way myself.”

  Karen knew that. Clarendon Road was one street away from where Waterstone lived.

  “Go to the end of the street,” Waterstone said, “then take a left and then a right at the—”

  “I’m hopeless with directions,” Karen said. “If you’re going that way, get in and I’ll drop you off.”

  Waterstone looked ecstatic, like Christmas and all his birthdays had come at once. He opened the door and got in beside her, a big, cheesy grin on his face.

  “Hope you don’t mind the smell,” he said, holding up his wrapped kebab.

  “Are you kidding?” she winked. “Who doesn’t love a big portion of hot meat?”

  Karen put the car in gear and set off, and her hand crept over his crotch. “Wow! That’s a huge portion.”

  Waterstone looked stunned for a second, then started gyrating his hips under her hand. He didn’t seem to notice that they’d already turned into the next street, his sole focus the attention he was getting from her delicate fingers. He put his hand on her thigh and she let out a soft moan. When she indicated for the next turn, Waterstone suddenly came to his senses.

  “That’s the wrong way,” he said. “You need to take a right.”

  “I know,” Karen smiled, as she rubbed his hardening cock, “but it feels like we’ve got some unfinished business.”

  At the next junction, she put on the handbrake and took a small pill bottle from her pocket. She shook out the contents and popped two into her mouth, then offered the other two to Waterstone.

  “What are they?”

  “Quaaludes,” she said. “Ever tried them?”

  He shook his head.

  “You should. You’ll never have a better sexual experience, I guarantee it.”

  Waterstone grinned as he swallowed the pills, and Karen turned right, toward the destination she had scoped out over the past five nights. As she faced away from him, she spat the pills from her mouth.

  “How do you feel?” she asked a few minutes later as they neared the industrial park.

  Waterstone fumbled for words, but none came. He looked groggy, like he’d just gone a few rounds with a heavyweight champion. The combination of beer and the sedative tablets she’d given him had worked wonders.

  Karen took his right arm and held it up. When she let go, it flopped by his side.

  Perfect.

  She took the hypodermic needle from inside her calf-length boot and took off the protective cap. Waterstone saw it and tried to move, but his body wouldn’t obey.

  “Hmmmn…harrummnn…”

  “Yes, I know,” Karen smiled, “I hate needles, too, but it’ll all be over soon.”

  She plunged the hypodermic into his neck and pressed down until the chamber was
empty. The sodium thiopental went to work quickly, and Waterstone was soon unconscious. Karen rested his head against the window and set off for the countryside.

  She didn’t go as far as Hampshire, much as she wanted to. She was constrained by time, but the spot she’d chosen was as good as any. She was on the A40 in minutes, and when she reached the Swakeleys roundabout near Uxbridge, she headed north. The place she’d picked was off a country lane. She drove up to a dilapidated gate and got out of the car, listening carefully. The only sound was the breeze rustling the leaves in the hedges on either side of the lane. She pushed the gate open and quickly got back in the car and drove through, parking up against the hedge so that she couldn’t be seen from the road. After closing the gate again, she slowly inched the car around the edge of an open field. The grass came up to the windows, and bushes dotted the landscape.

  With her lights off, Karen followed the hedge for a hundred yards until she reached the corner of the field, then turned left. Fifty yards on, she stopped. A small copse stood to her right, and she got out of the car again. As with her last burial plot, it hadn’t been disturbed in the days since she’d last been here.

  She got to work, dressing in a disposable paper suit and putting men’s shoes on her feet. With her mask in place, she opened the passenger door, dragged the unconscious Waterstone into the trees and let him flop into the grave. She’d dug it a few nights earlier, knowing she wouldn’t have time to do it this evening.

  Karen went back to the car and took an envelope from her handbag. She put it on the seat, then donned the gloves she’d created and took the large sheet of polythene from the boot. She took several hairs from the envelope and went over to the grave, placing them on Waterstone’s body. One went under his fingernail, another between his collar and skin. She dotted the rest about his body, then spread the sheet out in the grave. The plastic was huge, twice as long as her victim was tall, and just as wide.

  Waterstone groaned, reminding her that her work wasn’t complete. She ran to the car and took the knife from under the rubber carpet in the footwell. Waterstone was still motionless when she got back to him. Karen dragged him into the grave, on top of the plastic sheet, and kneeling above him and to the side, put the sharp blade up against the point where she’d injected him and drew the knife across his neck. She jumped back as blood spurted from the wound. His body began to convulse as the red liquid ran down his throat, drowning him.

  After a minute, he lay still.

  Karen dipped a couple of fingers in the pool of blood that had formed in the hollow of his neck, then grabbed Waterstone’s arms and laid them across his chest. The bloody prints were clear, but she couldn’t rely on just a couple of sets. They might be obscured when she filled in the grave, so she made sure there were fingerprints all over the knife, too. She placed the murder weapon on his chest, wrapped him in the plastic to preserve the evidence, then picked up the shovel and started filling in the grave. Twenty minutes later, she was done.

  Back at the car, she stripped off the protective suit and put it in a black bin liner along with the mask, shoes, gloves and the shovel. She put the bag in the boot, then drove back to the gate and parked behind the hedge, where she picked up a branch and retraced her steps to the grave. From there, she followed the car’s tracks, obliterating them as she went. She didn’t want a farmer to discover them, or to follow them to the grave. The body had to remain undiscovered for a couple of weeks at the very least.

  Returning to the rental car, she paused to admire her own cleverness. She had placed strips strategically on the number plate. The number six now looked like an eight, and the letter V had become a W. If any security cameras had picked her up in the area where she’d met Waterstone, they would send the police on a wild goose chase.

  After closing the gate, Karen drove back to London. She stopped behind a row of shops and dumped the black bag in an industrial waste bin, then drove south. All she had to do now was remove the tape from the plates, hand the car back and get home in time for the next phase of her plan.

  Chapter 18

  Paul Gardner knocked on the door to Franklin Marsh’s office before walking in. “It’s on for tonight.” He closed the door and took a seat on the sofa.

  “What time?” Marsh asked.

  “Seven. They wanted to pick the venue but I told them it was our choice or they could sod off.”

  “Too right. I don’t trust those bastards.”

  Paul didn’t trust the Turks, either, but in this business, they often had to deal with undesirables. At least the Turks respected boundaries, unlike the Russians. Erkan Demir had been running his operation in Manchester for ten years now, and though there had never been any violence between the two gangs, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t screw Marsh over given half a chance.

  “I sent Terry to the meet,” Paul said. “He’ll watch for anyone turning up early.”

  The place he’d chosen was an abandoned farm north of Manchester. It was one of a few remote locations Marsh used to exchange goods with his customers. Usually it was drugs, but on this occasion, the Turks had requested weapons. Their own supply route had been closed down after an eagle-eyed customs officer had discovered a cache of AK-47s hidden inside a shipment of industrial pipes. The shipment had been allowed through and tracked to its destination, resulting in numerous arrests, but like Marsh, the head of the Turkish mafia never went near his own merchandise. A few lower ranks were sent down, but the men at the top were untouchable.

  “Who are you taking with you?” Marsh asked.

  “Just Phil,” Paul replied.

  “Not Ryan?”

  “I thought about it, but he’s only a couple of months in. I’m not sure I trust him a hundred per cent yet.”

  “Why? Billy Marsden already gave him the all clear. What more do you want? Is he acting strange, asking too many questions?”

  “No,” Paul admitted. “If I tell him to hit someone, he doesn’t think twice. Terry says the same. And he never asks what you do. It’s just…it’s too much of a coincidence, the way you met him.”

  Marsh lit a cigarette and blew a cloud up towards the ceiling. “You checked him out personally. You’ve been to all the places he worked, you’ve spoken to people who worked with him, it all checks out. There’s no gaps in his employment history bigger than a few weeks. That’s not enough time to join the police and train to go undercover.”

  “I know, everything looks fine…maybe I’m not over Kenny. Still hard to believe he was a copper.”

  “It’s natural,” Marsh said. “When something like that happens, you suspect everyone, but you can’t let it consume you. If we spend all our time looking for moles, we’ll get nothing done. Ryan checks out, that’s good enough for me. If you don’t want to use him tonight, fine, but I’m not paying him all that money just to slap people around.”

  “Got it,” Paul said. He went to the fridge and took out a bottle of orange juice. “If the Turks like the samples we show them tonight, I’ll take Ryan on the exchange.”

  Paul left the office and walked through the empty nightclub to the rear exit. The Vine wouldn’t be open for another six hours, but the cleaning staff were hard at work and the bar manager was stocking the fridges ready for another hectic night. Paul got the barman to lock the door behind him, then drove to collect Phil from the gym. He had to wait half an hour in the café, sipping a coffee, while Phil finished his daily routine and took a shower.

  “We going tooled up?” Phil asked when they got in the car.

  “No need. We’re just showing them samples. If they want more, then yeah, we’ll be carrying.”

  Thanks to traffic, it was a two-hour drive to the farm. When they got to within a mile of it, Paul called Terry.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  Terry’s job was to ensure no one arrived at the rendezvous early to set a trap. Customers were always given the location at short notice. That made it difficult to get people into place if the buyer planned to turn a st
raightforward deal into a robbery.

  “All clear,” Terry replied. He would stay hidden until the deal was over and everyone left.

  Paul pulled up to the barn half an hour before the meeting was to take place. He and Phil went inside and saw that Terry had laid out the two sample weapons, an AK-47 and a Zastava M57 7.62x25mm pistol, on a bale of straw. As usual, there was no ammunition.

  They talked about sports until Terry called at three minutes before seven. “Range Rover. Black.” It pulled up outside the barn a couple of minutes later.

  Three men got out. Paul recognised two of them: Oguz, the Turkish ringleader’s right-hand man, and Ilker, a heavy who was built like Phil. The third man was a surprise. He was dark skinned, though he didn’t look Turkish. At least, not like the Turks Paul had dealt with. While they were rough and ready, this man was immaculately dressed in a silk suit and polished shoes. His beard was neatly trimmed, and he strode with a confident gait.

  Paul shook hands with Oguz, then offered his hand to the stranger, who ignored the gesture and pointed to the two weapons. “Is this all you have?”

  Paul didn’t like the man’s tone, nor his arrogance, but the deal was worth a lot of money. Marsh wouldn’t be pleased if he just told the guy to fuck off.

  “These are samples. You’ll get the rest once we agree on a price.”

  The suit reached into his pocket and Paul tensed, but he pulled out a pair of latex gloves. He put them on, then picked up the AK-47 and stripped it down in seconds, examining every component. He put it back together equally quickly, then turned to the pistol. “What is this?”

  “A Zastava M57,” Paul said. “It’s Yugoslavian. Well, what used to be Yugoslavia.”

  “You mean it’s old,” the man said, tossing it on the bale. “I need reliable weapons, not this junk.”

  “They work fine,” Paul insisted, wishing he could demonstrate by putting a bullet through the prick’s head. “If you want something else, the price goes up. A Glock is going to be two grand, but you can have these for nine hundred.”