BLOOD MONEY a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by Charlie Gallagher

  The other man, who had been waiting, silent, at the back, shifted his weight and, as the first guard tried to get a hold back on Tony, he stalled him enough for his colleague to bring his fist up in a solid uppercut that met with Tony’s onrushing body, catching him hard in the abdomen. The oxygen left Tony’s body and he folded onto the pavement.

  Tony was gasping for breath but he was still trying to fight, his arms flailing helplessly towards the two men who now stood over him.

  The front man looked at his colleague. ‘Jesus, man,’ he said, ‘Was that really necessary?’

  ‘He came at me. Fuck him.’

  ‘He weren’t coming for us.’

  ‘Fuck him,’ he repeated.

  ‘But here? All the world’s press are here for fuck’s sake!’

  The man bent down to where Tony’s fight had been reduced to a helpless, whimpering wheeze.

  ‘Hey, big man. Let’s get you away from here and get some air back into you.’ He reached under Tony’s shoulders and pulled him to his feet in a single movement. ‘There’s a mobile round the corner here. I’ll get you a water, or I can do a shit tea.’

  ‘My son,’ Tony managed to say, and pointed to the car.

  The security man followed Tony’s finger. ‘Does he like tea?’

  Tony nodded. The man gestured at the car and after a few moments the door opened. Daniel ran to his dad and hugged him.

  ‘You okay, Dad?’

  * * *

  ‘What’s this all about then? I’m John, by the way. My mate out there is Alan and he ain’t normally such a twat. I’m kinda responsible for him which means I can apologise for him too.’

  Tony had been led to a Portakabin that had been set up for the event. Tony perched on the edge of a plastic stool that was slightly too high. The space was largely empty, a few trails of wire and some specialist-looking lighting stacked untidily in the opposite corner. He sat next to a steaming urn.

  ‘My name is Tony,’ he said, bringing a cup of tea to his lips and narrowing his eyes to the steam. He waved his other hand. ‘Forget it. I was being an idiot and he was doing his job. It’s just been a hard day.’

  ‘You was telling me about your son out there, that’s why you wanted to speak to the top man?’

  Tony suddenly looked panicked, and his eyes flitted to where Daniel was sitting, swilling a plastic cup of cold water, watching it intently.

  John turned to him too. ‘Hey,’ he said to the little boy, ‘Do you like football?’

  Daniel nodded and smiled enthusiastically. ‘There’s a football we kick around over there. If your dad don’t mind there’s a grassy patch just outside the door — you can practise your kick-ups.’

  Daniel looked at his dad and Tony nodded. ‘Just a few minutes,’ he said, but Daniel was already on his way out.

  Tony started talking. To some doorman whose mate had just punched him in the stomach. But he felt relieved to be talking to someone. Someone who wasn’t emotionally involved.

  John listened. He listened intently. Then a silence fell over the interior of the Portakabin. The steaming urn and an occasional loose football bouncing off the flimsy walls were the only sounds.

  ‘You need three grand a month?’ John said.

  ‘That’s where I am.’

  John reached into his pocket and took out a phone. ‘What’s your number?’

  ‘Why do you need that?’

  ‘I’m going to pass it on to someone. This person needs reliable people to do some work. It might be just the odd night, but he pays well.’

  ‘Three grand a month well?’

  John paused and looked up, the light from the screen illuminating his face. ‘Prove yourself trustworthy and you’ll earn that in a night.’

  ‘Three grand for a night’s work? There ain’t nothing the right side of the law that pays that much.’

  ‘It’s a courier job. You turn up somewhere, drive a car somewhere else, go home. I don’t ask why or what for. I can take your number and pass it on, or we can both forget this conversation and get on with our lives. Your choice.’

  Tony took a few seconds. The football bounced off the side of the cabin again. ‘Pass it on. I’m interested, sure.’

  ‘Good decision.’ John smiled. ‘What’s your full name, date of birth, and your address?’

  ‘I didn’t think this was legit. So why would you need all that?’

  ‘You’ll get checked out. If you’re not right, you won’t be called. If they’re happy, someone will call you.’

  ‘When?’

  John shrugged. ‘Maybe never.’

  * * *

  A few minutes later John watched Tony and his kid walking away. He already had his phone to his ear.

  ‘Yeah.’ John knew the voice. Lee Chivers. A horrible waste of skin, even his friends didn’t like him. He was the enforcer for cleverer men, but he was also the buffer, the monkey holding the phone for the organ grinder.

  ‘Gee, you still looking for someone to do some delivery work?’ Gee was Lee’s street name. Normally John would avoid using it just to piss him off, but today he needed him compliant.

  ‘J., you sad old fuck. Yeah, me and the man looking for someone to do a job or two. The filth got tight tabs right now, we can’t even fart down here.’

  ‘I met someone. He could be perfect.’

  ‘Could be? Hey yo! Shut up, bitch!’ John heard the sound of someone being struck and a soft female whimper. ‘Could be, John? I don’t need no could-bes.’

  John made himself stop and think, he didn’t need to be biting back. ‘I’ll send his details through but I think he’s clean. He’s got no ties to no one and he just needs the money. He’ll do what you need and the cops won’t even look at him.’

  ‘He ain’t stupid now, is he, John? Stupid enough to start thinking for himself? You know what happened to the last man you sent my way who started thinking for himself?’

  ‘Stupid enough to do as he’s told. Clever enough to do no more than that.’

  ‘Then send him through.’

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘You need to give me something!’ Helen Webb’s voice sounded desperate and angry.

  Ed Kavski allowed himself a little time before answering. He used it to lean back into his patio lounger and smile. He was enjoying himself immensely. He always enjoyed his telephone conversations with the detective chief superintendent at Lennokshire Police, the woman who doubled as area commander for the east of the county.

  ‘I don’t need to do anything,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t seem to understand the pressures I’m under here — and don’t think that you’re sitting comfortable either, because if they come after me, they’ll come after you too.’

  ‘But you know to make sure that doesn’t happen, don’t you, Chief Superintendent? They really don’t need to hear what I have to say.’

  ‘Oh, fuck right off, it’s getting boring now. Every time we speak, you make the same idle threat to tell the world about me. We both go down if you open your mouth and we both know that ain’t gonna happen.’

  Ed smiled again. Helen was often stressed, always curt, but rarely swore. She must be rattled, and she was right to be. Ed was the main supplier of class A drugs to her county, and she was a big reason for this.

  ‘So, what do you need?’ he said.

  ‘You know very well what I need. That job you pulled, the Whitfield robbery with the booze and fags, I need a result on it. Shop someone who was with you, give me a handler, anything to keep the chief off my back.’

  ‘The chief?’ Ed sat forward a little. He had closed his eyes and they now opened and fell on the lush green grass of his manicured lawn. He was sitting in the rear garden of a large manor house in a stretch of exclusive residences in the seaside town of Hythe. Lennokshire Police were paying through the nose to cover his rent every month. This little agreement had been made with Helen, who had managed to bury it in some budget or another.

  ‘Yes, the chief. The security gu
ard that you beat to within an inch of his life? Well, that inch appears to be getting smaller and smaller and now it looks like the old man might die. We’ve taken a bit of a hit in the media down here, as you can well imagine, and the last thing the chief wants is another violent crime. The man was an ex-copper and we’ve got a lot of unhappy cops who feel like more should be being done. Seems he’s become a bit of a symbol for them all after recent events. The chief’s under pressure, getting a lot of shit, and that shit is running downhill.’

  ‘You seem to have convinced yourself that I have any idea what you’re talking about. A half-dead security guard and a robbery ring no bells with me. That’s not really my style now, is it?’ Ed was an ex-copper himself. He’d been a damned good one once, but then it became very clear to him what policing in good ol’ England was all about: the media. That was all that mattered to these people. It wasn’t about keeping the streets safe, arresting the bad guys and protecting the vulnerable. It was about looking like you were keeping the streets clean, looking like you were arresting a load of bad guys, and giving the impression that you were protecting the vulnerable. If he needed any more proof, then this conversation was it. She couldn’t care less about the man in the hospital bed, just what the world would make of his demise and her part in it. Nothing is easier to exploit than ambition.

  Ed Kavski’s had reached his moment of clarity after ten years of unblemished service. From that point, it had taken him two years to use this realisation against his former employers. He was now at the head of an organised criminal network. He was known as ‘the Russian’ on the street. Kavski was no more Russian than the rest of the white middle-class population that filled the townhouses and bistros of his current hometown of Hythe, but his name sounded Russian, and the moniker had stuck. He was sure his Polish ancestors would forgive him.

  His drugs empire had been established with the assistance of some of the most senior police officers in the county, and since then, Ed had started to branch out a little. Into people trafficking, a little movement of weapons and, most recently, the robbery of a P&O storage depot in Whitfield. This last job was almost purely for fun. Ed had used inside knowledge that police resources would be rather stretched on that particular night.

  ‘Don’t take me for a fool.’ Helen Webb’s voice was a little more hushed now. Ed pictured her at work, hunched over the phone in her office with the door shut.

  ‘You knew we were all over the place that night. You were the only person who could know. What were the chances of a secure unit with a fast-response silent alarm getting hit at the exact same time as my entire police force was chasing a car heading in the opposite direction?’

  ‘You’ve had a shit run of luck recently, haven’t you?’ Ed chuckled.

  ‘The chief is here tomorrow. He’ll be speaking to the security guard’s family who are at his bedside, then to the forty-odd serving officers holding a vigil in the hospital grounds. Then he is coming to me for an update on the investigation and for a memorial service for the fallen officers that I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m responsible for. I need to be telling him about some pretty monumental breakthrough. I need to find out who put the security guard in hospital, and so far I’ve got next to nothing. I am on the bones of my arse here, Mr Kavski. The chief has already had a conversation with me regarding my future, and it probably involves demotion and movement to a distant corner of the free world. That will leave both of us in the wilderness, won’t it? Now — where is the stuff being held? Who’s stashing up the van?’

  ‘Jesus, you really haven’t got much, have you?’ Ed’s enjoyment had diminished a little. Helen was right. Her demotion and posting would remove her influence in the area completely and that left him vulnerable. He didn’t need her so much anymore for furthering his business but, pissed off and demoted, she could become very dangerous to him.

  Most of the stuff from the robbery had already gone out to street dealers — small-time crooks doing pubs and clubs in London and the surrounding area. None of the distribution was in Lennokshire, it would be too obvious where it was from. The van was stashed up. He was waiting for the heat to die down before moving it to its final resting place, but he couldn’t give that up. It was a key location.

  Helen was back at him. ‘I suggest you start boxing some stuff up then, Mr Kavski, because your nice little number by the seaside comes to an end in four days. I won’t have any budgets where I can hide two grand a month rent for a scumbag.’

  ‘Now, Helen, there’s no need to get personal. I can give you something. It’s nothing to do with your robbery but it will give you a few days, and soon I’ll get you the van and maybe a name or two.’

  Helen was quiet for a second. ‘What do you have?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning I have a large movement. I’ve got a courier picking up a package. He’ll be moving it along the coast to a point where it will stay for a while until I can move it on again. I’ll give you details of when he’ll be on the road. He’ll have a couple hundred grand of brown and white on-board. The brown is still in blocks — it’ll be seventy per cent pure if it’s true to form, not even cut for the street yet.’

  ‘Where’s the pick up?’

  ‘You don’t need to know anything more than my man’s route.’

  ‘Who’s he delivering to?’

  ‘Do you want the details or not? You’ll get enough information to make the stop. Nothing more. You understand that I know the value of the gear because I’ve already paid for it, yes? This is going to hit me hard in the pocket. I’m giving you this for nothing.’

  Actually, £200,000 wasn’t a huge hit for Ed. Besides, he could use it to his advantage. He would blame a leak from within his organisation, pick someone out and make an example of them. Give his people a bit of a kick in the arse, remind them about the price of disloyalty.

  ‘Of course I do. Is our man a major player? Someone we know well?’

  ‘No, actually. The poor sod came to me out of the blue. We had him checked out as best we could, and he’s got nothing with you lot. Just got himself in a situation where he needed money quick. He’s a fucking carpenter. He’ll be using his own car to make the trip. It’s a bright blue Skoda Estate vRS, distinctive — even your lot shouldn’t miss that. The reg is SD60 HSN.’ Ed stopped and waited.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’ll be on Dymchurch Road between eight and nine o’clock tomorrow morning. We wanted him to blend in with the rush hour traffic.’

  ‘What’s his direction of travel?’

  ‘West to east. Assuming he’s on time — and he fucking wants to be — he should be easy to pick out.’

  ‘I need to know where he’s going. You know I don’t want to hit this car on the run, Ed. There’s risk attached to that. We both need this to succeed.’

  ‘No way. This goes later today. I don’t have the time to isolate this bloke, so you’ve got what you’ve got. I can’t make it any easier for you — this life we chose is all about risks, is it not? I’m sure you can get this done.’

  ‘You people use any concealment methods?’ Helen asked.

  ‘This bloke’s picking up a holdall and delivering. He’s not one of my people — what he does with it when it’s in his car is down to him. My guess is that he sticks it on the passenger seat and wonders what the fuck he’s got himself into all the way home, but he might be stashing it in fake Michelins for all I know. You’re gonna have to do some work at least. I can’t give it to you any more on a plate than it already is.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Ed chuckled.

  ‘You think this is funny? You think this solves all our problems and you can relax? This is a token gesture at keeping us both out of the shit, and it may not have the desired effect. Rest assured, Ed, I will be back soon. I’ll need a break with the Whitfield robbery.’

  ‘I told you I’ll see what I can do with that. I need time myself. And a word of warning, Helen.’ Ed paused but got no reaction. ‘You need to hit
this bloke long before he gets anywhere near Hythe. I will be keeping a sharp eye on the job. Any suggestion that you’re getting ambitious and trying to follow the drugs to the drop site, I’ll cut him loose and you’ll get nothing from me. Understand?’

  ‘You’re hardly in a position to be giving me warnings, Ed.’

  ‘Whatever my position is, you have been warned. I’ve given you your job. Hit the car hard and clean and everyone’s happy. For now. I’ll get you something more by the end of the week.’

  ‘You’d better, or you might find that I won’t be able to have any influence on your business. Positive or negative.’

  Helen Webb hung up and the smile returned to Ed’s face as he conjured another image of the chief superintendent, swearing silently at her phone, and squirming in her chair. His mind switched to the new guy. He’d only contacted Ed’s people a few days ago — no criminal record and just needing some easy money, fast.

  ‘No such thing as easy money,’ he said out loud, getting to his feet. He stretched, then walked to the kitchen where he turned on the coffee machine.

  CHAPTER 3

  The spotter, PC Lee Howiss, picked up the electric blue Skoda Octavia vRS estate vehicle with ease. The spotter was disguised as a dog walker, wearing jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt, with a frenetic springer spaniel on a leash. They had found a lookout point from a sandblasted wooden bench on the windswept seafront of the small town of St Mary’s Bay. Lee was sitting sideways with a takeaway coffee, intently studying every moving object on the dead straight road behind him. The bench was right next to a pinch point, manufactured by the strike team using parked cars. It was 7.40 a.m. The target was early and had the seated police officer been just a few minutes later he would have missed it.