Failsafe Query

by Michael Jenkins

  It was almost certain now that Alfie was dead but where was the body?

  Sean brought all the clothes from the tumble dryer and washing machine into the kitchen, laid them out alongside the shoes and let Billy Phish lead Foz to the next stage. Foz didn’t hit on any of the clothing. There were no bloodstains on any items of Alfie’s clothing.

  The dogs had done their work and Sean had inspected below the carpet where Mike had hit. Not a sign of any disturbance in the concrete and Alfie’s body was not in the house – he was convinced of that.

  ‘A bit of a mystery here then, mate,’ Billy Phish uttered as they both stood in the kitchen with the kettle on. ‘It’s a proper job I reckon, proper clean-up and quite a clinical hit I would have thought. They definitely killed him here,’ he added before pausing. ‘But let me do some tests with Luminol spray to find all the blood and I’ll get some results on my mobile forensics kit courtesy of the CIA dollar.’

  ‘I need this kept quiet Billy,’ Sean said. ‘I can’t reveal what we’ve found to Jack or Dominic until we’ve probed a bit further.’ Sean was thoughtful as he answered, his mind actively deciding the next steps to take now he knew Alfie was dead.

  ‘Liz arrives this evening. I need her to do the full forensic analysis for us and she’s a trusted hand who keeps her own counsel.’

  Sean remembered how Liz had been approached previously in her West Scotland cottage to identify some forensics from a case that MI5 were investigating. These people were from the FBI and she had spun them a tale of how it couldn’t be done, despite the fact she had already solved it for MI5 some days previously. She knew where her loyalties lay and was clever with it. She was an expert freelance and independent forensic expert who specialised in soils, fibres, hair and pollens.

  ‘I reckon she’ll love taking this one on, Sean. None of this has to be to court-level standards, but it will give us the clues we want from any mud, blood and hairs mate. Don’t be touching anything.’

  Billy Phish scratched his greying stubble, turned to make the tea and lit his thinking pipe.

  Sean sat down on the kitchen stool – he knew he couldn’t let Dominic know of the finds at this stage and he began to think about how he would spin the case out and keep them in the dark until he was better placed to know what the hell had happened and where they had taken Alfie’s body. He started thinking about what Alfie’s attackers would have done next in order to get rid of his body and where and how they would have done it. This was like finding a contact lens in a snowdrift, which is why he needed Liz to help narrow down the huge search area he now had on his hands. The other person who could help him narrow down the search areas was Jugsy.

  ‘I’ve left a message with Jack to get Jugsy here soonest,’ Sean uttered, taking a sip of tea. He looked to check for a reaction.

  Billy Phish coughed, spluttered and spilt some tea down himself. He tried to regain his composure but was too shocked to say anything other than ‘You’re fucking joking me, man! He’s a bloody disaster and a nightmare to manage.’

  Once Billy Phish had recovered, and Jugsy’s foibles had been debated with much jesting, they continued a long discussion over several brews in the kitchen to decide what else needed to be done.

  ‘I’ll get the vapour dogs primed,’ Billy said, his pipe still in his mouth. ‘We should then be able to get an indication of where they took the body after they killed him.’ Billy Phish pointed towards the plastic forensic bag on the side of the kitchen which held Alfie’s old clothing. Sean nodded knowingly as he handed the bags to Billy Phish.

  ‘Liz will do her stuff with the forensics while we crack on, mate,’ Billy Phish explained. Sean agreed, knowing that forensics would be the key to finding Alfie. Billy Phish, Mike and Foz had done their job for now and it was up to the rest of the team to keep the trail hot. They had a target to find.

  *

  Sean sat alone that afternoon in Alfie’s chair. He had partly anticipated this scenario and mulled the options open to him if Alfie was dead. And whilst he was mindful of other odd and wild scenarios, he was convinced Alfie had been murdered by someone who didn’t want him to release his secret files to the world. These were high-level stakes, he thought.

  It occurred to him that the killers might be from a national agency, either a foreign one or one from home soil. At this stage, he also hadn’t discounted there being a potential organised crime link to the case.

  He looked around at the paintings and decor of Alfie’s secret home. ‘I wonder what drove Alfie to undertake these acts?’ he thought. Sean also wondered how One-Eyed Damon was getting on with the task he had given him.

  After a lot of thinking, he decided that he would not alert Jack and Dominic to any of the finds, clues or progress he had made. He would spin a few changes to the story just to give himself the space and time he needed, knowing that deception might just keep him alive in the landscape of irregular operations.

  He needed to lose Jane on this one too at some point – just to keep his story tight and away from prying eyes and ears.

  Chapter 17

  Côte Vermeille, 15 April 2016

  Sean took off his white overalls, threw them into the passenger seat of the van and grabbed a map of the Languedoc region from the glove compartment. He placed the map on the bonnet and put two small paint pots on top of it at each end to stop it blowing away in the gusting wind. He was exhausted but had an intense yearning to find out where the body had been taken. ‘Where do we go from here?’ he mused, drinking his coffee from an aluminium mug and glancing up to see two large kestrels hovering above the cottage, doubtless looking for a kill, he thought. It prompted him to call Jack.

  ‘Jane will fly back tomorrow from Perpignan airport,’ Sean said. ‘I don’t need her at the moment, but I’ll ask her to come back when I’m finished with Melissa.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Jack replied. ‘Do what you need to. What about Billy and his dogs – has that worked out OK?’

  ‘Yes, we did some good stuff this morning – not a bad start to be fair.’

  ‘Go on, what happened?’

  ‘Well, I’ve managed to trace Alfie’s whereabouts. I think he may have gone up into the Pyrenees and secreted some stuff up there. I also think Melissa knows more than she is letting on so I need to keep probing her over the next few days. She could have some critical information that might help me nail this.’

  ‘You can have whatever you need,’ Jack said. ‘Dominic just wants to know that the information Alfie had is safe and has not been exposed. Do whatever you need to make that happen. What else do you need?’

  ‘I need Jugsy brought in ASAP. With all his kit too. I’ll get him a hotel room here and we can reinstate Melissa in the safe house once I’m done with her.’

  ‘Jugsy is ready to go. I’ll come back in the next few hours to confirm timings.’

  ‘Jack, I need you to do something else for me too. It’s a big ask. Can you get someone to do some terrain analysis over Languedoc-Roussillon? It will need national assets, if you know what I mean?’

  Sean hinted at using American capabilities to support his search to find whatever Alfie had deposited on the Pyrenean moors and he needed high-end technology to help him track and trace where Alfie had been on the hills.

  Jack paused. Sean held his breath, hoping. ‘I can inject a task into the imagery-intelligence centre, under some guise of a new operation, Sean. It could be troublesome, but I’ll see what I can do. Are you talking about using satellites?’

  Sean breathed deeply, knowing that this needed special permission from the Americans to justify its use.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll need. And hyperspectral imagery too please. It will help identify any areas that have been dug from the air. I haven’t got a clue which sites yet, nor the date span I need for the terrain-change analysis, but this will help me narrow the search. Anyway, I’m working hard with Billy Phish to find where the hell Alfie went. He could well be alive and incarcerated – hard t
o tell right now.’

  Sean was conscious he was calling on high-end intelligence capability that he needed to complement the world-leading geoforensic expertise of Billy Phish, Jugsy and Liz. Only the full depth of forensic-intelligence layers would lead Sean to his goal. Whoever killed Alfie would have dumped his body in the sea or somewhere on the Pyrenean moors.

  ‘I also need someone to check the CCTV footage in Collioure, just to verify Alfie was here and his last-known movements.’

  ‘I’ll get Samantha onto it,’ Jack said. ‘Send me a grid reference of the house and we’ll do a search from there.’

  Chapter 18

  London, 17 April 2016

  Natalie Merritt walked briskly through the crowds on the cramped streets of Ludgate Hill, striding forcefully through those who were dawdling and in her way. She wore a beige Karen Millen trench coat, which accentuated her brown shoulder-length hair, and she grappled fiercely to keep her handbag on her shoulder whilst gesturing vividly during her phone call.

  She cursed the London weather as it began to rain, struggled to find her lightweight umbrella in the depths of her bag and gave up the instant she saw her destination. The rain promptly became torrential. She swore in haughty English, then broke into a gentle trot, cowering from the downpour for the last few metres. She was mightily unimpressed but hoped for a very quick reversal of fortune with her awaiting subordinates.

  Natalie had worked as a political advisor to MPs and Lords at the Palace of Westminster for over five years. Five years during which she felt lucky that, until this point, no one had investigated and uncovered her affiliation to Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR. As an illegal sleeper, she was directed by her masters in the mysterious Directorate ‘S’ of the SVR. She used her elegance and charisma to good effect in the male-dominated world of Westminster. Calm, alluring and cautious, with impeccable tradecraft in spy methodology, she was the perfect hidden mole within the UK Parliament.

  She was a new breed of spy – young, university educated, intelligent, full of youthful female ambition and hugely attractive. Now in her mid-thirties, she had been groomed from a young age by her father about her dutiful allegiance to Moscow, and had spent long periods of time being held back from clandestine intelligence activity until Moscow felt she had developed her career well enough through her British private sector roles. Finally, she had been channelled into a key government role, and then made use of.

  Natalie arrived at the modern office block halfway along Fleet Street and took a moment in the airy reception foyer to smarten herself up. She took her coat off, grabbed a brush for her hair and checked her make-up in a small vanity mirror – mascara seeped down the sides of her eyes, which she quickly cleaned off. She was fuming because of the deluge and felt her irritation continue to rise. She stepped into one of the four lifts and made her way to the undercover-operations room.

  She swiped her proximity ID card and passed through the high-security transparent revolving door. The air of a branded corporate-style organisation lingered as she purposefully strode towards the operations room. A set of secure grey doors sat prominently below the CCTV camera and a biometric eye scanner gave her access into the secure area of operations. She paused, drew breath, looked behind to watch the corridor lighting automatically dim and finally let her iris be scanned before punching in her six-digit key code. This brought her into an airlock where the same procedure was required, the last door requiring a second proximity card, which she had collected at reception.

  The last door opened and she scanned the dimly lit open plan office. The odd desk light was shining brightly on documents and maps that were being pored over by the evening shift.

  The offices of this small company provided cover for a Russian eavesdropping and electronic cyber unit capable of hacking deep into complex IT systems, and conducting electronic surveillance to gather information on a range of British targets.

  Her senses were electric as she strode into the room, excited that she was about to get her first big break towards finding Melissa and ultimately Alfie. Natalie had been informed by Moscow about Alfie and his confidante via a source they had in Westminster. Moscow was keen to protect its agents in the UK who were at risk from Alfie’s investigations – word had reached them from London. Moscow had done its homework, had put Natalie in charge of finding Melissa and had given her access to all the state intelligence apparatus at their disposal, including their clandestine cyber-operations centre located right in the heart of the City of London.

  ‘Who wants to start?’ Natalie asked firmly, as she walked to the control console. ‘Are we ready to go?’

  ‘Come and have a look at this,’ Boris, the cyber commander, said. ‘There’s been a lot of activity all day, but the last three hours have been special. I think you’ll be pleased with what’s about to go down.’

  Natalie was ushered to a cyber-operator’s console where a detailed metadata analysis was being conducted on numerous human targets across the UK to try and confirm the leads for her. The Russian operators had been working for twenty-four hours using high-grade signals intelligence in an effort to get a head start on the operation. They were listening into a vast amount of telecommunications traffic targeting known intelligence outlets. This operation was a welcome break from their regular duties of feeding disinformation to the British media outlets and brute-force hacking into the computers of central government, universities and armed forces to surreptitiously collect secret data for different strategic aims. Much of this data was used for psychological operations to try to gently subvert a raft of British and European political efforts.

  ‘You’ve boosted the surveillance team numbers, I assume?’ Natalie asked.

  ‘Yes, exactly as you ordered. It took us a while to track the precise location of the safe house MI5 are using in Southwold – that’s where this woman Melissa sent her message from. The metadata we’ve mined gave us the location of where she sent her tweet. We’ve been on the ground for three days now watching the house. The team have walked the grounds, and have seen a number of electronic defences that someone has installed. We can defeat them whenever you give the order.’

  Natalie knew the house would be the vital lead she needed to eventually get to Alfie’s files. She had strict instructions from her handlers in Moscow to locate Alfie, whatever the cost.

  ‘I think you’ll see a bit of action in the coming minutes,’ Boris said. ‘Come and have a look at the CCTV screens.’

  Natalie looked at the large bank of CCTV screens, excited at the prospect of a breakthrough at last. Patience was not her finest trait.

  ‘The female arrived a few hours ago,’ Boris continued. ‘She arrived at the house in a Mini Cooper, parked up and entered the house carrying a single red rucksack. This is her picture.’

  ‘Do we know who it is? This isn’t Melissa.’

  ‘We used an IMSI grabber that locked into her phones and contacts. No second name, but her first name seems to be Jane. Probably the safe-house custodian. The team are linking back to Moscow to get a full analysis on the contacts. Does it matter?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, not until we get in there and interrogate her and look at the forensics from the digital devices she has. No point waiting too long to find out either. I need results now.’

  ‘Do you want us to tease her out? A direct assault will fail. We need to use some guile, and this is the best time to go ahead and do it if you want that.’

  ‘Do it,’ Natalie ordered, turning to sit down.

  Natalie was firm and committed. She sat at the rear of the CCTV console, and began tapping her fingers on the table. She was eager to watch. Within seconds the CCTV operator had patched through the live feeds from the ground operators onto the large screens. Natalie watched the live images from the body-worn camera of the lead operator as he triggered the first active infrared beam in the garden by putting his hand through it. Natalie instinctively knew this would alert the female occupant by way of some sort of e
lectronic panel in the house. An audible alarm, she thought.

  She also knew that the occupant would expect false alarms, but that too many of them might eventually coax her into a more detailed investigation of the garden. Natalie tensed, thrilled at what might materialise if this did indeed happen.

  The ground operator triggered the same beam every six minutes. Then there was some movement from within.

  Natalie jumped out of her chair as she caught sight of the red-haired British agent on the TV screen. Jane made the fatal mistake of opening the highly secure back door.

  Natalie avidly kept her eyes on the screens, watching with glee as the Russian leader grabbed Jane by the throat at the rear entrance and slammed her up against the wall before a short punch to the solar plexus disabled her. The internal lights of the safe house gave plenty of illumination to provide clear images of Jane being brutalised. Natalie revelled in the ruthlessness she was seeing at close quarters and felt her body tense through stimulation. It seemed perverted, but she needed this. As an illegal Russian wunderkind, she thrived on being involved in ‘wet affairs’, the SVR euphemism for killing, brutality and torture.

  The body-worn cameras provided shaky pictures but they gave a good enough view of what was happening right in the heart of the action. The live imagery captured the second Russian vividly ripping Jane’s nine-millimetre handgun from her right hand, before throwing her to the ground. The loud thud as her head violently hit the floor reverberated across the operations room from the surround-sound speakers. Natalie watched with delight as Jane was kicked in the ribs before being punched square in the face. ‘Brilliant,’ she mused with a sadistic edge, smiling at what she enjoyed seeing.