Brick: An unputdownable gritty thriller...

by Conrad Jones

  “I don’t see what difference it makes,” Eddie said angrily. “The fact that Anthony was murdered will attract attention anyway. There’s no getting away from that. We’ve dealt with worse pressure from the law.”

  “You’re missing the point,” Yuri placed his hand on Eddie’s arm. “The police are a major concern of course but the real problem is if the police start digging and they find the container then Tucker will find out who took it from him and then we’ll have trouble, big, big trouble.” He smiled like a bad actor. “There would be a war and we can’t allow that, Eddie. Bodies on the streets will set us back years. We don’t operate like that.” He pointed his finger at Eddie as he spoke. “And neither do you, understand me?” Eddie swallowed hard and thought about what was being said. His son had been murdered and he was being told to shut up about it. He didn’t answer; his blood reaching boiling point. “We must process the shipment and distribute it without interference or we stand to lose millions. Keeping Tucker and his crew down is our focus for now and to do that we must keep everything quiet.”

  “Joseph Tucker?” Eddie scoffed loudly and laughed harshly. The other customers glanced uncomfortably in their direction. “I think that you should revaluate the priorities here. My son is lying on a slab and you think that I give a fuck about Joe Tucker and his retard brother?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Yuri shifted uncomfortably. He pulled at the collar of his shirt and wiped sweat from his brow. “It’s still so hot even at this time of night isn’t it?” he said to onlookers while he thought about his next words but no one replied. No one wanted to make eye contact, several drifting onto the beach. “Two more Chang,” he waved at the barmaid. She scurried over, wary of the bad atmosphere. Replacing the empties with full ones, she made a quick retreat to the other side of the bar. After a few minutes of prickly silence, he spoke again. “Eddie, do you know what Vorovskoy Zakon is?”

  Eddie rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You know that whenever things become tense, you Russians have to come up with historical horseshit.”

  “It is what we call, The Thieves’ Code and we have used it as a guide for hundreds of years,” Yuri shrugged ignoring Eddie’s comment. “Rule number one is that in times of need we have to forsake our relatives for the better good of our family of thieves. You can understand this, yes?” Eddie drained his beer and listened, staring at the sea. “The business must take priority over any personal issues that we have until the time is right. You must put your revenge on hold for now, my friend.”

  “Because of the Tuckers?” Eddie said shaking his head. “I don’t see it that way.”

  “The Tuckers have been a threat for too long now and they’re clever. Whenever we have tried to take them out, they are one step ahead. Victor thinks that taking this shipment from them will break them and make them someone else’s problem. It is a way of getting rid of them without attracting attention to ourselves. It makes sense, Eddie. Surely you can see that?”

  Eddie thought about it. He looked out to sea; the bright lights of the night trawlers lined the horizon as the night sky began to creep upwards from the horizon. It was a magical time of day when the sky was still blue but darkness tinted the farthest perspective. He couldn’t shift the feeling of despair from his stomach. “I just don’t see why you can’t see things from my point of view.”

  “Come on, Eddie,” Yuri sighed. “A container load of zombie is worth how much?” he said with a shrug. “A few million, three maybe even five or more, yes?”

  “Probably.”

  “Tucker doesn’t have that kind of money sitting around.” Yuri tapped his nose with his finger. “Victor knows that they have borrowed heavily to finance this deal. If they lose this shipment they’re finished for good and they will owe people a lot of money,” he laughed dryly. “They will owe very bad people a lot of money and when they can’t pay it back those people will take them out of the game completely, leaving us to mop up their assets without breaking a sweat.” Yuri shrugged; a wide grin on his face. “This is a golden opportunity to be rid of them without having a war. Those days are gone, Eddie. We must use our brains before our guns. Victor has been planning this shakedown for a long time. So you can see why there must be no reprisals right now?” his face pleaded for agreement although his voice had taken on a darker tone. “Nothing must happen that will attract police attention, understand?”

  “It is all a matter of priorities, Yuri,” Eddie said standing up. He tilted his head, finishing his beer. “Your priority is Tucker. Mine is squaring things up for my son and I can’t see past that.”

  Yuri took a deep breath and shook his head with a sigh. “How long have we known each other, Eddie?”

  “A long time. What does that matter?”

  “It matters because we want you to do the right thing at the right time and now is not the right time,” Yuri shrugged again his palms facing skyward. “Victor was very clear in his orders. There are to be no reprisals until the Tuckers are out of the picture and that is final.”

  “Victor is clear with his orders?” Eddie chuckled sourly. “Victor gives me orders now does he?”

  “You know what I am saying.”

  “No one gives me orders, Yuri.”

  “Look, you have to do whatever you have to do, Eddie but we will have to react to protect our business. We will forsake all relatives for the business,” he patted his shoulder but Eddie shrugged his hand off. “Vorovskoy Zakon, Eddie. We will forsake anyone, even our closest friends for the business.” He paused. “You’re grieving and you’re not thinking straight. I am urging you to think about it rationally. You’re understandably upset but please be sensible and follow Victor’s wishes,” he said playing down his words. “This is business.”

  Eddie nodded slowly. He pushed all thoughts of burying his child into the shadows but they kept creeping back, taunting him, haunting him. In his mind he thought about how much Bryn Evans would suffer watching his family slaughtered before he died. “You tell Victor that I won’t do anything that he wouldn’t do himself if he were in my shoes. That is the best that I can do.” He picked up his flip flops, tossed some crumpled Baht onto the bar and walked away from the Russian, barefoot in the sand. On the beach, a line of long tail boats were waiting to take tourists back to their hotels, a floating taxi rank. He checked his watch, his mind made up. There was half an hour until his taxi arrived and there was someone he needed to speak to urgently.

  CHAPTER 11

  Braddick watched the Range Rover being loaded onto a flatbed truck. Their cursory inspection had revealed three bags of money stashed in a lock box under the passenger seat, all used tens and twenties banded into bundles of a thousand. A uniformed officer counted sixty bundles into an evidence bag and watched it being sealed and taken away.

  “It looks like your friend Anthony was on a collection run, Paulie.”

  “No comment,” Paulie mumbled as they led him from his house.

  “This is not an interview,” Braddick tutted. “This is me thinking aloud.”

  “No comment,” Paulie mumbled ignoring Braddick.

  “He was picking up the takings wasn’t he?”

  “No comment.”

  Big Paulie was being put into the back of a police car, his weight making the suspension tilt. He looked around at the onlooking neighbours and blushed. Braddick bent towards the door.

  “There’s a lot of money in that vehicle, Paulie and when it comes to sentencing I’ve seen people get years for much less than that.”

  “It isn’t my money,” Paulie said confused.

  “It’s on your drive so it’s your problem,” Braddick shook his head as if he felt sorry for Paulie. He pointed his finger at him. “On your way to the station, you need to have a long hard think about what you’re going to say to me or you won’t be coming home for a long time...understand?” Paulie nodded, his face dark and sulky like a chastised child.

  “I’m not saying anything. No comment.”

&nb
sp; “Where are the drugs, Paulie?”

  “What drugs?” Paulie frowned, feigning offence.

  “Eddie Farrell’s drugs.”

  “No comment.”

  “Get him out of here,” Braddick snapped. The vehicle pulled away and he watched it turn the corner towards the park, wandering what had happened to cause Farrell’s death.

  “What have you locked him up for?” a female voice asked from behind him. Braddick turned to face her. She was attractive but thin, very thin. Her suit looked like she had borrowed it from a larger friend and her shiny black hair hung down her back in a long ponytail. “I’m DI Cain, Drug Squad.” She held out her hand. “You must be DI Braddick?”

  “I am,” Braddick said with a thin smile. Her hand felt as skeletal as she looked; no engagement or wedding rings. “What brings you here?”

  “A soon as we got the call that you had a warrant, I rushed over.”

  “Thanks for coming so quickly,” he said insincerely, wandering which idiot had called the Drug Squad. As the new kid in the playground, he needed to identify where old allegiances lay. Someone in his team had tipped her off and he didn’t like that one bit. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your first name.”

  “Steff, but most people call me Cain, to my face anyway. I have heard a lot worse behind my back,” she answered. “I’ve not come to trample on your toes...I know this is to do with the Farrell murder but we’ve been watching Big Paulie for a long time. He’s a bit of a celebrity around here.”

  “He’s certainly difficult to miss.”

  “We certainly couldn’t lose track of him.”

  “We’ve started the search but you’re welcome to tag along.”

  “Thank you very much, it’s appreciated,” Cain smiled, “I wouldn’t miss this.”

  “How long has the place been under surveillance?” Braddick tried to scratch beneath the surface. Cain was holding her cards close to her chest and a glint in her eyes said she was holding an ace. He didn’t want a previous investigation trumping his.

  “We haven’t had full obs on the house as such,” she said looking towards the park, “but we’ve had a Matrix officer in the park area for nearly six months. She’s been trying to infiltrate one of the local crews that operate there in a joint operation with Vice.” Braddick nodded but showed no emotion, disappointed that another department was now linked to the property, Vice as well as Drug Squad. “Our operative fingered this house as a base for the Farrells, one of three on the estate.”

  “Three?”

  “Yes,” Cain nodded. “They seem to be well established in this part of town,” she said, skirting the full truth. Braddick could sense that they had a lot more than she was letting on. He wondered why they had been holding back on searching the place. “We’ve been building up enough information to get inside but you beat us to it.”

  “Six months worth of obs and you couldn’t get a warrant?”

  “Yes, we weren’t ready to move,” Cain ignored the barb, “You’ve done us a big favour getting a warrant. It’s been a priority for a while but we didn’t want to blow our Matrix cover.” She looked at Braddick to gauge his reaction. His black skin was wrinkled at the corner of his eyes but he gave nothing away. “What have you charged Big Paulie with?”

  “Obstruction for now,” Braddick shrugged boring of the game. “We need to talk to him about Anthony Farrell’s death first; whatever else we find is a bonus.”

  “Anthony Farrell,” she said with a quiet intake of breath that made a whistling sound. “I’ve only just heard he’s dead.”

  “Are you familiar with him?”

  “Oh, yes. I can’t believe someone has whacked Anthony Farrell in broad daylight.”

  “It’s an odd one,” Braddick agreed, “a fourteen year old kid with a house brick.”

  “With a brick?” Steff said with raised eyebrows. “I thought that if he was going to go, he would go with a little more finesse, you know, taken out by a machinegun in a hail of bullets outside a casino or something.” She shook her head with a thin smile on her lips. “He was hit across the head with a brick by a teenager in Stockbridge Park? I didn’t see that one coming.”

  “Neither did he,” Braddick said thoughtlessly. “Have you ever had eyes on Anthony over the years?”

  “Oh, yes.” Steff nodded and bit her lip. “Both him and his brother are their father’s right hand men. They’re a real pair of arseholes.”

  “Well there’s one less now.”

  “Anthony was our main focus for a number of hits last year but there was never enough evidence to charge him. Our witnesses had a habit of disappearing; we could never get near them.”

  “I’ll put it down to Karma. What goes around, eh?”

  “They say Karma is a bitch.”

  “Oh, she is.”

  “You know that this is not going away without a backlash,” she warned. Braddick nodded that he understood. “The Farrells are a nasty bunch.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “And they’re in bed with the Russians, the Karpov family.”

  “I know all about the Karpov family,” Braddick said looking away. A needle of hate pricked him. Karin’s blistered face appeared; her eyes blackened pits. She vanished as quickly as she had appeared banished to the darkness at the edge of his mind, waiting, watching and reminding him constantly that he was to blame. He left her alone. “The Karpovs have business interests everywhere. Liverpool is merely one of their outposts.”

  “Of course, you would know all about them wouldn’t you?” Cain said fishing for information.

  “They survive on their reputation,” Braddick explained. “They move into an area, identify a local outfit to use as muscle and then move on leaving a few key members to oversee things. They can run a city with just a few people because the threat of them coming en masse is enough to make them untouchable. If they do have to get heavy with another crew, it’s like Armageddon for a week then they’re gone.”

  “Sounds like they’re running a franchise.”

  “The principle is the same.”

  “Your secondment with the NCA would have brought you into contact with the likes of them?”

  “Them and too many others.”

  “They’re at the top of the tree though?”

  “Yes. I came across them two years ago in London,” Braddick explained. “Victor Karpov is an especially interesting psychopath. I believe his nephew runs things in the North West, Nicolai?”

  “He does. He fronts things for the family using the Farrells as muscle. You’re going to have your hands full there.”

  “We’ll have to manage them, won’t we?”

  “We will,” she agreed. “You’re back from your secondment early aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  An awkward silence followed and she knew that it was of her own creating. Braddick wasn’t playing her game. She changed tack. “Was there anything in Farrell’s vehicle?”

  “No. The dogs reacted but we didn’t find anything but money,” Braddick gestured to the house. “Something was carried in it recently but it’s clean now. Let’s hope forensics find something solid.”

  “Like the blood of an unsolved murder victim in the boot?”

  “Be nice but unlikely, eh?” His mobile rang, the screen showing an extension at Canning Place. He apologised for the interruption with a wave of the hand and turned away to answer the call, “Braddick.”

  “It’s me, Guv.”

  “Google, just the man,” Braddick said. “I was about to call you.”

  “What about?”

  “Have you had any joy with the Facebook post?” he asked looking around. Cain was mooching near the back door, peering into the windows.

  “Depends what you call joy,” Google moaned. “We’ve got plenty of names and addresses but so far, no one wants to talk to us officially.”

  “All those comments and no one will talk?”

  “No, Guv. There’s plenty of ‘off the record’ inf
o but nothing solid.”

  “I’m surprised,” Braddick said disappointed. “There was venom in some of the posts that I read. I thought they would be queuing up to talk to us.”

  “No one queues up to talk to us, Guv.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “They’re keyboard warriors, Guv, full of fire and brimstone when they’re online but in the cold light of day it is all piss and wind,” Google said sourly.

  “I suppose so.”

  “The news pictures of the Johnson brothers dead in an alleyway doesn’t help one bit.”

  “No that doesn’t help.”

  “People are terrified, family or not. No one wants to talk to us.”

  “And no one is pointing a finger at anyone?”

  “Nope, we’ve had a few random theories but nothing of substance.”

  “Keep digging, someone will come forward. All we need is a name and someone knows it.”

  “We will, Guv. On a brighter note, the Crime stoppers line has had a number of anonymous calls, all saying that the Johnsons made a living, stealing containers and articulated lorries from the docks, truck stops and airports.”

  “Stealing containers would fit with the caption on the photograph,” Braddick mused. “A container load of anything could be worth killing for but if it is drugs, well there are a few million reasons.”

  “Without a doubt. We’re running checks on everything that was reported stolen in the last seven days; shipping containers, trucks, lorries, large vans and the like,” he paused, “obviously there’s a good chance that it was never reported stolen.”

  “Good work,” Braddick said. “What else did you want me for?”

  “Oh yes, that’s why I called in the first place. I’ve had a couple of calls from the uniform looking after your suspect, Bryn Evans, at the Royal.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “There have been reprisals, Guv,” Google explained. “A wreath was sent to the family home, frightened the life out of the mother.”

  “What?” Braddick shook his head. Bullying, tormenting and instilling fear into people sounded like something the Farrells would enjoy. “So they’re scaring old ladies, very tough. Is she alright?”