The Silent Man: A British Detective Crime Thriller (The Harvey Stone Crime Thriller Series Book 1)

by J. D. Weston

  Harvey didn’t reply. He thought of their faces and remembered their cries.

  “I know they did. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you. Then there was Asif, my cousin, my best man, and closest friend. And Ismail, Farhad, and Fareed. Somebody has to stop you.”

  “Is it me that has to be stopped? Retribution, though late, comes at last,” said Harvey, reciting the man’s words that seemed so apt.

  “Retribution,” said the man, his accent thick and his R’s rolling across his tongue, “retribution is for the worthy.”

  “What about all those girls? Aren’t they worthy? Didn’t their lives mean anything?”

  The man laughed and snapped his fingers in the air. The tall man who had been driving the car earlier entered the room moments later. He dragged the young girl in by the wrist. Her face was sour, and her lip swollen. Her makeup was smudged, and her hair was a far cry from her earlier immaculate appearance.

  “You mean girls like this?” said the man on the bed. “Farhad, show him what girls like this will do for a little money. Show him how little pride they have.”

  Without hesitation, the tall man pushed the girl onto the edge of the bed and bent to lift the hem of his kurta.

  “Stop,” said Harvey.

  The girl, who seemed not to be able to focus, swayed where she sat. She gazed at Harvey as though she was drunk.

  “Ah, I see,” said Rashid. “I hope I made my point. Did you see her fight? No. Did you see her struggle? No. Did Farhad have to force her to do anything?” He paused to let the question sink in and Harvey searched for some kind of life in the girl’s vacant eyes. “No,” he finished.

  “She’s out of her mind.”

  “Yes, she is. But do you know what? Tomorrow she will return and tomorrow she will be out of her mind.”

  “You’re grooming young girls. You’re feeding them drugs in return for-”

  “I’m giving them what they ask for. A good time.”

  “What about Jennifer Standing?”

  “What about her?”

  “The one that got away?”

  He laughed again and swung his feet from the bed then stood behind Harvey. He stared at him in the mirror and Harvey tried to find a weakness in the rope. He found none.

  “I don’t like to hurt the girls. You have to understand. But I am a powerful man. When the girls try to pull away, they threaten us with the police. It would destroy a man like me. But she hasn’t said a thing to the police, has she? Jennifer will be back. She was a good girl. A keeper, as they say.”

  “You tried to kill her.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “Faisal? I caught him. I slaughtered him and I pinned him to a tree.”

  The words hit home like a dagger to the man’s heart. His tone shifted to a bitter and resentful scorn.

  “Faisal was a sick man. He brought shame on us, but I loved him nonetheless for it. He always did have a soft spot for the younger girls. He didn’t like to share.”

  “You’re sick. She’s a child.”

  “You, sir, will pay for what you have done to my friends and my family. As they say, retribution, though late, comes at last.”

  He began to walk away toward the door but stopped to rest his hand on the girl’s head.

  “What about Donny?” said Harvey, still working the ropes but finding no way out of them. “What about his wife? What did she do to deserve being killed?”

  “Ah, young Julia,” said Rashid, and he turned once more to face Harvey. “She was once like Harriet here, a sweet girl who would do anything for pleasure and without pride.”

  “You abused her?”

  The comment riled the man, but he rose above the taunt and filled his chest with pride.

  “I introduced them. A young runaway, she was. I gave her hope.”

  “You gave her drugs.”

  “I gave her opportunity.”

  “You took her life.”

  “She was a friend,” said Rashid, and he leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “But she grew too old for the men in my circles. I thought I could trust her. But she opened her mouth. She told Donny far too much. Like I said, a man like me relies on reputation. But you have to admire Donny’s spirit. Beneath that miserable wretch of a man are morals. Do you know what he did?”

  “I’m working it out.”

  “Donny here was to supply my parties. You know? The good stuff. He didn’t need to know what happens at my parties.” His eyes widened and his tone was playful. Then it sank once more to the cruel and bitter bark of before. “But, as I understand it, Julia opened up to him, as a bride-to-be might. I imagine she told him things, things that should never pass a young girl’s lips. Things that might have cast my parties in a less than favourable light. And this must have displeased him.”

  Harvey found Donny in the mirror. A steady drip of tears fell from his nose into his lap, and his eyes, reddened with sadness and fear, stared back at Harvey.

  “So, he didn’t know what Julia was before you introduced them?”

  “I introduced her as an old friend. Where possible, I like to maintain friendships. A link to the Cartwright family could have been useful, you know?”

  “But once he knew the truth, he stopped supplying your drugs?”

  Harvey couldn’t help but find pride in his foster-brother. It was the first time, that Harvey knew of, that Donny had done something honourable.

  “Of course, he couldn’t go to his father. Oh no. The great John Cartwright loathes drugs. He fears them.”

  “He fears nothing.”

  “He fears drugs because he doesn’t understand them. He doesn’t understand their power.”

  “Without your drugs, you’re nobody. That’s the only power you have. That’s what you do, isn’t it? You get people like Donny to bring you drink and drugs. You feed the drink to wealthy businessmen, and you feed the drugs to the girls. The men have a good time with the girls and the girls develop a habit. A habit that needs feeding. But when the girls refuse or when they threaten you with the police-”

  “I warned Donny not to let me down. I told him there would be consequences.”

  “He gave the drugs to somebody else so that you couldn’t get them.”

  “He betrayed me. They both betrayed me.”

  “So, you sent Asif to kill him and Julia? Well, let me tell you something about Asif,” said Harvey. The time for honouring Asif had gone. The time for mutual respect had gone. It was time to bring down the man at the centre of the ring of abuse. And to do that, Harvey needed to play dirty. “Asif wasn’t the man you thought he was. Did you ever see him cry?”

  “Asif would never cry.”

  “He cried like a little girl, you sick son of a bitch. I had him strung up like a hog and I didn’t even need to touch him before he pissed his pants.”

  “You mean like your friend here?” Rashid said, and he waved his hand at Donny, who gazed down into his lap when Harvey caught him once more in the mirror. “Asif wouldn’t cry. He wasn’t capable of tears. He was a lion. He was my friend.”

  Rashid clicked his fingers again and called out in a language beyond Harvey.

  He heard her first and his senses placed the scent and the click of her heels before his mind had made the connection.

  Pale and immaculate, in contrast to Rashid’s dark and dirty skin, walked the girl who Harvey had nearly known. She was radiant. He remembered her as clear as day. He remembered her long legs and her passion. He remembered the heat of the moment and how close they had come before Asif’s gunshot had sang through the sky.

  He remembered her words. She had whispered them, and they had seemed out of place among the teasing, seductive tones.

  A girl like me needs a man like you. Will you help me, Harvey Stone?

  “Harvey,” she said, but her charm had faded, and the connection clicked into place. Her confidence had gone, and in its place was shame.

  “You supply this man with young girls?” said Harv
ey, ignoring Rashid and talking directly to the woman who was at the point of breaking down.

  “Like I said, they’ll do anything for the good stuff,” said Rashid. “Samantha here supplies me with suitable girls in return for a nice apartment, an expensive car, and a lifestyle fit for a princess. I provide her everything she needs. You see, Harvey, the grooming, as you call it, is not in my hands. Farhad handles the drugs. All I do is host the parties and make sure people have a good time.”

  “You ruin lives,” said Samantha, and all eyes fell on her. She raised her head, as if the words she had said gave her release. She exhaled loudly enough for Harvey to hear the compassion in her voice. “You destroy them. You break them. And when you’re done with them, you give them to your reprobate family to do as they wish.”

  “Silence, Samantha,” said Rashid, and he backhanded her hard enough to split her lip.

  “No. No, not anymore. I can’t do it anymore.”

  “You’ll do as you’re told, or you’ll lose everything.”

  “Everything?” she said. “I have nothing. I have nothing but nightmares and an ache in my heart.” She turned to Harvey. “I asked for help. I tried to tell you. But I had to trust you. Donny said you would help.”

  “It wasn’t Julia who said too much. It wasn’t Julia who told Donny about you. It was me.”

  Farhad forced her onto the bed and the girl, who had been swaying and staring into thin air, rolled off. She lay in a heap on the floor, her dress raised to reveal the track marks of injections on the inside of her thighs, where, Harvey assumed, her mother wouldn’t notice.

  Samantha screamed under Farhad’s weight. He knelt on her spine and his broad hands encompassed her neck. But she fought. There was strength in her.

  “It’s over, Rashid,” she hissed in a strange blend of tears and laughter.

  “Nothing is over until I say,” replied Rashid, and he nodded at Farhad to increase the pain.

  Harvey pulled at the ropes that bound his wrists. He tried to stand and break the chair, but nothing gave.

  “The girl…” said Samantha, and she waited for the right moment to finish.

  Farhad looked up at Rashid, a questioning expression on his face, waiting for Rashid’s decision.

  “It’s over, Rashid,” Samantha continued. “She’s your undoing. She’s the one who will bring you down.”

  “Harriet?” said Rashid, not following what Samantha was saying. “She’s as worthless as the rest of them.”

  “No,” Samantha hissed, and there was a genuine smile of retribution on her face as it was pressed into the bed. “She’s the policeman’s daughter. She’s Harriet Myers.”

  Even Harvey was taken back by the news. Rashid’s expression morphed from the unstoppable sneer he had worn in the photos in Myers’ file into a look of horror and realisation.

  “It’s over,” said Samantha as Farhad’s grip released. “This house will destroy you. She will destroy you. I will destroy you. The police will come. They’ll find the hairs of all those young, dead girls. They’ll find the drugs. And all of it leads back to you, Rashid. You’ve been played. You’ll pay for it-”

  Her words were cut short by Farhad’s grip. Her face was forced down and he used a pillow to smother her.

  Harvey, incensed by it all, tried to stand, planning on smashing the chair against a wall. But with Farhad busy with Samantha, it fell on Rashid to strike out himself. He stepped over the young, unconscious girl and struck Harvey square in the jaw. He held his throat and gazed into Harvey’s eyes.

  “You’re finished, Sheikh. One way or another. What are you going to do now? He’ll hunt you down. He’s onto you. I know he is.”

  “I’ll start again somewhere else,” he whispered. “Paris, New York, Amsterdam. It doesn’t matter where. They’ll come to me. They’ll come to me like lambs to the slaughter.”

  The sneer broadened and his eyes narrowed, just as John’s did when a plan formed that would increase his wealth and power. It was the hunger for power that drove men like him.

  Samantha’s bucking body stilled. The corners of Rashid’s mouth curled, and that characteristic sneer returned to duty. Farhad held her a moment longer, then climbed off. There was no expression of distaste. There was no emotion whatsoever. He stood, dutiful, waiting for Rashid’s next command.

  “Men like me always find men like you,” said Harvey.

  Rashid replied with a whisper, his face so close to Harvey’s that the lines around his eyes were like the Thames Estuary, deep and etched for eternity. “Retribution, though late, comes at last, my friend.”

  And although Rashid, who was calm in the face of disaster, peered into Harvey’s eyes, he then spoke to Farhad, and gave a clear and final instruction.

  “Burn the house to the ground.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The unhurried tone of the phone seemed to tease at Myers. The spaces between the rings seemed to last twice as long as they should.

  Clutching a cushion to her chest, Alison sat beside him on the bed she shared with Darren, filling those spaces with possibilities that they both knew were unlikely.

  “Maybe I should call Tiffany’s mum? She might have gone to her house.”

  Myers hung up the phone but picked it back up and dialled another number from memory, ignoring Alison’s verbal thought process. He had no doubt where she was.

  “Who are you calling? Are you calling the police?”

  Thoughts raced through Myers’ mind. Sick thoughts that he tried to banish. Thoughts of what had happened before and what might happen again. His daughter, and the faces of all those girls.

  Once more, the lazy ring tone taunted him, and once more, Alison filled the spaces with her panic.

  Three rings.

  “Oh, Matthew, she’s probably just with friends.”

  “Has she said anything unusual recently?”

  Four rings.

  “No. I don’t think so. But she hasn’t been herself. I’m not sure if there’s a problem at school or if she has a boyfriend.”

  “Do you talk to her?”

  Five rings.

  “I try,” she said, defending her custody. Then her tone softened. “She doesn’t want to talk. She promised me she was okay.”

  “Has she ever sneaked out in the night before?”

  Six rings.

  Alison faltered and looked away.

  “Alison? I need to know.”

  Seven rings.

  “Once,” she said. “That I know of.”

  “Alison, I need to know.”

  Eight rings.

  “Then, yes. Yes, she has. I don’t know how many times and I don’t know where she goes.”

  The phone clicked and Myers heard an intake of breath.

  “Allenby.”

  “Ma’am, it’s Myers.”

  The inevitable exhale followed.

  “I found the Rashid Al Sheikh file on your desk, Myers. What do you have to say?”

  “I need help.”

  “Even if Sheikh doesn’t press for an investigation, I’ll have to act on this. You accessed confidential files. That’s a gross misconduct charge, Myers. Do you know what that means? It means that’s the end of your career, your job, your pension. It’s all gone, Myers.”

  The words were like a kick to Myers’ gut.

  “Whatever you need to do, ma’am. I need your help. Please.”

  “I can’t protect you, Myers. You got yourself into this. I can’t be seen to condone harassment of-”

  “Harriet is missing.”

  Allenby silenced.

  “I think Sheikh has her.”

  He felt Alison stand from the bed, and in the corner of his eye, she covered her face with her hands. She spoke, but Myers was tuned into Allenby. He needed her now.

  “You’re right,” said Allenby. “You do need help. This has gone far enough. You’re a senior member of my team and you’re like a dog with a bone, Myers. Get a grip.”

  “She’s gon
e. I know he has her.”

  “How long has she been missing?”

  He mouthed the question to Alison, who wiped her eyes and shrugged. “Two, three, maybe four hours? I don’t know.” Her voice was high with panic and thick with tears.

  “Did you hear that, ma’am?”

  “Was that Alison?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Allenby sighed and he heard the phone shift to her other hand. He pictured her perched on her desk the way he’d seen her a hundred times before. Maybe she was fiddling with the monkey pot? The distraction of thought was welcome, but brief.

  “Tell her not to worry. Tell her Harriet will be fine. Tell her that I said not to listen to you.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Pull yourself together, Myers. She’s fifteen and you haven’t seen her for a few hours. Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

  “No. No, as it happens, I do not.”

  “Well, you are. You’re fixated on Sheikh and you’re pulling people down with you. Get a grip, man.”

  “I just need some help. Can you get a unit to investigate the address in the file?”

  “No, I cannot, Myers. She’ll come back. Check her friends’ houses. Check the local parks. You’re her father. You must know where she’d be.”

  “Just a drive by, ma’am. That’s all. Surely-”

  “Surely nothing. You have no favours left and I’m not putting my reputation on the line any more for you.”

  She left a silence to let the words sink in.

  “Look, if she’s not back by the morning, give me a call. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “The morning will be too late, ma’am.”

  “She’ll be back. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll presume I’m right.”

  The call disconnected but Myers held it to his ear a while and stared at the wall. Alison waited anxiously. There was a battle taking place inside him. On one side, every face of every girl he’d seen lying on a slab enticed the fear from some place deep down inside him. The place only parents know exists, where others disbelieve.

  On the other side of the battle, a rage was brewing. It was a rage that coursed through his body like a quake, trembling his fingers and watering his eyes.