TAKEAWAY TERROR: The DCS Palmer and the Serial Murder Squad series. Case No.8

by Barry Faulkner

  ​‘Oh my God,‘ Palmer said slowly, not really believing what he was seeing. ‘He’s crushed them.’

  ​They moved slowly to the crane and saw Wellbeck slumped against it. Knight checked his pulse.

  ​‘He’s had it, Sir.’

  ​‘I don’t think the people in the car have done any better,’ said Holt who had scrambled up onto the crusher’s apron and was looking down on the carnage inside.

  ‘I think the chaps from the morgue are going to have a job getting the bodies out of this.’

  ​A bullet whistled past Palmer’s head and pinged against the steel of the crane.

  ​‘What the...’

  They all hit the ground as another hit the steel.

  ​‘Stay right where you are.’

  The shout came from the front of the office, where Chrissie Wellbeck had them covered with an automatic rifle.

  ‘One move and I open fire. There’s eighteen left in my magazine.’

  ​‘Nobody move,’ Palmer ordered in a soft voice, then he shouted back to her. ‘You’ll only make things worse. You won’t get away, there’s an armed response unit at the gates. Put the gun down and your hands up.’

  ​The reply was another bullet pinging off the crane’s steel.

  ​‘Don’t be a bloody hero, copper. I know how long I’ll be looking at so just be sure, I’m not kidding. One move and I spray the lot of you.’

  ​She moved a step back and beckoned towards the office door. Ronny Robards sheepishly stepped out, fear percolating from every pore of his body. He was struggling with a large suitcase. Chrissie Wellbeck positioned herself behind him.

  ‘We are going over to the van. No funny business, or else.’

  She said something to Robards who nodded. Putting the suitcase down, he took a small incendiary flare from his overcoat pocket, ripped the top off which lit it like a roman candle, and threw it back into the office. The whoosh from within and the fierce flames that sprang from the broken windows showed that he had doused the place in petrol before leaving. Chrissie Wellbeck didn’t intend to leave any evidence of drug dealing behind.

  She prodded Robards in the back of the neck with her rifle and they walked slowly towards the red Transit parked alongside the far wall where O’Keefe had left it when they returned from torching the takeaway. Robards was having trouble carrying the suitcase; it appeared to be too heavy for him. She took it off him whilst keeping the rifle trained on his head from behind.

  ​‘How far do you think you’ll get, Chrissie?’ shouted Palmer. ‘We could cut a deal maybe?’

  ​‘A deal?’

  She stopped and looked towards him.

  ‘Oh yeah? And what kind of a deal would that be?’

  ​Holt spoke to Palmer quietly, trying not to move his lips.

  ‘My men at the gate say they can take her out with a head shot, Sir.’

  ​Palmer looked him in the eyes and shook his head slowly.

  ‘No, I want her for trial. If she shoots first then okay, otherwise hold back.’

  ​Holt conveyed the order as Palmer turned his attention back to Chrissie Wellbeck. He had her attention with the offer of a deal, which was what he wanted. He had no real intention of offering one, let alone keeping it, but he needed to keep her attention; because, as well as Holt and Knight, he could see the drone behind her, hovering silently in the smoky night air above the smouldering lorry. DS Singh knelt beside the lorry, working the control panel.

  ​‘What could you offer me?’ shouted Palmer, ‘How about your suppliers for a start?’

  ​Before Chrissie could answer, the drone dived at speed and slammed into the back of her head. She hit the ground already unconscious as the rifle flew from her hand and slithered across the dirt, spinning like a fan. The suitcase dropped with a thud and burst open, scattering its contents of bundled fifty-pound notes onto the ground like tumbling dice. Ronny Robards, visibly shaking now, raised his trembling hands into the air.

  ​Knight was first to the scene, and roughly pushed Robards to the ground face down and cuffed him before checking his pockets for more flares. He found two.

  ​Palmer strolled over and looked down at him.

  ​‘Ronny Robards, what a silly old man you are. You must have a liking for prison food.’

  ​Robards’s voice trembled.

  ‘I never knew it was gonna be like this. They said they just wanted that takeaway torched.’

  ​Palmer laughed.

  ‘Torched? You blew the bloody place to smithereens, with no warning to the staff or the punters in it at the time. You could be up on a murder charge if my chaps hadn’t cleared it. As it is, I’ll have you on attempted murder.’

  ​Robards was shocked.

  ‘What?’

  ​‘You heard. Take him away.’

  ​Knight lifted Robards to his feet and handed him over to an SFO, who took him stumbling away to the vehicles outside. DS Singh joined them as medics attended to the prostrate figure of Chrissie Wellbeck.

  ​‘I meant to hit her in the back, not knock her head off. Will she live?’

  ​‘She’ll live,’ a medic answered. ‘Have a hell of a headache though.’

  ​Palmer pointed to the drone’s shattered camera lens.

  ‘How did you manage to steer it without the camera working?’

  ​‘More by luck than judgement, guv.’

  ‘That’s how Mrs P drives too.’

  ‘I’ll tell her you said that guv.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  CHAPTER 22

  In the Team Room the next morning Claire, Gheeta and Knight were bent over a computer screen when Palmer arrived.

  ​‘Couldn’t you lot sleep? I was out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow. Then I woke this morning and I remembered all the paperwork that this case will need to close it down and felt like going back to sleep.’

  ​Gheeta stood up straight.

  ​‘Not exactly closed yet, guv. Claire’s been digging and hit a snag you’ll be interested in.’

  ‘Really?’

  Palmer moved to the screen, which was showing a black and white wedding photograph. Claire pointed to it.

  ‘The Wellbecks’ wedding day Sir– don’t they make a lovely pair? I was just trying to get some background info on them. There’s not much on file anywhere, so I checked their name against the local Hackney newspapers and came up with this in the local free newspaper thirty years ago. They like to fill the pages with adverts and local people and events – saves the expense of proper journalists. ‘

  ​‘Look a lot younger, don’t they?’ Palmer commented. ‘Nice picture though. I bet they didn’t think the marraige would end up like it has.’

  ​Claire pointed to the tagline.

  ‘It’s not the picture Sir, it’s the description at the bottom. It reads: ‘The wedding of local businessman Samuel Wellbeck and Christine Court.’

  ​Knight looked at Palmer.

  ‘Ring a bell?’

  ​‘Damn right it does.’

  ​Claire flicked onto another screen.

  ‘So I did a bit of digging on the BMD database and came up with Miss Christine Court’s family, and lo and behold, she has a brother. Daniel.’

  ​Palmer ran his tongue over his front teeth as though trying to dislodge a reluctant food particle.

  ‘Really, seems mister Daniel Court may not be the innocent person that he professes to be then. Claire, give the officers at the safe house he’s in a call and tell them not to let him out under any circumstances. I think we need to have a chat with him.’

  ​DS Singh was confused.

  ‘I don’t get this, guv. If he’s Wellbeck’s brother-in-law, what’s he doing letting the Arifs use his company to ferry their drugs around in Wellbeck’s manor?

  ​‘That, Detective Sergeant Singh, is what I want to know, and what we are going to find out.’

  In the kitchen of the safe house, Daniel Court sat at the table looking at his sister
’s wedding picture printed off the computer by Claire. Then he looked at the birth certificates of himself and his sister Christine next to it, both showing the same parents. Finally he looked up to encounter Palmer’s stern gaze.

  ​‘Care to explain?’ Palmer said, his cold eyes drilling into Court’s.

  ​Court took a deep breath and sat back.

  ‘I’m not in that wedding picture. In fact I wasn’t at the wedding, I wasn’t invited.’

  ​‘Go on.’

  ​‘I never liked Sammy Wellbeck from the first day Chrissie brought him home to meet the family, and he never liked me. For some reason she couldn’t see the wood from the trees; I could see he was a nasty piece of work, but the gifts and the good lifestyle he offered turned her head. Only when they were married did she realise what she’d let herself in for, but love is blind; and in any case, he wasn’t going to pack up his car insurance scams and the other illegal things he was into. And it just got bigger. And then he got into the drug scene, first with the E tablets and then marijuana, and finally coke. Chrissie had the big house, the top of the range cars, the designer clothes, exotic holidays and money-no-object life style, so she went along with it.’

  ​‘How were you involved?’

  ​‘I wasn’t. I kept a safe distance. I had the delivery business, and then my marriage went wrong. The wife and the boys went to Scotland, and that left me with Helen...’

  ​‘Your daughter.’

  ​‘Yes. Without her mother around she got closer to Chrissie; Chrissie became a sort of surrogate mother to her. I didn’t mind too much, but then she started going on their social nights with them and got sucked into the glitz and the drugs. Once she was hooked I couldn’t do anything about it; she became distant and spent most of her time with them. Drug addiction can take many forms, mister Palmer – with Helen it overwhelmed her to such an extent she couldn’t live without three or four hits a day. I tried to have her seek help but she wouldn’t. She became violent and destructive, and then Wellbeck showed his true colours and kicked her out of their life. She would come round to me sometimes when she needed money, but mostly she lived in squats, begging on the streets.’

  ​‘That couldn’t have been easy for you to bear, being her father.’

  The underlying thought in Palmer’s mind was what a weak man Court was not to have done something.

  ​‘No, it was far from easy. I hated the Wellbecks, and the hate bore into my every pore. Then I got a visit.’

  ​‘A visit?’

  ‘Yes, I got a visit from Mehmed Arif. He knew, he knew everything. He said he could put it right.’

  ​‘How would he do that?’

  ​‘He was quite open with me, mister Palmer. He said he had daughters, and if anybody did to them what Wellbeck had done to Helen he’d have them killed.’

  ​‘He offered to kill Sammy Wellbeck?’

  ​‘No, he had a better offer than that. He would look after Helen’s drug supply, make sure she got enough but no more – basically keep her stabilised until I could get her some help.’

  ​‘In exchange for what?’

  ​‘I told you he was open with me. He said he wanted to get rid of the Wellbecks from the area and take over their drug business but he needed a supply chain to get the stuff to his dealers, and one that was not going to draw attention as he built his network. My delivery lads would be just the job.’

  ​‘So you took the deal, shook hands with the Devil?’

  ​‘Of course I did. Helen would be basically back in my control and Wellbeck hit hard where it hurts, in his pocket. Of course I took the deal. Mehmed put his own controller in and I took care to give the delivery to just a few of my better lads. They knew what was involved, but money talks.’

  ​‘The Arifs played you, didn’t they? They knew that hurting Wellbeck was the button to press in your head to get you on side.’

  ​‘I suppose so. What happens now?’

  ​‘Depends on the CPS. They’ll probably charge Chrissie with dealing, take the Wellbeck property under the Proceeds of Crime Act, and she will go down for a long time. So will Marty.’

  ​‘And me?’

  ​‘You need a good lawyer. I would think you’ve got a ‘mitigating circumstances’ plea; you could do time, or you might get a suspended sentence.’

  ​‘Will you put in a good word?’

  ​Palmer looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘No. You could have saved me a lot of time and possibly prevented all the killing if you’d fronted up at the beginning. You didn’t, you lied. I don’t like liars.’

  CHAPTER 23

  Commander Peter Long sat at his desk, looking at the photos of DI Kirby at the scrap yard that Palmer had laid out. He blew out his cheeks with a long breath and raised his gaze to Palmer and Knight sitting opposite.

  ​‘The bastard.’

  ​‘Always one bad apple in the barrel, Peter.’

  ​‘I’ll get Internal Affairs to arrest him once we put all this together with your statements.’

  ​‘At least he couldn’t tip them off this time.’

  ​Knight was worried.

  ‘He’s going to deny it. He’ll say he was there trying to build a case against them or some such excuse.’

  ​Long shook his head.

  ‘We haven’t got any case on file against the Wellbecks, nothing ongoing, so he hasn’t a chance with that excuse; and I bet there’s no reference to his visit or a visit report on his computer or filed anywhere. He’s toast.’

  ​ Palmer rose and Knight did likewise.

  ​‘Okay,’ said Palmer.’Leave it with you. I’ve a pile of paperwork to get through or Bateman will be whining.’

  They made towards the door.

  ​Long sat back in his chair.

  ‘And where do you think you are going, DS Knight? You still belong to this department, you know.’

  ​Knight was embarrassed.

  ‘Yes Sir, I realise that – and I will be back as soon as I’ve done my reports if that’s okay.’

  ​Palmer turned at the door, a mischievous smile on his lips.

  ‘I was thinking of keeping him actually, Peter. I could do with another DS.’

  Long gave Palmer a slanted look with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Oh really were you, well I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere for your new DS. With Kirby on the way out I have a sudden need for a DI, and I always promote from within.’

  ​They both turned to Knight and smiled as his embarrassment turned into happiness.

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘Sounds more like the Wild West to me than Hackney,’ said Mrs P. as she put Daisy the dog’s food bowl down on the kitchen floor. Daisy knew just how to play Palmer; she solicited treats and scraps from his plate when Mrs P. wasn’t watching that were forbidden when she was and always positioned herself within catching distance when Palmer enjoyed a packet of crisps. It’s funny how dogs favour one person in a house; it’s usually the one they can get away breaking the rules with, and Daisy had Palmer firmly in that position.

  This evening Palmer was enjoying a home-made steak and kidney pie with chips and mushy peas. Mrs P. straightened up as Daisy got to work on her food.

  ‘You want to remember Justin Palmer, you’re no spring chicken now. Bullets don’t respect age.’

  ​‘We had the Firearms boys with us. Anyway, I didn’t get shot – none of my team did. Bateman wants to see me in the morning.’

  ​‘Sounds ominous. Why would he want to see you?’

  ​‘Might be putting me up for a medal, we just brought down two of the biggest drug firms in London.’

  ​Mrs P. stopped and gave him a sideways look of pity.

  ‘Bateman will never in a million years give you credit for anything, you know that. He’s probably going to try and force you into retirement again with an enhanced pension.’

  ​‘No chance, he could double it and I still won’t go. He’s tried the same tactic on Peter Lon
g, and he won’t go either. All Bateman wants is a row of dickheads with degrees who say ‘yes sir’ to every stupid idea he has.’

  ​Daisy had finished her bowl and wandered under the table, nudging Palmer’s leg. He surreptitiously slid a chip down to her. Mrs P. glared at him.

  ‘Stop feeding that dog from the table. She’s had her food. She’s half a kilo over weight as it is.’

  ​‘I wish I was only half a kilo over weight,’ said Palmer, shovelling in another forkful of pie.

  ​‘Oh, that reminds me,’ said Mrs P. wiping her hands on the oven cloth as she hurried from the room. Palmer took the opportunity to pass down two more chips to Daisy before she returned, holding a book.

  ​‘Benji brought this round for you.’

  ​Palmer looked at the cover.

  ‘The Vegetarian Good Food Diet.’

  ​‘He said he noticed how you tucked into the plates of party food at his birthday party. All vegetarian, and he remembered I’d told him you needed to lose weight. Isn’t that a nice gesture?

  ​‘I was blooming hungry; I hadn’t had anything to eat and came straight from work. I would have killed for a sausage roll.’

  ​‘And he said to say thank you, I don’t know what for but I did notice the barman pointing you out to him during the evening. What had you been up to?’

  ​‘Nothing.’

  He quickly changed the subject and pointed at the book.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to be dishing up veggie dishes all the time.’

  ​‘Wouldn’t hurt to cut down on the meat we eat. Cows are the biggest source of methane gas you know.’

  ​‘I think Linda McCartney’s Veggie Burgers run them a close second. When we had them I couldn’t stop far-’

  ​Mrs P. silenced him with a stern finger.

  ‘Thank you, we don’t wish to know about that.’

  ​‘I thought I was going to take off and go into orbit at one point. No wonder they called their band Wings.’

  Gheeta sat at her work desk at home and took a last look down at the Thames rolling by five floors below her Barbican apartment before clicking on her PC and bringing up the family intranet connection. She had set this up so the far-flung members of her family could see and talk to each other in private. It was, of course, encrypted for absolute privacy, and clearer than Skype which was a magnet for hackers.