Murder Without Reason (DCI Cook Thriller Series Book 5)

by Phillip Strang

  It didn’t stop him slapping him in handcuffs when he was taken off to the local assizes to be formally detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure while awaiting trial, bail refused.

  Mohammad Sohail Shafi was not meant to have a mobile phone in Belmarsh, but he did, as did half the prisoners.

  ‘I need a killing, are you up to it?’ the voice at the other end of the line said.

  ‘What’s in it for me?’ Shafi asked.

  ‘Respect in prison, as many cigarettes as you want,’ the voice said.

  ‘I don’t smoke, you know that.’

  ‘You can trade them. They’re better than money where you are.’

  ‘Tell you what I can do,’ Shafi replied. ‘You send a thousand pounds to my mother back in the home country, and I’ll do it for you.’

  ‘You better take a strong cord and a bar of soap with you for this one,’ the voice said.

  ‘All the better, but I need a clear passage to this person and thirty minutes. Can you fix it?’

  ‘No problem, but it’s got to be tonight,’ the voice emphasised.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘One in the morning. The gate to the detention cell will be open.’

  ‘You want me to kill the fresh-looking kid that came in today?’ Shafi asked.

  ‘Wali Hasan’s his name, and I’m sure he looks pretty to you.’

  ‘He is pretty.’ Shafi was a crude man given to crude language and crude behaviour. ‘I better make sure of an extra big bar of soap and make it forty-five minutes. I don’t want to rush a good throttling.’

  ‘Forty-five minutes it is. Have fun, and I’ll send the money tonight. I know you’ll not let me down.’

  ***

  Seamus Gilligan was a decent prison officer, reasonably honest and diligent. However, he had a problem. Two years at Belmarsh and he had seen the scum come in and go out. He had total disdain for those in his charge, but his problem was severe, and Faisal Aslam knew what it was. In fact, he was carrying the debt for Gilligan’s gambling and, as long as he was willing to do the occasional favour, then he was not willing to call in the debt or, if that was unsuccessful, a couple of kneecaps. It had only been smuggling a few letters, half a dozen mobile phones, and a couple of blocks of cheese. Gilligan, meanwhile, was a happy man. He had a tame Paki keeping him out of trouble and, as long as he didn’t get too involved, he could still carry on gambling on the quiet.

  ‘Seamus, I need a favour.’ Faisal Aslam was about to call in the debt that he carried.

  ‘No problem, what do you want?’ said Seamus. ‘Some letters? Cigarette smuggling?’

  ‘Not this time. I want the gate to the detention cell left open.’

  ‘I can’t do that. There’s no way I can keep that concealed.’

  ‘You’ll do it. And, by the way, I’m covering another five thousand pound debt to your account.’

  ‘What do you mean by another five thousand? I’m not gambling anymore,’ Gilligan angrily denied.

  ‘You may be able to fool your dear grey-haired old mother back in Donegal. We’ve got her address, by the way, so never try to fool the people I work with and me.’

  ‘This is blackmail,’ Seamus Gilligan said firmly.

  ‘Blackmail, that’s such a nasty word. I need help, and you need someone to keep the debt collectors from putting you in a wheelchair. It’s a fair deal.’

  ‘They’ll know it’s me.’

  ‘What do I care? Just open the cell and close it afterwards. What you do then is of no concern to me. Just make sure you give us a forwarding address. Otherwise, we’ll arrange a trip over the water to Donegal. You do understand what I am saying?’

  ‘I understand, you bastard.’ Gilligan was cornered. He had no option but to comply.

  ‘You can call me what you like, but at one in the morning, you will open that gate and forty-five minutes later – no, you better make it sixty minutes – you close it. You will see no one, and you will make sure none of your soon to be ex-colleagues come anywhere near. Is this clear?’

  ‘It’s clear, but I won’t forget how you’ve screwed me.’ Gilligan regretted his addiction, but the regret was too late. He knew he would follow instructions.

  ‘Forget or not forget, that’s your problem. If you can’t control your gambling, that’s not my concern.’

  ***

  At the nominated time, Seamus Gilligan opened the gate. He saw a shadowy figure. He was fairly certain who it was, but he was no longer in a position to be concerned, and he couldn’t go to the authorities. He was guilty as charged of smuggling in one of Her Majesty’s prisons, involved in the aiding and abetting of convicted felons, and he knew he’d get at least five years minimum. Besides, there was his mother in Donegal. She was grey-haired and ailing and totally devoted to her son. Proudly she would tell her neighbours that Seamus was over there in England, a prison officer, a man to be respected. His transfer to the wrong side of the prison cell bars would kill her, even if the once tame Paki didn’t.

  ‘Wali, I’m here for a little loving,’ Shafi said as he entered the cell where the timid and scared terrorist was held.

  ‘Leave me alone. I’m not interested,’ Wali Hasan cried out, hoping that a guard would hear him. The only guard that could have possibly heard him, had no intention of becoming further involved.

  ‘Come on, it’s only a little thing, and if you want an easy life in here then you need a friend,’ Shafi said.

  ‘I’m not staying. They’re getting me out of here.’ Wali Hasan was in fear of his life, as well as his rear-end, and he had nowhere to turn.

  ‘Who’s getting you out of here?’ Shafi asked.

  ‘The police inspector. He said he would if I gave him some information.’

  ‘And what information would you possibly have that would cause them to let you out? You know what happens to informers in here.’

  ‘I’ll make up a story. He’ll never know, and besides, I don’t know anything.’

  ‘You were there when that idiot blew himself up, weren’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t know he was going to kill himself.’

  ‘I did the police a service,’ Mohammad Sohail Shafi bitterly said. ‘Accidently killed some gypsy crap and they bang me up in here. You’ll be in here for a long time, so you better get used to my dick up your arse.’

  ‘Leave me alone! I’m a good person. I’ve got a girlfriend,’ Wali Hasan lied, attempting to protect himself.

  ‘A girlfriend, that’s good. Then you’ll know all about screwing.’

  ‘No, she’s a good Muslim girl. We’re waiting till we get married.’ He lied again, but he was desperate.

  ‘I’m tired of this silly talk. I don’t have all night. I’ve got the soap, and you’ve got the arse. We’d better get on with it.’ Shafi, an unpleasant bear of a man with rough hands, a full beard, and bad breath, entered the cell where Wali Hasan cowered in a corner.

  ‘Ah, fresh meat,’ said Shafi. ‘You’re as pretty as I thought you were. Come here and suck my dick.’

  ‘The screws will be back soon.’

  ‘It’s been fixed. It’s you and me and a little loving.’

  Wali Hasan resisted for as long as he could, but he was frail and weak compared to a man who ensured double helpings in the prison canteen and worked out in the gym three times a week. Shafi was rough in his approach; the more Wali Hasan struggled, the more vicious he became. It was futile and, in the end, the big Pakistani was sated in his lust.

  It had taken no more than twenty minutes and, conscious of the time, the burly prisoner realised he still had one further commitment. He had to kill his reluctant, if no longer virginal, lover. It was regrettable as he would have preferred a more permanent arrangement, but there was his mother back in the home country - one thousand English pounds would go a long way. The voice at the end of the phone wanted a death and a death he would get. He had killed before. This one, pretty as he was, would not cause him undue concern.

  A nylon cord, ninety centimet
res long, taken from one of the weightlifting machines in the gym, was ideal for the purpose. Quickly, he looped it over the head of Wali Hasan, twisted it at the back of his neck and tightened. Wali, legs outstretched, clawing at the rope and emitting a weak gasping sound, lasted for thirty seconds before his body relaxed.

  Shafi then placed the body in a resting position on the bed in the cell, loosely covered it with a blanket and made his way back to his part of the prison. It would be the morning call for breakfast before any of the prison officers realised that the detainee was dead. No one would know who it was that had killed him. The cord of death would be back on the weightlifting machine before anyone visited the gym.

  He could only reflect as he made his way back to his cell that it had been a good night. Maybe prison isn’t so bad if there’s the occasional young boy for buggering, he thought.

  Seamus Gilligan saw the figure returning through the gate he had opened earlier. Closing the gate and setting the lock, he realised that it signified the end of his career and that he was as dead as the inmate in the cell probably was, although he did not attempt to check. Ten minutes later he exited the prison, location unknown, as was his future.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Wali Hasan is dead,’ the Governor of Belmarsh Prison said sheepishly as Isaac Cook entered the Governor’s office at eight in the morning. If the DCI had not been taken aback by the statement, he would have noticed a pleasant room, compared to the gloomy cell where his main hope for a breakthrough in the recent spate of bombings had been incarcerated, and where he now laid covered with a sheet. Two leather chairs, a desk with a fake walnut top, and a window that caught the morning sun, would have been an ideal place under normal circumstances to spend a couple of hours, discussing villains and crimes that the Detective Chief Inspector and Governor Harry Sheldon had dealt with over the years.

  Harry Sheldon had been in the prison service for twenty-five years. He had seen a few villains in his time. Wali Hasan had been a terrorist, although he looked like an innocent, almost a child when they had brought him in the day before. Now he was dead and he, as the Governor, was to be held responsible.

  ‘How did this happen? He was in your custody,’ DCI Cook asked bluntly.

  ‘One of the prison officers is missing,’ the Governor replied.

  ‘Are you saying a serving prison officer killed him?’

  ‘It seems unlikely.’ Sheldon knew the missing officer, and there was nothing in his profile to indicate he had the ability to commit cold-blooded murder.

  ‘Then what are you saying? An inmate?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘I need a full report. I need to know details. The identity of the prison officer, possible suspects, murder weapon, the normal information and I want it today.’ DCI Cook had the weight of Counter Terrorism Command behind him, the Governor would comply.

  ‘He was raped.’ The Governor anticipated the DCI’s reply.

  ‘Raped? What do you mean?’

  ‘He was buggered, up the arse, sodomised.’

  ‘I threatened that as a possibility to get him to talk. I said I’d throw him in the main prison if he didn’t talk.’

  ‘Did he talk?’ the Governor asked.

  ‘No, that’s why I’m back here today. I gave him a few hours to calm down, get his story together. He would still have lied through his teeth, but he was freaking out yesterday, too much nervous verbiage. It was too difficult to disseminate the truth from the lies.’

  ‘The person who raped him probably killed him as well,’ Governor Sheldon said.

  ‘Who in the prison population would be capable of rape?’

  ‘Virtually all of them. Unless they’re too old or at the receiving end in the shower block.’

  ‘And someone of strength,’ DCI Cook added. ‘Hasan would have put up a fight.’

  ‘Not much of a fight. He was skinny, almost undernourished. Of course, it would have needed some strength to strangle him.

  ‘DNA, you must have some DNA?’ DCI Cook asked.

  ‘Yes, your forensics people are checking the crime scene, and we do have samples from everyone in the prison,’ the Governor confirmed.

  ***

  Literate, street smart, able to calculate a good deal on the buying and selling of drugs on the street – the concept of forensic science baffled Mohammad Sohail Shafi. He had been born in Pakistan, schooled there until his eighth year when his parents, as with so many others, had made the trip to England. At the age of fourteen, he had decided that school and his burgeoning business enterprise of selling ganja, or marijuana, to the teens at the local youth clubs were no longer compatible. What could a school give him? A job in a supermarket packing shelves earning a hundred pounds a week? Here he was, pulling in well over a thousand.

  Rasta Joe, a slick sixteen-year-old Jamaican with dreadlocks, supplied the drugs.

  ‘It’s betta dan wha yuh can buy pond de street inna Kingston, man,’ he said in his peculiar and endearing Jamaican Patwa.

  Shafi could never understand why Kingston upon Thames, a suburb of London, would be a place for good-quality drugs, but then, leaving school young and not taking much notice, he did not realise that Rasta Joe’s Kingston was the capital of Jamaica. All Shafi needed to do was divide the drug up into smaller packages and sell it around his area. A Jamaican Yardie would never venture where he traded, and Shafi never ventured into his turf. It was a good arrangement – and, he had to admit, he quite liked the black Jamaican, although he would never admit it to any of his Muslim friends.

  Rasta Joe didn’t last long. He cheated some Turks, sold them some low-grade weed and received a knife to the gut. Shafi, after that, a veteran at sixteen, bought and sold drugs in much the same way as Rasta Joe. He also dabbled in the occasional stolen car – a quick respray, file the engine block numbers off, stamp some others on, falsify the log book and sell for a bargain price, no questions asked. It was drugs mainly, but he made sure if he struck a deal, he kept to it. He’d seen the Jamaican’s body after the knife, and he didn’t want to end up in the gutter face-down, like Rasta Joe.

  Shafi killed his first man at nineteen, a fist fight over a couple of Romanian prostitutes he was pimping. The man, an Egyptian, wanted a refund after the second tart had refused him a blowjob on account of the severe rash on his testicles.

  ‘No way I’m going near him,’ she said, although the first woman, fresh out of the container that had transported her to London via Dover and Calais, had complied. She had been more desperate and in need of some cash to feed her heroin habit.

  The Egyptian was threatening to knife the other prostitute, and Shafi had to intervene. He had no objection to the girls being roughed up as long as the customer paid for the privilege, but it had to be minor and not visible. If the girls couldn’t lie on their backs or get down on their knees, he was losing money.

  ‘Leave the girl alone,’ Shafi shouted as he pulled back the curtain that separated the cubicles in the one-bedroom flat on the ground floor of a depressing tenement block. The building should have been condemned but wasn’t due to all the pimps clubbing together and paying off the building inspector at the local council to turn a blind eye.

  ‘She won’t go down on me,’ the Egyptian, a degenerate, obese man of indeterminate age, said. ‘My money’s as good as anyone else’s.’

  ‘If she won’t, she won’t,’ shouted Shafi. ‘And if you harm her, I’ll harm you. Do you understand?’

  ‘I want what I paid for,’ said the Egyptian incensed, with a hard-on due to the double dose of Viagra he’d taken before he had paid his money to Shafi.

  ‘I’ll give you some of the money back.’

  ‘I want all my money back, or I’ll be back with some of my friends, and they’ll fuck both of them for free, and maybe you as well,’ the Egyptian threatened.

  ‘No, you won’t.’ Shafi did not respond to idle threats. ‘Besides, you don’t have any friends. And what are you going to tell them down at
the Mosque? That you’re screwing Eastern European tarts with the money you should be sending back to your family in Egypt? Get real, man. You’ve had your money’s worth. Just leave.’

  ‘Okay, I won’t bring my friends, but I want all my money back.’

  ‘I’ll give you half. One of my girls gave you a blow job, so that’s half the service provided.’ Shafi didn’t want trouble. They were bringing in good money. Besides, he’d be able to screw them at the end of the day free of charge if he looked after them now.

  ‘You’re cheating me! I’ll get you for this.’ The Egyptian, an aggressive man, inflamed with an unsatisfied passion, a penis standing to attention, and a deflated ego because a stupid tart did not want the benefit of his inimitable style of lovemaking, lunged forward with a stiletto blade. It had been concealed in the inside pocket of the heavy jacket that he had put to one side on a chair.

  Shafi, adept at dodging a knife blade, stepped to one side. The blade harmlessly pierced the sofa that one of the girls was sitting on. Angered, and concerned that a primary asset had nearly received a knife in her shoulder, he grabbed the blade from the hand of the Egyptian and thrust it straight through his rib cage, just below the heart. Two minutes later, the Egyptian was dead, five minutes later, Shafi and the women had exited the flat, never to return. Three weeks later, the police arrived on a tip-off and found the decaying body covered in lice and vermin. Nobody knew when or what had happened. The other pimps and tarts in the building had left not long after the killing. It was to remain an unsolved murder and Mohammad Sohail Shafi’s first killing.

  In time, there were more drug deals, the occasional angry customer, but no more women. Protecting them from the violent and depraved was too much work, and keeping up with their invariably severe cases of drug addiction, too costly, although the pretty ones had made a welcome diversion on a cold night.