by Menon, David
‘Just stop, will you?’ Luca appealed. ‘Just fucking stop.’.
‘I’m going to go through every bloody room in this place until I find what belongs to me’.
‘You don’t need to do that’ said Luca who was lucid enough to have thought of a plan. ‘I’ll give it to you but it’s not in here. Follow me back into the kitchen area’.
Howard did as he’d been asked and once he’d got round to the kitchen part of the large open plan living space that included Luca’s lounge and dining table, he wanted to know where the file was. He was standing behind Luca and didn’t expect him to pull a knife on him.
‘Hey, hey, hey’ said Howard, his arms raised and his eyes flitting between the knife and Luca’s face. Luca was keeping the sharp point of the knife just about half a dozen millimetres away from Howard’s throat. ‘No need for this’.
‘No need for you to have attacked me’.
‘I was desperate’ said Howard. ‘Surely you can see that’.
Luca manoeuvred Howard round, using the knife as a threat, so that he was able to close the door between the room and the hallway. His back was now against the door and Howard was looking like sheer terror was coursing through his veins.
‘There’s only one way out for you now and that’s over the balcony’ said Luca, gesturing to the French windows. ‘But we’re eight floors up so I don’t recommend it’.
‘You’re playing with fire, young man, fire that will burn way out of your control’.
‘That’s as may be’ said Luca. ‘But my mother was killed in the Piccadilly station bombing and I want to know what you know about that’.
‘How do you think I could know anything about that?’
‘Don’t treat me as if I’m fucking stupid! I saw that file and I could see that it had the plan for the bombing written all over it. So, what is it you know, Howard?’
‘I’ll tell you if you put the knife down’.
‘No way’.
‘Well then you won’t get the answer to your question’.
‘Don’t try it with me, Howard. I lost my mother and I’d see killing you as some kind of natural justice. Are you ready to die, Howard? Are you ready to pay for your sins?’
‘I didn’t have anything to do with the bombing, Luca, I swear!’
‘And I don’t believe you’ said Luca who could now see clearly the sweat of fear covering Howard’s face. He didn’t like being on the receiving end. He didn’t like being the one in a situation who was without power. ‘I want to know it all, Howard. Every single detail’.
Without taking his eyes off Howard, Luca deftly took his mobile out of his pocket and dialled Adrian Bradshaw’s number. When Adrian answered, Luca said that Howard Phelps had attacked him in his flat but was now ready to make a full statement to the police over the relevance of the file written in Hebrew that was now in their possession. Luca watched Howard’s face crumble like a building that had just been detonated.
‘What’s going on, Luca?’ asked Adrian, nervously.
‘You’re going to hear it all, detective’ said Luca who then placed the phone on the table and pressed the green button. ‘And you’re now on speaker phone so you can take down everything he says. And don’t worry, I’ll keep him here until you get here’.
‘I’m being held here against my will’ Howard declared.
‘No, you’re not’ said Luca. ‘I’ve made a citizens’ arrest after you attacked me in my home and trashed my bedroom’.
Adrian’s voice then came crackling through the phone speaker. ‘Mr. Phelps? I’m Detective Sergeant Bradshaw of the serious crimes unit. Do you have anything to say?’
‘Go to hell’
‘Mr. Phelps, why were you in possession of those files in Hebrew? We’ve had them translated and they point to every detail of the bombing and every person who was involved in its planning and execution. You are one of those names, Mr. Phelps, in fact, you’re near the top of the list of those involved. Mr. Phelps?’
‘I have absolutely nothing to say’.
‘Then I’m coming down there with reinforcements’ said Adrian. ‘Luca? We’ll be about five minutes’. And then the line went dead.
‘You heard the man’ said Luca. ‘You’re going to get what’s coming to you’.
‘How did you know that policeman? Is he a client of yours?’
‘He’s a friend of mine’.
‘A friend? That’s sweet’.
‘Shut the fuck up’.
‘What? Only a minute ago you were wanting me to talk’.
‘I suppose it’s easy to play the big man when you’ve made millions out of other people’s misery’ said Luca. He’d had enough of this. He wasn’t going to just let this sad excuse for a man have it all his own way before the police arrived.
‘Oh I think that every time you take cash for sex you’re swimming in the same pond that you think I’m swimming about in’.
‘There’s no comparison! I take cash so that sad fuckers like you can get what they can’t get at home and nobody dies in the process. You make millions out of the slaughter of innocent men, women, and children so I’d say I was a saint compared to you. I mean, how does it feel at night to know that children are dead because of you and your arms dealing?’
‘Ah shove your bleeding heart where the sun don’t shine!’
‘And that you’re using British taxpayers money to get business and make money for yourself and your boyfriend! Oh but I’m not supposed to know that, am I?’
‘Shut your stupid, fucking little mouth’.
‘Oh I love it when people with a posh accent swear. It sounds so ridiculous’.
Howard really had heard enough. It was getting to be that you couldn’t put the frighteners on some stupid little rent boy these days without them trying to act like their cock is bigger than yours. ‘I’m going to make a break for it’.
‘I don’t think so’.
‘Are you really going to stop me? Have you really got what it takes to stop me from getting out of here before the police arrive? Have you?’
‘If you think goading me is going to work then think again’.
Howard did make a break for it. But Luca was too young, fit, and agile for him.
When Adrian and his team of uniformed officers arrived moments later they found Howard Phelps lying on the kitchen floor with blood pouring out of several wounds. The murder weapon, a large kitchen knife, was still embedded in his chest.
And Luca was nowhere to be seen.
*
Nina Barry knew the end was nigh when she took a frantic call from her husband who was at the police station after being taken in for questioning. He told her that they’d called just after she’d left for work with a search warrant for the premises. They’d wanted to know why Ehud and Benyamin Goldstein had been at the house earlier that week on an evening when Colin had been at a work’s dinner. He was frantic. The police must’ve got it all wrong. How could the two most wanted men in Manchester have been at their house?
Nina hung up, cursing. How the fuck had the police known that Ehud and Benyamin Goldstein had been at her house? There was only one man she could talk to now and whatever he was doing he was going to have to see her.
*
‘So?’ said Sara. ‘Did your wife give you any clue as to what she was doing with two alleged mass murderers?’
‘No’ said Colin Barry from the other side of the table in the interview room. ‘Because there isn’t anything. Look, why am I here? Why are you searching my house?’
‘We’ve already told you that, Mr. Barry’ said Sara.
‘And I’ve already told you that there must’ve been some mistake!’
‘Mr. Barry, there’s your wife opening the door for Solomon Levy, and there’s Ehud and Benyamin Goldstein entering your house’ said Sara. ‘It couldn’t be any clearer unless it had been broad daylight’.
Colin Barry leaned his elbows on the desk and put his face in his hands. ‘None of this makes any sense t
o me, detective. I swear it doesn’t’.
‘Mr. Barry, these are more pictures of your house guests Ehud and Benyamin Goldstein’ she said as she laid them out on the table. ‘And here’s one of the lawyer Solomon Levy. These were taken last night’.
‘I went out for a drink with my brother last night’ said Colin.
‘And I’m sure you had a lovely evening but the thing is, we have pictures of the Goldstein brothers leaving, but not of Solomon Levy. Do you know why that is, Mr. Barry?’
Colin was distraught. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know about any of this. You’ve got to believe me!’
‘Mr. Barry, has your wife ever been to Israel?’
‘Israel? Well yes, she has’.
‘And when was this?’
‘Well we go every year to see her family out there’.
‘And when she was there did she go off and meet people by herself?’
Colin paused. ‘Well, yes, she did. Look, what does that prove exactly?’
‘We don’t know yet’ said Sara. ‘But we aim to find out’.
*
Nina drove down the motorway as far as Crewe and then she left her car in a car park behind the train station. She took some cash out of a cash point on the main street and then she went into the station and bought a ticket for London Euston. Three quarter bottles of red wine later she walked through Euston trying not to look like she was looking out for any police who may be watching all inbound trains from the northwest. As it was they were looking and she considered herself lucky that she was able to get through and onto the underground. She bought a zone 1 ticket and headed for Westminster. She breathed a sigh of relief that she’d got that far.
At the block of offices across the road from the Houses of Parliament where most MPs had their Westminster base, security was handled by a private firm who wouldn’t know or care less if you were the Queen or Myra Hindley but Nina couldn’t risk being seen in such a high profile place so she texted Craig and asked him to meet her at the nearby flat he shared with three other northwest Labour MP’s. It was only three in the afternoon and his flatmates would all be in the house doing something or other but she’d still be careful in case the place was being watched. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling to know that you were hunted.
‘Have you told the police I was coming here?’ she asked.
‘No’ Craig answered. ‘Do you want some tea or coffee?’
‘No, I won’t, thanks’.
‘Nina, why do the police want to question you?’
Nina thought it was a fairly small room given that the flat overall was quite large with its four bedrooms and two bathrooms, but the architect must’ve just run out of adequate space when it came to the living room. It was on the fourth floor and through the window Nina could clearly see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, and beyond that the modern dynamic of the London Eye. If things had been different she might’ve settled in London one day. She’d always liked it.
‘Well now, there’s a story’ Nina answered.
‘You don’t look so good’ said Craig. ‘I’ve cancelled my Select Committee meeting at four. Nina, the police are looking for you everywhere. They’ve been to the constituency office. What’s going on?’
‘I want you to know, Craig, that this has been nothing personal’ Nina began. ‘I like you. I always have and whether you believe it or not I’ve always valued our friendship’.
‘So why did you stab me in the back?’
‘I had a mission to fulfil’ she declared. ‘I was told to steer you away from any kind of sympathetic viewpoint towards Muslims. That’s why I wanted you to vote against the building of the mosque. The aim was to stir anti-Muslim feeling in the community so that our job would look more credible’.
‘Whose bloody job?’
‘I work for Mossad’ admitted Nina.
‘The Israeli intelligence service?’
‘That’s them. I was recruited a few years ago just before I started working for the Labour party. They said they wanted people to act for them across the world and that included the United Kingdom. I agreed and within six months of working for the Labour party I’d leapfrogged two other people in the office for promotion. I knew they had influence everywhere and that I would go right to the top of the party if I helped them’.
‘In return for?’
‘A lifetime of helping the state of Israel defend itself’.
‘You make it sound like it’s such an inconsequential thing’
‘It is in a way’.
‘So did you know Ehud and Benyamin Goldstein?’
‘I was their handler’.
‘Was?’
‘It looks like we’ve lost this particular battle because of DCI Sara Hoyland who is much too good a police officer and has sniffed us out. The mission has now been abandoned’.
‘So you were behind the attempt on the life of Jacob Abrahams and the murder of the student who got caught up in that? Plus the murders of Melanie Sanders, Robert Jackson, the two security guards, and James Henderson? Not to mention what your friends put Jackson and Henderson through before they died?’
Nina smiled. ‘That is correct but you’d have a very hard job proving it’.
‘You disgust me’.
‘That’s your perspective’.
‘You disgust me that you stand there and calmly admit to organising murder’.
‘My people have been murdered throughout history and ... ‘
‘ ... oh don’t start on that one. So have many others but they don’t carry on a fight that is alleged to have started three thousand years ago!’
‘What can I say? We bare grudges better and longer than others’.
‘I didn’t even know you were Jewish’.
‘I’ve been discreet for obvious reasons’.
‘So part of your grudge involved me?’
‘We need to spread the word of Zionism. Our friends in the Christian Zionists in the US have been extremely helpful to us in providing money to build the settlements on the West Bank, allowing so many more Jews to come to Israel’.
‘And live in illegally occupied land!’
‘I’ll ignore that for the sake of time’ said Nina. ‘But they also needed help to identify Tory candidates who would be sympathetic to our Zionist cause so that we could truly influence government policy here in our favour. We have to win no matter what happens to the Palestinians and by inciting hatred against Muslims everywhere we could far more credibly put the Palestinians in with them and paint them all as terrorists’.
Craig was lost for words. ‘I am ... well I’ve gone beyond disgust. You used all those people who died in the Piccadilly station bombing just so you could include the Palestinians in the blame game against all Muslims’.
‘Again, spot on but difficult to prove’ said Nina. ‘Israel doesn’t want peace it wants land. Whenever there’s a whiff of unity amongst the Palestinians then we will carefully orchestrate attacks that can be put down to the terrorist organisation Hamas so that we then have an excuse not to conclude a peace deal. It suits us so much better to keep the Palestinians divided and nobody in the international community, especially not America, will ever challenge us on it. Now coming back to you - your seat had to go to make way for two sympathetic Tories’.
‘So in the guise of working for the Labour party you’re really helping the Tories?’
‘That’s been part of my mission, yes’.
‘You’ve been assisting a foreign power to use its intelligence service to operate in this country?’
‘And I’d do it all over again for the state of Israel’.
‘You’re responsible for the abduction, torture, and murder of British citizens on British soil!’
‘Alright, alright, but once I got involved I couldn’t just resign and hope they’d give me a good reference’ Nina retorted. ‘I had no choice. I was with them or I was their enemy’.
‘And who was handling Faisal Hussein and his cohorts?’
‘A
section of British intelligence we’d managed to infiltrate’ said Nina. ‘They formed the surveillance unit on Hussein and his friends which meant they could carry out the bombing despite being under surveillance. But what Hussein never knew was that his friends were all agents of Mossad and they were the ones who killed his wife and son. Hussein had grown suspicious which is why he had to be silenced once the bombing had been carried out. We wanted to stir up such a fury of anti-Muslim feeling in the city that when our ultimate target was eliminated nobody in the city would doubt that it had been Islamic extremists who’d carried it out which would reinforce our case against them back home in Israel’.
‘Ultimate target?’
‘President Obama. He’s too willing to see the justice of the Palestinian case and we can’t allow that. We must monopolise world sympathy for our cause and nobody else’s’.
‘You were going to assassinate the President when he came to Manchester?’
‘Yes’.
Craig sat down before he fell down.
‘It’s a lot to take in, I know’ said Nina.
‘And why are you telling me?’
‘I told you before that I’d always liked you and I wanted to explain’ said Nina. ‘If you choose to betray me it won’t matter because I’ll be long gone and out of reach. And anyway, who would believe you? Israel has just been defending itself against all our nasty terrorist enemies. Israel doesn’t want peace, Craig. It wants land. And it wants all of that land cleansed of anyone who isn’t Jewish’.
‘No matter how it’s done or who gets killed in the process?’
Nina shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s war’.
‘War that you’ve manipulated for your own ends!’
‘Look Craig, Israel will never be held to account for war crimes or for the general way we treat the Palestinians. And do you know why? Because Mossad does the dirty work of all the western intelligence services’.
‘Er, say that again?’
