Driving into Darkness (DI Angus Henderson 2)

by Iain Cameron

  At two, Maria showed William Lawton into the room. They shook hands and chatted about the weather and the general state of the economy for a few minutes before Maria returned with a tray of coffee and biscuits and departed, closing the door behind her.

  Green picked up his cup and sat back in the chair. ‘So Mr Lawton, what did you want to see me about?’

  At a touch over six foot, Green towered over most people, the bald head giving the impression he was taller still, which was just the way he liked it. Lawton only came up to his chin and while his tubby demeanour might lose him a point or two in the prominence score, he was impressed by the hand-made suit, tailored shirt, silk tie and snazzy leather shoes. All the same, he expected nothing less from the Managing Director of a jewel of a business, as he believed if the corporate world did not feather the nest of their senior management, what the hell was the point?

  ‘You may have read in the business press, Mr Green,’ Lawton said in a measured way, ‘Sir Mathew Markham retired from the company over a year ago, but perhaps you didn’t know that he now intends to sell all his interests in Markham Microprocessors. In order not to cause an unseemly rush to the altar, as he would call it, he decided not to put the company up for sale in a public auction, but to flush out all those companies with the necessary where-with-all and invite them to make a bid.’

  Green re-filled his cup and added a little skimmed milk. Lawton’s dapper red-framed glasses and modern hair style made him think he was dealing with an East End bond salesman or a glib poker shark, but his speech was articulate and precise. ‘I’m following you so far.’

  ‘Good. To date, eleven companies have shown their cards but none have met Sir Mathew’s criteria. Now, there’s been another little twist in this tale.’

  ‘Do tell. I like twists.’

  ‘Sir Mathew has been in talks with some Koreans and I believe if no action is taken soon, the deal will be done and dusted and they will become the new owners of the business.’

  ‘Tsk, tsk that was naughty of him.’

  Lawton started banging on about how the Koreans would be bad for employees, suppliers, and anyone else connected with the company, but Green had been around long enough to know self-interest was playing a big part here and Lawton was fearful of his own position. He wasn’t without sympathy as he would feel the same antagonism towards his employer if he were sitting in William Lawton’s expensive shoes.

  Green put his cup and saucer on the table. ‘What you've said is all very interesting, Mr Lawton and I must say, it’s a difficult situation you find yourself in, but I fail to see how this could be of any interest to me.’

  ‘Ah, but it will be Mr Green, you’ll see. As a result of Sir Mathew’s actions in talking to the Koreans, I intend to put together a consortium to buy the company from under their noses. My aim is to have a group of five or six big hitters who can raise the necessary capital to make Mathew an offer he would be stupid to refuse. I’m here because I would like you to become a member of this consortium.’

  Green stroked his chin, a habit that surfaced whenever he was thinking seriously about something, and not shooting from the hip as he often did. ‘I’m flattered that you would think of me but I know nothing about your business and I have to tell you, I never put money into something I don’t understand.’

  ‘The inner workings of the microprocessor industry are a mystery to most people, Mr Green. If I may, I’d like to tell you something few people know about and which will, I’m sure, change your perception of what we are talking about here and help you appreciate the scale of this opportunity.’

  Words like ‘electronics’ and ‘microprocessors’ were an anathema to him, but words like ‘scale’ and ‘opportunity’ succeeded in piquing his interest. This discussion was starting to warm him even better than the fire. ‘Call me Dominic,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Dominic and please call me William. Now, you may think Markham Microprocessors is a fine company in its own right and one in which you would be wise to invest, and you’d be right. In fact, if you’d bought one hundred pounds worth of shares two years ago, they would be valued at almost six times as much now, and if this isn’t enough to tempt you, this might.’

  Lawton shifted to the edge of his seat.

  ‘What I’m going to tell you Dominic is top secret, none of the other bidders know anything about this yet, and it’s the main reason why Sir Mathew didn’t want an all-out sale. When you realise what this means, it will enable our consortium to bid higher than anyone else, safe in the knowledge that we can reap rich rewards for our boldness.’

  Like a poker player about to play a trump card, Lawton paused before placing his triumphant winning hand on the table.

  ‘We have developed a new enhancement to battery technology which will wipe the floor with every existing battery solution.’ He pulled out his phone, one of the latest smart phones and one of the things Green detested. Time robbers he called them. To Green, who only used a basic mobile for making and receiving calls, it looked like a small computer and the sort of thing Spike, his fixer and fully-qualified hard-nut, spent all his time playing with when he wasn’t bashing people’s heads in.

  ‘This is the latest Apple iPhone, courtesy of the company and not available yet but it has all the latest gismos you would expect, like web access, video replay, emails, video calls and so on, but the battery will only last ten hours during normal use and perhaps three hundred hours when it’s on standby doing nothing. In addition, all battery operated devices lose power even if they're not being used and the ability to recharge the battery diminishes over time, so after three or four years, they’re dead and need replacing.’

  ‘Humph,’ Green said with obvious disdain. If he had his way, the batteries would last no more than fifteen minutes and they would be incapable of being replaced. It would stop the obsession people had for looking at their phones and ignoring the person sitting beside them, behaviour he noticed was becoming more prevalent, particularly amongst women.

  ‘We have developed a completely new technology that will change battery use forever. All around us, even as we sit here in your fine drawing room, are radio waves generated by a whole range of equipment, such as radio and TV transmitters, your home Wi-Fi network, garage door openers, Wi-Fi hot spots at airports and coffee bars, all manner of things.’

  ‘If we could see them,’ Lawton continued, ‘we wouldn’t be able to see over to the fireplace in this room or to the garage outside the window because they are so numerous and all pervasive. These waves are carried on small amounts of energy and some clever people in our labs have found a way to collect this energy, suck it into the phone, and convert it into low-voltage electricity that will keep the battery fully charged all the time.’

  ‘What a bloody ingenious idea,’ he said. He was a keen reader of science fiction, in particular the novels of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov and loved whacky, left of field ideas. ‘But why bother with a battery at all? Why not use radio waves to power the phone directly? Cut out the middle man, as it were.’

  ‘A very good question Dominic and one we debated long and hard in our development meetings. We decided to opt for the battery-based solution, as even though our new device absorbs radio waves from all directions and squirts electricity out in a nice, even flow, it will be retained for those times when a user is in a remote place with little or no radio wave activity around them. I’m thinking here of a beach in the Caribbean or a secluded hillside in Scotland.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said.

  ‘Now that I've explained the technology side, let me tell how it will impact our business. The battery companies are not going to like it, hence we are making strident efforts to keep it a secret and therefore I don’t advise you to buy any shares in their businesses in near future.’ A rare smile creased his face. ‘To prevent copies and industrial espionage, we will manufacture the device ourselves and license the technology to one or two other microprocessor chip makers.’

  He st
opped for a few moments and drained his coffee cup. Green leaned over to refill it.

  ‘When it’s released, I can see this tiny device being incorporated into every phone, laptop, satnav, and ereader, every mobile device on the planet. I’m telling you Dominic, it will revolutionise the electronics world and the way we use mobile devices. For Markham, the effects will be massive. We will make millions, hundreds of millions.’

  The thought of millions absorbed his thoughts for a few seconds before he spoke. ‘Two questions. The first is, did you think this idea up all by yourselves or could you find, sometime in the future, half a dozen companies filing patent infringement law suits against you?’

  ‘The basic outline was dreamed up by a maverick radio genius called Gary Larner, but all the practical development work was done by the team at Markham, led by two brilliant engineers, Marta Stevenson and Sanjay Singh.’

  ‘I take it they are, and will be well compensated for their efforts.’

  ‘Yes indeed. We look after our key employees.’

  ‘What of your clever radio engineer, Gary Larner? Is he still part of the set-up?’

  ‘No. He no longer works for the company.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He had a bit of a breakdown and went crazy for a while, so we were forced to let him go. In truth, it was just what the project needed, as he was going nowhere with it and only when Marta and her team picked it up, did we see any progress.’

  ‘Was he sacked or did you pay him off?’

  ‘The latter. He and his assistant received a generous pay-off.’

  ‘Is it likely they will cause trouble?’

  ‘Oh no, not at all. It’s all done and dusted now.’

  Green looked at his face. This was an important point and he had to make sure Lawton wasn’t telling him porkies. Bad things happened to people who told lies to Dominic Green.

  ‘Fine. My second question is, how well developed is this technology? I mean, if it was up and running, I’m sure you would have brought along a working model to show me.’

  ‘You’re quite right. At the start of this month, all we had were drawings and computer models but last week we had a major breakthrough. We’ve built a prototype and the great news is, it actually works.’

  SEVENTEEN

  The squad room on the first floor of Hackney Police Station was bursting at the seams. DI Henderson and DS Walters couldn’t find a seat, so they stood at the back to listen to the briefing.

  It was being conducted by Detective Inspector Gary Wallis, a gung-ho, ‘lead from the front’ type, a description often used by Henderson’s brother Archie to describe some of his commanding officers in Afghanistan. When he mentioned this to DS Billy Hardcastle, Henderson’s contact in the Metropolitan Police, he was told Wallis was a former member of the Parachute Regiment but a number of years ago, left the Army to join the police after receiving a bad shrapnel wound in his right leg.

  Henderson and Walters were in London only as observers as there was no question in Henderson’s mind or that of Inspector Wallis, this was a Met operation since the garage that was pinpointed by the surveillance team was very much on their patch.

  The Sussex officers were there as the car thieving gang had put five local residents in hospital, including one still in a coma with a fractured skull and Henderson felt responsible all the time this gang hadn’t been apprehended. It was a difficult situation for them because if any of the Met officers were injured, they would receive flak for calling the raid but with no influence as how it would be conducted.

  It was all thanks to Billy Hardcastle they were there at all, as he had taken a greater interest in the case than they might have expected. Not only did he set up a small team to do the legwork around the area where they thought the chilled foods van disappeared, he used some of his people to pose as telephone engineers and rig up surveillance cameras across the road from the four possible sites that had been identified.

  They struck gold two days ago when a Jaguar XK-R Coupe was stolen from a house in West Grinstead and Billy’s cameras spotted it being unloaded from the chilled foods van at 3:45am, outside a dilapidated building, formerly a furniture wholesaler, in Pritchard’s Road. However, it was not good news for the car owner, as in line with the gang’s trend of escalating violence, he was beaten unconscious.

  Wallis decided against a night raid, despite the obvious attractions, as he believed and Henderson concurred, there was a good chance the car they nicked last night was still in the garage and if left any longer, it would be moved to another location. He also said, he hoped no one would be naive enough to believe they would find the big bosses sitting around drinking tea and reading car magazines when they all piled in, but grabbing a mechanic or an electronics expert would put a big spanner in their operation and with a bit of luck, could lead to the top dogs as well.

  Unlike similar operations mounted by Henderson in Sussex, many of Wallis’s officers were armed. It was a tough call and one Henderson would not have made, as the car thieving gang had used only boots and sledgehammers and not once had they deployed or threatened to use guns. However, the occupants of the garage could well be from a different gang and DI Wallis knew this part of London better than he did and Henderson had no option but to keep his mouth shut and defer to his more considered judgement.

  To his surprise, Wallis then asked Henderson to come up and say a few words. He didn’t mind speaking in public, but would have preferred a little more notice, as he liked to be well prepared and well rehearsed when making speeches at places like this or at press conferences. In the short walk to the front of the room, he was racking his brains, searching for something useful to say that hadn’t been said already by Wallis.

  ‘Good afternoon everyone,’ he said, looking around at all the inquisitive expressions. ‘I am Detective Inspector Angus Henderson of Sussex Police and my colleague, standing at the back, is Detective Sergeant Carol Walters. Take a good look at our faces, as I don’t want any of you arresting us or shooting us by mistake.’ The laughter sounded easy but lingering behind he could feel the tension.

  ‘I have no idea the kind of the people we might meet inside the garage, as my intelligence suggests the car thieving gang we are chasing are delivery boys, and the people today are likely to come from some other crew. The gang operating in Sussex have been responsible for a number of vicious attacks on innocent householders, gratuitous some might say as several car owners were beaten, even after they handed over their car keys, but I do stress neither guns nor knives were used. It just leaves me to say, good luck to everyone and I hope and trust this raid is a complete success.’

  Henderson returned to his former position to polite but muted applause. Wallis make a few closing comments, dropping the ‘Brigadier addressing the troops’ tone and replacing it with a more street-based jocularity, as he wished everyone happy hunting and a safe return.

  It was pleasing to see none of the sour faces that ended some of his briefings, when he asked them to head out into a cold, miserable night to take over the surveillance of a warehouse where drugs were being stored, or to drive into a run-down estate and arrest a suspect. This lot were joking and smiling and despite the anxiety attached to any job of this nature, he was sure many of them regarded this as a cushy number.

  They caught a lift to the rendezvous in the back of a grubby Ford Mondeo. It would have been acceptable in Sussex as a pool car, but he expected more from the Met’s Stolen Vehicles Unit, they had to have better cars than this in their garage. Hardcastle sat behind the wheel and unlike the deep, sensuous voice on the telephone, giving Walters the impression she was dealing with the English Antonio Banderas, he was small, rotund, mid-forties with a large bald patch on the crown of his head and a squashed, fat nose that had been punched too often, and he suspected not all in the line of duty.

  In the passenger seat, Hardcastle’s companion was a taciturn Geordie by the name of Adam Ledbetter, about whom they were told, would make a better
car thief than the people they were chasing as he knew every trick in the book. However, Henderson suspected the main reason for his inclusion in the raiding party was not for his under-the-bonnet skills, but intimidation value as he was a giant of a man and as a result Walters, sitting behind him, could only see out of the car’s side windows.

  Not that there was much to see. It was five-thirty on a damp Wednesday afternoon at the end of April, a long month without a break as Easter was early this year and memories of Christmas were long forgotten even if the bills were not. Local streets which no doubt looked fine on a good day, were depressing in the pissing rain, with shoppers scurrying from shop to shop under broken umbrellas, cars splashing long queues at bus stops, and the tops of high-rise flats hidden under thick, grey clouds.

  They turned off Pritchard’s Road into a side street. They exited the vehicles and a large group of fourteen officers made their way up the road to the garage without further conversation. Henderson and Walters were bringing up the rear, in part due to their lowly status as observers, but also to avoid being clobbered by something solid, as the Met team were wearing stab-proof vests and helmets with anti-spray visors, carrying door bangers and riot shields, and armed with side-handled batons and Heckler & Koch carbines.

  Wallis emphasised in the briefing it was not the ideal place for indiscriminate fire, as they were heading into a small area where a number of their own people would be, and Henderson hoped they had all been listening. Their instructions were only to fire if they were fired upon first and the moment guns were raised, neither Henderson nor Walters needed telling twice that both of them would make friends with the floor.