Waging War To Shake The Cold

by Wild Wolf Publishing

  When he couldn’t find them he’d have to call out the rescue services to get into his car. That was the problem with Porsches; they were a bitch to break into without leaving them in such a state that they had to go back to a dealership. The rescue service would take ages to get there and a fair while to get the job done when they did.

  Kats smiled. He’d have a few hours at least to turn over Nick’s flat. More than enough time.

  The van was parked a few blocks away and Kats reached it in no time. He started it up and pulled smoothly into the traffic heading for the City centre. He was feeling fine and in control.

  He'd already sussed out Nick’s locale yesterday with Badger’s help, so he knew exactly where he was going, where he would park, and how to get to the flat quickly and unobtrusively from the car.

  As long as he didn’t run into anyone on the stairs or the landing, this was all going to be straightforward. He quickly found the key to the external security door and then made his way up to the third floor in long loping strides, going up the stairs three at a time. The stairway was carpeted so he made no noise and met no-one.

  His biggest worry was the alarm. Not that the neighbours would come to see what was going on, they never do, but just in case it was linked to the local police station. The likelihood was it wouldn’t be as it was a private home, but it was still a risk and he knew it.

  The other issue was of course that if the alarm was blaring when he eventually got back, Nick would know immediately that his house had been turned over no matter how careful Kats was when he was inside.

  He wasn’t ready to give Nick a sign, not yet, so he fretted about the alarm until the key was in the lock and turning… and then it didn’t matter. He was inside and there was no warning beeps counting down to a wailing siren. The idiot must have forgotten to set it.

  He stood just inside the door and appraised the flat.

  Nice. Very nice.

  Big open plan room on two levels with a glorious view of the City from the large window. He could see the adjoining kitchen and assumed, rightly, that the door leading off from the far side was to a dining room.

  There was an open door opposite him and he could see the corner of a bed and there were several other doors, all closed, spread around the rest of the room.

  Kats took in the scene. He wanted to make sure he left no disturbance, so he took time to memorise the position and aspect of each piece of furniture and fitting. When he was ready he went inside proper.

  On a table in the lounge were a number of magazines, mostly business, a few car mags and a copy of the forthcoming programme for The Kings Theatre.

  Likes a bit of kulchur does he?

  He didn’t touch anything but moved quietly and slowly, appraising the owner through his possessions: some nice prints on the wall; leather suite with recliners; top of the line kitchen equipment that looked as though it was well used; wooden floor, polished to perfection; typical bloke’s place, big on utility, light on frills; very neat and tidy so he obviously had a cleaner, but it looked like he clearly liked it that way; everything in its place and a place for everything.

  There was a full wine rack in the kitchen and Kats looked at it, marvelling that someone could keep that much drink, unopened, in his house at any one time. Everyone he knew would just drink the lot as soon as it was bought. He pulled out a few bottles. All of them looked expensive, mainly because the labels were all in French.

  “Poof juice,” he said with a smile. Even though he liked wine himself these days, it was mostly New World varieties and so it was hard to break the working-class delineation of fine wine being a snob’s or softie’s drink.

  Ironically, like most kids from the schemes, his first experience of alcohol was with wine. Buckfast Tonic Wine to be specific, made by the good monks of Buckfast Abbey in Devon. A wee bottle of “Who You Lookin’ At” to its many devotees; or just plain old “Buckie”.

  He’d once been to Torquay and taken the tour to Buckfast Abbey. The front two rows of the bus were occupied by bewildered pensioners whilst the rest was filled with neds from Glasgow and Lanarkshire, singing sectarian football songs and flashing their arses at everyone who passed by.

  He took a pair of cotton gloves from his pocket and slipped them on. The first door he tried was a storage cupboard. The second opened to reveal what he had come for: Nick’s home office.

  On the desk were a bunch of business papers and a laptop. Kats fired up the machine but knew instinctively it would be secured; Nick surely couldn’t be that dumb.

  The same was true about the business papers, just miscellaneous letters and contract documents. Again, he was hardly surprised. What he wanted was bound to be hidden, or at least kept away from the prying eyes of the cleaner. He carefully slid out each drawer of the desk and went through the contents, replacing them exactly as he’d found them.

  When that search turned up nothing of interest he started to feel on the underside of the drawers in the desk unit itself. Above the bottom drawer he found a ledge and on that an A4 file. He pulled it out and opened it carefully.

  “Bingo.”

  He started to leaf through the various papers… company formation documents which he didn’t understand… trading statements which he also did not understand… certificates of incorporation…. it was all gobbledegook.

  Kats sighed, wishing Badger was with him as he seemed to have the financial insight.

  He was savvy enough to realise this was important and the fact it was hidden was evidence enough that it probably was what he was looking for, but it was too detailed, too complex for him to grasp what it was telling him.

  Okay. Standard ops. Review what you see in front of you and match it to what you know. Nick was up to something in a deal called MorSecure so look for references to that first.

  He flicked through the paperwork until he found the word MorSecure. It was in a letter to an organisation in Grand Cayman. In the same letter he found references to another company called Plan A Mortgage Insurance.

  Following his nose he scanned the paperwork further and found incorporation details for both MorSecure and for Plan A, both registered with the same bank in the Caymans.

  Eventually he found a letter from the First Commercial Bank in The Cayman Islands. It welcomed Nick as a High Net Worth Investor and explained, in glorious detail, how simple it was for Nick to access his accounts online, both his personal and business accounts, and transfer money to and from them and, indeed, any other account in any other bank in the world without limit to the transaction values.

  “Sweet…”

  All Nick would need to complete these transactions was his four digit PIN number and, because he was a business user he’d also need his CodeMaster.

  What the hell was a CodeMaster?

  Then it hit him: as well as keys there was a small electronic device attached to the keyring he’d stolen from Nick. He hadn’t paid it any attention at the time but now he fished the bunch of keys from his pocket and examined the device more closely.

  It looked like a small computer memory stick, but on the front it had an LED window which displayed a six digit number. Every so often one of the bars on the display went out, like a countdown, and when they were all gone the number itself changed. He turned it over and found the legend “CodeMaster. Powered by RSA” on the reverse.

  Kats thought about what he had found. Here was a bank in a part of the world notorious for lax taxation and finance laws where Nick had placed his own personal account plus the accounts of MorSecure and this Plan A Insurance.

  He may not have had the business nous to understand the finer points of the trading statements in the papers, but he was sharp enough to know that amounts placed in this bank account could be accessed and transferred between all of these accounts, including Nick’s personal account, without limit and without trace.

  He scanned through the paperwork again but didn’t find any bank statements. Still, common sense suggested these bank accounts held
the answer, and instinct told him Nick’s private account would be bulging, whilst there would be next to nothing in the others.

  Where was that sodding PIN number? He scanned the file again.

  Yes!

  There was a security packet with a semi-transparent window. In the window was a four digit number in patterned writing. It had to be the PIN.

  Well, well, well… the keys of the kingdom.

  The final piece of paper in the file was a printed email detailing flights to Grand Cayman. They were confirmed for the following Saturday.

  So… he’s about to do bugger off. Lucky I’m just in time then.

  Kats stuffed the PIN number in his pocket and started to put the file back in order.

  Just as he finished he heard a car door slam and a diesel engine rev. It sounded like a taxi. He went to the window and looked down just as Nick stepped out of the cab.

  “Fuck!”

  He hurriedly replaced the file and the drawer, and headed for the door, slipping the lock silently and going into the hallway. He could hear the muffled sound of someone coming up the stairs in a hurry and so he headed on up to the next landing, flattening himself against the door at its head.

  He listened as Nick rattled the door, and he chanced a glance over the landing rail to watch him peeping through the letterbox, trying to see if anyone was inside, then he stood up and went back downstairs.

  Kats didn’t know if he had called the cops, but suspected not. It was best to be sure though, before he made any moves.

  He heard Nick come back upstairs and this time there was the unmistakable double click of a key being turned in the lock. There was a clunk as the door closed and Kats immediately took the opportunity to slip downstairs, past Nick’s flat, down the rest of the floors and quietly out the front door, keeping parallel with the wall to hide himself from the view above should Nick be looking out of the window.

  Piece of cake. Now to find an Internet café and see what we can see.

  He almost whistled as he headed for the van.

  Chapter 29

  When Nick got to his car he put his hand in his pocket.

  Shit!

  The car keys were gone. It had to be that jogger; he’d sensed there was something wrong with him and now he knew what. He’d been targeted and he knew exactly who was behind it.

  “Sophie, you bitch.”

  He could visualise it all now: Sophie had already had him followed by a private detective once before and now he was sure she’d paid this guy to rob him of his keys.

  He sprinted along the path the jogger had taken to see if he could catch up, but too much time had passed, he was long gone. He fished out his mobile from his kit bag and scrolled through the address book, finally punching Dial.

  “Come on… come ON!” he said, as the number rang out to an answering service.

  His neighbour wasn’t in. He contemplated calling Porsche Breakdown but they would take forever, and so he ran back into the Health Club and asked Crystal to call him a taxi, not having any numbers on speed-dial.

  It arrived in minutes – great, hopefully he could get to his apartment before Hoodie did. That was if he was headed there immediately, he couldn’t be sure.

  He’d need to change his locks right away in any event. Perhaps he should do the locks on the car too, just to be sure.

  And get that bloody alarm fixed!

  Why oh why had he procrastinated over getting it repaired?

  It had been broken for months and he’d had plenty of opportunity to do it but just not gotten round to it. All that can come later though; first he had to get home to make sure Hoodie hadn’t beaten him to it.

  He gave the taxi driver the address, uttered the immortal cliché “Step on it mate”, and sat in the back fretting.

  “Whit’s happened here then…” said the taxi driver as they ground to a halt. The lights had failed ahead and traffic was backed up, honking futilely at each other.

  “There must be another way mate. I’m in a hurry here.”

  “Aye, there is,” said the driver. “But it’s too late noo we’re in this pal. We’ll be through it in nae time. You’ll see. There’s nowt we can dae noo anyway.”

  They weren’t through it in no time. It took half an hour, and Nick calculated that if Hoodie had gone straight to his flat he’d have had at least forty minutes on his own. Shit.

  Maybe I should call the police?

  But then, did he really want them sniffing about his flat, perhaps finding something interesting whilst they searched for clues?

  Can’t take the risk.

  Anyway, he didn’t know if a crime had even been committed yet. They probably wouldn’t even turn out for something like this, it was too vague and he had no evidence that anyone had been anywhere near his place.

  The taxi dropped him in the street and he ran to the front door of the apartment block and punched in the code for the lock over-ride on the wall panel. The door clicked and he was up the stairs to his own front door in seconds.

  He looked for any visible signs of entry and then peeked through the letter-box. All seemed calm and there was nothing untoward going on inside. If he’d seen anything he decided not to go in but to call the cops. There was no sense in risking violence after all. He ran back downstairs to the emergency key box which was hidden in the utilities room, entered his security code and then went back upstairs with his spare door key.

  He opened the door slowly and looked in, not sure what to expect.

  Phew, no-one there.

  Stepping into the room gingerly, he looked around. Everything looked normal, so he started to relax. He walked around, taking in the tidy scene and feeling better as he did so.

  Everything was normal. He’d gotten there in time. Going into the kitchen he opened a drawer and took out a Yellow Pages.

  “ ‘L’ is for locksmiths…” he said aloud, running his finger down the page.

  Chapter 30

  “Just a plain coffee,” he said, after pausing to read the list of bizarrely named brews at exorbitant prices. “And twenty minutes access time.”

  The young girl serving him smiled and went to make his drink. He looked around the café carefully. It wasn’t too busy and there were several booths near the back that were secluded enough for what he wanted.

  She brought his coffee after a sustained period of hissing and whooshing from the machine.

  “Can I use any of them?” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the vacant booths.

  “Yeah, any one you like, but no naughty stuff or the alarms all go off.” She had a cheeky smile and Kats gave her a hopeful wink. It had been a long time since he’d had a girlfriend but with all of this shit going on it seemed it would be a while yet.

  He was rewarded by another smile as he paid for everything and he headed off to the back of the room, wondering if he should have asked for her number anyway. Maybe later; for now there was work to be done.

  He’d used the web a lot in the Army, mostly to log onto internet dating sites. All the lads did that, it was a competition to see who could a) get the most women to write to them, and b) get the most to send photos of their tits. Surprisingly few refused to do so and the lads had a league table for everyone in the barracks with photos pinned beside it.

  Midge was the Master and seemed to have a way with the written word. He never failed to get a photo when he picked a target.

  He sat down in a corner booth where he could watch the room and stay far enough away from the rest of the clientele. Best that no one could see what he was doing. He logged on with the access code he’d been given, and when the screen loaded, he Googled “First Commercial Bank Cayman”.

  The bank’s home page was a riot of offers and enticements and he scanned it until he found the small logo in the top left of the screen. Login. Mouth drying, he clicked on it.

  “Shit.”

  This was going to be more complex than he’d hoped. The screen was prompting him for a user name and password
as well as the PIN number, and not only that, it wanted the password by selective characters: first, fifth and ninth followed by the PIN in fourth, first and third characters.

  He hit the refresh button and the screen now displayed the password request but this time in third, fourth and seventh order followed by the first third and second characters of the PIN.

  It had all been looking too easy, and now he had the show stopper. There was nothing else for it: he’d have to get a hold of Nick and somehow get the user name and password from him. Of course it was unlikely that the information would be volunteered, so he’d need a watertight plan on how to extract it.

  First up, he’d have to get close enough to grab him. That shouldn’t be a big deal; he would simply follow him and wait for the right opportunity.

  He’d have to make sure that Nick didn’t spook the minute he saw him, he could easily recognise him as the jogger who’d robbed him. Kats was pretty sure he wouldn’t have seen too much of his face because of the hoodie and the confusion of the accident, but best not to take any chances. It was likely he would only get one shot so he’d have to make it count.

  Since he was currently close shaved, the first thing was to start a beard, or at least get a healthy stubble going. That might be enough for him to get close enough to make a move.

  Better yet, get to him at night if possible. There was probably no immediate rush – he knew when Nick was due to leave so he knew he had a few days – but it would be wise to start tailing him just to be safe.

  Next, some hardware would be required. He’d want to frighten the shit out of him to minimise the risk of any struggle. He didn’t think Nick was brave enough to try much anyway, but a gun would definitely keep him quiet. Badger’s Beretta would cover that nicely.

  Last, he needed a place to go and do the business. That was potentially more of an issue. In order to get the information he needed, it was likely he’d have to hurt Nick a bit, and that could get noisy.