The Detective Jake Tanner Organised Crime Thriller Series Books 1-3 (DC Jake Tanner Crime Thriller Series Boxsets)

by Jack Probyn

  Then he screamed – no words, just noise.

  It wasn’t until he heard a sharp noise that he came back to reality. He shook his head violently and then jumped out of the car, scrambling towards the damaged police vehicle. Running alongside the ditch was a row of bushes and small trees, kept in line by a fence. From his position, it looked as though a couple of thick arms had pierced the windscreen of the overturned police car. In the accident, the bonnet had impaled itself in the mound of earth and the vehicle had rolled on its roof so that it was now running parallel with the road. Smoke and steam billowed from the front of the vehicle and quickly filled the air with a rancid burning smell.

  Jake knew he didn’t have much time. Preservation of life was his main focus.

  He rushed over to the front of the vehicle to find it was filled with debris and foliage. A single branch, as thick as a lamp post, had plunged into the driver’s stomach. Thick globules of blood dribbled from the man’s mouth as he dangled upside down, stuck in place. Meanwhile, the officer next to him was plastered on the dashboard like a rag doll. Showered in glass, limbs broken and twisted in various places. The sight made Jake want to vomit. He tried for a pulse on both men but soon realised his efforts were worthless.

  Next, he tried the rear of the car. In the force of the collision, Michael’s passenger door had opened and buckled.

  As Jake approached, he heard a deep groaning sound.

  ‘Michael! Michael! Michael!’ Jake whispered frantically. ‘Are you there? Are you all right?’

  He peered inside the car and saw Michael hanging upside down, his body kept in place by the seat belt. His hands were loose – they’d come free in the collision – and blood gushed from his head and ran down his arm. Jake climbed inside, unhooked him from his seat and lowered Michael to the ground.

  ‘It’s me, Michael. Everything’s going to be all right. Help’s on the way!’

  Jake hefted Michael from the wreckage and dragged him onto a small bank at the side of the road. The man’s body was heavy, and Jake felt his muscles shake under the pressure.

  Michael was messed up. In a bad way. Not only was his face covered in blood, but his nose was broken, half his teeth were missing and his arm was clutching his stomach as if he were clinging on to his life.

  ‘I’m going to get you help,’ Jake said, trying to console him.

  As he stood up to leave, Jake heard Michael whisper something.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Speak louder.’

  Michael curled his finger in the air and gestured for Jake to join his side.

  ‘Listen,’ Michael said. His voice was raspy, and he choked on his blood after every syllable. ‘Listen. No names. Never any names.’

  At first, Jake didn’t understand what Michael was trying to say, but then, as he realised, his attention focused on Michael’s lips.

  ‘No names. Yes. I get it,’ Jake said. ‘What else?’

  ‘But… I remember…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The guy… The one who found us… I heard him once… something he said… a lot… a phrase…’

  Yes, yes, yes.

  ‘He always… used to call me…’

  Jake leant closer.

  ‘He called me a… good egg. I was… a good egg.’

  CHAPTER 48

  SITUATION

  Jake’s pulse pounded hard, the rhythm of his heart flexing the skin on his neck pervading every other noise in the area. Dumfdumfdumfdumf. His breathing was panicked, and his body trembled with the rapid onset of adrenaline. Or was it shock? He was alone, in the middle of a country lane, holding Michael Cipriano’s lifeless head in his lap. Torrents of blood continued to dribble from Michael’s temple and neck – the extent of his injuries worse than Jake had anticipated – and it quickly soiled Jake’s trousers, forming a red petal on his leg.

  He tried to piece together what had happened. The black van, coming towards them in the opposite lane, then swerving into the police car, sending it over the mound of earth into the ditch; the driver of the van, features and identity hidden behind the reflection of the sun on the windscreen. In the time it had taken for Jake to crawl out of his car, the van had since disappeared and the fields were now filled with silence, save for the wind rustling the bushes behind him and the sound of petrol dripping inside the police car.

  I was… a good egg.

  Michael’s final words echoed and bounced through the chambers of Jake’s mind. There was no doubt who he’d been talking about. But what did it mean exactly? Was Liam just the one who’d scouted The Crimsons in the first place? Or was he The Cabal, organising all these hits? Jake didn’t want to believe it. Sure, he knew that Liam had his darker side – he’d made that apparent in the past few days – but he’d never believed his friend was capable of murder. Of organising someone’s brutal and merciless death.

  First Danny. Now Michael.

  Who next? And when?

  A noise distracted him – the sound of car tyres skidding on tarmac and screeching to a halt. Car doors slamming. Voices shouting.

  Jake snapped his neck round and looked at the row of bushes behind him. Instinct washed over him and told him to run. Fight or flight. And he wasn’t willing to gamble with his life. There was no way it could be the police – he hadn’t called them, and he hadn’t seen anyone in the vicinity who could have made the call.

  Someone was coming back to finish the job.

  Jake let go of Michael’s head in as dignified a way as he could manage, scrambled up the bank on the opposite side of the road and then jumped over the hedges, tearing through the twigs and thorns and nettles. He landed awkwardly on his leg and then rolled onto mud. Once he’d righted himself, ignoring the stinging in his arms, he peered through the gap he’d created in the foliage.

  Two figures were standing at the top of the bank opposite him, peering down at the overturned police vehicle. Their faces were hidden behind black masks and in their hands they each held sub-machine guns.

  At the sight of them, Jake struggled for another breath; his brain communicated to his lungs that it was a bad idea. The air remained silent as they cast their gaze around the area.

  One of the figures started down the mound. The other grabbed their shoulder and yanked them back before they were two steps in.

  ‘What you doing?’ the voice behind the mask asked. Jake noted it sounded Russian. Female.

  ‘We’ve got to check on him. We need to make sure he’s dead,’ the other voice replied. This one was markedly British. Essex. A complete contrast to the other.

  Jake watched the British attacker slowly turn, raise his gun and train it in Jake’s direction. He panicked and lay flat on the grass, shielded his ears with his hands and closed his eyes, water seeping through his clothes, sending chills through his chest.

  ‘Wait!’ the Russian said. ‘Stop. Don’t shoot. Make look like mistake, remember. No shoot.’

  Jake breathed a heavy sigh of relief as he heard those words. But it wasn’t over yet – not until he heard the sound of a car door closing and the car leaving.

  ‘What about the other car?’ the Brit asked.

  Jake’s ears perked up.

  ‘I’ll check it.’

  Fuck.

  The female hurried down the bank, skipped over kicked-up tufts of grass and raced towards Jake’s car. She kept the gun close against her chest and peered into the vehicle.

  ‘Empty!’ she called back.

  ‘Where’ve they gone?’ the Brit replied.

  ‘I don’t know. Run, maybe. You see anyone?’

  ‘Check through the hedges.’

  Fuck fuck fuck.

  Jake was trapped. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. And they were coming for him. She was coming for him.

  He heard her footsteps approaching softly, winding her way through the bushes. And then he saw her.

  A tall figure all in black. Head to toe. No identifiable features, save he
r accent. She was much taller than he anticipated. In her hands she held her firearm, pointed at him. As soon as she caught sight of him, she froze and lowered the gun, her eyes – hidden behind the letterbox of her mask – narrowing. Jake rolled on the grass, hand over his mouth to stifle his heavy breathing, panicking as he studied the gun.

  Toe to toe with death, he cowered into a ball, something he wouldn’t be afraid to admit. Images of Elizabeth, Maisie and Ellie flashed in his mind like a strobe light. Each one replaced by a new one almost instantly. How would they cope without him? How would they get by without their daddy to look after them, protect them?

  ‘You found anything?’ the Brit asked from the other side of the bushes.

  The Russian remained frozen. She placed her finger on her lips and called back, ‘Nothing. There’s nobody here.’

  And then she ducked through the foliage and returned to the other side, almost as quickly as she’d come. Gone. He’d been spared. She’d let him live. But there was no time to be grateful or ponder on why; the Brit was advancing towards Michael. Keeping himself flat on the grass, now doused in a layer of his own sweat, Jake peered through the branches and watched the man come to a stop by Michael.

  The man knelt by Michael’s side and checked for a pulse.

  ‘He’s still alive!’

  What? Had Jake left him there alive? He’d been certain the final Cipriano brother was dead.

  Then a muffled sound disturbed Jake. The masked attacker was punching and beating and kicking Michael in the head and the rest of his body. He kept this up for the next two minutes – with his fists and feet and the butt of his gun – until Michael was finally dead.

  After he’d finished, the man hurried back to the top of the bank, and then the two of them disappeared out of sight.

  As soon as they were gone, Jake rolled onto his back, panting. He’d stopped watching after the first few punches, and he’d plunged his fingers in his ears, but it hadn’t stopped him from hearing every punch land on Michael’s defenceless body.

  No time to think. No time to lie there.

  The sound of car doors closing and an engine starting kicked Jake into action. Rolling onto his front, he propelled himself off the ground, vaulted the bush and hurried back to his car. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Michael as he passed him. Seeing his bloodied and beaten face out the corner of his eye was enough.

  By the time Jake reached his car, the attackers were already heading left, about half a mile ahead. He jumped into his car and slammed his foot on the accelerator. Clumps of mud and grass kicked up as the tyres fought for grip. Eventually, they found it, and the car mounted the bank, breached into the road and gave chase.

  As he roared along the tarmac, Jake tried Danika’s mobile. If something had happened to Michael, then it was possible something had happened to her too.

  No answer.

  ‘Bollocks.’

  Next, he tried Charlotte.

  ‘Jake?’ Charlotte asked, almost uncertain whether it was him.

  ‘Urgent assistance required! I repeat, urgent assistance required. Michael Cipriano has just been killed,’ he said between frantic breaths.

  ‘What?’

  ‘In pursuit now. Two suspects carrying firearms. Black Transit van.’ The vehicle was in sight, and Jake squinted for a better view of the registration number. ‘Vehicle reg Alpha-Bravo-six-five, X-ray-Yankee-Zulu.’

  ‘Please repeat.’

  ‘Ahh, fuck!’ Jake smacked the steering wheel. ‘It’s a fake. Repeat: the registration is fake!’

  ‘Where are you?’ Charlotte asked. ‘I’m getting you some backup.’

  Jake glanced at the satnav and said, ‘Heading south on Grove Barns.’

  ‘ARVs will be there shortly.’

  Jake didn’t respond; he was too focused. In the time he’d spent talking to Charlotte, the attackers had managed to distance themselves from him by another half a mile.

  They tore down the country lane, swerving in and out of what sparse traffic there was. He followed them for another mile until they eventually came to a stop outside an abandoned farming factory. The structure was monumental – double the height of Jake’s home, and about ten times as wide, like an old airfreight hangar.

  Jake pulled the car to the side of the road several hundred feet away, concealed behind an oversized bush that dotted the landscape. It was twenty feet tall and twenty feet wide, just large enough to conceal him and the car. The factory was at the cross point in a junction, and there was nothing else around him.

  Jake felt exposed, out in the open, a sitting duck.

  But so were they. They were going nowhere. Cornered. The only problem was, there was one of him, and at least two of them. Keeping his eyes focused on the factory, Jake grabbed for his phone and called Charlotte again.

  ‘Charlotte… it’s me…’ As he stared out at the warehouse, two vehicles exited from either side, split up left and right, and quickly disappeared out of sight.

  ‘Jake! Jake! What is it?’

  ‘Abort,’ Jake said. ‘Call it off. Get rid of them. We don’t need them.’

  ‘What’s going on, Jake?’

  ‘I need you. Just bear with me, all right. Whatever happens, make sure you come down here.’

  Jake hung up the phone, returned to his address book and dialled. The call was answered almost immediately.

  ‘Liam… we’ve got a situation I thought you should know about.’

  CHAPTER 49

  PHRASES

  Liam wanted to throw the phone at the wall. He wanted to throw it at the window, at the desk, at the computer. Fuck it, he wanted to throw it at everything.

  It was all beginning to spiral out of control. Michael Cipriano was dead. And it was now going to be his responsibility to tidy the mess up. Just like with Danny, Richard and all the other cover-ups before them. He was going to have to come to the rescue like he always did. Wearing the cape and tight spandex.

  The Rover to the rescue.

  He let out a little groan. If there was one thing that was certain, it was that Jake was beginning to turn into a little rat. Tanner’s presence at Michael’s abduction and murder concerned him. And what concerned him even more was the threat that Jake now posed. Had he and Michael met up? How much had Michael disclosed to Jake? How much had Michael shared with Jake before he died?

  Liam had had direct dealings with Michael in the past. They’d met on several occasions after he’d originally recruited The Crimsons, and Michael had clearly seen Liam’s face. That in itself was too much of a risk for him. The past was coming back to haunt him like a dirty secret. He’d been compromised, and he was vulnerable.

  Action had to be taken against Jake. And fast.

  Liam slid out from beneath his desk, scooted over to the safe hidden within the filing cabinet, unlocked it and stared inside. Sitting at the bottom of the metal box was a dense roll of £20 notes wrapped tightly in elastic bands. Ten grand, left over from the last job The Cabal had given him as part of their agreement on The Crimsons’ last hit. He’d kept it there for safekeeping, or as a get-out-of-jail-free card. And where better place to hide the proceeds of his corrupt activities than the exact place nobody would think to look?

  Liam scooped the money into his hand and pocketed it, then exited his office. MIT was thin on the ground: the group of admin workers at the back were busy on their computers, shoulders hunched, eyes inches from the screen. Nearest to him were Drew and Charlotte, working almost in the same manner.

  Liam wandered over to Jake’s desk with purpose, pulled out Jake’s chair and nodded at Charlotte as he sat down. There, he waited, just in case Charlotte rose from her chair and peered across the partition.

  Slowly, once he deemed it safe enough, he pulled the money out of his pocket and placed it on his lap, concealed beneath his palm.

  ‘Drew!’ Liam shouted, taking Drew by surprise.

  ‘Yes, guv?’ Drew asked with a slight hint of fear in his voice. Then his eyes fell on
the wad of money.

  ‘How are we coming along?’ Liam asked, acting casual. ‘What’s the latest on Maddison’s death?’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s… We…’ Drew’s gaze was darting between the money and his computer screen. Irrational. And if he didn’t sort it out soon, it would draw unwanted attention to them both. ‘I had a look at Maddison’s psychological profile from when he was in prison for the sexual assault. He was considered a suicide risk, and he was supposed to be kept under close scrutiny both inside prison and out…’

  Liam eyed Jake’s top drawer. He reached for it, hooked his finger under the handle and slowly – and as silently as he could manage – pulled it open.

  Drew continued, oblivious. ‘While he was inside, he underwent several counselling sessions with the therapist to abate his suicidal thoughts.’

  ‘But how does that fit in with what DI Grayson is suggesting?’

  Liam planted the wad of money on top of the ten grand that Drew had already given Jake and scribbled a note on a strip of paper.

  Drew cleared his throat. ‘It doesn’t, guv. Richard Maddison was a suicide risk.’

  Liam removed his phone, opened the camera and took a few photographs of the money inside the drawer. He said, ‘But there’s evidence found in the forensic report that suggests there was someone else in the house at the time of his death. Have you not already had these discussions with DI Grayson?’

  At the second mention of her name, DI Grayson leapt out of her chair and rounded the side of her desk. She stood in the aisle between Liam and Drew with her arms folded, watching over them both.

  ‘Well, yeah…’ Drew began, flustered. ‘But there’s something else I meant to tell you.’

  ‘Will it make me happy?’ Liam asked, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Yes, guv.’ Drew wiped his nose and sniffed hard, giving Liam a nod.

  ‘Great. Then I wanna hear it.’

  The three of them had a variety of coded phrases that they used to communicate in open conversations when others could be listening. There was seldom a need for them, but they always worked effectively when there was.