HE WILL KILL YOU an absolutely gripping crime thriller with a massive twist

by Charlie Gallagher

  ‘Arrest?’ Dolton was floundering again. ‘I’ll call Lowe, I’ll call him direct and have you removed!’

  Harry lifted his phone. He pressed a couple of buttons. ‘That’s his number. You can call him now. Do you think I would come here without his knowledge? This is very serious, sir. But then you know that already. So why don’t you drop this ridiculous act and tell me what you know. I know this has been a tough week for you. We might even be able to help each other.’

  Frank stared at the phone, but his hands stayed by his side. He sighed.

  ‘Look . . . Look, I’ve dealt with it, okay? I’m not making any complaints. I’m the victim here, there’s no need for any of this.’

  ‘Dealt with what?’

  ‘I assume you know what?’

  ‘Humour me.’

  ‘We already spoke about this. There were some chancers trying to extort some money out of me. I’ve dealt with it.’

  ‘There’s more to it, Mr Dolton. You don’t think I’m on the verge of arresting you for dropping your trousers on a webcam do you?’ Harry used another pause.

  Dolton seemed to think about this for a second. He huffed a couple of times before he spun on his heels, pulled his keys from his pocket and strode into his house. He left the door open. Harry walked in after him. Maddie and Vince did the same.

  Dolton continued through to the kitchen at the far side of the property. Maddie’s eyes wandered around the interior as they followed. It was impressive. The whole place screamed money and its layout was clearly designed around showing it off, creating a powerful impression of the man of the house.

  Now though, the man of the house was stood in the kitchen, slumped forward onto an oval island that seemed to be holding him up. He pushed a half-empty glass of red wine to the middle. The open bottle was near to it. His movements looked slower, more laboured; it was as if he had run out of steam all of a sudden.

  ‘Bit early to be having a drink?’ Harry said.

  ‘It’s been that sort of week.’

  ‘A problem shared, so they say. I think you could do with telling someone else what is going on.’

  Dolton suddenly looked tired, like a man who might have gone a couple of days without sleep. His heavy eyes hunted the kitchen surfaces.

  ‘Can I offer you anything to drink?’

  ‘No. I have a feeling we might be up against it a little bit, Mr Dolton. I have information that suggests the residents of this area are facing a bomb threat and that you know something about it. Now, you may be a victim or you may be in collusion. Either way, you need to start talking to me or you will be leaving here in cuffs. And very soon.’

  ‘I like a man who talks straight,’ Dolton said. He chuckled a little. It was empty and Maddie recognised someone who was stalling for time. ‘Well, where do I start?’

  ‘From the place that allows us to save lives, Mr Dolton. And quickly.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose that would make sense. But you should know that I’ve dealt with the matter. This is all over — you have my word.’

  ‘All over?’

  ‘I was the victim of a crime. You know this — we talked about it. There was some escalation after we spoke. These people wanted more and more money. In the end we came to some arrangement, I paid some money and they have gone away.’

  ‘Gone away?’

  ‘They took over my computer. Had you come here first rather than my place of work I might have been able to show you. As it stands my computer has now crashed and appears to be beyond repair. I guess they thought they would have the last laugh, maybe it was punishment for taking my time.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘Show you what?’

  ‘The computer . . . where is it?’ Harry turned back towards the hall. He started across the kitchen.

  ‘Looking at my computer . . . that would constitute a search, would it not?’ Dolton called out.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you’ll be needing a warrant.’ Dolton reached in his pocket and pulled out a mobile phone. ‘I think I should take some advice from my solicitor. I’m pretty sure you can’t—’

  Harry stepped back to Dolton and his hand shot out and grabbed Dolton’s wrist, tight enough to make him shout out. Harry twisted it and Dolton arched his side, it looked as if he might drop to his knees. His phone clattered onto the slate floor. Harry stepped in closer. He dragged Dolton’s arm behind his back and bent it upwards. Dolton rolled forward. He cried out again, this time more in pain than surprise.

  ‘Vince . . .’ Harry said. Vince took cuffs from his vest and snapped them on. ‘Frank Dolton, you are under arrest for conspiracy to murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be used in evidence. Do you understand?’

  ‘What! This isn’t my fault! I’m the victim here!’

  Vince kept a firm hold of his cuffs. Dolton was still leant forward. Harry walked round so he was in front of him. He stooped to look him in the eyes. ‘Right now, I don’t care what you are, just that you’re in my way. Arrest for conspiracy to murder means I can tear this place apart. And I will. Unless you wanna suggest where I should be looking. A man like you has secrets, Frank, am I right? We will find them — all of them. Tell me what you know about this bomb. Right now, that’s all I care about.’

  ‘And you’ll let me go?’

  ‘No,’ Harry growled. ‘But I might not look for anything else.’

  Vince lifted the cuffs higher, adding to Dolton’s discomfort. The strain showed on his face.

  ‘Look, okay! But I don’t think I can help. My computer. Nudge the mouse to wake it up. It’s useless, you’ll see. In the study.’

  Harry stomped through to the hall and Maddie followed. Vince kept hold of Dolton, who was forced to walk still stooped forwards. Harry stopped in the middle of the hall, his head flicking from room to room. He made for one to the right of the front door. Maddie saw that it was laid out like a study.

  Harry gestured at the wide-screen monitor on the desk. ‘You’re better with these things, Maddie.’ She took the hint, moved in front of it and pressed the keyboard. The screen stayed mostly black but there was a grey box in the middle. It simply said: 12 noon.

  ‘Twelve noon, Frank, what does that mean?’

  ‘It was my deadline.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Was. Twelve noon today. I had to pay by then.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what they were going to do, but I had a deadline yesterday too — that was two p.m.’

  ‘When your brother was killed,’ Maddie muttered.

  ‘Yes. I didn’t take them seriously. I thought it was chancers, so I just let it run down. Then they killed my brother. They told me they had set the bombs in the tunnel too, a few days earlier. It was all over the news. I could see what they were capable of. So I paid them.’

  ‘How much?’ Harry said.

  ‘Ten million.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For what? What do you mean for what?’

  ‘Your brother was already gone. Why would you pay them now? I don’t have time for half-truths, Frank.’

  ‘They said there was another bomb. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Random. They said it was under some car, somewhere.’

  ‘How? How did they talk to you?’

  ‘Email. Alexa or something, that’s what she called herself.’

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘About some random bomb?’

  ‘I’m not a monster!’

  ‘You didn’t save your own brother. You don’t care about anyone else. Ten million is a lot of money — even for you. But it wouldn’t be about the amount, would it, not for you. Someone is getting one over on you. You would need something much more important than the death of a stranger to allow that to happen.’

&n
bsp; ‘That’s it. That’s all I know, okay? I paid them. You remember that. I stopped them.’

  ‘You think you stopped them? How come your computer still has a deadline?’

  ‘It crashed. It was counting down before. It crashed, then that time came up, but it’s over! I did what they asked. I transferred the money and then it started deleting stuff. Some programme was running, I watched it all happen. I couldn’t do anything. It took seconds. But they have what they want.’

  ‘You’re wasting my time.’ Harry strode out of the room. He was back in seconds with Dolton’s phone. ‘Vince, you got an evidence bag?’

  Vince nodded. He took a bag out from one of his vest pockets. It was crumpled and he shook it open. Harry dropped the phone in it.

  ‘You can’t just take that!’

  ‘I’m taking everything. My next call is digital forensics. They will send a full team and we will get everything. We’ll go to your banks and your accountants for all your personal dealings and your company’s accounts — every single asset you have and where it’s come from. I won’t rest until we have it all. Here, your work, everything.’

  Dolton’s cheeks dimpled where he was biting down. He had been standing a little straighter, but he slumped forward again, his head shaking. Vince still held his cuffs. Harry continued.

  ‘Your wealth is all you care about,’ Harry said. ‘That and the status that comes with it. If I know that, I reckon these people knew that, too. They know something about you, don’t they? Something that threatened your way of life. Some dodgy dealings from your past maybe?’ Frank’s head was still shaking from side to side.

  ‘I need to speak to my solicitor. I have that right.’

  ‘You do. It will delay everything, but you do. You make that decision and you can call for legal advice from the police station. The forensic teams, the financial teams, they won’t get anything before twelve today, before this deadline. If people die because you were trying to protect yourself, I will make sure the judge, the jury, the whole world knows what you did. That you had the chance to help and you didn’t. We will find whatever you think you’re hiding. Telling us now gives us a chance to do something about it.’

  Dolton’s head stopped rocking. He stared at the floor. ‘Okay . . .’ he said. His voice was quiet, almost too quiet to hear him. No one replied. He took another few seconds. ‘I told you about the Facebook thing. The woman who got me at a weak moment. I’d had a glass or two of wine.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘The countdown started from then. I got an email saying I had to pay the ten grand or they would release the video to humiliate me. They seemed to know I was in the running for a public office. I didn’t pay. They upped the stakes almost immediately. The timer reset. I got twenty-four hours and a message telling me that my family were in danger too. They wanted a million this time. Quite a jump. It smacked of desperation on their part. The message itself wasn’t very specific, there was no suggestion they even knew my family. It just confirmed to me that they were chancers and they’d seen from my pictures that I’d got money. I thought if they knew me, if they knew anything about my family they would know that there were other things far more valuable to me than that. I ignored it.’

  ‘And you think they killed your brother?’

  ‘I know they did. I got a message.’

  ‘And a new deadline?’

  ‘Yeah. And then they wanted ten million.’

  ‘And what if you didn’t pay? That’s what’s missing, Frank. That’s what I will find out. Don’t make me do it the long way. I promise I will make you suffer if you do.’

  Dolton looked over at Harry, and Maddie could see that his eyes were full of fear. ‘You have to understand, Inspector, I just paid ten million pounds for this information to remain secret. I’m more than a little reluctant to release it now — and to the police, especially.’

  ‘You’re out of options, Frank,’ Harry said.

  ‘You might think so. I have solicitors. They can make this all very difficult for you — maybe even impossible.’

  Harry lurched forward again. He grabbed Frank by the scruff of his collar in his big fist. He spun him round and pushed him firmly into the office chair. The chair rolled back a little. Harry leant in, his big hands slapping on the arms of the chair, his face pushed up close to the seated man who was squirming in discomfort, his hands still clamped together behind his back.

  ‘I was in a briefing just a few hours ago. We saw pictures. Pictures of the inside of that tunnel and of your brother’s car. Dead people, Frank — what was left of them. A woman running with her baby with shrapnel sticking out of her spine. That was what I saw, but do you know what I heard?’ Harry almost spat out his words as he pushed Dolton as far back in the chair as he could manage.

  Dalton shook his head.

  ‘The briefing. The man giving it, he knows his stuff. He said that the one thing every bomber wants to do is detonate his bomb. That’s the evidence, Frank. A bomb is like a signature and it will go off. You haven’t stopped a damned thing. All you’ve done is funded the next one.’

  ‘I thought . . . I just thought, if I paid them—’

  ‘You thought, if you paid them, you might get to save your own skin. You just paid ten million pounds to the people who killed your brother. I hope it was worth it.’

  ‘Nothing will bring him back.’

  ‘What do they know, Frank? Last time I ask you.’

  Dolton hesitated.

  Harry only waited a moment then snatched his phone to his ear. ‘Take this piece of shit away!’

  Vince loomed over the seated man

  ‘I washed some money, okay?’ Frank blurted. His face twitched immediately, almost like he hadn’t meant to. Vince stepped slightly to the side. ‘I washed some money for some people. It was a long time ago. It was a mistake, a big mistake. I didn’t expect to be paying for it almost a decade later.’

  ‘Money laundering?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I don’t know, I really don’t. Hundreds of thousands, okay? A couple of brothers — drug dealers. They had some cash to get rid of and I was in the property game. I had some land. They put up the money to have some places built on it. When I sold them I gave it back and it was clean.’

  ‘And you made a nice profit I’m sure?’

  ‘I’m a businessman. I saw an opportunity.’

  ‘So the brothers, who are they?’

  ‘Dead, I heard. Or at least one is. Overdose. The other is three years into a life sentence by now. I had nothing to do with them since that day.’

  ‘So someone else knew?’

  ‘My computer. These people got into it, to take control of my webcam and install their timer — or whatever they did. They must have had a bit of a look round. They got hold of some documents I thought I’d deleted. Some bank statements, too, and paperwork confirming the house construction and sales. It would have been enough to show what I did. They sent it all attached to an email, showing me what they had. They were going to go public with it.’

  ‘So your brother wasn’t worth a million pounds to keep him alive, but your freedom is worth ten million?’

  ‘My freedom!’ Dolton snorted. ‘My freedom is just the start. The money laundering was just the start. I have a number of very powerful allies who are heavily invested in me holding a senior office as the independent police commissioner. They’ve been part of getting me this close, putting money up. The commissioner role . . . well, it’s part of the job to spend the budgets, to decide who to spend it with.’

  ‘So your mates were going to get the police contracts and you would be getting kickbacks for your trouble?’

  ‘I’m a businessman, Inspector. I told you that already. If that information were to be released, then not being elected would be the least of my problems. The money laundering is something I could fight. Even though my business was built on that money they wouldn’t be able to take it all away. I might even avoid
jail. But these emails they have obtained . . . I’ve effectively promised favourable allocation of contracts worth a lot of money, but always in exchange for something. I’ve spoken direct to business leaders — important people, the sort who take their reputation very seriously. They would be exposed at the same time as me.’

  ‘So it was worth ten million pounds of your money.’

  ‘I would have made that back in twelve months of being commissioner. And that was before my own businesses saw any growth.’

  ‘I need to see everything. If you paid these people then there will be a trail. We can follow the money.’ Harry pulled away and turned to Maddie. ‘Can you call this into Gold? We need a full team here now, digital forensics, the lot.’ He moved back to Dolton. ‘I need to know what the threat was specifically and what confirmation you received when you sent the funds.’

  Dolton was shaking his head. ‘The computer . . . it’s totally dead. I was diverted to the dark web using something I had to download from the internet. It was all on an email. It will all have been deleted when the computer crashed. Your digital people will struggle. I spoke to my IT expert in the office, I told him a hypothetical story. These people directed me to a site on the dark web to transfer funds.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I gave him the address. You can’t search this dark web, but if you have the address you can go straight to a site. He had a look. He said it was a data scrambler. I don’t really know what that means. He explained as best he could to a dinosaur like me. They gave me a list of digits to pay the money into, they looked like a standard sort code and account number, but when you type them in the coding on the site reads those numbers as different numbers altogether. Only the person who programmed it can tell what they are. I just followed instructions. I didn’t know what I was doing. I did what I was asked. Afterwards I typed the site’s address back in — it was gone.’

  ‘Jesus . . .’ Harry stepped away. Maddie had taken her phone out. She was waiting for Dolton to finish before she made her call. She knew a bit about currency exchanges on the dark web. Enough to know that it left no trace. If they could get into the computer and if the email trail hadn’t deleted itself then there was an outside chance they could get information on where it was sent from to start tracking the source. There were things they could do, but it would all take time. Maddie moved so she could see the monitor. Time was not something they could rely on. Twelve noon was just over an hour away.