Hunter's Revenge

by Val Penny

  “Yes, Boss,” Tim and Bear muttered.

  “When the search reveals the cocaine, you will conduct the arrest. Bear, you will carry the handcuffs. The prison officers will not make any comment about them.”

  “Yes, Boss,” Bear smiled.

  “Colin and Nadia will be in one car and Mel and I in the other so that the entrance and exit of the car park are well covered.”

  “How far in advance do you want us there, Boss?” Tim asked.

  “Be there reasonably early, no later than quarter to two.”

  Tim nodded.

  “There is no doubt now that this visitor is the courier, but the one Mansoor calls Bill is the mastermind who arranges the mules and the courier to allow Mansoor to supply the jail.” Hunter said.

  “What about the supply to the city?” Mackay asked. “Do we know who organises that?”

  “We know who used to organise it and how. That was Mansoor,” Hunter said. “From what we know, the route is the same as it was before we caught Mansoor. The cocaine is transported in cars being brought into this country.”

  “Or, as in the case of the blue Volvo, taken from this country and brought back?” Nadia suggested.

  “I think that was a rush job, Nadia,” Hunter said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Arrangements had to be made to pay George’s hit-man, so an extra cocaine run had to be made at short notice.”

  “So they were going to pay the hit-man with cocaine? That’s a possibility,” Mackay said.

  “Or, they were going to sell the extra cocaine in the old Volvo to pay the hit-man,” Hunter said.

  “It wouldn’t sell fast enough, Boss,” Colin said.

  “It would if you were selling the car load to one person,” said Tim.

  Hunter nodded. “Yes. And since we told Akram we were going to arrest him for two murders as well as trafficking cocaine, he’s been singing like a canary.”

  “But it was Kasim Saleh who took the Volvo to Thomson’s,” Tim added.” Although The Lizard seemed to think he had a claim in the vehicle.”

  “Who is Kasim Saleh?” Mackay asked.

  “Mansoor’s brother-in-law,” Hunter replied.

  “That numpty, Frankie, identified Merkel as the person who arrived and spoke to Jenny as Frankie was leaving,” said Mel.

  “I think Frankie is telling the truth,” said Hunter.

  Tim grinned. “Shit, boss, I’ve just worked out who ‘Bill’ is!”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “I don’t care who you are, sir,” the prison offer declared. “Governor’s orders: every visitor to any prisoner is receiving a full body search today.”

  Tim carried on the pretence by appearing uncomfortable and cross. “In that case, I will leave the visit and not see my father today.”

  “Sorry, sir. No can do. You are now on prison property and subject to our rules. Got something to hide, Mr Myerscough? Sir Peter asked for something he shouldn’t have?” The officer was clearly enjoying this charade.

  “You canny force him to visit his father,” Jamie contributed.

  “I don’t need any advice from you, Short-Arse,” the officer sneered. “We should just install a revolving door for your lot.”

  Tim wondered whether it would be the prison officer or Jamie who would win the award for best actor. Tim took off his jacket, stepped forward and allowed himself to be subjected to a thorough search. He opened his mouth and got the all-clear. Then the officer patted down his body above his clothes, but so carefully that anything Tim was trying to hide would have been felt. He crouched on demand easily, but with a poor grace: anything he had hidden up his back passage would have been emitted.

  Tim blushed as he realised this was clear to the others in the waiting room. They were all looking very uncomfortable. Tim knew that one of them wasn’t acting.

  Tim now had his own acting part. He had made a point of leaving his phone in his jacket pocket. As Tim made to put his jacket back on, he grimaced as the prison officer pretended only to notice it then.

  “What’s this, Mr Myerscough? A mobile phone? I don’t think so. Turn it off and put it in one of the lockers over there.”

  The prison officer turned to Bear and examined him equally carefully, but without finding anything. It had been arranged earlier that only Tim would be ‘caught’ before the last frisk was done.

  Jamie carried only a few coins in change, allegedly to get coffees and snacks during the visit with his pop. Jamie nodded as the prison officer declared that he was satisfied.

  The fourth visitor had waited in silence, watching with increasing horror as the searches took place.

  “You’re last, sir,” the prison officer called him forward.

  “I’ll have to go back to my car first. I’ve left something important there,” he said.

  “Not today, Mr Blair. No visitors leave this room without a full search. Guv’nor’s orders.”

  “But this is ridiculous. I am a solicitor meeting with my client,” Blair blustered. “I have special privileges. This is a blatant transgression of my human rights.”

  “Privileges? Rights? Not here, not now, Mr Blair. Take it up with the police, sir. I’m sure DC Myerscough or the other DC will be happy to take your details. Now, jacket off and open your mouth.”

  Donald Blair’s face was an unhealthy shade of red and he was shaking. Without another word, he removed his jacket and subjected himself to the same undignified search as the other visitors had endured. His squat was far less agile than those performed by Tim and Bear, but he did it. He opened his mouth, then his briefcase, and even permitted the officers to examine his client’s file and folder.

  The guard glanced at Tim. He gave an imperceptible shrug.

  “Thank you, Mr Blair. That all seems to be in order.” The prison officer held Donald Blair’s jacket up to allow the lawyer to put it on more easily.

  “What did you expect, you revolting little jobsworth?” Blair said, just a little too loudly. He moved to snatch his jacket from the officer, just a little too quickly.

  “Excuse me, Mr Blair,” the officer said.

  “God in Heaven! What is it now?”

  “Your jacket feels a bit heavier than I would expect.”

  “It is a very good quality jacket,” Blair stated.

  Tim watched as, without another word, the prison officer felt first the pockets, and then all around Blair’s jacket. He squashed the seams along the bottom of the garment, then turned the seam upside down. Tim could see that it was not sewn, but held together with Velcro.

  “Quality isn't that good, actually, Mr Blair.”

  The prison officer signalled to his colleague who, until now, had simply observed proceedings from the side of the room.

  “Do you see what I mean, Paul? Mr Blair should have a word with his tailor. Leaving an important man like this with a shoddy finish to his jacket: well, it’s just not good enough. Not the done thing at all.” With that, they both pulled the Velcro apart, and little baggies of white powder fell onto the floor. They pulled the seam at the bottom of the jacket all the way around.

  “I’ll get some gloves and a bag to put these in. We don’t want Mr Blair to lose anything,” Paul said to his colleague. He managed to do this without a hint of sarcasm.

  “I have no idea what that is,” Blair bellowed. “It isn’t mine.”

  When Paul re-entered the room wearing gloves, he handed his colleague a pair of latex gloves too. The examining prison officer picked up the little bags and put them carefully into an evidence bag.

  “That’s not mine,” Blair shouted. “I don’t know what that is. This is harassment.”

  “Well I suspect, I know what it is,” the prison officer said. “It is a white powder, possibly cocaine. Probably heavily cut, and perhaps not the best quality, but I am sure it will be found to be cocaine. Whatever it is, you were trying to bring this into the prison secretly and that is an offence. And, as we found it sewn into your jacket, I th
ink it probably is yours, Mr Blair. Your visit was to Mr Arjun Mansoor, I believe. I will inform Mr Mansoor that you are unable to attend today.”

  The room was silent, except for Donald Blair’s protestations.

  “I will need you three gentlemen to act as witnesses. And I am sorry to say that your visits today are also cancelled. I know this is a disappointment, but there we are,” the prison officer said softly. “DC Myerscough, could you and your colleague do the business for me?”

  Tim recited Blair his rights and Bear handcuffed the man. Blair’s protestations that the prison officers should have found the handcuffs were ignored as the two big detective constables marched the lawyer outside, to where Hunter was waiting by the car.

  “Akram was telling the truth about the drug supply into the prison,” Hunter said. “What did you get out of it, Blair? A cut of the profits, or new clients? Whatever it was, I hope it was enough to feed your family until you retire. You certainly won’t be practising law again. Now, mind you don’t bump your head getting into the car.”

  “Should Jamie, Bear and I give our statements to the prison officers, and then come over to the station to give statements?” Tim asked. “You can de-brief Bear and me then, I suppose.”

  Hunter smiled. “That’ll work fine, lad. I’ll head back to the ranch and the CSIs can do their business. Well done.”

  “Has Cameron been found, Boss?” Tim asked gently.

  Hunter shook his head and drove off.

  As Tim and Bear walked back into the prison waiting room, Jamie was finishing his statement to the officer. He turned to Tim.

  “Never thought I’d end up helping out fuckin’ cops, Blondie. But here we are. You and me on the same side.”

  Tim smiled. “Don’t get carried away, Jamie. You’ll need to hang on whilst DC Zewedu and I will give our statements here, and then we’ll take you over to the station to give your formal witness statement.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Excellent news, Hunter. Myerscough and Zewedu played a blinder,” Mackay said.

  “They did, Sir. And Jamie Thomson played his part.”

  “And we have Blair in custody to answer questions now.”

  “Yes, Sir. I’m just going down to interview him now. I’ll take Myerscough with me in case that bastard Blair tries to make up what happened in the prison waiting room.”

  “Good idea,” Mackay said.

  “Yes, and I believe this will allow me to establish the case against those who ran Mansoor’s cocaine smuggling into the city. I should also be able to prove who killed Jenny Kozlowski.”

  “And George? Our primary task was to find who killed our friend.”

  “Yes, Sir. I think I know who did it and why the murder was committed. If I’m right, soon I’ll be able to prove it. Small compensation for the loss of a good man, but the best we can do.”

  ***

  “Have you any idea how long I have been kept waiting?” Blair demanded.

  Hunter shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. Sit down, Mr Blair.”

  Blair sat down opposite the detectives. He glowered at them with his little piggy eyes. His ruddy cheeks were the result of too much whisky and high blood pressure. His bald head was flaking and raw because of his eczema, and his pudgy hands wound up and down his tie.

  “You'll ruin your tie doing that,” Hunter said. “A might tense are we, Mr Blair?”

  “Furious. Not tense, I assure you.”

  The soulless interview room was a dark, windowless box of a room painted in faded blue and grey. The vinyl floor was scrubbed every day by cleaners on minimum wage, inured to the smell of dirt, sweat, farts and fear. Even the strongest disinfectants could not vanquish the sour smell of scoundrels.

  The furniture consisted of a metal table (bolted to the floor), four chairs (bolted to the floor), and recording equipment (bolted to the table). A camera (bolted high up on the wall in a corner) scanned the whole room and made a visual recording of all that went on.

  “Would you like to have a solicitor present, Mr Blair?” Tim asked politely.

  “I think you’ll find I am a solicitor, sonny,” Blair laughed. He tried to sound brave, but he clearly didn't feel it.

  “Not for long,” Hunter said quietly.

  Blair admitted his name and address; his occupation and that he had been at HMP Edinburgh this afternoon to meet with his client, Arjun Mansoor. He volunteered that Mansoor had sought the meeting.

  “Is that how he lets you know he needs more gear? By calling you for a privileged appointment?” Hunter asked.

  Blair shook his head. “No comment,” he said. From then on he answered every question ‘No Comment’.

  It was then that Hunter tried his trick of shifting blame to elicit a denial and an explanation.

  “That’s fine, Mr Blair, but Hadi Akram has given evidence that you are the man in charge of this new supply of cocaine flooding that prison. You see, Arjun Mansoor is behind bars, largely as a result of the painstaking work carried out by the late George Reinbold and his team of CSIs. We know Mansoor blamed George for his downfall. He persuaded you, a despicable, greedy lawyer, to take over ‘importation’ of cocaine – and the poor bloody sod, Akram, was just the mule. Wasn’t he?”

  “No comment, nothing of the sort,” Blair said.

  Hunter glanced at Tim. He could tell that the junior detective did not think this mode of questioning would work. And Hunter understood his doubts. After all, Blair was a solicitor and an old hand at police interviews. He must have seen this trick played before. Hunter looked at the lawyer's red, sweaty face and the man's defiance disgusted him. Still, he sat quietly, listening carefully, and pressed on with his line of questions..

  “You arranged for Akram to bring in the drugs, and with the money you got, you hired the hit-man who killed George Reinbold. Arjun Mansoor ordered you to do that.”

  “Nonsense. I have no reason to do that. Anything I instructed Hadi Akram to do for Mr Mansoor was minimal in the grand scheme of things. Oh bugger it – no comment.”

  A swift smile faded on Hunter's face as he went on. “Mansoor had you over a barrel: you were his cocaine supplier to the prison, and poor little Jenny Kozlowski was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, wasn’t she? But you caused her death too.”

  “No comment. You’re making all that up, DI Hunter. You haven’t a shred of evidence. There was no woman ever involved. Not at all.”

  “I beg your pardon. The girl is dead, and for evidence I have twenty-nine baggies of cocaine found concealed in your jacket, your meetings with Lenny The Lizard Pratt and Max Merkel, and the fact that you represent Arjun Mansoor. I think I’m getting there, Mr Blair.”

  “Honestly, DI Wilson, you are just opening your mouth and flapping your gums. There is no way you are going to make this stick. You must know that. And as for that charade in the prison at Saughton... You are on a hiding to nothing. I wish you good luck.”

  “Thank you, Mr Blair. I don’t need luck. DC Myerscough, charge him: one count of murder, one count of culpable homicide, two of trafficking a Class A drug, and one of being a complete fucking wanker.”

  “Yes, Sir,” said Tim.

  “And you, Myerscough. You are probably as corrupt as your bloody father.”

  Tim stood up and curled his fist. His big hand looked as if it was clenched around a cricket ball.

  “No, young Myerscough, he’s not worth it,” Hunter said calmly. “I’m going to phone the Law Society of Scotland to start the procedure for getting this piece of shit wiped off their register.”

  “You really have got it all wrong,” Blair said wearily.

  “Then give us the right of it all,” Hunter said.

  The three men sat down again in the stuffy little room. Blair began to tell them his version of the truth.

  It was a long statement. After a while, Blair said he required coffee and something to eat. Hunter persuaded Tim to fetch coffee and biscuits to sweeten the deal.

  Ch
apter Thirty-Eight

  Hunter left the station at Fettes and walked up to the Cavalry Club where he was meeting Meera for dinner. He wanted to walk to get all that Blair had said clear in his head. The fresh air and exercise would allow him to do that. Hunter felt sad for George now that he knew and understood his fate. It didn’t make it right, but the actions of an exuberant youth on his eighteenth birthday had set a chain of actions and feelings in motion which would have led to George’s death, one way or another.

  The detective strode south towards Comely Bank. The sight of the wide streets with cars neatly parked on both sides was so familiar to him: it made him feel calmer just to be there. The evening was bright and fresh. He passed young parents proudly pushing babies along, couples making their way to the pub for an evening drink, and older folk standing chatting in their gardens, just to be part of the world around them. Hunter did not stop. He was enjoying a perfect spring evening to walk in this beautiful city, but he was bound up in horrible thoughts.

  He turned onto the Dean Path that led to the lush nineteenth century Dean Village with its picturesque homes next to the Water of Leith. Hunter thought what a lovely, secret part of the city this was. By the time he reached Belford Road, Hunter noticed he was no longer striding out. He was walking calmly, his breathing was slower, and his brain was slowly considering the complexity of all that had happened. It was becoming clearer in his mind.

  He walked past the National Gallery of Modern Art that he and Meera had visited in the morning before Jane and Rachael’s celebrations. Hunter preferred the parkland in which the gallery was set to the art it contained, but Meera had seemed to enjoy both during their visit.

  When Hunter arrived at The Bruce Hotel, he was tempted to march in and demand to see Heinrich Reinbold and confront the man with what he knew, but that would ruin his plans. These men were clever; Hunter would have to be cleverer.

  He walked on, up Douglas Gardens with the fine mature trees on the right-hand side of the road and the handsome nineteenth-century buildings opposite them. He reached the stone bridge over the Water of Leith that led him into the wide sweeping streets of the New Town and past the Gothic towers of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral and the grounds of St Mary’s Music School. Finally, he turned into Coates Crescent and saw Meera getting out of a taxi as he approached. Hunter kissed her chastely on the cheek, but was thinking far less chaste thoughts as he patted her bottom when they entered the restaurant.