Driving into Darkness (DI Angus Henderson 2) (3 page)

He slumped down on the settee. It had been a crappy morning. The DSS were playing silly bastards with his disability money and despite loads of notices posted around the place telling ‘clients’ not to abuse staff, if it wasn’t for the security screens, he would have jumped over the counter and carved the ugly bitch’s face.

Rab McGovern was a thin, wiry Glaswegian who at times was jumpier than a rabbit, thanks to all the dope he took. His body contained more tats than the Illustrated Man and he had a predilection for getting into fights due to an argumentative nature, particularly when drunk or high on dope and bore the ugly marks and scars of numerous street fights and prison attacks, most visibly, a ragged scar on his right cheek.

However, he could usually get out of fights with profuse deployment of his trademark tools, an open razor and a serrated hunting knife. It had been given to him by a bloke more than twice his size during a fight at Saughton Nick in Edinburgh, when he was forced to defend the honour of his hometown against a bunch of arse bandits from the east coast. In telling the story, he saved the best bit for last because his assailant did not get off scot-free, able to go where he pleased to main more of his compatriots from the west as he now moved around with the assistance of a wheelchair and crapped into a colostomy bag.

To be fair to the DSS, he wasn’t disabled other than having a long razor slash on the right thigh, given to him by a mad druggie who was so high on some crap, he missed slicing the side of his face, but he could fake a limp better than most. If there was any doubt in their minds or they wanted verification, he didn’t bother producing a doctor’s note and instead dropped his trousers. That was often enough, as it was an ugly thing running from a point close to his balls, to an inch or so above his right knee and looked debilitating, even if it wasn’t.

It was ugly because at the time, he was also out of his head on dope and didn’t go to hospital for a day or two and when he did, he was so abusive to the doctors at the Southern General in Glasgow, he was sure they employed a leather worker with bad eyesight to stitch him up.

He pulled a beer from the fridge when he heard the thump-thump of the stereo system from the flat above him. The owner, a former bond trader, now a crack addict who cruised the streets at night getting his fix and sleeping most of the day, hence some days the music didn’t come on until late in the afternoon.

McGovern had warned him before about playing his music too loud but the prick wasn’t listening or didn’t take his warnings too seriously. He hauled the door open, ran up the stairs two at a time and banged on his door. When he opened it red-eyed, hair needing washed and wearing crumpled clothes he had probably worn in bed, he said, ‘where the fuck’s the fire?’ McGovern grabbed a handful of t-shirt and head-butted him across the bridge of his nose.

He walked over to the stereo, a neat B&O system that must have cost a packet and pulled it off the shelf, the connecting wires popping out as he did so. He dropped it on the floor and stamped on it. As usual, he was wearing heavy boots and after only three whacks, it was turned into a heap of broken acrylic and a mess of electronic circuitry and components, with the added bonus it stopped playing the techno crap the prick had been listening to.

Damien, as the druggie was called, was bending over holding his face and trying to make sense of the pain in his nose and would only realise he had nothing to play his CDs on later when the effects of the drugs wore off. McGovern walked up to him, his finger pointing at his face with the rigidity of a steel blade. ‘You stupid fucker. I told you turn it down.’ He kicked him in the nuts and smacked him in the face with his knee, knocking him backwards where he banged his head on the wall. ‘Next time,’ he said, leaning in as close as he dared to avoid receiving a puff of his rancid breath, ‘I’ll decorate your face with my fucking razor.’

McGovern walked downstairs to his flat, grabbed his jacket and headed outside. He wandered around Clapham for a while, trying to ease the anger out of his system as he was meeting the guys in ten minutes and they needed him cool and business like.

In a building, two streets away from Severus Road where McGovern lived, he entered a flat on the second floor. As usual, the large armchair was left for him, a position where he could see everybody and keep an eye on the door to make sure no one was standing out there and earwigging or trying to stick a surveillance camera through a gap under the door.

The gang were all there, his gang. Stu Cahill, a good looking bloke and an expert at cutting telephone lines and neutralising house alarms but even better, he gave them access to a database that told them where they could find a nice new motor.

Jason Ehuru, a tall, well-built guy who could strike the fear of God into the most resistant ‘target’ but a cool man to have in a crisis, driver of the getaway car, and an indefatigable user of a sledgehammer.

Tremain Rooney, another big guy with no fear and a genius at driving and fixing any motor, no matter how complicated. Ehuru brought him into the gang and the tall Jamaican proved his worth time and again when they were stuck inside an unfamiliar car, unsure how to start it, not to mention driving it.

It was McGovern who pulled them together and drilled into them the standards he demanded but if anybody screwed-up or tried to be clever, he would be on them like a rash and no matter how big they were or were or how indispensible they were to the operation, he would take them down. They were doing it his way because his way worked and in time, they would all be rich, not stewing their arses in some piss-smelling prison cell. No way was he going back there, no fucking way.

‘Right Stu,’ McGovern said, ‘let’s get moving, I don’t wanna be here all fucking day, people to see, balls to break.’

‘Sure thing,’ Cahill said. He lifted a sheet of paper and peered over it, like an actor about to deliver his lines or a poet doing a recital, but the thick bastard couldn’t remember what he had for lunch, never mind trying to memorise a few lines of a play.

‘Next up is a Maserati Quarterport Sport GTS. It’s a bloody silly name for a motor, if you ask me but what the hell do I know?’

‘Its
Quattroporte
, ya dickhead,’ Rooney said. ‘It’s Italian for four doors.’

‘Ok smartarse, have it your way. Next up gents is a four-door Maserati, ok?’ He picked up a computer printout. ‘The last one sold around here was to a guy in Warninglid, a place near Gatwick Airport, three weeks ago.’

‘Is the motor on Benny’s list?’ McGovern said. Benny told them what to nick and if it wasn’t on the list, they didn’t get paid.

‘Yep.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah, I am, Rab, I doubled checked.’

Cahill might be a handsome bastard but he had to be watched, as he would rather try to get his mitts up some bird’s dress than do the needy on the car lists. With short black hair, a face devoid of marks and scars and having the right amount of pecs to get noticed, he was washed, scrubbed, and wearing his best t-shirt and jeans.

This could only mean one thing; he was on the pull. This did not please McGovern as Cahill’s little lady, Jena, was vital to this enterprise and he didn’t want her getting messed around. He would need to have words.

‘You been there?’ Jason Ehuru asked as he pressed back in the chair, his bulk causing it to squeak in protest. To those that didn’t know him, the big Nigerian with close-cropped hair and arms like a heavyweight boxer, was a menacing presence as he was a keen body-builder and larger and stronger than anyone else in the group, but to those that did, he was a pussycat until crossed.

‘Yeah, I’ve been down there. It’s a big gaff, well away from neighbours and surrounded by fields. Can’t see another house for miles.’

‘Course it’s a big gaff,’ Rooney said. ‘You don’t think somebody who lives in a council flat in Clapham’s got a hundred fifty grand to splash out on a motor, do ya?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘What’s access like?’

‘There’s a quiet road at the end of a field, then up a long, narrow farm track to their place. No neighbours and no fuckin’ gates.’

‘You sure?’

‘Of course I’m bloody sure. I know what fucking gates look like, don’t I?’

McGovern nodded. ‘Good. We can be in and out of there quicker than last time.’

‘This motor gents, this Maserati,’ Rooney said, ‘it’s a bit downmarket for us, yeah? Ain’t it a cheap Italian sports car made by Fiat or somethin’?’

Tremain Rooney, a half-caste Irish-Jamaican and solidly built, didn’t do weights like the other guys as he worked on a building site carrying bricks all day and the only one of the four of them to have a ‘real’ job. He had shoulder length Rasta-style hair and a genial face, which some said made him look girly but this belied a sharp brain, nasty temper, and a deft ability with a flick knife, and having the jumpy fucker in the same room as him made McGovern uneasy.

‘Rooney you fucking prat,’ Ehuru said, ‘you might know what’s going on under a car’s bonnet, but you know fuck-all about cars. This motor’s got a four thousand cc engine, costs over a hundred grand and sounds like a sports car should. The fuck you care? We get paid even if we nick a scooter or a Peugeot 208, right Mac?’

‘Yep, but listen up, we need to crack on and yak more about the gaff,’ growled McGovern. ‘It looks like an easier take than the last one but I still need to make sure you fuckers know what you're doing, I don’t want any fuck-ups this time.’

A well dressed man stepped out of Markham House and into spring sunshine. Normally he ‘acclimatised’ before moving out of the sterile, air-conditioned atmosphere of the building behind him, but today he was in too much of a hurry and the sharp blast of cool air swirling up from the seafront, made him gasp. For once, William Lawton’s reason for leaving the office early wasn’t a lie. He told them he was going to see the chairman and this time, he was going to see the chairman.

The drive to Ditchling was always pleasant in the Aston as it offered a good mix of road conditions to keep him awake, even after a hard day. Driving through Hove was always a pleasure as he could admire the smart houses and the attractive girls, before picking up the by-pass where the car's six-litre engine gave him a thump in the back as it left everyone else for dead.

His progress came to an abrupt halt at Coldean Lane, which as usual at this time of the early evening, was choked with traffic. Ten minutes later, the long straights and beautiful scenery of the Ditchling Road beckoned, restoring his good mood once again.

The village of Ditchling was a quintessential Sussex village with rose-covered thatched cottages, narrow streets overhung with oaks and silver birches, quaint pubs selling real ale and traditional English fare, and possessing a colourful heritage dating back to the days of Alfred the Great.

The sting in the tail for all beautiful villages of this ilk was in attracting thousands of tourists. It was not unusual in mid-summer to find the centre of the village at a complete standstill, clogged with cars, delivery vans, and buses, and with tourists, so intent on reading the blue plaques and looking at old houses, they were unaware they were standing in the road and in grave danger of being mowed down when the traffic started to move again.

Stavely House, on the eastern outskirts of the village, had stood there for over three hundred years but having been modernised and re-modelled numerous times, it now took on the air of a new house trying to mimic an old style. With six bedrooms, reception rooms, a tennis court, and a swimming pool, it was now too large for one man as Sir Mathew Markham was divorced and his children had all flown the coop, so it was no surprise to see a ‘For Sale’ sign had been erected in the front garden.

He knocked and was surprised to see Sir Mathew open the door. ‘Hello Mathew.’ Lawton said, putting a friendly hand on the old man’s shoulder, the chairman didn’t do ‘man-hugs’. ‘Is Mrs Hodges off for the day?’

‘Hello, William, come on in, come in. No, she got a call this afternoon to say her mother has taken a turn for the worse. It’s lung cancer now,’ he said leading him into the library. ‘They don’t expect her to last the month.’

‘How awful.’

‘Well if the old bat had given up the ciggies when Kate told her to, all those years ago, she wouldn’t be in the place she is now.’

Markham eased his large bulk into his favourite leather armchair while Lawton sat on the bright but comfortable flower-patterned settee, and placed the folder he had been carrying beside him. The chairman had already started on the whisky and was reaching for the bottle to top-up his glass. This was a bad sign as booze clouded his crystal-clear judgement and brought out an argumentative nature that always seemed to be bubbling below the calm, studied exterior.

The chairman offered him one but he declined and in the absence of the redoubtable housekeeper, Lawton headed into the kitchen and made coffee.

When he resumed his seat on the settee, he opened the folder.

‘How did the monthly meeting go on Monday?’ Markham asked.

‘Fine, Mathew, no burning issues to report.’

For the next few minutes he briefed him on recent software developments, sales levels, new ideas and what the senior management team were up to, with particular reference to wives, girlfriends, divorces, and children, as he liked to hear all the personal stuff. He then moved on to the three main items topping their agendas whenever they got together, company accounts, the proposed sale of the business, and progress or otherwise on Project Kratos.

‘I’m a bit light on the financials this month, Mathew I’m afraid, but what I've got is the Flash Report, sent out last week by David’s number two before the numbers were finalised. It’s ninety-five per cent accurate and fine for our purposes.’

‘Oh. Where’s David? Is he away somewhere?’ Markham asked, reaching for his coffee cup. The whisky was on the back burner now as there were more pressing issues to discuss.

‘David wasn’t at the meeting. We haven’t seen him at work since Friday and as he didn’t make an appearance this morning, I asked Jules to call round at his house but when no one came to the door, he called his home number. He heard the phone ringing inside but no one answered. I’m getting no reply from his mobile either.’

Markham sat back stroking his neatly trimmed beard. At one time it was black, giving him the air of a television presenter or a West End actor but twenty years ago, it turned silver to match his thinning hair and he now resembled the esteemed professor of Egyptian hieroglyphics at a Cairo research facility, a pose he cultivated.

‘How odd. David’s never gone AWOL before, especially at this time of the month. You know how he likes to have a go at the poor sods for spending too much money.’

‘I agree but–’

Markham’s hand shot up. ‘It’s more important than that, William. I’m in the middle of delicate talks and if word gets out that our Finance Director has suffered a heart attack or a nervous breakdown, it could all fall apart. You know what it’s like with those Koreans, trust is everything.’

Trust? Koreans? What the hell was the old fool babbling on about? What talks with Koreans? Was it in reference to the sale of the company? If so, nine companies had stuck their oar in; two Japanese, three Americans, three British and one Russian but no Koreans.

‘Find him William. We need David back at his desk pronto.’

A bewildered Lawton talked him through the financials and other major software developments but by the time they started to talk about Project Kratos, normal service had been resumed. He handed Markham a two-page paper summarising the development team’s progress over the last four weeks and it was obvious he wanted to read it in full, as he sat back in the chair, holding the document out in front of him.

After a few minutes he put it down, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘This is fantastic, William. I never believed we’d get this far. Good God, it looks like we could have a working prototype inside a couple of months.’

‘Yes I know, it’s terrific news.’

Markham Microprocessors, in common with most of the companies in their field, had grown frustrated by the batteries of mobile devices as they were struggling to cope with the huge loads being placed upon them by high-definition pictures, games, videos, applications and music.

With the proposed rollout of a 4G network across Europe promising a whole host of new, unheralded but power-hungry services, it was now widely recognised that battery technology had not kept up with other developments in the electronics industry and a crisis was looming.

A Markham software engineer called Gary Larner, a maverick who walked the thin line between genius and madness, was obsessed with the idea of extracting electrical power from radio waves and given the parlous nature of battery technology, Lawton gave him his head and a large budget to find out if he could do it.

He didn’t, but using his basic ideas and concepts, the current development team took it much further and now they believed they were on the cusp of producing a working prototype. If successful, mobile devices would never need to be charged from a power socket, as a Markham microchip buried inside would charge it with energy extracted from radio waves in the air. This would not only annihilate one of the major aggravations of modern life, but also turn the company into one of the biggest hitters in the business.

‘How are Marta and Sanjay doing? Are you looking after them?’

‘They want for nothing. They’re working all the hours on the project as you can imagine, staying late and coming in most weekends, but everything’s fine.’

‘Make sure they are, we don’t want them going off the rails like our Mr Larner, do we?’

He nodded. ‘Of course not.’

Their discussion came to a natural conclusion ten minutes later and Lawton rose to fix them both a whisky. He handed a glass to Markham and trying to sound as calm as he could, said, ‘who are the Koreans you’ve been talking to?’

Markham peered at him over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses. ‘Didn’t I tell you, William?’

Lawton shook his head. ‘No you didn’t.’

‘I must be getting forgetful in my old age. It’s the Han Industrial Group, a large conglomerate, based in Seoul. They’d heard of us through the Korean shipping group we use to ship the Medusa chip set, Crown Transportation.’

Lawton nodded.

‘Yong Nahm’s cousin is the MD of the Han group and they got talking and he mentioned he had been looking to buy a high-tech company for several months.’

‘How have these talks progressed?’

‘They’ve been more like negotiations than talks, to tell you the truth.’

Markham looked embarrassed, as well he might because Lawton knew he had kept it from him deliberately, because he knew he wouldn’t like it. He had a better memory than the old man and Lawton felt sure he didn’t remember hearing a dickey bird about this.

‘They would be a good fit for us as they have a growing electronics division and huge amounts of money to invest. They like us because we’re cutting-edge and they think we could turn their mobile phone business into the world’s largest.’

He babbled on few more minutes, about the work Han did assembling circuits and building laptops but he couldn’t concentrate. He knew a lot about the Han Group, as he had travelled to South Korea many times. They were an aggressive buyer of companies, keen to build additional revenue streams away from their core industries of oil and forestry on which the huge industrial conglomerate had been founded, and which provided their large cash pile.

In their approach to acquisitions they adopted what had become known in business circles as the ‘Cisco Model,’ but with a little twist of their own. Whilst they followed the American networking company by insisting an acquired company adopt their procedures and systems wholesale, no matter how good or expensive they were, they also insisted on putting a Korean management team in place, including a new managing director.

He shuddered in fear. What the hell was he going to do at the age of 54 with no job and no income? His wife said she always wanted to retire to Spain where they owned a villa, but to do what? Improve his tennis serve and his golf swing, or to catch a better suntan?

How long would it be before a ‘golden parachute’ payment sank deflated into the Med and his savings ran out? How long could he stand listening to his wife's constant nagging about his swelling paunch, complaining about his underperformance in the bedroom, or moaning about him getting under her feet whenever she tried to clean up, a belligerence heightened by flinging too much cheap Rioja down her neck? How long would it be before he would find it all too much and there he would be, bashing her over the head with his new five hundred quid Titleist driver and chucking her lifeless body over a cliff?

He knew all of the main companies in the microprocessor design business and none were looking for people of his calibre. In any case, many of them had branded him Sir Mathew’s poodle, with no real ideas of his own. His determination to make Project Kratos a success was designed to prove all the doubters wrong and if successful, would turn him into one of the most influential and important men in the business.

However, a working prototype was still several months away, too late in the day to stop this curved ball the old man was bowling. He made it sound as if Han were now assembling their troops, ready for the onslaught. Perhaps it was worse than that. Maybe they were already inside the compound.

He needed time to think, to plan, and deploy his defences but of one thing he was sure, stopping the Korean takeover had now become his number-one priority.