Dexxman

By Robert A.V. Jacobs

When the body of the British Home Secretary’s son is found in an alleyway where he had been battered to death, Larry Dexxman, a seventy-five year old private detective is thrown into the middle of a political minefield that could easily cost him his life.
His only protection is Sally, a tiny Shih-tsu/Yorkshire terrier cross, Penny his twenty-four-year-old assistant and his own combat experience gained in the armed forces fifty years ago.
Narrowly surviving several attempts on his life, Larry must try to protect those around him while, at the same time, keeping his promise to the murdered boy’s girlfriend that he would find out who was responsible and see that they were brought to justice.
When the Director General of MI6 is murdered by an infiltrating foreign power, it soon becomes evident that his daughter Hayley’s life is also in danger, and she turns to Larry and Penny as the only people that she can trust.
The Home Secretary is powerless to intervene, fearing for his own daughter, Denise’s life, unless someone can remove her from danger under the nose of the single officer appointed by the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, and the watching agents of the Foreign Power.
Eventually, the danger to Larry’s life, as he probes deeper into the conspiracy, is acknowledged, and he is placed under police protection himself. But he still must find a way to keep Denise safe, even if he has to kidnap her, without, at the same time, alerting CTC or his own bodyguard to his plans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert A.V. Jacobs
• Release date: Nov 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311240637

Book preview

Children’s fiction, ten years of age and upwards:

Daisy Weal

Daisy Weal and the Monster

Daisy Weal and Sir Charles

Daisy Weal and the Last Crenian

Dauntless

The Adventures of Daisy Weal (Omnibus edition, containing four of the books in the series)

Grandpa’s Shed

Short Stories in the Daisy Weal series

(Only Available as ebooks):

Daisy Weal and the Grelflin

Daisy Weal and the Weenies

Daisy Weal and the Millions

Daisy Weal and the Face

Daisy Weal and the Secret

Daisy Weal and the Disaster

Daisy Weal and the Ghost

Daisy Weal and the Figment

Young Adult and Adult Fiction:

The Lost Starship

The Star Queen

The Yellow Dragon

The Diamond Sword of Tor

Cardoney (Omnibus edition containing both The Yellow Dragon and The Diamond Sword of Tor)

Adult Science Fiction:

As a Consequence

Taldi’na

Adult Detective/Murder Mysteries:

The Disappearance of Natalie Firth

Time to Die

A Promise to Doreen

Almost Enough

Non-fiction:

Sudoku, Food for the Mind

Table of Contents

Also By

Author’s Note

Dedication

Foreword

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Why not Write a Review

Character List

The Disappearance of Natalie Firth

About the Author

Authors Note

This is my first venture into an Adult Detective/Political thriller, and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did writing it. I must say that it gave me greater pleasure than any book that I have attempted before. Even though there are a lot of anti-American sentiments in the book, I am definitely not anti-American, and count many Americans amongst my closest friends. So guys, forgive me, but it is fiction, and explores the realm of ‘what ifs’.

The Chinese or Russians are usually the bad guys, so I thought I would do something different. I have used the names of real politicians in some cases, but in a fictional way and I am sure that they are most unlikely to behave in the way that I have portrayed. I apologise to the current Home Secretary Theresa May for temporarily doing her out of a job at the time of writing, (2013) but for the purposes of the book, I needed a man in that position.

The character of Larry Dexxman is definitely NOT based upon me, though I too am seventy-five and I do have a real dog called Sally. I would also like to add that I have been happily married for fifty years (2012) and for me to behave as my character does would be unthinkable.

This second edition rests almost entirely on the fact that I erroneously identified Little Jimmy Dickens as ‘Little Jimmie Dickenson’ in the first edition. I have no idea what came over me at the time, and I apologise to him sincerely for the error. I also took the opportunity to add some small pieces, correct a few minor errors and change the chapter structure.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of my:

Father

Albert Victor Jacobs

Born: June 20th 1899

Died: December 6th 1953

And to my mother

Gwendoline Alice Jacobs

Born: November 19th 1913

Died: November 26th 1989

Foreword

The day had been pretty uneventful, as a large proportion of my days seemed to have become lately. Most of my friends urged me to retire, saying that a seventy-five year old detective is amusing, but not practical. For instance, how was I supposed to catch criminals when I needed a walking stick and could hardly walk, let alone run? I have to admit that cases have become increasingly hard to come by, with most people just giving me a cursory glance before looking elsewhere.

But how could I give it up? It was the only thing that I really knew how to do well. My wife divorced me almost fifty years ago in what was a particularly messy affair, with the result being that I never got to see my daughter as she grew up. I wasn’t there when she got married, and I should have been. That was the only thing that I really regretted about the whole shooting match. So right now, I only have me and my dog to worry about, and being a one man band detective with only Sally my little Yorkie/Shih-tsu cross for company suited me down to the ground.

Oh, there is also Penny of course. She is around about the age that my granddaughter would be if she was still alive, and joined me after pleading for a job when I met her in Gregory’s Café one day. She had nowhere to stay, so I gave her a spare room in my flat. She turned out to be invaluable, particularly where computers and paperwork were involved.

You may think that it was a bit odd that I did not make some effort to at least tell my daughter who I was when she grew up. But circumstances got in the way, together with my wife’s determination that I should have no contact, and eventually I stopped thinking about her. Her birth may have been the catalyst for the divorce, but whatever it was the divorce became final when she was only a couple of years old.

Poor old Sally liked to eat, and Penny had nowhere else to go, so how could I let them down? The answer of course was that I couldn’t. So I kept trying, and kept on going. So as I said, the day had been pretty uneventful. But I needed to think seriously about the possibility of not being around, and at my age that would, most likely, be in the not too distance future. It was not a bad evening weather wise, so I decided a walk might help me decide on a course of action, and if it didn’t, then hopefully, it would still do me some good.

Chapter One

I had not expected to find a body while I was out on that evening stroll, so it came as a bit of a shock when I did. Well it was not really me that found it, but rather it was Sally. Sally is a little dog, and my constant companion. She’s part Yorkshire terrier, part Shih-tsu, and looks cute as hell when she’s trimmed, but a bit like an un-sheared sheep when she’s not. The damn fool loves me to death, as anyone who has been left to dog sit will testify. She never roamed far away from me, and kept returning to make sure I was still there, so a lead was not really necessary.

She had just snuffled off into the shadows of an alleyway, following some elusive but irresistible scent, when the sounds of her snuffling and moving about ceased, to be replaced by an unmistakeable ‘come and look at what I’ve found’ whinge. Sally never really whined very much, but rather whinged in the way that teenagers whinge when they are not getting their own way. So I retrieved the small Maglite torch from my pocket and headed towards the whinge, thinking that she’d just met the love of her life Cocker Spaniel, or perhaps was having a standoff with some aggressive ginger tom. When she was younger, her best friend had been a Bengal cat, so she could never understand why other cats were nowhere near as nice to her.

It turned out that neither was the case. She was whingeing quietly beside a young, and very dead boy, who looked to be about fourteen, though it was difficult to tell because the kid had not died easily nor cleanly, judging by the amount of blood and the really horrific injuries that were present. I had to pull Sally away, as she was doing her best to ‘lick him better’.

During the adult part of my seventy-five years I had seen quite a few bodies, particularly during my stint in the Royal Air Force. Most of them had either been shot or blown up, but in either case particularly nasty injuries were always present. I had got used to it, or so I thought until I saw this lad, and then I found myself heaving. I turned away and was violently sick, which did serve to confirm my humanity but achieved little else. I would hazard a guess that he had very few unbroken bones, and his head and face were hardly recognisable as human. I had to look away, not knowing which was worse, the extent of the injuries, or the fact that he was only a young boy.

The murder weapon, and it clearly was the murder weapon judging from the amount of blood and gore coating it, had been discarded casually by the side of the body. It was an American style aluminium baseball bat, though it was difficult to recognise what it was made of at first sight. Not being as stupid as movies would like to portray the first discoverer of a body to be, I didn’t touch it.

Bit late for that babe, I said, as I gently pulled her away, that’s enough.

She knew the ‘that’s enough’, and moved away to sit down beside my legs as I pulled my Blackberry out of my pocket and keyed 999. I bent down and rested my free hand on her head to comfort her, while I briefly told the emergency operator what I had found. At the operator’s request, I explained what I had been doing at the time, and then confirmed that I would remain where I was until the police arrived.

I moved away from the body to make sure that we didn’t contaminate the evidence any more than we already had, and sat down against the wall of someone’s house to wait for the police to arrive. Sally moved over and lay down beside me. She was whining quietly to herself because she knew that something was not quite right here. She loved people, all people, and it upset her no end when she sensed that someone was injured or in trouble, hence the upset whine rather than a plaintive whinge.

I knew I was in for a difficult time when they arrived. Suspicion always falls on the discoverer of a body until any physical evidence to the contrary is found. So it looked like several hours of questioning lay ahead. I did have the advantage of age, and the fact that very few crimes are committed by people who have dogs with them, but the truly evil nature of this murder might still make the questioning unpleasant.

I heard the police coming long before they arrived, and soon the sirens died and their blue lights were illuminating the end of the alley. It was a surprisingly quick response, and from where I was sitting, I could just make out a police patrol car and the larger form of an incident van.

I recognised the Inspector, who was the first to come into the alley, as someone I had met once before, and I remembered that our meeting had been quite amicable. I’m a licensed private investigator, and have been ever since I was discharged from the RAF. Strangely, I had surprisingly little to do with the police, but that one meeting had been as a result of a particularly nasty scam that I had been investigating at the time. Even though my license was under review because of my age, at least it had not been revoked yet, so still having it, might go some way towards mitigating the problems that I was about to face.

Chapter Two

The details of that previous meeting with the Inspector started to come unbidden into my mind. It had been quite a lucrative assignment from a wealthy young lady who had been taken for an expensive ride by some individual, but couldn’t get the police to listen to her. So she resorted to the phone book and I won the search. It only took me two or three days, using a number of fairly bent people who owed me, to accumulate a lot of damning evidence against the scam artist, and I accompanied the young lady to the police, where with my help she put up a sufficiently good case to get him arrested. The resulting six years he got, plus the two thousand pounds that I got from the girl, made for a satisfying conclusion to what had turned out to be a fairly simple case.

From memory I recognised him as a uniformed Inspector called Chuck Allen, well it was Charles really, but all of his colleagues referred to him as Chuck. Sally began to rumble in her throat as he approached me. She didn’t take to people walking around too close to me until she had been introduced to them.

It’s OK Sal, I said, that’s only Chuck.

At which point she immediately accepted him as someone she had known forever, and her tail began to wag faster than windscreen wipers in a thunder storm.

Fielding her as she attempted to jump all over him, he arrived at my resting place and held out a hand to help me to my feet. The help was welcome as I was no longer in the first flush of youth, and had been wondering how I was going to get up from here. You can always fall down, but getting up is a different matter altogether, and usually it requires a lot younger bones than mine. I sniggered as a thought crossed my mind about a country singer I had seen on a visit to Nashville. It was a ninety-one years old guy called Little Jimmy Dickens. He said that when he bent down, he always looked around to see if there was anything else he could do while he was down there. And that was exactly how I felt at this moment.

Thanks, I said, I could have been down there for a long time.

You are welcome. he replied, grinning We have met before haven’t we? If you are who I think you are, I remember that it was quite a pleasant meeting. That scam artist thing wasn’t it? Fairly odd name it was. Yeh, I remember now, its Lawrence isn’t it, Lawrence Dexxman?

That’s right, Dexxman with two ‘x’s, but call me Larry, and the enthusiastic lady is Sally, I said pointing to her.

OK then, give me the story before the detectives arrive, and I may just be able to save you some grief, though it is fairly obvious that you are not the perp. You don’t look strong enough to lift the bat, let alone swing it.

Thanks, I said, just what I need to really boost my confidence.

Of course it wasn’t a long story. After all I was only out walking my dog when she just happened to discover a body, and I called 999. That was it. I did explain that Sally had been trying to lick him better, so it would be wise to take her DNA for comparison. I pointed out that I had touched nothing, and just pulled the dog away. I did add that I had been sick, and indicated where. I felt a lot better when Chuck went over to look at the body, and was sick in the same place that I had. When he came back, he grinned wryly as a thought came to him,

No need to take Sally’s DNA, the lab boys will know the traces are not human, and as the injuries are clearly not the work of a dog, they’ll ignore it. There are probably more animal traces than hers on the body anyway.

As he was speaking, the forensics team came into the alley carrying their equipment cases, and started to tape off the area around the body. There