Blockbuster

By TONY NASH

The UK in chaos; tens of thousands dead and thousands more dying daily; marshal law and armed police powerless to stop the countrywide rioting, looting and murder. Only one badly wounded, disturbed man can possibly prevent this scenario - providing luck is on his side and he can stay alive long enough.
This book is likely to be banned as a textbook for terrorists, detailing as it does a method for killing hundreds of thousands without the need to carry a firearm or a bomb.
When DI John Hunter is called out to witness the retrieval of the skeleton of a murder victim buried twelve years before, he has no idea of the deadly forces he is about to cross swords with.
A partial fingerprint gives him six possible identities for the skeleton and trying to ascertain which of the six was the actual victim has him trying to find his way through a maze and under the stern gaze of the Secret Services. The discovery of the ancient corpse opens old wounds and occasions more deaths.
When John finally knows who the victim was he realizes that he is up against two crooked Russian financiers, Rock and Smart, aka Doom and Death, multi-millionaires who milk the market by arranging ‘accidents’ around the globe to depress share prices after they have sold short, unaware of the danger he is putting himself and his wife Jane in when he confronts one of them in his lair.
Just before disaster strikes, John becomes aware of a scheme hatched by the Russians that is so diabolical in nature that it is almost unbelievable, a scheme that will bring the UK to its knees in very short order.
Near to death from a gunshot wound and with Jane abducted and missing John is determined that Rock and Smart shall not bring their aims to fruition. That determination will bring him down to the level of the animals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TONY NASH
• Release date: Jan 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310262036

TONY NASH

Tony Nash is the author of over thirty detective, historical and war novels. He began his career as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, later re-training at Bletchley Park to become an electronic spy, intercepting Russian and East German agent transmissions, during which time he studied many languages and achieved a BA Honours Degree from London University. Diverse occupations followed: Head of Modern Languages in a large comprehensive school, ocean yacht skipper, deep sea fisher, fly tyer, antique dealer, bespoke furniture maker, restorer and French polisher, professional deer stalker and creative writer.

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Blockbuster

Tony Nash

Smashwords edition

Copyright Tony Nash 2015-01-26

Other works by this author:

The Tony Dyce thrillers:

Murder by Proxy

Murder on the Back Burner

Murder on the Chess Board

Murder on the High ‘C’

Murder on Tiptoes

The John Hunter thrillers:

Carve Up

Single to Infinity

The Most Unkindest Cut

The Iago Factor

Blockbuster

Historical saga:

A Handful of Dust

A Handful of Salt

Other books:

The Devil Deals Death

The Makepeace Manifesto

The World’s Worst Joke Book

Panic

The Last Laugh

Hell and High Water

And The Harry Page Thrillers:

Tripled Exposure

Unseemly Exposure

This is a work of pure fiction, and any similarity between any character in it and any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional. Where actual places, buildings, characters and locations are named, they are used fictionally.

"Il pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville. Quelle est cette doleur qui pénȇtre mon coeur?" Paul Verlaine 1874. ("It is raining in my heart like it rains on the town. What is this dark sadness that invades my heart?)

CHAPTER ONE

Brixton in the pissing rain. Two-ten in the ack-emma. The pits! Muggy as hell. Vests and shooters; sweats. Target house a grave. No lights, no movement.

‘Retractor’.

Re-bloody-tractor? What the hell’s that controller on about? And what’s that steady beeping? Radio must be on standby.

Four hairy male arses plus one cutey backside on the grey cloth upholstery, the latter that of Carol Baker, newly promoted DI, ex-Bedford cop-shop. Attractive, green-eyed brunette, close-cropped boy’s style; head anyway. Matching Brazilian for sure or shaven. Lezzie? Maybe. Not giving out anyway.

Usual stakeout blues: boredom, backsides, bladders. Last always the worst. Orders: stay in the vehicle. No relief in sight.

Quiet pierced; a loud squeeky fart. A woman’s fart. Musical; A sharp.

Carol, poor little sausage, must have been squirming in agony. Male piss-take, but Bill Gann just has to: one cheek lifted, loud blatter, disgusting stink, stupid grin. ‘Cor, thanks, Carol! Bin ‘oldin’ that in for ages.’

Carol silent, seething; windows down fast for fresh air.

‘Suction, now!’

That controller needs controlling. Suction? For fuck’s sake, is he getting a blow job?

Low engine noise. ‘Ay-up! Vehicle!’

Windows up again fast. Dark coloured Volkswagen LT35, one headlight out, trundling down from crossroads. Low gear. Number plate too dark to read.

Heads down, faces hidden.

Van passes, turns the corner. False alarm?

Thirty seconds later a single headlight, same corner. Duck again. VW drifts past at walking speed and into the target drive.

Gann reads reg; types it in to DVLA. Grunts, ‘Stolen.’ Surprise, surprise!

One figure, slight, query male, leaves van, enters house with key. Front door closes.

Gann triggers mike, ‘Sierra Bravo Two, go, go, go!

Out of the vehicle, across the road, into the drive, Glocks out like a fucking penis parade. Carol too. Penis? The mind boggles.

‘Police, open up!’

No reply. Bates uses the persuader; smashes the door open. Infantry charge, Gann in front. More officers in from the rear.

Male on the landing. Twenties, weedy, pale, thin nose with huge nostrils like two cherries on a stick, shitting himself, no weapon. Hands in the air.

Fuck! Not our man!

Gann tackles stairs; subject on the floor, handcuffed.

Rooms checked. Clear! Clear! Clear!

Fucking total fiasco!

Two toilets, one up, one down. Blessed bladder relief. Men first; we’re not on the fucking Titanic and women can hold it, can’t they? More loud farts; heavy sighs. Vests opened to dry sweat.

‘BP ninety, dropping…eighty…seventy, we’re losing him’. No, we’re not, you fucking idiot, we’ve got him. Gann has.

He radios in.

More ‘Fucks!’ from HQ. The Chief Super’s voice, well pissed off; understandable.

Gann out through the front door with the subject. Carol next, then me, headgear in hand, tired, relaxed; job done, concentration gone.

Shots!

Subject drops, then Gann. Carol’s head explodes, splatters me. Blood, bone, brain tissue; shooter somewhere ahead! React, you stupid bastard! Dive! Too fucking slow; I take one centre chest. Vest is open. Oh, fuck!

Beeps stop. Steady note.

Fuzzy shout: ‘Paddles! Charge! Clear!’

Paddles? Charge? Who does he think we are, the fucking river police or the Light Brigade?

My God, it’s gone black in here. Put the light on someone!

‘Epinephrine, now. He’s still in defib. Charge again, three-sixty joules.’

Someone talking, words still fuzzy, ‘Three hundred Amiodarone. Last try, three-sixty again.’

Steady note off, beeps back. That bloody radio is really playing up.

Big sigh of relief, ‘He’s back. Well done, people. Let’s have three mills Lidocaine to be on the safe side.’

CHAPTER TWO - THREE WEEKS EARLIER

‘I don’t know why you’re laughing; I’m bloody soaked!’

I was, head to toe, but I was laughing too, fit to piss myself; you bloody had to, or cry. That passing thought suddenly brought back my school days and Mam’selle Pinasse, her of the amazingly huge tits and long sexy legs that had every boy in the class leching after her, except Billy Cray, who was about as bent as a burglar’s screwdriver, sitting on that tall stool beside the desk, not demurely behind it as she should have been, with her skirt deliberately well up above her knees, reading from her copy of Beaumarchais about how old Figaro, when asked by Count Almaviva how he kept so cheerful with all those cuckolded husbands chasing after him with daggers and pistols, answered, ‘Je me presse de rire, de faut que je pleure’. Bloody strange how the mind works, bringing snippets like that back from the dead, but now I knew how he felt: he forced himself to laugh, for fear that he would cry. Not a bad philosophy, that; useful in all sorts of everyday situations. Funny, but that was the only bit of the story I remembered. Must have been the thought of all those macho men running around with weapons at the ready and dirty, lucky old Figaro getting his leg over those happy, well-screwed wives working on the testosterone-fuelled imagination of a teenage boy. And, of course, one must not forget the fabulous mammary glands of Mam’selle Pinasse! It was so easy to ignore the dark fluff on her top lip; we were all imagining the darker fluff at the top of those legs, hoping desperately that we might catch a glimpse when she uncrossed and re-crossed her legs! Even at that tender age I knew you didn’t look at the mantelpiece when you were poking the fire. Looking back, I guess she must have got one hell of a kick from deliberately flaunting herself to a class of sex-mad, horny boys, watching their arms moving with their hands out of sight under the desks.

The door sighed shut on its automatic piston behind us, shutting out the monsoon-like downpour and bringing me back from the past with a bang.

‘Aw, my poor darling, you should have shared my umbrella.’

My darling wife Jane was right, as always. Gorgeous, young, shapely, blue-eyed, blond. I would never get over the miracle that she’d chosen me: battered, overweight, greying, world-weary, forty plus; plus quite a bit in fact, and deeply in love for the very first time in my life. Sure, I’d had the teenage crushes, where it felt like the world had come to an end when they dissolved, and I thought I’d been in love with Anita, but looking back realised that when we fell it had been heavily in lust, not love. It had worked pretty well too for quite a while, but it was nothing like this. Jane was my moon and stars, my inspiration. Just looking at her made my heart sing. Each time I touched her something like an electric current hit me. I had to work hard not to show it too much; I was so desperately afraid that too much love could push her away. I had heard it could happen.

I grinned, ‘You’re right, sweetheart, I should have.’

‘You don’t need to be macho with me, John, and there’s no one else watching.’

She was right; there wasn’t. We always arrived well before the nine-on-the-dot crowd. Car parking in the Headquarters car park was at a premium, and if you were late in you had to find a slot somewhere on the surrounding roads, or sit waiting for someone to go to work so that you could slip into their space before the next man beat you to it. It was why I’d stopped using my own jalopy for jobs: you’d get back and find no space. It buggered up the expenses payments but was a hell of a lot easier on the anger management.

‘Six bloody days and nights now; when the hell is it going to stop?’

It wasn’t just pissing down, it was one continuous bloody cloudburst with no let-up; rivers bursting their banks and flooding up and down the country; repeated yellow warnings all over; mudslides, houses evacuated, half-drowned cars and fully drowned sheep and cattle drifting down rivers; a hard pressed Government having to promise money it hadn’t got for yet more flood relief. I’d given up raincoats as passé years ago and donated my last one to Oxfam, but I could have done with one now, or better yet a wet-suit!

Shaking some of the raindrops off we strolled to the rest room and made a couple of coffees before using the stairs to get up to the next floor and the detectives’ office. Start the day off right: no low java light.

DIs Hamish Hamilton and Annie Green, the duty night staff, were standing by their desks ready for the off, pleased as usual that they could leave a few minutes early.

Annie put her hand out as if to take my coffee, ‘That’s very nice of you, John, but you needn’t have bothered, really.’

I pretended to pull it away from her, ‘Gerroff!’

We went through the same old jaded routine every morning, to give the others a laugh. Annie, she of the totally silent orgasm, was one of my ex-lovers whom Jane was not bothered about and they were good friends, although Jane knew Annie would still willingly drop her drawers for me at the slightest nod. We’d made a lot of pretty music together, although the noise part of it always came from me. After the play-acting I held out the mug and she took it and had a long slurp.

‘Anything doing?’

‘Two suicides, one with an unlicensed pistol; a World War One vintage Luger Parabellum, believe it or not. Both sorted, otherwise quiet.’

In SCD1 we dealt with murders, unexplained deaths, abductions and unusual disappearances anywhere in the Greater Metropolitan area. I’d been with the unit since its inception eleven years before, but in the job for over twenty. Jane had joined us straight from Bramshill as a fast-track brat three years back.

Our immediate boss, acting-DCI Angela Crane, pushed the door open, her own coffee balanced precariously on one palm, while she clasped a thick pile of documents in her other hand. Jane stepped over and quickly relieved her of that burden, catching the door, whose return spring was in danger of having it slam into Angela’s back, with her foot.

‘Wow! Thanks, Jane. Good job you were there. I should have made two trips or put them in a briefcase. As it is the outside pages are sopping wet.’

Annie and Hamish went off for some well earned shuteye, and shortly afterwards the rest of the day team arrived, clothes steaming and all moaning as usual about the rain.

We worked steadily through the first couple of hours on catch-up reports and took another coffee break at eleven. It began to look like one of those rare euphoric ‘lost dog’ days as we called them, but as usual what little euphoria there was didn’t have a chance to settle in. It never did in our neck of the woods; there was always some murderous bastard out there, determined to ruin our peace.

The phone call came in at twenty past. Angela took it; called us in.

‘Angus Blaine just called. Do you remember him, John?’

I nodded, ‘The Hillgay affair. A good man.’ Angus was the senior fire investigator with the Met Brigade. ‘What’s he got for us?’

‘The boys were called out to a culvert that was in danger of giving way in Fulham. They tried to shore it up, but one portion was too weak and when it collapsed it disgorged a body, or at least what’s left of one. It looks suspicious, wrapped in plastic.’

‘Not another Neanderthal man then.’

‘No.’ She gave us the address.

‘We’re on it, ma’am. Forensics?’

She picked the phone up again, ‘My next job. Off you go.’

It was likely to be a long job in the rain, so no messing with this one: we went down to the stores in the basement and signed out Wellingtons and full wet weather gear before taking an unmarked Ford Galaxy from the motor pool. In the rather grand motor we must have looked like two rich fishermen going down to the docks to pick up a boat for the day. I remembered the few times one of my more caring foster fathers had taken me fishing, and I knew which of the two occupations I’d rather be engaged in.

The Brigade had done a good job securing most of the culvert: they had a firm of structural engineers there helping, with steel shoring equipment and heavy lifting gear.

The stretch that had given way was about thirty yards long, almost in the centre of the two hundred yard long culvert wall, and the plastic-wrapped body, or what was left of it, was lying in the mud near the right hand end of that section, but when the earthworks had given way it had been with a whole lot of water behind it, so it was anybody’s guess where the body had been buried to start with. Not that it would have made a great deal of difference; the scene of crime was completely fucked up.

Angus had been talking to the structural engineers when we pulled up. He was easy to recognise, even in full wet weather gear: six feet three inches tall and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. In amongst the half dozen yellow-clad workers he looked like a bloody great animated oak tree in the centre of a wet autumnal wood.

He detached himself from the others and walked over, giving us a big soppy grin; he thought the world of Jane. He’d been a rugby player at school and university, and his face showed it: several long-healed white scars on his forehead, a right eyebrow with a bit missing in the middle, where no hair would ever grow, and a nose whose line had a distinct kink in it halfway down. Nevertheless, he was a handsome devil, with a permanent twinkle in his blue eyes. He knew us from other jobs we had been on where the Brigade had been involved.

‘When we found the body I thought of you sitting in that nice dry office drinking coffee and reckoned you would much rather come and enjoy it with us out here in the mud and squalor.’

‘Yeah! Thanks a bunch, Angus! Who’s been down near the body?’

‘Jake, over there. It just looked like a large bin bag, so I sent him down to see what it was. Your crime scene is pretty intact, such as it is. He saw a couple of bones sticking out through the plastic from several yards away and didn’t go any closer. Of course, it could be a large dog or some other animal, but I decided not to take any chances.’

‘That’s good. We’ll stay up here too and let forensics do their thing. They should be here soon.’

‘I might be wrong, but I believe the burial of the corpse may have been what caused the collapse. It would have been much bulkier when it was buried, with the earth tight around it, and now the flesh is gone the bundle will have shrunk, leaving a space in the wall where water could accumulate and form underground runnels, weakening the structure at that point. Whoever buried it didn’t think of that.’

‘They probably didn’t think of this.’ I pointed to the sheets of water falling from the sky. ‘It has been exceptional.’

‘True. Bloody global warming.’ He looked over my shoulder, ‘Here’s your team.’

Janet Keller and her two assistants, Michael and Alastair, opened the doors and got out of their van. Like us, they were togged up in issue yellow plastic. The SOCO