Dry Rain

By B J Kibble

British police detective Tom Carver investigates what he believes to be a run-of-the-mill murder of a vagrant. As he works the case, however, he learns that the murdered man was a banker who was moonlighting as a black-mailer with ties to Maxamillion Snider, the head of a nefarious crime organization. The murder victim had stolen a top-secret disc for Snider with information about the government's attempts to manufacture a battlefield nerve gas agent. When he refuse to drop the murder case investigation, Carver is framed by members of his own force who are in league with Snider. Soon he's on the run from the police, security Services and Snider's hit men—and even his estranged family is threatened. Can Carver get Snider before the nerve agent is released throughout London?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Whiskey Creek Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781611603101

Book preview

Chapter 1

Guided toward the murder scene through the pre-dawn darkness by the flashing blue lights of squad cars, Detective Inspector Tom Carver crunched the frostbitten grass of Regents Park beneath his scuffed black brogues.

Killers were damned inconsiderate. Why couldn’t they wait for summer and give a hard-working copper a break?

He stopped short of the white crime tent, its sides flapping like sails in the icy wind, and sniffed at the air. London owns a unique smell, a skin-permeating odor of clean linen tinged with the smoke of a million coal fires. He liked the smell, felt at one with it.

However, the stench that struck him upon lifting the entrance flap was a stomach-churning potpourri of dried sweat, urine and stale booze. Twenty years with the force had desensitized him, preventing his rushed breakfast of jam on burnt toast from splashing the ground.

Although he didn’t like touching the victims, they forever burrowed under his skin, crying out for justice. He never dwelt on their intimate echoes—he had a job to do. Privately, he enjoyed his work. Publicly, he moaned about everything with a shovel-full of sarcasm, but that was the way of experienced coppers who unearthed the darker secrets of the living and the dead.

Breath steaming, he tugged a latex glove over his frozen right hand, crouched, lifted back the plastic sheet and studied the corpse. Blood matted the middle-aged vagrant’s thinning black hair. The well-tailored dark brown pinstriped suit, shabby and stained with vomit and alcohol, wasn’t the usual attire of a tramp. A spent nine-millimeter shell was wedged between his mauve lips like a cigarette butt. Most professionals marked their kills, and would display the heads on their walls like big-game trophies given the chance.

With a decisive but gentle touch, he turned the shattered skull. An execution. Close up. Single bullet through the brain entering at the back of the neck. He peered up at his Detective Sergeant. Benny, who the hell would sanction a contract on a wino? And why the hell do it on a freezing January morning when I ought to be home snuggled in with the wife.

Benny shoved his hands into his duffel-coat pockets and stomped his feet. You were divorced two years ago, Tom.

Carver grinned and snapped off the glove. Chummy must’ve been an important bum to warrant a professional.

He found a peculiar fusion of excitement and comfort whenever he hovered in the quiet roar that followed death, especially violent death. He forgot his surroundings for a moment; even the cold and the shadows of his colleagues melted into the incessant hum of the blinding halogen lamp. The lamp, which hung from an aluminum support pole, had burned away the hoarfrost from the tented rectangle of grass.

He glanced at the ashen face of the young uniformed constable positioned by the flap, and then at his murder-squad colleague. I’d bet my pension no one heard or saw anything? Who found him?

I did, sir, the uniformed officer said.

Good grief, he’s just a kid. They were churning out babies now and sticking them in uniforms. How long you been on the force?

Just out of Training College, sir.

I wish I was. Carver smiled at him. Don’t worry, son, you actually get used to this. Any identification?

The officer fumbled with his notebook.

Benny turned to him with a word of encouragement. Take your time.

The policeman cleared his throat and gripped the book between his black-gloved hands. Half a bottle of brandy, five hundred pounds in fifties, a quid in loose change and a tattered color photo of three men. He looked up. One of them resembles the deceased, sir. Well…what’s left of the poor—

Not our run-of-the-mill tramp, Benny? Carver shook his head. Doesn’t make sense. You can hire an unemployed slob from a seedy club in Soho for twenty quid. A lowlife who’d happily top his own mother. However, that sort would’ve taken the tramp’s money. No, I’ve seen this before, too neat: the precise angle of shot and the bullet casing left as a calling card. I reckon our killer’s an expensive pro with a sense of humor. Perhaps by some miracle we’ll turn up a fingerprint.

He twisted when the tent flap rustled.

A short, stout man in his late thirties entered. His dark green, knee-length camelhair coat was a little too short in the sleeves, and it clashed with the signal-red baseball cap worn back to front as though it were the last vestige of a lost youth. Chief Superintendent Geoffrey Allison always looked as if he’d just fallen off a Christmas tree. Carver knew enough not to grin.

Allison’s high, impatient voice resonated like echoes in an empty tin. What have we got?

Carver glanced at Benny and raised an eyebrow. A dead wino, Geoff.

Hell, Carver, the CAD room told me that bloody much.

Contract killing, Carver snapped back.

What, a bloody vagrant? Do me a favor.

Benny said, Contract killers don’t usually make mistakes.

Allison looked down his nose at Benny. This body got a name?

The uniformed constable spoke up. Not yet, sir.

Allison gave the man a narrow-eyed stare. Did I bloody ask you?

Carver stood. We’ll know more later, Geoff.

Find out who he is and keep me posted. Too bloody cold to be standing over a dead tramp at seven a.m. I’ll be at the station until three. He adjusted his baseball cap, stepped up to Carver and whispered in his ear, Use my correct title in front of subordinates.

He hesitated at the flap, turned back, lifted the plastic shroud and quickly dropped it.

Allison’s behavior was odd. He usually avoided the grisly aspects of a case, opting to remain glued to his desk unless there was a glory slot on TV when a case was cleared. That he’d come out at all, especially at that unearthly hour, was a miracle. A look of surprise creased his pale face, and then he adjusted his baseball cap, mumbled something and left.

Benny shook his head. "No wonder they call him Farthead around the Nick."

Carver shrugged. They rise…they fall. Come on, Benny, we’ll find out who our mystery man is over hot coffee. He turned to the constable. Don’t let our body walk off, son. He smiled and patted him on the shoulder. And make sure you talk about this to someone later over a beer or two, okay?

The officer nodded.

* * * *

Carver drove the two miles to Heston Road Police Station, in the heart of London’s West End, in silence, his thoughts snagged by the faces of the three men in the wino’s photograph.

The building smelled of old books—musty, like the majority of its aging officers. Carver despised the modern double-glazed doors stuck to the Victorian façade like a callous afterthought, a wart on the arse of sensibility and good taste. He also hated the new policing methods that cuffed coppers from doing their jobs and mixing with villains to keep them on-side; worse was the modern, mainly young, incompetent brood of senior officers, which included Farthead.

Except for the faint smell of pork sausages, the white tile canteen reeked of disinfectant like the Carlton Street Morgue.

Carver sat in a metal and canvas chair, which should have been thrown out with the antiquated six-inch heating pipes. They rattled persistently and brought tears to fools who sat too close and banged their kneecaps. He stared at the crinkled photograph in its cellophane evidence wrap.

Benny placed the full tray on the Formica table. It’s cold enough in here to freeze the nuts off a polar bear. Why can’t they—

You recognize any of these faces? Carver tapped a finger on the snapshot, and then slid the image across the table.

Benny studied it with a furrowed brow. No, but I can see from the familiar glint in your eye that you do.

Carver stirred his coffee with a hospital-white plastic spoon. The one on the left is Michael Brendan. In the middle is our stiff, John Fowler, and the one on the end is Robert Dyson. They all worked for Ptarmigan International Bank...once.

Once?

There was a scam in the late nineties. My old Detective Inspector, Phil Clark, dealt with the case. He often rang me to discuss its complexities, and I got to see the file once or twice. Anyway, all three disappeared without a trace. Four weeks later, Brendan turns up as a suicide. A week after that, Dyson dies in a car crash in southern Ireland.

Yeah, I remember. Something about missing money. Benny looked pleased with himself. Am I right?

Carver sipped his coffee and peered at him through the steam. Two million in South African rand. Never recovered a cent. Everyone thought Fowler had gone off to the sun with it.

Didn’t Urquart, the Labour Party Home Secretary, get his knuckles wrapped over it?

Yeah, he was Defense Minister then. The whole issue was a political storm for Labour. I was seconded to protection duty at the time in Ten Downing Street. He sipped his coffee and stared at the photograph again. Chris Cronin, the Deputy Prime Minister, took full responsibility for his illicit transactions between a couple Middle East countries that harbored terrorists. He shrugged. Poor sod. They crucified him for someone else’s mistakes. But don’t they always?

Benny shook his head. Where’s he at now?

Cronin disappeared one night after topping his wife and was never seen again.

That doesn’t explain Fowler’s sudden reappearance, Benny said. I mean, he had two million smackers, yet turns up as a tramp with five hundred pounds in his wallet.

Bent money can do strange things to a person, and in Fowler’s case...get you killed. Someone got shafted by these three, and I bet that someone has now finished dishing up his own form of justice.

Benny buttered his bread as if the stuff were going out of fashion. He added a runny egg, smothered it with black pepper, folded the bread, and then cut the crusts off with the precision of a surgeon.

Good grief, Benny, you’re not going to eat that?

It’s food, ain’t it? Anyway, you can talk. It ain’t good to live on takeaways. He caught a drip of egg on his tongue. So who are we looking for?

Carver took a mouthful of his bacon roll and chewed it thoughtfully. The only good thing about the canteen was the way they crisped the bacon—probably by accident.

The Duty Desk Sergeant stormed through the door and made a beeline for their table.

Farthead wants to see you urgently, Tom. He’s racing around like a bull with a hot iron up its arse.

Thanks, Stan. By the way, how’s the Missus?

The policeman hurried off, stopped at the door and turned. Still gives me hell, but that’s what keeps the pubs in business.

Benny slurped his drink, and then put the cup down, chinking it against the saucer. Farthead wants the Commissioner’s job.

He’s welcome to it, Carver said. I’ll give him what I’ve got. Finish your grub and meet me in the squad room.

Benny stood and his chair banged against the heating pipes. When’s Allison going to realize he looks like a bloody garden gnome in that cap?

You don’t get labeled Farthead for nothing, Benny.

* * * *

Carver knocked and opened the door to the DCS’s office.

Allison stood by his grimy office window with his fat pink hands clasped together behind his back. His light gray suit looked as though he’d slept in it. He stared at the sheet of smoke-gray sky. He’d probably stay like that all day, counting pigeons.

Take a seat, Carver.

Carver sat at the desk and eyed the gilt-framed photograph of Allison in full uniform at Bramshill Police College—more human without his Yuletide trappings.

Reeking of wood polish, the room was a sterile, sparsely furnished place like Farthead’s brain: like railway station waiting rooms late at night where people feared to tread, and if they did, they seldom lingered. He couldn’t blame them. Both Allison’s manner and mouth were equally abrupt.

Allison turned. His stern round face creased slightly at the thin lips with a manufactured smile. This bloody tramp.

Fowler, sir?

Yes, yes. He cleared his throat as if he was about to go up an octave. You can call me, Geoff...in my office, of course.

Carver nodded and slid a finger up and down the waxed desktop. He studied a tiny chip in the mahogany, and expected to see the blood and bone of some poor wretch who’d upset the man.

Something clicked in Carver’s brain, and he peered at Allison. It was odd that the man already seemed to know the victim’s name. On the other hand, tramps were in and out of the nick on a regular basis enjoying Heston Road’s heating and hospitality for a night.

Allison said, The Commissioner wants it kept under wraps for now.

Carver sat forward. You’re joking.

Allison sat down, tugged open a drawer and produced a half-bottle of Irish whisky. Sensitive issues at stake. I’m sure I’ve no need to explain them to you. Drink?

Carver shook his head, leaned back and folded his arms. It’s a murder, Geoff, and I’m on the murder squad.

Quite. But nothing’s what it seems, is it?

Meaning?

Allison abandoned his phony smile and stiffened, twisted the cap back on the bottle, shoved the bottle in the drawer and slammed it shut. You’re up for promotion again, yes?

That’s correct.

Been waiting eight years to make DCS.

A familiar knot swelled in Carver’s gut. You know that, sir. Everybody knows.

You’re forty-eight, Carver. Bit late in the day for ambition.

I’m an experienced officer and—

And you’ve put a lot of noses out of joint with your die-hard attitude.

I simply spoke my mind when the occasion demanded.

You certainly did. Allison opened a file in front of him and perused it. Your future lives or dies with me. All it takes is a scratch of my pen.

I deserve a lot more credit than some give—

That’s all, Inspector. Without looking up, Allison stuck out a hand. I’ll take the photo you found on Fowler.

The photograph weighed heavily in his pocket. DS Vince has it.

Then get it. There’s a good fellow.

Sir.

* * * *

Benny sat toying with a computer mouse in the cramped, hot squad room with his feet perched on a cheap, wood laminate desk, his back against the radiator.

Carver slumped in his swivel chair, facing a table stacked with buff files.

He’d known Benny for five years. Detective Sergeant Benjamin Vince was an honest copper, a keen detective. His boyish face and thick black hair made Carver’s deep lines and long, bent nose look positively ugly, not to mention the thinning hair with its ample tints of gray.

Benny’s wife was the talk of The Nick: mostly crude toilet talk. Benny wasn’t fazed; he knew what he owned, and to him she was solid gold. A beauty, but a touch naïve when it came to the real world. Most coppers preferred someone to go home to—eventually—who loved them despite the sacrifices they made to the job. They needed women who were interested in their child’s latest school report and making more babies, not in the blood and knuckle of the street.

Most coppers, that is.

Carver didn’t ride that particular train. Harriet had been shrewd, intelligent, wanted to know how his day went. On the other hand, she needed a nine-to-five husband. She always had an answer, always moaning about his being a stranger. Now he was a full-time stranger, and not only to her but also to his girls, Cristina and Angelina.

The damn computer won’t let me have any information on Ptarmigan, Benny said. It’s marked classified with a referral to Home Office Department.

Figures.

Benny stared at him. You don’t seem bothered.

We’ve been told to leave well enough alone.

Will we?

Carver grinned. No way. This stinks, and I’m in a fumigating mood.

Benny laughed. When he laughed, the room shook.

Get me Ptarmigan’s details and the name of their managing director, Carver asked. Find out if Fowler had a family and get his CRO file. Get the files of the other two conspirators as well, and then see if the serial numbers on those fifties are consecutive.

Did you show Farthead the photo?

I told him you had it.

Ha! Thanks a bunch, Tom. Farthead’ll be on my back now.

You’ve got broad enough shoulders.

Carver removed his jacket. Blimey, it’s freezing in the canteen and like an oven up here.

Benny picked up a fax from his tray. You heard the bad news?

What?

Your old governor, Clark, he’s dead. Heart attack.

Carver’s jaw dropped with surprise. Never—he had the heart of a bloody ox.

Sorry, Tom.

Hell, coppers live on stress all their working lives, then retire with nothing to do, and...and they slide into death without breaking a sweat. Phillip Clark had been a good sort, stretched the rules but got results. Carver bent to turn the radiator thermostat down. It wouldn’t budge. He kicked it. I’ll tell you something, Benny, I ain’t dying in bed or watering some damn garden.

I just don’t want to die alone. That’s all.

Benny, you’ll die a happy old fart with a runny egg sandwich in your mitts.

Benny laughed, but Carver could only think of Phil Clark’s retirement party, when he stood in the man’s giant shadow. Grief, the bloke was only fifty-five.

Carver took out the vagrant’s photo and peered at three more dead people. Fowler, the one in the middle, was the sort of victim Clark would have loved to investigate, really get his detective teeth into. Allison’s cloak and dagger attitude would have only made him bite all the harder.

Benny screwed up the fax and tossed it in the bin. You gonna tie up this African murder today?

Yeah, my last showing at the Old Bailey. Start on this Fowler thing tomorrow. I’ll be at court all day making sure that bugger Ottawangi gets life for butchering his wife and kids. Why don’t you pop around this evening, and we’ll go have a beer.

Sounds good.

Bring a copy of the photograph. For God’s sake make sure you give Farthead the original.

* * * *

Carver shut the door to his Paddington flat and slung the keys on the onyx telephone table. A winter shiver ran through him. He wanted to leave thoughts about his dead colleague and Fowler in the hall, but couldn’t shake either of them. Death had a long reach and he wasn’t getting any younger.

The housekeeper had been there; pine aerosol lingered in the air. He’d have to check the fridge again as little Maria had a larcenous tendency for all things edible. Not that he kept much in the fridge apart from microwave pizzas and whole nut chocolate.

Sleet pattered the misted glass of the living room sash window. He wiped his hand across a pane and looked out. Three stories below, the London traffic snaked beneath the muted lemon light of street lamps. People walked quickly—ever so quickly—intertwining but never touching, never speaking.

The world never stops for breath. Phil Clark did, and died for it.

A man in a black ski-hat hugged the doorway of Clothes Are Us, shuffling his feet against the cold. He looked up. Carver grinned. He’d been a policeman too long, found the bad in everything and everyone. He stared the man down, just for the hell of it, and the stranger stepped back into the shadows.

Carver hitched his left trouser leg up. In his rush to the murder scene, he’d put different colored socks on, one blue and the other black. It would never have happened in the old days. He took care of crime while Harriet took care of his children, his laundry, his ironing, his substantial meals and his bed. However, most of all, she deposited neat piles of carefully-wrapped socks in the airing cupboard: all matching, warm, and inviting. Always there, trustworthy and reliable—unlike him.

The doorbell rang.

No doubt it was Maria returning for her money, which he’d forgotten to leave, again. Perhaps she’d cook him something, if she’d left anything to cook. How could a woman eat so much and remain so thin? She was a good cleaner, seemed trustworthy, although he kept his private papers behind the bath panel. He liked to think she fancied him; it made the nights pass quicker.

The stranger at the door was a tall man, bald and skinny with a squashed face that looked as though he’d been smacked with a frying pan. Too late to react to the fist, Carver reeled back and tasted blood. A second blow to his head sent the hall into a spin and he collapsed on the carpet. The kick in his groin was the last pain he felt.

* * * *

He woke up on his bed in the pitch black, his head full of jackhammers, and groaned when he grabbed the bedside clock. The luminous hands read eight p.m.

He recalled the knock on the door, the bald man, and the punch. Must’ve have been a heavyweight burglar. He must’ve got the wrong flat—Carver hadn’t two pieces of silver to rub together thanks to Harriet and the girls. The place would be in a mess. Maria was going to hate him. He touched the bruise on his chin, and then reached across to switch on the bedside light. His hand fell back against cold flesh.

Maria Estobelle’s five-foot-nothing frame was stretched out on the bed, naked, her throat neatly cut, and a sea of blood had poured down between her small breasts to pool between her splayed thighs.

He jumped from the bed.

A man’s voice broke from the shadows in a corner. Relax, Carver. Sit down.

Eyes now accustomed to the dim light, he made out the shape of a gun in the bald man’s hand. Who the hell are you?

Sit down!

He sat on the edge of the bed, glanced at poor Maria and then glared at the killer.

A sharp spear of moonlight from the window cut across the man’s flat nose as he leaned forward. What do you know about the computer disc?

What?

Fowler’s disk. Where is it?

He glanced at Maria. Your bloody handiwork?

I do lots of things.

Like killing tramps.

Answer the bloody question.

Screw you.

Another man appeared from the blackness of the hall and stood in the doorway. He produced a syringe from his brown leather bomber jacket and tugged the cork off the needle. I threw the kitchen knife in a bin downstairs. It won’t take them long to find it.

What the hell’s going on? Carver said.

The bald man stood and stared at him. You don’t know shit, do you, Carver?

His mate stepped closer to the bed, the syringe upright, his thin black face partly shrouded by dreadlocks. I’ve wrecked the whole flat and found nothing, Spud?

Don’t use names, you daft prat. What about the other copper?

Other copper? Carver said, but when he tried to get up the click of a gun hammer froze him.

Dreadlocks chuckled. I spread his guts all over the living room. Man, you should get a hundred and twenty-five years for them both.

Good. The bald one stood. Let’s put him to sleep and get out of here.

What about the disc?

He don’t know nothing. Like Mr. S said, Carver’s safer in prison for now. We’ll go talk to that obese shit, Beadle, next.

The cold tip of a gun muzzle pressed into Carver’s temple, forcing him down beside Maria. He eyed the needle as it dropped to his arm and winced when it bit into his skin.

Chapter 2

John Beadle, Financial Director of Ptarmigan Securities Division, left the head office of Ptarmigan National Bank and entered the underground parking lot at ten p.m.

He was pleased to have secured another deal that day worth five million to the South African Bank, and even more pleased that one percent of that was his. There was nothing wrong with the accumulation of wealth. Money was the way to happiness; he loved making it and he loved spending it.

He was grabbed by unseen hands—they shoved him through the exit door and back into the lift.

He turned and faced the two assailants. What the—

Shut it, you fat slob. The bald one snatched the briefcase from his hand and rifled through it.

Beadle fumbled in his trouser pocket, produced his brown leather wallet and held it out with a shaky hand. I...I don’t carry cash. Take my credit cards.

The lift door slid shut on what Beadle suddenly realized might well be his coffin. The Rastafarian punched the controls and the cramped car jerked upwards.

His colleague threw the briefcase to the floor and shoved the sweating, twenty-five-stone banker against the oak paneling. You seen Fowler lately?

Fowler?

Beadle yelled when his genitals were squashed.

Man, we’re not in the mood for your crap, the Rastafarian said. Talk, or you’re gonna have your first and last flying lesson.

Okay, okay. The pressure to his groin relaxed. He rang...out of the blue. Wanted to meet. I said no.

Does he still have the disc?

He didn’t say. The slap to the side of his head stung. Please, he didn’t say anything else. I swear.

The lift didn’t stop at any of the forty-two floors, and Beadle’s heart hammered like a steam engine. Heights weren’t his thing. With his face burning hot, and his thoughts in turmoil, the grim features of his attackers blurred.

He’d insisted that his office be situated on a lower floor, the second floor to be precise. A decision due partly to his excessive weight, but mainly because of his acute vertigo. He never traveled the glass-fronted stairway unless there was a fire drill, and then, despite his size and shortness of breath, he’d take two steps at a time, gripping the banister with a prayer on his lips.

When the lift stopped, he was manhandled up a flight of stone steps onto the moonlit roof where the icy wind needled his face. Oh my God, please don’t hurt me.

The bald guy laughed. Your God ain’t up here.

They marched him to the ridged parapet at