Dead or Missing

By Mike Crowson

Dead or Missing
Simon Maddox is the laid back persona of an undercover police officer already living dangerously, trying to infiltrate a drug and people smuggling gang, when he is asked by his minder DI Helen Morris and her own superior officer to investigate the disappearance of Alan Gaff - another undercover policeman. It is only Maddox's bloody mindedness, his urge for freedom and unwillingness to properly keep his 'minder' informed that, quite literally, keeps him alive.

Inge Axelhammer is an unusual looking Swedish woman with stud, piercings, tattoos and a combination of a waist length plait and shaved head. She has a degree in IT from Umea university and incredible skills at hacking into places she legally shouldn't be. She works with Simon's friend Derek in a consultancy used by MI5 and Special branch - why are they so willing to help him stay alive and one step ahead of the people smuggling mob

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Crowson
• Release date: Dec 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370825677

Mike Crowson

Former teacher, former national secretary of what became the UK Green Party and for 40 years a student of things esoteric and occult. Now an occult and esoteric consultant offering free and unconditional help to those in serious and genuine psychic or occult trouble

Book preview

DEAD OR MISING

Mike Crowson

© Mike Crowson 2018

Smashwords

CHAPTER 1

It's funny how you remember unimportant details: I had just finished my cornflakes when there was a hammering at the door.

I had come the conclusion that the corn flakes were past their best – either past their 'best before' date or suffering from the packet not being closed properly - but they did look better than the chocolate cereal Max's six-year-old son was eating. When I took my first bite of the toast, it was a bit burnt and cold. His wife Wendy is usually a pretty fair cook, but this had been left in the toaster too long and too long ago. Max was sitting at the table, drinking tea from his enormous mug, and Wendy was at the sink. I can see the scene clearly, even now. Yes, it's strange how you remember lots of irrelevant details.

Police! Open up, a voice yelled harshly. Wendy went to the door drying her hands on the tea towel.

Now what? she asked rhetorically.

Open up or we'll break the door down, the same voice yelled.

All right I'm coming, Wendy yelled back as she unlocked the door.

What the fuck do they want now? Max muttered resignedly as several police officers, bulky in padded body armour, pushed Wendy to one side and rushed menacingly into the room. Others were standing outside the door and I think one of them had a gun.

Max stood up from the table and the nearest two busies grabbed him, slammed him against a wall and one held him there while the other cuffed him.

Get your jacket and come with us, the more menacing – and more bulky – sergeant said. You, he added, talking directly to me, Get up or I'll have you for resisting arrest.

I got to my feet, took my jacket off the back of the chair and shrugged it on. Can ask what we're supposed to have done, I asked.

Shut up, he snapped. He gave me a shove towards the door, On your way.

Max was just being propelled out of the door ahead of me while Wendy just stood there shaking her head. Outside I noticed one of those hanging back was armed. I thought I had seen a gun. Whatever they were after looked pretty significant, though I had no idea what this was all about. For a start Max, who was a pretty well known minor but regular customer of theirs, had been behaving himself for several months since they had let him out. He wasn't planning to behave, mind you, but he hadn't done anything yet, as far as I knew, so whatever was behind this little raid was pretty certainly nothing to do with either of us.

I was propelled down the steps into the street. So far I wasn't cuffed like Max but with all the rush there wasn't much chance to orientate oneself. We were still following Max and the two officers in body armour towards three cars and a van. There were more of them standing around, including a handler and his dog, and I suppose the couple from the armed response unit were following somewhere behind me. Probably frustrated they hadn't been needed.

In the car, the sergeant snarled, opening door and 'helping' me in. Max was in another vehicle, whether the van or one of the other cars I hadn't time to notice before we roared off, sirens going and blue lights flashing.

It's not a very prepossessing area of London, the lower end of Stoke Newington, but I guess there are worse places. We turned left into the main road and travelled northwards as a noisy convoy, past shops and intermittent nondescript housing dating from the 1890s or earlier, through to the 1980s or later. We flashed and sirened left again into Seven Sisters Road, over Holloway Road to Camden. From there we went roaring north up the hill, through a steadily more affluent area of bigger houses with bigger gardens and at Hampstead Police Station the convoy turned in.

It's red brick building, looking more like an even larger house in an area of larger houses. It somehow fits its surroundings and one could drive past without really registering it as a police station. I imagine it was purpose built in the nineteen thirties to blend in, when the area was sedate and select as well as affluent, and most of the additions and extensions have been away from the main road and hidden from local sensibilities. Our little convoy had stopped the sirens as we swept up the hill and the blue flashing lights had been turned off. I felt mildly irritated by this attempt to appease convention, however, we negotiated silently into a car park at the rear of the building and drew to a sedate halt.

Out you get, the sergeant said, a little less aggressively now that superior officers could be watching, and perhaps slightly intimidated by this upper middle-class affluence around us. My bosses want to talk to you.

What about, I ventured.

No idea. We were sent to bring you in, not brief you, he answered, not nicely or politely, but with less of a snarl. But you can probably make a better guess than me anyway.

I went ahead of him into the building mulling it over, but I really did have no idea.

Interview room 2, the man at the desk said, looking up from his paper. I'd have called him a 'desk sergeant' except that he wasn't a sergeant. He wasn't even, as far as I could see, a police officer.

My sergeant opened a door, In there, he said. As I went in I caught a glimpse of Max being propelled into a different interview room.

Interview rooms come in different shapes and sizes, but when you've seen one you have essentially seen them all. This one had a table and three chairs. As there was no one in the room when I entered, I sat down and waited.

The door opened and three people came in. One of them was my personal 'minder', Inspector Helen Morris, one a Superintendent, presumably Gleason, who was in charge of the whole operation. I hadn't actually met him before, but presumably Inspector Morris had. The third was an even more senior officer I didn't recognise and who wasn't introduced. The one I took to be Gleason dumped a couple of folders on the table and sat down. The anonymous senior officer took the other chair and sat down to one side. This left Helen standing and she didn't look too pleased.

Better get yourself another chair, Gleason suggested. Helen glowered and went briefly from the room. She returned with a chair and banged it noisily down by the table and sat down next to Gleason.

Good morning, Maddox, I'm Superintendent Gleason, as I imagine you know. He was using my cover identity. This is Chief Superintendent Walters. Sorry about picking you up like this and all the fuss that went with it, but we needed to talk to you rather urgently and we didn't want to break your cover.

I nodded. I did wonder what it was all about, I agreed.

Officially you and Max Radov are both being questioned about a murder in east London. When we've finished here we'll release you both on police bail pending further investigation. That will be an end of it, of course, but your cover will be intact.

I nodded again.

Okay, I said, Something very urgent must have come up to justify this morning's exercise – three cars, a van, an armed response unit and a dog … I paused and waited for the explanation.

There is second undercover officer in this operation, Gleason began. His cover name is Alan Gaff and his instructions were to try to get close to Cooper. To that end he was given a suitable background. We even arranged a short spell in a Swedish prison and transfer to a UK open prison as part of the cover. Now, he reports to Inspector Morris as well. Or he was supposed to report to her – weekly. Unfortunately we haven't heard from him for at least three weeks and he doesn't answer his failsafe.

I wondered whether they had any other cause for concern that they were keeping back: I had the distinct impression I wasn't being told everything.

Where do I come in? I asked.

You have been renting a room from Max Radov for nearly a month, Gleason said, You can tell him you're going to that brother of yours in Hebden Bridge for a few days. In the few days you're technically away you can go and look for Alan Gaff and report your findings to Inspector Morris.

I wasn't getting very far at Max's, I remarked. He's tied in with the gang right enough, but he's too junior to know much and too cautious to tell me much.

It was good cover, though, Gleason observed. It gives you a convincing background.

It occurred to me in passing that he seemed to know more than I had told Helen. Or, at least, more than I remembered telling her but, as he was running the case it was his business to know stuff, which didn't quite explain how he knew.

In this file, Gleason continued, tapping one of the two folders in front of him, Is the background we gave Gaff, details of his flat, his car and so on. I'd like you to read it. You can make your own notes of dates, phone numbers and car registration numbers, but I suggest you leave the file itself here or you stand a good chance of blowing your own cover as well as his.

Okay, I said, and picked up the file.

Don't go anywhere. When you've had the chance to look through it, Inspector Morris will let you go on police bail. She's going to stay here in case you have questions. This other file is a very brief summary of the murder case, so you'll be able to answer any questions you're asked.

He stood up. Good luck Maddox, he said. I'm worried about Gaff.

He nodded towards his silent superior and they left without a word. The other man had said nothing, which made his presence here very odd. After all, Gleason was supposed to be running the enquiry.

After they'd gone, Helen sat in Gleason's chair. Helen is turning 40, maybe 42 or 43 – I'm a bad judge of women's ages, so don't take that as certain. Her hair is short and blonde and her manner efficient and not altogether friendly. She didn't do anything to encourage talk that was merely conversational so I started on the first file.

I presume everything here refers to Gaff and his cover story, I remarked. After I'd said it I thought it was a bit trite and conversational, but she answered it seriously enough.

That's his cover bio, she replied. I don't know anything about his bio in the force. I'm not sure he was from the Met.

Greater London is policed by the Metropolitan Police that everyone knows as Scotland Yard. From the address of its headquarters: I wondered, if he wasn't part of the Met, what part of the country and what force he had originally come from.

When did you take him on as minder? I asked.

He'd been with the operation just under four months. Gleason phoned the details through but didn't tell me anything about him, I was just a contact he reported to.

So much for this supposed concern about close monitoring of undercover officers. Had she perhaps been a bit lax?

I haven't even seen that file you're reading yet, she went on, So you'll pretty soon know a lot more about him than I do.

She didn't sound very pleased about that. In fact, it must have been her day for not being very pleased about a lot of things. Apart from that, the file was about an undercover personality, not the man himself. None of this, however, was a starting point.

When did he stop calling in? I asked.

He was as regular as clockwork at first, then four weeks ago he just stopped calling, she answered. When it got to more than two weeks without a call I put out the failsafe into operation but he didn't respond. I emailed Superintendent Gleason and he rang and told me to pull you in to investigate.

I had an impression that Gleason might have thought her on the slow side seeing a potential problem and triggered the full scale response in a panic. Maybe he had been heavy on her and she, being – I think - an ambitious bitch, had not liked it. Or maybe she had wanted to investigate herself, though that would have blown a cover they'd gone to a lot of trouble creating. Well, I had no great love for her myself, but she was okay and usually very efficient. I read on.

Bear in mind this was a cover bio! Alan Gaff had done time in Sweden for being part of a gang smuggling people from eastern Europe into the European Union. He'd been transferred from a jail near Stockholm to an open prison in Lincolnshire – at least that what the file said. There was no photo in the file, - there isn't one of me on my file either and I have wondered about that occasionally. I used the back of a pocket diary to note down Gaff's current address and phone number and his car registration.

Can you ask someone to check the current owner, I said to Helen, pointing to the registration number. She made a note herself and went out of the room. While she was gone I finished the file, that wasn't very helpful as regards starting points. I put it one side and started on the second, even briefer folder.

The car's registered to Alan Gaff at an address in Stockwell, Helen told me as she came back into the room. She passed me a note of the address. It was the same as the one I had copied into the diary. Actually that was obvious when you thought about it – they'd gone to a lot of trouble with the cover identity and wouldn't have overlooked that one. Still, his address looked to be the place to start.

Okay, you may as well let Max and me go on bail and I'll call Alan this evening and drop round there in the next couple of days.

You better get straight onto it, she said sharply.

I can't start wandering off until I've got an excuse for Max sorted, I responded. Must keep up the cover story because it's the only thing keeping me alive.

I'm not sure what made me sound casual about it – probably I just didn't want to let her think I thought the matter as urgent as Gleason apparently did, or maybe part of my cover persona didn't like to do anything in a rush and was carrying over into real life, which is probably not a bad thing in the long run.

The Met bureaucracy started to grind slowly to let us go. I'd given my personals to Helen and Max was around when she handed them back and made a fuss about me signing for them. Max signed for his personals and the civilian on the desk said, Right, you can go now.

Don't we get a ride? Max asked.

Half a mile up the hill is Hampstead Underground station, he explained. A couple of hundred metres the other way there are some traffic lights. Turn left, go down past the Royal Free Hospital to the bottom and left a bit is the Hampstead Heath Overground station.

He was not being very helpful.

But I don't have any money on me, Max protested.

Then walk home, he said.

He was definitely being unhelpful now, and didn't sound very interested either.

Come on Max, I said. I've got a bit for the fare.

We went out of the front door and turned left down the hill. The overground goes to Dalston Kingsland and that's nearly home, I added, sounding (I hoped) sour, resentful and resigned.

CHAPTER 2

The air's fresher here,