Devil's Gate: Book Two of the Rialto Trilogy

By George G A Wensley

Carpenter and Kaminska continue their search for Dragor. To complicate things the remains of Dragor's daughter are found in Ramsgate. He is involved in a plot to assassinate members of the British Establishment. The stress on Dragor is immense will he survive it. Will Carpenter and Kaminska solve the murders and stop the assassination that will surely bring the World to it's knees? They start in Kent and end up in Scotland but the strings are being pulled....

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481785884

George G A Wensley

George has for a long time done amateur photography concentrating on landscape photography, any people that appear in his photographs are there by chance. He enjoys poetry and short stories. Having achieved a certificate in creative writing he has learnt that some of the great novelists also wrote short stories and poetry as well. He admires people like HG Wells, Henning Mankell, Roald Dahl, Tolkien, Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, Kathy Reichs and Anne Lamott. Some of their shorter works give an insight to the larger ones. George likes to go visit the places that appear in his novels and write about them in detail, then like Ernest Hemingway's tips of the Ice burgs include a small detail in the full scale novel. The Isle of Thanet appears in his second novel, while doing research for the second book 'Devil's Gate and his work for the certificate, he went to the Turner Gallery at Margate and wrote a piece called the Dreamlands (he had read The waste lands by T, S Eliot) to get the description out of him. There is also a piece called 'Venice in the Rain,' which he wrote because he was struggling with the end of the book and what was happening in the third. He wishes that he could say that he lives with cats but because he likes to travel it would be difficult to keep them, but he does like his small flat with a court yard garden in a market town in Kent.

Book preview

DEVIL’S GATE

BOOK TWO OF THE RIALTO TRILOGY

GEORGE G A WENSLEY

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AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2013, 2014 by George G A Wensley. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/07/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8586-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8587-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8588-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

About the Author

About the Book

Also by GEORGE G. A. WENSLEY:

Text Murder

Prose, Photos, and Poems

To follow:

Espresso Murder, the conclusion of the Rialto Trilogy

The Andreas Trilogy

To two princes that laid a wreath with the legend

Mummy

Acknowledgements

I n thanks to all the people who read Text Murder and said When is the second book being published?; my publishers, AuthorHouse, and all the backup people there; and to Helen Hart of SilverWood Books ( www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk ), who did some editing of the start of the book; my sister Anne for reading DG; and to all those people I have forgotten.

Author’s Note

T his is my second book, and I am trying to develop my working practices. I used to write in longhand and then transcribe these thoughts onto the computer word processor. I still do that, but only for the sequences with Carpenter and Kaminska. As my writing has improved, I have started writing all the other stuff, like the sequences with Xian and the baddie (if anyone can be 100 per cent evil) sequences, straight onto the computer. The general technique is to layer in different storylines to the basic narrative. I hope this work is even better reading than Text Murder.

Preface

I n this book there are characters that play themselves, so to speak. Some are fictional, and some are real people. This book primarily is a work of fiction. Some of the locations are real but have been moved about a bit. None of the information on the famous people has been accessed by illegal or intrusive data acquisition. The info in the book has come from the media, my visitations to the locations, and my creative manipulation of these ingredients.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Chapter 1

T he room looked small with all the people in it. To Carpenter it looked dark particularly when, as he was doing now looking at a resin cast of Dragor’s finger. Cramped around the table were, DS Kaminska, CI Gower, DS Greywick, forensics tech Xian, and ME Hawthorn.

There was a babble of conversation; Carpenter listened to snippets of it, which ranged from the price of coffee, to who was seeing whom. Carpenter and Greywick didn’t engage in this conversation. Carpenter let go of his self-consciousness and gently banged the table.

Thank you, ladies and DS Greywick.

A titter and a grunt came in response to that.

Carpenter had an uneasy feeling that Kaminska was watching him. Assessing him. But for what? His life was not good, but he was scared of bliss and that fear of it being taken away.

He drew himself away from that thought and started the meeting. Thank you for coming to this meeting. As you know, we have caught and obtained a confession from the killer, Timor, to the murder of Ilse Chemnitz. We could pat ourselves on the back, but we shouldn’t, as the job is barely done. We still have to find Dragor or his remains, a businessman based on Canary Wharf who lives in Marylebone.

A door opened, and a man walked in. He had a lightly cropped haircut; its colour was white and black-speckled grey. His eyes were doe brown, and the wrinkles that adorned his face showed that he smiled a lot. A smile wasn’t on his face now. He wore a shirt without a tie, and a well-cut black suit.

Does this room possess anything that will make a caffeine drink, preferably an espresso machine? His accent was LA Californian.

Carpenter spoke first. Who the—

CI Gower, Jenifer to her friends, cut in. This is Marco Richmond. A company colour sergeant in the American Armed Forces Intelligence Services.

All eyes in the room were on Richmond—some with admiration, some with envy, and some with suspicion. He raised two fingers side by side to his temple in salute and then resumed his hunt for coffee.

Carpenter chipped in. There’s a kettle over there on the counter with instant coffee, sugar, and Coffee Mate. I’m afraid our budget won’t go to an espresso maker. Mine’s black with two sugars.

The room fell to silence while Richmond made the coffee. He sampled his work. Hot and wet, the way I like it. Richmond placed a large latte mug in front of Carpenter, who hated large anything. It wasn’t a good start, but Carpenter was never good at starts.

Get back to work—that’s what I’m good at. Carpenter smiled at that thought, but the smile didn’t quite hide his distaste for the coffee in front of him. He took a sip. Mmm, that’s nice. Welcome, Colour Sergeant Marco Richmond. That name is a bit cumbersome; is there a shorter version?

Marco, not Mark, I’m very particular on the spelling of my name. I was named after the Piazza San Marco. My mother was Italian from Venice.

Marco it is, then. Carpenter did the intros, noticing the reaction of the team to its new member. Kaminska’s was the most surprising—very polite, very wide-eyed, and as warm as her red-dyed hair—but she fingered the silver cross that hung around her neck nervously, almost yanking it off.

Carpenter said, "Right, Marco, let me get you up to speed. I’m a member of the Special Branch Police. We deal with special crimes, like spying against the realm, organised crime and murder, and finally protection of VIPs in the government and the royal family. As a consequence, we work very closely with MI5; in fact we are seen as the enforcing side of MI5.

"We had a murder of one Ilse Chemnitz, a young woman from the former East Germany. I was brought in, because I have experience of investigating foreign nationals, and in particular those from the former DDR. It looked like a simple murder of passion, but there was a lot more going on. It was a professional hit at the behest of a London-based Serb gangster-cum-businessman called Dragor. The hitman, Timor, had a working relationship with Dragor that went way back before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

"As sometimes happens, the gangster became legit and the hitman languished in a personal hell. Timor turned to alcohol and drugs; he then murdered a drunk in an argument about a can of beer. Timor was sloppy, and that meant we got him.

The communication between the two was by mobile phone—and not by any old mobile phone. It was part of a batch of six mobile phones—or, as Marco would call them, cell phones—in London. We found one that had been dumped in the Thames, and then they switched to the second to communicate. The third was used to blow up a military site near Sevenoaks in Kent, where they analysed IED s. I guess this is where you come in, Marco?

Yes, I’m attached to NCIS. My boss’s son was killed in that bombing. I’m here to find the murdering sons of bitches, with your assistance.

Carpenter bristled at that. We are allies in this cause to find Dragor. He may not be the head of the dragon, but he must be found. Recently we have received information that his daughter was murdered at Pegwell Bay near Ramsgate.

The coffee that Marco had drunk seemed to have had a calming effect. I would like to examine the forensic evidence available on the cell phones.

Carpenter got nettled. We call them mobile phones, and as I’m in charge of the day-to-day investigations and the majority of the personnel on the team are English,—Gower and Kaminska gave him a sharp look—we shall refer to them as mobile phones.

Hey! We speak the same language. Don’t we?

Yes, but in different dialects.

Gower, the leader of the group spoke for the first time; her accent was Swansea Welsh, and it was coming through strong. People that knew her realised this meant she was angry and losing control of her carefully constructed calm barrier to her inner self. Gentlemen, we seek the same objectives! We will not achieve them if we fight each other.

Carpenter and Marco said in unison, We’re not fighting.

What in hell’s name are you doing then?

Carpenter got in first. Getting a pecking order established.

Richmond then said, We’re finding the correct US of A-Brit protocol.

Gower had calmed a little, and she sounded a bit more English. Semantics. You are fighting. Marco, you are here to observe. Gordon, you are here to do. Now both of you sit and wag your tails.

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The flat overlooked the Grand Canal in Trieste. The canal was cut in the earth to allow ships to enter the first port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire—a coup for that landlocked royal institution the Hapsburgs. To look at the man in the flat, he would appear to be a normal kind of a person, with the normal fears and aspirations. But he was not normal; he was on a personal mission handed down to him from his parents and their parents—the destruction of the greatest still-living dynasty. This is why he was sending a message to London. The resentments of his parents bore heavily down on him.

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Dragor sat in his flat opposite the Marylebone Hotel. He was grinding his way through a bottle of slivovitz hooch liquor from his native Serbia. Other people were in the room as well. He mechanically went through the social motions, and it was as if he were on social autopilot. He didn’t know what he was saying, but at the moment nobody took umbrage, and it wouldn’t be a problem for long, if it was one at all.

The doorbell rang; it wasn’t an unusual event, as Dragor was giving a party. He went to the door and opened it. It was a despatch rider, judging by the grease and rubber smears on the leathers and the helmet he was wearing. Strictly speaking, despatch riders should take their helmets off. Take your helmet off.

The helmet moved from left to right and then back again. From a large sack he took out a fancy red metallic bag with waxed white handles. Dragor knew now why the rider kept his or her helmet on. Is there anything to sign for?

Again there came a shake of the head; the rider wasn’t Bulgarian or Greek, then.

Dragor took the bag and went back into the party.