All Several Sins

By E.A. Yorke

Killing Eve meets Line of Duty as Annie Montague, former DCI with the Met, seeks to track down and apprehend the head of a dangerous and audacious OCG. The group are engaged in the trafficking of drugs and people, as well as money laundering and murder, and everything in between. The boss of the OCG, Mila Ro

• Language: English
• Publisher: AMZ Marketing Hub
• Release date: Apr 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915942258

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All Several Sins

E.A. Yorke

Copyright © 2022 E.A. Yorke

All Rights Reserved

For you. You know who you are.

Prologue

The stench of human excrement. It’s long since overpowered the previous effluvial mélange. Ammonia, sweat, rotting fruit. Breath. There’s a bucket in the corner with a loose-fitting lid. A single white toilet roll stands atop as sentinel, at first portly but becoming disconcertingly slim.

Don’t use so much! hisses one of the girls. That’s all we have.

Hard to say whether it’s the contagion of fear or an untimely call of nature. Either way, the gloom is such that there is no need to avert the eyes, although the adults do.

They gave one of the men a flashlight for the journey. Once inside, another was discovered, kicked into a corner by a member of the previous cargo. Both shed their light reluctantly. He will use one until it fails - sparingly, for short bursts; then the other with even more prudence. He is particularly attentive to the latrine, checking with the frail torch beam every time there’s a lurch. Good to have a sense of responsibility at times like this - keeps the pecker up. Even if only as self-appointed guardian of the shit bucket.

There are blankets. The kind supplied by international aid agencies, rough and synthetic, most likely stolen or otherwise obtained under false pretences. They are mercifully dark in colour, so when the flashlight limps over their folds, the storytelling stains remain silent. Up close, their odour’s strong enough to deter sleep. Even the least squeamish of the travellers are unwilling to rest their heads. Children crumple onto laps. Adults slump against steel, their spines feeling every jolt of the journey.

A crate of oranges has been abandoned in the no-man’s land between the latrine and the seating area. The decent fruits have been picked out and eaten or pocketed. Those that remain are soft and beginning to cultivate their own patina, the hue of tarnished copper pipes. Discarded pith and peel are strewn amongst them, discoloured and curling. If there were optimum conditions to accelerate decomposition, these are they. The air is fetid and moist. Happiest of hunting grounds for bacteria. There were packets of rusk-type biscuits and bottles of water, too, at the outset. ‘Nutritious refreshments included in price.’ These have been distributed, fairly or otherwise, and squirrelled away.

Passengers’ feelings are in conflict. The decision-makers agonise over what they have brought about but cannot allow themselves regrets. Not at that cost. They must try to cast what they are leaving behind in the worst possible light. Not difficult, in many ways. Violence. Poverty. Discrimination. They remind themselves how desperate and miserable they were in their homeland, though recollections are overshadowed by the hell of their current situation.

As for the few young children, any sense of excitement and adventure has been eclipsed by the discomfort of the journey. They tread a knife-edge of nausea: if one vomits, they’ll all go, like firecrackers in a box.

Only three of the twenty or so have something other than the distress of the journey on their minds. Farah cradles her son in her arms. Her husband, Kia, looks on, tense and fretful. Parsa is six years old. The fever that threatened the previous day has taken hold. He murmurs with the pain in his head and the ache of his limbs. He refuses food and water. Despite the humid warmth of the place, his hands are ice-cold. The rules were perfectly clear. No passage for anyone unfit. And no refunds. They had passed a rudimentary medical check at the border into Greece, not twenty-four hours since. The supposed doctor was a gruff old man with a stethoscope and a mercury thermometer, dipped into a pot of blue liquid before being shoved into the mouth of the next candidate.

Farah clings on to the hope that they are nearly there. That the world-famous NHS will heal her son, no questions asked. Kia is haunted by the rumours he has picked up en route: scare stories to keep everyone compliant. It was said the facilitators once lost patience with one of their clients. He, like Parsa, must have got through the medical, passing off the first signs of sepsis as a common cold. Perhaps the despicable doctor, turning a blind eye, made a few extra Lira that day. The septic shock must have struck during the crossing from Rotterdam to Felixstowe - one can only imagine how the hours passed for him in that container. He had somehow made it into the white transit van that was to transfer the passengers to their final destinations - London, Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield. But he didn’t get as far as Ipswich. The van pulled briefly onto a benighted back road, and, the story goes, he was thrown into the undergrowth between the road and railway line.

The container sways before juddering to a standstill, signalling their arrival at the port. Nerves are jangling despite the assurances.

UK officials are notoriously tricky, they had said. We’re the only service provider with such good contacts.

Sure enough, disembarkation proceeds hitch-free. They are ushered from the container and, just as eyes begin to get accustomed to the artificial lights of the dockyard, loaded into the waiting white transit. Parsa’s blotchy rash must go unnoticed for some time longer.

(Some years earlier)

Question put, That the Bill be now read a third time.

Division!

The Ayes to the right: 324, the Noes to the left: 320.

The Ayes have it, the Ayes have it.

Bill accordingly read the third time and passed.

It had a numbing effect. Those watching, unable to tune out despite being sickened at the sight of the jubilant Government benches. Those not usually lost for words, were.

Chief Superintendent Lively surveyed the 6th floor of New Scotland Yard from her glazed corner office. The scene reminded her of 9/11. As a young Detective Sergeant, she and her whole division had sat motionless and transfixed by the horrors unfolding on their screens. Crime had seemed to stop that day as though in deference - the everyday criminals, outdone. Most of this lot were too young to remember that. This was their watershed moment.

Scanning the office, Lively caught the eye of her favourite DCI, a tough cookie - they all were - who had visibly paled at what had just transpired. Lively shook her head in exasperation. Her DCI acknowledged with a pained nod, holding Lively’s gaze. She realised she was required to say something.

She left her office and crossed the open plan to the windows, looking out across the river as her officers gathered behind. Those closest scooted over on their wheelie chairs. Others stood and leaned where they could. She turned slowly, assembling her words and shaking off those which she was sure had sounded the Met’s death knell. Not just a few bad apples….

I’m very disappointed - disappointed? - as I’m sure you all are, at what’s happened in Parliament today. We were hoping for a government defeat, and at one point, it seemed that might happen. Though I’m afraid the very narrow victory and the number of MPs opposed will be of no comfort at all. She felt herself floundering. Faces were difficult to read. "You will all be anxious as to what the future will hold. Both on a personal level and, perhaps like me, on an institutional level. And I would simply ask you to keep an open mind. Try to see this as an opportunity for change for the better. And to seek to uphold the law in whatever capacity you may find yourselves.

The Commissioner will be addressing all staff at 3pm."

1

I’ll be setting up one-to-ones with you all over the next couple of days, but a couple of things to note meantime. I have a young son and a husband, both of whom I’m quite fond of. Unless I have a very good reason to be here past 6pm, you won’t find me at my desk later than that. No Brownie Points for sticking around in the office just for form’s sake. Get out as soon as you can, when you can. There’ll be plenty of times I’ll need you here all night. And please, if you have any issues with how I’m running the team, come and tell me. Don’t gripe behind my back or let it fester. Thanks.

Annie Montague strode back to her desk and began settling herself in. Her new team dispersed themselves to re-take their own seats. They flashed each other charged looks.

Christian Taylor was straight on the Office Messenger –

– Talk about chippy northerner? Worse than we thought. Bloody ex-Met. Always the same. Until we break ‘em, ‘eh?!

The missive was directed at Kat Macfarlane, whose desk was directly opposite Christian’s across a felted divider. She responded, lightening quick:

– Careful C. She’s not to be messed with. I hear she’s going places. So best keep her on side?

– OK. I’ll be a good boy. For now. Now stop bothering me and get back to work.

He added a Winking Face Emoji for good measure.

Kat, a porcelain-skinned Scot with blue eyes and hair the colour of copper beech leaves, frowned at Christian over the desk divide. The gesture was outwardly playful, but she was actually quite cross with him. She’d done time at the Treasury and the City of London Police before joining Themis in male-dominated work environments that fostered competition to be the last to leave the office of an evening. She was ambitious, but at twenty-nine, the idea of having a family had begun to occur. Just a question of finding someone to assist in the matter. Annie Montague’s endorsement of a work-life balance had struck a chord. And Christian Taylor’s snide remarks grated.

Christian returned to his work feeling more than a little mutinous. He’d been at Themis - the largest of the anti-serious and organised crime companies - from the start. Previously a fraud investigator for a succession of investment banks, he was snapped up in a bid to counter ex-police and -NCA institutionalism in the new company: to bring some private sector nous to the party. He’d initially watched ex-police officers, like Annie Montague, come and go: they couldn’t hack private sector pace. But more recently, they were staying put to take promotions from Christian’s cohort. When Themis missed out on the lucrative cyber-crime contract to its big rival, the Anti-Crime Company, the management believed good old-fashioned law enforcement was the answer. Ambitious and high-performing ex-police officers were being sought, incentivised by fatter pay packets and increased job satisfaction. And here was former Met Detective Chief Inspector Annie Montague, recruited to lead the OCG team, bringing with her this formidable reputation and her own brand of northern charm.

He pulled up the full report from Lenco, one of the regional law enforcement companies, on his screen. Certain words and phrases were highlighted in yellow: the triggers for Themis’s involvement. ‘Felixstowe Docks.’ ‘No possessions or personal identification.’ ‘Likely of Middle Eastern extraction.’ ‘No match with missing persons reports.’ Without the flags, this case would have gone no further. The death of a nobody, even if suspicious, wouldn’t reach the threshold for investigation at the public’s expense. And there was no one to stump up the cash for a private case. He read and reread the report. Then he pulled up the photographs. The body was beginning to decompose, or perhaps hedgerow scavengers had been at it, but features were clear enough. Hair was thick and dark. There was no mistaking the strong bridge and wide base of a Persian nose or the youth of the deceased. He wore pale blue jeans and battered trainers and, under a grey anorak, a Manchester United shirt from many seasons past, faded and tatty. An eagle-eyed ornithologist, on the train to Felixstowe for the Landguard Bird Observatory, had spotted the back of the head and upper torso emerging from the bushes. She had patiently waited on hold for three and a half rounds of Clair de Lune before being clicked through to the main switchboard of Lenco. Two employees of their Suffolk branch were then despatched, with no particular urgency, to investigate - and made the eventual discovery.

An aerial picture showed the precise location of the body: a yellow circle superimposed onto a narrow strip of greenery between road and railway line. The minor road was single-track just there and the nearest house, half a mile away. Immediate landmarks were Tolkien-esque: Bucklesham, Potter’s Hole, Hobbin’s Walk. Christian swiftly loaded a route planner and was able to extrapolate an approximate distance from Felixstowe’s Trinity Terminal to the location of the body. About 7 miles - no longer than 12 minutes by road, assuming it was night and traffic was light.

The pathologists had identified the sepsis which had ravaged the fellow’s scrawny body. Un-checked, as it was, it would have graduated into full-blown septic shock, taking organs out one by one. That, or possibly hyperthermia from exposure, was the most likely cause of death. They put his age at seventeen or eighteen.

The recent spell of wintry weather meant the body may have been preserved for longer than usual, so it was difficult to establish when death had occurred. There’d been heavy snow in the weeks before the discovery, and it could have lain hidden for some time. They could narrow it down only to sometime within the past five weeks. There was evidence of ante mortem fractures in each wrist, consistent with the deceased trying to break his fall, as though he had been thrown bodily or pushed hard from the roadside. Based on the position of the body, it was likely he’d crawled a short distance from his landing point. It would have been hard going through that undergrowth with two broken wrists and internal organs on the blink. He’d probably made it a maximum of forty metres.

As he read the autopsy report, Christian made notes on a lined A4 pad in pencil. He preferred the pace of the graphite, the time to think whilst it worked against the resistance of the paper, building up a picture of the deceased that told him much more than a name or next of kin.

Across from him, Kat was going through the CCTV files from the camera on the primary exit road from the docks. She knew what she was looking for. Traffickers favoured transit vans for onward transfer in the UK. Medium size with a long wheelbase, enough space for fifteen to twenty people, cheek by jowl, kids on knees. Capable of a decent speed where lack of traffic enforcement allowed. Something like a Ford Transit or a Fiat Ducato. They were usually white and were sometimes wrapped with bogus signage for building services or the like, which could be easily removed once in a CCTV blind spot. The plates would have been cloned. The hope was that the traffickers would slip up somewhere. Use the same van and plates more than once. Forget, or be unable, to remove the sign-writing. Break down at the roadside and be caught on camera changing a tyre or popping the bonnet.

She sat back, rolled her head and rubbed her face with both hands like a hamster grooming itself. She restarted the footage. The good news was that she had already spotted transit vans leaving the docks during that period. The bad news was that there were many, many of them. She’d noted down the time, date, registration number and model, where possible, of each one that came into view. All would have to be followed up, sapping precious time and resources. But Kat had requested this particular footage to work on: she had a good feeling about finding something. Then, just a question of making the connection with what she already had from the flash drive provided by the docks. And then who to tell? Could she trust the new boss?

If Annie Montague were in the habit of regret, she might be ruing the tone she’d taken that morning. She’d come across as combative, uppity, she knew that. But her reception, even before she’d spoken, had had all the warmth of a hoar frost. She’d been practically prodded by glares as she approached her subordinate huddle. Some had continued to stare intently at their computer screens for several seconds after she had begun to speak, at least flagging up the passive-aggressive tendencies. There were a couple of ex-police officers in the team, but even they must have gone native. Not so much as a grudging smile to welcome her to her new post.

It didn’t help that her predecessor was very well regarded in his field and in general. Simon Fairbrother worked for Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, SOCA and the NCA before joining Themis, racking up over twenty-five years in law enforcement. The year before last, he received an MBE in the New Year’s Honours for his work in fighting gang-related crime. In his spare time, he mentored young offenders from deprived backgrounds and coached kids’ cricket. He said he was taking early retirement to write his memoirs and take up bee-keeping. He’d made no secret of his disillusionment with the commercial law enforcement landscape.

When the Met folded, Annie had followed her Chief Superintendent, Rebecca Lively, to DeJure - her DI, Jack Carter, and most of the unit following on. And with her whole team around her, it seemed like privatisation wasn’t going to make much of a difference. But the Met had pretty much split in two: half going to DeJure, the other half to Nomos. Though the politicians promised the competition would lead to efficiencies and lower crime rates, Annie found it divisive and destructive. Colleagues became competitors. Information was jealously guarded and costly. Each individual crime now had a price tag. Annie thought the move to Themis might help. It was a different patch. And they paid more.

But there was another reason.

At DeJure, Annie had been assigned to the deaths of two teenagers - victims of knife crime. One near the Cally Road, the other in a leafier part of North London. Uncontrovertibly drug-related. And exhibiting many features of gang involvement. But not the traditional street-gang mischief one might assume from the age and general circumstances of the deaths. These were not stabbings, as such. Throats had been cleanly slit. Confrontation had been minimal. And tracks, covered with meticulous care.

Seventeen-year-old Jayden Mahama lived on one of the estates off the Caledonian Road with his Mum and three siblings. He had left school - the local Academy - at sixteen and gone on to pursue a lucrative career in dealing. His mother, a nursery school assistant, understood he was working for a friend selling vapes and refills. When it came to it, though, she couldn't account for the designer clothes and expensive trainers that filled his wardrobe, nor the iPhone XS Max and TAG Heuer watch they found on the body.

Do you think it’s at all possible your son was selling drugs, Ms Mahama? Jack Carter had asked, looking pointedly at the 55" flat screen television that dwarfed the cramped sitting room.

She’d glanced at the television before fixing Jack with a plaintive expression that said it all.

And that might have been the end of the matter. There were no immediate leads. The boy was a criminal himself. This was a low-priority case with too high a price tag, resource-wise, for Delure to pursue.

Then, three weeks later, Ben Carter-Jones appeared on the crime scene. Also seventeen and male. But, if Jayden’s humble background and untimely death by knife on a London street corner sounded a little clichéd, Ben was striving to break the mould. His parents - Dad, a banker, Mum, a dabbling artist - had a six-bedroomed house in Hampstead. The several flat-screen televisions and a home cinema in the basement were all fully accounted for by Dad’s hefty bonus scheme. Ben was doing his A-levels at a renowned private school just down the road.

Forensics had found traces of heroin on Ben’s clothes. It transpired that some of Ben’s possessions had recently disappeared. He told his parents he had been mugged on the way home from school for his Apple Watch and iPhone, plus all the cash he’d had on him. The working theory had to be that he’d sold them for cash or handed them over directly to pay off debts.

Here was the same modus as the Mahama murder. Forensics said it could even have been the same knife. Something small and deadly - a high-end pocket knife such as a Kizlyar Supreme or a Spyderco. Both boys were killed from behind with one slash. The depths of the respective wounds were almost identical. The positioning, too, from the left ear down and across, indicated that the killer was not only right-handed but also knew his stuff. The carotid artery had been severed adeptly, causing catastrophic blood loss. Unconsciousness and death would have come in quick succession: a matter of a few minutes. These were executions.

Ben’s murder attracted the kind of voluminous and, thanks to his parents, sustained media attention to meet DeJure’s criteria for further investigation. If they didn’t pursue it, Nomos might. And if successful prosecutions came out of that, DeJure would be losing out to their main competitor. Annie was able to have the heroin traces analysed in depth. It was a long shot, the quantity might not allow for it, but her aim was to build a profile of the sample. What had it been cut with, and in what proportions. The wholesalers had their signature cuts. If samples of wraps seized across London, across the country, could be matched to each other by composition…

Serendipity was an infrequent visitor to Annie’s incident rooms, but when she deigned to appear, she could turn a case. And so it was that the same scientist who had analysed specks of white powder found in the pocket of Ben Carter-Jones’ Armani jeans, together with residue from his nasal passages, had run tests for Themis on some heroin found at Felixstowe docks. Not seized, as such. The port’s security guards found it lying at the side of the dock road on a routine walkabout. A bag of the stuff must have fallen unnoticed during unloading. And with an estimated street value of £20k, someone would have got it in the neck for that. The greedy gulls had been at it. A few of them were displaying erratic behaviour, tottering around on their spindly legs like drunken super-models and unable to take off in flight.

Eleanor Short, the forensic scientist, was straight on the phone with Annie. She wasn’t afraid to break protocol in sharing Themis’s information - Annie would be discreet. The chemical compositions of the samples were almost identical. The same cutting agent had been used in proportions too similar to be ignored. When the headhunter called with the opportunity of leading Simon Fairbrother’s OCG team at Themis, Annie saw the chance to join the cases. With Themis’s hefty budget for serious and organised crime, she might get justice for Jayden Mahama.

2

The windows were painted shut. Save for the top vent, which only a cat might fit through and a small one at that. The question was how to break the window. Or rather, what to break it with.

Nora had been considering this for some weeks. Even relishing the intellectual challenge as relief from the tedium. There was no day-to-day requirement for brain power otherwise. Indeed, it was better to switch off and not to think at all.

Her choice of tool was limited to the contents of the room. Most objects were soft: clothes and bedding. Or flimsy: hairbrush, deodorant stick. She’d considered the heel of a woman’s boot but couldn’t be sure she had the strength to bring it home. She only had one shot at it. The noise of a failed attempt would quickly rouse the ogre downstairs.

She was pleased with herself for her eventual idea. Having already moved the bags and belts to the bottom of the wardrobe, Nora now lifted the MDF shelf from its silver pegs and slid it gently out. She tested the weight of it in her hands. With enough of a whack, it should work.

She went to the window, hardly needing to look out since she could perfectly picture the view. She would have to jump. She reckoned she had about 2 minutes from impact until the thug was upstairs, perhaps 3 or 4 if he was asleep or ensconced in Homes Under the Hammer. There’d be no time for knotting sheets together or shinning down drainpipes.

Nora stood side-on to the window. She held the shelf horizontally and swept it around slowly, stopping just as the corner kissed the glass. Satisfied as to positioning, she took one last look out. The flat-roofed extension into the yard, which had made the jump at all conceivable, now seemed far too far below. Her bladder twinged at the prospect, though pissing herself was the least of her worries. She quickly, then, swung the shelf at the window, putting her bodyweight into her spin like the slightest discus thrower imaginable. The noise of the impact exceeded her expectations. Someone would, surely, call the authorities on hearing it. There were no police here, rather some sophisticated law enforcement system involving private contractors. Nora couldn’t hope to understand it, but if there were a number to call and a concerned enough bystander, she might be saved that way.

She would still have to jump,