‘ Fuck knows… just follow me.’
Rider got into the Granada and pulled the mask off. He slid that and the gun underneath the seat.
The car started first time.
From the boot he could hear Munrow’s muffled banging and shouting.
There was no going back now.
The real bad weather had hit London. Public transport was at a virtual standstill. Traffic hardly moved in the heavy snow.
Even so, the conscientious Karl Donaldson crawled into his office at 7.30 a.m., having left home at 5.00 a.m. in the Jeep.
Some faxes and correspondence had appeared on his desk overnight.
One of the faxes gave the result of the second autopsy on Sam Dawber.
It came to the same conclusion as the one performed on Madeira. Some more specks of human tissue had been found underneath her fingernails and was being DNA profiled. The bruising on her body was inconclusive.
‘ Goddam,’ he sighed, resigning himself even more to the fact that he would probably never be able to prove Sam had been murdered. His only hope was a lead from the tissue, but being a pessimist at heart, Donaldson doubted anything would come of it.
A large fat envelope underneath this fax was from the New York Office and contained a photocopy of everything the FBI had ever filed on Scott Hamilton. Donaldson shuffled the papers out onto his desk. The file was almost half an inch thick. He scanned through it quickly.
Hamilton’s main claim to fame was that he had trained as an accountant, had then been briefly jailed for skimming his employer’s profits, and moved on to handle the financial matters of a well-known New York hood — i.e. laundering money for him. The Feds and the DEA had blown the racket sky high. The hood had been jailed (and since escaped), but Hamilton evaded incarceration by the skin of his teeth.
He branched out into some classy white-collar crime, defrauding people who should have known better. Currency and commodity frauds were his favourites.
He had been caught for a tobacco scam which backfired when the buyers turned out to be Fibbies. In particular, one Samantha Jane Dawber.
So that was how she knew him, Donaldson thought.
Hamilton got eight months for that.
He was not considered big time, as in mafia terms, but he was wealthy and worth watching as his activities sometimes straddled state and international boundaries.
He also had a violent streak and was suspected of dealing with a rival in a fatal manner. Nothing was ever proven. He was also believed to be a fixer, arranging things for third parties such as burglaries. Again, this was only intelligence, not hard evidence.
Since his prison release for the tobacco scam, he had dropped out of sight. There was nothing on file for almost two years.
Except the FBI now knew where he was — Madeira, running a timeshare. Donaldson wondered what type of criminal activity the Jacaranda was fronting. He knew one thing for certain — it was going to be investigated ruthlessly.
He cast his eyes over the rap sheet for the cigarette fraud. Sam’s name was down as Case Officer. It was a good bust. One to be proud of.
She probably couldn’t believe her eyes when she spotted Hamilton on sleepy Madeira.
So why had she died?
Accident? Donaldson was convinced this was not right. More likely revenge for the jail sentence. Or had she stumbled across something more? And would he ever know? Probably fucking not.
The phone rang. He closed the file and answered it.
In days of yore, Rider would have known exactly where to take Munrow for a little chat.
Times change. He had no contacts to speak of any more, owned no suitable properties of his own, so was therefore forced to play it by ear.
After half an hour’s driving he was heading up a steep winding road against merciless snow, out of the border town of Todmorden towards Bacup.
Halfway up the hill he turned off the road onto a farm track, where he pulled up out of sight of the main road. There was no sound coming from the boot. He prayed that Munrow hadn’t died of hypothermia or inhaling exhaust fumes.
Jacko drew the Transit in behind.
Rider climbed out of the Granada and opened the boot. A shivering, numb Munrow lay curled up in the foetal position, arms folded tightly around his knees which were drawn up to his chest. He looked up at Rider, full of hate.
Rider produced the gun. He reached for Munrow’s arm and heaved him out. He pushed the naked man roughly towards the back of the Transit, opened the doors and forced him in, climbing in behind, squatting on his haunches, gun held loosely. With immense satisfaction Rider saw that the huge throbbing erection had shrivelled to sub-acorn size. Now Rider didn’t feel quite so threatened.
‘ Get out, pal,’ Rider ordered Jacko. ‘Go sit in the car.’
There was no need to tell him twice. He was gone in a flash, leaving Rider and Munrow alone.
Munrow’s whole body was shaking with the cold. His skin had turned ice-blue. His teeth chattered audibly.
‘ I’ve brought you here for two reasons,’ Rider said, giving the impression this was a pre-planned halt. In truth, he was winging it.
‘ Which are?’ his captive managed to stutter.
‘ So you are obliged to listen to what I say and know I’m not bullshitting.’
‘ Why the fuck should I listen to you?’
‘ Your own interests, Charlie boy. I mean to make a point and doing it this way is the only way you’ll take it seriously.’
‘ Get fucking talking then.’
‘ OK. I don’t give a monkey’s ass about what’s going on between you and Conroy. I’m not involved, never was, never will be. Your guys saw me with him because he wanted something from me, not because we’re in business together. Understand?’
‘ You shot one of ‘em.’
‘ Self-defence,’ Rider said quietly.
‘ Don’t believe you.’
‘ Your choice, Charlie. But think about this. If I was with Conroy, do you honestly think we’d be having this conversation right now, especially after your two goons beat the shite out of me the other night? Your head would be in pieces and they wouldn’t find you until the snow melted… would they?’
Rider raised his eyebrows.
Rider wasn’t sure whether he succeeded with Munrow. The other man could merely have been conning him just to get out of an awkward situation.
In the end, Rider had two choices — to kill him, or let him go and see what happened.
Rider always knew he would choose the latter. Just to make a point and ensure that Munrow realised Rider was no soft touch, he threw the Granada ignition key into a field adjacent to the lane where it disappeared in a snowdrift. He left Munrow standing there stark naked in the middle of nowhere, mouthing obscenities at him as Jacko reversed the van out of the lane, back onto the main road.
The man who only hours before had orchestrated vicious attacks on three nightclubs, now found himself helpless and freezing, scrambling over a dry stone wall into the field to search for his key.
A humiliation he would never forget for as long as he lived.
Henry’s heart went cold because he recognised the voice on the other end of the telephone line
