The lady spoke. “Hello, sir. Are you Mr James Sheldon?”
I managed to nod.
“We haven’t met before. I’m Carla Parsons. I’m the new DS, just transferred yesterday from Derby. I’m afraid we’re here with bad news.”
When you’re a serving detective with the local police force, you immediately know this has nothing to do with a minor traffic offence.
Even with all my experience of dealing with horrific crimes, such as armed robberies and serious assault, and having been in the position of telling people their loved ones had been hurt or worse, when it happened it still cut into me like a hot knife. All the training I’d received went out the window.
Suddenly, instead of kissing my lovely wife and hugging my kids, I was thinking about how you arrange three funerals.
They told me that according to an eyewitness, all three were hit by a blue BMW as they collected some shopping to stock up after my three days of ready meals for one.
Of course, they gave me time off for compassionate leave, even though it meant the investigation into local council corruption, which I was about to lead, would be passed onto another over-worked detective.
After the funerals, and all the relatives and friends had said their words of comfort, I was left to face the world – without the people who were my world: My son Jack. When I wasn’t working on a weekend we’d play football in the garden.
I recall taking him to his first football match. I wanted to make it special, so I took him to the Birmingham-v-Leicester match. We watched an exciting game with the away team scoring the winning goal inside injury time. The final score was 3-2.
My darling little Abigail, with her golden hair, just like her mother’s. A real daddy’s girl, and that big smile. If only she’d had the chance to grow into a teenager she would have broken quite a few hearts.
And my beautiful Miriam, the girl of my dreams. We met when we were at university and I knew she was the one for me the first time I saw her.
When she died, she was only thirty-three and we had planned to have another child when the time was right.
After mowing them down the bastard just drove off.
Whoever it was, I hope they rot in hell.
Chapter Two
DAVE REX
As the jet flies above the clouds into the night sky, Dave Rex is enjoying his comfy seat with the ample amount of legroom which comes as standard when you fly executive class.
After a nightmare of a day, he begins to relax for what seems like the first time in ages. With the gentle whoosh, yet assuring power of the engines, and the glass of wine by his side, Dave thinks back over the years to where he had started from and where he is now.
Like his late father, he’s been a career criminal since the day he could move his arm high enough to pick someone’s pocket. Before he passed away, Dave’s father taught him all about a life of crime, giving him advice such as ‘Never give a sucker an even break. Never feel sorry for anyone and always look after number one.’
In his early life, Dave started out selling dodgy motors, then moved into selling fake designer goods and finally to dealing in cannabis and soft drugs. Things hadn’t always gone according to plan as over the years he’d been arrested for a number of crimes including burglary, robbery, assault, arson and drug dealing. In truth, it’s a much longer list, but luckily for Dave the evidence wasn’t strong enough on many occasions.
Twelve years ago, he started selling cannabis and the real money came in. Things had gone well for two years until he got caught up in a police sting operation and was found with drugs in his car. When the case went to court, he was convicted of supplying drugs, but his highly paid and skilful barrister managed to persuade the judge that it really wasn’t his client’s fault and, if given this ‘very last chance’, Dave would change his ways. He got away with a two-year suspended sentence.
So Dave has never yet enjoyed the delights of prison food. Not that it would change him. It’s far easier to make money illegally than to carve out an honest living. Crime does pay. In fact, it pays extremely well.
After such a close encounter, he vowed it would be the last time the police would be able to pin anything on him. He decided that in future he would find other people to carry the drugs for him. If someone was going to get caught it certainly wasn’t going to be him.
As things progressed he’d moved up the chain from selling to street dealers and had started buying in larger quantities and selling to the local wholesalers. Then after four years, in response to his customers’ repeated requests for harder drugs, he found a London contact and that’s when his illegal activities really took off.
His problem was that all his cash income needed to be laundered and turned into clean money if he didn’t want to attract attention from the police and the taxman.
His London contacts had offered him advice so over the years he’d opened three legitimate businesses to make it look like these gave him the income to support his luxurious lifestyle.
Dave’s thoughts are interrupted by the voice of the air stewardess as she brings him his meal. Rushing round all day, he hasn’t had time to eat properly so he is happy to see her standing there with his order of spicy Green Thai curry and his second
