Dead if You Don't Read online

  DEAD IF YOU DON’T

  PETER JAMES

  MACMILLAN

  TO COLIN DUNCTON

  An absent and much-missed friend.

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  95

  96

  97

  98

  99

  100

  101

  102

  103

  104

  105

  106

  107

  108

  109

  110

  111

  112

  113

  114

  115

  116

  117

  118

  GLOSSARY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABSOLUTE PROOF

  8 Years Later: Wednesday, 1 February 2017

  Thursday, 16 February 2017

  Monday, 20 February 2017

  Tuesday, 28 February 2017

  Tuesday, 28 February 2017

  1

  Thursday 10 August

  The small white ball skittered over the numbers on the spinning roulette wheel, passing 36, 11, 30. Tappity-tap. Tappity-tap. It ricocheted off a diamond-shaped bumper. Tappity-tap. Danced. Rattling around the rim; hopping over the numbers 12, 35, 3 and catapulting back onto the rim.

  Kipp Brown watched it in silent concentration. His nerves were tightropes. This was the moment, as the rotations steadily slowed. The moment when time froze.

  ‘No more bets,’ the croupier announced, like a recording on a timed loop. It was pretty pointless; Kipp had no more left to bet. It was all there in those neat towers of chips spread across the baize. Covering his regular numbers, his lucky numbers and a couple of random ones, too.

  All there.

  The school fees. The mortgage. The hire-purchase payments on his cars.

  Tappity-tap.

  The dumb ball had no idea just how much was riding on where it landed; no knowledge of just how much money Kipp Brown, the only punter at this table on the high-value floor, had bet on this spin of the wheel. It didn’t know just what this particular spin of the roulette wheel meant to Kipp. Nor did the bored-looking female croupier.

  So much was riding on just six of the thirty-six black and red numbers. So much.

  It was a perfectly formed ceramic ball, less than one inch in diameter. It had no brain. It had no knowledge that the man at the table, watching it the way a buzzard watches a field mouse from two hundred metres high, had bet the ranch on numbers 2, 4, 15 and their neighbours.

  No idea at all.

  No idea that, until recently, Kipp Brown had been one of the wealthiest men in the city. That on a July night last year he had walked away from this casino with over one million pounds of winnings – the biggest sum anyone had ever won in a single night at Brighton’s Waterfront Casino.

  Nor did it know that since then he had lost it all again on the very same tables.

  That in recent months, with his judgement skewed from the stress of his mounting debts and his train crash of a personal life, he had bet and lost all the equity in his house.

  His business assets.

  Pretty much everything.

  2, 4 or 15. Please.

  Tappity-tap. The ball rolled into number 2, then out again.

  He sat, anxiously, nursing his drink. It was gone 11 p.m., and he should have left hours ago. He had to drive Mungo to school tomorrow morning and go straight on to an early meeting with a new, potentially large, client. He should be home, getting rest. His eyes were bleary. His brain was tired. Exhausted from chasing losses all evening. But he couldn’t help it. The wheel would come good eventually, it always did. Always had.

  Hadn’t it?

  If you stayed at the table for long enough.

  Tappity-tap. It danced over 15. Then 4.

  Yes!

  Four! Fantastic, a home run! He’d done it!

  Then as he watched, suddenly and inexplicably, as if pulled by some force, the ball bounced out of 4. Then out of 17, 11, 1, 31.

  Come on.

  Click.

  It settled, nestling between two frets.

  The number popped up on the screen above the table.

  16.

  Unbelievable.

  He drained his complimentary Hendricks and tonic, picked out a piece of cucumber and munched it, solemnly and disconsolately, as he watched the croupier scoop away the neat stacks of chips.

  A tall, fit man of forty-five, who normally had fine posture, Kipp Brown was stooping badly as he left the table and walked over to the cashier with his wallet full of maxed-out credit cards.

  Behind him, he heard the sound that was the music of his life. His secret, second life that few people, other than his wife, Stacey, knew about – and, guiltily, he mostly only told her about his wins, rarely his losses.

  Tappity-tap.

  Followed by a loud cheer from the group of Chinese who were here, like him, most evenings. It sounded like one of them had a big win. Great. Lucky them.

  Every night these Chinese guys were here, adding to their winnings, so it seemed to him.

  And every night, just recently, he was here, succumbing to the classic gambler’s folly, chasing his losses. Like he had been tonight.

  Except there wasn’t going to be any more chasing tonight. Not for him.

  He was over his account limit with the casino. The cashier tried all six of his credit cards in turn. Then shook her head. She had the decency to look apologetic.

  2

  Friday 11 August

  The twenty-one-year-old strapped to the steel table, in the windowless basement room, was pleading beneath the blinding white lights. But the sound of the Kinks, ‘Mr Pleasant’, turned up loud on a constant loop, drowned his voice out – not that anyone could hear beyond this dank, soundproof room with its rank smell and the open-barred door to the darkened pool area beyond it where, it was rumoured, Mr Dervishi’s cro
codile lived. Ryan Brent did not believe any of this could actually be happening, could actually be real.

  But his tormentor, Gentian Llupa, did. A handsome twenty-three-year-old, with close-cropped, gelled brown hair and a serious, concerned expression, Llupa’s one worry was that Ryan might die too soon. Before the one thousand cuts he had been instructed to administer, for the benefit of the camera, could be completed.

  ‘Mr Pleasant is good

  Mr Pleasant is kind

  Mr Pleasant’s okay . . .

  Hey, hey

  How are you today?’

  Echoing the words, Gentian looked down at his victim. ‘So how are you today?’ Then he added, ‘How’s your day so far?’ It was his boss, Mr Dervishi’s, favourite expression and he liked it, too. All of Mr Dervishi’s close team used it, as a kind of code. Mr Dervishi instilled good manners and a code of behaviour in all his employees.

  His boss was extremely particular. He would want to examine every incision on the naked young man’s body. Each one that he was about to make with the Stanley knife’s freshly inserted blade, as a lesson to the youth. Each cut would be anatomically correct. One thousand lessons. Starting with the ankle tendons, to make running away impossible. Not that escaping had ever been an option for him.

  So many tendons in the human body! That was one of the things he had learned back in his home country of Kosovo as a medical student, before meeting Mr Dervishi and being offered more money than he could dream of to continue his studies in England. Although, currently, Mr Dervishi kept him too busy to resume his studies.

  He was going to be working from a colour chart showing the tendons of the human body beneath the skin, which he had Blu-tacked to the wall beside the table. It was really there for Ryan Brent’s benefit, to give him an anatomy lesson. Gentian very politely told him in which order he would be proceeding. He had a ball of cloth ready to stuff into Brent’s mouth if he screamed too loudly, although Mr Dervishi did not want him doing that, he liked to hear his victim’s screams. He liked to show his collection of videos of what had happened to those who crossed him, to other employees. It was his way of ensuring loyalty.

  Tendon after tendon.

  ‘People say Mr Pleasant is good

  Mr Pleasant is kind . . .’

  ‘Please, please!’ his victim screamed. ‘I will pay the money back. I’ll pay it all back. Please!’

  ‘No,’ Gentian said. ‘You will never be able to. And besides, I do not like people who steal money from the man who gives me a new life. Especially not people who do that and sleep with his mistress as well.’

  ‘I didn’t know. Honest! I didn’t know. Please don’t! I’m a fellow human, like you, mate. Oh God, please let me go. What kind of a monster are you?’

  ‘Probably the worst kind!’ Gentian smiled. ‘That’s not good for you to know that, is it? You see, I am both the worst kind and the best kind. I am honest and I am loyal. I do what I’m told. I could make things very much worse for you, but I don’t because I’m just like the guy in this song. I’m Mr Pleasant!’

  As Gentian picked up the cutter, he announced the count, loud and clear, for his victim’s benefit. In order to be pleasant. ‘Number one!’ he said and peered at the chart. ‘Quite a long way to go, eh? How’s your brand-new limousine?’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘It’s just a line in the song, don’t worry about it.’

  3

  Friday 11 August

  The call came in on Adrian Morris’s private mobile at 11.23 a.m. It was one the Amex Stadium’s Head of Safety and Security had been expecting, fearfully, for the past six years. Ever since his beloved football team, Brighton and Hove Albion, had moved to this magnificent new home it had never been, in Morris’s mind, a question of if – but when.

  The Amex Stadium was one of the city of Brighton and Hove’s great modern landmarks. Designed with majestic, swooping contours to blend in with the rolling hills of the South Downs, it sat on the north-east extremity of the city, a short distance from the Sussex University campus and bordering open countryside.

  And, as Morris well knew, it was always going to be a potential target. Security had been at the heart of its design and was state-of-the-art, but he was experienced enough to know that the greatest security systems in the world were only as good as the people who operated them.

  A strong male voice with an Eastern European accent spoke slowly, precisely and confidently. ‘Mr Morris, I hope this is not an inconvenient time. You need to know there will be a bomb on or under one seat in the stadium tomorrow afternoon. If you wish to prevent this from happening, it is very simple. You just have to arrange for £250,000, in Bitcoins, to be placed in an account you will be given. Very small beer for you, if you consider the potential financial loss of abandoning your first Premier League game. It would be such a shame for your fans and the city. I will call you back later with further instructions. I do apologize if this is not a convenient time. And it would really be better not to involve the police, they will only delay things very dangerously for you.’

  Click.

  The caller was gone.

  The timing was deliberate and impeccable. Tomorrow the stadium would be hosting the team’s first home football game in the Premier League – it would be one of the most well-attended and watched games in the club’s history. In the city’s history.

  But Morris still held the phone to his ear. He stared out of the glass observation booth above the North Stand of the stadium at a sea of blue and white plastic seats, each one of which would be occupied tomorrow afternoon, Saturday, for the 5.30 p.m. kick-off. His face felt hot, his body clammy, his mind going into overdrive as he considered what he had just heard.

  Real or a hoax?

  The display read Caller ID withheld. Almost certainly it would be untraceable, made on a burner.

  Under the Football Association rules, a club’s Head of Safety and Security had seniority over police inside a stadium on match day, from the time the public entered until after they had left. It was a responsibility Morris was happy to accept under normal circumstances, but not now.

  He hit the speed-dial button for the mobile phone of PC Darren Balkham. The officer was somewhere on the premises, overseeing the first of the two thorough searches that were routine the day before each match – and repeated again by specialist search officers and sniffer dogs immediately before the public entered on match day.

  A veteran of football policing, Balkham had been running the police operations for Brighton and Hove Albion effectively and quietly for twenty years, and under his command there had never been a major incident at a home game. He told Morris he would be right up.

  As he waited, Morris considered his options. Calling off the game was not one. Nor was paying the ransom demand. If they caved in this once, they were at risk of being blackmailed for every game here subsequently.

  He stared across at the empty seats in the family stand. A pair of them would be occupied by two of the club’s biggest fans – his four-year-old son, Finley, and his own father. A photograph of the two of them together sat in a frame in front of him on his work surface, both wearing Seagulls – the nickname for the club – bobble hats.

  Moments later, Darren Balkham entered the room, looking grim. The calm, stocky uniformed police officer, who had natural authority, sat down beside Morris, who relayed the call as accurately as he could.

  ‘OK, first thing, Ade, do you have any disgruntled former employees? Anyone you’ve sacked recently who might want to get back at the club?’

  Morris told him he could not think of anyone.

  ‘Have there been any nutters known to your security people recently?’

  ‘No – no one capable of this. But I’ll check now with Paul Barber.’ He immediately called the club’s CEO, apprising him of the situation, and asked him if he thought there was anyone the club might have upset recently, in any way.

  Barber replied there was no one he could think of. He asked, deeply vex
ed, if this meant the match might be abandoned. Morris assured him not.

  The Amex was one of the most modern football stadiums in Europe, if not the world. What few people knew was just how elaborate the security systems were. On the bank of CCTV monitors above him Adrian Morris could, within seconds, zoom in on any one of those 30,750 seats. He could go in tightly enough to read the time on any spectator’s wristwatch. The latest technology in CCTV enabled him to see every inch of the building, above and below ground, and the immediate surroundings. No one could enter – or leave – unseen and without being recorded.

  Balkham’s first action was to contact the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team and speak to the duty Senior Investigating Officer, DCI Nick Fitzherbert. He apprised him of the extortion threat and Fitzherbert told him that he would begin an investigation with himself as lead, and inform Ops and the chief officers. He told Balkham that he would also speak to the Force Gold and arrange for an intercept to be placed on Morris’s phone. He asked the PC to let Morris know that officers from his Major Crime Team would come and see him.

  During this time, with Balkham alongside him, Morris set to work. Firstly, he convened an urgent meeting of his entire security team, and secondly, he put out a request to the 400 stewards who would be attending tomorrow’s game to come in two hours earlier than usual. This was followed by a request from Balkham for additional Special Constables to be drafted in for tomorrow, on the advice of the Match Commander.

  Next, Morris said he would arrange for the CCTV-monitoring team to check the recorded footage from all cameras around the ground for the past month, for signs of anyone acting suspiciously.

  At 6 p.m. that evening Morris’s team, along with a number of Expo dogs and their handlers, began the most thorough search of the stadium that had ever been undertaken.

  Just as they were finishing, three hours later, his private mobile phone rang again.

  ‘Mr Morris, I hope again this is not an inconvenient moment. You are going to a lot of trouble, most impressive – you are to be commended for your efforts. I will be brief because I’m aware, despite my warning about speaking to the police, that you now have a recording and tracing facility on your phone. But you won’t find me, I’m on one of those crappy little phones that doesn’t have any geo-mapping facility, OK? So, look, you really are wasting resources. You will not find this bomb, trust me. Just pay the money – to avoid having blood on your hands. This club has come so far, don’t you think it would be such a tragedy to see it destroyed for what is petty cash? Please trust me – treat me as your friend, not your enemy. I want to help you. I will call you again later.’