Blood Money (2 page)

*

Having finished the in-flight breakfast, Eddie takes a glance out of the cabin window and sees nothing but impenetrable grey cloud. The sensations in his ears and stomach alert him to the fact that the plane is on its descent and a check of his Swiss wristwatch confirms that they can't be too far away from landing. With a top speed of Mach 0.92, the Cessna Citation X is the fastest business jet in history and since the retirement of Concorde it can now also claim to be the fastest civilian jet in operation. It has made short work of the journey time to London.

City Airport is situated just north of the iconic Thames Flood Barrier. Its single airstrip sits almost entirely surrounded by water, the airport having been developed as part of a series of docklands regeneration projects around what were once The Royal Docks. The Citation's descent is nearly complete, it crosses the Thames and despite a gusting crosswind it wastes no time in smoothly touching down.

On reaching the western end of the runway, the Citation turns left towards an available ramp and it comes to a stop just outside the Jet Centre. Whilst the pilot goes through his shutdown procedures, the co-pilot gets the forward cabin door open.

Eddie moves to the front of the plane and descends down the lowered steps onto the tarmac, leaving Alexis to remain inside for a few minutes longer. Taking a deep breath of the cold, damp air he glances at the brooding ashen skies before checking the time yet again. It's just gone 7am so they're bang on schedule just like normal. He walks briskly to the arrivals entrance and with no one to queue behind he immediately goes through passport control where (as usual) the uniformed official barely takes a glance at his passport. He now passes through customs clearance and exits the airport to go and retrieve his parked car.

Standing beside his boss's Mercedes S-Guard armoured limousine he reaches inside his jacket and removes a telescopic pocket search mirror. Once it's fully extended he switches on its in-built torch and makes a sweep around the underneath of the black luxury car. With nothing untoward found, Eddie unlocks it and gets inside. He passes through the barrier-controlled exit, and once he's pulled out onto Hartmann Road he drives over to wait outside the Jet Centre's front entrance. Eddie's done this hundreds of times and the routine with his boss is almost perfectly synchronised. Within twenty seconds, Alexis appears through the doors and enters the safety of the waiting limousine. Pulling away smoothly, Eddie begins the short seven mile journey over to Alexis's London headquarters in the very heart of the square mile, 60 Lombard Street.

Just half a mile north and Eddie gets on to the dual carriageway that will take them west across the meandering river Lea and through some of the poorest boroughs of London. Alexis rarely looks up at this stage of the journey, he doesn't wish to acknowledge the existence of the brutal monolithic tower blocks and the sprawling, run-down housing estates of Tower Hamlets, Newham and Poplar. But it doesn't take long to pass through the unpleasant deprivation and in the blink of an eye they reach Aldgate to find themselves surrounded by the comforting wealth and opulence of the City of London.

The City is often referred to as the ‘Square Mile', but far from being square its shape has more resemblance to a misshapen crown, a result of its ancient boundaries remaining virtually unchanged since it was defined by the building of city walls back in the middle-ages. Its only true rival to the claim of being the world's leading centre of global finance came in the nineteen nineties from a small district at the very southern tip of Manhattan, known as ‘Wall Street'.

Eddie checks the clock in the Mercedes; it's now 7:15am.

The journey has been smooth and unhindered, the same as usual. At this time of the morning the roads are relatively traffic-free though the pavements are starting to get busy. Like black ants, multitudes of city workers are emerging from various tube stations and independently move towards their allotted workplaces. Wearing dark suits, some choose to carry briefcases; others hold onto take-away coffee cups or folded-over newspapers. Unsmiling, these white collar workers scurry along, a crowd of strangers alone with their unhappy thoughts. The only individuals to interact with one another are the groups of smokers huddling outside office entrances, taking their last fixes of nicotine before they too disappear inside their financial cathedrals.

And so, the City's resident population of 8,000 swells to 320,000 during office hours as commuters working in the financial services sector swarm into the Square Mile from every conceivable direction.

The Mercedes engine and transmission are almost inaudible during normal driving; Eddie finds the variable suspension and luxurious interior make it an extremely comfortable car to drive and in streets where Porsche's, Maserati's, Bentley's and Aston Martins are commonplace its looks are pretty anonymous. Their journey is now almost at its end as they pass by iconic buildings like ‘The Gherkin' and ‘Tower 42'. They drive a short way down Cornhill before Eddie smoothly slows the car and indicating left he turns down a narrow side-street called Birchin Lane.

Birchin Lane is only 200 yards long and Eddie sees straight away that there's a large white truck blocking the far end, right outside the side entrance to Alexis's office building. A quiet, cautionary voice inside his head tells him to slow down and stop before he gets too close. With the black limousine now motionless he finds himself exactly half-way down the narrow lane. Alexis notices that there's maybe a problem and strains to see what seems to be blocking their way. There's nothing about this situation that Eddie likes, it feels set-up just like a training operation. As the seconds elapse, he feels increasing levels of adrenaline entering his bloodstream and he decides sitting still is no longer an option.

As Eddie puts the car into reverse gear a white BMW enters the lane behind them, blocking their exit. Eddie starts reversing slowly, showing the car behind the need for the blocked route to be circumvented. But it ignores the fact and continues to slowly move forwards, closing the gap between them all the while. With the aid of the rear view mirror, Eddie's sharp eyes see that the two men inside the BMW are pulling down balaclavas to cover their faces. Now glancing forwards, it's even more worrying to see that the driver of the truck in front has just raised its roller shutter door to reveal a 2nd man who's holding a pair of Kalashnikovs. Immediately jumping down from the back of the truck he hands the driver one of the assault rifles. They raise them to their shoulders and turn in unison to point them directly at the slowly retreating black Mercedes.

Being totally out-gunned there's no point in reaching for the unlicensed SIG Sauer P226 semi-automatic pistol he keeps hidden in the glove box. Needing to extricate himself from this situation as quickly as possible Eddie decides to target the weakest part of the ambush, -the white BMW still blocking their exit back out onto Cornhill.

“DOWN ON THE FLOOR!!”
Alexis hears the urgency and authority in his bodyguard's voice and complies immediately. Already in reverse gear, Eddie stamps on the accelerator so that the powerful AMG V12 engine snarls back at him. Releasing the clutch there's an enormous thump through the transmission as power is sent to all four of the extra-wide tyres, accelerating the vehicle backwards. What had seemed only moments before to have been a large and placid limousine has just been transformed into a very angry four tonne battering ram.

Until now, the men in balaclavas had believed themselves to be in total control of the situation. Their ‘mark', Alexis Vasilakos was to have been bundled into the truck, where he would have been bound and gagged. After switching vehicles on the outskirts of London, he was to have been taken to a waiting safe-house in the middle of nowhere until their demands were met in full. If the chauffeur was smart and didn't get in their way, he'd simply be dragged from the car, knocked unconscious, hooded and left handcuffed to the railings. If he tried to be a hero then they'd shoot him dead. The kidnapping had been meticulously planned months in advance, weeks of painstaking surveillance had led to them to choose this very place and moment for the ‘contact'.

Yet despite believing that they'd set the perfect trap, they hadn't bargained on such determination and aggression from Alexis's chauffeur.

The BMW doesn't have time to react to the offensive driving from the Mercedes, one moment they'd been closing-in on their target exactly as planned and the next they're about to be rammed…with bone-crushing force.

There is no room in the confined lane for any fancy evasive manoeuvres. The truck ahead is too large to confront and Eddie has to put distance between the Mercedes and those assault rifles. Thankfully, he couldn't have been in a better protected vehicle. The armour plated composite body panels, the STANAG level II ballistic glass and the run flat tyres meant he was inside a protective shell that would hopefully buy him enough time to extract both himself and his boss from this life-threatening situation. Eddie had made the purchase of the Mercedes S600 Guard almost two years ago, and Alexis hadn't baulked in the slightest when he'd asked to spend £250k for the highly modified limousine. Now, with hindsight it looks to have been a very wise investment.

As soon as Eddie reverses, fingers begin to squeeze down on the triggers of the two Kalashnikovs. A vibrating maelstrom of noise and chaos smashes into the front of the limousine as the thugs empty their 30-round magazines into the rapidly retreating Merc. AK-47 fire is so powerful it's known to have cut down trees in the jungle theatre of the Vietnam War. The 6mm thick armoured-steel bonnet and laminated glass/polycarbonate front windshield are now splattered with white spalling marks the size of apples. But Eddie hasn't time to consider the damage he can feel being sustained against the front of the car.

Wham!
The front of BMW crumples like an empty coke-can being stamped on by a fat kid. The smaller, lighter car is pushed downwards as the back of the Mercedes rides up onto its bonnet; its hapless passengers are hurled forward into their instantaneously inflating airbags. The 1½ ton stationary Beamer has just been hit by 4 tonnes of solid mass travelling at close to 20mph. Totally unprepared for this scenario, the men down at the south end of Birchen Lane rush to load fresh magazines into their rifles.

This buys Eddie enough time to pull forward, getting the Merc free from the crumpled BMW. Now he reverses yet again, controlling his power and speed to shunt the wrecked BMW back up the lane. As this is happening, the stunned assailants struggle to shove their airbags aside only to find that they're unable to fight back against such an irresistible force.

Once the wreck of a car has been unceremoniously pushed out onto Cornhill, the Mercedes is once again out in the open. Eddie leaves the area at speed despite struggling to see through the windscreen battered by ten or more bullet strikes.

When he asks Alexis if he's ok, a muffled and very shaky voice from somewhere down in the rear foot-well replies “Yeah I think so.”

Only when he's sure they're not being followed does Eddie give his cowering boss the all-clear to get up off the carpet.

It's 8 am. From a distance the smartly dressed John Gibson walking out of Liverpool Street Station looks just like any other City worker. But this casual observation doesn't stand up under closer scrutiny. The 5ft 11” thirty one year old with an honest looking face is wearing a poorly fitted suit that can't possibly be Saville Row. His badly ironed shirt is certainly not Thomas Pink, his well-worn shoes are not even leather and his polyester tie is more River Island than Hermes. John Gibson is clearly no high flying City worker; he's just a regular guy…a policeman…serving in City of London CID. After waiting momentarily for a gap in the traffic, he crosses the wide road and enters Bishopsgate Police Station where he's about to start his shift.

The City of London has its own police force, totally separate from ‘The Met'. Uniformed officers from City of London Police have a unique red and white chequered insignia, (the colours of the City of London) and its 800+ officers are spread between just three small stations. In the west is Snow Hill, in the east is Bishopsgate Station and more centrally, close to St Pauls is the Wood Street headquarters.

Working out of Bishopsgate Station, John has done his time as a ‘Lid' (a uniformed officer) and made the transition to the Criminal Investigation Department some three years ago. CID officers don't wear a police uniform; they dress according to the needs of their job which for work in the City usually means a suit and tie. Working CID in most parts of the UK means investigating serious crimes such as murders, serious assaults, robberies, sex offences and at the lower end of the scale, theft.

But at Bishopsgate they don't get too many cases like these, their main work focuses on rather boring but often complex fraud cases. Truth be told, the realities of crime have been changing dramatically over the past couple of decades. Crimes like armed robbery and burglary just don't pay enough nowadays to sufficiently compensate thieves for the high risk they take in being caught. Burglary used to be a trade, passed down from father to son. Now it's only done by desperate crack-heads, many of whom get caught before getting much beyond double-figure numbers of offences.

‘Gibbo' gets on well with the lads. They see him as a safe pair of hands, someone who's always willing to muck in. He's honest and he plays by the rules. During his first couple of years on the force he naively thought he would quickly gain promotion by becoming the best thief-taker in the station. However, the realities of police politics soon became apparent and since then he's abandoned any such foolhardy flights of fancy. It's a fact of life that these days that it's nearly always the ‘station butterfly' who gets identified as a high flier, someone who makes a big play of being highly active whilst actually achieving very little. Thirteen years into his chosen profession and John would now have to admit to doing his job for the same reason as most other coppers. He gets to earn plenty of overtime and knows that at some point in his fifties when he feels like he's had enough it's a job in which he'll be able to retire early with a good pension and a lump sum due to reasons of ‘ill-health'.

Having joined the Police Service for all the right reasons as a bright-eyed eighteen year old, full of enthusiasm and high morals, he now feels like his career has already lost its way. Unfortunately for John it also feels like it's now too late to jump ship into another profession.

When the rare opportunity comes his way, John Gibson likes nothing better than to get stuck into a case that involves a bit of robbery or violent crime; it breaks-up the monotony of the usual slog involved in dealing with ‘boiler room' fraud. This is where bogus stock broking companies (usually based overseas) cold-call vulnerable pensioners or people who've just been made redundant and who might therefore have cash to invest. The fraudsters then bamboozle them with terminology they don't understand, promising exceptional levels of returns and generally pressurising them in whatever way they can into buying worthless or even non-existent shares. It's good honest police-work, but it's not particularly exciting when you're investigating it day in, day out.

Boiler room fraud is a ‘new' crime that's increasingly prevalent because the criminals can remain abroad, far away from their chosen victims, with very little risk being taken and with the potential of it being highly lucrative. Now compare this with good old-fashioned burglary, where you have to be right there in the thick of it, with unknowable risks and unforeseeable complications. Ask yourself why anyone today would choose a career in burglary, especially considering the low levels of return you'd make. With imported goods being so cheap these days it means a professional burglar might only make £20k a year, far less than he might make doing a legitimate job.

As soon as DS John Gibson enters the station this Monday morning he can sense something isn't right. The corridors, locker rooms and stairways are unusually quiet; in fact, looking around he realises the place is almost deserted. Climbing the stairs to the 1st floor John switches on his laptop and whilst his aging pc slowly boots-up he walks across the unoccupied office to the kitchen area to start the day with a strong black coffee. Once there, he bumps into his guvnor, DCI Jenkins.

Because of his rank, the DCI's job is almost entirely desk bound and this has unfairly earned him the nicknames of BINGO (book in, never go out) and ‘the Olympic Torch' (that too ‘never goes out'). But before John gets a chance to say “Morning”, the senior detective starts talking excitedly about the action that's already occurred this morning. Unfortunately his commanding officer (as usual) takes his time in getting to the point.

“Sometime after 7 o'clock this morning an office worker in Cornhill reported she'd heard a noisy disturbance outside. She said that when she looked from the window overlooking the road, she witnessed a collision between a black Mercedes and a white BMW. The Merc was seen to leave in a westerly direction at speed but the BMW was so badly wrecked as to be undriveable. The two men inside abandoned it and fled the scene on foot.”

John is only half listening, as it sounds like just another road-rage incident. Not being a patient man, he has to restrain himself from interrupting the monologue. So far there seems to be no particular reason for CID to be involved, but he knows that at some point his gaffer will eventually get to the point. John bites his lip and waits submissively for the tale to reach its conclusion.

“Now get this next bit!” continues DCI Jenkins, the pitch in his voice rising, hopefully an indication that he's about to explain the relevance at last, “-When a response vehicle got there they found evidence of a shooting! Leaving their vehicle, the uniforms walked through Birchin Lane and found a bunch of spent rifle casings at the southern end.”

Now all of a sudden the DCI's boring narrative isn't quite so boring anymore, and he now has John's undivided attention.

“Everyone who started their shift early got down there sharpish and there's now a heavy police presence at the scene. The area's been cordoned off now and since you're too late to attend the shout I want you to get onto the control room and see if CCTV can throw some light on what went on whilst I ‘phone Wood Street and brief the Assistant Commissioner.” John takes his steaming mug of coffee back to his desk and reaches for the ‘phone to call the CCTV monitoring control room.

One thing London has in abundance is CCTV cameras, and in an underground complex somewhere in the heart of the City is the room where they're all controlled from. The surprising fact about this facility is that despite being able to tap into the feeds from any one of the thousands of cameras looking out over London it is manned at any one time by just four civilians and one police officer.

In the 1990's the capital witnessed a huge increase in the installation and use of CCTV cameras. Following the IRA's terrorist attack on Bishopsgate in 1993 a network of cameras was introduced to monitor entrances into the City of London and this became popularly known as ‘the ring of steel'. The reason so few people man this operation in spite of the City having CCTV cameras installed just about everywhere is because it needs to be intelligence led. Trying to look for suspicious behaviour amongst the throngs of people on the busy streets is just an ineffectual waste of manpower. The only way in which the system can ‘earn its corn' is by someone with a specific piece of intel telling the control room staff where to look and when.

John liaises with the CCTV control room shift supervisor to pinpoint the nearest cameras to the scene and giving them the estimated time of the incident it doesn't take too long before they find some useful footage. With John still at his desk at Bishopsgate Police Station the camera supervisor is able to transfer the relevant images onto the CID officer's monitor screen. The ones that John decides are most useful he'll make copies of for later use as evidence.

The grainy black and white images he has (from the southern end, looking northwards) shows a truck blocking the near end of Birchin Lane and moments later the driver can be seen getting out of the cab. John now has a precise time of the incident, 7:17am. The recorded image is paused and he zooms-in closer to study the balaclava wearing trucker, but as he does so the image quality gets dramatically worse and the blurring and pixilation make the image unusable. John zooms back out and lets the video move forwards. On the far side of the truck, he can see a dark limousine reversing away at speed. With the action now further away and with the narrow lane being so dimly lit the likelihood of getting some decent images isn't good. John freezes the video stream at different stages as the incident unfurls, he freezes and zooms, but the more he strives to get well defined close-ups of the action the more frustrated he becomes at the inability of the equipment to give him clear, usable images of vehicle registration plates or the faces of those involved. Even if the men hadn't of been wearing balaclavas, the images from these old cameras is so fuzzy John wouldn't be confident of being able to recognise his own best mate.

In incidents such as the lethal poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, CCTV footage proved crucial to police investigations, unfortunately, the pictures John is looking at are from cameras installed some twenty years ago and the effect this has on image quality is telling. When he tries several different cameras up and down Lombard Street, John finds the light to be much better and with perseverance he manages to get a clear image of the licence plate from the white truck as it makes good its escape at 7:19 am.

Finally, John directs the CCTV supervisor to examine the recorded film from cameras in Cornhill. Being a major artery in and out of the city he isn't surprised to find that these units have been recently upgraded to high definition colour cameras and with much more natural light getting into the far wider street John is able to capture some nice clear images showing the number plates of both the black Mercedes and the white BMW. The Merc's personalised plate ‘KRON05' must have cost a few notes and John can't believe anyone would intentionally go out and commit a crime in such a glaringly identifiable vehicle. He carefully studies the Merc ramming the white BMW backwards out of Birchin Lane, then he zooms in on it at the point just before it starts to drive away and he can see that the driver of the vehicle seems to be the only person involved who's not wearing a balaclava.

Examining the image closely he's surprised at the astonishing amount of damage to the front of the BMW, it's been completely crushed as if it's been run over by a freight train. In stark contrast, the black car, apart from its windshield looking like it's been hit by a dozen white paintballs, doesn't look particularly damaged at all and is able to drive away from the scene without difficulty. Almost as an afterthought, John rewinds the video to 7:16 and studies the images of the Mercedes entering Birchin Lane, only to be followed moments later by the BMW. He takes a couple more still images of this, and notices that the black Mercedes at this point in time clearly has a passenger in the rear, as if he's being chauffeur driven, most probably to his place of work. Gibson prints a couple more images of what he's seen and after thanking the control room supervisor for his help he terminates their session.

Draining the last mouthfuls of cold coffee from his mug, John now logs onto the police computer system. Once on-line, it takes only seconds to discover that the Merc is registered to one Mr Eddie Slater. A few minutes later DS Gibson has checked a couple of other databases and discovers that Slater is a self-employed security advisor (ex-army), has a British Passport and has an address in Mayfair. A picture is forming in John Gibson's mind, a bodyguard driving some rich businessman, getting shot at in the middle of London.
–It's looking like a proper bit of action so perhaps the next couple of weeks aren't going to be quite so boring after all?

The licence plate from the white truck shows it to be registered to a budget rental company in South London. The owner of the BMW is one Mr Trevor Conroy. Names and addresses are scribbled down in the Detective Sergeant's notebook. Digging a little deeper, John discovers that both vehicles were reported stolen at about the same time just yesterday (Sunday), from the same place, East Dulwich. This coincidence would appear to indicate that they were both stolen by the same criminal gang and that the incident in Birchin Lane had been pre-meditated and well-planned. The people in the truck and the people in the BMW appeared to be working together, so was this some armed bank raid gone wrong? Perhaps some turf-war between feuding gangs?
Maybe a failed assassination attempt?

Trying the internet and searching against KRONOS, John gets a number of interesting hits. As well as being the name of some sort of mythical Greek God, it looks likely that it might relate to the name of a high profile business, ‘Kronos Capital Management'. And although it's registered in the Cayman Islands, it also has a London address, and that address is…
60 Lombard Street on the corner with Birchin Lane!