Fogarty: A City of London Thriller (7 page)

A tall, well built man in a dark suit came onto the Farm through the brick walled gateway and headed straight towards Trafalgar House. He was carrying a briefcase. As he came close
r, Mikey stood up. The man was his height, but he was carrying less weight and more muscle. Mikey hoped he wasn’t the physical kind; an altercation with this guy might not bring a good result.

“You look lost, mate. It’s a bit dangerous for strangers aroun
d here. Maybe I can help you.”

The man smiled and handed Mikey a business card
that read ‘Clive Williamson, Solicitor for Kendall Bailey’. Even Mikey knew that Kendall Bailey were a top City law firm.

“I don’t think anyone is interested in any mergers or acquisitions today,” Mikey remarked, handing back the card.

“Why don’t you just call Mr Grierson and tell him I’d like to speak to him about his next remand appearance? I’ll wait.” Mikey wanted to punch the arrogant bastard’s lights out, but he held back. Maybe Den wanted to see the brief. Lifting his mobile from his pocket, and without taking his eyes off Clive Williamson, he pressed speed dial number one. The phone was on speaker and both could hear it ring. It was answered with a grunt.

“Den, I’ve got some bloke called Clive Williamson here, a lawyer, wanting to see you. He’s from Kend
all Bailey.” There was a pause.

“Tell him I’m quite happy with my current
brief,” Den answered politely.

“I don’t think your current solicitor has Kendall Bailey’s power in the courts, n
or is he likely to do the case pro bono, or free of charge,” the lawyer said, loudly enough to know he had been heard by Den.

“I know what pro b
ono means, you smarmy git!” Grierson hissed over the speaker-phone. “Mikey, let him come up. Barty will meet him at the door.”

***

Barty Tones was twenty stones of muscle and fat, not necessarily in the most ideal proportions. He had been Den’s enforcer for fifteen years but,
at forty-three, he was well past his best. Nonetheless, to a preppy lawyer from a City law firm he would no doubt pose a formidable threat. When Clive Williamson smiled and showed no sense of alarm or fear as he was being patted down by a hard man in a wife beater tee shirt, Barty was a little taken aback. Clive was shown in to the lounge and Barty retired to the kitchen. Clive passed his business card to Dennis Grierson, who scanned it briefly.

“So, Kendall Bailey are doing pro bono work for the rioters, are they? How very public spiri
ted of them. Still, I expect it’s good publicity. Lots of TV time, eh?” The older man grinned; he still hadn’t invited Clive to sit. “Pardon me if I don’t stand up, but those bastards at the Met worked me over good and proper.”

“I expect you deserved it,” Clive responded without a hint of irony. Den looked shocked. Clive continued. “You can’t beat a policewoman half to death and expect to be given the first pick of the Krispy Kreme doughnuts, can you? That’s always assuming that the toe rags from this estate hadn’t wrecked the Krispy Kreme shop, which of course they did.” Clive smiled. His grin was wide a
nd, Den thought, condescending.

“I might just get out of this chair and wipe that smile off your face, you poncey turd!” Den
was angry but still restrained.

“Come on, Psycho - you don’t mind me calling you Psycho, do you? It seems so appropriate, somehow. I just want to help you get that
nice bracelet off your ankle.”

Den was fuming and on the verge of ordering Barty to hammer this insolent lawyer into the ground, but free legal advice was better than paying f
ive grand a throw to Penderley.

“OK, Mr smart arse lawyer, just how do you anticipate getting this bracelet off and having me set free?”

Clive set his briefcase down on the floor and folded his arms. With a vindictive smile on his face, he replied to Den’s question.

“Personally
, I thought I might hack your foot off with a blunt knife. The tag would fall off and you could hop to freedom. Maybe you could get to Spain and join the rest of the pond life from London who became too old and too stupid to avoid justice.” The lawyer stood and grinned. Den gripped the arms of the chair until his knuckles were white.

“Barty!” Den yelled
. “Teach this arsehole a lesson!”

Barty stood just inside the kitchen door, as if to block the exit. As the lawyer turned to face him, the old bouncer smiled
and lifted up his right hand to reveal a hunting knife with a razor sharp blade and an uncompromising serrated edge. Barty expected the city lawyer to be terrified, but the man merely looked bored. Barty was even more surprised when the lawyer shook his head and spoke. “How pathetically predictable.”

The next thing that happened was lost in a blur of movement. Before Den’s minder could react, the lawyer was standing in front of him with his back to the old bouncer, holding Barty’s right wrist in his iron grip. Somehow the man had moved and spun in one slick movement. The lawyer crashed Barty’s forearm against the jamb of the door. Everyone in the room heard the bones crack. The ulna and the radius were both cleanly broken and the radius pierced the skin, revealing a sha
rp, bloody bone and torn flesh.

“Oops, a compound
fracture,” the lawyer said sarcastically as the knife skittered to the floor, and then he threw his head back into Barty’s face. The old minder, whose body had long ago gone to fat, fell to the kitchen floor, moaning.

Seeing the imminent danger he faced from the lawyer, Den began to rise, the adrenalin
e obscuring the pain from his bruised and damaged muscles, but before he was upright the lawyer threw a punch that hit the gang leader in the chest like a sledgehammer, then threw him back into his old mum’s chair, where he slumped, gasping for breath.

The man Dennis Grierson knew as Clive Williamson pulled up a chair and sat three feet aw
ay, facing the tagged criminal.

“You aren’t from Kendal Bailey at all, are you?” Dennis Grierson was calm, although he now believed he was looking at his executioner. Ben Fogarty playe
d with the knife as he replied.

“No, I’m not. Clive was good enough to exchange business cards with me yesterday in the bar at the hotel. I am
indeed a lawyer, though.”

“You’
re Australian.”

“Not quite. Many people think I’m Australian, but I’m actually from New Zealand. I just flew in on Friday to give your name to the police.” Ben took satisfaction from the
scowl that crossed Den’s face.

“I knew no one from around here would have shopped me. Question is, how did you know it was me? Y
ou aren’t from around here.”

“I used to
be from here, a long time ago.”

“Not from these flats. I would know if anyone from these flats was a lawyer or went to New Zealand. I know everything that goes on he
re. So, what’s your real name?”

“Ben Fogarty.” Ben watched the blood drain from the face of his biological father. After a stunned silence, Den found his voice.

“So, you came to kill your dear old Dad, did you, Ambrose? Kill the man who mowed down your whore mother and made you an orphan. What an irony, being killed by my own bastard kid.” Den figured he
might as well go down fighting.

Ben had visualised this meeting and had replayed the vile things that might be said over and over in his head until his reaction was calm and controlled, as it was now,
when faced with the reality.

“I’m not sure that I want to kill you, actually. You are already destined to go to prison for the rest
of your life, and if you don’t - well, I’ll still be here to ensure justice is done.”

The whole time they had been speaking, Den’s right hand had surreptitiously slipped behind the arm of the chair, where he kept an old Zastava 9mm automatic handgun, an East European copy of the Sig Sauer. His hand gripped the gun, and his finger found the trigger as he raised it into firing
position.

Ben had been watching the older man carefully, and had guessed that he would have protection close at hand. Before the gun was aimed in his direction, Ben raised the hunting knife and arced it down in one swift movement. Den screamed and dropped the pistol as the knife plunged into his left thigh, embedding itself right to the hilt. In fact, the sharp knife went right through his leg, p
inning it to the chair beneath.

“That wasn’t terribly hospitable, Dad,” Ben said through gritted teeth. “Your son comes to see you and you try to shoot him. Anyone would think you were an impotent sociopath with mummy issues.” Ben picked up the gun by
placing a pen in the barrel and laid it on the windowsill, well out of Den’s reach. Then, not very gently, he wiped the knife handle to obscure his prints as it still stood protruding grotesquely from Den Grierson’s leg.

The blood was soon flowing freely from Den’s thigh, but not as freely as it would have been flowing had Ben clipped the femoral artery. No, Den would live, would be imprisoned and would die alone in a cell. Ben looked in on Barty, who was sitting upright in the kitchen, his ba
ck against the washing machine.

“Call an ambulance!” he pleaded weakly. Ben said he would send Mikey up on his way out. As Ben took one final look at the old and broken figure that was once the fearsome Dennis Psycho Grierson, the
old man spoke to his tormentor.

“I’ll come after you! I’ll kill you and I’ll kill your sister an
d anyone else you care about.”

Ben shook his head sl
owly.

“Do you really think I care about some half bred, feral female offspring you might have produced? You probably fathered half the kids in this block with young girls who didn’t know that the great Dennis Grierson was just a sicko who wasn’t man enough for a grown woman, who couldn’t satisfy anyone over thirteen.” Ben knew he needed to leave. He was beginning to lose it now.

“The girl I’m talking about isn’t any half breed; she’s your sister, good and proper. She’s your twin!” Den laughed a sneering and dirty laugh, which was only silenced by Ben’s fist dislocating his jaw.

***

“You weren’t up there long,” Mikey commented as Ben passed him, wholly unaware of what had happened upstairs in the flat whilst h
e had been on patrol down here.

“No. Den isn’t feeling well. He wants you to go up and see him. No hurry, though.” Ben smiled and waved at Mikey as he departed. Mikey raised his hand and waved back. ‘That Aussie bloke is all right’, he thought to himself.

Vastrick Security Offices, Nr 1 Poultry, London.

Monday 15
th
August 2011; 11:30am.

Dee Hammond squirmed around uncomfortably in her office chair. At seven months pregnant, there no longer seemed to be any such thing as a comfortable sitting position. Dee had seen her friends at seven months and they had seemed quaintly rounded, but her own stomach was so extended that she felt as though there might be two or three babies in there. She typed onto her Facebook status page: “Top three things I miss being pregnant; spicy food, lying face down and bladder control.”

She closed down her computer and began wading through the office expense accounts. Heading up the Vastrick London office was a nightmare of administration and form filling,
but fieldwork was out of the question for the time being. As well as being heavily pregnant, she was still recovering from her latest bullet wound; that made three in eighteen months. No wonder Josh wanted her to be desk bound for a while.

The telephone rang and Angie on reception told her that they had a visitor, a Mr Ben Fogarty. Dee asked Angie to send him along to her office and in the interim she closed the admin files and retrieved the Fogarty file from her desk. Patrick Fogarty had warned her that his son was likely to c
all in whilst he was in London.

Despite knowing that Ben Fogarty was tall and a rugby player, Dee was still surprised by his size. He filled her doorframe. Dee rose from her chair, with difficulty, to shake his outstretched hand. He was quite attractive and relatively undamaged for a rugby player. His smile was genuine and disarming, and Dee could imagine women warming to the dark floppy hair a
nd the startlingly bright eyes.

“You are rather larger than I’d imagined,” Dee blustered, blaming her hormones for the unsettling effect this client was having
on her professional demeanour.

“So are you!” he quipped, looking
at her bump. They both laughed.

“Mrs Hammond, I need to speak to my grand
mother as a matter of urgency.”

“Call me Dee, please. Why, may I ask, do you need to see her so urgently? You haven’t seen her for twenty years, have you?” Dee was a little taken
aback by the fear in his voice.

“No, I haven’t, but I believe that she is the only person who knows about my tw
in sister and her whereabouts.”

“Your father never mentioned a sister and, to be honest, we didn’t find any mention of a twin sister in the records. Although, it has to be said, we weren’t looking specifically.” Dee paused. “What makes you
think you have a twin sister?”