The Financial Terrorist Read online

  Jacqui thought, “There is a risk that Wendy Dale hears of the killings on the news. But, if we make sure the detectives have no papers, it will take time to identify them. The other risk is that Jefferson’s body is found and the police issue a press release. But I doubt it. We haven’t got many options anyway.”

  “I’ll go and see the guard downstairs and set his part up. But how do we steal the cars?”

  “That’s easy. We’ll lift one from the car park opposite. The guards can take theirs once they are ready and they should do it away from here. It’s better to limit the time we have any of the cars and we don’t want them to be associated.”

  Charles went downstairs to the guard and explained the plan, “I want you to think where we can meet up. And put your mate into the picture. We have a sub machine gun in the cache in the office. I’ll get it for you nearer the time. Oh and there’ll be ten grand each for you for the job.”

  The guard treated these unusual instructions as if they were absolutely normal. Charles sometimes thought that the heavies that Di Maglio had given him were far better than your run of the mill thug.

  Charles glanced at the monitor and saw Maria approach. She strode up the steps, her eyes sparkling. He recognised that look. He had seen it when she killed before. It was a mixture of lust and satisfaction. She had explained it to him once. She said that, after a kill, one had an empty feeling and needed to make love to get over it. The last time one of them had killed, they had had sex, and the time before. Charles didn’t expect to be in a supporting role this time with Jacqui around.

  “Come upstairs,” Charles told Maria. “We need to talk.”

  He turned to the guard, “When are you relieved?”

  “Five. They usually arrive about a quarter of an hour before.”

  “Good. We plan to leave at half four. Think when and where you will meet us.”

  Maria and Charles walked to the lift. He brought her up to date. She looked at him quizzically. “It’s lucky that you and Jacqui stayed behind to finish off some work. I thought you would have headed back home.”

  It was clear that she realised that he had not told the whole truth. He could see her mind buzzing and ignored it.

  Jacqui, Maria and Charles sat together in the office. They ran through their plans. Maria agreed with them, “We have to clean up properly. If you clubbed the detective, was there any blood on the carpet or furniture? Has anyone checked?”

  Jacqui nodded, “The guard cleaned up and has tidied up the detective’s face. It isn’t bleeding any more. There was some blood on the furniture but he cleaned that up. It should be OK.”

  Maria looked at her watch. “It’s half one. Jacqui needs to get the car at about four. Then she drives it here and we put it in the car park. We stuff the two detectives in the boot. The car will have to be big enough to take them.”

  Jacqui agreed, “Assuming the guards leave by five, they should be on the road by half five. You should rendezvous around six. There won’t be much traffic at this time of day. I wonder if they have worked out where you can meet.”

  Charles phoned down to the ground floor and asked the guard if he had any ideas. “I think the best place is Notting Hill. We can easily dump our car in the Paddington area and there are some good derelict places for the hit near by. With a bit of luck, if we leave the keys in their ignition, the cars will be stolen again and maybe even torched.”

  “I agree. We meet at Notting Hill. I will park by the junction of the Bayswater Road and Camden Hill. Then you lead me to one of the back streets to the north of the Road and I’ll let the detectives out. You hit them once I have gone and as they walk away. The betting is that they’ll head towards the underground either at Holland Park or Notting Hill, whichever is nearer.

  You dump the car in Paddington and we’ll do it well to the south. That way the chances of the two stolen cars being associated remains remote. We’ll have stolen them from different places and will dump them in different areas. The main risk is my car is seen when we dump the detectives but I’ll take care to be discreet. If necessary kill any bystander, after all it’s unlikely in that type of area that it will be anything but a tramp.

  I want no mobiles used. If anything goes wrong, fire two quick bursts of the gun in the air, we’ll hear that. We shouldn’t be seen together. And, afterwards, Maria and I have some other chores to do.”

  The guard once again agreed without question. He just said, “Don’t forget the gun and enough spare ammunition. I assume it can’t be traced. I plan to jettison it once the kill is done. I’d rather not carry it with me.”

  “Of course, it can’t be traced. It’s from Di Maglio,” Charles snapped. “I’m not an amateur, you know.”

  He turned to Maria once he had put down the phone, “I need you to help me in Kilburn. There is always a possibility that Wendy Dale is out or with someone. We may have to waste two people. Or we may have to wait for her. And we need to be careful in case she hears something about Jefferson. It could be on the radio. We need to ensure that we are on alert at all times for all eventualities.”

  Jacqui agreed, “I’ll head home after I have left the car. I’ll wait for you there. I hate that part of it. I know you can’t take any risk and call me to say how it’s going. They’ll scan the records for suspicious calls in the vicinities of the kills. They always do that. But I do hate the idea of total silence.”

  Maria made as if to protest. Jacqui shook her head, “Don’t worry. I know the rules. And I know that they are important.”

  “Let me calm down our visitors. I’ll tell them that we are going to negotiate with Jefferson, and that we will let them go, once his masters have agreed to lay off us. I’ll put on the TV. They can watch the football or something.”

  Charles did that and the poor fools swallowed the story he spun them. They had no idea that they were in deep trouble and not going to see the next day. When he got back, he saw Maria had made coffee and brought some biscuits. He went over to Jacqui and kissed her on the back of her neck, “Shall we finish what we started?” he whispered.

  “And what will you tell Maria?” she queried. “We can hardly ask her to wait in her office.”

  “Why can’t we? I am sure she would.”

  “Look, there is only one thing that you can be sure of. She’s not going to be jealous, but she may be upset. And you and she need to work as a team.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be jealous?”

  “God, men,” replied Jacqui. “You’ve worked with her for two years and haven’t realised. She’s gay. She’s a lesbian. She’s lived with her pal, Claire, for the past seven years. You know the pretty blonde, who was on the boat with us in Barbados that Christmas after I was kidnapped by the Russian Mafia.”

  Charles looked astonished. They’d never discussed this before. He now realised why Jacqui was indifferent to him spending time with Maria. She suspected she was a lesbian. She thought she and Claire were lovers, although Claire was around less now she worked in New York. Charles also knew that Maria may have been gay but could be as heterosexual as the next girl could. They had slept together on several occasions, especially when Jacqui left for one of her trips to New York. But he obviously said nothing.

  “Don’t look so amazed,” laughed Jacqui. “Do you think I’d leave you alone with her if that wasn’t the case? I’m not stupid you know. And I’m very possessive.”

  At that moment, Maria came in and so the conversation stopped. She started busying herself. She, like Charles, had now changed into a black sweater and slacks. They checked with the guards, who had both changed into dark casual clothes. That was all they needed. They would wear baseball caps as well to make it difficult for people to identify the colour of their hair and their exact features.

  “I’ll drop my car back home,” said Maria. “I’ll be back in good time. I don’t want anyone to know that I have been back here. It’s better that everything looks as normal as possible.”
/>   Once she had left, Charles turned to Jacqui enquiringly, “No fear, this place is too busy. It’s no longer out of bounds. Much as I’d love to, we’d better wait for another occasion. Besides, you need to psyche yourself up for the next steps. They’re not going to be easy.”

  He must have looked disgruntled because she laughed and said, “I promise we’ll come back and make love on the board table. I’ll even wear a bowler hat if you want.”

  He smiled, “The question is where?” So they waited. Then just before four, Jacqui walked out and over to the car park. It took her a few minutes. She returned with a fairly standard saloon. She had taken one that was an innocuous blue. It was good. The boot would be large enough for their guests and the car was standard enough to avoid attention. Jacqui knew, instinctively, how to act in situations like this.

  Nevertheless, Charles still asked her if she had avoided the security cameras. She nodded. Like the others, she had put on dark clothes. “I kept my back to the cameras and wore the cap, so they can’t tell the colour of my hair. They won’t be able to trace me. I found a cigarette in the street and left it near one of the cameras. That will put their forensics on a wild goose chase, if they notice the clue.”

  Jacqui then left. Maria and Charles headed upstairs to the detectives. “We are going to put you in the boot and drive you to the other side of London. Before we release you, we take delivery of some papers from Jefferson. We’ll drop you in Notting Hill. You can say you were mugged, that’ll explain the bruises on your face. Do you agree?”

  They nodded eagerly. They were pretty dim, anyone could see the bruises were at least a few hours old. The story that had been suggested did not stack up. Or perhaps they kept quiet in the hope that Charles was stupid. “Why are you going to put us in the boot?” asked the tall one.

  “We don’t want anyone to see you. And make no noise or the deal is off and you’ll regret it,” said Maria. They agreed immediately and were taken downstairs.

  The guard came and went over the instructions again. He reported to Charles, “We’ve erased all the videos in the security cameras and reset the system. It will look as if there was a failure. We’ll restart it once you leave. That way it will only be discovered if anybody looks at the film for Sunday. They won’t be able to establish why, but the system was off from midnight through to half four or so this afternoon.”

  “Well done, I’d overlooked that. I thought the tapes were just re-used.”

  “No. They are stored for a month and then re-used,” he answered. “So if nobody is suspicious at the end of the day and they remain unchallenged for a month, then there will be no trace of what we have done. The only thing that we can’t alter is the time clock.”

  “What about the boardroom?”

  “It’s clean as a whistle. Not even forensics could find anything there. There are a couple of scratches on the boardroom table though that we can’t remove. You must have pushed your guns or something across the table.”

  Charles ignored that. There was no security camera in the boardroom and so they would never know what caused the scratches. He suspected it could have been the belt on Jacqui’s skirt. She had, after all, propelled herself from one end of the table almost to the other.

  Charles and Maria drove off and swung away from the bank towards the West End. The roads were quiet that Sunday evening and they reached Notting Hill in just over half an hour. They found a space at the bottom of Camden Hill and pulled in there. There was a muffled moan from the boot.

  Maria got into the back seat and whispered to the detectives, “We are waiting for Jefferson. The meet is round the corner. As long as he does what he promised, we’ll head over to Notting Hill then and find a quiet place to let you go. It shouldn’t be long now.”

  She pretended to get out of the car. In reality, she closed the rear door and climbed back over to the front seat. They waited for the guards to appear. The guards reached the meeting point about twenty minutes later and headed slowly in front. Maria opened and slammed her car door and called to the men in the boot. “It’s done. We now need to find a place to let you out without being noticed.”

  Charles followed the guard’s car. It headed north and soon was in some pretty gloomy territory around Paddington Station. He did not know the area at all but it was well sign-posted to the West End and so he was relaxed they would have no difficulty finding their way back.

  They drove up a small side street, full of empty, boarded up houses. It was waiting for the demolition men, an excellent place to dump the detectives in the back. Charles pulled his cap down further over his face and went to the boot.

  “Out,” he ordered. They obeyed promptly. They stood there stretching themselves and blinking nervously, “Now keep out of my life,” he snarled, handing them a bag. “These are your wallets and things. Now go.”

  They did not look at the bag, which also contained a small packet of cocaine. There was not much there but enough to further raise the suspicions of the police. With the residue on their clothes, they would be labelled drug pushers.

  Charles got back in the car and drove down the street. The detectives were walking quickly in the opposite direction. As he got to the corner, the guards’ car pulled away from the kerb, driving back down towards the men.

  Although they had turned into the next road, they heard the rattle of the machine gun as it mowed down the unfortunate detectives. Then there was silence. They did not say a word but drove on. They reached the park, it was late enough for there to be spaces there. They had no need to wipe down the car for they had worn gloves all the time, and they left it open with the key in the ignition. With a bit of luck it would be stolen again well before the police noticed it.

  They went down the tube at Queensway, then they caught the train towards Kilburn, walking arm in arm for the last mile, so they would not appear on the station monitors. They looked like any other couple going for an early evening stroll. This was the last stage of the clean up. The fourth victim was hopefully the last.

  Wendy Dale lived in a gloomy terraced house. Breaking in took a minute. Standard locks protected it and Maria took moments to pick them. There wasn’t even a troublesome alarm for them to worry about. They had established she wasn’t at home, they now had to wait.

  In the kitchen was a calendar. Her social diary was hardly exciting if that was anything to go by. Her weekend appeared to have been spent in Oxford with a girl friend. She was a methodical woman. They established she would be on the seven thirty-train back. That meant they could expect her by nine unless she took a cab rather than the underground.

  Maria and Charles went through the house. Upstairs there were three pocket-sized bedrooms. One was used as a workroom and study. They went through the papers. They could find nothing from Associated. Their name was also on none of the files.

  The place was clean. She did not appear to be using it to store any material from the office. Charles turned to Maria, “Should we set the place alight once we have killed her?”

  “There’s nothing we need to destroy here. I’d prefer it to look like a break-in. We could take this jewel case, and she’s bound to have some money on her when she returns. Otherwise, I can’t see anything we would want to steal. Anyway, if we leave her here, she may lie there for a few days. That always helps in case someone thinks they saw something suspicious. The longer it takes to find her, the less reliable any witness will be.”

  “I need to question her in any case. If she starts to yell or anything, kill her quickly. We don’t want the neighbours around.”

  The clock chimed nine and they waited expectantly. A taxi drew up. A couple got out. “Shit,” muttered Maria. They went into the house next door. Charles and Maria breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then they saw her. She must have caught the underground. She was walking up the street, carrying a small suitcase. She was on her own. She was medium height; slightly podgy with long tinted blond hair. With a bit of effort, she
could have looked attractive. There was no elegance in the walk as she came to the house. It just mirrored the discomfort she felt as she wobbled on her too high heels in her too tight knee-length skirt.

  She fumbled for the keys. Maria and Charles waited behind the lounge door. They wanted her away from the hallway. She was going to be shocked when she saw them waiting for her.

  She closed the door and dropped the case in the hall. She went over to the phone and checked for messages. They listened carefully. The machine told her, “You have two messages.” They heard a button click and an excited woman’s voice called out. “There’s a lovely new play on at the theatre. It’s supposed to be great. Can we get together and see it. Please call, Wendy.” Then a button clicked again. “Wendy. This is Jefferson. I’ve sent the two detectives into IBE. They’ll get the tape. There was a meeting. They say that some big guns were there. We need to stop acting alone. I need to tell the boss what we’ve found. This could be big money for you. He’s sworn he wants to see that bastard, Rossi, in jail. Call me when you get back.”

  Maria and Charles nodded as if on cue. “Hello Wendy,” Maria said. “I think you’ve got some explaining to do before we call the police.”

  “Yes,” Charles added grimly. “And you can tell us who Jefferson is. And why his boss wants to put me inside.”

  She was so astonished by their appearance that she didn’t say a word. Charles took her by the arm and eased her into the lounge. She walked like an automaton. She was in total shock.

  She then said, “How did you get in here?”

  Maria answered. “I can pick a lock. Yours were easy. It’s one of my skills. It allows me to disprove my reputation. You know the one that you credit me with in the office. See, I have other skills that don’t require me just to lie on my back.” That was delivered with a look of hatred.