“Friday Fiction” Series: Arms Control, Chapters Seven through Nine…
[Note from Steve: Let’s hope this “Black Friday” doesn’t involve illegal gun sales–we have enough guns in the US. This story, which ends today, is about them, though–they plague the British too! My British-style mysteries to date probably are more influenced by Dame Agatha and other authors’ creations rather than the hard-boiled American school, probably the major influence for my “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series (the Tums-chewing Castilblanco is as hard-boiled as lollipop-sucking Kojak, to be honest). After a bit of reflection about that, I decided to write a story about a hard-boiled British DI. Okay, he has Irish blood, so maybe the stereotype of Irish NYC cop also holds true with him? You decide.]
Arms Control
Copyright 2021, Steven M. Moore
Chapter Seven
At the twenty-second hour, the team came together with Hal and Jay present. They’d discovered that Art and Doug shared a flat, and the two were driving other residents in the building and neighbors in the area crazy with their visitors’ going and coming, mostly during late evenings and early mornings. The team also had some grainy CCTV records from a nearby pharmacy that backed up the residents and neighbors’ stories. Unfortunately the video quality was too poor to run facial recognition software.
“We’ll have to go in with this,” Alan said. “Worst case, we let them go and put surveillance on the flat, although they’ll probably just entertain their guests somewhere else.”
“An old lady in the same building,” Hiram said, “gave our artist enough to make a good drawing, right down to a facial scar, mustache, and goatee. Other residents and neighbors saw the drawing and said that person was one of the frequent visitors.”
“Still not enough for facial recognition?” said Jay.
“Iffy. In any case, there was no match in HOLMES. That scrote might be a foreigner, or just someone clever enough to be without form. Hal shipped it off to Interpol, MI5, and NCA.”
“That will take a while,” Hal said. “We won’t have anything in time for the second interrogation.”
“I suggest we threaten them a bit,” Alan said. “Say we’ve checked and the Home Office wants MI5 to take over their case, and they’d be much better off with us?”
Hal smiled. “That might put a little more pressure on them, assuming they’re intelligent enough to know what MI5 is.”
“And they might call your bluff,” Jay said, “or their lawyer will.”
***
Judy and Alan filed into the interrogation room while Jay and Hal entered the room behind the one-way window once again.
“You’ve had more than enough time to think about your plight,” Judy began. “And we’ve had enough time to make things worse for you.”
“What do you mean?” said the barrister.
“MI5 would like to question your two clients now,” Judy said. “They’re interested in arms trafficking because of the terrorist angle. They suspect your clients are involved in arming terrorists. We’d love to see them pin that on your clients. They’d be in the nick for a lot longer.”
“They can’t do that!” Art Simons said. “Buying a few things doesn’t make us terrorists. We’re as patriotic as the next bloke.”
“So…” Alan said with a smile. “Who did you buy the vests and weapons from? J&M or someone else?”
Art glanced at Doug, who nodded. “Okay. J&M outfitted us.”
“And you’ve continued to deal with them, considering all the visitors at your flat. What are you planning? Or are you now helping them distribute?”
“We just socialize a lot,” Art said, and Doug nodded.
Alan laughed. “With some rather shadowy characters.” That wasn’t a lie. The witnesses and video evidence hadn’t been good enough to identify anyone, but they were grainy and shadowy on the video. The best they had was a drawing! “You can either give us their names, or give them to MI5. I’d think you’d prefer the first option. MI5 doesn’t have to allow any legal representation, so they can do what they want.” That was only true for people accused of treason, and only in the initial stages, but the scrotes wouldn’t know that. Would the lawyer?
“I need a break to confer with my clients,” he said.
Time for tea and cakes, thought Alan, but not for that trio.
“Any change of opinions?” Judy said twenty minutes later after returning from that break.
“As far as we know, there’s only one bloke who’s with J&M,” Art said.
“The one with the facial scar, mustache, and goatee?” said Judy, taking an educated guess. At least he looked different from the others and foreign, which didn’t mean much in England or the UK as a whole anymore. Now both Art and Doug nodded. “What’s his name, and what were you doing for him?”
“Helping him outfit customers,” Art said. “He threatened to turn us in to NCA or MI5 if we didn’t cooperate. We didn’t want to go back to prison, so we helped out. Not a bad deal. Paid better than armed robbery, to tell the truth.”
As if these two know what truth is, Alan thought. “His name?” he said.
“Ivan Stoyanov. We think he might be Bulgarian.” Art looked from Judy to Alan and back. “We helped you out. What’s going to happen to us?”
“The Crown Court will take that all into consideration. It can’t hurt your case. It’s not like you were on the straight and narrow, but yes, you helped us.”
“And MI5?”
“We’ll keep you here for now.” Alan slid legal pads and biros to the two. “Your lawyer can help you edit your confessions. Seems like he’s not good for much else.”
The lawyer did nothing but glare at Alan.
Chapter Eight
The manhunt for Ivan Stoyanov had success two days later. They brought him in as a murder suspect for arranging the murder of Sam Duncan. A uniformed constable’d spotted him buying liquor in a small shopping center not far from Art and Doug’s place. Ivan had thrown a bottle at the constable who had the good sense to step aside. That’d been enough to motivate the young constable to pursue Ivan. Knowing the neighborhood well, the copper took a shortcut. The Bulgarian ran right into the constable’s outstretched arms while looking in the expected direction of pursuit. The constable put him down and cuffed him. Alan chugged the constable a bit by commending him for a job well done.
Judy and Alan entered the interrogation room once again.
“I’m a legal resident of this shite country!” were the first words they heard. “I know my rights. I want to lodge a complaint about police brutality!”
Alan smiled at the bloke’s Crown-appointed lawyer. “Better get your client to settle down. He’s not helping his cause.”
“He says he’s not an arms trafficker,” the lawyer said, examining his nails as if he didn’t care.
“We have proof he is. As a legal resident of the UK, he’ll be the guest of the king in a maximum security prison for at least five years, maybe more.” Alan now focused on Ivan, who’d become very quiet upon hearing that. “That will occur unless you can provide us some useful information. Let’s talk about J&M, Ivan. We know you, Art, and Doug work for them…worked, in their case, and most likely past tense for you as well. We want details about their operation.”
Ivan sighed. “I’m just a go-between. Those two and others work for me. I don’t know much about the details. J&M’s organized like a spy network, each layer not knowing much about the one above but everything about the next one down.”
“Okay. At your level, you three and others deal with sales to different groups. We want to know who those groups are. We also want to know where the warehouses are. You must store the merchandise somewhere.”
“What do I get for telling you that? I’m not going to grass on someone if there’s no quid pro quo, you know.”
Alan smiled. So poetic…and he knows Latin.
“We’ll put in a good word to the Crown Court that I’m sure your attorney can use to your benefit,” Judy said. She glared at the lawyer. “Need time to discuss that with your client?”
“Yes, although I believe it’s Art and Doug’s word against my client’s, so there’s something to be said for hoping to obtain a complete acquittal in court. The UK shouldn’t treat its European workers in this way, especially if they were trapped here by Brexit and Covid.”
“Nice little speech, counselor, but hardworking immigrants don’t usually work hard at arms trafficking. We’re willing to take our chances in court if you insist on that option. We’d go for the maximum sentence in that case.” Alan stood. “You can have fifteen minutes alone with your client. I need a tea break anyway.”
Almost twenty minutes later, Judy and Alan entered the interrogation room again. “Are we ready for some serious negotiating now?” he said.
The two had decided it was in Ivan’s interest to tell them everything he knew. Alan had predicted that. With all his pretended superiority and urbaneness, Alan thought Ivan Stoyanov was just a scared little weasel who had little or no skills to make a decent living. He’d probably been a criminal in his home country and continued to be one in England. That meant that the UK’s immigrant-vetting filters were a bit lax.
Ivan’s statements were the snowball that created an avalanche. Now they had to get both MI5 and NCA involved. What they needed was a raid on all the warehouses J&M used to store and distribute their illegal weaponry.
After consulting with the Home Office, NCA suggested that such a raid had to involve multiple law enforcement organizations. The Home Secretary agreed. A group formed from them would meet and hammer out the details.
***
The “committee” met at NCA’s HQ with impressive but discreet security. Judy, Alan, and Jay arrived first and were shown into the meeting room. Hal and Jeremy from MI5 came in next and then Sr. Agent III Karl Schuster, Hal’s old boss from Interpol, and agent Denise Fournier from DGSI soon followed. Finally Lauren Johnson with an aide, both from NCA, entered; she went to the head of the table while the aide took a chair sitting against the wall.
“Let’s get to it,” Lauren said. “Our goal is to shut down this arms trafficking network. With Stoyanov’s information our partners have gathered for us—” She smiled and nodded in turn at Judy, Alan, and Hal, but not Jay. “—we need to plan a raid throughout Greater London. We’ve done this before with drugs trafficking networks, but this op will have to be a bit different. For one thing, these arms traffickers are incredibly organized. For another, they’re much better armed than most of us usually are.”
“We have armed units,” Jay said.
Lauren glared at him. “Without wanting to be adversarial, DCI Mallow, I’ll state the obvious: The Yard’s SCO19 units have no experience with taking part in a citywide raid.”
Jay’s face turned red. Alan had already noted evidence for a competitiveness, an animosity even, between Lauren and Jay. Maybe they have a history?
“The Yard has more experience with focused raids,” Jeremy said, “and so does MI5. I’d like to suggest that we divide up the target sites to take advantage of all the armed units we have available, with NCA directing everything, which the drugs ops give them the experience to do.”
Lauren smiled at Jeremy. A mutual admiration society between two old warriors? Alan asked himself. Brand and Johnson seemed to be connecting. Maybe more than professionally? He smiled. Stranger things had happened in meetings like this, and bad and good past experiences always seemed to be aired. That reduced the effectiveness of most committees. He hoped that wasn’t the case this time.
“Agreed. I think this entire committee as it’s presently configured should be directing everything, although I want Interpol and DGSI to focus on the international aspect, particularly for the EU. We want to hit them hard on the continent too.”
“We also need someone to coordinate in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic,” Hal said. “Maybe not against J&M, but there’s evidence illegal arms and such here are coming from there as well. I can focus on that with Karl’s help. We don’t have much time, so we have to move fast.” Schuster nodded.
“All that leads to a discussion about timing,” Lauren said. “We can’t delay. J&M might be on the move now to shut things down if they’ve heard that Stoyanov is the guest of Scotland Yard.”
“Let’s hit the phones now,” Denise said. “I’ll work with Hal and Schuster. What’s the drop-dead time, Lauren?”
“Shall we say tomorrow at midnight?” was Lauren’s suggestion. The others either said “yes” or nodded.
“We need a name for the op,” the pompous Jay said.
Lauren seemed amused by his comment. “Give me one.”
“Um. Well, I don’t know….”
“OK Corral,” Hal said.
“That’s what we’ll use,” Lauren said, “although I hope it doesn’t become an event as violent as that one was. Operation OK Corral is now a go. Full speed ahead.”
Chapter Nine
NCA had the facilities and experience to set up an ops center quickly, but Alan suspected that MI5 did too. Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police’s many substations, including his, also had the ability to mount a small SCO19 op, or join forces in a team effort. But Alan knew that only certain egos from the different organizations involved in OK Corral could work together. Everyone on that committee room was qualified except Jay. He’d fortunately left. Alan hoped his superior could keep his mouth shut. In a way, Alan felt sorry for him. This wasn’t an action where a copper could bluff his way through it, and that’s all Jay was: Bluff.
Alan didn’t have time to dwell on those thoughts. They each had a job to do.
They ended up staying the night there, catching a few nods when and where they could. And it took all the next day to get armed units, police and agents, as well as ambulance with EMTs stationed and hidden around J&M’s warehouses.
The last thing they waited on was the greenlight from the PM and Home Secretary. Even with the international flavor of the op, they were the only politicians who knew about the raid. The first man had to cancel a courtesy meeting with the king using a lame excuse that might have even made that old toff wonder. After a conference at 10 Downing with the Home Secretary, the green light came a bit after nine p.m. OK Corral was going live as planned.
***
Alan felt a bit uncomfortable watching the action take place via video in the ops room. He felt like he was in an elaborate computer game. There were some gun battles, but the J&M organization wasn’t as agile as he’d feared. Some in a few warehouses were trying to load lorries and do a runner, but only a few escaped. Over three hundred associated with the trafficking network were rounded up if you counted those in Northern Island. Several suppliers in Europe also were caught; they were even less prepared for operation OK Corral, mostly led there by Interpol and DGSI, using France’s and other countries’ armed units.
Alan went home to Amanda completely knackered; from what, he didn’t know, because all Judy and he had done was watch video images on the war room’s ten screens, some of them even split to cover all the action. It could have been from some BBC drama or documentary as far as he could relate to it.
He got off his train and walked up to street level. Two blocks later, he realized he was being followed. That made him nervous. The top levels of J&M had escaped the net cast by the raid. Will killing an unarmed copper send a message? Alan doubted that, but it put a frisson down his back.
He stayed calm enough, though, even slowing down. He then heard the rush behind him. The knife only nicked him in the shoulder because Alan had spun around. His right fist came down hard on the knife arm, making his attacker drop the knife, and his left slammed into the scrote’s jaw. He parked a foot on his assailant’s chest and called 9-9-9, then Amanda.
“I’ll be a bit later than planned, Luv,” he said. “Some crazy bastard just attacked me with a knife.”
“Are you okay?”
“A bit of a nick. I’m going to interrogate this scrote at the station. He might be connected to the case that’s consumed me the last few days.”
“I’ll go ahead and eat, but I’ll save your dinner for you.”
“You bet. Ta.”
By the time patrol cars arrived, Alan had lost enough blood that he was getting dizzy. The uniformed constables hauled his assailant off to the station. An ambulance hauled Alan to the nearest NHS hospital. On the way, the EMT let him call Judy.
Epilogue
The next morning, Judy and Hal came to see him. He was staring at some mess that pretended to be a solid English breakfast; it wasn’t appealing, so he was glad to have the interruption. Hal grabbed something like a twig that might be a sausage and then took a chair; Judy stood and shook her head at the food.
“Good old NHS,” she said.
“Get any joy with that scrote?”
“He did an Ivan on J&M,” Hal said. “That organizations’ VIPs hired him to kill you.”
“Why?”
“They blamed you for showing the world that their business model was flawed, I guess,” Judy said. “We have some of those VIPs in custody now, thanks to the knifeman’s grassing on them.”
“Um. We got some of the head and the tail. One or more of them will lead to the middle. Tell Lauren to make it a clean sweep.”
“There’s someone waiting to see you,” Judy said, “and she’s furious with you. We’d better leave and avoid the fireworks.”
Amanda was only furious with him because he was in the hospital.
“But Luv, I just might have broken the case wide open.”
“And that bastard almost cut you wide open.”
“Actually, that little altercation was a bit of fun. I’d been depressed because I hadn’t participated that much in earlier action. Others took away that joy.”
“Fine. Let those others be the ones who get cut up. You already have enough scars.”
“None that will ever come between us, Luv.”
“You’re damn right. I have those dance lessons set up.”
***
Comments are always welcome.
Free fiction. Current ‘zines now aren’t worth my time—their submission processes are more onerous than those for any novel—so I now give away my short fiction. If you’ve been regularly reading this blog, you’ll know that free fiction can be found in the “Steve’s Shorts,” “ABC Shorts,” and “Friday Fiction” archives, but it’s often serialized like this story. It then moves (non-serialized) into a free PDF download. See the complete list of free, downloadable PDFs on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website. If you feel guilty about enjoying the reading of my free fiction, please donate to your favorite charities; some good ones are the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the Nature Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund. Donations to them and others are often tax deductible; donations to the NRA and PACs are not.
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