Gray Justice (Tom Gray #1) Read online

  Gray had offered him no answers and had left without making his peace. That had been his last contact with Dina’s family, and now it seemed there would be no more.

  “Come on, Tom, let’s grab a drink.”

  Len Smart led Gray to his car and they drove in silence to the pub. Once inside, with pints in front of them, Gray said “I should go to the wake, Len.”

  “No, Tom, you shouldn’t. Give them time, they’ll come round, but right now let them grieve.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  A dozen of Gray’s friends walked into the pub, having followed them from the church. Two headed to the bar to get a round in while the rest pulled tables round so that they were all sitting together.

  “How’s the business coming along?” Carl Levine asked, although he already knew the answer: he just wanted a topic to take Gray’s mind off the day’s proceedings.

  “Not too bad. I got a contract for three BGs in Afghanistan last week, and another coming up for eight in Iraq, looking after oil workers. I’ll be meeting with the oil company in a couple of weeks.”

  “Sounds good. When you get it, don’t forget our old friend Len.”

  “Don’t worry, when the contract’s signed, you’ll be second on the list.”

  Len appeared hurt. “Only second? Who’s first? Not Sonny, surely.”

  Simon ‘Sonny’ Baines was so named because he’d looked like a school boy when he’d enlisted and hadn’t seemed to age a day since. Along with his youthful looks he had a penchant for school boy pranks, many of which were at Len’s expense.

  “No, not Sonny. Me.”

  “But what about the business? What happens to that when you’re running around Baghdad?”

  Gray took a mouthful of beer. “It’s up for sale. One venture capitalist firm has already shown interest. We haven’t discussed numbers yet but my accountant reckons I should be looking for about one point eight million.”

  “This is a bit sudden. What brought it on?” Jeff Campbell asked.

  Gray took another long drink, keeping them all waiting. He had known these men for many years and they had been through a lot together, yet he still felt uncomfortable opening up in front of them. They had shared many things in their time, but rarely their emotions.

  “I just can’t bear it without them,” he finally said, staring into his glass. “If I stay around here it will drive me crazy, I know it. When Dina and Danny were both alive I would think about them on the drive home, and every time I opened the door he would run to me shouting ‘Daddy!’ Now, when I open the door, there’s just silence, and it tears me apart.”

  His eyes began to cloud and he wiped them before finishing off his beer. As he put his empty glass on the table it was immediately replaced with a fresh pint.

  “Whenever I pass his nursery, I think of him. When I go to the supermarket I remember the times we used to go as a family, and I even sleep on the couch because I can’t stand to be alone in our bed. When I see a woman and kid in the street, it reminds me of them.

  “There are just too many things in my daily routine that make me think about my family. I need a fresh start, get out of the area and throw myself into something that will take up every waking moment. The only thing I know that intense is a stint in Iraq.”

  “But why sell up?” Colin Avery asked. “Couldn’t you just get a manager in for a while?”

  “I could,” Gray admitted, “but I want a clean slate. I don’t want to come back to the old routine; it’ll just bring back the memories. This way, once I’m done in Iraq, I can settle anywhere I like.” A few nods told him that they thought his plan made sense.

  A couple of them asked about positions in the upcoming contract and he began taking the names, but was interrupted when his mobile rang. The display told him it was his solicitor, so he made his excuses and moved to a quieter area of the room. He listened for a few moments, then suddenly exploded into the phone: “You’re fucking joking!”

  Everyone at the table looked at him, their eyes asking what the problem was. Gray listened for another minute or so before ending the call and resuming his seat at the table.

  “They released him,” he told his friends, and knocked back a whiskey which was sitting in the middle of the table. “Apparently he offered to plead guilty if they changed the charge to driving without due care and attention. The prosecution accepted the offer and the judge gave him fifteen months, and then released him because he had already served more than half of that on remand.”

  “Why only fifteen months?” Paul Bennett asked. “Was it his first offence?”

  “Fuck, no.” Gray spat. “My solicitor said he had forty-three previous convictions for car theft, plus thirty-four other convictions including assault, burglary, possessing an offensive weapon and various drug offences.”

  “So that’s it? He just walks?”

  “He just walks,” Gray confirmed.

  “He’s just spent eight months with his own kind, learning new and improved ways of breaking into cars, and now he’s free to try them out,” Sonny said. “That can’t be right.”

  “This country’s too soft on these little shits,” Tristram Barker-Fink agreed.

  “They should bring back National Service, give them some real discipline.”

  “...or the birch...”

  Other suggestions came thick and fast, including “chop their thieving hands off” and “just shoot them in the fucking head.”

  “Want us to pay him a visit?” Avery asked, and a few of them nodded their willingness to take part.

  “Thanks, guys,” Gray said, a faraway look in his eye, “but I think it’s gone beyond that now...”

  Chapter 2

  April 12th 2011

  Joseph Olemwu desperately wanted some gear, but with no cash he would have to find a different form of currency. Luckily, Albert Tonga accepted mobile phones as full payment, and at this time of night there was always the chance of finding someone to donate one, even if they didn’t do so willingly.

  He took a large swig of Vodka and passed the bottle to Vinnie Parker. “Robbo told me he did it with Shelly White on Friday,” Parker told him before wiping the neck of the bottle and taking a drink. Olemwu nearly choked with laughter, vodka erupting from his nose and clenched mouth.

  When he finally recovered he said “Robbo is full of shit. He didn’t shag no-one on Friday. I was drinking with him all day and the last I saw him he was puking in the stairwell at midnight. I had to help him to his flat. Fuck me, his mum was pissed off.” He smiled at the recollection and imagined the bollocking that would have been dished out.

  Marcus Taylor tapped Olemwu and Parker on the arm and motioned towards a figure approaching them. He was at least six inches smaller than any of the boys, perhaps a couple of years older than them at around twenty years of age, wearing glasses and hair cut short with a side parting. He was chatting on a mobile, seemingly oblivious to their presence until he was on top of them. The man stopped when he noticed the three boys and made eye contact for a brief moment, then haltingly walked on past them, keeping them in his peripheral vision.

  Olemwu was the first to react. “You looking at me, cunt?”

  The man carried on walking, his pace quickening, and the boys trotted to catch up. As they got within ten feet of him he took off through a gate and into the park. The three boys followed, chasing him into the darkness. He had on a light brown jacket and that helped them keep him in view, but they didn’t seem to be gaining. As they ran three abreast, the two on the flanks were suddenly confronted by figures dressed entirely in black, who seemed to rise out of the ground barely five feet in front of them. Their momentum carried them towards the men, who took a step to the side and swung baseball bats, catching the boys in the chest. Ribs cracked and they dropped likes sacks of cement.

  Neither had managed to get out a cry, but Olemwu had heard the bats striking, as had the man he was chasing. Both stopped, and the man in the brown jacket turned and started wal
king purposefully towards him, placing his glasses in a protective case. Despite the height advantage there was something menacing in the slight figure that deeply troubled him. He spun round to seek strength in numbers but from the faint street lighting he saw his friends lying in the foetal position, barely able to moan, never mind move. From the sides two dark figures approached him, leaving him nowhere to run.

  “Look man, I don’t want no trouble. We was just fuckin’ wiv ‘im, that’s all.”

  The men said nothing, simply moved closer and closer, bats raised and ready to strike. Joseph Olemwu’s head spun as he tried to keep an eye on all of them at the same time, and when the blow came he barely saw the blur of the wood before it crashed into his temple. He dropped to the ground, out cold, and the men wasted no time applying plasticuffs to his arms and legs. Sonny Baines put his glasses case back in his jacket pocket and clicked the talk button on his collar mike twice. The three men picked the unconscious Olemwu up and carried him into the darkness, and after a hundred yards Sonny heard a voice in his earpiece. “Seventy yards out, eleven o’clock.” Sonny adjusted his heading and saw the transit van when he was within ten yards of it. The driver was scanning the surrounding area with night vision glasses, ensuring there was no-one around to disturb them. Satisfied, he opened the rear doors and Olemwu was bundled in unceremoniously.

  “Christ, Carl, could you have hit him any harder? You nearly took his fucking head off.”

  “He’s fine, look,” Carl said, giving Olemwu a kick. “He’s breathing, ain’t he?”

  The van pulled out of the park and once on the road the driver turned the headlights on. In the back they settled down for the long journey, using Joseph Olemwu as a footrest.

  Chapter 3

  Sunday April 17th 2011

  John Hammond was preparing his notes for the next morning’s Joint Intelligence Committee meeting when Andrew Harvey knocked on his door and walked in without waiting to be beckoned. Normally Hammond would have had something to say about the intrusion, but Harvey was a solid operative, very experienced and above all a man who knew when to stand on convention. If he ignored the unwritten protocol it was often with good reason.

  “Something big has come in,” Harvey told him. “We’re all gathered.”

  Hammond nodded, locked his workstation and followed Harvey. In the conference room, Diane Lane used their arrival as her cue to start the briefing.

  “In the last thirty minutes, calls were made to all the major newspapers as well as the BBC and Sky news channels to inform them about this new website.”

  She pressed her remote control and an image of the website appeared on the fifty-inch wall-mounted plasma screen. The banner proclaimed the site to be the home of “Justice For Britain” and in the centre of the page a video was waiting to be streamed. Lane clicked the Play button on the embedded video player and a man appeared on the screen, not overly handsome, the mouth perhaps a little small, but the face under the short chestnut hair had an air of authority. He moved the camera so that it was pointing towards what appeared to be five prison cells, all with their doors open. Each cell contained a single box-like chair upon which sat a shaven-headed figure wearing a white T-shirt and nothing else. They all had tape over their mouths and their arms were outstretched and tied to the cell walls, while their feet were shackled, the chains running through metal rings set into the floor between their legs.

  “You are all here,” the man began, walking past the cells and addressing the occupants, “because you all have criminal records stretching back years. Despite the courts being lenient with you, you have spurned numerous chances to change your ways. You might have thought that the courts were doing you a favour by just giving you a curfew or community service but it’s quite the opposite: If you had committed one crime and learned your lesson, you wouldn’t be here. The fact that you have a string of convictions means you have no regard for the law or the people you have plagued over the years. You have shown that you do not want to make a positive contribution to society, and up until now society has had no say in the matter. We have all had to rely on our government to protect us from you, yet they have thrown you back on the street time after time.

  “Well, enough is enough. I think you have had all the chances you deserve. I say it is now up to the people of this country to decide what happens to you.”

  The figure turned to the camera.

  “Folks, my name is Tom Gray and the next few days are all about choices.

  “Last year, one of these criminals killed my only son and our fabulous judicial system gave him a fifteen month prison sentence and then let him walk free because he had served eight months on remand.

  “That was all they thought my son’s life was worth.”

  Gray took a swig of water from a bottle.

  “I have created this website so that you, the people of Britain, can have a say in what happens to these five people. Judges throw them back on the streets because the crimes they commit do not directly affect them. If they did, you can be sure the sentences would be harsher. If a judge’s son was killed by a joy rider you can be sure he would go down for a long time.

  “I have contacted all the major UK news outlets to let them know that I have a device placed at a location which will kill thousands. If one of my colleagues out there lets me know that this website was interrupted for any reason, I will kill everyone in this room, take my own life and the device goes off at midday on Friday. I am the only one who knows where the device is, and its location will die with me.”

  Gray started to count off on his fingers. “If the government interferes with this website or causes it to stop functioning, I will take my own life.

  “If this story isn’t shown on all UK news channels, and that includes showing the address of the website, I will take my own life.

  “If any attempt is made to rescue these criminals by force, I will take my own life.”

  Gray unzipped his combat smock to reveal a waistcoat fashioned from webbing. Strung from it were three hand grenades, with a cord attached to the pin of the one in the centre. The cord emerged through the lapel of his smock and was attached to a large handle, making it easy to grab.

  “In my line of work I have long accepted the fact that death will come, so I do not fear it.

  “As the TV and newspapers will no doubt tell you over the coming days and weeks, I spent fourteen years in the Army. My knowledge of explosives is more than enough to create and prime the device I mentioned, so do not doubt its existence.”

  Gray pulled a photo from his combat smock pocket and studied it for a moment before showing it to the camera.

  “Seven months after our son died my wife took her own life, so I have no more family. The choice I had to make was to either live my life in constant mourning, or end it this week while trying to make a difference.

  “As you can see, I have made my choice.”

  He replaced the photo of his family in his breast pocket and buttoned it up.

  “I want to remind the Prime Minister that his government came to power on the promise to get tough on criminals. Well, now it’s time for him to make his choice: Let the public watch these transmissions through to their conclusion on Thursday night and save the lives of thousands; or try to save these five career criminals.”

  Gray made a weighing motion with his hands. “Thousands of lives, or five criminals. All I ask is that you let me finish this, let the country decide the fate of these criminals. Consider it the ultimate straw poll.

  “To you out there in Britain, the voting starts now. On the left hand side of the screen you will see the profiles and criminal records of the five men here. The first person to be dealt with will be Simon Arkin, aged twenty one, from Manchester. Simon has sixty seven convictions but has never been behind bars. Instead, the courts gave him community service, which he hasn’t carried out.

  “If you think he should be set free to commit more crimes, send an email to [email protected]. Put
the word ‘Simon’ as the subject and the word ‘Live’ in the body of the email. If you think he has had all the chances a person deserves, replace ‘Live’ with ‘Die’. Well, do you think he deserves another chance? I know what I think, but what do you think?

  “Voting closes at seven-thirty this evening and I will be back with a live broadcast an hour later to reveal the results.”

  The video ended and Lane turned to her colleagues after replacing the image of the website with a photo of Tom Gray.

  “This image was sent to us by the MoD. They confirm that Tom Gray was one of theirs but he appears to have understated his role.” After glancing at her notes, she continued. “He joined Two Para aged eighteen and after achieving the rank of Sergeant he joined Two-Two Regiment, where he spent his last eight years, including three tours in Iraq which earned him the Distinguished Conduct Medal. We'll have more details when his file arrives.”

  “He's SAS?” Hammond asked.

  “It appears so.”

  “Which means he probably will have the knowhow to create the device he mentioned, so we proceed on that assumption.” Hammond massaged his cheeks for a moment. “He mentioned colleagues on the outside. Work that up, see who he has been in contact with over the last six months. Phone records, email account, we need names and addresses for everyone.” The Assistant Director General of MI5 turned to Harvey. “Andrew, our main priority is that bomb: Get every available resource looking for it. Once that’s rolling, ask the techies to get working on that website. Examine every avenue, give us some options. I don't want them to make a move, just options.”

  The intelligence officer nodded and left the room.