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  “Customs and Excise?” asked Melody.

  “Yes, but we need them on our side, they’re already on our case about the human trafficking ring. If we find any information on the source of the explosives, we pass that on to them, I don’t want internal enemies.” Frank stood, put his hands in his pockets and waited for the team’s attention. “Tenant, you’ll be here in headquarters, I want information on Stimson’s man. Stone, Mills, and Cox, you’ll be visiting the manor house tomorrow morning. Like I said, I want to know exactly how you would do the job.” He addressed the last part of the statement to Harvey.

  “Lastly,” said Frank as he opened the door and turned back to the room, “the auction is in four days. We have no information on when the buddha will arrive, so assume that the robbery will take place any time between now and then. Any questions?”

  The room was silent.

  “Good. Go get me Adam Stimson.”

  “Okay, Reg, all on eyes on you right now, I’m afraid, get us something to start on,” said Melody.

  There were standing at Reg’s command centre.

  “Righto, Melody, so let’s recap, we’re putting eyes and ears on Stimson’s man. And I guess you all want a visual of the manor house?”

  “Stimson will be in the last phases of his plan, we’re well behind already,” said Harvey.

  “How can you be sure?” asked Melody.

  “Well, Stimson is a known criminal, not just by the police, but in the world of the criminals too. He’s extremely good at what he does, he’s a planner. You know how I feel about planning-”

  “Failure to plan is planning to fail,” the team chorused.

  “Exactly,” said Harvey, ignoring his colleagues’ efforts at making fun of him. “So you need to be aware of a few things here. Adam Stimson has never been arrested, he’s never been to prison, and likely never will.”

  “Because he’s too good?” asked Reg.

  “Yeah, and he’s careful, Reg,” said Harvey. “He wouldn't even buy moody fags from a bloke in a pub let alone make calls to an explosives dealer. But there’s one thing that I do know for certain.”

  “Go on,” said Melody.

  “He’s a glory hunter,” said Harvey. “He’ll want the job done so precisely that he’ll be on it himself. He doesn’t just send men out to do jobs for him, he’s involved. It's his plan, it's his way, or not at all. He’s one of the smartest strategists you’ll come across and will have back up plans for his back up plans. We don’t just need one way of doing the job, we need to think of every way we’d do the job, and we don’t have much time. Stimson’s had the luxury of time.”

  “What makes you so sure?” asked Reg.

  “A year ago, the Cartwrights and the Thomsons were both planning to do a diamond heist, you all know the one?”

  “Right, yeah. The Stimson’s got away with it in the end, didn’t they?”

  “Yep, the diamonds are still missing. You know why the Cartwrights and the Thomsons didn't actually succeed?”

  The team looked at each other.

  “Didn’t you kill Terry Thomson?” asked Denver.

  Harvey didn't reply to the question. Instead, he continued. “Because Adam Stimson is smart. He knew that the Cartwrights and the Thomsons would go after the diamonds, so he arranged for twenty-four Heckler and Koch MP5s to be lost, and end up in Thomson’s possession. The Cartwrights bought twelve of them, leaving the other twelve with Thomson. This led both of them to believe they had the hardware to do the job, but each of them was so engrossed in stopping the other from doing the job, a gang war started. Meanwhile, guess who digs a neat little hole somewhere nobody thought of digging and walks off with the diamonds?”

  “Adam Stimson?”

  “Not a single shot fired,” said Harvey. “He’s a smart man.”

  “So do we have Stimson’s phone?” asked Melody.

  “Yep, we do as it happens,” said Reg. “I’ve been monitoring it for ages, but nothing ever happens.”

  “Of course nothing happens. As long as Stimson knows we’re listening, that phone will be clean,” said Harvey.

  “It’s encrypted actually, I can see and access everything, but can’t hear the calls. Military grade hardware, way out of our league without significant investment.”

  “Did you ever meet Stimson?” asked Melody. “You know, in your-”

  “In my days as a criminal, Melody?” finished Harvey. “Nobody ever met Adam Stimson, even John Cartwright never knew what he looked like. I told you, he’s smart.”

  “But we have his phone, he can’t be that smart.”

  “You have his phone because he lets you have his phone, that’s why you won't find anything incriminating on there. Yeah, we’ll get contacts, and we can isolate the links from his trusted inner circle to external contacts in the outer circle. But we’ll never nail Stimson like that, and he knows we won't bother arresting his inner circle when it’s him we really want.”

  “Smart,” said Melody. “So who is his inner circle?”

  “Who’s the guy that made contact with Hague?” asked Harvey.

  “Lucas Larson,” said Reg. “Lifetime criminal. His last stretch was five years in Belmarsh for intimidating a witness and perverting the course of justice.”

  “Is that the only name we have to go on?” asked Harvey.

  “So far,” replied Reg. “I’ve got LUCY analysing his records to show his most frequent numbers to see what we’ve got. But I’m going to need some more time here to build a full picture,” said Reg.

  Harvey and Melody took the hint and walked away, each going to their own desks in opposite corners of the room.

  Melody sat and unloaded her Sig Sauer. She placed the unused rounds back in the little cardboard box inside her ammo cabinet, then stripped the Sig. She turned on the lamp and pulled her cleaning kit from her desk drawer. Each weapon Melody fired was meticulously cleaned before being returned to the armoury.

  Harvey put his own Sig on his desk, cracked his neck left then right, and stretched his arms up and around. His body felt tight after sitting in the coffee shop all morning. He turned and landed a left jab into the punch bag, followed with a right hook that sent the bag swinging up to a nearly horizontal position. It swung back towards him and Harvey stopped its return dead with an uppercut. Jumping up, he took a wide grip on the steel joist that supported the mezzanine floor above him. He did a few pull-ups without counting then dropped to the floor.

  “How’s that research coming on?” asked Frank from upstairs. “Doesn’t sound like much is happening.”

  “I think I’ve found something,” said Reg.

  Harvey looked at his watch, it had been less than two minutes. He strolled over to Reg and stood beside him, Melody and Denver came to see what he’d found.

  “The most common dialled numbers from Stimson’s phone are here.” Reg outlined a group of numbers pasted into a text file on the far left, lower screen. There were three numbers.

  “Family?” asked Melody.

  “I don’t suppose Adam Stimson is much of a family man myself, but, he does appear to enjoy talking to his mum. This is her number here, not a burner, it’s even registered to her name.” Reg highlighted the number. “He calls her at least twice a day. The evening calls seem to be the longest, morning calls are probably trivial mother and son stuff. Would you agree we can eliminate this number?”

  “I’d agree with that,” said Melody. “Harvey?”

  “I’m not sure what’s meant by trivial mother and son stuff, but I’ll take your word for it,” said Harvey.

  Melody sensed the awkward reply. It was an area that the team usually avoided as they knew Harvey had been searching for his real parents’ killer for many years.

  “I call my mum at least twice a day unless we’re on a job someplace,” said Denver. “I can hear it in her voice that it makes her day, so I just can’t bear not to anymore.”

  “How often do you see her?” asked Harvey.

  “Thre
e or four times a week. She does a curry for us all on the weekends and usually has a little something for me to take home if I swing by during the week.”

  “A curry at the weekend? Don’t you have a roast dinner, Denver?” asked Reg.

  “A roast? No, my mum’s vegetarian, we get a killer curry, rice and homemade naan bread.”

  “In all this time I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about your family,” said Melody.

  “You never asked before,” said Denver.

  “How about you, Reg? How often do you see your mum?” asked Melody.

  “Oh, pfff, maybe once or twice.”

  “A week?” asked Denver.

  “No, not that often.”

  “A month? You only see your mum once or twice a month?”

  “No, a year, give or take.”

  “A year?” cried Melody.

  “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?”

  “How often do you call her?”

  “Once a month, maybe.”

  “Reg, the woman brought you into the world, take some time out and go see her.”

  “Most blokes are the same, except Denver,” argued Reg.

  “You only get one mum, Reg, look after her,” said Denver.

  “Maybe if she cooked for me, I’d go round more often.”

  “Maybe if you went round there-“

  “Are we actually going to look at these names?” said Harvey.

  “Sorry, Harvey, bit insensitive of us,” said Denver.

  “Not insensitive, but if we’re going to talk about family lives and what we’re doing for Christmas, I’ll go home early. I’ve got better things to be doing than stand here listening to a load of old women talking.”

  “What exactly do you do at home, Harvey?” asked Reg. “I imagine you go home, sit down and stare at a blank wall, but I bet in reality you have a really crazy hobby that you keep secret, like knitting or something.”

  “I think about you a lot, Reg,” said Harvey.

  “Me? Really?”

  “Yeah, with no skin on. Now show me what you found.”

  Both Melody and Denver smirked. Harvey was really beginning to take his place in the team. He filled a hole that needed filling but brought much more to the table than just muscle and bravado. Melody looked at him with one hand on the back of Reg’s chair. She thought about how different he was than the guy Frank had described when he first put the idea of bringing an ex-hitman, who was born and bred to live on the wrong side of the law, into the team.

  “So all these numbers here,” said Reg, “are out. But these two here are still in the game.” Reg was in his element, he loved pulling information out of nowhere and presenting his skills to the team. “This number especially gets dialled an average of fourteen times per day, that’s Larson’s.”

  “Fourteen times per day, who calls anyone fourteen times per day?” asked Denver.

  “A rich man who has a number two. He’s someone Stimson delegates to. A trustee,” said Melody.

  “Who does the other number belong to? And what else do we have on Larson?” asked Harvey.

  “Well, Lucas Larson. No previous, forty-five years old, born and raised in Munich, then moved to Britain when he was eighteen,” said Reg.

  “So Stimson calls three people frequently, his mum, Larson, and who else?” asked Denver. “Would he even need anyone else?”

  “Yes,” Harvey cut in. “Stimson has Larson, who’s probably highly intelligent, and capable of running the show himself, but is held to Stimson for some other reason. This other number is someone very unintelligent, but is likely pretty handy and never too far away from Stimson.”

  “His bodyguard?” asked Melody.

  “I’d say so. If we’re going to get to Stimson, we’ll need to take this guy out. But if we’re going to catch Stimson, we’ll need to be all over Larson,” said Harvey. “I’m telling you, if we get Larson, we’ll stand a much better chance of getting as a shot at Stimson. Where does Hague fit into this?”

  “He doesn’t anymore, he was just the explosives supplier,” said Reg. “Larson’s contact.”

  “Okay, but remember what Hague said? He was going to blow himself up, and he told us he had to do it, they had his boy,” said Harvey. “Is this two different crimes or what? Who had his boy? He was carrying a bag full of explosives, are we forgetting that?”

  “We’re talking about going after a diamond thief who is buying illegally imported explosives to perform domestic organised crime,” said Frank, who was leaning over the railing above them and listening, “which is exactly why this team exists. Nothing else concerns us.”

  The team looked up at Frank.

  “So what do we have?” asked Frank.

  “We have a location, a motive, and a link to Stimson, via Larson,” said Melody.

  “I also have Larson’s phone monitored.”

  “Who’s the third guy?” asked Frank. “The third number on Stimson’s phone.”

  “An unknown. Harvey thinks it’s a bodyguard.”

  “Makes sense,” said Frank. “Now what?”

  “I’d say we take a visit to the manor house tomorrow morning, go for breakfast, scope the place and work out how they’re going to do the job,” said Melody. “Until we get out there, this is all speculation.”

  “We’re tracking all three phones, so we’ll know if they’re on the move.”

  “The auction is in four days,” said Frank. “Harvey, if you were going to rob the place, when would you do the robbery?”

  “As soon as possible,” replied Harvey.

  6

  Sheep

  “I need some air,” said Harvey. He strode towards the single door beside Reg’s command centre and stepped out into the cold November day. The wind off the river a hundred yards away bit into his skin as he walked down to the riverside to lean on the railing and watch the water.

  “Penny for them?” said Melody, who came and stood beside him.

  He turned to her. “We’re missing something.”

  “It’s always like this at the start of an investigation, we’re still gathering intel.”

  “We’re making up theories. We should be out there, gathering facts.”

  “Yeah, well, a little extra time on the intel makes gathering the facts a lot quicker. It's okay.” She held a cup of coffee, and offered him some. “Coffee?”

  “No thanks, I’m going to go for a run soon. Something’s missing, I need to clear my head.”

  “You know,” began Melody. “I never said it before, but I owe you thanks. Actually, I owe you a few thanks, you saved my life.” Six months ago, Melody had been captured during a human trafficking investigation. She’d been stripped of her clothes, had her hands tied and been dumped in the freezing ocean to drown. Harvey had dove in and rescued her.

  “You already thanked me for that.”

  “You came back to us,” she said. “I never thanked you for that.”

  “You know why I’m here?”

  “In the team?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go on.”

  “Frank gave me a choice, either I stay and work in the team, or I go to prison.”

  “For what?”

  “I boiled a man alive, Melody.” Harvey looked across at her, and she nodded. She’d found the body with Frank. “Plus, doubtless Frank would heap on as many unsolved crimes as he could.”

  “So you’re not here because you want to be here?” Melody was taken back.

  “I wasn’t, not at first.” Harvey smiled. “I kind of like you guys, it’s a big change for me, I never had people on my side like this before. It was always dog eat dog.”

  Melody moved away. “No, Harvey, it’s wrong. You need to be with us one hundred percent. We’re a team, we’re all one hundred percent invested in this, and if one of us isn’t then that person is putting the rest of our lives in danger.”

  “Hey, I’m here. I made the choice, didn’t I?”

  “It wasn’t a particularly
hard choice, was it? Let's face it.”

  “Yes, it was a hard choice, Melody. All my life, I’ve been hiding from people like us, people like Frank. How easy do you think it was to do this? But you know what, it’s been a year now, and we’re a damn good team. I like it here.”

  “So could you walk away right now?” asked Melody.

  Harvey didn’t reply.

  “Frank still has you doesn’t he?”

  “He said he’d help,” replied Harvey. “Frank won't take the noose off until all my questions are answered, and I can focus.”

  “What questions? You found out who raped your sister.”

  “My parents, I need to know who they were, why they were killed-”

  “And who killed them?”

  Harvey didn’t reply.

  “Jeez, Harvey, we all have questions, we don’t all go around moping about them, you have to move on.”

  “When I have the answers, Frank will take the noose off.”

  “And then what?

  “And then I get to choose, I guess.”

  “Between?”

  “Freedom.”

  “And? Freedom and what, Harvey?”

  “Boredom?”

  Melody moved closer to him, “This is freedom to you?”

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought, Melody.”

  “And?”

  “I’m doing what I always did, what I’m good at. Only now I’m doing it for the good guys.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No, I’m also doing it with people I like and respect.’

  “Like friends?”

  “I guess you could call it that. I’ve only ever had one friend, so I’m not one hundred percent sure.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was killed,”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “What can I say? Julios was the only one that was ever there for me. He was my foster father’s bodyguard, then when Hannah died, he became my mentor, he trained me.”

  “Trained you to be a killer?”

  “Yeah, but not at first. I was only twelve right, it wasn’t a career move. But I was angry, he channelled my anger, taught me self-defence, aikido and all that. He helped me grieve.”