Meanwhile, Perry had played his third shot and his ball landed on the front of the green. He huffed and puffed his way along the course, looking for his partner. Perhaps he had slipped off behind a gorse bush for a pee. He was curious to discover what sort of shot Richard had left; did he by some miracle still have a chance of salvaging a half?
He still kept looking over his shoulder, expecting to see the policeman striding up to join him. No sign of a ball on the green; fingers crossed he had flown the green and landed in trouble at the back.
“Come on Richard!” he called out.
“Where the bloody hell has he got to?” he said to himself.
There was no sign of the ball over the green; Perry felt a cold chill run down his back. He walked over to the pin. Shit! There was the ball nestling up against the stick an inch or so below the lip of the hole. DCI Richard Armitage never knew it but he had holed his second shot at the eleventh. The eagle had landed!
“I don’t believe it!” shouted Perry Watts-Williams “that’s another fiver I owe you.”
Still fuming at his playing partner’s piece of luck he set off back down the fairway. He found Richard Armitage face down on the grass by his trolley. There was blood on the collar and shoulders of his wet weather jacket. No shouting or shaking would do any good he wasn’t getting up again.
Perry looked around but couldn’t see anyone in sight. How on earth had this happened? What should he do? A golf ball landed ten yards away. He ran out into the middle of the fairway. Another ball skipped by him and ran towards the left hand rough; Perry stood where he was and started waving his arms frantically. What a terrible thing to have happened! As he saw a couple of club members striding towards him he had one consolation; he suddenly realised that he could keep his money in his pocket. Richard Armitage wouldn’t be collecting from him on this occasion!
The two golfers realised that something was wrong and ran towards the by now distraught Perry. The shock of finding his dead colleague and the sudden thought that perhaps he too was in danger, stuck out here at one of the furthest points on the course had made him almost incoherent. By the time the emergency services had been called and the course cordoned off to preserve the murder scene Colin Bailey was on a train heading for London Victoria. He was coolness personified; satisfied with a job well done.
CHAPTER 14
Erebus had watched the minicab disappear up the driveway, carrying Phoenix to the station. This was the first direct action he had sanctioned to be carried out by someone who was not ex-military. His reputation was on the line; Phoenix must not fail him. Erebus had turned away from the window and prepared for the morning’s meeting; there was nothing more he could do. He had put his trust in the man they had plucked from the river and he would know in less than twelve hours whether that trust had been misplaced.
The old man was now in the drawing room where he, Athena, Thanatos, Alastor and Minos were meeting to discuss the status of all the operations they were currently running. In addition, there were new targets to be considered for direct action. The most pressing item on today’s agenda however was the emergence of a possible terrorist threat to the London Olympics which were less than ten months away.
The five main members of the Olympus group discussed the ongoing operations. Seven agents in various European and African countries were all declared ‘code red.’ This meant that the target they had been assigned was now due to be scheduled for removal. In order to disguise this activity even more than the lengthy steps taken by the agents themselves, the group selected specific days and times for the tasks.
Account was taken of major events in the countries concerned; religious holidays, strikes by public servants; even a celebrity wedding. Any additional element that could be added to the list of newsworthy items on the day selected was pertinent. No stone was left unturned in the search for a good day to bury news of the sudden death of a gangster or politician, whichever part of the world it may happen in. Everything available was used to divert attention away from anyone being able to link these deaths to Olympus.
The next series of items covered potential new targets. A couple were postponed until further data could be gathered by the surveillance personnel in the ice house; others were fairly straightforward and assignments delegated to agents in the appropriate areas. Erebus paid particular attention to one background story from Scotland. It sounded as if it was tailor made for Phoenix.
A sixteen year old girl from Dunfermline had been reported as ‘being disgusted’ with the extremely lenient sentence handed down to a policeman who had assaulted her and her sister. The forty eight year old constable had been given a one year’s community order.
In March ’09 the girl had been walking home after a study session at a school friends’ house. The constable had been on duty, in uniform, when he stopped his patrol car fifty yards in front of her under a street light. When she got alongside the car he opened the passenger door and told her to get in. He gave her a lift home and told her to be careful about walking alone on the streets late at night. “You never know who’s about” he had told her and said he would keep an eye out for her so she didn’t come to any harm.
The following month she had gone into town with her twenty year old sister and a couple of her workmates. The other three girls had some half bottles of vodka in their handbags and although they were buying her just tonic waters in the bars they visited, of course by chucking out time, all three were hammered and she was drunk for the first time in her life!
When she came out onto the pavement from the last pub they’d been in, she staggered briefly, grabbed a street sign to stop herself from falling and then threw up. The headlights of a police car were switched on across the street and the vehicle drove over. The girl’s sister was comforting her and had an arm around her shoulder. The other two girls had long gone, making their way unsteadily down the street looking for a kebab shop that was still open.
Once the driver of the police car had got out and walked around to the young girl, she realised it was the same constable that had driven her home previously. He suggested that both girls get into the back of the car and he drove off towards the estate where they lived. He said he was deciding whether to charge the younger sister for being drunk and disorderly; as for the older sister he had said she was in more serious trouble for supplying alcohol to someone who was underage.
When they were about a hundred yards from their front door, he stopped the car in a quiet spot away from any street lights and told the younger sister to get off home. He said that she was lucky; this time he’d forget about her getting drunk and throwing up in the street.
The constable told her sister to get in the front seat with him. She had left the two together talking and had run inside the house, where she spent some time in the bathroom being ill. When she had eventually crept along the landing to her room, her sister’s bedroom door was shut. She had wanted to know if he had charged her or just given her a rollicking, but it had had to wait until the morning; she had fallen into bed and slept until the following lunchtime.
When she had seen her sister the following afternoon, she had learned the awful truth. The officer had suggested to her that there was a way to avoid either of the sisters being charged with an offence. He had leaned over and fondled her sister’s breasts and placed her hand on his groin. When she asked him what he meant, he had unzipped his fly and exposed himself. He had said that in return for oral sex he would forget all about the charges.