The Mallorcan Bookseller (The 3R International Series Book 1) Read online

  Sam nodded his appreciation.

  “Thank you for your understanding.”

  “But I have not finished,” the officer said.

  The officer then spoke quickly in Spanish to Sam.

  “Señor, I don’t want to alarm your friend, Señor Patterson, but I can tell you that we have had a number of these scams reported in the last few months and in some cases, although not all, the victim has then been subjected to a burglary at their home, sometimes with extreme violence being shown.”

  Sam couldn’t hold back a frown.

  Bill said, “What is it Sam?”

  The officer got up and said he would be back in a moment with a colleague.

  “Bill, this isn’t the first they have heard of this and our friend here has just told me that some scam victims have then been burgled. He’s just gone to get one of his colleagues, so we might find out a little more in a moment.”

  As they waited, Sam sent a text to his mother to let her know what was going on and just as he finished, the officer returned with his colleague who immediately introduced herself.

  “Detective Inspectora Lori Garcia. I usually work with the Unidad de Crimen Organizado, our Organised Crime Unit, but I am currently seconded to the Grupo Especial de Operaciones.”

  She let that sink in for a moment. Sam had heard of the G.E.O. They were a special operations group who dealt with terrorism and organised crime and were one of the elite teams of the Policia Nacional.”

  “Señor Martínez, I understand you are an officer from London and you also work in the same area as I do?”

  Sam nodded. He was a Detective Chief Inspector in an Organised Crime Team and so he very much understood the type of work DI Garcia was engaged in.

  “Yes Inspectora and thank you for taking the time to come and see us.”

  “Please call me Lori, it’s Sam isn’t it?”

  Lori Garcia was a striking and attractive woman, who clearly had a presence and level of seniority that had the other officer standing upright and almost at attention to her side. She thanked the officer and dismissed him and then sat down with Sam and Bill.

  “Your officer was very kind Lori,” said Bill.

  “Señor Patterson, that is good to hear and I will be sure to let his superiors know. Now, I’d like to make sure that you don’t also become a burglary victim.”

  Sam understood that he was clearly been giving the courtesy of a more involved response from the Policia Nacional than perhaps a usual victim of crime might expect. He smiled and assumed she had done what he would have done in similar circumstances and just at that moment his phone buzzed with an in-coming text. He glanced quickly at it and saw he was right. It was Jimmy from his office. The message said, ‘So why are the GEO asking about you?’ He looked back at Lori Garcia who smiled.

  “Your office are telling you we have been asking about you?”

  “Yes,” he smiled back.

  It was clear she had already done her homework as she knew Bill lived just down the coast towards Illetes. It was an impressive villa in extensive grounds and would therefore be a very attractive target for a follow up burglary. She didn’t go into much detail about the violence that had been used making Sam think that these were no silent in and out burglars.

  “Señor Patterson, can you go and stay somewhere for a few days, maybe a week, whilst we look after your house?”

  “Oh, there’s no need for that,” said Bill. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Bill, this is serious. The people doing these burglaries don’t mess about and they’ve hurt people who have got in their way and hurt them badly,” said Sam.

  Bill looked at Sam and then at DI Garcia and saw the look in their eyes. He was still pretty fit at seventy nine, but he knew they were talking sense.

  “Look, come and stay with us. Mum would love that and so would I. We can catch up on old times,” said Sam.

  Bill nodded and smiled “That would be lovely”. He knew that whilst he still got out and about and kept himself busy, especially with his golf as a member at Real Golf de Bendinat, he did sometimes feel very lonely.

  “Okay, good, that’s settled. Thank you Señor,” said DI Garcia.

  As they got up to go DI Garcia looked at Sam.

  “Can we speak later?”

  Sam nodded and as they all shook hands she continued, “These are nasty people Sam and are somehow tied into the call centres making the scam calls. We’re putting a lot of messages out there for the public, especially the vulnerable, but we’re still getting new victims coming forward every day.”

  *****

  As Sam left the meeting with DI Garcia, he texted back to Jimmy, ‘Nothing to worry about. Family friend been IT scammed.’ Almost immediately, his phone buzzed again. Jimmy. ‘She sounded nice…….’ Followed by, ‘You OK?’

  He had not had much contact from Jimmy since he had left London. Jimmy was a good mate, someone he’d known since he joined the MET Police nearly fifteen years ago and he knew Jimmy was giving him a bit of distance since it all went a bit pear shaped for him at work. He texted back, ‘Yes she is nice….. if you like older women’ – he added a smiley emoji ‘and yes I’m OK mate’.

  ‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘she is nice’ and she certainly looked like she knew what she was doing. First time he had thought about a woman since getting home to the island. He was pretty much over Kirsty, although he should be. It had been over a year since she had finally had enough and walked out on him. He couldn’t blame her. He knew he had become withdrawn, moody and he’d stopped talking to her about the important stuff. They had been together for nearly five years and he wondered why they hadn’t taken things further and maybe got married or had children. But they hadn’t. He knew what it was and he didn’t need the counselling to tell him either. He was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD and he wasn’t dealing with it very well, not very at all in fact.

  He had messed up on a firearms job three years ago. Distracted by a young child coming into his firing line, he had momentarily taken his eye off the target. That’s all it took and his mate Jimmy took a bullet that he, Sam, could have prevented. He couldn’t get that Jimmy didn’t blame him.

  ‘Christ,’ he thought, ‘I don’t know why not. I think I would!’

  The doctors had said Jimmy had been lucky. But how lucky is lucky? The bullet had gone through him and lodged near his spine leaving him in permanent pain and in a wheelchair. The guy who shot him just laughed in court when sentenced. Sam fell apart inside, but didn’t tell anyone and did his very best to not let anyone see. In fact he had been promoted again since then, to Detective Chief Inspector. Something he had seen as a way of getting out of the front line, so that he longer went out on armed operations, but most of all, it had given him a way of dealing with the stuff going on his head about blaming himself for what happened to Jimmy.

  The Job were pretty good with Jimmy and after he had recovered, he came back to work in the same team. Sam couldn’t believe how well he adapted to being desk bound and he was still a bloody good intelligence officer, one of the best.

  “Two choices mate,” Jimmy had said to him. “Give up and wallow, or crack on with it. But don’t ever think I don’t hate it when the guys go out on a job and I get left behind. But I’d rather be here than lying on a slab in the morgue. Then again, it could be worse, I could have been promoted like you and still not been able to go out,” and he’d smiled.

  Cop humour. Jimmy was getting on with it. Sam not so well.

  TWO

  The men approached the villa in silence. They had parked up away from the main entrance and split up. Two to the front and two to the rear.

  Senichi Sargsyan took the lead. Known as Sonny, he knew he could have left this to his men, but he enjoyed the adrenalin of the moment and it let them know he was still very much the boss.

  The recon team had reported that there was just an old woman in the house at this time of the day and the CCTV was wireless oper
ated. These were easy targets, with little risk and a low likelihood of the police getting anywhere near them.

  The radio crackled and he heard that the CCTV frequency jammer was now on and after acknowledging the team at the rear were in position, Sonny gave the order over the radio to move in and cut the CCTV wiring. He climbed the garden fence and walked to the side door nearest to him which easily gave way to the force of the jemmy.

  Entering the villa, he found the woman in the living area.

  “Mrs MacDonald, I need you to tell me where your safe is.”

  The woman looked terrified. A slight woman. She looked in her 70s and was smartly dressed and clearly had the look of having money.

  He thought this was going to be another easy one until the woman straightened up and shouted at him, “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?”

  Sonny smiled. She had courage this one. He slapped her hard across the face and she screamed and fell against the sofa.

  “You’ll have to do better than that mate,” she snarled at him.

  His smile turned to a quizzical frown.

  “One way or the other, Mrs MacDonald you will tell me where the safe is, but we have enough time anyway before anyone comes back, so with or without your help I’m sure we will find it.”

  He sat down across from her and waved for the other three men to start looking for the safe.

  “Take that picture and that one as well,” he said, pointing at two pictures hanging in the living room.

  Sheila MacDonald tried to get her senses together. From the East End of London she had seen many things in her life and so wasn’t completely overwhelmed by what was going on. He spoke with an East European accent, but there was something in the man’s eyes, the one sitting calmly across from her, that was unsettling her. It was such a cold look that she decided there and then that the best tactic to get out of this would be to just give him what he wanted and get him out of her house as soon as she could. Hopefully that would be enough.

  “It’s in the main bedroom. Behind the picture of the waterfall.”

  Sonny smiled.

  “Now that was almost too easy Mrs MacDonald. I was expecting more from you, being a tough East End London woman.”

  “How does he know that?” thought Sheila.

  He let it sink in for a moment, smiling at the confusion and uncertainty in her face.

  “I know you’re wondering how I know these things Sheila. It is Sheila isn’t it? Well, you need to be careful who you talk to on the telephone.”

  He saw the puzzled look on her face and then the recognition. She had been on the computer when a box flashed up saying there was an IT problem. She had spoken with someone in an IT support call centre and they had fixed it, but it had been ridiculously expensive. She hadn’t yet told John, who was back in London, as she was worried she might have been scammed and felt a bit stupid, so she wanted to tell him when he got back.

  “You bastard!”

  She couldn’t help herself, but wished she had as he got up and came towards her. She crouched in a ball. She thought he was going to hit her again, but he didn’t, so she relaxed. But then he dragged her roughly off the sofa and into the main bedroom and dropped her by the safe.

  “Open it Sheila,” he said, again in a calm voice.

  She knew the combination. The safe had her jewellery, some cash and some documents in there. ‘Not worth dying for,’ she said to herself. She opened the safe and sat back on the bed, her head throbbing from the pain.

  “Thank you Sheila. See, that was easy.”

  One of the men gathered the contents in to a bag and just as he did, the alarm activated.

  “Oh Sheila, what have you done? That was not a good thing to do.”

  Again, the calm, disturbing voice. She was worried now. He had been wearing a balaclava, but now he’d taken it off.

  He could have just shot her. He knew that was what his men were thinking. She tried to put up a fight as he punched her face, again and again. She was tough, he had to accept that, so he didn’t stop even when he felt her go limp and eventually Alex Krikorian, his second in command, had to pull him away from her.

  “Sonny, she’s dead. We need to go,” said Alex.

  Sonny looked down at the beaten and bloodied face of the woman and felt nothing. He turned and at first he glared at Alex, but then he nodded, yes, they needed to get out as the cops would be on their way. The recon team had calculated the response time in the event of an alarm and they still had time to get away without a panic.

  He motioned to the other men to move out and they were out of the area by the time the police were arriving on the scene.

  *****

  Back at his Operations Centre, a suite of offices in a smart office block, away from suspicion, Sonny took stock of the morning’s events. Another easy job on the back of the call centre scam that he had set up with Jaz. This was a great bit of collaboration that was bringing in some easy money and Sergei had been impressed with his initiative.

  He was responsible for all of Sergei Grigoryan’s operations in the Balearics. These included extortion, money laundering, drugs and prostitution and more recently this side line of high value burglaries.

  He had known Sergei since he joined the Armenian Army, when he was eighteen. Sergei was four years older and had taken Sonny under his wing and he had become one of Sergei’s most trusted lieutenants after they got out of the army and started up in business. Beginning in their home town just outside of the main city Yerevan, Sergei had grown the business with a philosophy of trust and loyalty, reward and punishment. Sonny had often been called upon by Sergei to deal with a punishment ‘issue’ and had gained a reputation as being someone not to cross.

  Sergei expanded the business in the US and into Europe, with Country Heads looking after the business for him. It was three years ago that Sergei had sent him to Palma to ‘take over’ from the previous boss. This meant putting a bullet in the head of the idiot who had got too greedy and was skimming too much off the top of the business.

  Sergei ran the entire organisation back in Yerevan. He ran it like a corporate business, with a command team, clear performance targets and defined outcomes. Whilst he demanded total loyalty, he also rewarded his people very well, but in return, loss of his trust resulted in a level of punishment befitting the level of responsibility. Hence, when his previous In-Country Head in the Balearics had been discovered stealing from the corporation, he had been permanently dismissed.

  *****

  He stood in the Chapel of Rest at the funeral director’s offices. John MacDonald was holding his wife’s hand and could feel the tears streaming down his cheeks. Fortunately, they hadn’t seen the police photographs and the funeral directors had worked miracles and so when he and his sons saw Sheila, their wife and mum, she seemed at peace.

  She looked beautiful. She was dressed in the really pretty dress they had bought in one of the boutiques on Passeig de Born. He was always happy to go dress shopping with Sheila as he loved the way she just glowed when she came out of the changing rooms. He would never do this again. He felt empty.

  His two sons were there with him, supporting him, but he was struggling to contain the hurt and pain of losing her. He hadn’t been there. He hated the fact that she had died alone, without him. They had always been together and he rarely went away on business without her, but this was only going to be for a couple of days whilst he popped back to London for a Board Meeting.

  “Dad?” said Chris, his oldest son. “Are you Okay?”

  “Yes boy, I’m just missing her. Not sure what to do now to be honest?”

  “Drink Dad?” said Jack, his younger son.

  “Yes, son. It might not help, but it certainly won’t do any harm.”

  *****

  John MacDonald had also been born in the East End of London and he’d married his childhood sweetheart Sheila.

  Chairman of Trent MacDonald, John was a highly successful businessman who had
built Trent MacDonald into a multinational engineering company. But whilst he was used to dealing with crisis management and operating in challenging countries, he suddenly felt very tired.

  As he walked slowly across to the two cars they had travelled in down to the Chapel of Rest, he saw his two sons and recognised the look in their faces. ‘Why the hell had this happened? Why would someone need to harm a woman in her seventies when they have clearly got what they wanted?’

  As he got into the Range Rover, John glanced back to his son Chris.

  “Get hold of Greg.”

  *****

  Greg Chambers was sitting in the Cittie of York, a pub in Holborn, London watching a young man, a City Trader, who was with three other people in one of the line of snugs in the pub. They were all dressed in smart suits and had been flashing their cash at the three other pubs they had been to so far during the afternoon.