The Godfathers of London Read online

  The Godfathers of london

  second in the singhing detective series

  M.C. Dutton

  Copyright © 2013 M. C. Dutton

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

  any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

  publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

  the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries

  concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Any similarity to persons

  living or dead is merely coincidental.

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  ISBN 9781783068241

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

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  Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

  Always dedicated to my children and their partners and my gorgeous grandchildren. Since my last book the number of grandchildren has grown to eight with the birth of gorgeous Edie-Rose. Thank you all for your wonderful support and encouragement. LUA

  * * *

  Special thanks to Gary Dunn based at Paglesham. His enthusiasm and knowledge of the waterways around Paglesham has been fantastic.

  * * *

  Special thanks to Allan Sargent for

  brainstorming with me.

  * * *

  I would also like to give recognition to the fantastic work of the RSPB on Wallasea Island for their Wild Coast project that features in the novel.

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by this author

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY- SIX

  Also by this author

  THE DEVIL’S TEARS

  SILENT NIGHT

  THE SINGHING DETECTIVE (Jaswinder Singh 1)

  CHAPTER ONE

  A dish best served cold

  ‘John, John, John,’ he said to himself almost absentmindedly whilst gently swirling his whiskey in a glass choked full of ice. Previously most of his evenings had been full of laughter and adoration, but since the court case they had been silent, with only the constant staccato of chinking ice to keep him company.

  He had spent the month recuperating. The court case had worn him out somewhat. The questions had been specific and awkward, and the attention from the public distasteful and unsophisticated. As a professor who lectured in English Literature, specialising in poetry, he considered himself a bard who wrote a few worthy, meaningful and (he hoped) legendary verses to be preserved in the annals of time. His female students always loved to sit with him as he recited his poetry for their pleasure. He found this excited them and although never openly acknowledged, it was his best seductive line. Now all the students were kept away from him, and this depressed him. He needed to feel the warmth of love and adoration; he needed someone to caress, someone to be taken willingly to bed and loved expertly and intensely. He wanted the enthusiasm and refreshment of youth between his sheets.

  Laura had been a mistake, he conceded. He had the pick of umpteen girls, better looking and more willing than Laura. He still couldn’t figure out why he’d wanted her so much. She had been dowdy: a pretty girl, he forced himself to admit, but she dressed a little too ordinarily for him. He liked his girls in tight jeans with skimpy tops that just covered delicious places he wanted to explore. Laura had been like one of those clumsy puppies that want to love you but don’t know how. She had followed him around, hanging on his every word. It seemed to him that wherever he was he would turn and bump into a pair of adoring eyes just following him around the room. If he needed a pen, a tissue, anything, she rushed up and offered it. He was used to being adored but this was something else. He’d often mused that if he told her to jump off the top of the building, she would have done it for him. It was a heady and addictive pleasure that consumed him. He knew she was a virgin and it became his goal to take her virginity as his own.

  Thinking back, he wondered how he could have been so taken in by her. He knew it wasn’t an egotistical thing. She had cast a spell on him. He was, after all, only a man and she was using all her womanly guile to ensnare him, but she was the devil incarnate. She was never going to give away her virginity willingly; he’d tried, and she had stopped him. Everyone knew an inflamed man couldn’t have his passion quashed. She was goading him and teasing him, and it had driven him mad.

  That night had been difficult. He knew for certain she wanted to be taken. Some women were like that; they couldn’t say yes but they didn’t mean no. He took her virginity in a flurry of spittle and screams, with an urgency that ripped her clothes and left bite marks on her beautifully budding tits and neck. It was wonderful and glorious. He loved the fight but she wasn’t strong; she whimpered and screamed, and this made him thrust harder. He climaxed magnificently and shouted in pleasure. This had been the best he’d ever had.

  She lay still, silently crying. At first he was surprised, then angry. What the fuck was she crying for? She’d been taken by the best lover in the land. She would never find another so exciting and so proficient. Yet she accused him of rape. He sat up, shocked and amazed at such an assumption. He had no need to rape anyone, he told her; he could have at least ten women at any time just by clicking his fingers – and he flicked them in her face, angry now. He could see she was scared, and this made him even angrier. When he asked what she was going to do, she said she wanted to go home to her parents; she wanted her mum. He could see she would tell all, and it wouldn’t be the truth. He hadn’t raped her! It was a game she had been playing; he knew these games.

  She got up and arranged her clothes,
crying louder and telling him he had no right to do what he did. He was scared and angry, and they argued violently. He still didn’t know what made him pick up the bronze statue of Wordsworth that sat close by, but when she said fiercely that she would tell the police what he’d done, he picked up the heavy statue and hit her across the back of the head. She fell across the bed – and he could see she was dead.

  It had been a terrible time for him. He hadn’t meant to kill her. He wasn’t that sort of man and he was upset that she had died. She wouldn’t listen to him and this had made him so angry he’d done something he didn’t think he was capable of. It took him an hour of shaking before he could pull himself together and dispose of the body. He still shuddered at the thought. He’d wrapped her in bedding and carried her to his car. It was late, she was heavy, and he grunted and groaned with the effort. But no one was around and he took her to Hainault.

  He knew he’d done wrong but it wasn’t his fault. If only she had listened to him and been honest with him, they would never have been in that situation. He’d told the court they were lovers, and that she’d been a very energetic lover, which accounted for the internal bruising and that on her thighs. He had to protect himself; no one would understand, so he permitted himself to lie a little. He couldn’t admit to killing her. It was a kind of accident; he would never have picked up the statue if she’d been more sophisticated, and just talked to him instead of screaming and threatening him. The jury found him not guilty and he was grateful for that. At the moment he was on garden leave but he expected to be reinstated as a lecturer when everything had calmed down a bit. For the moment he just idled away his time in alcoholic contemplation – until he got his calling.

  The knock on his door at 11 p.m. was unexpected and interesting. He hoped that one of his girly students had decided to ignore the ban and seek him out. Full of sexual anticipation, he went to the door: it was a shaft of brightness in a dark hour. He opened the door with an expectant smile that drained from his face when he saw four men there, standing very close to the threshold. The man in front was smiling, asking brightly if he was John Carpenter. But the smile didn’t reach his eyes, which were sizing him up coldly. The two strangers at the back kept glancing behind them, seeming quite edgy and anxious, while the third man just stared at him in a manner that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Guardedly, he asked why they wanted him.

  Their answer was swift and deadly. Of course they knew who he was; they had watched him for days. In seconds the door was closed and he was marched back into his flat, and roughly thrown to the floor. The acid down his throat stopped the screams and the last thing he saw before it took his sight was the face of his attacker frowning intently as he carefully squirted the contents of the bottle – the burning, painful, life-destroying liquid – into each of his eyes. Never again would he feel anything other than the exquisitely deep intense pain created by the acid as it burned through his voicebox and then the corneas of his eyes. It was the start of a fear and panic that seemed impossible for a human being to live through.

  A heavy object, a club hammer, crashed down on his shoulders, breaking them in one blow. The pain was so intense it took his breath away, and then the hammer fell with force onto his arms, breaking them. The pain reached an intensity that caused him to black out. He didn’t feel his legs being broken. Now limp and lifeless, he was lifted unconscious out of the flat and into the waiting car. The journey took them to Epping Forest. No one spoke for the whole journey. The men were used to these sorts of jobs but the very specific instructions they’d received had taken them by surprise. No one had ever requested something this gruesome before and it wasn’t pleasant.

  They had to carry him some distance into the forest. The instructions had specified a particular area. They crashed through the forest, shining large torches to find their way. It took just one of them to carry him; he was slight and limp, able to be thrown over a shoulder and carried with ease. They found the spot, where a white sheet hung from a tree. Dropping him onto the ground, they took down the white sheet. As instructed, they waited until he became conscious. It took some time and they paced up and down, anxious to leave. Four cigarettes later, they noticed him stir.

  He looked pathetic; trying to make a noise but nothing happening; his arms and legs didn’t belong to him and nothing moved. It was dark but he was blind. As instructed one of the men leaned over him and said, ‘You are in the middle of Epping Forest. No one will find you for days. You are blind, you can’t shout, your arms and legs are broken and you can’t move. All you can do is listen and feel. When we have gone, the animals will come out and find you and it is hoped you will rot in hell. With that, they all left, glad to be going back to the car, and off to get a stiff drink.

  He lay there, suspended between hell and madness. A crack of a twig, a rustle of a leaf: he heard it all. The first touch, the first bite, the first hairy creature he felt, caused a chasm of fear that could not be breached. He wished he could die and be out of it but his senses kept him wide awake and alert. He wanted out of this hellhole but his body was on crisis alert and would not let him rest. He felt every little bite that tore through him as his flesh was ripped into. It took three days for him to die, by which time insanity had invaded his mind with a fear of everything living. He died in an intensity of pain and a suicidal depression of fear and forgotten-ness. He died knowing no one loved him and he was alone.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Recap

  Jazz had been back at Ilford Police Station just two months when Laura was murdered. He should never have been given the case. After Bam Bam’s trial for the murder of DC Tony Sepple, and the gangland murders, Jazz was given leave to recuperate. In other words, the police psychiatrist had recommended he went away to rehab for his budding breakdown and the drink problem that had grown up. He was in rehab for six months and actually enjoyed it. He was somewhere in the Cotswolds, and the peace, walks and company did him a power of good. When he returned to Ilford, to De Vere Gardens and Mrs Chodda, he was fitter and leaner, with no drink problem. Again, he thought he wouldn’t stay there too long but for the moment it did him okay, and he had warmed to Mrs Chodda and her ways. He found his room just the way he’d left it, except that Mrs Chodda had gone in and cleaned everything for him.

  His team as it was had moved on. He heard that Sharon was now ‘shacked up’ with a DS in Lewisham and had moved to the station there. The big difference was no Bob as Custody Sergeant. Jazz took great pleasure in being at his trial and seeing him get twelve years. Hopefully his time in prison would be painful.

  Bob had pretended to be Jazz’s friend at the police station, but all the time he had been working for Bam Bam, one of the local gang leaders. Jazz had confided in Bob as a fellow officer and friend, telling him things about his investigation that he would never tell another officer, and all the time Bob was passing everything on to Bam Bam. Jazz still felt the immense anger rising as he remembered that it was Bob who was responsible for the death of a fellow officer. A crime that should have seen him hung. Oh no, he certainly wasn’t at all ashamed about what he had organised. Jazz had some very useful contacts and he’d arranged for Bob to be given a prison welcome when he arrived. He had heard that after an indecent amount of time in prison Bob was found in the hospital wing with enough cracked and broken bones to keep him in agony for quite some time. Jazz hoped he would never walk again. No, he definitely didn’t feel any shame in arranging this. He was proud of it! He did it for Tony.

  Now Bam Bam was a different matter. This big, fat, evil bastard was well looked after in prison and closely guarded by the cons and guards. Bam Bam had contacts on the inside and couldn’t be touched, Jazz knew this, but he had killed DC Tony Sepple and that meant that Bam Bam would have to die. Jazz could wait. There would come a time when he would get his revenge for Tony’s death and all the treachery.

  Again, he expected his team to be new Detective Constables. No one wanted to work with him. As was said none t
oo quietly, he had now got two DC’s killed. They conveniently forgot to mention to the new team that it wasn’t Jazz’s fault, but all to do with Bob the Custody Sergeant and Bam Bam who were now behind bars.

  First of all he had to report to Detective Chief Inspector Radley, who had been on the telly again recently. He had become the blue-eyed boy in the Met Police and the press loved him. He got full credit for breaking ‘The Holy Trinity’ and seemed to be enjoying the fame. No one had mentioned Jazz in this, but he didn’t care. He hated the press anyway. They just caused trouble and poked their noses into areas that were better left undisturbed.