Tags:
Fiction,
General,
Thrillers,
Mystery & Detective,
Mystery Fiction,
Police,
England,
London,
Police Procedural,
London (England),
Murder for hire,
organized crime,
Gangsters,
Police - England - London,
Thorne; Tom (Fictitious character)
the big Turkish gangs that have already got the area sewn up. Not if you want to be around in six months' time. You so much as start sniffing around one of those big heroin operations and they'l wipe you out, right?"
If anybody disagreed, they were keeping quiet about it.
"What makes more sense, if you're looking to make a splash, is to go up against somebody else completely. Somebody unconnected with local business or local territory. When that letter dropped on to the doormat in that video shop, somebody saw an opportunity to expand in a different direction altogether; to send out a message to the gangs around them without getting anybody's back up. This lot, whoever the hel they are, probably see the Ryans as a soft target."
Tughan had been typing something. He raised his eyes from his computer screen and smiled. "Somebody should tel Bil y Ryan that."
There wasn't a trace of a smile from Yvonne Kitson. "And the Izzigils .. ."
"So who are they?" Stone asked. "If we want to stop a war, we'l need to know who's up against who."
Tughan stabbed at a key, leaned back in his chair. "I think DI Thorne might wel be right when he suggests that we're dealing with a Turkish or possibly Kurdish group here. I'm liaising with the NCIS, specifical y the Heroin Intel igence Unit.. ."
Thorne shook his head. "I told you, I can't see that this is about heroin. This is about not shitting on your own doorstep."
"Is that a technical term?" Brigstocke asked. "I must have missed that seminar."
Thorne smiled. "I've seen a couple of Guy Ritchie films."
Tughan raised his voice a little, bridling slightly, as always, at any exchange that rose above the funereal. "I'm confident that we wil establish the identity of this gang quickly. We wil find something connecting them to the video rental business, or we might get a lead from Turkish community leaders in the area .. ."
"Only the ones with a death wish," Brigstocke said.
"One way or another, things are much clearer now than they were." Tughan brandished the letter whose implied threats had probably been the catalyst for at least six deaths. "We've made a real breakthrough today."
Thorne's mood blackened in an instant. He remembered the film of tears across a pair of dark eyes, red around the rims.
A real breakthrough .. .
He doubted that Yusuf Izzigil would see things in quite the same way.
They drove back from the restaurant in virtual silence.
As always, Jack stayed wel within the speed limit as he steered the Volvo through streets that were stil slick after an early evening downpour. The short journey was one that they tried to make at least once a month sometimes more if there was a birthday or anniversary to be celebrated. Jack always drove, always stuck to half a bitter while they waited for the table, and a glass of wine with the meal.
"Are you cross with me?" Carol said, eventual y.
"Don't be sil y. I was just worried."
"It's like I spoiled your evening."
"You couldn't help it. What happened, I mean. You didn't spoil my evening."
Carol turned away from him and stared out of the window. She could stil taste the vomit at the back of her throat. Instinctively, she looked again to make sure there was none on her blouse.
"You must be coming down with something," Jack said. "I'l cal the quack first thing."
Carol nodded without shifting her gaze from a scratch on the car window, from the darkness moving past it.
It had come over her from nowhere as she was digging into her spaghetti a heat that had prickled and spread quickly until she'd had to throw down her fork and rush to the toilet. She'd emerged ten minutes later, pale and with a weak smile that had fooled nobody: not the manager, who offered to cal a doctor and assured her that the meal was on the house, and least of al her husband. Jack had shrugged at the waiters and smiled. He'd taken her arm: "Come on, love. You're white as a sheet. We'd best make a move .. ."
Carol knew ful wel what the trouble was. This was the
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