Price of Blood

Michael Langford

Description

Police Sergeant Timothy Fuller is employed by a secret anti-terrorism group, in the wake of continued attacks from political extremists.

Informations

• Publié par: Langford Books
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783019908
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Price of Blood
The Price of Blood
2016 Michael Langford
Langford Books
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Ebook creation by Ebook Partnership
Contents
A 1. St Aidan s School, Little Fatherington, Surrey. Saturday, July 22nd, 2006, 2.30 p.m.
A 2. The home of Samuel and Esther Abrahams, 15 Elm Drive, Potlington, Surrey. Monday, July 24th, 9.30 a.m.
A 3. The same day, 11.30 a.m.
A 4. 8.00 p.m.
B 1. The Blue Lion Public House, Oxford. Thursday, July 27th, 7.00 p.m.
A 5. A Mossad office, Tel Aviv. Friday, July 28th, 10.30 a.m.
A 6. Gaza City. Sunday, July 30th, 11.00 a.m.
A 7. The Norfolk Broads. Monday, July 31st, 4.00 a.m.
A 8. The Abrahams home. Tuesday, August 1st, 4.00 a.m.
A 9. Princess Street, Milton Keynes. Monday, August 7th, 2.30 a.m.
A 10. Anchor Street, Milton Keynes. The same day, 8.30 a.m.
A 11. 15 Elm Drive, Potlington, Surrey. Tuesday, August 8th, 10.00 a.m.
A 12. The central police station, Milton Keynes. Thursday, August 10th, noon.
A 13. A Mossad office, Tel Aviv. Friday, August 11th, 10.00 a.m.
A 14. Napthali Apartments, Tel Aviv. The same day, 3.00 p.m.
A 15. 15 Elm Drive, Potlington. Sunday, August 13th, 10.00 a.m.
A 16. 47 Coronation Avenue, Warminster. Monday, August 14th, 11.00 a.m.
A 17. 12 Henrietta Street, Devizes. Monday, August 21st.
A 18. Banstead Police Station, Surrey. Tuesday, August 22nd.
A 20. The M4 Motorway. Friday, September 1st.
A 22. Birmingham Rovers Football Ground. Friday, September 8th, 10.00 a.m.
A 23. A road near Birmingham Rovers Football Ground. Saturday, September 9th, 2.45 p.m.
A 24. Exhibition Road, Kensington, London. Saturday October 7th, 2.00 p.m.
A 25. Sunday October 8th, 11.00 a.m. The North London Military Hospital
B 2. St Ethelreda s Church, Birmingham. Friday, October 20th, 11.30 p.m.
B 3. St Ethelreda s Church, Birmingham. Saturday, October 21st, 2.25 p.m.
B 4. The Arabi Mosque, West Birmingham. Monday, October 23rd
A 26. MI1588 headquarters, London. Wednesday, October 25th, 11.00 a.m.
A 27. Henrietta Street, Devizes. The same day, 1.45 p.m.
A 28. Later, the same afternoon
A 29. Late, the same day. The London Headquarters of MI1588
B 5. St Ethelreda s Church, Birmingham. Sunday, October 29th, 2.00 p.m.
A 30. 15 Elm Drive, Potlington, Surrey. Thursday, November 2nd.
Historical Note
A 1. St Aidan s School, Little Fatherington, Surrey. Saturday, July 22nd, 2006, 2.30 p.m.
A white van drives onto the grass verge fifty yards beyond the school gate and slows to a halt. Unusually for this kind of vehicle there are small windows in the back, set a few feet behind the seats for the driver and his passenger. Immediately behind the driver is a bearded man in his fifties, who for the last few miles has left the passenger seat and squatted on the floor. He opens one of the rear windows and looks across two lanes of carriageway and a hundred yards of school playing field. He focuses his binoculars on the wooden platform that has been raised alongside the Victorian mansion, comprising the main building of the school. The summer prize-giving has begun.
With a slightly shaking hand he draws a curtain across the window so that he cannot be seen from outside by the occupants of any passing car. Then he takes the sniper s rifle from its hiding place beneath the rugs that lie beside him. He screws the silencer onto the end of the gun and opens up a camera stand, setting it so that when he crouches at the far side of the van the midpoint of the rifle is steadied by the stand while the point of the barrel is just inside the window. He returns to his perch by the window, opens the curtains just enough for the use of his binoculars, and resumes his watch.
The man seated in the driving seat is unshaven and a bit younger than the passenger, perhaps in his mid thirties. He speaks in a low voice that is tinged with a foreign accent. Gerald, say when you want me to report on any approaching traffic.
His companion replies - an unaccented, educated English voice. I ll say All set , Kasim, and then I want you to give me the all clear on the traffic.
Seated on the platform, Mr William Carstairs, headmaster of St Aidan s Preparatory School for Boys and Girls, just manages to suppress a yawn. Lady Smith-Yarborough, a second cousin of his wife, whose title is useful on such occasions - especially to impress the more snobbish parents - had promised to be less than ten minutes in her opening remarks, but already she has been fifteen and the seven-year olds sitting at the front of the assembly are getting fidgety. But at last she is finishing and the fourteen prizewinners are lined up by the steps that lead to the top of the platform. The youngest goes first, and last up is one of his favourites, twelve-year old Rebecca Abrahams, who is among the cleverest children he has ever taught. She is one of the day pupils, who make up about half of the school, the others being boarders, and has just won the predicted scholarship to St Aidan s Senior School, also in Surrey and only four miles away, where she will start in September. Now she stands in front of Lady Smith-Yarborough to receive the Cranmer prize for overall top marks in the last year.
It is a little incongruous, the headmaster reflects, that this prize, funded eighty years ago by an evangelical bishop and former pupil, should today be awarded to one of only four Jewish children in the school. However, it is 2006, and the three Jewish families presently sending children to the school seem to have little difficulty with activities on Saturdays, although two of them, including the Abrahams, do insist on the children being home before dark on Friday evenings, when they keep traditional family rites. Another example of changing times was the school party, held two months ago, when the whole school celebrated, on the same occasion, both Rebecca s Bat Mitzvah and the recent confirmation into the Church of England of three other pupils.
Rebecca takes her envelope, containing book tokens worth seventy pounds, shakes hands with the formidable looking Lady, and turns to bow to the assembly in acknowledgment of the applause. After the bow she straightens up, ready to walk down the steps and join her parents among the ranks of onlookers.
Just under two hundred yards away the driver of the van is checking the road to make sure that no vehicle is about to come between the marksman and the prize-giving. He gives the all clear, and immediately afterwards a sharp crack is heard on the platform. It is not loud, and in the next few days many people remark how little noise there was in view of the devastating impact. A red circle, the size of a penny piece, appears on the girl s forehead, just above the left eye. Without uttering a sound she falls.
A 2. The home of Samuel and Esther Abrahams, 15 Elm Drive, Potlington, Surrey. Monday, July 24th, 9.30 a.m.
Samuel Abrahams is only dimly aware of the familiar clatter made by the morning post as it hits the parquet floor in the hall. He had spent every night since Rebecca s murder trying to comfort Esther. But at last she has fallen asleep. His own emotions are hard to describe. First there was just shock, then an indescribable sense of grief and loss. And now, perhaps in the forefront, a rising anger. Who had the right to take the life of an innocent child? What had Rebecca ever done to deserve this, a lovely smiling girl whose worst ever fault had been forgetting her younger brother s birthday? Could there be a worse example of an evil and senseless act?
And the intellectual questions. Was this a random attack, or had the killer been targeting a Jewish child on purpose? Could it be just because they happened to be a Jewish family, or had they been singled out for some special reason? It did look as if the killer had some inside knowledge, because although both of his sons habitually indicated their faith, often wearing their small skullcaps, Rebecca had nothing to distinguish her from the gentile girls that surrounded her on the school platform.
There is a vile feeling at the back of Samuel s mind. Could there be a certain kind of horrid method behind this outrage?
Davy, his elder son, whose boarding school in Hampshire broke up for the summer holidays one week ago, comes into the library with the post. His face is still almost white; he has large dark patches under both eyes. He and Rebecca had always been close.
The boy has already sorted the post in accordance with family custom. The junk mail is in the bin, those for other members of the family in neat piles on the hall table, and father s in his hand. There are three business letters, and four from friends and relatives: the beginning of what he knows will be a flood of attempts to express sympathy. But one last piece of mail does not fit the standard pattern. It is a regular-size brown envelope and too thin to contain anything other than paper, but the odd thing is that his name and address are written with pencil in clumsy block capitals. There is no indication of who the sender is.
Davy watches as he opens the envelope. Inside there is a piece of lined paper on which nothing is written, and folded within it lies a number of passport-sized black and white photographs, placed one on top of another and kept in position by a large silver-coloured paper clip. The top photograph shows the face of a smiling, Arab-looking boy, aged about ten, with curly dark hair and a missing upper tooth. There is no indication of who he is, but the face seems to stir something in Samuel s memory, particularly the missing tooth. He pulls the photograph from the pile and freezes. The second photograph is of Rebecca s head and shoulders. It must have been taken in the past few months. On her forehead is the