Trashed

Norman Townsend

Description

You've paid GBP6000 to get here on a dinghy well past it's sell by date. You've avoided cross channel ferries, coastal patrols. You've seen others shot and bodies ditched overboard - not wanted on voyage. You're herded like cattle into the back of a van and driven in pitch blackness to an unknown destination. What else do you need to do just to stay alive? Ex-military man, Paul Stafford finds out when his small recycling company beats the odds to win a contract to run five Hampshire waste tips, he finds himself up against a ruthless criminal gang who have relied on the tips as cover for their frightening catalogue of villainous activity.Desperate to keep their multi-million pound enterprise intact, the gang embark on a campaign of violence against Stafford and his employees, proving themselves willing to go to unimaginable lengths to regain control.A council executive disappears. Bombs, murder and mayhem are employed against Stafford, his workers and their families. But Stafford is made of stern stuff. Can he and his little company prevail against the lawless might of this international criminal syndicate?

Sujets

• Hampshire

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789011807
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Trashed




Norman Townsend
Copyright © 2018 Norman Townsend

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.

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents areeither the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, places of work, events or locales is entirely coincidental or used for fictitious effect.

ISBN 9781789011807

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
FOR AMY K. TOWNSEND
Thanks to Jenny and Amy for constant support above and beyond! Thanks to Rex, Paul, Jill and Dylan for help and support for what must have felt like an awfully long year.
And a big thank you to Richard Barnfather for extra art work and publicity pictures as well as moral support.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 1
P aul Stafford turned his ancient Volvo estate on to the A331, heading out of Farnborough towards an auction house in Camberley. He liked the fact that the old car said “near poverty” to his tip and auction punters. He felt it showed he wasn’t profiteering from them. And he liked that it fitted his six-foot-one-inch frame adequately. At just before eight the traffic was heavy as always at this time of a weekday morning. A Cream CD was in the player. A Victorian Canterbury and a reproduction Davenport desk were in the back. These had arrived damaged in one of his tips and had been rescued and repaired ready for auction.
Thirty-nine-year-old Stafford had spent more than twenty years in the military. It was this experience that enabled him to recognise the “crump” of a distant explosion, even from the confines of his car. Curious, he pulled his car into the nearest parking space and climbed out. The sky behind was almost black with vast amounts of debris, plastic bags, newspaper and a myriad of other unsavoury items wafting slowly down. He guessed the explosion was at or near the tip and U-turned as quickly as traffic would allow.
Since taking over the tips at Farnborough and before that at Aldershot, Stafford had experienced low-level vandalism at both sites. The previous managers had left both sites strewn with rubbish and all the Roll on-Roll off bins overflowing with trash. Red graffiti had been sprayed on the Portakabins declaring “You owe us major.”
This explosion, he suspected, was further torment, designed to pay him back for taking away their very lucrative tips.
Racing towards the Farnborough site, his mobile phone rang. He saw it was from Garfield Lewis, and accepted the call.
‘You need to get here…’ The line went dead. Stafford hit the speed dial button, alternately trying the tip’s land line and Lewis’s mobile. He drove as fast as he dared. Getting no response on his mobile, he turned his attention to cursing the other drivers for not moving out of his way fast enough.
*
The bomb blew at precisely 7.55a.m. Why that time nobody knew, not even the people who planted it. They didn’t care, it had done its job. They knew Paul Stafford would get their message. From the front gates to the back wall the football pitch-sized Farnborough Waste Transfer Station was ankle-deep in household waste. The bomb had blasted its way through the massive metal roller shutters, taking with it the mountains of waste stored ready to be loaded and shipped to landfill.
Six members of staff had been preparing to open the site to start their day’s work. The site manager had started to walk the thirty yards or so to open the large double gates. The weighbridge operator was at her desk turning on the computer, absentmindedly looking out of the office window, waiting for the first Ro-Ro bin lorry to arrive and tip its load. The yard foreman did what he’d done this time of the morning every working day for the last twelve years; he unlocked the side door to the huge warehouse waste storage area to press the buttons that operated the front roller shutters. As he put his key in the lock, he was thrown upwards, backwards, forcefully into oblivion by an invisible shock wave. Unconscious, he crashed to the ground twenty feet away, where he lay motionless, traumatised. Barely breathing and with eyes rolling back into their sockets he disappeared under the mass of waste descending from the heavens.
The driver of the hook loader lorry had been walking alongside the JCB operator to their machines ready to start their day’s work. The lorry driver was nearest to the roller shutter when the blast ripped it apart, blowing them off their feet. Jagged shards of metal hit them at lightning speed. The lorry driver was lucky: he took the brunt of the blast and died instantly. The left side of his head and face disappeared, sheared off, covering his colleague with a spray, red with blood and snot and bone. Another shard hit with such force it sliced through his gut and carried on to do damage to his friend.
Shards hit and sliced through meat and bone alike. A final jagged shard severed the JCB operator’s left hand. The power of the blast dumped it some ten feet away. Torn apart in milliseconds, they hadn’t stood a chance. They crashed to the ground, landing one on top of the other. Fountains of blood pooled and mixed around them.
Screaming in agony, the JCB driver took longer to die, but the fountains of blood didn’t last long. Within minutes they were covered in the household waste that still rained from the sky.
For just a few seconds the silence was absolute. The stench of rotting household waste hung in the air. Then sound began to break through. The weighbridge operator ran into the yard and screamed, tears streaming down her face. The site manager was slumped trembling against the unopened gates, mouth opening and closing like a stranded fish, shock and fear in control. The yard man who had been in the mess when the blast happened, shuffled aimlessly through piles of waste, mouth open, eyes wide, not believing what they were seeing.
Moments later Paul Stafford’s crew from the adjoining household waste recycling centre chased down the concrete steps linking the two sites. They were led by Jamaican-born Garfield Lewis, the recycling centre manager. He realised the surviving transfer station staff were too traumatised to act rationally. Bringing his military expertise to bear, he took over. He ran towards the weighbridge operator, put his arm around her shoulders and guided her back to the office. Sitting her down he handed her the phone.‘C’mon now, love,’ he said, ‘we’ve got to get things sorted’. I need you to dial 999, tell ’em what’s happened. They’ll know what to do.’ She nodded, wiped away the tears, and with trembling hands dialled the emergency number. Garfield quickly checked the day book that every waste site is required to have, noted six persons on site, then ripping a first aid kit from the office wall, he dashed back into the yard thinking the first aid kit would probably be a waste of time… it was.
*
From seemingly all directions sirens were wailing and he could see the occasional blue and red flash in the distance as police and emergency vehicles raced towards the site of the explosion. The old Volvo screeched on to Templar Avenue, a road wide enough for him to overtake at high speed, well, the highest the Volvo could muster. Sliding around Elles Road roundabout the tyres fought to hold the tarmac. He saw two ambulances, sirens blaring, lights flashing, picking a hazardous pathway through morning traffic on the other side of the road. As he reached the Arrow Road roundabout, gridlocked traffic blocked his way. He decided to run the last half mile or so and eased his car into the car park of a company on the corner of a nearby road.
Even in his physical condition running was difficult and became more like a slalom as he dodged cars parked on the pavements, cars with doors left open, and abandoned hook loader lorries. Stafford dodged this way and that, trying to avoid the occupants as they craned to get a better view of what was going on. As he ran he realised he was running ankle-deep in household waste. Closer to the site he could see through the crowd of onlookers, five or si