On the attack, p.1
On the Attack, page 1
part #4 of Ryan Kaine Series
Ryan Kaine: On the Attack
“By Strength and Guile”
by
Kerry J Donovan
©Kerry J Donovan, September 2017
The right of Kerry J Donovan to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without prior written permission of the Author and without similar conditions including this condition being imposed on any subsequent purchaser. Your support for the Author’s rights is appreciated.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Published by Human Vertex Publications, France.
Head shot image, David Ilic ©2015
Table of 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 1
Monday 23rd November—Teddy Tedesco
Ocean Village, Southampton
Jerome ‘Teddy’ Tedesco glared at the empty whisky glass in his hand. He’d have thrown the fucking thing at the wall, or at the Kraut, but his therapist kept telling him to find his inner peace, not to vent his anger on others. To do so wouldn’t help relieve his underlying stress, or lower his blood pressure, or sort out his anger control issues.
Well screw her. Screw the overqualified, overcharging bitch into the wall.
So far, he’d paid the woman a small fortune to leave her Harley Street clinic and make weekly house calls and, after twenty sessions, the best coping strategy she could come up with was meditation?
“Think things through before you act, Mr Tedesco,” she said, before handing over another fucking invoice.
Yeah, and what else had he been doing all his goddamned life?
Fuck.
It was little better than the things Mother told him as a boy.
“Count up to ten, Jerome. Count up to ten. If you do that, the anger will fade and the world will seem a better place.”
If he’d listened to Mother, he’d have saved tens of thousands of pounds worth of therapy over the years, but … sod it. If he’d listened to Mother, he’d still be working for the Shylock in the back street betting shop and wouldn’t be the owner of all he surveyed—half of Southampton’s seafront. He wouldn’t own any of his businesses, the casinos along the south coast, the fishing boats, the pleasure cruisers, the stud farm on the South Downs, or the racecourse. Where would he be if he’d counted to ten and toed the fucking line?
He let the Kraut on the far side of the desk, Schechter, sit and squirm a little longer before delivering judgement.
The moron would be doing plenty more squirming in a minute, but Teddy kept him dangling. He liked to see the minnows suffer. It suited his management style and made the ending all the sweeter. The two slabs of meat standing either side of the door already knew what he was going to say—he told them before they let Schechter into his office, his inner sanctum. They’d be ready for any reaction from the stupid Kraut.
German efficiency be damned.
Teddy had to admit, Schechter looked the part. Tall, blond, square-jawed, broad-shouldered, intelligent blue eyes, the archetypal Aryan—one of Hitler’s supermen. But everyone knew what happened to Hitler and his bully boys. Bottled out and ended up losing a war they should have won. Yeah, Schechter had come highly recommended by a man Teddy once trusted, but that hadn’t worked out too well. Not so far. Not for the Kraut, and not for Grady, the Kraut’s sponsor.
Fuck’s sake, who did he have to screw over to get things done properly these days?
He held up his empty glass and the nearer of the two guards, Ginger, rushed to refill it for him.
Good monkey. Well trained.
Teddy warmed the glass in his cupped hand and inhaled the rich vapours. Smokey and warm. The aroma of peat bogs, oak casks, and heather. Precisely the aroma a Macallan Speyside single malt should give off. Reassuringly expensive. He raised the lead crystal glass and touched the liquid to his lips, allowing his skin to absorb the moisture. He licked away the residue.
Very pleasant. Very rewarding. Well worth the expense.
“Tell me, Schechter, how difficult can it be to get rid of a corpse?”
The Kraut stared back, said nothing. His open-mouthed expression, dumb and stupid. Not a good look for someone about to plead for his life.
Teddy lowered the glass to the coaster in case he lost control, which was on the cards. Wasting any of the nectar wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t do at all.
Meditate. Count to ten.
To make certain, he rolled his chair further away from the desk, distancing himself from the glass and the Kraut. It gave him more perspective. More room to operate.
“It isn’t a rhetorical question, man. Answer me!”
Schechter stiffened. For the first time since he’d joined the organisation, the German showed real fear. Quite right, too. On the other hand, it was the first time he’d fucked up in all that time. Simple thing, but it caused Teddy a monumental fucking headache.
“I apologise, Mr Tedesco,” he said in his fucking annoying stiff and precise accent. “It was the result of unforeseen circumstances. We thought—”
“You thought! Fuck off. You didn’t think at all. When Grady recommended you, he said you were bright. A university graduate, no less. It’s not like Grady to be so fucking wrong. Shame really. He used to be my ‘go-to’ guy for new personnel, but not anymore. Timothy and Ginger have acquainted him with a hospital bed. Be drinking his meals through a straw for the next few weeks. He’s not ‘going-to’ go anywhere for quite a while.”
Ginger sniggered.
Teddy grabbed a book off the shelf behind him and hurled it at the redheaded fucker, who caught it mid-flight, in front of his nose. Good reactions. Reminded Teddy why he’d kept the bugger around for two years. Not as efficient or bright as Timothy, but acceptable. Although Teddy needed to keep him on his toes. Didn’t pay to let the hired help have ideas above their station.
“What the fuck you laughing at, shit-for-brains? Your job is to stand there, look mean, and do as I say. Did I tell you to laugh? You’re not laughing, are you, Timothy?”
The enormous African at Ginger’s side looked at a point above Teddy’s head, giving it the thousand-yard stare.
“No, Mr Tedesco. Not at all, sir.”
“That’s right. See that, Schechter? Timothy knows when to answer and when to keep his mouth shut. Pity Ginger doesn’t learn from him. He doesn’t know when to keep his ears open and his mouth closed. He will though, given time.”
Ginger shut the book quietly and hugged it to his chest. A thick, leather-bound volume it was, something about the Decline of the Roman Empire. Teddy’s interior designer—the mincing queer—bought a truckload of the dusty books to build the room’s ‘ambience’. In the end, Teddy approved of the look and had even read a couple of the tomes. After all, they’d cost enough. Might as well get some use out of them other than as fuck-off expensive wallpaper.
“You can put it back where it belongs, Ginger. We all know you never learned to read. Yeah, you can laugh at that one. It’s meant to be a joke and people can laugh at my jokes.”
Timothy smirked as Ginger marched across the room, replaced the book with its mates, and returned to his post without so much as a twitch in his expression.
Teddy sat still, giving Schechter the evil eye. What the fuck was he going to do? Things were beginning to slip sideways. If he didn’t get business back on track, the London hyenas would rumble south and start circling, and he couldn’t let it happen. Teddy valued his position in society—and his neck—too much to allow it. No way. Best cauterise the dead tissue before the infection spread, and what better way than to make an example of a young German wise-arse.
Top of his head, Teddy could list a dozen ways to dump a corpse, and all of them would have been better than the one Grady and Schechter chose, stupid mutts. Most of the methods, he’d utilised himself on his way to the top of the tree.
Dig a hole in the woods somewhere and plant the body as fertiliser. Chop it up into pieces and feed it to the pigs. That was a good one, possibly the best. Pigs loved human meat. Ate everything—bones, teeth, hair, the lot, and then crapped it out over the fields as manure. Wonderful. The circle of life. Back in the day, you could drop a body into the foundations of a bridge or a new building and cover the bloody thing with a thousand
Couldn’t do that easily these days, though. Not since builders became so bloody security conscious and fenced everything in. Teddy blamed the Health and Safety Executive and all the other Nanny State, do-gooding bastards. Fuck them and fuck all the so-called terrorists who gave good, honest thieves a bad name. Ignorant towel-headed cretins who blew themselves up for a pack of virgins. What use is a virgin to a fucker who’s blown himself into tiny pieces? The lack of logic was hysterical. Comedians could write sketches about it if they weren’t so scared.
Count to ten, Teddy. Savour the moment. Watch the Kraut squirm.
“Okay, Schechter. Let’s have it. I gave you and Grady the simple task of losing Tubby Malahide’s blubber-filled carcase and the whole thing ended up like a dog’s breakfast. Tell me what happened in your own words, and tell me what you’re doing to rectify the situation.”
The Kraut clasped his hands together. A sheen of sweat formed on his upper lip.
Yeah, that’s right, Schechter. You should be sweating.
Teddy retrieved his drink and took a real sip, soaking up the golden liquid and waiting for a story that might just save the German’s life—but he doubted it.
Schechter swallowed and took a breath.
“Come on, I don’t have all day.”
“I apologise, Mr Tedesco. I was trying to gather my thoughts. I need to make this as clear and concise as possible. On Sunday last, Grady called and told me we had a task to perform on your behalf.”
“Yes, yes. I know all that bollocks. Don’t think you can shift all the blame onto poor old Grady just because he’s not here to defend himself. I already have his explanation and want your side of things before making my final decision. See how generous and fair I can be? That’s why they call me the nicest boss on the south coast. Isn’t that right, Timothy?”
The South African dipped his head.
“That’s right, Mr Tedesco,” he said, in a deep, rumbling voice that could shatter bricks—and kneecaps. “Absolutely right.”
“Good. Now get on with it, Schechter. I’m not a patient man.”
The German shuffled in his chair. “Grady called me to his flat and told me to bring a tarpaulin and a car with a big enough trunk to take the, ah, package—”
“Fuck’s sake, man. We’re all grownups here. Call a shovel a fucking shovel.”
“Entschuldigen sie? Excuse me?”
“Tubby wasn’t a brown paper parcel headed for the Post Office. He was a corpse, a cadaver, a body, a stiff. He might have been dipping his hand in my till, but he already paid for it with his life. Show him some fucking respect!”
“Jawohl! Yes, sir.” Schechter swallowed before continuing. “I drove Grady and the ... body to the quarry, under his directions. It was not a place I had visited before. He said it would be deserted at that time in the evening, but when we removed the body from the car, a dog barked.”
“The mutt you shot?”
“Ja. That’s correct. A woman of middle-age, maybe forty-five, was exercising her animal around the lake that formed from the quarry workings. The animal was brown and white, and stood about so high.” He raised his hand about two and a half feet above the carpet.
“I don’t give a shit how big the dog was. This isn’t Crufts, fuckwit. Get on with the story!”
Teddy jerked his hand and some of the expensive whisky splashed onto his fingers. He licked them clean. Strike one for the Kraut. Any more and he was out. This wasn’t baseball. No second or third strikes in his organisation.
“Grady yelled at me to get her. He can’t run because of his bad knees and one of us had to stay with the body. I gave chase.”
“How far away was this old biddy?”
“Across the lake on the other bank. No more than thirty, thirty-five metres straight across.”
“So, this little old lady was only a few yards away, but she was too fast for you and you let her escape?”
Teddy squeezed the glass so hard, he worried it might shatter under the load.
“It was not like that, Mr Tedesco. Thirty metres in a straight line, but the shore was curved, and she ran directly into the woods. I tried to go straight across, but the wasser was too deep. I had to run around the shoreline. The woman was faster than I expected, but I gained upon her quickly.”
“And you had a gun, right?”
“Yes, sir. I was close enough to shoot her without missing when the dog attacked. Vicious. Look!” He rolled up his shirt sleeve and showed the bandage covering his forearm. “I shot the animal two times in the chest, but it landed on me. Took me down to the ground. By the time I threw it off, the woman had disappeared. It was dark and pouring rain, and I had no taschenlampe, ah, flashlight. And then I heard a car roar away.”
He took a breath before continuing.
“All this time, Grady was yelling at me to come back, so I picked up the dog and carried it back to the car.”
“You took the dog?”
“Yes, sir. I thought it best not to leave any evidence. You know, the bullets inside the animal?”
Teddy took another sip. Collecting the mutt showed initiative. The Kraut had just earned back his first strike. He might be on his way to earning a reprieve, too. Although it was too early to tell.
“Also,” Schechter said, growing more confident, his voice firmer, “the rain was pouring down. It was heavy enough to obscure our tracks, I thought. And there was one other thing, Mr Tedesco.”
“Which was?”
“The dog was in good condition. Despite the rain, I could tell it had been professionally groomed. Well looked after. Expensive collar, you know?”
“So what?”
For the first time since his arrival, Schechter’s shoulders relaxed. A smile stretched his thin lips. He reached into his pocket. Timothy and Ginger stiffened and started moving forward, but Teddy raised his glass and shook his head to send them back to their posts. In his other hand, the one not holding the tumbler, he gripped a Sig Sauer P226—the weapon of choice for the US military. Good enough for the Americans, meant good enough for him. Teddy would never be without it and, with Schechter on the other side of the desk at a distance of less than two metres, he wasn’t about to miss.
Despite the state-of-the-art gizmos protecting his office, the body scanners, the x-ray and infra-red cameras, the metal detectors, and the other electronic countermeasures, Teddy was not about to drop his guard. Too many high ranking ‘businessmen’ had grown lazy thinking they were Teflon-coated and died as a result. Well, not Teddy Tedesco. Nobody was going to catch him on the crapper with his trousers around his ankles.
The Kraut’s hand came out of the pocket holding a white plastic disk, no bigger than the lid of a jam jar.
“If that’s a bomb …”
Teddy set the tumbler on the coaster, racked the Sig, and pointed it at Schechter’s face. The Kraut’s eyes bulged and his jaw slackened.
“No, sir. I-It is a microchip reader. Given the dog’s condition, I-I thought it a possibility it had been microchipped. I bought the device at a pet shop this morning.”
With his thumb, Teddy pressed the gun’s de-cocker to lower the hammer and make the weapon safe, but he kept it in plain view and Schechter’s eyes stayed locked on the muzzle. Hardly a surprise. Teddy’d been on the wrong end of a gun a few times in his life. There were few things in the world more terrifying than seeing the black hole in front of you, especially when it was being held by a nut job with evil in his heart.
“And was it?”
“Chipped? Yes, sir,” Schechter said, drawing his eyes from the muzzle back to Teddy. “It was, and I now have the name and address of the owner.”
He turned the scanner to let Teddy read the screen:
Mrs Angela Shafer, #3 Railway Cottages, Old Mill Lane, Hampshire.
Teddy nodded and allowed himself a congratulatory smile. The kid had done well. Saved his own life even if it did upset Timothy and Ginger, who looked as though someone had opened their last Christmas presents by mistake. Not to worry, he’d be able to feed someone else to his murder monkeys soon enough. There were always plenty of people around who tried to put one over on Teddy Tedesco. So far, none had succeeded. At least, not for long—as Tubby’s ghost would confirm.
