04 Dead Ground by M. W. Craven

Author:M. W. Craven
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective, Hard-Boiled, Crime, Fiction, Suspense, Thrillers, General
ISBN: 9781472131973
Publisher: Constable
Published: 2021-06-02T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 53

‘What’s the one thing Southampton has that London doesn’t?’ Poe said.

‘A decent football team,’ Slater said.

‘A port,’ Finch said. ‘I mean, yes, London does have docks, but nothing like the deep seaport here.’

‘Exactly,’ Poe said. ‘This is why Terry Holmes moved here. The container terminal for freight and cargo is the second-largest deep seaport in the country.’

‘Damn,’ Slater said. ‘While we were looking in, we should have been looking out.’

‘I think the fencing business was just a cover for his real illegal business.’

‘Smuggling?’

Poe nodded. ‘It ticks every box.’

‘And don’t forget the cruise companies have four terminals here,’ Slater said. ‘They go all over the world and there’s little to nothing in the way of customs checks for passengers when they return. Even less for crew members.’

‘And every commercial port has smuggling problems,’ Melody Lee said. ‘The dope run by mules who tunnel under the US/ Mexico border is insignificant compared to the dope that comes into the country via cargo containers with a whole bunch of correctly filled in paperwork. One of the drawbacks of free trade agreements is that nothing really gets checked any more.’

‘Freight for the larger items and individuals for the smaller stuff,’ Poe said. ‘As a way of getting things in and out, ports are ideal.’

‘But you don’t think Mr Holmes was smuggling things for himself,’ Finch said. ‘You think he was the point man for the Port of Southampton?’

‘If Susan’s right, her father didn’t have the technical skill to set up his computer like this, and if Tilly’s right, and she always is, then Terry Holmes was making more money from handling stolen goods here than he was in one of the world’s richest cities.’

‘So he was a link in a chain?’

‘That’s my guess. The people behind this will be a transnational organised crime group. Probably have offices in London, New York, even Beijing. They’ll have recruited him and asked him to relocate to receive and broker their goods. They’ll have a Terry Holmes strategically placed in all major sea-and airports.’

The pawnshop went quiet as they all considered what they had learned.

‘What had my dad got himself into?’ Susan said eventually.

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