His First Mistake: An Alex Harper Mystery Thriller (Alex Harper Mysteries Book 2) by Mark Ayre

Author:Mark Ayre [Ayre, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Twenty-Six

Rosella learned her trade at her father’s knee. As soon as she could walk, she would join him in the garage, handing him tools and watching him work. She was never an academic kid, and her school grades reflected this, but she could strip down and rebuild an engine before she turned ten. A fact of which her father was immensely proud.

At sixteen, she dropped out of school to become an apprentice mechanic. It was the only job she had ever wanted, and she had never looked elsewhere. Her salary covered her living expenses, with more than enough left for a night out and a takeaway now and then. Perfect. She was a woman of simple tastes.

Like her, her father had loved his job. When it came to the financial aspect of his work, he was less satisfied. From Rosella’s earliest years, she could remember the extra ‘jobs’ he had taken on to earn a little spending money.

Her mother hated it. She repeatedly warned her husband that he would end up dead or in jail. He wasn’t worried. He told her he was careful and that there was nothing to fear. As it turned out, he was right. The police investigated her dad on only one occasion. Nothing came of it. He kept in with his criminal bosses, so they saw no reason to end his life. Besides, he was a low-level dealer. He wasn’t significant enough to inspire anyone to kill.

Rosella’s mother forbade her husband to involve their daughter in his dirty dealings. She could not stop him from being a fool, but she drew the line at their daughter becoming a criminal. Rosella’s father could be an obstinate man, but as it happened, on this point, he agreed. Rosella never committed a crime for dad.

Even so, dad’s extra work brought him into contact with a range of unsavoury characters, some of whom had children Rosella befriended and who grew up to follow in their parent’s footsteps. Some even climbed the ranks within the intimidating Murray organisation.

One such person was Binko. A sweet guy Rosella had dated in the summer before she moved away from town. As a kid, Binko would cycle around with bags of cocaine and other substances in a messenger bag, running a doorstop delivery service for the Murrays’ wealthy clients. Kids were ideal for this job. If they were caught, the police tended to go easy on them. And that was a big if. A kid on a bike escaped a chasing police officer eight times out of ten.

These days, Binko had graduated from handling a few tiny bags of coke to overseeing the distribution of hundreds of kilos of the stuff a year. There was no doubt that he had gone up in the world.

Despite his rise, he had not forgotten his old friend Rosella.

“Ah, Rose, girl, I missed you. A few texts ain’t enough, you know? Why don’t you visit more?”

“Life, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. Gets in the way. I’m working round the clock, and when I ain’t, it’s all nappies and night feeds.

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