The Rules by Laurence Todd

Author:Laurence Todd [Todd, Laurence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910864913
Publisher: The Choir Press
Published: 2017-07-27T22:00:00+00:00

F I V E

Wednesday

The main headline in many of the daily newspapers, even in some of the tabloids, was the killing of Jamal Khoudri, described as a merchant banker currently working as campaign coordinator for the independent Tory candidate James Blatchford in his quest to become Mayor of London. The facts of the case had been briefly laid out, along with how his body’d been found by police late morning. A police canvass of the area around the campaign HQ had, so far, not produced any results, and they currently had no obvious suspects but were keeping an open mind as to motive. A couple of campaign workers had been quoted, saying Jamal was a lovely man and they couldn’t understand why anyone would want to kill him.

However, only the Independent and the Guardian mentioned Khoudri’s body had been found by two Special Branch detectives who’d just been to talk to Qais Jaser. They both also mentioned the same detectives had been at the meeting al-Ebouli had spoken at on Saturday, which was an election rally. Both papers queried why Special Branch was investigating James Blatchford’s campaign.

Several of the broadsheets mentioned Jaser was the personal assistant to Christian Perkins, a senior backbench Tory MP. Perkins would be pleased to see his name in print.

Following on from the shots fired at al-Ebouli last Saturday, and the killing of PC Jones on Monday, several broadsheet newspapers focused on what appeared to be a dangerous new trend in British politics: the use of extreme violence to attempt to intimidate or to silence those with whom you disagree, with the Telegraph making the point this trend would not be developing if extremists were banned from holding or speaking at public meetings.

What none of the papers knew was my suspicion two animal rights protestors hadn’t died in an unfortunate accident; they’d been murdered, and you couldn’t get a more silent opponent than one who was dead.

*

“No, Detective, that isn’t the case at all.”

I was on the phone talking to a Ms Kerrie Brandon who, from her accent, came across like a Brit trying to sound like an American. I’d arrived at the office and, after looking at the papers and learning Smitherman was upstairs at an early morning meeting, had phoned Ambersial in Cambridge, identified myself and asked to speak to a senior manager. Kerrie had told me she was currently the most senior manager onsite, adding that she was responsible for strategic counter planning logistics. I didn’t ask her to elaborate. The job title sounded dreadfully boring and I didn’t want to know what it involved.

I’d begun by asking her about the burglary. She’d replied they’d already spoken to local police after retrieving their stolen property, and asked why she was being asked to repeat herself. I said I wasn’t local police, I was Special Branch, and our interest was different. She didn’t sound convinced.

She described arriving at work with a colleague and, on entering the main office, discovering the drawers in her desk and in other desks, plus the office filing cabinet, were all unlocked.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.