TAKEAWAY TERROR: The DCS Palmer and the Serial Murder Squad series. Case No.8 Read online

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

  The names, characters and incidents in it

  are the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or act relating to any

  persons, living or dead, locations or

  events involving them, is entirely alleged

  or coincidental.

  Published by BSA Publishing 2019 who

  assert the right that no part of this

  publication may be reproduced, stored in

  a retrieval system or transmitted by any

  means without the prior permission of the

  publishers.

  Copyright @ B.L.Faulkner 2019 who

  asserts the moral right to be identified as

  the author of this work

  ISBN 978-1-9997640-9-8

  Proof read/editing by Zeldos

  Cover art by Impact Print, Hereford

  BOOKS IN THE DCS PALMER SERIES

  BOOK 1. FUTURE RICHES

  BOOK 2. THE FELT TIP MURDERS

  BOOK 3. A KILLER IS CALLING

  BOOK 4. POETIC JUSTICE

  BOOK 5. LOOT

  BOOK 6. I’M WITH THE BAND

  BOOK 7 BURNING AMBITION

  BOOK 8. TAKE AWAY TERROR

  All available as individual or double ‘case’ e-books and paperbacks.

  THE PALMER CASES BACKGROUND

  Justin Palmer started off on the beat as a London policeman in the late 1970s and is now Detective Chief Superintendent Palmer running the Metropolitan Police Force’s Serial Murder Squad from New Scotland Yard.

  Not one to pull punches, or give a hoot for political correctness if it hinders his inquiries, Palmer has gone as far as he will go in the Met and he knows it. Master of the one-line put-down and a slave to his sciatica, he can be as nasty or as nice as he likes.

  The early 2000s was a time of re-awakening for Palmer as the Information Technology revolution turned forensic science, communication and information gathering skills upside down. Realising the value of this revolution to crime solving Palmer co-opted Detective Sergeant Gheeta Singh onto his team. DS Singh has a degree in IT and was given the go ahead to update Palmer’s department with all the computer hard- and software she wanted, most of which she wrote herself and some of which are, shall we say, of a grey area when it comes to privacy laws, data protection and accessing certain restricted databases.

  Together with their small team of favourite officers that Palmer co-opts from other departments as needed, and one civilian computer clerk called Claire they take on the serial killers of the UK.

  On the personal front Palmer has been married to his ‘princess’, or Mrs P. as she is known to everybody, for nearly thirty years. The romance blossomed after the young Detective Constable Palmer arrested most of her family, who were a bunch of South London petty criminals, in the 1960’s. They have three children and eight grandchildren, a nice house in the London suburb of Dulwich, and a faithful English Springer dog called Daisy.

  Gheeta Singh lives alone in a fourth floor Barbican apartment, her parents having arrived on these shores as a refugee family fleeing from Idi Amin’s Uganda. Since then her father and brothers have built up a very successful computer parts supply company, in which it was assumed Gheeta would take an active role on graduating from university. She had other ideas on this, as well as the arranged marriage that her aunt still tries to coerce her into. Gheeta has two loves, police work and technology, and thanks to Palmer she has her dream job.

  The old copper’s nose and gut feelings of Palmer, combined with the modern IT skills of DS Singh makes them an unlikely but successful team. All their cases involve multiple killings, twisting and turning through red herrings and hidden clues, and keeping the reader in suspense until the very end.

  TAKE AWAY TERROR.

  CHAPTER 1

  Jack Bernard was just nineteen and he was killed because of money. Not money he owed anybody, not money he had stolen. He was killed because he was trying to make a bit of extra money delivering takeaways in the evenings.

  He and his moped were crushed by a speeding long wheel base Transit van as he parked up to make a late night delivery.

  Jack was the third delivery boy to be killed that way in three months. Another two had managed to jump clear of the six-wheeled assassin just in time, unable to pursue it on their bikes which were rendered into a tangled mess of steel. The Transit was carrying false plates, with no lights and no markings.

  DCS Palmer was fidgeting. He was hungry. It was Friday evening and he was home for once. The report files from his last case had been completed that afternoon at his office at the Yard and were ready for the DPP’s office. His celebratory Chinese takeaway Mrs P. had ordered was on its way. He was looking forward to it although he knew that at any moment the phone could ring, and it would end up inside Daisy – his faithful English Springer – rather than on his plate which was warming in the oven. Daisy was curled up by his feet, hoping that the phone would ring and hoping the meal had beef in it. Palmer rose from the sofa and looked expectantly out of the windows, hoping to see the delivery lad coming up the front garden path of his Dulwich Village home. No such luck.

  ‘Give them a ring and ask them where it is. They don’t usually take this long,’ he called over his shoulder to Mrs P. who was arranging two trays in the kitchen ready for the meal. She didn’t really like eating off trays with the telly on, but it was a bit of a ritual this Friday night takeaway at the Palmer’s.

  Mrs P. did the week’s shopping on a Friday afternoon. No supermarkets in Dulwich Village, so she usually drove to Brixton or Streatham and timed her return to coincide with Palmer arriving home; that was if he wasn’t off chasing a serial killer somewhere. She would order their takeaway and together they would put the shopping away, open a bottle of Argentinian Malbec and relax with their meal in front of the TV watching one of the cheap games shows that run on TV at that time of day. Well, she would try to watch whilst Palmer interrupted her concentration continually with his comments about the show: ‘Who’s he?’, ‘Never heard of him’, ‘Blimey she’s put on a few stone!’ and ‘Mutton dressed as lamb!’ which he aimed at the Z-list celebrities who seemed to populate the game shows at that early evening time.

  ‘I expect they are busy,’ Mrs P. shouted back from the kitchen. ‘It’s Friday night after all. Oh, and by the way, whilst I think of it – make sure you are home next Saturday evening.’

  ‘Why?’

  He picked up the paper and checked the TV listings in case Sky had a decent football match on. Probably not. Since they’d lost the Spanish contract he’d had to make do with the Premier League; it was okay, but he’d rather watch Barcelona than Huddersfield Town.

  ‘What’s happening next Saturday then?’

  ‘It’s Benji’s sixtieth, he’s having a do at the local pub. Booked the function room, and we are invited.’

  ‘I’m working.’

  This was Palmer’s standard answer to anything involving his neighbour Benji.

  ‘No you are not. You never work on Saturdays unless you have to.’

  ’I have to next Saturday.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s Benji’s sixtieth and I don’t want to go. It will be full of local councillors and Benji’s old mates, that Pride lot.’

  ‘LGBT.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s the correct term, not that Pride lot – LGBT.’

  ‘I thought that was a sandwich?’ said Palmer with a cheeky twinkle in his eye.<
br />
  ‘That’s BLT, and no you didn’t think that at all. Next Saturday evening, keep it free. I’ll be most disappointed if you don’t make it, and so will Benji. You may not realise it, but he really respects you.’

  ​‘It’ll be vegetarian eats, won’t it? All lentils and bits of hedgerow.’

  ‘Just be there Justin Palmer, or else.’

  Benji – real name Benjamin- was Palmer’s nemesis as well as his next-door neighbour: a retired advertising agency executive in his mid-fifties – single and with a massive pension, and nothing to spend it on except world cruises and new cars – he was the total opposite of Palmer. A fake tan, ponytail and designer clothes completed the image, and his flamboyant manner and mincing walk had Palmer unsure of Benji’s sexuality, although he would never make reference to it on the explicit instructions of Mrs P. But what really got under Palmer’s skin, although he would never admit it, was that all the women of Dulwich Village – well, those of a certain age from the WI and Church Flower Arrangement Brigade, who had previously flirted and paid attention to Palmer – had transferred their attentions to Benji almost as soon as he moved in; and when he recently stood for the local council it was their block votes that put him top of the poll and elected him.

  In the last two years, Benji’s top-of-the-range garden hot tub – big enough to re-float the Titanic in – had burst and flooded Palmer’s front garden, and then Benji’s latest barbecue, which was about as big as Palmer’s kitchen, had toppled over and burnt down part of the dividing fence between their gardens. But, for all that, Palmer liked the man; and yes, he’d try and be there for the sixtieth birthday.

  The doorbell rang. At last, food had arrived.

  ​Mrs P. came into the lounge.

  ‘Give me twenty pounds.’

  ​‘How much?’ Palmer asked, feigning shock.

  ​‘Twenty pounds. We have the same meals every time and it’s always twenty pounds, and you always say how much. You know how much – eighteen for the meal, two for the delivery boy. Twenty pounds please.’

  She held out her hand

  ​‘Where are we getting it from, Harrods?’

  ​‘You say that every time too.’

  ​He pulled a twenty from his pocket and she hurried off down the hall to the door. He tossed the paper aside not having found anything worth watching on TV, as usual. Thank goodness for Netflix and Sky. He resented paying the BBC licence fee, especially since the disclosure of the hundreds of thousands of pounds some of the presenters got for reading an auto cue, so he clicked over to Netflix. He could usually find a decent film or Mafia series on there to watch.

  ​He settled back as Mrs P. put their food on the plates in the kitchen and brought it through on trays.

  ‘And you can get your greedy eyes off it,’ he patted Daisy and turned his attention to his meal. ‘This looks good.’

  ​‘He said there was another delivery chap in a road accident earlier tonight in the West End. Three in a month been killed by hit and run.’

  ​‘Blimey, dangerous job then.’

  Palmer was more interested in his meal than in hit and runs. He was just about to spoon a sweet and sour prawn ball into his mouth when the phone rang. He swore blind he could see a smile cross Daisy’s face.

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘What did you say his name was?’

  ​‘Jack Bernard.’

  ​Palmer nodded and turned the collar of his thick overcoat up as protection against the cold rain that seemed to be coming at him horizontally like a flight of stinging arrows through the dark evening light. He pulled the front of his trilby down a bit to keep it out of his face. He was stood looking at the wreckage of Jack Bernard’s moped, flattened against the tarmac road. Eight foot-high crime scene screens had been erected around three sides of it and a tarpaulin strung across the top to keep the rain off; crime scene cordon tape was stretched across the street twenty yards either way from the scene. Next to him Chief Inspector Longman from West End Central uniform branch stood bent against the rain and wished he had brought his raincoat with him from the station when the uniformed traffic patrol had called in the accident. He wanted to turn the scene over to Palmer as soon as he could and get back to the shelter and warmth of the station.

  ‘Where’s the body?’ asked Palmer as he bent close to the wreckage and saw some blood stains on the tarmac.

  ‘Taken to West End Central morgue.’

  ​Behind them a brand-new top-of-the-range black Range Rover silently pulled up outside the cordon tape and DS Gheeta Singh slipped out of the front passenger door as a smart looking young man exited the driver’s side to open it for her. They stopped at the tape, where Singh showed her ID card to the two officers who were keeping the public and press photographers at a distance from the scene. They allowed her through and she stooped under the tape and walked over to Palmer, who introduced her to CI Longman.

  ‘DS Singh, meet CI Longman from West End Central. Singh is my number two,’ he explained.

  That was a bit of a shortened bio of DS Singh, as not only was she his number two in the Serial Murder Squad but he had pulled strings and called in old favours to get her there. After seeing her at work in the Cyber Crime and IT Unit, he had decided she was just what his department needed to get it updated and kept abreast of the rapidly changing face of crime in this era of social media.

  Singh was in a designer trouser suit and patent shoes. She’d obviously been out at a social event when her beeper had alerted her to ring in to the Yard who had told her that Palmer had asked for her presence at the scene. Palmer noted the young man she had left at the tape.

  ‘Hope I didn’t disturb anything important? ‘he said, raising his eyebrows and flashing a knowing smile.

  Gheeta smiled back.

  ‘Well, we will never know now guv, will we?’

  She walked back over and spoke to the young man, who went to the car and came back with a raincoat and helped her put it on. Then she gave him a peck on the cheek, before he returned to the car and drove off.

  ​Palmer had noted that even coming from an evening out Gheeta had her laptop in its case slung over her shoulder. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her without it, the reason being that she could tap into their mainframe and servers at the Squad Office in Scotland Yard on wi-fi and download any information they might need within minutes from their data banks. Data banks she had installed and kept up to date.

  ​‘Right then guv, what have we here then?’

  She flipped up the rain hood on the coat, took the laptop from its satchel and started taking pictures of the scene. Palmer looked to CI Longman to explain. Longman cleared his throat, resigned himself to another few minutes in the rain, and spoke.

  ​‘Well, being the third fatality of a delivery boy and having had two other similar hit and runs that just crushed the bikes, it’s pretty obvious to us that there’s a war going on somewhere. What sort of war we don’t know, but I can’t imagine that there’s enough money in takeaway meals to murder for, so it could be drugs – witnesses have described the same vehicle doing the damage at each scene so it’s not random hit and runs. And seeing that my CID is overstretched already with the wave of knife crime and your department is tooled up to take on serial killings, I have great pleasure in handing over to you.’

  He gave Palmer a false smile.

  ‘Have fun.’ And with that he was off.

  He didn’t get far. Palmer and Singh exchanged glances, then Palmer shouted loudly and in a superior voice after Longman:

  ​‘Just one minute, Chief Inspector!’

  ​Longman stopped and turned. Palmer’s face showed he was not amused.

  ‘You will have a full report of the other deaths and all the witness statements and attending officers’ notes through to my Sergeant tomorrow, won’t you.’

  It was a statement not a question. Longman realised he’d taken on the wrong person to be so abrupt with. He smiled a false smile to each of them.

>   ‘Yes, yes of course,’ he said, standing like a scolded schoolboy.

  Palmer shooed him away with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Good. Right then, off you go – we will take it from here.’

  ​Longman nodded and was gone, his tail between his legs. Palmer looked at Singh.

  ‘How do twats like that get to be Chief Inspectors, eh?’

  ​Singh diplomatically didn’t answer, noticing the smiles the uniformed officers at the cordon tape exchanged with each other as Longman left. She stooped over the mangled remains and looked at the moped’s wooden carrier box, now splintered on the road.

  ‘Why would anybody do this, guv? Longman’s got to be right on one thing though, I can’t believe there’s enough money in delivering takeaways to warrant killing people. The carrier box is empty, so he’d already delivered the meal. If the killer wanted to disrupt the business, surely he’d kill him before the delivery was made.’

  ​Palmer gave himself a small smile. Singh was already exploring the whys and wherefores and they hadn’t even seen the reports yet. He liked that approach.

  ​‘Now, now, Sergeant, let’s not run before we can walk, let’s get all the information and reports and take a good look before we go into the reasons – plenty of time for that tomorrow. Nothing we can do here. If you’ve got enough pictures we’ll call it a night. Come on.’

  They started to walk to the tape.

  ‘I don’t know about you but I’m starving – I had two mouthfuls of a Chinese meal when the call came. I expect it’s inside the dog now.’

  ​‘You can’t feed that to the dog, guv!’

  ​‘Oh, well it’s inside Mrs P. then. One thing’s for sure, she wouldn’t have thrown it away. Might even have taken it next door to Benji, she treats him like one of the family. How was your evening going?’

  ​‘We’d just sat down in an Italian place I’ve been meaning to try for ages. Just ordered.’

  ​‘That’s the nature of this job I’m afraid, who’s the lad, new boyfriend?’