TURKISH DELIGHT by Barry Faulkner (learn to read activity book .txt) 📕

had stormed out. The whole Turkish community of the area looked for her but nothing doing. I got the lad’s name from Mehmet, checked DVLA and got a registration number and made a couple of calls to people I knew in the Met; we had the car found outside a B&B in Greenwich and the couple inside. I paid them a visit and persuaded the boy he’d rather face Mehmet than me when he refused to take the girl back; amazing what an index finger bent back to the point of breaking from the knuckle can do to change a person’s mind. Yes, I know I’m cruel, but come on – the girl was just fourteen; it might be legal in Turkey, but it certainly isn’t in the Borough. I took them back and haven’t paid for a takeaway since. I would go more often, but I find it embarrassing. I see the daughter around now and again, she always smiles in a friendly way, behind the smile maybe a yearning to plunge a knife in my back; as for the boy I have no idea what happened to him, but the doner kebabs tasted better after that. I joke! I hope.

I picked up the meal, put a tenner on the counter, hurried out before Mehmet could pick it up and catch me and made my way back to the office.

Gold had got the other pages laid out on the desk.

‘Some very interesting stuff here.’ She picked up a page.

‘Wait, food first.’ I was starving, and I didn’t want bits of kebab and salad on the pages. Eating a doner kebab full to the brim is an art – if you manage without some salad spilling out, you are a kebab pro. I never could, so I made more coffee for us both – coffee and kebabs, a perfect marriage – and we sat away from the desk and enjoyed our meal.

I picked up the wrappers when we’d finished, put them in the trash bin and we both washed our hands.

‘Okay, let me tell you what I’ve found out about our lady.’ I told Gold what Mehmet had told me as we dried our hands. ‘So we have a name to go on, Serife Aydin, and we know she’s a top peg in the Turkish military. I’ll get digging on her tomorrow. What have you got from the other papers?’

‘Murder, mayhem and financial investments moving around the world – all associated with arms dealing.’

‘Sounds interesting.’ I settled back to listen.

Gold took a long breath and began. ‘Okay, the obituaries are all of top business people: three men and one lady, high flyers in big UK and international companies. Their deaths were all in the last six year period and they were all late middle age or older, so none of the deaths were flagged up as suspicious.’ She pointed out the papers one by one. ‘Herbert Langford, CEO of First Security, an international company with interests varying from mining in Africa to helicopter gun ship component manufacturing. Julian Hastings, MD of DPL, a London-based small arms manufacturer with government supply contracts worldwide, including the Middle East. Sir Randolph Roberts, owner of Mercandle Enterprises, ammunition suppliers including grenades and air-to-earth missiles; and Estelle Barniere, CEO of Euro Systemes in France, a conglomerate working in the air-space defence area.’ She paused and looked up. ‘Get the gist?’

‘Yes, I don’t think any of them would be in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize.’

‘Not a chance – all those companies are in the top ten of arms and weapons suppliers worldwide. Anyway, over the six years covering their deaths each of the companies they worked for had their public shares gradually bought up by a shell company in the Caymans called, and you’ll love this...’

‘Go on?’

‘Rambart-Reynolds International.’

It took me a few seconds to get the connection: Nicholas Rambart and my client Jameson Reynolds – the same Jameson Reynolds who told me he didn’t know anything about the Rambarts. He was part of the armaments smuggling, and a big part at that. So just what game was he playing?

‘You’re kidding me?’

‘I’m not – that company now has financial control of those companies; and, listen to this, as leading shareholders they replaced the dead executives with people from Rambart-Reynolds International, and over a period of time with their majority share holdings were able to elect more of their people onto the various boards.’

‘Sounds like they have a pretty good foothold in the armaments market.’

‘If you combine the turnover of those companies, only BASF is bigger in the weapons market.’

‘If I was the CEO of BASF I’d be worried.’

‘And quite right to be – not all those bosses died in their beds. Julian Hastings fell from the twentieth floor balcony whilst on holiday in Barcelona with a belly full of whisky, and Herbert Langford had a skiing holiday accident – went off piste and down the side of the mountain. Ringing any bells?’

‘Eve Rambart’s previous husbands.’

‘Correct.’

‘So she must have been part of the plan at that time.’

‘Yes. So who killed her, and why?’

‘Got to be Nicholas Rambart – her body was taken to his warehouse, probably to be dropped into a vat of acid or cremated on a bonfire; and after all he’s the one who offered a million to me to kill her.’

‘Don’t you think it strange you haven’t heard from him at all?’

I hadn’t really thought about it like that; I just thought I’d better keep out of his way for a while after the warehouse break-in and his wife’s murder at the apartment. ‘Strange in what way?’

‘Maybe he’s dead – maybe the lady Serife Aydin is knocking them off and the Turks are taking over? They would have lost quite a few millions in the ship going down and God knows how much when their