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

made one mistake: she targeted one of my top clients, and I quickly sussed her out and stepped in. We recognised each other and became good friends and sort of business partners; she had skills in the cyber world of IT and the dark web, whilst I could present a pretty hard face to any of her victims who got nasty. As a reliable back-up, she’s second to none – I wouldn’t want anybody else.

‘Yeah,’ she answered my call – her mobile would show me as the caller. She was a lady of few words.

‘You busy?’

 ‘Waiting for a mark.’

‘I’m going to text you a name to do some digging on.’

‘Okay, why?’

‘She’s offered me a job.’

‘Take it. Rent to pay, food to buy – take it. How much?’

 ‘A million.’

 ‘A million pounds?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who is the victim?’

 ‘Her husband. How do you know it’s a hit job?’

 ‘A million quid? Bit over the top for a marital bust up, isn’t it? Bit over the top for a hit too.’

‘I thought that.’

She laughed. ‘Tell me more.’

 ‘Nothing more to tell. Do some digging and come round the office tomorrow afternoon and I’ll fill in the gaps.’

  I texted Eve Rambart’s name to Gold and shut the phone. You never know who’s got a tap on your phone, so I never say more than I need to. When I’m on a job I use burners and dump them pretty regularly – costs me a fortune, but keeps me safe from hackers. The society and showbiz page journos of the tabloids and internet entertainment websites know I’m the number one call for celebs and high-flyers who stray over the line and need things kept quiet and covered up, so I’d be their top target for a phone hack. And despite the News of The World court cases, don’t think that has changed a thing – it hasn’t.

 

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‘So what’s the job?’

‘What have you found out?’

Gold sat opposite me at my desk the next day. I’d spent the morning smuggling a wealthy client’s dipstick son out of a rehab clinic by the back door and driving him home to their Weybridge Mansion – second time I’d done it for this kid, and no doubt in my mind that the first offer he got of a coke tab would roll him off the wagon and back into his dealer’s arms. It always did. I told my client a couple of heavies paying a visit to the boy’s dealer would have the problem solved at half the cost of a month’s rehab fee – at least it would solve the problem until another dealer tried his luck, which he would. County lines have an inexhaustible supply of care home kids willing to get out of the system with the money they can make dealing in towns and cities where their faces aren’t known.

‘Eve Rambart is trouble, Ben.’ Gold shot me a look that said ‘stay away from this one’. ‘She’s on her third husband, Nicholas Rambart. Numbers one and two had accidents – lethal accidents. Number one went over the edge whilst skiing in France and fell four hundred feet down a ravine; number two had a stomach full of whisky and fell from a balcony twenty storeys up in Barcelona. Eve was with them at the time, although on both days she had alibis that placed her far enough away from the actual scene so as not to be noted as a suspect.’

‘Perhaps she hired people to do the deed for her. Maybe that’s what she’s wanting to do with us. Local police raise any suspicions?’

‘No, local courts and coroner gave accidental death verdicts in both cases. She did rather well though, both husbands were rich – honest riches. Businessmen with seats on various top company Boards and major share holders in all of them; both were in the Forbes top earners list. It all went to Eve each time. She’s a multi-millionaire Ben. What’s she doing hiring a hit man?’

‘I don’t know – with that money I would think she’d hire a lawyer to get rid of a husband.’

‘Lawyers cost more than hiring you. Perhaps she’s trying to do it on the cheap?’ Gold laughed.

‘What’s her background?’

‘Sketchy. She seems to have arrived on the elite social scene out of the blue. No family history of money – in fact, no family history at all. One minute she’s nowhere to be seen, and then within a year she’s at all the big social affairs with husband number one and becomes a paparazzi target.’

‘Why?’

Gold laughed. ‘You saw her, Ben. Is a paper going to pay a paparazzi more for some washed up minor reality show celeb getting out of a cab at a night club showing her knickers or Eve Rambart in a Stella McCartney one off and half of Cartier’s window display draped around her neck and wrists?’

She was right of course.

‘Okay, you keep on her tail. I take it you found out where she lives?’

‘Knightsbridge, she’s got a rental apartment over one of the shops. Expensive.’

‘You think she knocks off her husbands for the money? Do you think that’s what she’s after this time?’

‘Could be, two husbands having accidental deaths are just about believable – but three? I think that might raise a few flags with the law, so she might be looking for this one to be murdered by person or persons unknown. Or, she might be setting you up.’

‘Setting me up?’

‘You do the hit and she points the finger at you, takes the heat off any investigation into her and the two previous.’

I could see the sense in Gold’s answer. ‘Okay, keep an eye on her Knightsbridge place, see who comes and goes. I’ll see what I can