FF 07 Creature Discomforts Read online

  Creature Discomforts

  (The seventh case from ‘The Freeman Files’ series)

  By

  Ted Tayler

  Copyright © 2020 by Ted Tayler

  This ebook is licensed for your enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please buy an additional copy for each recipient.

  All rights are reserved. You may not reproduce this work, in part or its entirety, without the express written permission of the author.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: - www.thecovercollection.com

  A Harmsworth House publication 2020

  Other books by Ted Tayler

  We’d Like To Do A Number Now (2011)

  The Final Straw (2013)

  A Sting In The Tale (2013)

  Unfinished Business (2014)

  The Olympus Project (2014)

  Gold, Silver, and Bombs (2015)

  Conception (2015)

  Nothing Is Ever Forever (2015)

  In The Lap of The Gods (2016)

  The Price of Treachery (2016)

  A New Dawn (2017)

  Something Wicked Draws Near (2017)

  Evil Always Finds A Way (2017)

  Revenge Comes in Many Colours (2017)

  Three Weeks in September (2018)

  A Frequent Peal Of Bells (2018)

  Larcombe Manor (2018)

  Fatal Decision (2019)

  Last Orders (2020)

  Pressure Point (2020)

  Deadly Formula (2020)

  Final Deal (2020)

  Barking Mad (2020)

  Creature Discomforts (2020)

  Silent Terror (2020)

  Where to find him

  Website & Blog: – http://tedtayler.co.uk

  Facebook Author Page: – https://facebook.com/AuthorTedTayler

  Twitter: – https://twitter.com/ted_tayler

  Instagram: - https://instagram.com/tedtayler1775

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  Table Of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  About The Author

  PROLOGUE

  Sunday, 25th May 2014

  Grant Burnside rarely got out of bed before ten o’clock in the morning.

  There was no rush. He had people at his beck and call that rushed around for him.

  His long-suffering wife, Maggie, looked after everything at home, and their son, Gary, was supposed to keep a watchful eye on everything else.

  Youngsters today didn’t have the same attention to detail as those Grant knew as a boy. That was why he had to roll out of bed a few minutes after seven. On a Sunday, of all days. Sunday was a day of rest. In Grant Burnside’s world, it was just another day of the week.

  The head of the Burnside clan had recently reached sixty-five years of age. He had spent every day since his teens on the wrong side of the law, and his body bore the evidence to prove it.

  His hands were like dinner plates and were scarred and lumpy.

  “I’ll never play the piano again,” he used to tell Maggie.

  His wife smiled every time. She knew what to expect if she didn’t.

  Grant’s hands showed the damage they’d caused over the years every bit as much as the pain they’d suffered. The gangster stood a smidgen under six foot tall and was solid with it. He reminded his colleagues of a prizefighter. They saw him as the bloke who came out of the crowd at a funfair to challenge the ex-professional in the boxing booth and knocked seven bells out of him. The word ‘hard’ didn’t cover it.

  No way would Grant Burnside ever get caught in a gym working out.

  “That’s for nancy boys,” he’d tell his sons.

  Grant kept fit by grafting at home and taking a rare labouring job off the books.

  In summer months, he stripped to the waist when doing any manual labour. Nobody queried the three wounds on his torso: two bullet wounds and one stab wound.

  Everyone who met one of the Burnside family knew better than to ask.

  It was wise never to answer questions about them in case word reached their ears. The punishments for crossing the Burnsides were the stuff of legend in Swindon and the surrounding towns and villages.

  Perhaps inevitably a life defined by violence should end in bloodshed.

  Someone planned to put an end to Grant Burnside’s life on this sunny Sunday morning

  When he got out of bed, Grant Burnside didn’t know it was for the last time.

  On the other side of Swindon, Howard Todd was frightened. He’d left home not long after it got light and threaded his way through the empty streets on the Park South estate. Todd checked every corner to see that nobody lay in wait. He glanced over his shoulder every few seconds to see if he could spot his pursuers.

  Todd paused in the doorway of a newsagent. The Sunday newspapers lay by the door in bundles, waiting for someone to arrive to fill the empty spaces in the rack behind him. His sister lived nearby, although it had been a while since he’d visited her and he wasn’t sure of the quickest way to get there from here.

  Todd set off after checking in both directions once more. If he was right and this next left turning took him onto Mandy’s street, then less than four hundred yards separated him from the shelter of her terraced home. He could hide there until night time and persuade Mandy to drive him to Oxford. There was no way he’d survive another twenty-four hours on the streets of Swindon.

  The red-brick walls of the narrow alleyway stretched skywards on both sides. Todd whipped his head around when he heard the scrape of a boot against pavement way behind. Had someone spotted him? He hurried further along the alleyway to escape, and when he saw what awaited him, his heart sank.

  The row of houses on either side had access to the main road he’d just left for their wheelie bins, bicycles, and tools. There was a twelve-foot red-brick wall with broken glass embedded in the top separating these houses from the gardens of the terraced properties on the street he was desperate to reach.

  This alleyway was a dead-end.

  Howard Todd swallowed hard. Why couldn’t they have called it something else?

  He ran at the wall, jumped, and scrambled up as far as possible. It was useless. His eyes darted left and right. There was nothing to use as a weapon. His only hope was to drag a bin from the nearest house and risk having his arms and legs torn to shreds scaling that wall.

  It was preferable to what was in store if he got caught.

  If only he’d taken the next left turning. His whole life was about making the wrong choices. Howard Todd used to consider the men after him as his friends. They weren’t his friends any more. He’d crossed the line.

  For the past eight months, Todd had skimmed a tiny percentage from every contract he’d handled for the Burnside gang. He realised it was stupid, but he wanted the money it brought to finance business of his own. Nobody made a fortune working for someone else.

  Todd dreamed of a future at the head of his own drug dealing business. At this very moment, he just wanted to see
tomorrow. The heavy footsteps grew closer. As Todd wrestled with the locked garden gates on the nearest properties, he tried to decide how many of Grant Burnside’s thugs there were. Was it two or three? He gave up struggling with the locks and darted across the alleyway to try his luck with the houses on the other side.

  Todd didn’t dare look back down the alleyway. His ears told him the three men had stopped running. They were walking steadily towards him. He was going nowhere.

  “Well, well, Sly Todd. You seem to have taken a wrong turn. What a pity. You were so close to getting away from us, too.”

  Gary Burnside himself was at the front of the muscular trio.

  “Don’t make him feel too bad, Gary,” said Denver Drewett. “We’ve got someone watching Mandy’s place. Toddy wouldn’t get away from us this time.”

  Howard Todd looked at the three men blocking the alleyway.

  Burnside and Drewett had Vic Hodge riding shotgun. He was another enforcer that Grant Burnside had on his books. All brawn and no brain. Todd knew his options were limited. He could stand still until they made a move on him, or he could fight.

  What was he thinking? Three against one. Each of them twice as big as he was and well-accustomed to a street fight. His only chance was to run. Vic Hodge was too slow to catch a cold. If he could get past him, he might just find a way out.

  Howard Todd yelled at the top of his lungs, lowered his head, and ran straight at the lumbering giant. Vic Hodge wasn’t used to people running towards him. He was puzzled and wondered what to do next.

  As Todd hit Hodge squarely in the gut, the big man stumbled back into the red-brick wall. Todd was almost past Hodge and ready to run for his life. Neither of those three thugs would catch him in a foot race with a few yards head start.

  Gary Burnside had spotted Todd eying the numbskull on his right. He calmly allowed the leather cosh to slide into the palm of his hand from his jacket sleeve. As Todd tried to barge through the human barrier, Gary struck Todd twice, once with a straight jab to the kidney and then with a savage blow to the back of the head.

  Howard Todd fell against the alleyway wall, and his legs buckled. He sprawled headfirst onto the tarmac, and the lights went out.

  “You okay, Vic,” asked Gary.

  “Yeah, sorry, he surprised me.”

  Gary waved the cosh under Vic’s nose before slipping it into an inside jacket pocket.

  “Don’t let it happen again, Vic, eh?”

  Hodge and Drewett dragged the unconscious Howard Todd to the end of the alleyway. Gary Burnside made a call, and a Mercedes van pulled alongside the four men within minutes. They bundled Todd in the back, got inside, and the van drove away.

  The streets of the Park South estate were still empty. While the thugs were dealing with Howard Todd at the alleyway entrance, the odd dog walker and newsagent’s staff member strolled or cycled past, but nobody said a word. They well knew the Mercedes van across the town.

  Drewett and Hodge sat in the back with their prisoner, while Gary sat in the cab with the driver.

  “You took your time, son,” said Grant Burnside. “at least me getting out of bed at this ungodly hour hasn’t been a waste of time.”

  After a ten-minute drive, Grant brought the van to a halt outside a row of commercial units on the Cheney Manor Industrial Estate. Gary jumped out and went inside. Grant watched the roller door sliding up to give them access in his rear-view mirror. He reversed inside and killed the engine.

  “Nice and quiet out here this morning,” said Grant. “We won’t get disturbed. Why don’t you let the lads have fun while we get ourselves a mug of tea? Nothing permanent, you understand.”

  “Okay, Dad,” said Gary. He opened the rear doors and Drewett, and Hodge frogmarched Howard Todd inside the unit. Gary closed the roller door.

  “There’s plenty of heavy-duty plastic sheeting over there in the corner,” he told the lads, “don’t get the floor dirty. The boss said you could take the first crack. To get him used to real pain. It might make what’s coming not so hard to bear.”

  Howard Todd’s head was clearing. They must have bound him, hand, and foot, inside the Mercedes. Hodge held him upright while Drewett laid light blue sheeting on the floor in the centre of the unit. Todd wondered why.

  Hodge shoved him to the ground. Todd fell face first and knew his nose had broken from the first jolt of pain. He soon forgot his nose as Drewett and Hodge took it in turns to kick and punch him. After several minutes, he was so dazed and numb that he could only lie watching the light blue sheeting turning red. Todd blacked out again.

  “A nice cuppa that was,” said Grant Burnside, smacking his lips. “No biscuits, though, what a pity. Right, the lads have had their fun. Let’s get in there and see what’s what.”

  When Howard Todd awoke for the second time, he found himself sat on a chair. His ankles firmly secured to the front legs and his hands still tied behind his back. His eyes were closed, but he could just make out the person walking towards him when he raised his head.

  Grant strolled across to where Howard Todd sat. The gangster’s sheer presence filled the room. A fluorescent tube flickered above Todd’s head. The frightened man shrank back in the chair as if to give Grant Burnside room to breathe.

  “Welcome back, Howard,” said Grant. “You led us a merry dance. Fair play to you. I don’t know why you wore yourself out running though because we were always going to catch up with you, eventually. I can’t abide employees who think they can steal from their bosses and get away with it. You got paid well for the work you were doing. Let me ask you something. One hundred and eleven? Does that number mean anything to you, Toddy?”

  Howard tried to speak but could only cough as pain racked his bruised and battered body.

  “That was the number of occasions when you profited from a score that should have come to me. I ask you—over one hundred times in just eight months. I wasn’t great at school, but even I could work out you cheated me every other bleeding day. What possessed you? Somebody was bound to notice.”

  Todd sensed another person edging closer to him from his left.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Gary whispered in his ear, “maybe this will help.”

  Todd heard a swishing sound through the air. The next sound he heard was someone screaming. It was him.

  Gary had smashed his left knee with a baseball bat. The pain was excruciating.

  “You know what happens to people who cross us,” said Gary. “Aren’t you going to beg for your life, you ungrateful little worm.”

  Todd was ready for the next blow. He groaned, bit his tongue and tried everything to stop himself caving in as the baseball bat crunched into his right knee.

  “I fear my running days may be over,” he growled, as blood seeped from his mouth and a red bubble of snot escaped his nose.

  Grant Burnside elbowed Gary out of the way.

  “That’s enough, Gary,” he snarled. “I want him to pay for every single one of those one hundred and eleven missing bags. He hasn’t got enough body parts to even the score. Fetch me more plastic sheeting and the tools.”

  Howard Todd realised that things were going to get deadly serious.

  He managed a dry laugh at his ludicrous thought.

  “Oh, you think it’s funny, do you?” snarled Gary.

  Todd raised his head to stare into the eyes of his tormentor.

  “You’ll never be more than a pawn while the king is still in the game. Don’t you get fed up with taking orders from him day after day? At least I tried to break the shackles to run a business I could call my own.”

  “Yeah,” scoffed Gary, “and look how well that’s turned out for you.”

  Dumb and Dumber had finished spreading extra plastic sheeting around the chair, and Grant Burnside had everything he required at his disposal.

  Howard Todd looked at the bolt cutters, nail-gun, and machete lined up ready for action.

  He shrugged his shoulders and resigned himself to his fate.
r />   “Get on with it,” he said. “You can’t blame a bloke for trying.”

  CHAPTER 1

  The Mercedes van drove out of the warehouse one hour later. Denver Drewett and Vic Hodge stayed behind to carry out the clean-up. Gary Burnside and his father had a delivery to make. The mortal remains of Howard Todd were on their way to a farm near Blunsdon. Grant took the A419 road towards Cricklade and turned off onto the minor road that led to the farm.

  Thirty-five minutes later, they parked outside an outbuilding. It was a trip they had made frequently in the past when someone stepped out of line, and an example made. Fergus McHugh’s family had farmed here for three generations. Although pig farming had provided a significant contribution of the family income for many decades, Fergus had accepted the inevitability of the need to diversify.

  Grant Burnside had bumped into Fergus McHugh in a pub in Purton four years ago. He remembered the conversation very well. Grant had always lived in town, so his impression of pigs was false. He thought they were filthy animals, and Grant stood further along the bar from Fergus to avoid the stench. The farmer had told him pigs were the cleanest animals in the farmyard. They wallowed in mud to cool themselves because they didn’t have sweat glands.

  Grant asked Fergus how he felt about slaughtering a proportion of his stock every winter. The elderly farmer had shrugged and replied that it was merely a part of pig farming. Because it was vital, his father had reduced the disposal of things with zero marketable value to a fine art. Fergus had adopted the same system when he inherited the farm after his father died.

  Grant thought this disposal system sounded promising and bought Fergus another pint. He moved closer and invited Fergus to tell him more.

  “Lye is a corrosive alkali found in household cleaners,” the farmer told him. “Most people realise acids are caustic, but few realise that their chemical opposites can be just as destructive. Lye’s toxicity at the highest can be super toxic.”