The Phoenix Series Box Set 3 Page 14

  “In addition,” Zeus continued with a wry smile. “I have ordered one hundred overseas agents home to bolster the people we have available for the actions Phoenix is proposing. They have had little to do in the recent past, as their trouble-spot has become less volatile. Your second set of trainers can give them a swift refresher course before they hit the streets. What I insist on, Phoenix is that you warn me why, where and when you intend to strike. You will receive a green light on every occasion unless I’m aware of a bloody good reason it might be unwise.”

  “That’s no problem, Zeus,” said Phoenix. “You can expect my first call within seventy-two hours.”

  “We need a change of pace,” said Zeus, taking his seat at the head of the table, “this pro-active mood I’m in is exhausting. What news do you have for us on the four potential candidates we put forward at the last meeting, Athena?”

  Over the next hour, Athena took them through the reports that Minos and Alastor had compiled. Apollo arrived halfway through, fetched himself a coffee, and took his seat at the table. Zeus nodded to him, to acknowledge his presence. Apollo sat and listened as the discussions continued.

  When they concluded, it was agreed that the positives outweighed the negative.

  Ludovic Tremayne would assume the code name Achilles, with no reservations. Dawn Prentice’s name must drop from the list of possible candidates. They needed to uncover another candidate to take the guise of Aurora.

  As for Jean-Paul St Clair, and Piya Adani, they became Daedalus and Ambrosia going forward. However, Zeus, as expected, remained cautious over the character traits that had been exposed. He needed time to consider. Achilles would be invited to the next meeting in Manchester, in July. As for the other two, they would hold back their invitations, while Zeus, and Larcombe, continued to test their suitability.

  “What do you intend to do concerning the replacement for Dawn Prentice?” asked Phoenix.

  “I had other names to put forward,” said Zeus, “but I believed these four the best candidates. I won’t reconsider any of the ones I discarded. We can’t accept second-best. I’ll start a new search. We will carry on with either nine, or eleven Olympians until we find the right people.”

  “Well, I guess that’s it,” said Athena. “What a most positive meeting.”

  Apollo spoke for the first time.

  “I’m sorry for my late arrival. These family visits are necessary but stressful as you know. I hope someone can bring me up to speed with what happened before I got here?”

  Daedalus tapped Apollo’s sleeve.

  “When the others leave, stay with me, I’ll run you through everything.”

  “There is one low priority item I wished to raise,” said Apollo, “regarding rumours I picked up on my travels. I donate money to amateur boxing clubs across the country. I would never have been a world champion unless I had received the opportunity to learn the noble art. My troubled teenage years could have led me on a different path. The ex-boxers who took me under their wing gave me discipline, and respect both for my body, and for my opponents. They saved me. Now I use my wealth, here at Olympus, and to help save small regional clubs threatened with closure. I paid recent visits to gyms in Reading and Newbury. One name cropped up in both, which made me ask more questions. The name was Dean Laker. He’s said to be a nasty piece of work who is a serial stalker and abuser of young women. I want that confirmed, and if it is, that we teach this Laker a lesson. I understand this pales into insignificance, against the matters you’ve discussed today, but I would appreciate your help.”

  Athena looked at her husband. Phoenix nodded.

  “We may have just the people for the job, Apollo,” she said. “We’ll take on the task, and it won’t need any resources from Larcombe. Our man will find the proof.”

  “Thank you, Athena,” said Apollo. “That’s terrific.”

  Zeus looked around the table to see if any other business was forthcoming. He saw nothing, so he brought the meeting to a close.

  “Onwards to Manchester then,” he said, “and happy hunting between now and when we meet again.”

  After they said their goodbyes, Phoenix called their driver to come and collect them. He and Athena left the conference room. Apollo and Daedalus were deep in conversation. Zeus and Hera were chatting with Aphrodite and Heracles about their wedding plans.

  “We couldn’t have hoped for such a positive outcome from today,” said Athena.

  “Zeus surprised me,” said Phoenix. “We’ve got the go-ahead to strike at the heart of the Grid. We’ll prod the sleeping lion until he breaks cover. Then I plan to make sure he doesn’t live to see his dream of a nationwide crime syndicate come to fruition.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Wednesday, 30th April 2014

  Phil Hounsell struggled to find a good reason to be at work today. It wasn’t the weather. That was changeable, as opposed to the warm, dry spell they had experienced lately. He and Erica took the kids to the seaside at Burnham-on-Sea last weekend. They enjoyed twelve hours of sunshine, with little more than a breath of breeze. Perfect weather for wandering along the promenade, then sitting on the sea wall, eating fish and chips. The Hounsell family found simple pleasures often the most satisfying.

  No, it was the monotony of the jobs Hounsell Security Services received these days that squeezed the will to live out of him. The hunt for ‘mispers’ was time-consuming and largely fruitless. To confirm a poor wife’s husband was up to no good when he swore he was working late could be soul-destroying. It might pay his staff’s wages, but it wasn’t fulfilling.

  As he watched the grey clouds scudding across the skies, he longed for the thrill of the security jobs that came their way in the early days. Even though the treacherous Sixties pop singer Honey B almost cost him his life, Phil would have swapped a few days of excitement for the boredom their work schedule promised. He scanned the jobs he and his operatives needed to carry out on the whiteboard in front of his desk and gave a deep sigh.

  “Should I ask, boss?” asked Wayne, his senior colleague.

  “Don’t you find these jobs repetitive, Wayne?” said Phil.

  “We’re working, with no sign of things drying up,” shrugged Wayne, “so that’s a positive. Things can be repetitive, but that’s life, isn’t it? I go shopping every week at Sainsbury’s. When I grab hold of a trolley on a Friday evening, I can’t believe it’s been seven days since I did the same thing. I find myself analysing every one of my activities the same way. A rut is what your life slips into when you start getting older.”

  “Thanks, Wayne,” said Phil. “I hoped you might cheer me up, but you’ve made me more depressed than ever.”

  The office phone rang. Phil grabbed it. Praying for a lifeline.

  “Hounsell Security Services. Phil Hounsell speaking. How may we help you?”

  It was Hayden Vincent at Larcombe Manor. Olympus was calling. Maybe things were about to improve?

  “Good morning, Orion. We have a job for you. A name has been passed to us concerning a serious case of harassment. We need surveillance carried out. If you can confirm our informant’s suspicions, then please send your supporting evidence in whichever format you collect it, and we will take the matter forwards ourselves. That would end your involvement. If you agree to accept this mission, you will receive a full background report in the next hour, and payment on completion. What do you say?”

  “Yes, please,” replied Phil, trying not to sound too eager, “we’re not short of work, but variety always helps.”

  “Understood,” said Hayden.

  “Another job, boss?” asked Wayne.

  “Larcombe has someone being harassed in an aggressive manner that needs a helping hand. I haven’t learned much more yet, but my inbox will receive the full details before long.”

  “It might be tricky to carry out effective surveillance if this person is harassed in their workplace, boss. Unless it’s a business we could send one of our lads in to pick up a zero-hours contract fo
r the duration.”

  “Let’s not try to second-guess what we’re being asked to do Wayne,” said Phil. “All will be revealed in time.”

  The file Hayden Vincent promised soon arrived in Phil’s inbox. He downloaded it, printed out the relevant contents and he and Wayne browsed through the details for the next fifteen minutes.

  “Heck,” muttered Wayne, “this girl has been through the mill, hasn’t she?”

  Phil nodded. Stalking had been a contentious issue while he was a serving officer. More so in the early days, with the force more male-dominated than when he quit last summer. Only a tiny proportion of cases ever got recorded. Often the officers treated the woman involved as a nuisance, not a victim.

  Over the years, he noticed subtle changes. At Portishead, officers such as Angela Chambers, and Zara Wheeler, for example, proposed initiatives for more training for officers to recognise the crime. They wanted to give support to those that suffered from it.

  Things improved, but they had a long way to go yet, for the number of offences to reduce to any great degree. Only about half of the victims appeared to go to the police anyway. Which suggested they didn’t trust the authorities to take effective action. That was another issue that needed confronting.

  Sat on the other side of the fence, eight months later, he read of the nightmare this young woman was experiencing and understood the frustration she must feel. It was clear the police had been unhelpful.

  Olympus were alerted to her plight, and with the help of HSS, maybe her nightmare could end. How she coped in the aftermath, was a different matter. Phil wondered what support structures existed for victims of stalking, and aggressive harassment. He was ashamed to admit that he didn’t have a clue.

  “It looks as if Amy Grant was unlucky to find a lazy copper on duty when she plucked up the courage to report this Dean Laker at last, boss,” said Wayne, interrupting Phil’s reverie.

  “Amy reported the number of occasions she spotted Laker stalking her. Although I bet that was only a fraction of the times he lurked nearby,” said Phil. “As soon as she mentioned the online element, they told her not to check her e-mails so often. Or abandon the internet altogether. Not helpful, was it? I see they told her ‘to come back when he does something’.”

  “The law changed eighteen months ago,” said Wayne, “differentiating between stalking and harassment, didn’t it? Officers haven’t learned the difference yet, that’s obvious. The training is inadequate. Things can escalate into a real danger in a flash. I read somewhere that stalking’s the only crime where if someone is going to kill you they warn you first.”

  “It’s vital the right training is in place,” said Phil, “because many stalking cases will involve physical violence. A significant proportion of domestic homicides identified stalking as occurring in the lead-up to murder. Guys such as Dean Laker are often serial offenders, and Amy Grant may not have been the first, and she won’t be the last. The threat is always there, that violence levels will increase with each successive victim. Murder is the ultimate outcome.”

  Phil and Wayne worked on the details of the case and formulated a plan.

  Amy Grant was thirty-three years old. She had never married. She worked as a market researcher, in a busy office in the centre of Reading, Berkshire. The man accused of harassing Amy, was thirty-five-year-old, Dean Laker. He worked in advertising, in a role that didn’t need him to be face-to-face with the public. This raised a ‘red flag’ in Phil’s mind at once.

  Amy met him through an online dating site and at first, couldn’t believe her luck. Her friends were getting married, or in steady partnerships, but a five-year relationship ended months earlier. She was keen not to make the same mistakes again, and Dean Laker seemed different.

  Dean Laker lived in his own two-bedroomed maisonette. He was always well-dressed and insisted on picking up the bill when they went out. Laker was not how he appeared. Although warm and friendly at first, within weeks of meeting Amy, his jealous rages and controlling behaviour left her feeling trapped and isolated. When she plucked up the courage to stop seeing him, he bombarded her with texts and e-mails. He followed her time and again. Dean turned up outside the offices where she worked. Amy suffered anxiety and panic attacks. She relented, and the relationship with Laker had been continuing for the past few months.

  “We need more research on this Laker fellow,” said Wayne. “I’ll bet you a large, iced bun he’s got previous.”

  “More than likely,” Phil agreed, “you get started on that. I’ll carry on checking the stuff Larcombe sent.”

  Life had been so much simpler for him and Erica when they started dating, but times had changed so much in fifteen years. Couples found it more difficult finding partners. Thousands used online dating sites in the hunt for true love. Relationships defined people these days, many were socially isolated and relied on the relative anonymity the internet offers. When they went online a person could manufacture an identity that bore no relation to their reality and exploit it to their own ends.

  Phil read once more part of the statement Amy Grant made on her initial break-up with Laker.

  ‘Dean couldn’t accept the relationship was over and kept telling me how much he needed me. He pleaded for reconciliation and flew into a rage when I refused. I felt so embarrassed at yet another failed relationship, that he wore me down, and I agreed to see him again.’

  For Amy, alarm bells rang within weeks of her and Dean getting back together. Everything was sweetness and light, at first, and she was flattered by the attention. He showered her with gifts and wined and dined her even more than the first time. She slept at his place, often over the weekend and awoke one night to find him looking through her phone. Amy thought it rude and a touch weird but didn’t challenge him. Amy was still convinced that she had at last found her soul-mate.

  Only later did she discover Dean must have watched her entering her security passwords and realised he had been through her social media accounts and e-mails.

  In the past couple of weeks, he had become jealous of any online male friends and insisted she deleted their contacts. Laker became a Jekyll and Hyde character. One minute he was charming and attentive, the next threatening and intimidating. Because Amy was desperate to make the relationship work, she kept making excuses for his behaviour.

  Phil was aware recent statistics showed one in five couples now meet online. Why would Amy Grant; an attractive, intelligent professional woman, and a good judge of people by day, all of a sudden reason flies out of the window when picking a partner, and accept such crass behaviour?

  Phil supposed it was because everyone is extra-vulnerable when looking for love. If you have met someone through an online dating agency, you’ve revealed yourself as available. You’ve given away personal information you might well hold back until you talked to them face-to-face several times.

  These profiles people filled in on-line had much to answer for, Phil thought. Unless girls such as Amy limited how much of themselves they showed ‘up-front’, then they risked being exposed to exploitation by a serial offender looking for a victim to control.

  Amy Grant’s experience might have been far worse if someone from the predatory sex offender category had seen her online profile. What she had gone through so far at the hands of Dean Laker disgusted Phil. Whatever retribution Olympus planned for him was his just desserts.

  Wayne didn’t take long to return with information on what they sought.

  “Just as we suspected, boss,” he said, “I Googled him and found his previous convictions straightaway. They got reported in his local newspaper. Laker moved to Reading from Newbury two years before he met Amy Grant. In fact, he was a serial stalker with a criminal record for harassment and violence against a former partner. For terrorising an ex-girlfriend, Dean Laker received an indefinite restraining order preventing him from contacting her. He received a three-month prison sentence, suspended for two years. That period had since run out. His profile was listed on thre
e separate dating websites, even while dating Amy Grant. It’s obvious he had every intention of carrying on in the same manner.”

  Wayne’s investigations revealed a catalogue of crimes going back a decade. They showed Laker had served a prison sentence for harassing and assaulting an ex-girlfriend seven years earlier. His last partner, Tina Fowler, before he moved to Reading, confronted him over a newspaper report about his earlier trial. She too carried out a simple online search and uncovered the real Dean Laker.

  Dean Laker was not the charming, presentable young man she had been attracted to, but a sad loser who preyed on unwitting, defenceless females. Laker tried to explain the news report away; he maintained it wasn’t how it looked. Tina told him they were finished. That only antagonised Laker further and he began stalking her in earnest.

  He hounded his ex-partner for weeks. He demanded the return of presents he had given her and turned up at the shop where she worked to intimidate her. Tina was forced to change her phone number and went home to her parents to escape the hassle. In desperation, she plucked up the courage to report him to the police for harassment. Laker was arrested.

  “Stalking has become a serious crime,” said Phil. “It’s to do with obsession and fixation. Serial offenders steal peoples’ lives.”

  “You’ve only got to see what these girls have experienced,” continued Wayne. “Celebrities who are stalked are likely to get help and protection because of who they are. It must be harder to convince the authorities when you are being stalked by someone with whom you’ve been in a relationship. It sounds so feeble when a girl goes to the police and says she’s received a dozen long-stemmed red roses. Then tells them an ex-boyfriend met her outside her workplace and said they still loved her. Unless you record every single instance of e-mails, text messages, and surprise gifts, then it’s difficult to convey the relentlessness with which a stalker pursues their victim.”

  “What do you think we need to do, Wayne?” asked Phil.