On Monday morning, a Transit van was outside, it was loaded with boxes of files retrieved from various locations following the raid on the farm. There was no way it would all fit in the bedroom they used as an office. Dave opened up the garage, the boxes were stacked by location, the farm, Peter Farrell’s home, and finally his office. Once they were all in and counted, he signed the paperwork and the driver was gone. Thinking where to start, he decided the files from the farm would be the best place, once he and Sally had sorted through those boxes, everything else should be connected back to that. He took the eight boxes from the farm upstairs. The first task was to put everything into date order, it didn’t look like anyone had gone through the boxes, nothing had been sorted. He started checking dates on paperwork, by the time he had finished, the desks were covered, there were piles on the landing and in the spare bedroom, this wasn’t going to work. Phoning Jane Goodley, he said the amount of paperwork was too much for him to work on from home. “I need somewhere nearby that is secure and two more people to help, not field workers, people who are good with paperwork, I will train them in what to look for.” Two hours later she phoned back, “I have secured the top floor in a local government building, it has a large unused office and several smaller offices, can you look at it today and see if it is suitable?” She gave him the address, it was in Leicester, he drove over as soon as the call was finished. The building was two storey, modern, on the ground floor was an HMRC local tax office in the process of winding down, at one time they had occupied the building fully, now they were reducing staff on a monthly basis. Dave was shown upstairs, he looked round, the main room had at one time been a call centre. He called Jane Goodley, “This will do fine, I need a joiner here today or tomorrow morning to fit a decent door, with locks, into this area, the one here now could be forced by leaning on it. I would like the files you had delivered this morning, collecting and brought here, two men to lift and move desks would also be helpful, arrange them for tomorrow morning please, I’m not sure if we can piggyback on the HMRC network to access the internet, I’ll leave that for you to fix. Finally, four computers, a printer and a router, if you have an IT guy available, send him as well.” “Your two operatives should arrive in the morning,” “I will be here from 08:30.”
When he arrived back home, Sally was in the kitchen, “it looks a right mess upstairs, you can’t leave all that shit there.” “It will be gone tomorrow, we have offices in Leicester until we have sorted out the paperwork.” She asked where, Dave gave her the location, “I have to be there by 08:30 tomorrow, do you want to come, Jane is sending two people up to assist us, the garage is full with boxes as well?” Sally said she would be there, “I want to see who they send, I don’t want some young girl trying to seduce you.” That evening, Dave tried to keep as much of the paperwork in date order as he boxed it up ready for the morning. He was up at 07:00, Sally about ten minutes later, she was straight into the shower, when she came out, there were two mugs of coffee sitting on the bedside tables. They swapped over, with Dave showering as Sally dressed. Breakfast was eaten as they got ready, they were out the house by 07:45. It was quiet on the back roads into Leicester, they hit the traffic as soon as they were on the main roads. It was 08:40 when he pulled up outside the offices, he saw a joiner’s van and two men waiting, Dave apologised for being late. He showed them the door which had to be replaced. “Two hours mate, we will be gone by 11:00.” Sally looked through the cupboards in the upstairs kitchen, she found cups and a kettle, but no coffee, she said she would be back in half an hour. Returning with a Sainsbury’s carrier bag, inside was teabags, coffee, milk and several packets of biscuits. The new door was hanging, the locks were being fitted, a Mercedes Sprinter van was outside, Dave was upstairs with the three men from the van, he was directing where he wanted the desks, he asked two of them to go with Sally over to the house to pick up all the boxes. “Bring a Glock with a shoulder holster, put it in my backpack, just in case.” It was two hours before she was back, the van was laden, the three men set to work carrying the boxes up the stairs. Dave had the ones he had sorted yesterday put in the large office, the others were piled up in one of the spare offices. At 13:00, a man and a woman, both in their late twenties came looking for Dave, they asked Sally which one of the four men he was. “The one with the short hair and broad shoulders.” She wanted to know who they were, “we’ve been sent up here to help sort out paperwork.” Sally shouted Dave to come across, “your two assistants,” he introduced himself and then Sally, the two were Mark Thompson and Grace Daniels. Dave led them into an office closing the door so no one would hear, there were two desks, he said for them to sit down, he remained standing. “How much have you been told?” It was Grace who spoke, “very little, only that there was a mountain of paperwork from a job which needed to be sorted and to see what information it contained.” He gave them a brief outline of the material retrieved and what he hoped to achieve, “none of it will make much sense at the beginning, but hopefully as the days go on, we can make connections.” They explained they were analysts, used to working on documents. Both had joined MI5 directly from university, they had been working in the Analysis Section for five years. Dave wanted to know if they were a couple, this time it was Mark who answered, “no, we work together, but we aren’t in a relationship.” He explained he and Sally lived and worked together. Sally knocked and entered, “the IT guy is here, where do you want the computers?” Dave said for Mark and Grace to make themselves a coffee while he sorted out the IT equipment. Sally went to speak to the new arrivals, “his mind works on a different level, he will be talking to you about one thing and he will be thinking three steps ahead, if you do as he says, you will be fine. He will want you to think, not just input information. If you think you have found a link or something interesting, tell him, it doesn’t matter if it appears stupid, he will store it and possibly link it to something else later. It’s what he does.” It didn’t take long to set up the computers, Dave had forgotten to ask for a scanner, fortunately there was one on the van the IT guy arrived in. Everything was setup, they had to use the existing internet connection in the building for now, it would be sorted later in the week.
Once everyone had gone, it was late in the afternoon, the four of them were in the main office. “OK, a few rules before we start work. You tell no one downstairs what we are doing, if they ask, say it is classified. Never leave the main door unlocked if you are the only one here, not even to go out to the snack wagon when it comes in the mornings. Always lock the door. There won’t be any visitors unless I have said someone is coming, if reception buzz and say there is someone here to see us, lock the door and call me. Lastly, there is no dress code, wear clothes you are comfortable in.” He then explained what he had been doing yesterday, “in these boxes is the paperwork recovered from the farm, I started sorting it out by date, however it proved too much for our office, I want to do that now, Sally will write ‘month and year’ on sheets of A4, starting from now and working back, use all the desks around the room to lay everything out, if it hasn’t got a date, put it on a separate desk to be looked at later. Don’t try to work anything out now, we will start with that in the morning. Once we have finished, that will be it for today, we will start again at 09:00 tomorrow. He gave each of them a key for the door and kept the third one for himself. By 17:00 they had finished, rooms had been booked for them at a nearby hotel until Friday morning and for the following week. On the way home, Sally said she had warned them about him, “I told them how you work, I think they had been briefed beforehand.”
Dave was there at 08:45 the next day, Mark and Grace arrived five minutes later. They were both dressed less formally, the first thing he did was to make coffee for the three of them. “Help yourself whenever you want to, I have put £50 in a glass for when the snack wagon comes round, don’t spend your own money, I will claim it on expenses. OK, what I want you to do is to start with the most recent months, and then work backwards, can one of you create a master spreadsheet, I want to put any names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and the subject of the message so we can cross reference the entries, I’m looking for anything that you think might be interesting. When you have entered something, use a highlighter to indicate what you have entered, pass the papers for me to double check, we are also looking for codewords, right, let’s get started.” Grace created the spreadsheet while Dave and Mark went through the first month, he understood why Jane Goodley had said it was a huge job. By the end of the first day, they had covered two months, Grace and Mark swapped roles every couple of hours to keep them fresh, Dave had sat checking their work. Sally could tell by his eyes he had been looking at paperwork all day, she found a facecloth, soaked it in cool water and said for Dave to tilt his head back, she rolled the cloth up, and placed it over his closed eyes. “Stay like that until I have cooked dinner, then you can take it off.” An hour later, his eyes looked better, she asked how it had gone. “Slowly, they are good, but there is so much information, would you come in on Friday to look over what we have found?” She said she would. Thursday went much better, there was now six months of data on the spreadsheet. On Friday, Grace copied the information, Sally sat at one of the other computers, she started with phone numbers, the same ones appeared frequently, she asked to see the actual sheets for one particular phone number, all work was stopped while the info Sally wanted was retrieved. She used a spare desk to lay out all the sheets, it took her an hour to make the connections. “Dave, I think I’ve got it,” they all moved to see what had been discovered. The three of them moved to the desk Sally was using. “This is the phone number of the buyer/dealer, I think the next one is their initials, then the drugs they want to buy, ‘HE’, ‘CO’ or ‘E’, heroin, cocaine and ecstasy, the quantity and the price. His whole dealer network is here, this paper is from one of those duplicate books used by small traders to write out invoices. The book must be kept somewhere else when it has been filled.” “That must be how Farrell kept a check on what was being sold.” He kissed Sally on the top of her head. “Thank you for that. Mark, print out the spreadsheet, log onto your office and find out if any of the phone numbers are traceable.” “I can’t do that, I don’t have authorisation.” Dave phoned Jane Goodley, “can you give my two operatives authorisation to check phone numbers please?” “It will take around thirty minutes, I will email you when it has been done.” They stopped for coffee while waiting, Mark said now they knew what they were looking for it should speed things up, Dave asked Grace to total up the drug quantities by type and the amount paid for each month they had done so far, it would give a rough total of the amount being sold and the money coming in. Mark checked when he had finished his coffee, he could now access the phone numbers, as Dave suspected every one was a burner phone, he knew there must be a list somewhere, but where, he didn’t know.
Picking up his phone he called Jane Goodley, “I want to see Ronald Jeffries, can you find out where he is then arrange a meeting, Tuesday would be good for me. I want to use a false ID, use Paul Jarvis as a name.” An email arrived giving him the address of Liverpool Prison, the time was 09:30. Before they left for London, he spoke to Mark and Grace, he thanked them for the effort they had put in. “Next week we should make good progress, hopefully on Tuesday, I will have more information, I won’t be here, but Sally will be across some time in the morning. Have a good weekend.”
Sally and Dave had a quiet weekend, they didn’t stray far from the house. The cars were washed and vacuumed inside, in the house, Sally was going through mountains of washing.
Monday saw Dave, Mark and Grace in the office, more information was being gathered, however there was no indication who the recipients of the drugs were. Mark was concentrating on the phone numbers, most were burner phones, some were landlines, the names and addresses were noted, Grace tried to tie them to information on the spreadsheets, she was getting nowhere. “Hopefully Sally might be able to find a way forward tomorrow.” He hadn’t said where he was going in the morning, only Sally knew.
He was outside the prison at 09:00, he knew from experience it would take time to go through security, inside his briefcase was the record for Francis Jeffries. He handed over his identity at the first window, it was checked against a list of visitors, a door was released, in the next area he was searched, his pockets were emptied, anything not required for his meeting was to be left behind. A note of everything he was taking into the prison was made. The next process was to pass through a metal detector, his case was searched. When it had all been completed, he was given a lanyard to wear, ‘Visitor’ was printed across the card. Dave lost count of the number of locked doors he was taken through, the further into the prison the stronger the smell, it reminded him of school dinners and smelly trainers. Frank Jeffries was already waiting, sitting on one side of a desk, it, and the two chairs were fixed to the floor. “Press the bell when you want to leave, stand well back so we can see you.” The door was closed behind him, “good morning Mr. Jeffries, my name is Paul Jarvis, I would like to ask you a few questions.” “Fuck off, I have nothing to say, and who the fuck are you?” Dave spotted the CCTV camera in the corner of the room, he wondered if they were monitoring the audio as well. “I’m doing a little digging into the goings on at the farm, I’m not the police.” Dave opened his case, took out the folder inside, he also passed over a packet of cigarettes. “I still ain’t answering any questions,” “OK, I’ll talk, you listen.” He read through the list of convictions, lingering on the sentence given for each of his crimes. There was a pause when he finished. “What do you think you will get this time, you’re a career criminal, when you finish this one, it probably won’t be long before you are back in again. You have a son, about ten years old now, not very nice for him on visiting day.” “Fuck off.” “Frank, a little co-operation might help you.” Dave was sworn at again. “OK, I will give you one chance, if I don’t leave here with the information I want then…” He didn’t finish the sentence. “Then what, you don’t know anything.” “Frank, I have the proof you were the one in charge at the farm, you organised the distribution of the drugs and weapons, Billy or someone else would give you the information of what was to be sent out to whom. That puts you pretty far up the distribution chain, the drugs are bad enough, but weapons as well, I think that might be worth fifteen years at least. Once they read out the consequences, from the sale of the weapons, who knows what will happen at the sentencing.” You’re bluffing.” “We have worked out the code used for the drugs on the order slips, they are all in your handwriting. I’m sure if I speak to one of the others arrested, they would confirm the facts.” Dave now sat and waited, he waited for what he had said to sink in. It was a couple of minutes before he spoke, “Here’s the deal, you tell me where I can find the book with the codes to identify the recipients and I won’t say anything about you being in charge, at the moment, with the charges you are facing the maximum will probably be five years, out in just over two.” Again, he said nothing and waited. Frank Jeffries was less confident now, he was wavering, “it’s a one time offer, I either walk out with the information I want, or I pass on what I know, there will be no second chance.” There was a long pause, Frank Jeffries was struggling, he wasn’t a grass, but then again he didn’t want to spend too long inside. The answer came in a low voice, “do I have your word?” “I and my team are the only ones investigating the paperwork, my job is to find the money, I’m not interested in prosecutions.” “There’s a secret drawer in the desk, it’s in there.” “Thank you, I hope you’re not lying, if you are, you know what will happen.” Frank Jeffries shook his head. Dave pressed the bell and stood back from the door, he was escorted out the building, it felt good to be in the fresh air again.
© 10210ken 2025
