The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3363 by Angharad Copyright© 2022 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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It was Wednesday or Thursday before I heard anything from Jim, "Your friend Davidson is very secretive even the legitimate stuff was well hidden and the rest was almost impossible to find."

"So you haven't got anything then?"

"I said almost impossible which isn't the same as impossible."

"So you have something?"

"Yes after I spoke with your Sammi, who did the unlocking for me."

"I didn't know you knew Sammi?"

"Yeah got to know her after the bank commissioned investigations on some clients that concerned them, her computer skills are something else."

"I know all that, who'd you think got her the job in the first place?"

"I've an idea it's someone I know quite well."

"Perhaps, but I want to know what you have on my target."

"Like I said, he's very private and I hate to say it but I suspect the remains of his partner are somewhere under the M25 as that was being enlarged when he disappeared and there is an unexpected payment to someone, it's a one-off payment too. My attempts to trace the payee ended equally abruptly, but he was a contractor on the enlarging of the motorway. I did a search amongst police records and a body resembling overall but missing a head and hands was found in a quarry in Surrey a couple of years ago. We don't have any DNA to go on, although we have plenty from the corpse we don't have any to compare it with and we don't know if he had any kids. There is no sign of the hundred grand he was supposedly paid, so perhaps he got acute lead poisoning for his troubles."

"So you think our man killed him too?"

"It's speculation but it's entirely possible, especially if he wanted to keep his money."

"How was the money paid because if it went through a bank there'll be records?"

"He drew out the money in cash."

"To minimise further records and to launder through his legitimate activities."

"I have noticed that he sold a few cars at ten thousand each, which to my mind were vastly overpriced and which have since seemed to disappear soon after."

"Bought by fictitious customers no doubt?"

"It's very likely but must be a risk with HMRC."

"I think if he's paying some taxes they don't look at you too closely and he does pay taxes on all his legitimate business, it's the other which makes most of his money, drugs, people smuggling, prostitution and so on."

"But he could be guilty of killing at least twice?"

"Very likely, plus who's going to miss young women that aren't even recorded as being here. Stella and I caught some bloke beating up a woman years ago, Stella was injured but we detained them until police arrived. The woman was eastern European and didn't cooperate with the authorities so they sent her back to Serbia or wherever she was from. It wasn't one of Davidson's as far as I know because this was a while ago, but if it happened now, it could well be."

"You move in strange circles," he commented and I agreed I had at times.

"Sadly, we have nothing tying any of this together, it's all suspicions and they don't get you convictions."

"No we need something we can drop in the HMRC's lap so he'll be too busy to notice us or any relationship between Francesca and Danni, so keep digging but do it quietly I don't want him to suspect anything."

"Quite as a mouse, I'll be, perhaps a dormouse, they go largely unobserved."

"Tawny owls and various ground predators hunt them and remember 60 - 70 % die during hibernation, so maybe not the best analogy."

"Speak to you when I have something else." He rang off and I was left contemplating what he had told me. Simon had told me he was suspected of making snuff movies, the ultimate in bad-taste porn, where the victim doesn't survive the abuse and the film includes their actual death. I don't know what kind of scum watches such things but they obviously don't come cheap. If it's true that he is involved in it, I'd love to bring evidence to the authorities to stop it and convict him, I'd also like to see an end to people trafficking and him convicted of that as well. However, murder convictions would put him away the longest so I shall concentrate on those."

While I obviously wanted to know if Danni was still seeing Francesca and what sort of relationship it involved, I didn't wish to involve any of the other girls in any sort of surveillance as it would cause ructions and could break up the family and it has undertones of the Stasi or North Korea. No, it would have to stay low-key and involve as few as possible.

Danni had use of the moped scooter thing which gave her some independence at least around town, any further and she used Mum's taxi service as often as not or we paid a taxi to take her to Bournemouth for her soccer matches. She was supposed to be saving for a car, she was eligible already but she wanted something nice and Simon offered to help her get something when she was eighteen. I offered her some lessons for her next birthday and she accepted.

Seeing the reports of collisions among young drivers didn't encourage me to want her to drive but I also knew that if she got her degree she might want to do a master's in something like ecology in which case a licence and her own transport could be useful. My time doing dormouse checks using a bicycle didn't want to repeat for my daughter, I was certain of that.

The week had seen me busy with my mundane chores but it's what the university pays me for and apart from trying to encourage investment to continue research in climate change and biodiversity and how they affect one another, I did some supervision for my two PhD students and some teaching amongst the first and second years, especially on ecology or fieldwork, the course I had set up had eventually combined with a few other bits and pieces to make a full ecology degree at master's level and we required a 2:1 as a minimum qualification or a very tough interview when we accepted the occasional student with less. Usually, we had it fairly well right and all the students we took as interview candidates successfully completed their master's degree. I left that to one of my staff now as was mainly concerned with things higher up the food chain like doctoral degrees and trying to get them funding from the various bodies that provided it like the NRC and Natural England.

As we approached the weekend my thoughts turned again towards our football star and the complications of her life and trying to protect her against some of them. Jim had not reported again and Sammi was occupied with yet another attack by various Russian hackers. At times, it seemed that most of the world was disgusting and dishonest and was trying to get your money or your information. I know that hi-tech industries have a problem with them as do banks and other financial houses as well as defence and other government departments.

Why can't we all live in harmony without trying to get one over on each other, Putin's Russia is simply a state run by gangsters, the leader being the biggest of them all with his morality being shown to all by his use of the Wagner organisation which is known to employ all sorts of psychos and convicted murders as well as assorted sex offenders. They have been implicated in a number of war crimes and torture or execution of civilians and military personnel and acting in a terrorist-like manner running amok in Ukraine.

I see the Dutch investigation has concluded that three men are to blame for downing that Malaysian airways jumbo jet with a anti-aircraft missile killing hundreds, they were two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist. Whether they will ever stand to atone for their crimes is questionable, but then the Russian agents who killed various dissidents in the country as well as the woman in Salisbury, have been identified and we all know they will escape punishment because they were acting for the regime which seems to have lower standards of morality of anywhere outside China. They in turn are accused of having their own enforcers in various countries including Britain and America.

I read in my newspaper that transsexuals and other non-binaries have been killed in the US and the number is likely an underestimate because nobody keeps an official record of their deaths which in many cases are likely to be hate crimes, killing just because of what you are. Doesn't everyone have the right to be who they feel themselves to be. In Qatar, the world cup is just starting where the authorities are accused of treating the foreign labour that built the stadia as if they were slaves and many it seems are unpaid and the casualty figures of deaths and serious injuries are being swept under a large carpet. In the papers today the authorities are also accused of funding fundamentalist Islam all over the world, so it's not just Iran and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps we should have colonised them until the oil ran out as they seems to be inhumane states which we know have caused countless deaths and unhappiness. Possibly Iran's rule by religious morons is coming to an end but everywhere else things seem to be getting worse and even in the UK the right-wing attacks on trans people is on the increase, something which seems to have spread here from the US.

Here, we have just had a budget that will penalise the poor more than the rich, they siphoned off the profits long ago and with Brexit, Covid, the war in Ukraine and twelve years of Tory mismanagement, we're up a gum tree without a paddle. They are all in self-denial about Brexit, it has caused damage of up to 40% to the British economy. They just won't listen, but it is like an elephant in the room. The liars that persuaded the idiots that voted for it should be tried for lying and then for doing untold damage to our businesses, isn't that a form of treason, damaging your state? Why they can't go back into the single market is ridiculous and it seems if we don't have more migration here, then our economy will shrink even more. Who says, the Chancellor.

So there is much going on around the place, some of which affects me or my job or has an impact on Simon's job in the bank. It looks like Britain is well on the way to becoming a third-world country under the Tories and also it seems that people have changed since Covid, they have become more demanding, more aggressive, more intolerant, and more racist. I sometimes don't recognize the place. It seems the culture war against woke is really an American phenomenon that we have imported via right-wing Tories, which has little meaning here if not irrelevant except the rise of the right-wing in Europe and America means that until we've had a reminder of what fascism is all about we are due to repeat the mistake again with some other version of the Nazis perhaps spread by the Taliban or Qatar where intolerance runs wild again.

As for me, apart from switching off lights everywhere and turning down the heating, I am trying to keep a wary eye on my footballing daughter while waiting for more evidence of what she's up to and how I can help produce evidence to make us safe from the likes of George Davidson and his ilk.