Criminal Revenge by Conrad Jones Page A

was one thing killing one of his most promising dealers, another to dump the body in front of his home. His wife would be mortified and there would be more questions and accusations than under the Spanish Inquisition. There would have to be savage repercussions to avenge this strike, but right now, he had to clear up this mess before Lana did something stupid, like calling the police.
    Was it a coincidence that a dead body had been dumped and his son hadn’t come home? Ash turned and looked towards the front door. Lana was stood on the porch with her hands covering her eyes and face. She was visibly shaking.
    “Lana.” Ashwan said calmly to get her attention. She looked at him, but he wasn’t sure she’d registered what she was seeing. “Go and see if Mamood is home.”
    Lana shook her head from side to side. “I’ve just checked. He hasn’t come home.” Lana put her head onto her shoulder and dropped to her knees slowly, as if a heavy weight was pressing her down. “What’s going on, Ashwan?” Her body quivered and tears ran freely down her cheeks. She began to wail like a scalded cat.
    “Get a grip, Lana,” he hissed. “I’m not sure what is happening,” Ashwan said, opening the garage door. “Go inside, this is not Mamood.” He looked at her with a face like thunder. Lana could tell by the look on his face that he was serious. “Turn off the security lights and get inside, do it now!”
    “What is going on, Ash?” Lana wiped her running nose with her dressing gown sleeve. “What have you done?”
    “Get inside, and turn off the lights,” Ash hissed and his face turned to a snarl. He grabbed the plastic and dragged the body towards the garage. The security lights went out as he closed the metal door. He needed to call Malik. Someone had declared war.

Chapter Fifteen
The Bernstein Brothers – Present Day
    Richard Bernstein sat at his desk in the basement of a Victorian farmhouse. It was set in the centre of twenty-five acres of grazing land, surrounded at the perimeter by deciduous woodland. Richard had fallen in love with the farm the first time he had seen it as a teenager. As a young man he used to fish in the stream which ran through it. Carp and chub swam in the gentle waters, and he had come to escape the traumas of his family disintegrating. He had sat on the bank in the sunshine alone, dreaming of owning the farm one day when he grew up. He had rarely caught any fish, but he loved the peace and quiet. The setting was idyllic, and it offered the owner privacy while not being completely isolated from the main arterial routes.
    Many years later when Richard had grown up, the farmer could no longer make a living from the land, subsidies from the European Union were slashed dramatically, and he decided to sell up and retire. Richard paid the full asking price for it before the ‘for sale’ sign had gone up. It was ideal for a loner like Richard. The farm had a cellar network, outhouses, a workshop and stables, and he put them all to good use. When he had left school, he had studied at college, and then gone on to complete a chemistry degree at university. He had stayed and completed a masters, and then a doctorate. Work in the chemical industry was easy to find, and a brain like Richard Bernstein came with an expensive price tag attached.
    Richard’s career was well documented. He had worked on several new pesticides and fungicides, for all of which he owned the patent. He had licensed his formulas across the globe, bringing him a substantial passive income every month. Now he spent his time as an advisor to the agricultural industry as an eminent scientist developing fertilisers and animal feeds to compliment his patented products. In his free time, he used his extensive chemical knowledge to develop other things, things that exploded.
    The farmhouse cellar was an extensive warren of rooms and corridors, once used to store seed and grain. Part of it ran beneath the farmyard and underneath