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Yup, it's him. Admittedly I haven't seen Series Three of Ashes to Ashes yet, so it's more "Hunt as of the end of Sereis Two".

I won't spoil it for you but you might have written it differently if you had seen series three ;)

But it was a very nice pastische(sp?) of DCI Hunt
 
Kurt_Steiner True enough.


Derek Pullem
Then I won't watch it for now, because I have some plans for the DCI.
 
I started playing Strike Fighters 2 again.


 
Now originally these weren't going to be posted to the wider audience until I was actually going to use them (Very soon in one case), but Mark Jones a.k.a. BaderBusCompany over at the What If Modellers Board dis such a splendid job that I had to share them.


BelgianMossie.jpg

Kingdom of Belgium Air Force (Can anyone translate that into Flemish and French for me please?)


DutchMozzie.jpg

Royal Netherlands Air Force


PolishMozzie.jpg

Polish Air Force
 
Sent you the link to his current thread in MSN.
 
Chapter 245


princess-street-man_1.jpg


Liverpool was still sweating heavily two days later. The man was standing in the shade of a tree and was reading a newspaper that loudly proclaimed the newest attack of the Allies, not that he cared. He was instead waiting for an associate of his who by the looks of things came walking down the road, and once they had dashed into a nearby alley the first thing thug number one did was to slam his fist into the stomach of Number Two who crumbled to the ground.

“Why the f**k did you kill Weatherby? The snivelling little bastard will be missed by the wrong kind of people.” One said while he massaged his fingers.

“Bloody hell..” Two said while fighting to keep his food down. He slowly stood up again and faced One. “You were the one who told me to take care of them. How was I to know that he had been transferred yesterday? You wanted him dead, so I killed him.”

Little did Two know that One had the orders from his own boss who was the one who had started this whole operation a year back. Stealing blank but stamped ration books was a genius as long as no one used too many of them at the same time, and frankly neither One nor his Boss cared what was being done with them as long as they were paid. Jonesey though had never been the brightest bulb and that he had gotten greedy had cost him his life.

“Damnit, we can't do anything about that now.” He grabbed Two by the sleeves of his shirt and and pulled him upright. “Screw up again and I'll do you in myself, you hear?”

Two just nodded and walked off.




At the other end of Liverpool DCI Hunt was wolfing down the cafeteria food more out of the need of nutrients for his body than appetite or hunger and even though and when Crabtree walked in and asked for Hunt to follow him out to 'meet a some bloke' he gladly left the piece of Whale Meat behind.

When they entered the Super's Office, Crabtree excused himself and Hunt had a very bad feeling when he heard that the third man in the room was from the London Special Branch.

It appeared that the Yard was missing one of their own, suspected to be bent and last seen on a train towards Liverpool. After asking what that did have to do with the case he was informed that the man had a Brother who had been no one else but one Mr. Weatherby, and when asking why the man wasn't simply contacting his colleagues at the local SB, he heard, much to his surprise, that he needed someone to trust implicitly and Hunts Boss was an old Friend of the Londoner's Boss and had thus been recommended.

“So DCI Winters here has been sent to liaise and to pretty much track the bugger down.”

Hunt still felt that there was a lot that he wasn't being told, but he was a good reader of men and Winters seemed to be on the level.
“Can I interest you in something cool to drink, Winters?” Hunt asked as an opener when they had left the Super's Office.

“Jesus Christ yes. I spent most of my Childhood in India, and here it's almost as hot.”

The line in front of the Vending machine was considerably shorter this time and soon the two coppers were standing nearby each with an opened bottle. Winters took a sip and then commented that when he had tasted the sugary brown liquid on a stopover in New York in the late 20s it had tasted differently.

When the conversation shifted towards the matters at hand, and Hunt briefed Winters on what they knew, which was little enough.

“I can see now why the Super put me on this, if he is coming here and wants to disappear like you suggest he will need a ration book, you can't live off British Restaurants alone.”

“Agreed.” Hunt said. “So it makes sense that he will show up somewhere within this mess, but I'm afraid we lost the lead when the first idiot's girlfriend did the vanishing act. We have absolutely nothing to go on at the moment...”

Winters nodded and emptied his bottle.

“Probably true, but I'd still like to go over the files if you don't mind. Perhaps there is something that you couldn't know for lack of information.”

“Sure enough.”

“Meanwhile here is something that my boss gave me in case you needed some new angle.”

Winters handed Hunt a small stack of papers that he had produced from the pocket of a coat that he had worn in spite of the heat. Hunt began to read and soon found that his eyebrows and his unfortunately receeding hairline were trying to meet.

“Well that's a surprise.” he said. “Do you think there's anything special behind it?”

Winters hesitated for a fraction of a second and then replied:

“We think it's just some ordinary Crims widening their operation.”

Hunt had seen the hesitation, but he believed that Winters was telling the truth, at least as far as the case was concerned.

“How come the Ya..Metropolitan Police never bothered to ask? If we could have cracked down on this earlier we might not be sitting here without even the slightest clue.”

Winters sighed and then leaned over towards Hunt.

“If you ask me it was because the boss suspected even then that at least one copper was bent...”

Hunt agreed with the sentiment. As much as he wanted to believe that the local force was clean, he knew it wasn't. Oh it wasn't about the odd piece of meat a Constable walking the beat got as a gift of appreciation or the odd free Beer here and there. No, there was corruption on the large scale just as in any other human society. It had been especially bad during the worst years of the depression, but from the mid 30s onwards a real effort had been made to stamp out the problem. Now it was back to the usual trickle it had always been. If however the London Special Branch was correct, then this was the biggest case of corruption since a Copper from Belfast had been caught selling weapons to the Republicans in the Six Counties a couple of years before the war, a phenomenon that would probably would stop only now that Ireland had buried the hatched with Britain and entered the war.

garryplymouth.jpg

1 Company, 2nd Battalion, Regiment of Dublin, 1st Irish Division, marching to their troop ship

“Bloody hell....” Hunt said, “I knew it was going to be one of these cases.”

Winters agreed with him there.

“Have you been to Weaterby's place of residence yet?”

Hunt shook his head. “Not yet. I was going to go after lunch though. Maybe you'd like to come along?”

“Sure. If you have a vehicle.”

The one thing that had worked out in the last few days was that Hunt had been assigned a deep red '38 Triumph Gloria Sedan as a permanent Vehicle, what's more it was a former under-cover vehicle and was thus equipped with various improvements and as a result much faster than the series vehicles.[1]


He disliked the colour but trying to get a civvie car repainted during wartime was harder than finding a virgin in a maternity ward and so he was stuck with it. At least he would no longer have to request a car whenever he had to go out for the job, and given he accounted for every mile he could even use it to drive to and from work, thus avoiding commuting with public transport.

Weatherby wasn't living over his station after all. The small house wasn't any larger than one would expect considering the kind of Salary the man had earned, and like the moth-balled car was already confirmed as being a family heirloom, and when Winters and Hunt looked the car over it was clear that it hadn't moved in years.

“Do we have a key?” was Winters' Question when they approached the front door. Hunt tried out one of several keys on a keychain taken from Weatherby, but none would fit. He looked at the door somewhat closer and then then simply kicked it in.

“We do now.”

Winters only glanced at Hunt with a strange look on his face and then followed the other man inside. Once they were standing in the narrow corridor they saw that this house lacked a woman's touch, it was dusty and the windows probably hadn't been opened since Weatherby had gone to work on the day of his death. In the kitchen the dirty dishes were still in the sink waiting for someone to clean them and while the cupboards were exceptionally bare and the ice-box only contained water by now it was clear that the man hadn't intended on not coming back.

Hunt began to look through a stack of mail and sorted them between Official and non-Official, cursing that the rationing on paper had been lifted a few weeks earlier.

“I have a cousin from the American Branch of the Family, he serves with the 6th Airborne in Italy. He's just as messy as this bloke.”

Hunt glanced over and saw that Winters had opened the door to the bedroom/living room combination and he could see the stacks of probably unwashed clothes and books scattered about the floor. Since no cupboards and drawers were open it didn't seem like it had been searched, at least at a first glance.

“Has to be a nutter to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.” Hunt said. He stepped into the room and began to take a closer look for himself.

“Anything in the mail?” Winters asked.

“Mostly bills. But there is one thing...” Hunt showed Winters a bunch of post-cards and letters in his hand and placed them in his pocket.

“It's a bunch of post-cards and letters from his sister, an Army nurse and all sent over the last three weeks. The only problem is that this dear sister of his, while she does actually exist, serves currently in an underground hospital in Singapore, about as far removed from Blightey as you can get in this maddness.”

Winters' eyes expanded and Hunt then went on:

“I may only be CID, but if he were a spy or something they'd probably use a less easily checked way of communication, and anyway nothing that went over his desk was classified in any way, and neither for any of those he worked with regularly.”

“What about the girl of the first one?” Winters asked when they were walking to the rear, since the house lacked a second storey.

Hunt shook his head. “Naa. We haven't found her yet, but she gets picked up at the street corner every other week and she isn't the brightest bulb. If it is something like that she is as much a pawn as he was.”

Hunt opened the rear door that went out to the small back garden.

“Any anyway, if it were the Germans or the Ivans then they can be expected to use someone a little less wanting in the facualties of the mind. I can't see especially the Germans being that dumb and incompetent.”[2]

Most of the garden was taken up by a windowless shed that hugged the wall of the house on the other side of the block. When Winters and Hunt approached they could see that the door, while old and probably not that strong was secured by a sturdy and new looking padlock.

“Well, it seems as if Mr. Weatherby had something to hide after all.” Winters said.

“And it's probably not a secret passageway down the Thirteen steps.”

This time he found a key that fitted. He moved to open the door.


“Holy......” was the only thing Hunt could say before the door smashed in his face and pushed him to the ground. Before he or Winters could react a figure ran past them and disappeared into the house. Winters immediately took off in pursuit while Hunt scrambled to his feet and followed ten seconds later. Before he reached the door a shot rang out, shortly afterwards followed by a second one. It was coming from the kitchen, and before Hunt could cover more than half the distance between the back door and the kitchen, Winters stepped out and it was obvious that he had fired the second shot judging by the blood spatter on his clothes and the smoking Mk.VI Webley in his left hand.

“What happened?”

“Bugger pulled a gun, charged me and well....”

Winters stepped into the nearby bathroom to get cleaned up and Hunt went into the kitchen. Weatherby the Older was lying on his back with a great hole on his forehead and Hunt suspected that the rear of his head was most likely gone. This was odd, because however good a shot Winters was, if a struggle, even a short one happened then setting an aimed shot like that was highly unlikely, but not impossible. He quickly searched the man's pockets and found an ID Card made out to the name and description of Federick Weatherby as expected, and his Police ID Card was also still there, so whatever else had happened, at least this man had been who he was supposed to be.

Something troubled Hunt though. When he continued to search through the man's wallet he suddenly found what it was, but then Winters returned and Hunt instead simply put the wallet in his pocket. If his theory was correct he would never see it again if he left it where he had found it. Finding the offending Item had been instinct more than anything else and yet his instinct had yet to mislead him.

“Found anything?” Winters asked, and for a second there Hunt thought he detected suspicion.

“Nothing whatsoever, except for his ID card and a few London theatre tickets.” hardly damning evidence and thus left in place.


Back at the station Hunt used the excuse of having to park the car to get some privacy while he looked through the wallet. He instantly found what he had been looking for.

It was a third-Class ticket for one of the Ferries that connected Britain with Ireland.


'Great. Just Great.' he thought. His dislike of the Irish had only grown since then, at least once a month he was forced to dive into the community, and that a good friend of his had been killed in the riots that had accompanied the departure if the IEC in both the Republic and the six counties didn't help. Whatever this case really was about, it had just gotten more and more complicated.

He climbed out of the car with the intention to confront Winters, but as soon as he was close to the door the man in question stood in front of him.

“It's time you knew what this was all about...”


[Notes: Next Chapter: the grand resolution.]



[1] It's a tad early for the Quattro. :D

[2] Only the opinion of the Character, not the Author.
 
[2] Only the opinion of the Character, not the Author.

That brings to my memory when I used to discuss with my Literature Teacher whether the voice of the narrator was also the voice of the author, and the answer was that we coudln't know for sure, but, in most of cases, it wans't. We must remember that the narrator belongs to the world that he's narrating, and, thus, he's also part of the fantasy that the author has created.

And here stop myself before someone feels the urge to shoot at me.
 
Deathsheadx It's funny you know. I hate reading them but I like writing them.

Kurt_Steiner In AAO it's easy. Everything not in [ and ] means In-Story unless otherwise noted.


Griffin.Gen Well, see first reply of this post.
 
Kingdom of Belgium Air Force (Can anyone translate that into Flemish and French for me please?)


Aviation Royale de Belgique
 
Kingdom of Belgium Air Force (Can anyone translate that into Flemish and French for me please?)


Aviation Royale de Belgique
De Belgische Luchtmacht in Flemish. not sure about the French, though. I think L'aeroforce Belge.
 
Chapter 246


By the time the first Allied units crossed the Yugoslav border Hunt and Winters were sitting in the car as Winters tried to explain, but Hunt had his own things to say first.

“So what are you, Five? Naval Intelligence?”

“Five, but ex-Branch and seconded back to the Met for that special purpose.”

“So what was their fault? Did they steel Winston's dog or something?”

Winters snorted. “No. I didn't have anything to do with the others, these were genuinely some goons bashing away at each other. The more recent one though. I had orders to stop him at all costs, and I was after him for almost three weeks, and he was 'bout to jump out the window. He heard me, turned and did pull the gun. I shot him with my own, his should still be behind the kitchen sink. A stupid pre-war Colt Detective Special. You can guess where he had it from.”

“Bloody hell.” Hunt exclaimed, and with good reason. The Republic of Ireland was full with them since Irish Americans had flooded the Irish Republican Army with them in the late 20 and then again during the early and mid-30s when for a time Irish Communism had been on the rise, since that time one popped up in the Irish Community now and then. Only last month a bank had been robbed with one. “IRA?”

“Intelligence gathering more like. He was probably feeding them stuff for some time, probably through is brother.”

“Who killed that one then, and why?”

“Beats me. It wasn't us though, at least as far as I know. Mind you, without the Brother's name in the paper we wouldn't have gotten a wind of where he was going.”

“Holy...” Hunt exclaimed, startling Winters again. “I think I know who might have done it.”

“How come?”

“Do you remember the Ladyfriend of his?” Winters nodded in reply. “Well, before I went to the cafeteria shortly before we met I opened her file, and there was something in there.”


“What?”

“We have to go back to the shed.”


When Hunt 'parked' the car in front of the house he almost ran over Constable Crabtree who was helping several other Constables loading the innards of the house onto a lorry.

“Have you started on the shed yet?”

After getting a reply in the negative, Hunt ran through the house past the surprised and somewhat annoyed Constables and opened the door of the shed. He made a satisfied grunt when he found what he was looking for.

“I only caught a glimpse of it,” he said, “back when the bastard knocked me down. It took me all that time to realize what it was.”

“What is it then?”

“You won't believe it...The woman was picked up working the corners in front of THIS establishment.”

Hunt stepped out and now Winters could see what it was. A hotel towel of all things with the name of the Hotel stiched into the centre of the cloth. It had once been white before a black substance of some sort.

“What's that dirt?” Winters asked.


“Ink.”

As it turned out, Weatherby had not only supplied his frien..business partners with the ration books but had also managed to obtain crude copies of the printing plates from the smalls printing shop in the basement. The hand-made copies printed in the shed were not of the best quality even considering the low quality of the copied printing plates that were used, but well enough to be sold on the black market and to pass the most fleeting of inspections and if Jonesey hadn't started using multiple ones and not thought of the possibility that the various shops he was using them in might start talking with each other it would probably have been some time before the Police had noticed what was going on. Now however not only did they know but also knew who was behind it.

“Paul Marcus Evans. Former runner of everything from weapons to Marihuana and maybe Cocaine to, from and through the Republic of Ireland, not to speak of god knows what other dirty deeds here in Blighty. We tried to pin something on him for years now, even before I joined the Force, but so far we failed.”


“Until now.” Winter said as Hunt handed the precious piece of evidence to Crabtree as they walked to the car.

“Until now.” Hunt paused to unlock the car and once the engine was running continued: “He operates out of the West Gate Hotel, a bloody pile of bricks with Grand Hotel pretensions, hence the branded towels.”

“Are we going there now?”

“Hell no. A trip to the armoury first and then some reinforcements. Evans has a considerable goon squad with him wherever he goes. And no shooting of suspects without permission this time.”


An hour and twenty-seven minutes later twelve Constables, four Inspectors and one MI5 agent, armed with shotguns and Webleys were waiting at a street corner.


“Move.”


The group ran across the street. Constable Crabtree expended both barrels of his gun to open the door for them and while he reloaded the group of attackers swarmed through the lobby of the shady hotel. The receptionist was scared stiff and offered no resistance but in the rooms on this floor Hunt could hear the sounds of a few people trying to get away or to fight, sometimes intermingled with female screams.


“Upstairs.”


Hunt, Winters and two Constables ran upstairs where there were only two rooms for the employees and the 'Office' in which Evans spent most of his time. Hunt was the second up the stairs which probably saved his life, because Winters was first up and when the shotgun fired, he took the full force of the blast in his face and he was killed instantly. Hunt remembered his Army days and wished he had a hand grenade, but instead he snatched the shotgun out of one of the Constable's hands, held it over the edge of the stairs he was lying on and fired both barrels. The recoil almost broke his hands but he was rewarded with a loud scream of pain. He jumped to his feet and ran up, sidestepping Winters' body. His gun was raised, but he needn't have bothered, Micheal Evans was lying on the ground and held the left side of his body where most of Hunt's second shot had hit.

Hunt closed on, and when Evans struggled to his feet, Hunt kneed him in the groin and simply said:

“You're nicked!”


Later he would say that he didn't remember much of the next few hours, and it was true. Inbetween calling the whole thing in for a clean up, writing reports, interrogating the arrested and simply wondering what had been that had brought the late DCI Winters (for lack of any real name) to Liverpool.

His long-term memory would click on only when the Super appeared on the scene to both congratulate his men for staying alive and to get a preliminary report from Hunt. The Superintendent was less than happy, because now he would have to inform MI5 and somehow explain how one of their men had ended up in what should have been a regular arrest of a local Capone wannabe.

“He insisted, Sir. And besides even if he hadn't I wouldn't have stopped him. The man was a Copper down to the bone.”

The Superintendent snorted but then was forced to agree. “Eh, probably true. That doesn't however absolve me from the problem of explaining to those spooks over at Five how I had one of theirs killed on my watch. Mind you, at least I've just been told that 'it' is over and since you'll read about it in the papers tomorrow anyway, I can tell you now...”




[Notes: Am I evil? Shortness due to the content of the next one. ]
 
As of right now German TV is dead for me. They dubbed Top Gear into German. I still feel sick.
 
Thanks you two!

you're welcome. and while we're on the subject, I just want you to know I hold you wholy responsible for the fact that it is now 3 at night.:p
Just wanted you to know I started reading page 1 TODAY and am now on page 17. wanted to check to see that this AAR is still alive. Wish I hadn't.
chapter 246????? :eek:
why didn't I discover this forum when I bought HOI2 years ago? :wacko:

edit: Just checked the official website. In French its La Force Aérienne
 
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Sounds kinda like you've been reading the Horses Arse series of books. Brilliant stuff!

Also, misterbean, I share your pain. I did the same at the start of the year. You may be looking at around a month of your time.