Smith 2 / Smith (ePub)

A policeman is puzzled.

It's like the IRA all over again. The IRA and the Krays and the Angry Brigade. Why haven't they all been looking for this killer, this Stephen Smith? Why isn't the country on high alert?

He discovers why. There are 'sensitive' aspects to this case. The public mustn't be alarmed. In other words, he used to be one of ours and now he's gone off the rails, got himself the weirdest gang - a posh lawyer couple, an Irish builder, a Croatian stripper, a Cockney chancer and a crazy poet - and a serious amount of cash from a bank robbery in Switzerland, laundered and sequestered who knows where. A highly funded commando unit who are after… what? The report calls them 'anarchist'. What do anarchists want? Blow everything up? Well when they do, it's the strangest places.

Then there's the deaths: a dentist found in the waters of Cardiff Bay - shot. The bits of another one, apparently blown up. A woman, executed in a car park. A general assassinated at an English public school.

Too much mystery.

'Something stinks. There's something about this whole situation that's not right. None of it fits. You all know it. I know it. But our job is to find and catch the criminals. Nothing else is important here. We are going to get this bastard using old-fashioned police work and then we'll worry about anything unusual going on. So. I want a life story. I want to know the colour of his underpants and the smell of his farts. And I want it all by the end of the day.'

Should be easy enough, after all, Smith wants to get caught. The question is… why?