SEPTEMBER’S BROKEN CHILD

Book two in the first Daley trilogy

Inspector Sean Daley, 25 years a police officer but with a dark past in British Army Special Forces, blessed with numerous skills, many of them dangerously unorthodox, is selected to lead a covert team of detectives; their objective to identify and arrest a ruthless rogue cop whose corruption had tainted or destroyed numerous investigations into organised crime activities in Kent over several years and led to many gangland killings.

Only four people outside the team know of its existence and objective; the safety of the team is dependent on that secrecy.

Daley’s aberrant methods identify the corrupt cop’s trademark modus operandi in mysterious communication links to an east European crime gang that traffics children from Europe into the UK and Ireland for the sex and porn industry. The gang comprises callous killers, veterans of the Balkan conflict and crimes of war.

Daley inveigles himself into this gang in disguise in order to track trafficked children across Europe, risking himself and his team in the killing grounds of the former Yugoslavia.

The plot begins when the tortured body of DS Bell, one of Daley’s covert team, is found close to the home of another member of the team. A murder investigation based in Daley’s police station, Deal, on the Kent coast, must conduct its investigation into the murder of DS Bell without knowing the true objective of the covert team or that Daley leads it.

The corrupt cop’s identity or gender, isn’t known to anyone, even criminal associates; such is that cop’s need of personal security, therefore any leak of information that a covert team existed to capture the officer would push the officer into damage limitation mode,
endangering the team and destroying any progress already made.

Desperate to catch their colleague’s killer, Daley’s team reviews its own intelligence, taking the plot back in time searching for errors and missed evidence and revealing to the reader the team’s use of surveillance technology, disguises and deceptions to draw the corrupt cop to an unmasking. On the journey there is savage murder, abduction and the discovery of child abuse on a huge scale.

A Deputy Chief Constable and his wife are brutally murdered and evidence discovered indicating he is the corrupt officer. Daley’s boss won’t believe it; why, is there a top level conspiracy or whitewash, or is there more than one corrupt top cop?

Romance within the covert team also leads to tragedy!

A tenacious investigation eventually reveals the corrupt cop’s identity but a plan to arrest is thwarted by an explosive escape and cross channel pursuit by helicopter and boat into French territory.

The team’s craving for justice for Malcolm, and the child victims, fails in a trial at the Old Bailey!

The other books in this trilogy