Digby and Yates: The Lost Signal

Below is a little sneak peek from my Digby and Yates, short story series coming soon. Digby and Yates, are two humorous unorthodox detectives solving serious crimes. The first story in the series is called The lost Signal, and this is the crime that they need to solve.

All names, characters, incidents are nothing other than the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any thing or one in this universe and beyond, dead, alive, buried or frozen in time is entirely coincidental.

I hope you enjoy, and as always, thanks for reading.

Prologue

Tobias Lebwaski held a coal-black briefcase in his right hand tighter than a constrictor as if his life depended on it, which it did. It was Friday 11:00 pm, and everything was running to schedule. It would always run to schedule when Tobias was on the job. It’s why the agency called him for service in the first place.

The assignment Tobias returned from before receiving the call was very different from the Swap Over he was on now. Wednesday at 11:45 pm he was lying unseen on a rooftop in the North of England staring down the scope of a suppressed sniper rifle. At 12:17 am, he fired a single bullet at a target just over six-hundred meters away in a car which had been blocked deliberately by unexpected roadworks, just how it was supposed to happen. The shot blew a hole in the drivers head large enough for Tobias to know he was D.O.I. Dead on Impact. That night Tobias slept well as he always does after every assignment.

For the past eight years, he has been married to Silvia Lebwaski. She has never asked him once what he does for a living. They have a son and daughter, Nick and Grace, and lived seven miles outside of town. Still, if you knew this about Tobias, you wouldn’t be alive long enough to repeat it, nor would you discover his address led to a cleaning cupboard in a derelict factory. Such was the backstories of the special forces.
His real name was Simon Leto, a single man who had a small flat in the city and had no time for relationships that lasted more than one night.

At 10:58 pm he left The Rabbit Foots, a pub, knowing each step that would follow. He spent the last half-an-hour planning them with precision while drinking a double whisky with ice. His only distraction was from two young drunks babbling about their luck with women since The Foot became their new local. Tobias hated that kind of talk, as did Simon Leto. Hell the pair of them hated talk in general. Loose lips sink ships and knowing his newest assignment was at the wharf the words held their weight.

Friday 11:00 pm, and he was where he wanted to be, looking down Forfent Avenue holding his briefcase in his right hand. The night was cold, the mist hung, and several street lights were out of function. It was earlier that day, Brian Brown, the electrician from the electrical company who was hired to cut the wrong cable completed his part of the job. He wore persuading overalls and an  I.D card so convincing he could have fooled himself. However, special forces working for the same agency never met one another nor did they know any other job roles which may assist their own. Tobias never knew if he met a convert during his time, but he was smart enough to know when he saw the work of one.
The moonlight cast perfect shadows to navigate the street mostly unseen. 

He needed to walk shy of two-hundred-and-twenty meters to reach his drop off point by 11:02 pm. If the handover went to plan, which Tobias knew it would, Don Tugger and his crew will soon be caged like budgies. A well overdue siege, but the only man trusted to pull off the job had just become available. Tobias Lebwaski was that trust.

At 11:02 pm, he stood outside a boarded-up abandoned house. From the inside pocket of his navy suit jacket he took out a mobile phone which he would dispose of in a bin three streets away where Josh Martin, a bin man would collect the bag and throw it in his dustcart at 11:15 pm.
Tobias typed the number he memorised from his assignment details last night at the safe house and hit dial.

The explosion which followed, ending Tobias Lebwaski’s life at 11:03 pm, was heard several miles away. He was identified by the local police three days later when his right hand was discovered fused with the handle from his briefcase in a garden from the opposite street.

©Xander Panteli 2020