Informant

by Susan Wilkins

  As Puricelli absorbed this, he drew in several ostentatious breaths then he glanced at Alice Ogilvy. She was still but tense and keeping a wary eye on Bradley. She gave him a thin smile and launched her opening salvo.

  ‘We had absolutely no knowledge that Mr Phelps was involved or indeed suspected of involvement in drug dealing. Mainwaring Grant has an international reputation for probity, which we take extremely seriously.’

  Bradley raised his eyebrows but left it to Nicci to respond.

  She inclined her head politely. ‘We accept that. We’re merely seeking information.’

  Puricelli nodded. ‘What sort of information?’

  Ogilvy shot him a look. She seemed calm but still anxious to reinforce her point. ‘I should also add that although we did a small amount of work for Mr Phelps he is no longer a client. The . . . mix-up with the credit card was not acceptable practice and we terminated our relationship.’

  This amused Bradley. He wondered how Joey had felt about that given his own method for terminating business relationships. He noticed that Alice Ogilvy was looking pale. Perhaps she’d bitten off more than she could chew, found herself in cahoots with a gangster and got frightened. He wanted to sympathize with her, but maybe he was being naive. Would a woman with her experience really not have known what Joey Phelps was as soon as she met him?

  Alice Ogilvy turned to the young man beside her and her voice acquired a sharper edge. ‘It was Anthony who actually dealt with Mr Phelps. I had very little personal involvement. So perhaps he can answer some of your questions.’

  All eyes turned to the unfortunate Anthony, whose neck started to redden. Armstrong and Bradley exchanged looks, they were being offered a sacrificial lamb, young and fluffy, much like the counterpart that hung in the reception area.

  Bradley was almost enjoying himself, perhaps being a cop wasn’t so bad after all. He eyeballed Anthony, put on his Rottweiler face. ‘How did you first meet Joey Phelps, Anthony?’

  Anthony gulped, gave Ogilvy a nervous look. ‘Well . . . I’ve sort of known him for years. We was in the same class at school.’

  Bradley nodded. They’d hit pay dirt, a direct line back to Joey. ‘And school was where?’

  ‘Basildon.’

  ‘You still live there?’

  Anthony compressed his lips and nodded.

  ‘See much of Joey socially?’

  The young man shifted in his seat, his tone was dismissive. ‘Joey doesn’t live in Basildon any more.’

  They were about the same age, but Bradley felt he had the edge. He was enjoying getting under Anthony’s skin. He smiled. ‘But still your old schoolmate came to you for help? Why was that?’

  Anthony shot a questioning glance at Puricelli. ‘I don’t know.’

  Puricelli merely pursed his lips.

  Anthony ploughed on. ‘He just wanted some tax advice is all.’

  Bradley chuckled. ‘How to avoid tax on his next drug deal?’

  Anthony shook his head. ‘Just how to fill in a few forms.’

  Puricelli quietly monitored the exchange. He read the room like a poker player. Bradley was a bit of a show-off, it was Armstrong he needed to convince to seal the deal. He put his finger on a small plastic folder and slid it across the desk in Nicci’s direction.

  ‘Anthony and I have had a chat, done some trawling through the files. And we’ve come up with something that seems innocent enough, but which in the light of your suspicions may prove useful.’

  Nicci opened the folder, glanced at the first page and frowned.

  ‘Marko . . .’ – she struggled to pronounce the name – ‘. . . Dimitrenko? A Ukrainian dissident?’

  Puricelli nodded. ‘Dr Dimitrenko and his wife Leysa originally came to the UK seeking political asylum. But they had some problems with that and eventually Dr Dimitrenko obtained sponsorship as a skilled worker from a company belonging to Mr Phelps.’

  Resenting the change of direction, Bradley fixed Puricelli with a hard stare. ‘I’ve got a feeling, Mr Puricelli, that you think if you throw the dog a bone he’ll stop sniffing around. But my present inclination is to take Anthony here down the nick and get him to tell us everything he knows about his old pal.’

  Anthony looked like he was about to cry, his chin quivered. He couldn’t contain himself. ‘He’s not my pal okay! I don’t even know why you got me here.’ He glared at Ogilvy. ‘I’ve just done my job. I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  Ogilvy reached over and put her hand on Anthony’s. ‘It’s okay Anthony. I’m sure that what the officers want most is our help and cooperation in this matter.’

  Anthony wiped his face with the back of his hand.

  Nicci looked up from the file, which she’d quickly skimmed. ‘Indeed we do. So, Marko Dimitrenko?’ She referred to the file. ‘Doctor as in academic . . . from a family of dissidents . . . what’s useful about this for us?’

  Puricelli smirked. Nicci had the impression he enjoyed having the upper hand. ‘You need to read to the end of the file Sergeant. Dr Dimitrenko taught at Lviv University. He was the equivalent of a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Chemistry. He also did research for pharmaceutical companies.’

  Realization dawned on Nicci’s face. ‘A research chemist?’

  Puricelli smiled, the hook was in. He opened his palms. ‘Alice believed that Phelps was a legitimate businessman. She had no reason to wonder why he might employ a research chemist as a project consultant. But if he is indeed involved in the supply of illegal drugs, that casts the matter in a rather different light, doesn’t it?’

  Nicci knew the bone she’d been offered was large and juicy. It would certainly do for now. She nodded. ‘Well . . . we’d need to interview Dr Dimitrenko.’

  Puricelli smiled. ‘All the details you need to find him are in there.’ He hesitated. ‘And really . . . that is all we have that could be of the least use. Mainwaring Grant does most of its business internationally. Mr Phelps is not the sort of client we would normally accept. Unfortunately somehow he . . . slipped in under the radar.’

  Nicci glanced at Anthony, who was rubbing one sweaty palm with the other. Then she got up and fixed Puricelli with a polite smile.

  ‘We’ll be in touch Mr Puricelli.’

  As Bradley and Armstrong stepped out on to Clerkenwell Road she pulled out her phone.

  Bradley puffed his cheeks. ‘We lean on Anthony hard enough we could bust their scam wide open.’

  Nicci was scrolling through her address book. ‘Nice thought. But even supposing Turnbull would let us, they’ll just dump him like a ton of bricks. All we’ll get is Anthony the bad apple and squeaky-clean senior management who knew nothing. That’s why they were dangling him under our nose.’

  Nicci found the number she was looking for and clicked on it. Her call was answered on the second ring.

  ‘Cheryl, hi. It’s Nicci Armstrong. I’ve got a name – Marko Dimitrenko – and an address in Danbury. Chances are it’s where Joey Phelps has set up his drugs lab. Yeah, grab a pen, I’ll hold on.’

  62

  Kaz sat on the sofa. Joey handed her a mug of tea.

  ‘I put a couple of sugars in, ’cause that helps when you’ve had a bit of shock.’

  She didn’t know what had shocked her more, shooting her cousin or discovering that her own brother had set her up to do it. She accepted the mug without comment.

  Since entering the room she’d hardly been able to take her eyes off the solid oak flooring. It looked absolutely pristine. There was no sign of the puddle of blood that had surrounded Sean’s head. Kaz scrutinized it inch by inch. There didn’t appear to be a stain, but maybe there was the slightest discolouration. Joey watched her. He squatted down beside her, patted her thigh.

  ‘What’s done is done. It don’t do to dwell on it babes.’

  ‘What did they use to clean the floor? Bleach?’

  Joey looked across at the kitchen area. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘All the forensics they got nowadays, they can fi
nd blood and DNA and stuff on a fucking pinhead.’

  Joey pondered. ‘Okay, we’ll have the whole thing up, re-screeded, new floor laid. You moved in, but didn’t like the colour.’

  Kaz glanced at him, sun was flooding the room, she’d loved the colour; like warm honey. It was one of the reasons that in such a short time the place had become her haven.

  ‘I don’t know if I can live here any more.’

  Joey folded his arms. ‘Then we’ll find you somewhere else. Ain’t a problem. Meantime you can stay with me.’

  He was in Mister Reasonable mode, Mister Loving Brother. But Kaz wasn’t fooled by it any more. She glared at him. ‘Fucking hell Joey, he could’ve killed me.’

  Joey shook his head. ‘Nah, I put Tolya in there to keep an eye on things.’

  Kaz turned away from him; she could feel the tears welling up. She tried to swallow them down, but failed.

  ‘I don’t get it y’know. Why would you do this to me? You hate me that much?’

  A pained expression came in to his eyes. ‘Don’t talk daft, course I don’t.’ He took a deep breath, his brow puckered. He gazed at her, the hard, laser-eyed stare. ‘Look, you said you wanted to sort Sean out yourself. You said it, din’t you? I’d’ve done it, or got Yev to, but you insisted. So . . . I figured after what he done to you as a kid you deserved the chance.’

  ‘I didn’t want to kill him!’

  Joey sighed. ‘Oh get real babe. Grassing him up to the old bill was never gonna work.’

  The tears were coursing down her cheeks now. ‘It could’ve. Better than murder.’

  Joey exhaled an impatient snort of air. ‘Sean was a dinosaur. It was all “back in the day” with him. He’d’ve caused us trouble whether he was inside or out. He had to be taken out. Simple as. You just needed a bit of encouragement to get to that.’

  She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Encouragement? That what you call it? You promised me the killing would stop.’

  Joey flung his arms up in the air in exasperation and walked across to the window. ‘I don’t know why you keep harping on that. All animals kill – it’s natural. Lions kill zebras, sharks taste blood they attack – you seen them nature documentaries. It’s how the world works babe, and we’re just animals like the rest.’

  Kaz fixed him with a steady gaze. ‘That’s bollocks and you know it.’

  Joey glanced across the room at her, he tilted his head to one side. Then a dreamy expression swam into his eyes. ‘Yeah, but . . . when you pulled the trigger, when he went down, didn’t that give you a rush? That power? To me, that’s the best feeling in the world. There ain’t nothing else that comes close.’

  She stared at him. The fervour in his gaze was disturbing.

  He crossed the room, knelt down beside her, took her hand. ‘I wanted you to feel it babes. I wanted you to understand. Now we’re on the same page, you and me. And you know why? ’Cause we’re special.’

  She wrenched her hand away. ‘Special? Special fucking needs more like.’

  ‘That’s cool.’ Joey laughed, got to his feet. ‘Special needs! Like Ashley’s spaz brother?’ He continued to giggle, enjoying his own joke. Kaz glared at him.

  ‘No it’s not cool. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail.’

  ‘You won’t. Cops’ve got their heads up their arses most of the time.’ He grinned, a glint of pride crept into his eye. ‘Wanna know how many people I’ve killed?’

  ‘No! I fucking don’t!’

  Joey looked disappointed. He folded his arms. ‘Okay, I’m gonna tell you something I’ve never told anyone else.’ His face took on a deadly serious look. ‘I am special. Joking apart. I’ve always known it. And I’m not talking about some ego thing. I’m not some psycho with delusions. Some of us, our brains are hard-wired differently and there’s a reason for that.’

  Kaz watched him, a look of serenity spread over his features as he warmed to his theme.

  ‘Thousands and thousands of years ago, extraterrestrials visited this planet. We wasn’t much more than a bunch of cavemen. But they taught us things – there’s bags of evidence for it if you know where to look. And suddenly evolution took off like a fucking rocket.’ He swooped his arm upwards in a forty-five-degree trajectory.

  ‘A few of these extraterrestrials, they bred with our women. Passed on their very special genes. And some of us have got that in our DNA. We’re just different. Better at surviving, tougher. Don’t matter where we was born, we find a way to come out on top.’

  Kaz’s jaw slackened. ‘You really believe this?’

  Joey fixed her with his piercing gaze. ‘It explains everything. Books have been written about it, people’ve done research. Not idiots – proper scientists. Okay, it sounds a bit bonkers to start with. But y’know all the stuff they dish up at school, baby Jesus and all that, that’s the fucking fairy story.’

  Kaz sat in silence staring at her mug of tea. Joey was nothing if not surprising.

  He grinned at her, drained his own mug. ‘Ready for a top-up?’

  She shook her head. He poured himself more tea.

  She studied his face. ‘Okay, so have I got this right? If you’re different, if you got these . . . special genes, you don’t care about . . .’ The image of the bullet tearing into Sean’s eye socket flashed through her mind and bile shot up into her throat. She swallowed hard. ‘You don’t care about killing people. You don’t feel nothing?’

  Joey took a slug of tea. ‘No. Okay, you have to pretend to be like everyone else. But the truth is it ain’t no different to swatting a fly.’

  Kaz absorbed this as she watched him wandering round the room. That restless energy – he seemed perpetually wired. Realizing her own body was jangling with tension, she exhaled.

  ‘Well, you may be special. But I’m not.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘I felt it.’

  He stared at her. His eyes seemed to be filling with disappointment. He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Maybe you’re not. So in future you’d better leave that side of the business to me, okay?’

  Kaz’s phone was still on the kitchen worktop beside the kettle. It buzzed.

  Joey picked it up. ‘You got a text. Want me to read it?’

  She held out her hand, she had to concentrate to stop it shaking. ‘Nah, it’s okay. I can—’

  She didn’t get a chance to say more, he’d already clicked onto the message.

  ‘From Mal – who the fuck’s Mal?’

  Kaz’s heart missed a beat. ‘Just . . . a bloke I met in my art class.’

  Joey peered at the screen.

  ‘He says “Probs getting hold of M. Meeting him tonite. Will keep U posted.”’ Joey gave her a quizzical glance. ‘What’s all this about then, eh?’

  Kaz got up. She knew she had to hold it together, appear nonchalant. She walked over and put her mug on the kitchen counter.

  ‘Oh, some plan a bunch of them have dreamt up. I don’t really wanna be involved. Mike ran the art class. Mal and some of the others are trying to set up a little exhibition of all the work we done.’

  Joey looked at her for what seemed an age then he gave an approving nod. ‘Sounds like a great idea to me. You wanna be an artist babe, you gotta put yourself out there.’ He held out the phone to her. ‘You should text him back.’

  Kaz frowned. ‘I’ll do it later.’

  She reached for the phone, but Joey held on to it.

  ‘No time like the present.’ His thumbs hovered over the keypad. There was a definite edge in his voice. ‘What we gonna say to Mal eh?’

  63

  Bradley clicked his phone on and a text popped up: yo Mal count me in 4 def. kaz x. He stared at it, it seemed very odd. But then reduced to text-speak quite a few people ceased to sound like themselves. It was the name that gave him pause. He’d only ever called her Kaz once, in an attempt to be chummy. And as for the x, that made no sense. But maybe her attitude to him was finally thawing.

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Nicci Armstrong
. She was beckoning to him. He was standing next to a squad car on the gravel driveway of a tasteful barn conversion on the outskirts of Danbury in Essex. Cheryl Stoneham and her team had secured the place half an hour earlier and detained three Ukrainian nationals: a couple in their mid-thirties and a younger man.

  Bradley joined Nicci and she led him into the house. A pretty, dark-haired woman was perched on the sofa. Her eyes were red-rimmed with crying and she was wringing a soggy tissue in her hands. She gazed up at him as they passed.

  Nicci led him into the back of the house, they paused outside a door to the large workshop area which had been converted into some sort of laboratory. Cheryl Stoneham was conferring with the forensic photographer and the exhibits officer.

  ‘I want a full digital and stills recording before we bag up the exhibits.’ She glanced at the photographer. ‘Don’t let the rest of the team hassle you. It takes as long as it takes. I want the forensics on this watertight, okay?’

  The photographer nodded, already booted and suited, he entered the lab. Cheryl turned to greet Bradley. She gave him a broad grin.

  ‘Well you two have had a score, haven’t you?’

  He smiled. ‘We will if we can join up the dots and connect them to Joey Phelps.’

  Cheryl nodded thoughtfully. ‘Nic here has got you pegged as a chap with some education. Know anything about the Ukraine?’

  ‘A bit. Mostly what I’ve read in the papers.’

  ‘Well, we’ve taken the husband and his oppo down the nick. He’s poker-faced, asking for his lawyer. But the wife . . . she’s our way in I reckon. I’ve been letting her stew. So . . . how d’you fancy being her new best friend?’

  Bradley beamed. ‘I’ll give it a go.’

  ‘Her name’s Leysa.’

  Bradley took a deep breath. ‘Okay . . .’

  As he headed off into the main living room Cheryl Stoneham gave Nicci a sceptical look.

  ‘Why you giving him a leg up? Doubt he’d do the same for you.’