Dead if You Don't

by Peter James

  Grace frowned. ‘That name continues to worry me.’

  ‘It should,’ Potting said. ‘He’s Mr Big. One of the kingpins of the Brighton Albanian mafia – and quite a big pillar of the community. Lots of legitimate businesses: property, storage depots, warehouses, industrial units, estate agencies, betting shops, launderettes, cafés and a couple of car washes.’

  ‘I know all that. Does he have any businesses down in the Shoreham area, Norman? Any that are on the waterfront?’

  ‘I can find out, boss.’

  Sunday. Damned Sunday, Grace thought. So many business premises would be shut today. Warehouses, industrial units, storage depots – all classic places to hide someone, alive or dead. Mungo could be in any of them – or not. If the video and photograph were for real, he was at the water’s edge somewhere, below sea level.

  He was repeatedly trying to hypothesize what might have happened, and to put himself in the mindset of the kidnappers. Mungo and his pal, Aleksander, had originally set this up. Aleksander had used his own father’s trusted bodyguards, Valbone Kadare and Dritan Nano, to help Mungo with the sting. Then at some point a double-cross had happened.

  Question: Was Aleksander involved in that double-cross or not?

  If he was, he would know where Mungo was. And with the little time they had, the only way to flush the truth out of him might be to frighten the hell out of him in front of his parents. Read him the riot act, warn him if Mungo died he would face a murder charge. He needed to send in a bully, and realized the suspended Detective Sergeant Guy Batchelor would have been the ideal hard man to interview him. He felt Guy’s absence from his team acutely, more than ever at this moment. And he still found it hard to believe what he had done.

  Scarlett Riley, who was a trained cognitive interviewer and, despite her appearance, could be fierce when needed, would be a good person to interview Aleksander, he decided. To accompany her, he delegated another tough detective, the diminutive American FBI officer Arnie Crown – better known to the team these days as Notmuch, after a witticism by Norman Potting that had stuck. Arnie Crown had been seconded to them for training purposes as part of an information-sharing programme, and with his counter-terrorism background, he was highly experienced in extracting information quickly.

  Grace stared at the large-scale map on the wall. He ran his index finger along from the start of Shoreham Port to where it ended, some way along the River Adur. There could only be so many hiding places along the wharves. Might a local historian know them? But who? And where were they going to find a historian on a Sunday afternoon? With the clock ticking, they just did not have the luxury of that time.

  One option was a ground search along the entire waterfront. He knew there were places along the harbour, such as by the lock gates, with hidden sluices and tunnels. He’d need divers as part of a search team to cover the seven miles, but he’d have to bring them in from outside, and it would take hours just to get them into place. Hours they did not have. Sussex Police once had their own dive unit, but that had been a victim of budget cuts a few years back. He desperately wished, at this moment, they still had it.

  He switched his train of thought back to Boden Court. The blood on the victims was still wet, indicating they had all been shot only a short time before he’d arrived. Perhaps with a silenced weapon – or weapons. How had the killer – or killers – arrived and left? What was the motive? Was it greed? Taking out these three colleagues in the kidnap plan? Or was it more cynical? Perhaps someone cut out of the deal simply taking revenge and to hell with the boy? He looked at his watch. Felt panic rising.

  3.28 p.m.

  Just over two hours.

  His phone rang. It was Cassian Pewe. ‘What’s the update, Roy? I thought you were going to call me earlier.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I’ve been a bit busy.’

  ‘I’ve just heard that there’s more bodies, in a flat in Hove.’

  ‘Seems I didn’t need to update you, sir, you’re ahead of the curve. I guess that’s the advantage of integrating multiple initiatives into a systems-level approach.’

  ‘I beg your pardon? You’ve lost me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Your words, sir,’ Grace reminded him, smiling privately. ‘May I call you back in a little while, we’re very time critical at the moment.’

  ‘Are you getting this young lad back? Mungo Brown? Give me a straight answer, Roy.’

  ‘Well, sir, we’re working on the aggregation of marginal gains.’

  ‘What?’

  As soon as he had got the ACC off the line, Roy took several deep breaths. He had to forget his anger at the man, stay focused, think this through, look at the positives. Two hours. They still had just over two hours. How could he use them to the very best? What could he do that he wasn’t already doing?

  What bases was he not covering?

  At times like this, it felt like he had the loneliest job in the world. Sure, there were other detectives with kidnap experience he could call on, but he’d need to bring them up to speed and that would all eat into critical time. He had to accept that these next hours could be life or death for Mungo Brown. Very possibly depending on the decisions he now made and the actions he took.

  One thought occurred to him as he hastily updated his Policy Book – making sure he had answers for the inevitable inquest Pewe would hold, regardless of the result. As he wrote, he turned to DI Dull. ‘Donald, can you check all serials in the past twenty-four hours, look for anything that has been reported within the Shoreham Harbour and Beach area. OK?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’ll get on it after the briefing.’

  ‘No, start now.’

  ‘Roy?’ Forensic Podiatrist Haydn Kelly, looking like he’d done an all-nighter, his complexion pasty, his suit heavily creased and his tie slack, said, ‘I’ve been working together with JJ from the Super Recognizer Unit looking for the lad. We haven’t found images of him yet, but from the CCTV footage at the stadium we’ve viewed, we believe we’ve identified the individual in the red baseball cap who left the camera on the seat, then went through the doors and disappeared.’

  Kelly pointed a laser at a new whiteboard, on which was a very clear blow-up of the man in the cap. Next to it was a photograph of a man of similar age and build, wearing a blue-and-white striped Seagulls shirt, a matching scarf and bobble hat, and blue jeans. Beside that was a large mugshot.

  ‘JJ and I both believe this is the same person,’ Kelly said.

  ‘And your reasons are?’ Grace asked. ‘Apart from it being odd to wear a bobble hat in August.’

  The Super Recognizer, a tall DC in his early forties, with short, blonde hair and the eager attitude of someone who clearly loved his job, responded first, pointing the red dot of the laser at the chin of the man in the first photograph, then again at the second. ‘In my opinion,’ Jonathan Jackson said, ‘this is an identical match.’ Next, he pointed the dot on the first man’s nostril, then on the second. ‘Another match.’ He paused then went on. ‘The odds against any two persons having an identical chin and nostrils run into millions to one,’ he said, then gestured to Haydn Kelly, indicating it was his turn.

  Kelly returned to the board. He pointed first at the man in the red cap. ‘Roy, I’ve analysed this man’s gait from the Amex CCTV footage, from the time he stood up, to reaching the exit door of the stand.’ He then pointed at the second image of the man in the blue-and-white bobble hat and Albion strip. ‘I managed to obtain footage from BTP – it helped speed things up that their ACC, Robin Smith, is a former Sussex ACC,’ he said, with a smile. ‘It showed this man walking along the station platform just a short while after leaving the stand. My software analysis shows, beyond any doubt, this is the same person. I also managed to get this photograph of our suspect’s face.’ He pointed at it. ‘Does anyone know this charmer?’

  Nikki Denero spoke up. ‘I know him. He’s a member of the Brighton Albanian community. He’s got past form as a petty criminal – shoplifting and a drugs possession
case. He’s linked – again small-time – to the local big crime families, the Konstandins and Dervishis.’

  ‘Edi Konstandin?’ Grace quizzed.

  She nodded.

  He turned back to Kelly and Jackson. ‘Now you’ve got this second image, check out the CCTV footage from car park A, Bennett’s Field, to see if there’s any link with the green BMW car which I believe was the kidnappers’ vehicle. Make sure you keep DCI Fitzherbert up to date with progress.’

  Grace turned to Denero. ‘How much do you know about Edi Konstandin and Jorgji Dervishi?’

  ‘How long do you have, sir?’

  ‘As long as a car ride to Konstandin’s house takes. Where does he live?’

  ‘Somewhere near Fulking.’

  Fulking was a village fifteen minutes away.

  ‘Can you check if he’s home, Norman?’

  ‘He’s eighty-two, confined to a wheelchair after someone put a bullet in his spine twenty years ago. I doubt he’s out gallivanting around – he’s probably home, guv.’

  91

  Sunday 13 August

  15.00–16.00

  Kipp Brown, with Otto barking excitedly in the rear of the Range Rover behind the dog guard, drove up the A23 north from Brighton, then took the slip road left to Pyecombe and headed over Clayton Hill, as he had been instructed by DI Branson.

  He passed the turn-off to the Pyecombe Golf Club, carried on and then slowed as he reached the crest, spotting the turn-off onto the single-track road coming up on the right.

  To his relief, nothing followed him in. He drove along, as instructed, and then turned into the empty car park for the Jack and Jill windmills. He climbed out, pressed the clicker to open the tailgate, and as he did so heard a motorcycle approaching.

  Apprehensively, he grabbed Otto’s lead and held it as the dog barked. A BMW bike drove in and stopped beside him. Its leather-clad rider raised her vizor and said, ‘Apple. Mr Brown?’ She produced a police warrant card with the name PC Georgina Lestini.

  Kipp handed her the plastic bag, inside which was the ear, now in an evidence bag, as well as Mungo’s toothbrush and hairbrush. PC Lestini asked him to sign, date and time the transfer of the items, on the evidence bag. Then she slipped them into a pannier, thanked him and accelerated away. The encounter had taken less than thirty seconds.

  Otto tugged, excitedly, on his leash, barking again.

  ‘OK, boy! OK!’ Kipp walked the dog away for some distance, waited until he could no longer hear the bike’s engine, then knelt and unclipped the lead. The dog raced off happily. Kipp followed, tugging his phone from his pocket. He pressed to bring up his Contacts list, then again to bring up his Favourites.

  Near the top was one of his biggest clients, who had been with him at the Amex yesterday. He hit the man’s name.

  Edi Konstandin answered on the third ring. ‘Kipp!’ the eighty-two-year-old said. ‘I’m so sorry I never got to say goodbye to you at the Amex yesterday. Shame about the result, eh?’

  ‘Yep – but hopefully the team will settle down.’

  Despite everything, Kipp could not help it, a nagging voice in his mind was telling him that he needed to start thinking about strategic bets on future Seagulls games.

  ‘You’re a betting man, like me, Kipp,’ the old man said in his strong Albanian accent. ‘You think they’ll stay up?’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘I think so, too. But on a Sunday afternoon – I sense you’re not calling me just to discuss football?’

  ‘No, Edi. I need help.’

  The crime kingpin responded, guardedly, ‘What kind of help?’

  Kipp knew he was treading a fine line here. Not only was Konstandin one of his biggest clients in his own right, but for the past decade he had been his gatekeeper to many of the wealthy – and less wealthy – members of the Albanian community in the city. Whatever Edi Konstandin recommended, the Albanian expat community followed.

  ‘My son has been kidnapped, Edi. He disappeared at the Amex Stadium yesterday while we were there, and I’ve subsequently had a ransom demand. The police believe an Albanian gang is behind it. I’m calling you out of desperation to see if you can help me.’

  There was a long silence. Kipp began to wonder if he had been cut off. Then he heard the old man’s voice again.

  ‘Kidnapped? Your son? The police are wrong, Kipp. I can assure you. My people are keen to integrate into your society. It has been a taboo for a long time for any Albanian here in Brighton to step outside our boundaries. None of our people commits crimes against the local community.’

  ‘Does the name “Dervishi” mean anything to you, Edi?’

  Another long silence. ‘Jorgji Dervishi?’

  ‘Yes, and his son, Aleksander.’

  ‘You think Jorgji Dervishi is involved?’

  ‘I think he and his son might be.’

  After another long silence, the old man said, ‘You’d better start from the beginning, and tell me everything you have.’

  92

  Sunday 13 August

  15.00–16.00

  Cleo normally found it easy to chat to anyone she met. She had a friendly, caring countenance and people tended to warm to her instantly. Partly, that was because people interested her; Cleo had a theory that everyone had a story, that everyone had had something happen in their time, however pedestrian their lives might outwardly seem, if you could just get it out of them. It could be an adventure they’d been on, an extraordinary relative, a terrible tragedy, a serial killer they’d been to school with or an inexplicable mystical experience. It was there, if you could mine it, and she had always been good at doing that. But her one failure to date, the one person whose story she had not yet mined, despite many hours spent with him over the past few years, was Home Office Pathologist Dr Frazer Theobald.

  All she knew about this quietly spoken figure, with his threadbare dome, hooter of a nose and Groucho Marx moustache, was that he was married to a lecturer in microbiology and liked solo dinghy sailing in his time off. She was also starting to realize that he might be either greedy or insecure – or perhaps both. There were only thirty-two similarly qualified pathologists in the country. Which meant that, with around six hundred homicides a year in the UK, as well as many more seemingly suspicious deaths, they all got a decent share of the lucrative payments for Home Office postmortems.

  Usually, Brighton and Hove City Mortuary averaged around twelve to twenty Home Office postmortems a year, compared to around 950 regular ones, but today an unprecedented six, including Florentina Shima’s which had taken place earlier, were lined up. The human remains from the crusher site, the crusher operator, Stephen Suckling, and the three gunshot victims from Boden Court.

  The recently completed postmortem of Suckling revealed, in Theobald’s initial opinion, that he had died from a massive overdose of barbiturates. The hospital report was that someone had switched his drip bag. The SIO, Detective Inspector Bill Warner, was continuing his investigation.

  As each postmortem took around two to four hours, and sometimes longer, Cleo had suggested bringing in a second Home Office Pathologist to ease the workload – as well as freeing time for her, too – but Theobald would not hear of it. She was going to be stuck here with him, and the rest of the team needed for these postmortems, for the next two days without respite, she thought gloomily as she began removing each of the white plastic parcels containing body parts of the victim identified as Ryan Brent from the crusher site, and placing them on the stainless-steel postmortem table.

  Aside from the two small nuggets about his wife and sailing, the only other conversation Cleo had ever managed to prise out of Theobald was an explanation of why, in his fourth year at London’s Guy’s Hospital, he had decided to specialize in pathology; she hadn’t been able to tell whether he was joking or not when he’d told her that being a pathologist had two big plus points over being a doctor to the living. The first was that you didn’t have to make house calls. The second was that you didn’t
have to bother with a good bedside manner.

  And that latter, Cleo Morey often thought, really defined Theobald. Over the years she had been lumbered with this pedantic and totally humourless man on many of Roy’s homicide investigations. But despite Roy’s irritation at the man’s snail-like speed, he told her he could trust Theobald implicitly to do two vital things. The first was to establish beyond doubt the cause of death. The second was to provide evidence that, when produced in court, would be bullet-proof to attacks from even the smartest defence briefs.

  Theobald began positioning each of the parts very carefully, until finally all those recovered so far were laid out like a jigsaw puzzle, with bits missing, on the shiny steel. A right arm; a torso; a left leg. No head, left arm or right leg had so far been found. Each of the pieces, they could all see clearly, bore evidence of cuts with a sharp knife, possibly a box-cutter or a Stanley knife, Cleo thought.

  There was a new SIO attending the examination, DCI Mark Hailwood. The HM Customs Officer had now left after signing off the sachets of cocaine discovered during Florentina Shima’s postmortem, with a street value, he had estimated, of around £350,000, into temporary police custody. Other than that, the team remained unchanged.

  With Roy full-on with his kidnap enquiry and the workload here looking like an all-nighter at the very least, Cleo stepped into her office and phoned Kaitlynn. She asked her if she could remain with Noah and Bruno until the morning, and probably throughout tomorrow, then returned to the postmortem room, in time to hear Theobald dictate his first observations.

  ‘The presence of blood around the incisions on the body indicates to me these were made whilst the victim was still alive,’ he announced into his machine, seemingly oblivious, as always, to his interested audience. ‘Torture?’

  That was Cleo’s thought, too. Over the past couple of years there had been four partially intact bodies with similar cut patterns post-mortemed here. She stepped out, back into her office, closed the door and dialled Roy.