Marius

by Laurence Todd

  “How you gonna do that? Matey and Gary White are both dead, aren’t they?” He looked smug, almost triumphant.

  “Who’s Gary White?” I asked. “I’ve not mentioned that name.”

  He looked worried for a moment but quickly recovered his poise. “One of the two car thieves. Matey must have told me his name.”

  “So you’re admitting you told Mates to organise the stealing of two cars,” I stated.

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  “Now, that’s unwise, George, because we know you did, you see,” I said. “Before we came here, we spoke to others in the family, whom I’m guessing, if we named, you’d quite likely be familiar with.”

  He said nothing.

  “To put it mildly, they’re somewhat dischuffed at the family being used to accommodate rogue IRA, and even more dischuffed at Ali Chackarti’s driver and bodyguard being the man who’s instigating it all.”

  I stopped for a moment. Duncan sat motionless, his eyes alternately looking at whatever was on the wall or out the window. He looked at me, then stared at Glett for several seconds. He was considering his options.

  “Plus there’s the fact we have your fingerprints in the house,” I reminded him.

  Duncan was now biting his lower lip, looking as though he was concentrating.

  “So, you need to do yourself a favour,” I said, looking straight at him, “and get in front of this situation before you’re in too deep and you drown.”

  “What do you mean?” He looked puzzled.

  “It’s called positioning. I mean, when the shit hits the fan, and you’re standing too close, more of it hits you, you know what I’m saying? So the best place to be when that happens is as far away as possible so hardly any of it lands on you. That’s what I mean by positioning: being in a place where others get covered in shit rather than you.”

  His eyes looked upwards for several seconds. Was I getting through to him?

  “What’s your connection to the house in Kidbrooke? How do your fingerprints end up being on the kitchen counter there?”

  Duncan was leaning back in his chair, not speaking. From his expression, it appeared he was realising his options were limited. He could deny being involved in cars being stolen, and, with White and Mates dead, proving it would be an issue. But his fingerprints in a house where suspected terrorists had a base was a fact, something he couldn’t evade.

  I waited a few more seconds.

  “Our sources in the family indicate you only did what you did because you’d been told by Ehmat there’s protection from the police. Ehmat’s the one really up for this, we’re told. You know anything about that?”

  Hearing Ehmat’s name, he looked up, like he’d just awoken from a short nap. His wide-open eyes suggested I’d hit a nerve.

  “Yeah, we know Ehmat’s involved as well.” I looked at him with a sly smile. “He’s aligned himself with someone outside the family, and if you know who that person is, you’d score some real brownie points if you told us. Could mean less severe charges. That’s what positioning means, Dunc. We put in a good word, you might even avoid going inside.”

  It was evident from Duncan’s face he now realised we knew more than he’d thought. If he’d thought we were just groping in the dark, we’d shown this was no longer the case. Hearing Ehmat’s name dropped into the conversation had thrown him. He sighed several times like he was trying to take a deep breath.

  “The late Mr Mates conveniently died just after he pointed a finger at you,” I reminded him. “Don’t suppose you know anything about it, do you?”

  “That’s right, I don’t,” he finally said, trying to sound positive.

  “Well, somebody does, so unless a better candidate comes along, because you had all the incentive in the world to shut him up, I’m just hoping you don’t have any plans for tonight.”

  I left Duncan in no doubt of what I was planning. If he was in any doubt, my producing a pair of hand restraints certainly convinced him I was serious.

  He now looked like he was panicking. He was breathing deeply. He tapped his fingers a few times and closed his eyes for a moment.

  “Alright, alright.” He paused. “If I talk, what are my chances of a deal?”

  His voice didn’t sound quite as cocksure as when we’d first approached him. We had him on the end of a rope and were reeling him in.

  “I’d need to clear it with my boss first, but you give us whoever you’re dealing with and answer some questions, certain charges could go away, you know what I’m saying? We might forget we’ve spoken to certain people, things like that.”

  “And you’ll leave those people in the family not involved alone?”

  “If they’re not involved, yeah, most likely we will,” I agreed.

  “Is that guaranteed?” he asked.

  “No, it’s not.” I was adamant. “You know there can’t be any guarantees. We’re trying to get a handle on terrorists here, but what I can say is, if I don’t need to bring them in, or talk to them, they’re in the clear. Fair enough?”

  “Okay.” He sighed. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  *

  Ehmat Chackarti had come to visit Duncan one Tuesday a few weeks ago. He’d told Duncan he’d like him to do something.

  “What’s that?” Duncan had asked.

  “Organise the lifting of a couple of motors for me. It’s a private job, so don’t tell Ali, and I don’t want you telling Ahmed either because he’ll want to make a record of how much they’re being sold for.”

  Duncan had asked what he wanted the cars for.

  “Don’t ask too many questions,” he was told. “As I said, it’s a private arrangement and I’ll make it worth your while. Use someone good to organise it, and get someone reliable to lift the motors.”

  “What if they get caught?”

  “Nothing’ll happen, police are on side with this one.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really, so, as I said, can you do this? I’d be very grateful a bit further down the line.”

  *

  “So you went along with it and used Mates,” I said.

  “Yeah, I asked Matey, gave him a brief outline, told him to keep it quiet and I’d owe him a favour. He said he’d help out. I told him to get someone good to do it, and he did. He used Gary White. I told Matey not to tell him why the motors were wanted, just tell him to go get them, and that’s what he did.”

  “But Special Branch caught White, and we’re not the protection he was promised. So he pointed the finger at Matey, and he in turn pointed it at you,” I said casually. “Can’t trust anyone these days, can you?”

  White and Matey were beyond any risk of vindictive reprisals, so they could be named with impunity.

  “I don’t believe you.” He poured scorn on my suggestion.

  “He did,” I assured him. “Y’see, Matey’d discovered the two cars lifted were used by this IRA unit for car bombings, and one person had been killed, so his choice was simple: give us a name or face charges relating to the aiding and abetting of terrorism. It’s amazing how the mention of Belmarsh prison loosens tongues.” I grinned at Duncan for a few seconds, but, from his expression, he wasn’t in the party mood. “And that’s why I think White and Mates were killed, especially Mates, because he could point a finger at you, couldn’t he? You have them killed?”

  “No, I didn’t.” He was adamant.

  “You know who did?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “What about Ehmat, you think he might have had it done? I mean, if he knew you’d sent the order down the chain of command, and that chain was headed by him, it’d make sense to break the chain, wouldn’t it? No nasty pointy fingers doing it this way, eh?”

  “Ehmat knew Special Branch’d picked up White and been to see Matey,” Duncan said in a matter-of-fact voice.

  “How’d he know that?” This was very worrying.

  “I don’t know.”

  Glett joined the conv
ersation. “Ehmat has a police contact, that’s the only explanation.”

  “So it’s a logical assumption Ehmat’s involved in silencing Mates and White. That make sense to you?” I asked Duncan.

  “Who knows?” He shrugged.

  “So, back to my earlier question: how do your fingerprints end up in the house in Kidbrooke we think these people were using?”

  His eyes were still rolling from side to side and he seemed unfocused. He knew this was the one thing we could nail him for.

  “Look,” he eventually said, “I took a few boxes of stuff down there, alright? I was asked to do this as a favour and to do it myself.”

  “Ehmat,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “He gave me the Kidbrooke address, asked if I can just drop these boxes down there, and do it without Ali knowing, so I did.”

  “Big boxes?”

  “About so big.” From his hand movements, I guessed about two to three feet square.

  “What was in the boxes?”

  “I don’t know, and I didn’t ask.”

  “Heavy boxes? Things rattling about inside?”

  “Nah, I could carry two at a time easily.”

  From the size of Duncan, he could probably carry a grand piano easily.

  “Who’d you give them to when you got there?”

  “Nobody. I was told the house’d be empty but the door’d be unlocked, so just leave them in the kitchen and come away, which is what I did. But I made myself a cuppa tea while I was there, so that’s probably where my dabs came from.”

  “Best guess, what did the boxes feel full of to you?”

  “Didn’t take too much notice. I just dropped them off. That’s it. I didn’t see anyone, didn’t talk to anyone about what I did.”

  Glett rose from his seat and walked towards the corner of the room, indicating he wanted me to follow. I did.

  “What do you think?” I asked sotto voce.

  “We haven’t got any evidence to pin Matey and White’s deaths on him, have we? All we got is the fingerprints, but we haven’t found anything incriminating in the house either, so we’re fucked on that one as well.”

  “Yeah, true,” I reluctantly agreed.

  “Ehmat’s the key. He’s the one knows what’s going on. We gotta go after that joker.”

  “Yeah.”

  Glett went back to his seat. I moved closer to Duncan.

  “Ehmat’s working with someone outside the family,” I said. “It’s not the family helping the IRA, it’s Ehmat. You have any idea who this person might be?”

  “No, I don’t, I’ve no idea who it might be. I’ve certainly never seen him.”

  I produced Jacqueline Chandler’s drawings again and showed them to Duncan. “Recognise either of these two pilgrims?”

  I watched his eyes as he scanned the pictures of Cormac and John. I thought I detected a flicker of recognition from the way his facial expression changed.

  “Think I recognise this one.” He pointed to the younger of the two.

  “Where from?”

  “He’s been in Las Vargas occasionally when I’ve been there. Who are they, anyway?”

  “It was their house in Kidbrooke you took those boxes to. You know his name?”

  “No, but I think he’s French. Said he was over from France. Didn’t sound it, though.”

  Glett and I looked at each other. French?

  “What about this guy?” I showed him a picture of Murray Kirkwall on my iPhone.

  “That’s the same bloke, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, taken yesterday. You know him?”

  “No, I don’t. Seen him about, but that’s all.”

  I agreed with Glett. Ehmat was now to be our focus. “Where does Ehmat work? Where does he spend his days?”

  “Works from home, so far as I know.”

  “I know where he lives,” Glett said.

  After a couple of minutes warning Duncan to say nothing about the events of the past hour, and calmly telling him if he said one word to anyone, I’d be talking to Ali Chackarti, Glett and I left Duncan to think about the changed reality of his life inside the family.

  *

  Driving back to the office, I summarised what I knew about the past few days. Through the unlikely source of Charles Doyle, we’d discovered who’d stolen the cars used by an activated IRA sleeper unit to cause explosions, and through that thief we had found the man who’d got him to do it. The other man who’d helped steal the cars had pointed us in the direction of the mysterious Murray Kirkwall and his renting of a lock-up garage, whereupon guns, Semtex and other bomb-making paraphernalia had been found. We’d located an address in Kidbrooke for the person who’d come to the lock-up but found nobody and nothing there.

  More importantly, I’d learned the involvement of this IRA unit with the Chackarti family was largely the work of one of the four brothers, Ehmat. It was he doing this on behalf of the IRA. But what I didn’t know was who he was working with outside the family.

  I was convinced what we’d found in the lock-up garage belonged to Kirkwall, or Francis if the neighbours were to be believed, but the residents of his supposed address had skipped out, and coincidentally just after Murray Kirkwall had been released from custody. Had they been tipped off?

  But what really was a cause for concern was how Ehmat Chackarti had known Special Branch had picked up Gary White. Very few knew of the Branch’s involvement.

  I was also intrigued by George Duncan’s assertion he thought Kirkwall was French. Where had that come from? The guy I’d taken into custody wasn’t French and hadn’t spoken with a French accent. This was rapidly becoming a case where police knew a lot and, at the same time, knew nothing.

  There’s been no sightings of the Kirkwall/Francis family since they’d left Kidbrooke either. The neighbours hadn’t been certain the pictures shown to them were the people who lived next door. Chandler’s pictures had been copied and circulated to police across the capital, with officers being asked to look out for these individuals and report any sightings. Mercifully, at least there’d been no more explosions since early last Saturday morning, and I wondered whether our find in the lock-up had anything to do with this.

  There’d been one other piece of good news. Earlier this morning Tyler Watts had been released from custody, without charge, after anti-terrorism officers accepted Chappy’s statement about the lock-up being sublet to a Murray Kirkwall. I suspected there’d be a strain on his relationship with his son for some while, though.

  Police were now intensifying their efforts looking for the Kirkwall/Francis family.

  *

  I brought Smitherman up to speed with what had been going on since morning. He also realised, like me, that we were caught in the classic police dilemma: we seemed to know a lot but couldn’t arrest anyone because we had no meaningful evidence a court of law would accept. I suggested we focus all our efforts on Ehmat Chackarti, as he was the connecting point between the family and the IRA through whoever it was outside the family he was helping. My money was on Cormac or John McGreely.

  According to Duncan it’d been Ehmat who’d asked him to make the delivery to Kidbrooke. This was of course hearsay and couldn’t be used as evidence, and Ehmat would certainly deny it, but at least it was a factor against Duncan. Ehmat also knew White had named Matey, who’d named Duncan, so eliminating these two kept Duncan in place and meant no fingers pointing at Ehmat.

  Smitherman agreed, and told me to make Ehmat my new priority.

  Ehmat Chackarti for the moment, of course, was in the clear. We couldn’t bring him in for questioning, not only because we had nothing on him in this case, but also because it would alert the person outside the family he’d been dealing with, who might decide to go to ground again and become invisible, and he was the one we really wanted. Smitherman said Ehmat was going to be watched, around the clock, to see where he went and what he did. He’d arrange for Ehmat’s phone to be tapped as well.

  *

  La
te afternoon, 4.45 pm. I was now off duty and, by a quite fortuitous quirk in how my monthly duty rota had been arranged, I wasn’t back on again until just before midday Sunday, which gave me almost the whole weekend to spend with Taylor, as she wasn’t going into the Evening Standard’s offices on Saturday.

  I was on the bus to Battersea. I had almost a whole weekend off for the first time in a couple of months, and I was trying not to think about the Chackartis or who else’d died or anything else about the week just gone. My focus was solely on the first beer of the weekend and whatever Taylor and I would get up to.

  Midway along Ebury Bridge Road, four teenagers, two males and two females, all aged about sixteen or seventeen and in full school uniform, boarded the bus. I recognised the badge on their jackets as St Anne’s, an expensive fee-paying private school in Pimlico which specialised in getting rich kids into Oxbridge. They all sat in the seats two rows in front of me and one of the boys began excitedly talking about the weekend.

  He then opened his shoulder bag and produced a clear plastic pencil case, and inside, he boasted, there were several joints rolled and ready for immediate consumption. He said he’d bought them from Eduardo, who’d sold him the joints plus a number of legal highs for only £50. He asked his friends if they wanted one of each and, if they did, they should all come back to his place as his parents weren’t going to be home till later. They all agreed and gave each other high fives. I looked out the window the whole time, but I listened and heard everything, even above all the other conversations going on around me.

  The bus stopped in Prince of Wales Drive, on the southwest side of Battersea Park, and all four teenagers disembarked. I followed them off and waited as all the other passengers moved away. All four remained in the bus shelter looking around furtively and, when no one was nearby, the boy took out the pencil case and unzipped it. He had his hand inside the case as I approached them, which drew a few hostile stares.