He gave me a cynical yeah right expression. “Like that’s gonna happen. You know how much I had in there?” He looked miserable.
Harris, you jammy little . . . I thought to myself.
“Anyway, that’s up to you.” I moved on. “You buy anything at the market yesterday, or was it just a flying visit?”
“What, the market up the road?”
“Portobello Road. You were seen there yesterday afternoon.”
“No, I wasn’t. Who told you that?” He wasn’t a particularly good liar.
I produced my iPhone and showed him a picture of himself outside Pret a Manger. “Looks like someone’s impersonating you, then, Drake. They ever film your life story, this guy’s got the part.”
He sighed and said nothing.
“Someone saw you there, knew I had an interest in you, so they took a few snaps and sent them to me. You were definitely there, Drake. There’s the proof.” I wasn’t going to tell him I’d seen him.
He took a few deep breaths and didn’t reply.
“How do you know the person you were talking to, this guy?” I showed him a picture of him and Glett talking.
“He’s busted me a couple of times, so he knows who I am. I was just walking around and bumped into him at the market. He just stopped me, asked what I was doing there, that kind of thing.” He sounded nervous and unconvincing. “He knows I don’t usually go there, so he was curious about what I was doing away from around here.”
I stared at him disbelievingly. “Nice try, Drake. Now tell me why you went to meet this guy. He’s a DI, you know that?”
“I told you, I bumped into him, that’s it.”
“So this wasn’t an arranged meet, then.”
“No, nothing like that.” He was looking away.
“I was told you waited on the corner for a few minutes, then this guy strolled along. You telling me that was purely coincidental?”
“Must have been.” He tried to sound casual.
“So, if I ask this DI, then, he’ll tell me the same thing.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” He looked at me, trying to hold my stare, but his eyes told me he was lying. He’d not expected to be seen with Glett and was struggling to come up with a credible story. “How’d you get that picture, anyway?” He screwed up his face.
“Just told you. Someone saw you two together and thought I might be interested, and, yeah, I’m interested.”
This unnerved him. It’d dawned on him he was being watched. The fact it’d been blind luck I happened to be there at all wasn’t going to be made known to him. But what I couldn’t get my head around was what the connection could be between Glett and Mahoney. Was Mahoney Glett’s informant? Was Glett plugged into what was happening on the wilder fringes of the Chackartis or the IRA through Mahoney?
“Gimme your mobile,” I ordered him.
“Why?”
“’Cause I’m telling you to,” I replied firmly, taking a step closer to him.
He reluctantly passed his mobile to me. It was a Samsung: top of the line, brand new and probably stolen. I put it into phone mode and pressed the contacts button. I saw Glett’s name listed and a number. I looked down the list of numbers I’d obtained from Mahoney’s wallet and saw the same number. This immediately told me there was a connection between the two men. Why else would he have Glett’s number?
“Call this one.” I pointed to Glett’s number. “When he answers, say you’re sorry, you pressed the wrong number, or something like that. I wanna hear his reply.”
Looking like he wanted to kill me, he called Glett.
“Fuck you calling me for?” I heard an irritable voice say. “I told you only use this number if it’s something important.” This was definitely Paul Glett’s voice.
“Oh yeah, yeah, sorry,” he stammered, “didn’t mean to call you. Wrong number.”
“Jesus.” The speaker sounded angry and rang off.
Despite his tone of voice, it was apparent Glett knew Mahoney.
“So, how come you have the number of a CID detective inspector in your list of contacts? What are you, best mates?”
For a few seconds he seemed to be trying to come up with an answer I’d believe, and then my phone buzzed. It was Smitherman.
“There’s been a shooting at Ehmat Chackarti’s place. Get up there, see what’s happening.”
“Is he dead?”
“Not sure what’s happening, go check it out.” He recited the address.
Telling Mahoney he’d better have a good answer ready for me when I next saw him, I left.
*
I pulled into the road where Ehmat Chackarti lived, which was only two roads away from Ahmed’s place, though his house was smaller and, because the postcode was different, valued at considerably less than his brother’s. There were two police cars parked outside, and Paul Glett’s car parked up. Had he already been here when Mahoney had phoned him several minutes back? There was also an ambulance next to the police cars. Several neighbours were in their driveways talking to each other, wondering what was happening over the road on a Sunday morning which merited the presence of the emergency services.
I showed ID to the uniform at the front gate and entered the house. Everyone seemed to be in the kitchen, which was a large room. Mickey Corsley’s gym wasn’t as big as this room. The kitchen was brightly lit and there were lots of fearsome-looking, gleaming stainless steel cooking utensils hanging up, shiny black marble-looking worktops everywhere, and a breakfast bar. This would be many a woman’s dream kitchen.
Sitting at the breakfast bar was Ehmat Chackarti, who bore an astounding resemblance to his brother Ahmed. His shoulder had been grazed by a bullet, and he was being treated by a paramedic, while he insisted he was fine and refused to go to hospital. A detective I didn’t recognise was talking to him.
Glett was standing nearby. He spotted me and led me outside into the hallway. I considered asking him why he’d met Drake Mahoney yesterday but, as I wanted to compare stories, decided not to until I’d seen Mahoney again.
I asked what had happened. Apparently someone had taken a shot at Ehmat from behind a large lupin bush at the bottom of his back garden. Ehmat had been by the sink filling a kettle when he thought he saw movement in his garden, and the next second whoever it was had fired a shot at him. Ehmat’d felt a stinging pain in his left shoulder as the bullet nicked him, and the breaking glass had scratched his cheeks. I could see the bullet being dug out of the wall the other side of the kitchen.
“I’ve looked around down there, didn’t see anybody, didn’t find any evidence either,” Glett said. “There’s a small park the other side of the fence, so whoever did it was probably away within a few seconds.”
Ehmat was the family member who, according to his brother, was gung-ho for the liaison with the IRA. It was he who’d told his brothers he was going to be helping them out. He was also a member of the ruling council of one of this country’s largest and most fearsome crime families, yet someone had just taken a potshot at him. In his own home, where he lived with his wife and children. In underworld terms, this would be considered an infamita, an act of the ultimate disrespect, and contrary to all the accepted and unwritten rules of the game: attacking someone in their home, especially when women and children, who’d be regarded as non-combatants, were on the premises and being put at wholly unjustified risk.
Who could have been so brazen? The Chackartis were plugged into criminal networks all across the capital, and probably in several other major cities, and were known to have good connections inside the police, so, unless this was the action of a lone nutjob with a death wish, I didn’t doubt someone somewhere would soon hear a whisper and it’d reach the right people inside the family. Once that happened, the shooter’s time on earth would be running out.
Glett said he had to leave, but I said I was gonna remain and talk to Ehmat; this was a golden opportunity to question him because I had a legitimate reason to be inside his house. Glett left and I wen
t back into the kitchen.
Ehmat was clearly irritable with so many people present, but the medics had reluctantly agreed he didn’t need to go to hospital, so they began packing up. The lead detective saw me and queried who I was. I identified myself as Special Branch and said this was connected to something we had an interest in. He left me to it and went to check on the bullet.
“And who might you be?” Ehmat asked as I approached him. He sounded calm despite being the victim of a shooting.
“DS McGraw, Special Branch. Can you recap for me what happened just now?”
He told me the same thing he’d told Glett: standing by the sink, looking out the window, he’d thought he’d seen someone coming from behind the lupin bush near the bottom of his garden and, as he was looking, that person shot at him and nicked his shoulder. That was essentially it. He’d not recognised who it was, although it had been a man. His wife’d called the emergency services, and, no, she’d not seen anything either.
From his calm manner I suspected he knew who’d taken the shot but wasn’t going to say anything to police. This was going to be handled by the family.
“Any ideas why anyone’d wanna take a run at you like this?”
“No, I’m just a businessman. I’ve no idea why.”
Ignoring the last comment, I took out Chandler’s pictures of Cormac and John. “I’ve a couple of suspects here. Recognise either of these two pilgrims?”
I showed them to Ehmat and looked at his eyes. It was clear to me he recognised at least one of the men.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t know either of them.” He shook his head.
“You sure? Have a closer look.”
His eyes barely registered on the pictures. “No, sorry, don’t know these two.”
I put the pictures back into my pocket. He was outwardly calm but looked like he was trying to contain his anger. I suspected he was anxious for everyone to leave the house, but that wasn’t going to happen for a while yet.
“You know someone named Barry Mates, Ehmat?”
“Don’t think I do. Who’s he?”
“Or Gary White?”
“No. Are they the two people you just showed me?”
“No. They’re two people who work for your family, or used to. Both died unnatural deaths this past week. Mates was shot Wednesday lunchtime, White was stabbed to death same evening. Thought you might at least know the names of the people who work for you.”
“No, don’t know them. I’d heard someone was shot outside the club but didn’t know who.” He stated this as though the shooting were of no consequence.
Injured or not, time to ruffle his feathers.
“The Branch’s heard a whisper Mates was doing something for a reactivated IRA unit. That’s nasty stuff, Ehmat. You know anything about that?”
“What are you talking about?” He looked slightly rattled. “Mates helped the IRA out last week, and they used the cars he organised the stealing of to plant car bombs.” I wasn’t asking; I was telling him.
“I don’t know anything about that.” He looked away from me.
“If you guys are linked to the IRA, you know what that’ll mean, don’t you?”
At that moment I became aware of raised voices and activity behind me. I turned and saw three people coming into the kitchen. I only recognised one of them.
“And you are?” I asked Ahmed Chackarti.
He looked at me and gave no indication he’d recognised me. “I’m Ahmed, Ehmat’s brother. This is our brother Maroun and his wife.”
Maroun also looked like his brothers, though his wife was English. Ahmed looked briefly at me again and then walked past to talk to Ehmat.
After Ehmat told me again he couldn’t think of any reason why anyone would want to shoot him, I left him to talk to his family and finish up giving his statement to CID. I told him he and I would be talking again. He’d been rattled when he’d heard the name IRA and I wasn’t going to let it go.
I went out the back door and walked down to the bottom of the garden, where a couple of uniforms were searching around by the bushes and the fence for clues. I stood by the lupin bush and looked back. The kitchen window was about forty yards away, no distance for anyone who knew how to shoot. There was a gate, but anyone entering could be seen from the kitchen. The wooden fence at the very bottom was about eight feet high, easily scalable for a fit person. I looked around. The lupin bush would provide excellent cover for anyone climbing over this fence. Someone could easily scale this fence from the other side, take a shot, then leave without being seen.
I then went back through the house and along the road, turned a corner, went down a passageway and walked into the small park behind the house, looking around and wondering which route the shooter might have taken. I was starting to walk back around to the front of the house when a uniform approached me.
“Excuse me, sir, I’ve a woman here who says she saw someone climbing over that fence.” He nodded back to where Ehmat Chackarti lived.
“Oh, really? Where is she?” Could this be a lead?
He gestured to a woman standing nearby, probably early sixties and holding on to a grey mini schnauzer which looked resentful at its playtime being interfered with. I thanked her for coming forward and asked what she’d seen.
“Gertie and I were just over there” – she nodded to some bushes – “when I saw a man scrambling over that fence.” She pointed to the back of Ehmat’s house. “He seemed like he was in a hurry and disappeared that way.” She pointed in the direction of the road. “I didn’t think too much of it at first, I thought it might have been whoever lived there, but then when I heard there’d been a shooting . . .” Her voice tailed off.
“When did you see this?”
“Oh, less than an hour ago, maybe forty-five to fifty minutes.”
“Did you get a look at the man’s face?”
“Not really, he mainly had his back to me, and he came over the fence very quickly. I only saw him for a few seconds. He dropped down over there” – she pointed to the fence – “and then ran off.”
“Which way?”
“Down there.” She pointed to the passageway leading to the road at the front of the house. Why would the shooter go that way?
“Could you describe the person you saw?”
“I didn’t see his face, but he had on a dark jacket, a black or dark blue shirt and tie and ordinary-looking dark trousers. He had sort of lightish-coloured hair as well.”
Oh boy. Oh boy. I tried not to show my surprise.
“Okay, thank you for your help. Give your name and address to this officer as we may need to talk to you again.”
I walked away feeling confused. She’d just described Detective Inspector Paul Glett.
*
In the car I tried to make sense of the situation that was now unfolding, mainly thinking about Glett. Had it really been him taking the shot at Ehmat Chackarti? The woman I’d spoken to a few minutes back had just described him almost exactly, as that’s what he’d been wearing in the kitchen just now. He’d also been in the house when I’d first arrived. How would he have known about this situation so quickly?
I’d also seen him yesterday afternoon in Portobello Road market talking to Drake Mahoney. Mahoney was known to be on the fringes of those Special Branch identified as being IRA sympathisers, and he’d been a known associate of Seamus Drew, who’d blown himself to pieces whilst delivering a car to wherever he was going a week ago. How would Glett know Mahoney well enough for Mahoney to have his number on his phone?
I thought back to the shooting of Barry Mates last Wednesday lunchtime. I’d been outside talking to the two detectives when Glett came out from inside the club, and DC Bunn had said she’d not realised Glett had even been present.
I began to speculate. Murray Kirkwall had been traced to a house in Kidbrooke, but he and his family had left the premises a few hours before police had arrived. They’d obviously been tipped off. Could Glett have been involved in this?
Glett had also suggested we talk to George Duncan in his house last Friday, rather than go to a police station to talk, as Duncan would only lawyer up. But he’d know as well as I did that suspects brought in under the Terrorist Act 2006 had no automatic right to counsel. They’d be questioned by police before any decision about representation by counsel was made.
Glett was attached to the Gangs and Organised Crime division, based at West End Central. I contacted the division, identified myself and asked to be patched through to DI Glett. I was told by the woman at the other end DI Glett wasn’t on duty today. I thanked her and hung up. Why had he been at Ehmat Chackarti’s house if this was the case? I couldn’t make any sense of this situation. I needed to talk to him.
First, though, I needed to talk to Mahoney again. Back to Camden. There was no answer from ringing his bell. I rang another bell and the same woman as earlier answered. I explained I was looking for Drake Mahoney, and this time I showed ID. She said he’d left earlier with another man, but she didn’t know who it was.
But, courtesy of Mahoney, I now knew Glett’s mobile number, so I dialled it. Straight to answerphone. I also now had his home number, so I called it. His wife Clare answered. I identified myself as a work colleague, said I was visiting from outside London and trying to get in touch with Paul but he wasn’t answering his phone.
“He’s meeting another work colleague for lunch today. They’re on a case together.”
“Would you know who? Might be someone I know.”
“I don’t know the person’s actual name. I only know the name Paul refers to him as.”
“What’s that?”
“Paul refers to him as Marius.”
I’d heard the name before and it immediately struck a chord with me. I took a few deep breaths. Oh boy. Mixed, confused thoughts swirled around in my head.
“You okay there?” She laughed.
“Yeah, got a cold, trying not to sneeze,” I said. “Thanks for the tip. Could you not mention my calling to Paul? I’d like to surprise him.”
She agreed she’d say nothing.
But I’d just had the bigger surprise. In fact, it was more than a surprise. It was a shock to the system, the kind of shock which can induce strokes or heart attacks. The name I’d just heard was the codename he’d used in MI5 before being retired on health grounds.
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