by John Harvey
Kiley read the look in Cordon’s good eye. Made the universal sign. ‘Thought it wasn’t like that between you?’
‘It’s not.’
‘What was this then? A one-off? Pair of you got carried away? Or just a little something to alleviate the boredom?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Not to me. But it might make it tougher for her with Anton, if he knows she’s been screwing around.’
‘I wouldn’t exactly call it that. Besides, he knows she’s no angel. And Danny’s what he wants, not Letitia.’
‘In that case, why not just take the boy?’
‘Would have been difficult, bringing him out of France, back into the country on his own. All that much easier if Letitia agrees to play along.’
‘She’d do that?’
‘Pragmatic, that’s Letitia. Besides, I can’t see she’d’ve had a lot of choice.’
Kiley walked across to the window and looked out. The sky, shadings of deep purple and the occasional yellowish streak, was a similar colour to the skin round Cordon’s left eye.
‘You know,’ Kiley said, ‘I came to Brittany once when I was a kid. First time ever in France. Cycling holiday with the school. Some kind of exchange. First night a bunch of us shook off the teachers, went into town. First one cafe, then the next. One after another, pointing at the bottles behind the bar. Spending what little bit of money we had fast as we could. Sick, sick, sick as a dog. After that there was a curfew. Local police on duty to keep the stupid Anglais from causing any more commotion, getting drunk. Couldn’t have been much more than sixteen stupid years old.’
He smiled. ‘Met my first girlfriend on that trip, too. Pen pal more or less till I left school.’
‘Thinking of looking her up?’ Cordon asked caustically.
‘I did once. What? Dozen years ago? On holiday with a couple of friends. She was still living in the same place, little village outside Vannes, out near the Atlantic coast. Mistake. Five kids, moustache, wide as a house.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘I don’t know. Things like that, they nag at you.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Oh, missed chances. Roads not taken. Relationships allowed to drift. Always that nagging question, what if, what if?’
‘French air, is it?’ Cordon asked. ‘Bringing out all this philosophy?’
‘I dare say.’
‘’Cause if it is, sooner you get back across the Channel the better it’ll be.’
‘Had a word with the doctor on the way in. Four or five days it’ll be before you’re discharged. That, at least.’
‘Nothing to say I can’t discharge myself,’ Cordon said. But, as he moved, some unspecified pain speared through him and he gasped loudly, hands gripping the sheets.
‘When I come back later,’ Kiley said, ‘I’ll bring grapes. A deck of cards. See if I can’t win some money off you while you’re disabled.’
47
The Volvo had been found in a scrap dealer’s yard outside Erith, close to the Thames Estuary at Crayford Ness. The same Volvo that had been stolen from the Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush — 4,500 parking spaces, valet parking available, a lot of cars from which to choose — and then shown up on CCTV, tailing the leased Transit en route to Stansted and back; now with its engine removed, doors and side panels disassembled, chassis ready to be winched away. Bits and pieces for the fingerprint boys to play with. Girls, too. The result: one right index finger on the steering column, with a partial alongside; another partial, left little finger, on the fascia. Palm print on the inside of the offside door.
Where would we be, Karen thought, without computers, AFIS, DNA?
Answer: even farther behind.
The prints taken from the body of the Volvo confirmed what the dealer had already told them: the identity of the individual who’d brought it in — Stuart Dyer, just twenty-one years old and recently arrested for possession of a Class A drug with intent to supply, but then released. Two previous charges of possession of a controlled substance, one dismissed, the other for which he’d served a little juvenile time. His co-defendant in both cases was his cousin, Jamie Parsons. Parsons, who did scut work for Gordon Dooley and, because of that association, was gunned down outside the Jazz Cafe in Camden, presumed victim of an attack for which the torture and eventual murder of Valentyn Horak and his henchmen was a reprisal.
Give it time and, eventually, gradually, it all tied together.
When Ramsden, with some serious back-up, called round at the tower-block flat in Foots Cray where he lived, Dyer was sitting with his mum watching daytime TV, an ad for stairlifts screening when Ramsden came into the room. Dyer with a can of Kestrel in his hand, his mum favouring cider, both of them smoking, some kind of bull-headed mastiff growling through its slobber at their feet.
Dyer made as if to bolt, but then, reading the glint in Ramsden’s eye, thought better of it.
‘What the fuck’re you after now?’ Mrs Dyer asked.’ ‘Why’n’t you leave the boy alone?’
Jeremy Kyle appeared on screen to loud applause, doubtless about to reveal some poignant personal dilemma to the audience. Lifting the remote from the corner of the settee, Ramsden muted the volume.
‘Hey! I was fuckin’ watching that!’
The dog growled lazily, then lowered its head.
‘Sorry, Mrs Dyer. Just wanted a word with young Stuart here.’
‘Yeah, well, s’posin’ he don’t want a word with you?’
‘What’s it to be, Stuart?’ Ramsden said. ‘You want to talk here or down the station?’
‘I got a choice?’
Ramsden grinned, showing crooked teeth.
‘Just wait, yeah,’ Dyer said, ‘while I get me fuckin’ coat.’
‘Take it easy on him, yeah?’ his mum said, once he was out of the room. ‘Lot of mouth, but he’s not very bright. Easy led, know what I mean?’
Taking back the remote, she raised the volume loud.
Dyer sat uneasily, rocking the chair back on its metal legs. Grey drawstring hoodie with A amp; FITCH in white lettering down the sleeve. Tangle of dark hair. Something of a pretty-boy face, save for a cluster of whiteheads sprouting around his mouth. Half-hidden beneath his lashes, grey-green eyes.
Ramsden had asked one of the officers to fetch a Dr Pepper from the vending machine and Dyer drummed on it haphazardly with his fingers, nails bitten down.
Feigned nonchalance.
If he wasn’t already squirming inside, he was really as stupid as his mum had made out.
‘The Volvo,’ Ramsden said, ‘let’s start there.’
Nothing.
‘Come on, Stuart, don’t piss me about. The one you dumped in Erith. Snagged it from Westfield, remember? Volvo, S60, dark green. Asked for it special, did he, Arthurs? Dougie Freeman, maybe. Whoever it was, brought you in as driver. Get us a nice motor, Stuey, something with a bit of speed, comfortable. Volvo’d be handsome.’
‘Dunno what you’re talkin’ about.’
‘Come on, Stuart. Your prints are all fucking over it and, if that weren’t enough, we’ve got you barellin’ down the road to Stansted on CCTV.’
‘Bullshit!’
‘You think so?’
Dyer took a swallow from the Dr Pepper, bought a little time. Cleared his throat.
‘Just say. Just say, mind — and I’m not admitting anythin’, right, but, like I say, just s’posin’ I took the motor, right, like you said, all that’d be, takin’ and drivin’ away. No one’s gonna send me down for that. Lose my licence, maybe, six months, a year. Small fine, time to pay. Pro-fuckin’-bation.’
‘Stuart, Stuart, you’re not listening. The minute you got behind that wheel, that journey out to Stansted, you were getting into something a lot more serious. More serious than you believe. Accessory, Stuart, that’s you. Accessory to torture. Better than that, murder.’ Ramsden shook his head. ‘You done it this time, boy, and no mistake.’
The
colour had blanched from Dyer’s cheeks and there was a pronounced twitch in one of his grey-green eyes.
‘You want to take a look, Stuart? Take a look at these?’
With exaggerated care, Ramsden fanned out half a dozen photographs taken inside the storage unit, three bodies, like so much casual slaughter, hanging down.
‘Pretty, don’t you think?’
Dyer bit into his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
‘Of course,’ Ramsden said, a change of voice, change of tone, ‘I can understand why you’d have wanted to be involved. Jamie Parsons, him as was gunned down in Camden, he was your cousin, yeah?’
Dyer nodded.
‘Any kind of payback, only right you’d want to be involved. Family, yeah? Your mum’d have told you, I’m sure. Got to stand up, Stu. Be counted on this. But I bet she never, you never, thought it would come to this …’ Tapping the photographs. ‘Am I right, Stuart? Am I right? You never …’
There was panic now, bright and darting, in his eyes. The kind you see in rats, Ramsden thought, trapped up against the wire.
Slowly, he leaned in, not enough to frighten, just enough to reassure. ‘What we need to talk about, Stuart, is how you got yourself mixed up in all this. See if there isn’t something we can do. Some way round this, don’t leave you in the dock along with everyone else. Culpable homicide, Stuart, three times over. Life inside. You don’t want that.’ Reaching across, Ramsden patted his hand. ‘Okay, Stuart? Okay? Let’s see what we can do.’
‘This is all on tape?’ Karen said. ‘Transcribed?’
Ramsden grinned his crooked grin. ‘Even as we speak.’
They were in her office, evening, late, but no one was going home. Sandwiches, half-eaten; coffees, growing cold. Through the blur of half-glass, other officers moved around as if underwater, sat hunched over their desks, computers, accessed this list and that, pressed keys, made calls.
‘He’s named everyone?’
‘Everyone in the car, the van. Everyone involved.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Les Arthurs, Kevin Martin, Jason Richards riding with Dyer in the Volvo, Dougie Freeman and Mike Carter up ahead in the van.’
‘Just Kevin Martin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not Terry?’
Ramsden shook his head.
‘Shame,’ Karen said.
‘Yes. No Dooley, either. Too careful to get his hands dirty, this kind of business. Just a name, where Dyer’s concerned. Barely that.’
‘Who was it, then, set him up?’
‘Arthurs, apparently. Told him there was going to be some serious payback for what had happened to his cousin, Jamie. Give them a good working over, that’s what Dyer reckoned. What went on out at Wing, he didn’t know about. Not till after.’
‘Even though he was there?’
‘Sent him off for pizza, didn’t they? His story. Twenty-mile round trip in search of fifteen-inch pepperoni pizzas. Maybe when this is over he’ll get a job with Domino’s.’
‘You believe all that? Believe him or d’you think he’s just stringing us along?’
Ramsden shrugged. ‘I’d say, bit of both. But right now, it suits us to take what he’s saying as gospel. Long as it keeps him talking. And, besides, what he’s given us so far, Carter and Arthurs doing most of the heavy stuff, fits in pretty well with what we might have guessed. Nasty bastards, both of them. Sooner they’re off the streets the better.’
Karen nodded. ‘I’ve had one conversation with Burcher already. Due another one tomorrow.’
‘No plans for lifting Arthurs and the others till then?’
Karen shook her head. ‘Watching brief only. Till we’re told otherwise. My guess, they’ll want to wait till they’re sure everything’s in place, make one fell swoop.’
‘Just so long as they don’t hold off too long, let ‘em slip away. And make sure they remember who got ‘em this far. Don’t let the bastards grab all the glory.’
A rueful smile came to Karen’s face. ‘Trust me on that one, Mike. Trust me.’
48
This time the meeting was in a hotel close to the Westway, a conference room on the eleventh floor. Corporate anonymity. Silent through triple-glazed windows, three lanes of slow-moving traffic eased their way, ghost like, towards the city centre; drivers, whey faced, bored, listening absently to the radio, smoking, illegally using their mobile phones. On the table, jugs of water, glasses, a selection of sweet biscuits, notepads and pens bearing the hotel’s crest and name. At intervals the air conditioner cut in above the radiators’ low hum.
Sterile enough, Karen thought, should it be necessary, to perform an operation.
Burcher.
Cormack.
Alex Williams.
Charlie Frost.
Karen had made her report first, bringing them up to speed on her team’s progress: the links between Dennis Broderick and Gordon Dooley; the evidence that placed Valentyn Horak and two others on their way to Stansted inside the van Broderick had leased at Dooley’s request; Stuart Dyer at the wheel of the second vehicle — Dyer who placed five of Dooley’s known associates at the place where Horak and two others were tortured and probably killed.
‘No chance he’s going to recant?’ Cormack asked. ‘This witness?’
‘Always a chance,’ Karen said. ‘What I’d be more concerned about is someone getting to him. Persuading him to change his mind or shutting him up for good.’
‘We can cotton-wool him, surely,’ Alex Williams said. ‘Protective custody.’
‘Not something we’ve been conspicuously good at recently,’ Cormack chipped in.
‘We won’t lose him,’ Burcher said. ‘Lessons learned.’
‘The sooner, then, maybe,’ Karen said, ‘we pick up Arthurs and the rest, the better.’
‘Let’s not lose sight, though, of the bigger picture,’ Burcher said. ‘What we still don’t have, as far as I can see, is anything watertight that ties Dooley in to all this — Broderick’s assertion, aside, that it was Dooley talked him into leasing the van in the first place.’
‘Must count for something,’ Karen said.
‘Not a bloody lot.’
She flashed him a look.
‘There has been one other development,’ Cormack put in swiftly, ‘might prove useful. By dint of promising to revise his immigration status, we’ve persuaded one of the Chinese workers picked up at one of the raided cannabis farms to start cooperating, remembering a few faces. So far we’ve come up with Mike Carter, wielding a machete. And Carter’s links back to Gordon Dooley are, I think, pretty well documented.’
‘It’s something,’ Burcher said. ‘Still not enough.’
‘I don’t know,’ Alex Williams said. ‘Maybe Karen’s right. Lift Arthurs, Carter and the others now. If they think there’s mileage to be gained from shopping Dooley, that might just give us what we need. It could even panic Dooley himself into some kind of false move. Leave himself open.’
‘From our point of view there’s one big risk in going in too soon,’ Charlie Frost said, speaking for the first time. ‘SOCA’s main interest here, as you know, is at the money-laundering end of things. And as you also, I think, know, one of our principal targets, Anton Kosach, has — or, rather, had — links with Valentyn Horak which were starting to become more clearly defined at the time of Horak’s unfortunate demise. Quite large amounts which were being paid into one of Kosach’s subsidiaries, from where it would be moved around offshore, washed through a couple of shell companies and thence …’
A smile came to Karen’s face: she liked the thence.
‘… and thence to a numbered but otherwise anonymous account in the Caymans-’
‘Or Jersey,’ Alex Williams suggested.
‘Or Jersey. Either way, there’s some clear evidence that Dooley, after successfully moving in on Horak’s operations, has been in contact through intermediaries with Kosach, in order to move the extra money he’s been accumulating out of the country.’
Capitalism, Karen thought, such a wonderful thing.
‘Some evidence,’ Frost concluded, ‘but not quite enough.’
‘How much longer do you need?’ Burcher asked.
‘How much can I have?’
‘I don’t know.’ Burcher threw up his hands. ‘Warren? What do you think?’
‘Well, everything we know suggests Kosach’s a major player. And not just money laundering. His hands are dirtier than that. People trafficking. Prostitution. It would be great to bring him down. But I can see there’s a risk. Delay too long and we could lose everything. The whole shooting match.’
Burcher massaged his scalp. Thought. Waited. Thought some more.
‘All right, the way I suggest we proceed is this. Karen, your team, with some assistance, keep Dooley’s thugs under surveillance. Warren, you look to Dooley himself. This to give Charlie as reasonable a time to get the evidence as he needs — and no use SOCA being timid about this, Charlie, we’re talking days not fucking weeks — and the minute it seems as if Dooley or anyone else we’ve got tabs on shows signs of panic and starts to run, we bring the whole lot in at a gallop. No exceptions.’
He looked round the table.
‘All agreed?’
They were agreed.
Karen was hoping to catch Alex Williams on the way out, but Burcher made his own claim. ‘Alex, a few minutes of your time?’
The door closed behind them and Karen walked on to where Cormack and Charlie Frost were waiting, midway along the corridor, for the lift.
49
Cordon’s left eye still looked as if he’d walked into a door just a few days before; either that or said the wrong thing to the wrong man in the wrong bar. More than enough of those around, as the previous night’s drinking with Kiley had proved. That great barn of a place on the corner where they showed the Gaelic football amongst them. Cordon had lost his footing at one point, his balance still not being what it was, banged his sore ribs against the end of the bar and let out a shout louder than the one that had gone up when Mayo scored the winning goal in the last minutes against Sligo at Quigabar.