by Jake Cross
‘I’ll wait for you. I want you to take me to my friend Danny’s house tomorrow.’
His mouth fell open. ‘What? There’s someone you can go to after all? Why didn’t you mention him earlier?’
‘I can’t go tonight, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
Exactly what he’d been thinking. An extra half hour out of his life wouldn’t have mattered if it had meant getting rid of her. ‘Why?’
‘Tomorrow. I’ve explained all this. You can take me there tomorrow.’
He literally roared like a lion in frustration. He knew she wouldn’t be convinced, so started down the ladder again. ‘When I get back tomorrow, you make sure you’re gone. I did my good deed for this year. Be thankful you got any help. I had magnificent news six months back, and I don’t think I stopped smiling till you appeared.’
She pulled a scornful face. ‘Lucky for some. But I’ve got nothing to smile about, have I? I need help and you have to help me.’
He jumped the last few feet to the floor. ‘Okay,’ he said, and it was a blatant lie. He wasn’t going to take her home, to this Danny’s house or anyplace else. He figured that the morning would give her a fresh outlook and that she’d leave before he returned. But if not, it was a problem for a new day. Right now all he wanted was to go home to a woman he gave a shit about.
He deactivated the answerphone and went for the door. He flicked the light, crossed the dark room, and slid under the shutter. He could see flickering light from the loft: she had turned on the TV, volume low. For the millionth time he regretted ever having met this woman, then he lowered the shutter, locked it and got into his van.
He hoped he’d seen the last of Liz Smith.
Eight
Mac
The ID tag was military chic, unfortunately, so there was no real name, no religious leaning or medical information embossed on it. Just one word: Bosszilla. But it was enough. The detective who found the dog tag knew the word was urban slang for a rampaging, angry superior, Godzilla-like. He was formerly of Operation Trident, now called the Trident Gang Crime Command, which had been set up following a wave of shootings and killings in Lambeth and Brent, and he was well aware of a guy known as Bosszilla: Dave Ramirez.
Grafton hadn’t yet been confirmed as one of the dead, but he had a concrete connection to the slaughterhouse and now there was a pretty solid clue that one of his biggest and most notorious rivals had been there. It was enough to put two detectives in a speeding car.
* * *
Within fifteen minutes of the find, the two detectives were at an address in Crayford. They knocked and then pushed their way inside past an exhausted-looking and sweaty girl wearing next to nothing. Ramirez’s new girlfriend, probably. He was in the bath, and the detectives liked that. They figured it could mean he was washing blood off his skin.
He was a skinny little Latino guy with a bushy moustache that looked like a cartoon version of a disguise. And wide, shocked eyes. A big shot Bosszilla when he had his minions surrounding him, but not alone and naked in a bath, and he knew it. No match for two tall coppers, so he came quietly. He’d been arrested enough times to know that the place to put up a fight was the police station, with a solicitor as a cornerman. Fuckers like Ramirez usually won on points, but no matter how lucky they got, or what weapons they brought to the fight, the cops always got the first strike. And they took pleasure in it now as they yanked him from the bath, slapped on cuffs and spat the word ‘murder’.
* * *
Mac decided to watch Ramirez’s interview on video-feed from another room. He’d investigated Ramirez five years before, when the kid was just nineteen. A murder outside a Chinese takeaway in Kensington, when Mac, a year into DCI status, had headed their murder squad. There had been suspicions that somehow Ramirez had wielded the knife but convinced one of his cronies to take the rap.
DS Gondal and a lanky DC called Cooper conducted the interview. Ramirez hadn’t yet been told who he was suspected of murdering. A breach of the rules, sure, but normal rules didn’t really apply when dealing with people like Ramirez. They wanted to see how he reacted, and they didn’t think he’d be making an official complaint.
What he did was sit in silence and look nervous. Understandable. They’d sourced intel on this guy from the local CID and had been warned that he was cocky and liked to play games during questioning, but that was around coppers he knew: the ones who nicked him for running prostitutes, or peddling heroin, or breaking the legs of people who didn’t pay for his protection; charges he always beat. But these were new boys and the stakes were higher.
DS Gondal and DC Cooper made small talk without the tape recorder snooping. Now, backed up by a video camera eyeballing everything, Ramirez had lost his nerves. So, he was one hundred per cent attitude. He hadn’t asked for a solicitor yet, and had even admitted why: if his brief got called in, his mum would know it was serious and would hammer him. All three laughed about this. The cops knew Ramirez was trying to get them onside with a bit of larking about, and they pretended to think of him as a regular guy by asking about his hobbies, offering drinks and moaning about the March weather. A nice little party.
And then Mac sent Gondal a text telling him to begin. Gondal started the tape and introduced everyone present. Party over.
‘Do you know of a man called Ronald Grafton?’
‘Teflon Ron?’ Ramirez said, laughing. ‘Who doesn’t? The guy you assholes can’t seem to nail. That fraud thing just gone, fucked you all up on that, didn’t he? You had nothing on the Thames suitcase thing, did you?’
And then he stopped laughing. Very abruptly. He looked at each detective and nodded. ‘I get it. Oh, man, do I get it. I thought that guy had tried to fuck me over, set me up for some murder. But it’s him, isn’t it? Teflon Ron, Mr fucking Invincible, has finally been slotted, hasn’t he?’
Nine
Karl
You might be in danger. I don’t think you should go home tonight.
What a damn thing to say to him. It was bouncing around in his head like a pinball. The desire to return home, get back to Katie and snuggle up was intense, yet he pulled into a bus lay-by and grabbed his mobile off the floor, and booted up the Internet. He had to know more. He typed:
TILE KILN LANE ATTACK
Three months ago a guy walking his Labrador had been accosted and robbed by a low-life hoodie who took the dog’s sparkly collar.
Not that.
ELIZABETH SMITH
There was a Liz Smith with a silly blog about her pregnant cats. Another Liz Smith was collecting for a charity parachute jump. Grunge band singer Liz Smith was followed by a plethora of LinkedIn and Facebook Liz Smiths. None of them.
A memory: his Liz had mentioned Kensington.
ELIZABETH SMITH KENSINGTON
Christ. There was a Liz Smith, online boot store owner, who was showcasing her gear at the Kensington Shoe Event this month.
ELIZABETH SMITH KENSINGTON PAW PRINT TATTOO
He almost laughed. There was a Liz Smith who ran a kennel called Pawprints, in Kensington Park, Adelaide, Australia, which had been picked up by a newspaper because she had tattooed an advertisement for her business across the whole of her back.
A memory: his Liz had called her husband Ron.
ELIZABETH SMITH KENSINGTON PAW PRINT TATTOO RON
Jackpot. Top of the search results. Online edition of Home & Fashion magazine, dated six years ago. The story was titled:
HOLLYWOOD-STYLE WEDDING: THE JOURNEY BEGINS
He clicked it and up came the story, with a photo.
He skimmed the article. Local businessman Ronald Grafton last week married his long-time girlfriend, Elizabeth Smith, at Kensington Palace, at a serious price tag for one afternoon. The lavish outdoor ceremony on the Orangery Lawn had been attended by hundreds, and protected by the police. Home & Fashion were the important words here, though, because while the article made a big song and dance about hats and flowers and fancy fabric, it didn’t reveal much
about the newlyweds.
But there she was, glowing, like an angel, in a white wedding dress. The husband, a good-looking man in his late thirties, was facing her, left arm around her waist, right hand raised and pressed flat against her left hand. Karl saw the paw print tattoo on both their hands, and he understood. A split tattoo, like the broken heart ones he’d seen on some young lovers, with the paw prints denoting the beginning of a long and harmonious journey. Sweet, but only worth one line of text. Geraniums got two.
He impatiently flicked back to the search page, ready to type in a new name.
LIZ GRAFTON
But then he saw the link in second place on the list, and the words: GANGLORD MARRIES CHILDHOOD SWEETHEART
Ten
Mac
After the pleasant shock of learning that the mighty Ronald Grafton was dead, Ramirez quickly realised why he was sitting where he was, and turned down No-Comment Street. But he didn’t yell for a solicitor, so the detectives were still happy. Maybe he was aware that in a murder case police could question a suspect for a day and a half without legal aid if a senior officer authorised it. But he wouldn’t know that their superintendent, aware that the tactic was a dog that could bite the owner once a case hit court, had already said, Don’t even ask.
A pretty gruesome murder, they said. No robbery, this. Revenge. By enemies. Ramirez and Grafton had a long-standing beef, right?
‘No comment,’ Ramirez shot back.
Tit-for-tat vandalism of one another’s property. Violent Braveheart-style clashes between their minions in the streets. Drug zone wars. Then there was that episode with Ramirez’s prized restored Cortina, up in flames. Enraged him, surely? Could such a thing be forgiven?
‘No comment.’
Question after question about his volatile relationship with Grafton got the same response, altered now and then only by the injection of a swear word. He gave them nothing, but at least that included a request for a solicitor.
Just because he was travelling down No-Comment Street, it didn’t mean the detectives couldn’t steer the conversation where they wanted. Grafton, as Ramirez had said, was known as Mr Invincible on the streets, and in the media as Teflon Ron, which was a play on the nickname The Teflon Don given to infamous mobster John Gotti because charges never stuck. Most of London’s big criminals had these daft names, some they’d picked themselves. Grafton called himself The Boss these days, an inert title he liked because he was trying to project a straight businessman image, and who’d trust someone with a macho tag?
Had Ramirez heard that nickname for Grafton?
‘No comment.’
A stretchy name, The Boss. It didn’t say much about the man behind it. Bosses could be fair, good, kind, approachable, or completely the opposite. You didn’t know which sort you were dealing with if a man was simply The Boss, did you? But Bosszilla, that was different. That painted a certain picture, didn’t it? Ever heard that name?
‘No comment.’
A few years ago there was a gang of idiots called the GodZillas, in Lewisham, where Ramirez was born. Just kids, runts, fools who thought it would be cool to pretend to be bad boys and collide with other gangs on the streets of London instead of going to school. One chap, now doing twenty for aggravated robbery, was called Rodan, right? Was the youngest of the members called Godzooky?
‘No comment,’ Ramirez spat over the detectives’ laughter.
But the boss, he was Bosszilla, and, according to the Trident files, Bosszilla was a guy called David Ramirez.
‘No comment.’
Gondal’s phone beeped.
SHOW HIM
He showed Cooper the text and plucked out a plastic bag.
‘Found at the murder scene,’ he announced, loud and proud.
They noted the puzzlement on Ramirez’s face as he scrutinised the dog tag inside. There was no brave attitude now. Just fear.
In the room next door, Mac studied the video closely, looking intently at Ramirez’s face.
In that split second No-Comment Street turned onto Lawyer Lane.
‘Lawyer? Won’t your mum kick your butt for that?’ Cooper asked.
Gondal said: ‘You’re saying this dog tag isn’t yours?’
‘Lawyer.’
‘You’re saying that we couldn’t find people to say they’ve seen you wearing this?’ Cooper questioned.
‘Lawyer.’
Gondal asked: ‘You’re saying we won’t find your DNA on this when the results come back? Or Ronald Grafton’s?’
‘Get me a damn lawyer.’
They had no choice. The police station duty solicitor had an office upstairs, which was a nice touch to ensure that the arrested didn’t wait long for their tax-paid defender to arrive, as long as you got collared before 5 p.m. So, they needed to call a guy in, which meant a wait, and they weren’t going to let Ramirez do that on a comfy chair. He got a phone call first, then an hour in a cell. An hour alone in a stone box could feel like a long time.
* * *
It felt longer for Mac, who found himself experiencing something he hadn’t for a long, long time. Worry. He slid by the cell and peeked in, and saw Ramirez pacing. He couldn’t read him.
His fears grew worse when Cooper approached with an update. He had called the Crown Prosecution Service, but the government lawyer he reached hadn’t been impressed.
The Trident Gang Crime Command had got back to their former colleague with some bad news. They had statements, photos and files on the GodZillas, but all of it old. Nothing more recent than seven years ago. Ramirez had been fifteen when he set it up, but as he aged and upped his reputation and moved to Kensington, he disbanded it in favour of more secret squads, bigger scores, and heavier stuff than street brawls. They had ceased to exist, and Ramirez hadn’t been associated with the Bosszilla name in a long time.
According to the CPS, all Ramirez had to do was claim he’d lost the dog tag, and nobody could prove otherwise. Get something meatier, the lawyer had advised. Cooper had even pretended to get cut off so he could call back and talk to another lawyer. A woman this time, with a helpful dislike of gang violence because her sister’s friend’s son took a wandering turf war bullet. But the same grim outlook. Get something meatier and we’ll look at it.
Mac got the feeling he was starting to see their whole case unravel.
Eleven
Karl
Ganglord? Karl clicked the link with a shaking hand.
The wedding again but with a different angle to the coverage. Home & Fashion had the prim and the elderly to please, but this writer didn’t. Here, the cops were not present as security, they were eyeballing the crowd in search of wanted criminals. Many underworld faces had been expected at the wedding of one of Britain’s most notorious crime barons.
Karl typed in the name Ronald Grafton, and his worry rose.
Ronald Grafton: bigshot London criminal with ties to organised crime in Spain. His fingers were in every pie unpalatable to the police: prostitution, drugs, fraud, guns, identity theft. Rumoured to be worth £10 million. His nickname was Teflon Ron, and it was quite fitting: five times in the last nine years upholders of law and order had hauled him into court, only to watch him stroll right back out with a shredded prosecution case in his wake. What was then the Serious Organised Crime Agency failed three times to do him for drug smuggling; three years ago, when a former colleague was found in a suitcase floating in a river, he beat a murder charge because the police didn’t act upon information about a second suspect; and a year ago he was acquitted of arranging arson attacks on property owned by alleged rival criminals. He was due in court in a few weeks on a charge of fraud. The story was dated two months ago. Nervous, Karl hit the news tab and got a story that was ten hours old.
LOCAL GANGLORD CLEARED OF FRAUD CHARGES
There was a photo: Ron and Liz atop a set of wide stone steps outside a law court. Holding hands, their other arms raised for a crowd of onlookers. Her left hand, his right, with the paw prints denotin
g the end of a long journey this time. He wore a white suit. She wore the very dress wrapping her body when Karl nearly crushed her in his van.
A neutral piece of reporting this time. It didn’t say Ronald Grafton was a businessman wrongly accused, and it didn’t say another powerful criminal had beaten the system. It listed facts and handed over to Grafton himself for a quote given to reporters mobbing him like a film star. He said the charges had been absurd, justice had prevailed, now all he wanted to do was go celebrate with his wife and friends – thanks to all who believed in me, thanks to my loving wife who stood by me at every turn, and adios.
He couldn’t be reached for comment and that evening his Kensington home was dark and silent. He was believed to have flown out of the country to celebrate in one of his Spanish homes with his wife and a couple of close friends.
Oh no he hadn’t, Karl thought with a genuine chill on his spine. He’d stayed right here in London, tucked up at some secret hideaway. Maybe the paparazzi couldn’t find him, but others knew where he’d gone. The worst possible kind.
Shit.
It explained everything. Why Liz had used her maiden name, and why she had refused to talk about her husband, and most of all why she had refused to go to the cops after their refuge was attacked. High-level criminals had their own code of justice and didn’t involve the police in anything, be it a stolen pushbike or attempted slaughter at a remote hideaway home. That was why her husband had ordered her to flee and lay low if ever they got attacked by enemies, of which he must have many.