Whilst I didn’t particularly like Debbie Frost, I could imagine the shock being awoken in the early hours to be told her partner had died a violent death. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost but not quite.
Ritchie had mentioned Bartlett Poe as a suspect for killing Bryant. From the manner of Ritchie’s death it sounded like Post Poe was involved. I drove to the address listed for him, a flat in a hard-to-let block on Newington Causeway. I found the number and knocked but there was no answer.
A neighbour was standing nearby, looking concerned. “I hope you’ve a good reason for knocking on his door, mister. He doesn’t like people coming to his place, especially when it’s only nine o’clock.”
I showed my badge. “Fuck what he likes,” I said with some feeling.
I asked if she’d seen Mr Poe recently but she said she’d seen him leaving yesterday and hadn’t seen him returning.
I reported the absence of Bartlett Poe from his address on the wire, mentioning he was a potential suspect in two deaths and police units should be alerted. The public should also be warned not to approach him as he was likely to be dangerous.
I was about to get into my car and drive back to the office when I noticed a van bearing the name Fettolio’s driving towards the roundabout and indicating it was turning right. I didn’t recognise the driver. Curious, and on a whim, I pulled out and followed the van from a distance of two, three vehicles behind.
The van drove along St George’s Road, into Westminster Bridge Road, and joined the traffic crossing Westminster Bridge. I stayed three vehicles behind and could see the van, despite the heavier traffic in the area. Past the bridge, the van turned right and drove along Victoria Embankment, turning left into Northumberland Avenue, joined the throng of traffic around Trafalgar Square and then headed north up Charing Cross Road. At Shaftesbury Avenue the van turned into Greek Street and pulled up outside Delucca’s.
I watched the driver get out, open the back of the van and remove a couple of boxes and carry them into the restaurant. A few minutes later the driver returned and got into the van and drove off towards Soho Square, but I remained in place because my gut instinct told me to wait. It had been wrong previously but I waited.
Ten minutes later Michael Mendoccini emerged carrying an attaché case and, wearing a suit and tie and looking every inch the businessman, got into the taxi which had just pulled up outside. I followed as it pulled away towards Shaftesbury Avenue.
The cab went through Covent Garden, along High Holborn and towards the City. Mendoccini was smartly dressed, so my guess was he was off to do business somewhere. The taxi stopped in Threadneedle Street, opposite the Bank of England. I wondered if he was planning to make a deposit or blow it up. Looking at him as he paid the fare, I was struck by conflicting and confusing feelings. Part of me still loved him as a friend, but I was aware of what he was now a part of.
He crossed the road. I parked and followed him. He was ambling along leisurely, seemingly in no hurry to be anywhere at any particular time. He entered a small café. I walked along and glanced in the window and saw him talking to a man I didn’t recognise at a corner table. I crossed the road to wait.
Twenty minutes later both men emerged. The other guy was slightly bigger than Mendoccini and wearing what appeared to be a navy blue denim jacket. Mendoccini took something from his own inside jacket pocket and passed it to the other man. It looked like an envelope. After a brief handshake they set off in different directions. Mendoccini was still carrying the attaché case. I watched him walking away and tried not to let my feelings for him overtake me. Whilst I was distracted the other man slipped away and I didn’t see in which direction. I’d lost him through my lack of focus.
I drove to Debbie Frost’s flat. I’d phoned her office, Conservative Party headquarters, and been told she wasn’t coming in to work today as she’d suffered a bereavement.
She was sitting on her own when I arrived. The door to her flat was open and I could see her sitting on the couch, head back against a cushion and staring at the ceiling. She didn’t seem surprised to see me. She looked at me as if I weren’t really there. She was somewhere else inside her own mind and trying to make sense of the changes that’d recently occurred there. There was a sense of distance about the way she perceived her situation to be and her usual distaste at seeing me was not evident. I entered without knocking and stood by the coffee table, looking down at her.
“If it means anything coming from me, sorry for your loss.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
Her eyes were bloodshot and she’d been crying. I wondered if she had any family or friends nearby who could be with her at this time. I asked her.
“I phoned my parents just now, they’re on their way.”
“This is probably an inopportune moment but I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. Are you up to it?”
“Yes, I’m okay. I can do this,” she said softly.
I sat down opposite. She flexed her shoulders, like she was preparing for physical exertion.
“I’ll make you the same offer as I did Darren. You tell me everything you know about this and maybe you can get yourself ahead of any potential charges.” Despite my antipathy towards her I was trying to be reasonable with her. “But the same proviso applies: any bullshit and I’ll arrest you on conspiracy charges. We got a deal?”
“I believe so,” she sighed.
I was taking into account her distress at the loss of Darren Ritchie and was trying to cut her some slack. “Okay, run me through what happened here last night after I left.”
She took a deep breath.
“Not long after ten, Darren got a call on his mobile. He listened to whatever was being said, he said something like alright, I’ll be there and hung up. He put his jacket on, said he’s just popping out for a little while. He wasn’t back by eleven fifteen, so I went to bed. Next thing, police are at the door, sometime around three, telling me Darren’s been found dead by the embankment.”
She was composed in her reply. She spoke matter-of-factly, like she was giving dictation.
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“No.” She sniffed.
“And you don’t know who called.”
“I don’t, no.”
“Could you hazard a guess, perhaps?”
“Not really, could have been anyone.”
“You sure about that? It’s gotta be someone he knew well to get him to leave the flat that time of night. Could it have been someone from his work?”
“No, they wouldn’t call that time of night.”
“Did he sound perturbed at being called out so late?”
“No, he seemed fine about it, didn’t seem bothered at all. It wasn’t the first time he’d got a call at that hour.”
“His phone wasn’t found, so you have to assume it’s now in pieces so we can’t trace the caller. There’s nothing from CCTV yet either.”
She blew her nose loudly as I was speaking. “Sorry about that.”
“Did he have any enemies? Anyone threatening him for any reason?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so.” She looked at me as though she didn’t like the question.
“No jealous boyfriends or jilted girlfriends?” I was being flippant.
She ignored the question. I decided to grill her on my visit fifteen hours earlier.
“Do you think Darren’s death could be anything to do with why I came to see him last evening?” I looked directly at her, watching her response.
“In what way?”
“Oh, come on, think about it. He admitted complicity in money laundering. He told me he’d helped doctor accounts, enabling money to move more easily between different accounts. He was doing this helping Red Heaven, whether he knew it or not. There’s some nasty people involved here, Debbie.” I was thinking in particular of Post Poe and my suspicion he’d killed Bryant and also Ritchie. “Had he said anything to you about problems at work concerning this matter?”
“Darren’s only an investment analyst. He was just helping Bradley out. When he first started helping, he thought he was just doing his friend a favour.”
She began to sob quietly. I waited for thirty seconds.
“Darren met with someone named Michael Mendoccini on Monday,” I said. “He took a briefcase back to the bank.”
“Yes. Bradley couldn’t meet him in the open, so Darren collected it for him.”
“Do you know Mendoccini?”
“I think I’ve met him briefly but I don’t know him. He’s cute, though.”
“Why did they use cash rather than money transfers?”
“Apparently it made tracing it more difficult, so I was told. There’s less of a trail with cash; that’s why they did it like that.”
She began to sob again. I waited.
“This is all my fault,” she blubbed. She went into the kitchenette and returned with a box of tissues. “Darren’s dead because of me.”
“Why’s that?”
“When Darren first got involved, he had no idea of the extent to which Bradley was involved. He assumed he was just helping fiddle the books, making some small change for himself. But he found out the full extent of what Bradley was doing when Hemsley told him about the accounts he’d seen, the companies existing only on paper, the transactions with offshore companies, the fact only Bradley had access to the system where the laundering was occurring and so on. This made Darren aware he was getting in too deep and there was a lot more to this than he’d realised.” She paused.
“So, how does his death become your fault?”
“Because I discovered Bradley’s father was in the Government, someone with influence in the party. Bradley found out I was looking to become an MP, so he told Darren that if he continued to just move some figures around for him, turn a blind eye to where certain money was going and cover Bradley’s tracks for him, he’d have a word with his father, get him to put in a good word for me because I’m on the party’s A-list to be a candidate at the next election. With both Christian Perkins and Gerald Bradley behind me, I’d be in with a real chance of securing a winnable constituency, possibly even a safe seat.”
Perkins was a Tory grandee I’d encountered when attempting to discover why Phil Gant had shot dead two brothers last year. To say he was odious would be to sugar-coat my feelings. If she wanted him in her corner she was welcome to him. I could almost stomach Stimpson compared to Perkins. At least he was just obnoxious.
She blew her nose again and dabbed her eyes.
“Hemsley had no idea Ritchie was in as deep as he was, did he?” I said. “He was dumb enough to believe Darren Ritchie was his friend, helping him out. Whereas the truth is Ritchie was helping Bradley distort and manipulate the accounts so money could go towards Red Heaven via whatever offshore accounts it was routed through and be clean enough to spend without worrying about its source being compromised, and Hemsley presented a threat.”
She looked away and sighed. That was my answer.
“You knew he was aiding Red Heaven, didn’t you?” I wasn’t asking. “Have you heard of section five of the 2006 Terrorism Act? It covers the commission of acts preparatory to an act of terrorism. Helping launder money for a terrorist group to arm itself falls under that heading. What do you think?”
“Darren’s no terrorist. He was doing it for me.” She’d raised her voice.
I looked at her with some degree of disgust. “So, you agreed to Darren continuing to help funnel money into and out of various accounts, knowing or at least reasonably suspecting funds would be going to a terrorist group, so you could be put on the inner track towards getting a seat on the back benches. Have I missed anything out?”
She didn’t reply. I waited a few seconds.
“Do you know who Edward Giavante is?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“He was a New Yorker, on holiday with his family in Italy not long ago. He was buying ice cream for his family when a car bomb went off nearby. Blew him to bits. His wife and kid died from horrific injuries soon afterwards. His son had half his head blown off. The ice cream vendor also died; only a young guy, college student, working to help pay his tuition fees. Four innocent people dead, Red Heaven’s handiwork.” I spoke calmly. “Also, some English schoolkids on a Spanish visit recently got caught up in an explosion outside Barcelona’s ground and a few of them got hurt as well.”
She looked at me as if to say and?
“You work in political analysis. You think they could finance all these actions without Darren’s and Roger Bradley’s assistance?”
She looked dazed at my comments. I waited a few more moments.
“Do you think Red Heaven’s the fucking Boys’ Brigade?” I exclaimed. “Did you really think funds they received went on some end-of-term jamboree?” At this point I didn’t give a shit about her feelings. “Are you really that stupid?”
“There’s no need to be so hostile, DS McGraw,” she said sharply. “I’m answering your questions, aren’t I?”
“Hostile? You want hostility? Try explaining to Hemsley’s wife why her husband committed suicide as a result of this.”
“That bitch?” Debbie sneered. “Lois Hemsley and Bradley have been seeing each other for years. She probably encouraged Nigel to kill himself, you want the truth about her.”
“What do you mean?” I was curious.
“When Hemsley discovered his wife was seeing Roger Bradley and had been for some while, rather than go punch his lights out, like a normal bloke would do, he decides to dig into the accounts to find a way of getting Bradley sacked and prosecuted. But in doing this he stumbles onto what Bradley’s been engaging in, pretty much the whole story. He then tells his wife what he’s found, thinking that’ll stop her seeing Bradley. But she tells Bradley and that’s when the pressure on Hemsley starts building. The bank assures him there’s nothing wrong with their accounts. Bradley had structured the accounts in such a way that they were wholly plausible.” She nodded, almost with approval. “So Hemsley had suspicions but couldn’t really prove anything.”
“That was why he went to Bryant, wasn’t it?”
“I assume so. They knew he’d spoken to someone outside the firm.”
I hoped they didn’t know Hemsley had also spoken to Richard Clements.
“Hemsley wouldn’t have told them that,” I said.
“No, but his wife would, and she did, the bitch. She told Bradley she’d overheard Nigel talking to some reporter he’d hired to investigate his claims. Darren tried deflecting the reporter when they met but it didn’t work out. Believe it or not, he was trying to protect Nigel.”
“Darren said last night he wasn’t aware Bryant was being set up to be killed. You share that view?”
“I’m not as gullible as Darren.” She shook her head. “Put it this way: Bryant being killed like that didn’t exactly surprise me.”
“One thing I don’t understand. How would a merchant banker like Roger Bradley ever come into contact with someone like Post Poe? I’m guessing Poe wasn’t in the bank looking to extend his investment portfolio.”
“Through Richard Rhodes.” She said this as though I were stupid not realising it. “I don’t know how they came into contact, but Richard told Darren, if they ever needed help and he wasn’t around, to use Post Poe. Richard’s currently out of the country so I suspect, if Roger wanted anything taken care of, he’d have contacted Poe.”
Richard Rhodes was the son of Christian Perkins. I’d encountered him on two occasions and I suspected him of direct involvement in at least two deaths, though I had no proof for either of them. He was also ex-military and had worked as a mercenary soldier in several theatres of war. He was about as amoral as it was possible to be and still remain human. When he and Poe looked at each other, they saw themselves.
“Silly me, I should have known. I mean, why have some violent psycho on speed dial and not make use of his services?” I said facetiously. “Did you know I met Rhodes
’ mother once? She was a really nice, sweet old lady, but God must have hated her at one time. I mean, Christian Perkins as a lover? Richard Rhodes for a son? She must have been extraordinarily wicked in a past life to deserve that fate. What was she, Lucrezia Borgia?”
Debbie was unimpressed with my tirade. She looked at me with a face registering a scowl and repulsion at my denigrating two people she was fond of. Especially Perkins as, at one time, they’d been lovers.
“What’s Bradley’s connection to Red Heaven?” I asked. “I’ve seen his file and there’s no history of political extremism in his family. They’re all one-nation Tories. How does someone like him become embroiled in laundering money for a group like Red Heaven?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she said nonchalantly. “When Darren began helping him out, he’d been laundering funds for a little while. The system was already in place. Darren just fitted in there somewhere.”
“Other than helping get you into Parliament, what was Ritchie’s motivation for helping out Roger Bradley?”
“Just financial. Bradley paid him a few thousand for his help. I don’t know exact amounts but it helped us buy this place.” She looked around the room.
A two-bedroom flat in Chelsea, close to the Kings Road? He must have been paid considerably more than a few thousand. I waited a few moments.
“Do you have a good mop?”
“Huh?” She looked mystified.
“I was just wondering because, to buy this flat, four people have died and you’ve got their blood all over your floor, so you’ll need something to clean up the mess with.”
It took her two seconds to realise I’d just insulted her. Her expression then changed to one of outrage.
“How dare you make—” She sat up.
“You’re finished, Debbie.” I’d cut her off and raised my voice. My initial concern for her feelings at her loss was now well and truly behind me. I no longer cared if I hurt her feelings, her pride, her subconscious or her ancestors. “With what you’ve just told me, you’re as much a part of this as Ritchie was. I ought to arrest you right now, but I can use you.”
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