by Michael Kerr
When Andy left the cemetery, he was unaware that behind him, his movements were being relayed to Georgio. He was no longer safe. There was no way for him to know that Savino had asked Gorchev to find and snatch him: that as soon as he had fulfilled the contract on Katy Baxendale, he would be lifted and handed over to Savino’s
men.
The details on his mark did not present many avenues of opportunity to stage an accidental death. In the past, he had actually pushed a high-ranking civil servant off the platform of an underground station, into the path of a train. He could still vividly recall the loud thud, and the scream of steel-on-steel as the driver hit the brakes. And he had once taken an adulterous couple from Tunbridge Wells down to Beachy Head. Just climbed in the back of the car they were fooling around in and ordered the man to drive to the famous five-hundred-feet-high cliffs. No one argues with a loaded gun pointing at their beloved’s head. At the top of the cliffs, he told them to exit the car and jump over the edge. Said it would be romantic for them to hold hands and leap into eternity together in the moonlight. The woman had cried a lot and begged him to let her live, for the sake of her children. She should have thought of that before she cheated on a rich and vengeful husband. And the man had soiled his pants. Fear will cause that. But they had finally – with encouragement – done the right thing. Andy wondered what passed through their minds on the way down, before the bone-crushing and organ-bursting impact. The expression on the faces of most people who know they are about to die is almost reward enough. They usually go wide-eyed. Their bottom lips tremble, and the colour drains from their faces. Some collapse, totally debilitated by terror. Happy days!
Katy Baxendale worked, in the main, from home. She had no fixed routines, apart from spending much of her time on the phone or computer, digging the dirt on Gorchev and his kind. She was divorced, and her only child, a daughter, was a marine biologist based in Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The only other occupant of her house in West Ealing was a poodle. Not exactly a guard dog.
Katy would suffer a fatal accident in the home. He determined to visit her house the following evening, and if she was alone, and he could effect entry, it would be a done deal.
Georgio was on his way back to Teal Towers. He phoned Valentino and congratulated him on his work at the graveyard, and arranged to meet up back at their apartment. He had then contacted Sergei and told him where the hitman lived.
Sergei was very pleased. His nephew got things done. And Savino would soon be indebted to him. It was a shame that the hitter would be lost to him, but there were other reliable psychopaths who would be more than happy to be given the work. One, an American living in London, came highly recommended by an associate who had employed him in Cleveland, Ohio, before the said mechanic – for unspecified reasons – flew across the pond and settled.
Eddie took his coffee through to Ryan’s office. “We got something going down, but we don’t know what, boss,” he said, taking a seat when Ryan nodded to it.
“Spit it out,” Ryan said, lighting a cigarette, blatantly, and as usual, ignoring the no smoking rule. He was not going to take a lift down and step outside the building every time he wanted to smoke. If he got carpeted for it, then so what? He knew that some of the suits upstairs smoked, and he didn’t believe for a second that they hit the car park when the need arose.
“Phil just gave me a bell. He and Del tailed the guy who went to Teal Towers after the kid’s funeral. He drove out to Highgate Cemetery, went in with a briefcase, and came back out without it.”
“And?”
“The guy sat in his car for a while, then got a call and took off. Phil followed him, and Del stayed and watched for whoever was going to make a pickup. No one else came or went. Phil tailed the Russian, or whatever he is, who drove out as far as Snaresbrook, then turned round and went straight back to the apartment building. He didn’t stop once.”
“Where are Phil and Del now?”
“Phil is outside Teal Towers. Del is still freezing his balls off at Highgate.”
“Get on to them, Eddie. Tell Phil to stay put, and for Del to wait until we get there. I don’t want him going it alone.”
Eddie drove out to Highgate. Parked at the kerb. Del stepped out of the shadows thirty feet away and walked towards them.
“Nobody in or out this way,” Del said. “But they could have gone in another entrance, or climbed over the fence.”
“Let’s check it out,” Ryan said.
Twenty minutes later, Eddie pointed to the open wrought-iron gate of a crypt that looked like a miniature version of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.
Del had a penlight torch. He played the beam over the rusted padlock.
“It’s been forced open,” Eddie said, examining the fresh scratches that looked like silver wounds on the verdigris-covered face of the lock and hasp. Inside, they could smell cigarette smoke and cologne. Del shone the torch over every surface. There were six stone coffins. The lid of one had been pulled aside. Del peered in the gap and jumped back, banging into Eddie and almost knocking him over. “Fuck!” Del said. “There’s a sodding skeleton in there.”
“You’re in a bloody graveyard, Del,” Ryan said. “And that’s a coffin. What did you expect to find, Sleeping Beauty?”
“Its still got hair, boss.”
Ryan took the torch and looked for himself. The skull did have clumps of long, yellow-white hair clinging to it. And there was still remnants of dried skin curling from the bone. The jaw hung open in a silent scream, no longer held together by tendons and muscles. It struck Ryan that maybe three or four generations of the same family were reposing within the damp confines of this crypt: that their whole lives had been spent waiting to join those who had gone before. How depressing was that?
He examined the floor. There were three crushed cigarette ends, and above them the dust had been disturbed on the lid of the coffin nearest the gate. Someone had taken the weight off and sat here. There was nothing else.
“This is a waste of time,” Ryan said. “There was a drop and a collection. I imagine that it’s payment for a hit.”
“Why would the foreign guy drive out to Snarebrook and back, boss?” Eddie said.
“He might have been tailing whoever picked up the money.”
“Phil didn’t notice him following another vehicle,” Del said.
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t,” Ryan said. “Bag the cigarette ends, and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Julie brought the paperwork down to Ryan at nine a.m. the next morning. She had been looking into Anne Stark’s financial affairs since getting the warrants forty-eight hours before. Ryan was sitting with his feet up, ankles crossed on the desktop. He was wearing black western boots with pointed toes. They were scuffed and needed polish.
“We have Ms. Stark by the short and curlies, Ryan,” Julie said as she helped herself to coffee. “She made four cash withdrawals back in August. Check the amounts and dates.”
Ryan took the printouts from her and looked them over. “Twenty-five grand, He said. “Stark must have really got it in for Paula to fork out that much.”
“And there are no records of what she did with it. What do you want to do?”
“Get a warrant for her arrest; go and sweat her, and march her out in cuffs for all the world to see.”
“Will this cover it?” Julie said, taking a warrant out of a document wallet and dropping it in front of him.
“Accessory to murder,” Ryan read the charge aloud. “That should at least get her in a holding cell for a couple of days.”
“Let’s go and do it,” Julie said. “I can’t wait to see her squirm.”
They stopped by the incident room. Vinnie Gomez had found that Teal Towers was leased to Mantis Holdings from Romanoff Inc, a company with its head office in Chicago.
“It’s gonna be a long haul, boss” Vinnie said. “The Yank company is subdivided forever, and half of it is owned in turn by a corporation in
Hong Kong. If this is Gorchev’s set-up, then he knows all the fancy footwork.”
“Keep on it, Vinnie,” Ryan said. “Where’s Eddie?”
“Chasing up the details on the COD of Flynn and his men, and getting a police artist together with the Paradise Club’s manager, to see exactly what this Gorchev looks like.”
“Didn’t CID do that?”
“No. They work in mysterious ways.”
“Tell me about it.”
Anne Stark was in her office, on the phone, when Ryan and Julie walked in unannounced.
“Hang up, now,” Ryan said to the woman as she glared at him.
“Something just came up, Patrick,” she said. “I’ve got to go. I’ll get back to you in a few minutes.” She put the phone down, and then exploded. “Who the hell do you think you are, barging in my office without an appointment?”
“You know who we are, Ms. Stark. We have a couple of questions to ask you that just won’t wait,” Ryan said, approaching the desk to look down at the woman with all the intimidation he could muster.
“So ask them, then get the hell out,” Anne said. “And back off a foot or two. I don’t respond to macho, unshaven plods invading my space and stinking the place up with an excess of testosterone.”
“We need to know if you have a new sports car, or if you’ve just bought yourself a holiday home abroad,” Ryan said, not retreating an inch.
“That would be none of your damn business,” Anne said. “But why would you give a shit what I have or haven’t purchased?”
“Because you withdrew a lot of money in August, in cash, shortly after you threatened Paula Kay.”
“I never threatened Paula.”
“We have two witnesses, so far, who will swear under oath that you did. It’s apparently common knowledge that Paula dumped you for a younger woman. Seems you were a little heavy-handed in the sack, and just as violent out of it.”
“What are you implying, that I got so mad over splitting up with the little bitch, that I murdered her? That’s preposterous.”
“Paula rejected you, Anne,” Julie said in a very calm and steady voice. “You could not handle the fact that she left you for Jayne Lennox. Everybody knew. You found it humiliating. Add jealousy and a loss of self worth to the pot, and your love for Paula turned to boiling hatred. She probably laughed at you. And then I would imagine she told Lennox about every intimate, private moment you shared with her.”
“You took a lot of money out of various accounts,” Ryan said, pulling copies of statements from a pocket of his jerkin. “You have no way of explaining where that money went, because we know who got it. You arranged for a man to murder Paula and at least three other total strangers, to make her death appear just one in a series of random killings. Or maybe you could convince us that you only wanted her frightened or roughed up a little, and that what he did was not what you intended. It will be your word against his. He will obviously attempt to put as much of the blame on you as he can. But he pulled the trigger.”
“You can’t prove anything,” Anne said weakly. She had lost her aggressive demeanour. Was scratching the back of one hand with the nails of the other. Had they not been clipped short, then she would have drawn blood. Ryan could see that she was considering every angle. The dumpy little woman seemed to shrivel in her chair as she faced the possible consequences of her actions.
Anne was in mental turmoil. They knew everything. She could not explain the missing money, nor stop witnesses from being heard. They must have the killer in custody. Could they prove that she had made contact via computer? Probably.
“I want to call my solicitor,” she said.
Ryan reached back under his jerkin and removed the handcuffs from the leather pouch on his belt. Held them loosely at his side. “I am going to formally arrest you on the charge of accessory to murder, Ms. Stark,” he said. “Then handcuff you and take you to New Scotland Yard. Once processed you will be able to make a phone call.”
Anne put her hands to her face and began to cry. She had loved Paula. Wished that she could go back and stop herself from being so vengeful. Her life was now ruined. Could she salvage anything? Like the cop had said, it would be the killer’s word against hers. She might yet be able to lessen her culpability. Ryan had thrown her a lifeline to grasp hold of. Trying to deny everything flat out was no longer practical.
“I did not pay him to murder Paula, or the others,” she said. “I just wanted her to be frightened and slapped around. She deserved to be hurt for the pain she caused me.”
Ryan found it difficult to maintain his composure. He had not thought that Stark would crack so easily, if at all. But, then, she was not a hardened criminal who automatically denied everything, and had experience of the procedures. She was more like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
“How did you contact him, Anne?” Julie said.
“I need a cigarette,” Anne said, and opened a desk drawer and took out a pack of Bensons and an old variflame Ronson engraved with her initials. She put the cigarette between her trembling lips, held the lighter with both hands, and still had trouble finding the end of the cigarette. She was getting the shakes. The enormity of the situation was beginning to strike home. After a minute, she collected her thoughts and began to talk.
“One of the girls in sound effects, Jean Hislop, lives with an ex-con who has connections. I’ve known her for years. I told her that I wanted to have someone who was harassing me warned off...Hurt. A day or two later, she asked me for my e-mail address, and said that I would be contacted. Shortly after that, I received a message. There was a phone number. I rang it and spoke to a man. He said that he would do what I wanted, and told me to get the money, in cash. He phoned me a few days later and arranged to collect half the money. I...I went along with it, but I swear to God I didn’t ask him to murder Paula or anyone else.”
Armed with the name of the girl in sound effects, they waited in Anne’s office until other officers arrived to take Jean Hislop into custody. Ryan put the cuffs on Anne, and she was led out, through a gauntlet of BBC employees. The tyrannical producer reminded Ryan of Sadam Hussain, post-capture. Her head was bowed, and the bombastic and domineering side of her nature had been subdued; her spirit crushed.
Ryan felt nothing but disgust for the woman. She was as bad if not worse than the killer who had undertaken her instructions. Not for an instant did he believe that she had not directed Tyler to kill those young people. She would have her day in court, and if there was any justice at all, would be locked up for many years. It crossed his mind that she would probably fit well in a women’s prison. There would be no lack of willing partners to jump into the sack with. Maybe for a butch lesbian like Stark, she would come to think she had died and gone to heaven. Sometimes there are no winners.
The boyfriend of Jean Hislop turned out to be the key. His name was Winston Sunday, and he had been in the same prison at the same time as Tyler. All roads were leading back to Ray Savino, who Sunday worked for.
Chapter TWENTY-FIVE
Jean Hislop would soon be getting the shakes, followed by stomach cramps and a hot itch in her veins. She would be in need of a fix, so did not want to be jerked around by the filth for a second longer than necessary. She told them enough to ensure that she was not kept overnight. Confirmed that Anne Stark had approached her and said she wanted someone ‘taken care of’. Gave up Winston’s name without a fight. Said he knew a lot of people, and that he was a mean bastard, who as a favour to her, had made a phone call and said that someone would get in touch with Stark. That was all she knew. She had no idea what had transpired, and didn’t want to. It didn’t pay to be curious.
Ryan held Jean until Winston Sunday was lifted, then cut her loose.
While Winston drank coffee in an interview room, Ryan, Julie and Eddie scrolled through the CRO rap sheet on him. He had been in and out of various nicks for a good part of his thirty years: Young Offenders’ institutions, borstals, and three stretches in pr
ison. He was a hardened criminal, and was known to be muscle on Ray Savino’s payroll.
Ryan and Eddie tried playing good cop, bad cop with him. It didn’t work.
“You connected Anne Stark with someone who could help her with a problem,” Ryan said to the powerfully built black guy.
Winston smiled. There was a small diamond in a gold front tooth. The light danced off it, and off his shaven skull.
“Don’t know what you talkin’ ‘bout, Mon,” he said, affecting the syntax of Caribbean English, even though he had been born in Brixton. “Charge me wiv somefin’, or stop wastin’ your time an’ mine, ‘cause I ain’t committed no crime.”
“We can tie you to Savino, and a hitter he uses to take care of business,” Eddie said. “We know you jacked it up.”
“You don’t know shit, cop. I got noffink to say. Keep me in dis toilet for as long as you like, or till I get a phone call, but I ain’t sayin’ another word. Silence is golden.”
Winston had closed his eyes and folded his tree trunk-thick arms. Ryan knew that the man was not about to implicate himself or his boss. There were laws other than theirs, and Winston was not going to say anything that Savino would interpret as betrayal. Being taken out at dead of night to some desolate patch of wasteland and having his head blown off with a twelve gauge, or being lowered into the wet concrete foundation of some new construction, was the price he would pay for talking out of turn. The worst the police could do was put him back inside. Given that choice, there was no choice.
“So what have we got, boss?” Eddie said after Winston had eventually been released without charge.
“We’ve got Anne Stark. With her statement and the circumstantial evidence, there’s enough to put a case together. But we’re no nearer Tyler.”