by Nick Oldham
‘ The other interesting snippet of intel states that the Russians intend to form a bridgehead into Britain for all types of criminal activity. I think it stands to reason they might choose a city like Manchester and an area like the North-West as starting points for their invasion. Nikolai will be eager to earn his spurs by setting up structures and networks within the already-existing infrastructure to achieve this. Britain is a biggie and carries a lot of kudos for Nikolai if he can achieve this.
‘ Some facts and figures for you to chew on: there are eight thousand organised crime groups in Russia. Two-thirds of the country is controlled by them. Two hundred of these groups have constructive contacts in fifty other countries. They are spreading faster than AIDS ever did — and they are more lethal.
‘ The appearance of Drozdov in the UK tells me this is the British foothold and once they’re in, they are here to stay. Very worrying, H.’
Henry glanced up at Terry. ‘Hm,’ he breathed thoughtfully.
He continued to read the fax. ‘The FBI are investigating a series of killings believed to have been committed by one man across Europe. He is called Yuri Ivankov (no photo, all descriptions poor). Ex-KGB Colonel and hit man, now in private practice, freelancing exclusively for the Drozdovs. Late forties — that’s all I have. Working on a photo and desc as we speak. He has murdered several Turks and some Euro-based American mobsters, operating on the continent, hence our interest, and also the CIA, I’m told, but cannot confirm this.
‘ From what you’ve told me, putting 2 and 2 together, I would say he is Jacky Lee’s killer. Jacky was a barrier to the Russians, and they wanted his business. Thompson and Elphick are ambitious etc, etc… I’m sure you’ve already worked this out. What it means is that you’ve got real trouble up there and I think you need to get a big operation underway to disrupt them — NOW!
‘ Will be pleased to assist — in a consultancy capacity, of course.
‘ Best wishes, Karl D.
‘ PS — there was a killing in Paris just over a week ago. We think it could be the work of Ivankov.’
For the first time that year Danny was able to wear a loose T-shirt and cut-off jeans in the open air. With open-toed sandals, a clipboard and a shoulder bag, she set off to find Barney Gillrow. Whilst strolling along she noticed that couples tended to give her a wide berth; she wondered about this for a while until she realised she was in the uniform of a timeshare tout, many of whom were out prowling for their commission along the beach-front.
Twenty minutes of slow walking brought her into Playa de Las Americas, a large, bustling, purpose-built resort with three manmade beaches and three natural ones — dark, volcanic, typical of the Canaries.
She found Gillrow’s apartment block sooner and more easily than expected. It was set back about 800 metres from the Playa del Bobo beach, and was low rise in comparison to the surrounding blocks and hotels.
Danny wandered in through the reception area unchallenged and to one of the four lifts, taking it up to the third floor, stepping out on to a walkway running along the rear of the apartment block, overlooking a narrow side road. She found Gillrow’s apartment and rang the bell. Whilst waiting she rooted in her bag and found her warrant card.
Gillrow answered the door, dressed in a light short-sleeved shirt and slacks, nothing on his feet. He looked very tanned and healthy. Danny gave him her best smile and held up her badge.
It was with a great deal of reluctance that he invited Danny into the apartment, muttering, ‘I told you all I know over the phone. Wasted journey, this. Wasted.’
‘ Well, you never know,’ she said positively.
He gave her a withering look.
The inside of the flat was airy and bright, with patio doors opening out on to a wide balcony overlooking the pool. It was nicely furnished, with broad comfortable sofas and easy chairs. A huge TV squatted in one corner; Danny assumed it was able to receive satellite channels the world over.
Stairs led up to an interior landing off which were several doors — bedrooms and bathrooms, no doubt.
Ceiling fans rotated silently but effectively.
‘ This is very nice,’ Danny acknowledged. ‘Where’s Mrs Gillrow?’
‘ Down at the health club.’
‘ In that case we can have a nice chat, can’t we?’
Barney sniffed doubtfully and gestured for her to sit down at the table out on the balcony.
‘ Lovely view,’ she commented, once seated.
‘ Mmm. Can I offer you a drink? You’ve come a long way for nothing, so it’s the least I can do.’
‘ Thanks. Anything soft will be fine.’
Danny watched him go back in through the patio doors to the spacious kitchen beyond the sitting area.
He looked very well. Life out here in the sun obviously agreed with him. His hair was still dark with the odd streak of grey, swept back from his face, and he had a nicely trimmed moustache. Danny thought he was good-looking and could easily imagine him as a smooth-talking detective of the type to whom she had so often been attracted in her earlier days when she was younger and easily led. She had been very promiscuous way back then and, whilst not proud of it, she wasn’t raked by guilt either. A little regret, maybe, because she had a reputation which often preceded her and the ‘decent’ guys — as opposed to the ones after a bed for the night — avoided her like she had the clap, which she had once had.
Gillrow came back with a long, cool lemonade. Danny thanked him.
‘ I’ll bet you do most of your eating out here. It must be wonderful. I love eating in the open air. Food tastes so much better.’ She was out to do a little softening by flattering his lifestyle if nothing else.
‘ Yeah, we do eat out here mostly.’
‘ What’s the social life like?’
‘ OK. I’m a bit of a loner anyway, so I’m not bothered about mixing all the time, but my wife gets out and about. There’s a lot of ex-pats around here.’
‘ What made you decide to come out here?’
Gillrow opened his arms, looked around and said, ‘This.’
Danny nodded, sipped the lemonade: real lemonade.
‘ OK,’ Gillrow said. ‘Niceties over… what do you want?’
Danny shrugged as if to say, ‘You pushed it.’ She opened her folding clipboard. ‘Malcolm Fitch was found murdered in Blackpool, shot through the head. He was dumped into a vehicle inspection pit with two other bodies, both of whom had connections with the drugs trade from Tenerife. Fitch used to be one of your informants. He hasn’t been seen, or at least we’ve had no recorded sightings of him, for about fourteen years.’
‘ I had a lot of informants. He was one of many, as I remember,’ Gillrow said, making a great show of trying to jog his memory by screwing up his face. ‘He didn’t really give me much. I didn’t use him much, either. So you see,’ he apologised, ‘you have had a wasted journey.’
‘ Mr Gillrow, your record suggests you were a very diligent, highly motivated cop. I’ve got to say, I find it hard to believe you can’t remember more about Fitch.’
Gillrow’s face dropped and set like concrete. ‘I’ve been retired for eight years, Miss. And you are talking about someone I had dealings with — what, fourteen years ago?’ He leaned forwards. ‘I don’t remember — OK?’
Danny swallowed, completely dissatisfied by him, but aware there was nothing else at all she could do about his attitude or his memory loss. She gulped the lemonade, which tasted superb.
‘ If that’s the way you want to play it, fair enough. But remember this, Mr Gillrow. We’re investigating a triple murder with drugs connections all the way from Lancashire to here, Tenerife. I am not going to let that connection go cold, because sometimes it’s those tenuous ones that make a case.’
‘ Are you threatening me, young lady?’
‘ All I’m doing is telling you that I am a very thorough detective — just like you were, no doubt, and I don’t let go easily. There’s every possibility that I’ll be
back to see you again — I because I think you’re telling me porkies.’
They eyed each other like two boxers. Danny sipped the last part of her lemonade. The ice cubes crashed against her teeth. She nodded almost imperceptibly and folded her clipboard closed. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Gillrow. It was very enlightening.’
The atmosphere between them was as cold as the ice in her glass. Danny swilled it round and placed the glass on the table. The interview was over. She handed him her business card on the back of which was the name of her hotel and room number. ‘Call me if you get your memory back,’ she said sweetly.
Gillrow closed the apartment door behind her, went into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of cheap whisky out of the refrigerator, poured a long measure into a glass and stalked out to the balcony. Troubled, he watched Danny walking across the poolside area of the apartment towards an exit. She glanced up and saw him, gave a nod of acknowledgement. Gillrow did not respond, his eyes blazing towards her, a lump of fear growing in his stomach like a tumour. He swallowed a mouthful of the whisky and it burned his mouth with its cheap coarseness. Then he emptied the rest of it down his throat as he saw Danny disappear down the road towards the centre of the resort.
It had always been at the back of his mind that one day his past would catch up with him and destroy him. Now it was beginning to happen.
Eight years of placid retirement, shaken like the walls of Jericho by a phone call and then a visit from a woman detective. A bloody woman shaking him up! He had not liked her on the phone; in person he detested her with a passion because she had got her foot in the door and now all she needed, possibly, was a bit of muscle and she would have forced an entry.
He was trembling like an alcoholic on his next visit to the fridge, filling his glass with an even greater measure of Scotch. Then he slumped down on one of the sofas and shuddered as if he had the flu. It didn’t bear thinking about, but he had to get this detective to back off. Quick.
With reluctance he picked up the phone and dialled a well remembered number.
‘ I need to speak to Billy Crane — urgently,’ Gillrow gasped when the phone was answered.
A detective can only work on actual words spoken during an interview. Body language is not evidence of anything, no matter how much it might say. And Danny Furness, during her years on the Family Protection Unit before joining the CID, had interviewed numerous people with dark, horrible secrets to hide. Whether they admitted them verbally or not, Danny could always tell the truth from the NVCs.
Over seventy per cent communication is by way of non- verbals, it’s just that most people don’t know how to read them consciously.
Danny had been reading the signals for years, trying to interpret them, just as she did whilst walking back to Los Cristianos in the sunshine.
Barney Gillrow’s hands, eyes, head, posture, had all told Danny he was one big fucking liar. She knew this, not just because of his highly defensive body language, but because even in the bad old days of slack procedures and loose guidelines, informants needed handling, nurturing — and sucking dry of everything they had to offer. They take time and effort. They take money and reassurance. And because of that, they do not fade in the memory unless you’re suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Barney Gillrow was as sharp as a knife still and could easily have been in the job had he so wished, because Inspectors and above can work up to the age of sixty before enforced retirement.
So what had he got to hide? Danny asked herself as she reached the promenade and turned left towards Los Cristianos. Informants were always a dirty business. She guessed that Gillrow was probably hiding some deep, dark secret concerning his involvement with Fitch. The question Danny posed for herself was — how do I prise the top off this particular can of worms?
The massive doors clattered open and Terry Briggs reversed the Mercedes Box Van fully into the unit. The doors closed as soon as the vehicle was inside. He jumped down from the cab and trotted round to the back doors, which he opened. He then started to load the boxes of whisky into the back with the assistance of another couple of U/C cops who were killing a bit of time between jobs.
Henry was on the landline to the FBI office in London, speaking to Karl Donaldson.
‘ Thanks for the fax. Sobering stuff.’
‘ You’ve got some major problems up there, I’d say.’
Henry agreed. ‘I think we probably do need an operation to nip this in the bud, if possible. This whole thing started off as a murder enquiry and it seems to have snowballed. I need to get my thinking cap on and see if I can think of a way of scamming the Russians at the same time as my other targets.’
‘ If you’d like us to get involved, the offer is there,’ Donaldson said. ‘We have good intelligence on these guys and we’d be happy to share it with you. Well,’ the American qualified the statement, ‘up to a point.’
Henry understood. Intelligence was power and influence. You don’t just chuck it at people, whoever you are. Cops are notoriously tight-fisted with it; it’s a cultural thing.
‘ There is another twist as well.’
‘ What’s that?’ Donaldson asked.
Henry told him about the sudden, unexpected appearance of Billy Crane on the scene, which Henry hoped he had weathered. Crane had shown no sign of recognising him. After all, it was twelve years since they had confronted each other in the Casualty Department at Blackburn Royal Infirmary and Crane had been well out of it at the time. Henry had not seen him since as he had pleaded guilty at trial. But Crane surfacing like that had nearly given him a thromb. He would have to be very careful in future.
‘ I don’t know what’s going on, but Crane has been remarkably quiet since he got out of jail, and now here he is, back again.’
‘ Well, stick in there, buddy — and keep looking over your shoulder because I wouldn’t trust any of these people, even the cops,’ he chuckled.
Words which turned out to be prophetic.
Loz had been left in charge of Nero again and, by implication, in charge of the businesses whilst Crane was away from the island. What it really meant was that Loz should feed Nero and clean up his piss and shit and not do anything to rock the boat businesswise whilst Lord and Master Crane was abroad.
Loz was on the rooftop of Uncle B’s Bar and Disco with a six-foot-long piece of bamboo cane in his hand, staring disconsolately at the beast, having poked the mean bastard evilly several times just to annoy him. And annoyed the animal was, angrily pacing the small cage, grunting with each step, his eyes burning towards Loz who pushed the cane pole through the mesh and jabbed it at the cat again. Nero’s temper was worsened by the fact that a bucketful of bloody horsemeat was at Loz’s feet, the aroma driving the hungry cat madder and madder.
‘ Come on, you bastard, suffer like you made me do.’ Loz held up his bandaged hand and waved it at Nero. With his other hand he poked the bamboo into the cage. Nero reacted this time by turning quickly, swiping at the — offending stick and dragging it out of Loz’s grasp.
‘ Shit!’
Nero licked his lips and looked down his long nose at Loz and growled.
‘ In that case, you can wait for this, you swine.’ Loz kicked the bucket at his feet.
Loz was now a very unhappy person. Following his faux pas in hiring a stupid girl with an even stupider boyfriend to deliver drugs which had ended up in the hands of the cops, Billy Crane had been treating him very badly indeed. After the incident with Nero, Crane had virtually shunned Loz, used him as a gofer and a waiter and told him to forget about hiring any more mules. ‘Your judgment is so clouded,’ Crane had once screamed at him, ‘that I wonder if you’re a junkie yourself.’
Loz had denied it, even though it was beginning to be true.
When he had started in the game, he’d been clean. But then he got a taste for it, bit by disastrous bit. Until he reached a point where he was skimming for his own use, something Crane did not know, but may have suspected.
Now he was being denied
access to free drugs and he had been forced to go buying himself — and it was a problem. Money was getting tight. He’d dipped his fingers into a few of Crane’s tills even though he was aware that this was a quick way to a very dusty death if he wasn’t very careful. The thieving had to stop, but unless he could persuade Crane to let him get back into the trade, it would be a struggle.
Crane had also cut him off from everything else that was happening.
Loz could feel something big was in the air, but did not know quite what. The appearance of Smith and that pathetic little turd called Colin had signalled something on the horizon. Try as he might, Loz could not quite work out what.
Then Crane and Smith had suddenly departed for the UK, separately, leaving a festering man ‘in charge’.
Loz desperately needed to get back into Crane’s good books.
Teasing Nero, he suddenly thought, was not the way to do it. He emptied the disgusting horseflesh into the feed tray and kicked it through to the lion. Nero grabbed a huge chunk with an enormous roar and began to chew it. ‘Choke on it, you bastard,’ Loz said.
No, teasing Nero was not the way, but possibly acting on the phone call he had received earlier might be. Time to meet the guy and see what it was all about. It was 7.55 p.m.
At 8 p.m. Henry still had not heard from Thompson or Elphick. He was beginning to think the deal might be off. He and Terry were still at the unit, the only two police officers there at that moment in time. Henry had just finished a phone call to Kate and had also had a quick chat with both his daughters. The conversation with his wife had been strained, to say the least, but the girls were chatty and full of news, including the fact that the older one, Jenny, now had a boyfriend who had his nose pierced. Henry’s heart skipped a beat or two backwards at the news. It made him realise how grown-up she was, and how much of her growing up he had missed. It was a horrible feeling.