Hard Place

by Douglas Stewart

  “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” The priest’s words carried up the slope on the still morning while the watcher snapped countless pictures. Five meters to the bush, thought Tosh, his quarry now just fifteen meters away. Five meters to safety. He slowed slightly, doubling his care to avoid anything that would make a noise. Four meters. Three. Two. At that moment, a pigeon flew from the bush, its wings cracking like a rifle-shot in the stillness.

  The photographer jumped and looked round, totally shocked.

  But not as shocked as Tosh when he realized who he had been watching.

  His sphincter strained under the renewed pressure and he struggled to contain himself. For a second, their eyes met but then the watcher turned and ran across the hillock toward the cemetery gates.

  Had he been recognised?

  Had he, hell!

  Christ! He needed to tell Ratso. And quick.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Clapham, South London

  Ratso went through the motions at Wolsey Drive—handing round ham and tomato sandwiches and offering cans of lager or slugs of scotch. But his heart was never in it, not since he had taken Tosh’s call. It was a sinister and unexpected development—even worse if Tosh had been recognised, as seemed inevitable.

  Despite mounting frustration with the mindless chitchat, out of politeness Ratso lingered at the wake till just after three. For a time, he amused himself by irritating Frankie, the brother-in-law from Folkestone, while seemingly playing the good host with Charlene. But as the clumsy-looking brown clock, a relic of the 1950s, struck three, he could take no more. While listening with half an ear to stories about Neil’s antics in a pub in Mitcham, inwardly he was cursing the delivery driver who had smashed the O.P. van—and even more vehemently regretting his own decision to let Tosh attend. We’d have struck gold if only Tosh hadn’t been spotted.

  Ratso whispered to Charlene as she carried a tray of macaroons that there had been some vital developments and he had to leave. She led him into the hallway, pulling the sitting-room door closed behind them. “Will you get back tonight?” She rested her head on his shoulder and Ratso felt the enticing warmth of her body clinging to him. “My sister’s not staying. Everybody will be gone soon. Todd, I’ll be so lonely.”

  She squeezed him tightly and tiptoed to plant a lingering kiss on his mouth. Ratso was acutely aware of her firm breasts, prominent beneath the simple black dress and her single silver brooch. All morning, he had been admiring her shapely figure and until Tosh’s call, he had regretted that her sister was overnighting. Lust over logic. But Tosh’s worried voice had taken the lead from his pencil. Only the inviting rustle of Charlene’s black stockings was now coming close to tilting the scales.

  Ratso nodded to the closed sitting-room door, where the noise was rising with the alcohol. “Charlene, if I can, I’ll be back. But in my job, the only certainty is uncertainty. There’s been a nasty turn of events today. One of my team caught someone watching the funeral.”

  Charlene gasped. “The murderer?”

  Ratso was giving nothing away. He shrugged.

  Charlene’s eyes filled with tears and she tightened her grip. “Are you in danger? Was someone there watching you?” Ratso did not answer. “Todd. No, I couldn’t bear that. Not after Neil. You’re my rock. Remember?”

  Ratso drew away, held her at arm’s length and looked deep into her green tearful eyes. Strange how she has tears for me and had none for Neil. “I’ll call you.” He pulled her close once more, stroking the back of her neck until the stirrings started down below and he pulled away.

  Back in Clapham, he went straight to his office, black coffee in hand. The room smelled stale despite the cleaner’s lemon-scented spray. He summoned Tosh and Jock and they squeezed in, both clutching their own paper cups of coffee. As they sat down, he removed the black tie and hung his suit jacket behind the door.

  “Jock. You’re one step removed from this deep shit. What’s your take?”

  “Boss, this last ten minutes it’s a whole lot bloody deeper. I’ve just had the coroner’s officer on the blower. Yesterday he hadna interviewed Mrs Rosafa Skela. Too distraught, the widow said. But they took her statement last night.” Ratso saw he was holding a document. Jock handed over Rosafa’s statement and as he started to read, Ratso glanced up at Tosh and took in his ashen look.

  The statement was four pages long and Ratso’s eyes scanned through it, knowing whatever had spooked his sergeants would jump off the page. “Bloody hell!” Ratso threw down the statement. “We’re in bigger shit than the local sewage farm. Christ! Where does this leave us?” He picked up the paper cup, drained it and screwed it up angrily, hurling it into the bin so that it bounced from side to side.

  The two sergeants knew better than to interrupt Ratso’s train of thought. Ratso picked up the statement and read again the paragraph on the third page—a few words that changed everything. At last he spoke.

  “So Klodian Skela duped us.” Ratso’s stare was uncompromising. He leaned toward them, eyes hard, his fists now clenched on the desk. “This changes everything.” He frowned, shaking his head in bewilderment. “She says their daughter died aged thirteen.” He spoke quietly, almost as if thinking aloud. “So why did Klodian Skela confess to shagging Lindita, his own daughter?” With barely a pause, Ratso answered his own question. “Because he had to conceal her identity.”

  Jock looked concerned. “Did ye no read to the end?”

  Ratso looked sheepish. “It gets worse? I thought I’d found the bad point.” He flicked over the final page. “Jee-sus! It was Erlis Bardici’s daughter!” He put down the statement and looked at each sergeant in turn. “Rosafa says when she got back from Manchester, her husband confessed he’d been screwing Bardici’s daughter. Then he left the house and twenty minutes later, he jumped.” He looked at Jock and saw the concern on the Scot’s face. Tosh was pulling at his already long earlobe, his face a mask.

  Jock’s summary said it all. “Better admitting incest than to screwing Bardici’s little princess. He was right.”

  “Tosh, ever since your call, I’d been struggling with why Lindita was watching the funeral. It made no bloody sense. I kept thinking, why would Skela send her? But that made no sense.” He paused. “Now we know. Bardici sent her and she saw you.” He debated whether to add more. “That makes it ten times bloody worse.” Ratso saw that Tosh needed no warning.

  Jock stretched out an arm and put it over Tosh’s shoulder. “Ye’re positive she recognised you. So … ye’re compromised. Big time.” Ratso and Jock exchanged a glance before Jock continued, his voice low. “Suppose Terry Fenwick was suspicious and had checked upon ye. Did he see your ID?”

  “Yeah, briefly. I flashed it at him but he’d have learned nothing in that nanosecond.”

  “The receptionist had yer name from when ye made the appointment. So he sends Lindita. Point two: we must assume Bardici knows you interviewed Skela about the Range Rover.”

  Tosh clutched at a straw. “He wouldn’t know Skela was interviewed. Lindita would never have told her dad she and Skela were shagging.”

  Ratso’s glare was as sharp as his tone. “Three: he knows you were watching the funeral. Four: we don’t know if he is aware of your visit to Fenwick’s office. But I fear the worst.” He spread out his hands despairingly. “What a goddamned mess! He now knows or at least fears he is under suspicion for Neil Shalford’s death and the burning of the Range Rover.” Ratso’s eyes closed as he struggled to get 360-degree vision on the new situation. “And what Bardici knows, we have to assume Zandro knows. That means Zandro could be aware we’re after him despite the official line that he’s off radar.” He stood up in a sudden movement to bang the desk from a greater height. The remains of Jock’s coffee spilled as the flimsy cup toppled over but nobody moved. “Gentlemen, Operation Clam is … well and truly fucked.”

 
Tosh stared out of the window as Ratso stood with hand on chin for a moment before sitting down. The anger had gone. Months of careful planning had been blown. He spoke slowly, wearily. “Bardici’s no fool. He’ll suspect now that Neil was working for us, not the Hogans.” He turned another page in his notebook. “When they burying Skela?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Right. We watch Skela’s funeral.” His lips narrowed as he added sardonically, “From an O.P. van, unless there’s a good viewing point from an adjacent building. Tosh, I’ll keep you on the team but never again where you may be seen by Bardici or his daughter.”

  “But, boss, Bardici doesn’t …”

  Ratso cut him off with another hard-eyed stare. “I’m not taking any chances.” He then turned to the Scot, who was mopping up his coffee with a tissue. “Right. Jock. Before we discuss the club lists, tell me about this boat Skela was on about. What do we know?”

  “Boris Zandro owns a yacht. A rich man’s toy. More like a cruise ship. Helipad. Twelve staterooms. Jetbikes. Disco. Home cinema. Ye ken the stuff. It’s called Tirana Queen. That was in the old file. Today it’s heading for somewhere in the eastern Med.”

  “So Bardici wasn’t going to the Bahamas for anything connected to her.”

  “Aye, right enough but on Grand Bahama there are plenty of wee fishing boats. Some for in shore and others for big-game fishing for tourists, as well as commercial operations.”

  “Bardici wouldn’t be interested in them, surely.”

  Jock disagreed, explaining he might use a fishing boat for offloading his Class A from a bigger ship.

  “Or, I suppose, he might have wanted one for exporting cocaine from the Bahamas to a bigger ship that could cross the Atlantic.” Ratso was thinking aloud and didn’t sound or look too convinced by his own point.

  Jock checked his notes, written in red pen with lots of underlining. “Then there are the pleasurecraft. All sizes. Hundreds, maybe thousands of small sailing boats, cabin cruisers, speedboats, plus the top-end toys. Many of the smaller ones are for sale. The recession.”

  “But would Zandro send a thug like Bardici to check out a purchase? Bardici’s front is running a corner shop. His value to Zandro is as an enforcer. Thirteen stiffs and counting.”

  Ratso stood up, yawned noisily and stretched. Outside, it was now dark and the wind was edging up to galeforce, rattling the windows. For a moment, he thought of Charlene, probably alone now with the wind howling round the house. Waiting for him. Hoping for him. He should be there. But … he checked his watch.

  “Okay, Jock, Tosh. What do you think?”

  Tosh, who had been very quiet, nodded distractedly. He had been reliving the visit to Terry Fenwick’s office and the confrontation in the graveyard. “I’m with ye, boss,” concluded Jock. “Ye send Bardici to the Bahamas to sort out a prob-lem. Scaring the crap out of folk. That’s why he was there. But somehow it’s connected to a boat.” Jock paused. “There’s one other thing. There are two shipyards, boatyards, call them what ye like.”

  “Small craft?”

  “Och, no. Cruise ships—the big ones. Cargo ships, big and small. No huge supertankers but plenty of freighters big enough to carry a shiteload of dope.”

  “You checked them out? What’s going on in the yards?” For the first time Ratso sounded interested.

  “Remember the detective constable who came over from the Bahamas? Darren Roberts. We took him up West.”

  Ratso turned from the window and smiled. “Yeah. Good guy.”

  “He’s just been promoted again—up from detective sergeant. He’s a DI now. So I had a wee word. He’s taking a shufti at the two yards, checking out what’s going on.”

  “Long shot but that’s good.” Ratso turned to Tosh, whose face was pallid. “You look knackered.”

  “I’ll get over it.”

  Ratso nodded. He knew that if Bardici got hold of Tosh, the end would not be quick. The memory of Neil’s todger was still vivid. “From now on, till I say otherwise, your profile is lower than a snake’s arsehole. Take no chances. Different routes home.” He saw the fear on Tosh’s face and toned down his vehemence. “Look, Tosh: Bardici’s a killing machine, like a giant schnauzer bred to attack. He needs no reason to kill and you’ve given him one. If Fenwick was suspicious and his daughter mentions you, the jigsaw’s complete. I can’t take that chance. Fenwick may even know you work from here, in which case, so may Bardici.”

  “No fear from Fenwick,” protested Tosh, who looked like a dead man walking.

  “Y’know what Bardici did to Neil.” He saw Tosh flinch and his bulk shift uneasily on the chair as he wiped one hand nervously down his face. “We know zilch about Fenwick or Zandro’s lieutenants but Bardici won’t believe that.” He saw Tosh nibbling his finger nervously. “So maybe don’t even go home; stay somewhere different. Just for a while.”

  “Ye can stay with me,” Jock offered. “I’ve a spare room.”

  “The missus would divorce me. It wouldn’t take much.”

  The comment proved everything Ratso had always felt about coppers being married and he sighed in sympathy. Tosh’s wife’s tongue was the stuff of legend. “We’d done so well, so bloody well this past day or two. Months and months of investigations and Bardici never twigged we were onto him. All buggered by a pig-ignorant slob admiring his tattoos while driving his delivery van.”

  “And that bleeding pigeon,” Tosh added with a thin smile.

  Ratso snorted angrily. “Okay. Let’s move on—think positive. The club lists.” Ratso had read the report what seemed like a lifetime away, on the train going to the funeral. “I’ve seen the members’ names. A pretty good cross-section of blue bloods, captains of industry, judges, actors, media types and professionals.” Tosh said nothing, barely even looking at his colleagues. Ratso doubted he’d even heard the invitation to contribute. “So, Jock? What happened when you dropped by the clubs with the photos this morning?”

  “First, Terry Fenwick lives well but not flash. House in Bickley, worth just under a million. Wife. Two sons being educated at Tonbridge School. Drives a Chelsea Tractor. Wife has a Mazda. Member of the local tennis club. Pretty typical for a solicitor of his age.”

  “Check out both his partners.”

  Jock scribbled a note before continuing. “Fenwick’s a member of all four clubs—has lunch or dinner in one or other every week.”

  “Go on.”

  “Sometimes, he stays overnight at the Poulsden in Hill Street.”

  “A shag-a-thon?”

  Jock shook his head. “Impossible. No women.”

  “Who did you speak to? Discreet, is he?”

  “The club secretary. Roger Herbison. Good guy. Ex-military. One of the chaps. At each place, I spoke about Fenwick only to the club secretary, not the main entrance staff. I’ll come to them in a moment.”

  “Reliable, then?”

  “The club secretaries? I’d say! Shit-scared about any scandal. That was the reaction I got from every one. Not on our doorstep.”

  “And Boris Zandro? His name appeared nowhere. Tell me he’s a member.”

  Jock laughed. “I will if it’s what ye want to hear … but it’s no true. He’s no a member of any of them.”

  “But?” Ratso looked expectant.

  “Zandro is known at each of them as an occasional guest. Comes in for lunch or dinner. Never with Fenwick. The porters never mentioned that name once. At the Regent, Zandro’s usually a guest of Lord Brockstone or Sir Ian Templemore. The door staff recognised him but none of the others in the photos.” Jock pushed across the photos he had used—all suited individuals, well turned out, the types you would expect to find in London clubs with pedigrees dating back two or three hundred years. Ratso looked at the photo of Boris Zandro and his knuckles whitened at the aura of respectabilit
y and charm.

  “He gets signed in?”

  “No, not exactly. Typically, the front entrance just need to know from their members who to expect as a guest.”

  Ratso was disappointed; he had hoped for a paper trail. “Anything else?”

  “At the Metro, Zandro’s sometimes a guest of Lord Tramoyne from the Arts Council. The Conduit, he’s been there just once as the guest of some songwriter I’d never heard of. At the Poulsden, he’s usually the guest of Sir Antony Pulvenhof, the city financier, or Lord Brewham, the former prime minister.”

  Ratso’s voice rose in excited enthusiasm as he stood up—his stand-up, sit-down routine, familiar to his watchers when the adrenalin was flowing. “Jock! Tosh! There’s the link. Bent solicitor and Zandro with regular chances to meet, to exchange messages, whatever but never seen together or linked at all.” He fell silent as he turned to watch a bus go by beneath the huge swaying trees running toward the Common.

  “Fenwick’s partners are no members at any of the clubs.”

  “I still want them checked out.”

  “Fenwick doesn’t use the Poulsden that often. Never goes to their steamroom or sauna. Rarely goes into the library. Doesna’ spend hours in the bar. Just the occasional lunch or dinner.” Jock looked at his listeners in turn. “But as I said, sometimes he kips there.”

  Tosh had been silent, locked in his own private hell. “Being a member of the Poulsden is the dog’s bollocks. Isn’t that what you said, Jock? Royalty and all that. Perhaps it’s a status thing for Fenwick.”

  Ratso was dismissive, his fists still clenched. “Nothing about Fenwick suggests he’s interested in profile. No, he’s a member there for a reason. Let’s prove what it is.”

  He doodled for moment, drawing interlocking squares, fired up. Then he looked at them both, his eyes once again alight after looking so drained just moments before.

  “We’re coming to get you, Boris Zandro.” Ratso said the words slowly and with relish. Suddenly, they did not ring so hollow. “Check out Terry Fenwick’s travels. We presume he yo-yos back and forward between Bickley and his office. But let’s see if occasionally he goes to the Bahamas, Gibraltar—any offshore places. I reckon he could be a key part of the money laundering, setting up companies and trusts to receive the drug profits once laundered, then buying properties, shares, art, whatever. Let’s prove it.”