by Conrad Jones
“They have it down to perfection, I’ll give them that. I’m just fucking sick of hearing their name.”
“It’s a proven business model.”
“It’s a joke from where I am sitting.”
“That is what they see us as.”
“What?” Braddick laughed.
“They see us as a joke,” Jo shrugged. “They can operate here without any hassle because we need hard evidence to be able to do anything. We can’t touch the Karpovs and as long as they don’t get their hands dirty we never will. It is a fucking joke!” she chuckled dryly. “Can you see them getting away with this in their own country? Under Putin?”
“Not a chance. They would have been taken off the streets and sent to a Siberian gulag where no one would even know that they were there. Their files would be lost and they would be buried in the dirt before the ink was dry on their warrants.”
“Exactly. Our hands are tied. It’s a joke. As long as they can keep officers on the payroll, they are way ahead of what we are investigating. They can react and cover their tracks,” Jo said, turning her palms skyward. She shrugged. “I don’t know if Ade Burns was bent but someone is.”
“I didn’t want to believe that but it is hard not to.”
“Hard not to?” Jo shrugged. “Are you kidding me? The gun that killed the Rakovs turns up at a dead officer’s house?” Jo rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Are you telling me that he put it in the fucking glove box?” she asked no one in particular. She was ranting. “Of all places to hide a murder weapon, in the glove box of your car? He was an experienced detective. I mean, are you joking?”
“You’re right. It was planted. Whoever planted it must have been in a rush?” Braddick thought for a moment.
“What are you thinking?”
“Who was the lead CSI at his home?”
“Holly Evans, why?”
“How well do you know her?”
“Not very well.”
A knock on the door interrupted them.
“Come in,” Jo called.
The door opened and her friend Wilks walked in. Her black hair was silver at the roots and her chins had multiplied. Jo stood up and embraced her. Her smile could light up the night.
“This is Helen Wilkins,” Jo said, introducing them. “We were cadets together. Do you two know each other?”
“We do.” Braddick shook her hand and smiled. His eyes looked distracted. “Actually, I am glad you here.” He walked to the door and closed it. Helen looked confused. “You were at Mike Pilkington’s house, weren’t you?”
“Yes, why?”
“We have been discussing it,” Braddick said. “Did you see DS Burns at the scene?”
“Yes,” Helen blushed. “Why, what has he said?”
“Don’t worry. He hasn’t said anything, Helen,” Jo reassured her. “He’s dead.”
“Oh, my word. What happened?”
“We don’t know yet but it looks like he killed a brass and then hung himself.” Jo lowered her voice as if others could hear. Braddick looked horrified. A thin smile touched his lips. “What?” she asked him. He just shook his head. “That is what happened isn’t it?”
“That is terrible,” Helen said, looking suitably shocked. The truth was that she wasn’t bothered by the news in the slightest.
“So, did you see him at Mike Pilkington’s house?” Braddick asked. He made it sound like an innocent question.
“Yes.” Helen appeared concerned again. She looked like she wanted to say more.
“And?” Jo asked.
“And what?”
“I have known you long enough to know when you’re holding something back.” Jo smiled and nodded. “Come on. Spit it out.”
“It seems unfair to cast aspersions now he’s dead. Even if he was a prick.”
“You didn’t like him then?” Jo smiled. She exchanged glances with Braddick. It was the general consensus of most of the women in the division who knew him. He was a misogynist pig and a sex pest. Helen looked at Braddick. “Don’t worry about DI Braddick. He thinks that he was bent, don’t you?” She looked at him for confirmation. Braddick had his mouth open, a little bit stunned by her bluntness. “Let’s just say that there was more to DS Burns than meets the eyes.” She shrugged. “You did see him there?”
“Yes,” Helen relaxed. “He was sneaking about. I had to have a word with him.”
“What do you mean, sneaking about?”
“I caught him going through Mike’s bedside table. He was searching through the drawers. I told him not to touch anything until we had finished.”
“Then what?”
“Then he did that squeezing past way too close thing that he always did and he went.”
“Did you see which way he left?” Braddick asked. His face had darkened, he looked angry.
“It was getting on and we didn’t want the press walking in. The front and back doors were locked up. We were using the garage to come and go. He must have left that way.” Helen looked from one to the other. She read their faces. “Is this about the gun that we found?”
“We shouldn’t say anymore,” Braddick said.
“Yes it is,” Jo cut across him.
“Jo?” he sputtered. “We can’t…”
“What?” she said turning to face him. “I don’t do the ‘don’t talk in front of the children’ bollocks, okay?” she said, smiling. “We’re discussing the options with a fellow professional, nothing more. Stop being so worried about what people will think. They will make their own minds up anyway.”
“Fine. I get that. We shouldn’t be pressurising a CSI to make assumptions on our behalf.”
“I am not under pressure and I’m not making assumptions on your behalf. I am making them on mine,” Helen said. “We all knew that gun had been planted, especially when the ballistics came back. It was obviously a plant to muddy the waters. I must admit, I didn’t think that it was Burns who put it there though.” She smiled at Jo. “Anyway, where are the things you want me to strip?”
“Here.” Jo pointed to them and Helen put them into evidence bags and labelled them. “Thanks, Wilks.”
“No problem. I’ll run them this afternoon and get back to you before I leave. Don’t forget that catch up.”
“I won’t and thank you,” Jo said, walking to the door. She opened it and hugged Wilks. “I’ll talk to you later.” She closed the door and walked back to the desk. “Have we just had our first disagreement?” she joked.
“Not really,” Braddick said, shaking his head.
“Good. DS Burns planted that weapon. There is no other explanation. Either we have it completely wrong and Mike Pilkington was on Karpov’s books or the copper that planted it in his car was?” she said, looking at Braddick. He nodded. “One way or the other, the Karpovs have police officers from our division on the payroll. There’s absolutely no doubt about it. We might be wrong about Burns but I don’t think so and neither do you.”
Braddick blew air from his lungs and closed his eyes tightly. He shook his head as he thought about it. She was right and he knew it.
“Who else could be on their books though?” Braddick asked. “Cain, Pilkington, the UC’s or all of the above?”
“We may never know. Pilkington’s bank accounts are all kosher. His father was a successful insurance salesman who made his fortune in the nineties. He died before he was fifty and left his money in trust. Apart from the gun, Mike was clean and so far, Cain is too. I don’t think that they were bent for one second. They were taken out because they were bringing in an informer. The Karpovs know that they have one but they didn’t know who it was. They may know now.”
“That’s the problem,” Braddick stood up and looked out of the window. The river was slate grey, moving sluggishly towards the sea. “They know more than we know.”
“People talk when they are terrified.”
“Take this Holyhead hit for instance,” he said, turning towards Jo. “Look at the number of people involved
in that deal. The chances of one of them being pressured into talking were huge.”
“Information is valuable. There are addicts out there queuing up to sell it.”
“As long as the Karpovs keep that information coming in then they will keep wiping out opposition supply lines and will always be ten steps ahead of us. We’ve hit a brick wall.”
“Did I tell you that they pulled the surveillance on Ron Mason’s properties?”
“I heard that this afternoon.”
“He hasn’t done anything wrong and he wouldn’t talk about what happened to his brother anyway. It was a waste of time and money.” Jo looked thoughtful. “My money is on the informer turning the case. If we can find him that is. We still have no idea who he is.” Jo shrugged. “He will surface eventually, dead or alive. If he is still alive, he will take us a lot closer to nailing these bastards.”
“I have been thinking a lot about Cain’s informant.”
“I’m listening.” Jo raised her eyebrows.
“I was thinking about what the ACC said about it when we first spoke about it. He said that Cain said the informer’s evidence could bring the Karpovs down, right?”
“Something like that.”
“That would mean that the informer would have to have vital information, right?”
“Right.”
“We are talking about bank accounts, dealer’s names, supply lines, witnesses to murder or the like and they would have to have evidence. Hearsay would not be enough. It would have to be solid evidence.”
“For Cain to take it as seriously as she did, I agree. He would have to be tier three or above and that would be the minimum in my book. No one below that level would have that kind of information. And she would have to have seen it. There’s no way that she would have acted without seeing sample evidence.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking. I couldn’t see why anyone would want to turn evidence against the Karpovs. It would be a death sentence. Even if we managed to put some of the top tier away with the evidence, they would find the leak eventually.”
“Agreed. What is the point?” Jo twiddled her fingers through her hair repeatedly. He had noticed that she did it when she was thinking.
“The informer would know that too, right?”
“We would have to assume so.”
“I’m trying to rationalise the decision to come in.” He shrugged. “I mean why turn against them? What would make someone want to do that, knowing that they would wipe out their family first and then go for them.”
“Maybe they have a grudge. They might have been screwed over by them,” Jo suggested. “We all know what absolute bastards they are.”
“I think it is more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hadn’t given it much thought until last night. It was when I saw Sergei Karpov.”
“I’m not getting this yet?”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Sergei Karpov comes to the UK and suddenly an informer comes forward. I think that they think they will be killed anyway and that is why they’re not afraid to give evidence. Sergei is here for a reason. The informer thinks that he is dead anyway.”
“That would put them high up the chain?”
“I think so. Right near the top.”
“Another thing,” Jo said. She raised her forefinger in the air. “Who would not worry about their family being wiped out.”
“Someone with the surname Karpov,” Braddick nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. They are right near the top.”
“Right near the top?” Jo ran her fingers through her hair again, just next to her right ear. “Right near the top of a list?” She reached for her phone.
“What happened?” Braddick asked, confused.
“You gave me an idea?”
“I did?”
“Yes,” she nodded and held up her hand to quieten him. “I told you that Cain had a Karpov file on her laptop.”
“Yes.” Braddick nodded, confused.
“I didn’t pay much attention to it because most of it was archive information. She had her folders laid in alphabetical order. There were the usual names, nothing new,” she explained. Braddick shrugged that he didn’t understand. “Except for one, which wasn’t at the top of the list. It was way down the list and it shouldn’t have been.”
“And?”
“It was a file on Alexei,” she said, shrugging. “It should have been at the top of the list.” The call was answered. “Hi, it’s Jo.”
“Hiya, Jo. What’s up?”
“How are you getting on with that list on Cain’s laptop?”
“The Karpov folder?”
“Yes.”
“We’re working on it. You were right, it is mostly archive information. If we find anything, I’ll call you.”
“Try the Alexei folder for me.”
“I’m well past the A’s.”
“It’s near the bottom.”
“Let me scroll down.” The line went quiet for a minute. “I’ve got it. It won’t open, Guv. It’s password protected.”
“Try her name in lowercase.”
“No.”
“Uppercase?”
“Nope.”
“Date of birth?”
“Nope.”
“Shit!”
“Do you want me to try that?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jo groaned. She looked at Braddick and then looked at the space where the mobile phone had been. The UC’s face flashed in her mind. “Try George uppercase.”
“Nope.”
“Lowercase.”
“Nope.”
“Try gorgeous George,” she said. The line went quiet.
“I’m in, Guv. It is gorgeous george, all one word, lowercase.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a Criminal Informer file. There are sixty odd pages here. I’ll print it all off and bring it over to you.”
“What does it say about Alexei Karpov?”
“He is forty-seven years old and is an accountant by trade. He is listed as working out of Amsterdam. That’s all I can see about him. There may be more in the meat of the file. I’ll send it all over to Google shall I?”
“Thanks,” Jo said with a smile. She looked at Braddick “Bingo! We’re in. They’re printing it off. We need to find Alexei Karpov if he’s still alive.”
“We need to stop and think about this,” Braddick said. “Let’s run a search and wait and see what is in that file before we do anything. Everyone who has been near this is dead or missing.” Jo nodded and sat down. She sighed and bit her thumbnail. She knew that he was right. Rushing in now would be dangerous. “I think that the first thing we should do is call in the NCA and get that file to them. They might be able to act against the Karpovs on what’s in it. If anyone gets burned on this, let’s make sure that it isn’t anyone from here. We’ve lost too many people already. I don’t want to lose anymore.”
33
Big Ron Mason pulled into the farm; the rough track slowed his progress. There were potholes and rocks every few yards and the Shogun rocked from side to side. The sun was beginning to rise, chasing the darkness away. Everything was a dull misty grey. A rotting combine-harvester loomed out of the night. It’s lime green paint had been turned to rusty brown by the elements. It hadn’t moved from where it had broken down twenty years ago. The woods to his left were deciduous, their branches bare. To his right, the trees were evergreen, conifers and Leylandii. He could smell the needles rotting beneath them. The farmhouse was silhouetted against the dark grey sky. A light burned in the bathroom upstairs. He was approaching the house when his mobile rang.
“Is that you, Ron?” a female voice asked nervously.
“Yes, who is this?” He didn’t recognise her voice.
“This is your neighbour, Lesley from next door to you,” she explained. She had a mild scouse accent that she tried hard to disguise but there was no hiding her roots. “I was wondering if everything
was alright. I mean, were you in?”
“What are you talking about, Lesley?” Ron was tired and grumpy. He had only met the woman a few times and she looked down her nose at him. The last thing that he wanted to do was chitchat with Mrs Bucket from next door.
“Well, I couldn’t see your car so I was worried if you were in or not. Do you even know about it?”
“Know about what?” He pulled the van to a stop and turned the engine off. The nosey old bat was winding him up.
“The fire. I wondered if you knew about it.”
“What fire?”
“At your house. There are fire engines all over the place. Your house is burning down.”
“What?”
“And there are three dead bodies on your front lawn.”
“Three dead bodies on the lawn?” Ron knew that they were his cousins, the Farrells. The Karpovs had done a tit for tat for Leonid. “Fucking hell!”
“They have been buried upside down. I can see their legs sticking up in the air. I wasn’t sure at first but they are there. The glow from the fire is illuminating them now. I gather that you weren’t in then?”
Ron felt the anger rising. He hung up and punched the steering wheel. For the first time since he was a child, he suddenly felt scared. Scared and alone. Gary had always been there but he wasn’t there now. Rickets was his lieutenant but he wasn’t his brother. He needed help. The Karpovs had found out who had hit them much quicker than he had expected. He hadn’t planned for that. The Irishmen had made him so angry, that he hadn’t thought things through properly. He had rushed in because he was so pissed off and now he saw it was a mistake. His outfit was tight knit and made formidable enemies but he knew that the Karpovs were too much for them to take on. He had always known that. That was why he had always played second fiddle to that wanker Eddie Farrell. It was too late for regrets. He had to face up to whatever they would throw at them. One thing was for sure, the Karpovs would know that they had been in a fight.