Cold Kill

by David Lawrence

  Sorley spread his hands. ‘So there might. Don’t worry about it. Set the bail figure high.’

  ‘It won’t make any difference to him.’

  ‘No, but it’ll look good.’ Sorley was drinking from a plastic cup. It could have been coffee, it could have been Scotch or medication. Maybe it was coffee with a slug of Scotch and a dash of medication. ‘You went down there without any back-up and without asking me.’

  ‘Officer acting on information.’

  ‘Officer acting like a fucking idiot.’

  ‘It wasn’t a problem.’ Sorley looked at her, cocking his head, and laughed. She said, ‘If Wilkie comes good for me, we’ll have a name and a face. In which case, I’ll need more manpower.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘And more money.’

  ‘That’s okay too. It’s all okay.’

  Stella looked at him, the cherry nose, the sunken eyes. She said, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Terrific. Benylin, ibuprofen, Strepsils, Scotch.’

  ‘Cigarettes.’

  ‘Cigarettes,’ Sorley agreed. He smiled benignly. ‘How many guns did they find in this bastard’s flat?’

  ‘Upwards of sixty.’

  ‘Down on Harefield.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It’s a war zone. The United Nations should move in.’

  Stella named a sum for police bail and Wilkie pretended to be outraged. He made a show of including the bail price in their deal and Stella just said, ‘No,’ and shrugged a lot until he’d finished busking.

  The tape wasn’t running, but he asked for it to be removed from the cassette, then he said, ‘A guy called Leon Bloss.’

  Stella asked him to spell the name and, when he had, Harriman left the room. Stella asked for more and got the details of the meeting at the Wheatsheaf and details of the drop.

  ‘Out of the way of CCTV,’ Wilkie said. ‘Holland Park.’

  Stella felt a chill. ‘Where in the park?’

  ‘He waited on a bench up by the trees.’

  I’ll bet you did, Stella thought. Happy memories. Valerie Blake jogging by, you moving out of cover… I’m getting close to you now. You don’t know how close I am.

  ‘How do you know this guy?’

  Wilkie shook his head. ‘You meet people.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘You’re lying, Wilkie.’

  ‘Why should I know that stuff? He’s around. I’ve met him. Do I want his life story?’

  They’d done their deal, she had nothing left to offer and nothing with which to threaten, so she let it slide.

  Harriman came back after twenty minutes and said, ‘Nothing,’ which meant that Leon Bloss hadn’t shown in any computer trace.

  Stella turned to Wilkie. ‘Slipper, we’re going to do some computer-imaging with your help. It had better look a lot like the man in question.’

  ‘What’s it to me?’ Wilkie said. ‘He’s yours now.’

  They took a break. Only Maxine Hewitt and Marilyn Hayes were in the squad room. Stella sat with Maxine while Marilyn called round to find someone to make the computer-image.

  Maxine said, ‘Do you think it’s him?’

  ‘He picked up the gun in Holland Park.’

  ‘Open space, no –’

  ‘CCTV, I know. It’s the only sale Wilkie made last week. The only Glock.’

  ‘It’s not a cert.’

  ‘It’s a very good bet. We’ll have him in.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’ A pause, then, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Fine. Why not?’

  Maxine’s laugh was an echo of Sorley’s and she cocked her head in just the same way. Stella said, ‘What?’ Maxine reached into her bag and took out a make-up mirror. She held it up to Stella’s face. The blood from her scalp had dried and begun to flake, three little rivulets gathering at the point of her jaw. She picked some off with her fingernail.

  ‘I thought he was going to kill us,’ she said, ‘both of us. Just for a minute, I really thought that.’

  It was Bloss. Stella couldn’t have known, but it was him for sure, the strange, Oriental features, the thin line of the lips, dark hair balding from the forehead. She thought the eyes must be wrong, such a high, thin blue, but Wilkie shook his head. The eyes were what he remembered best. Stella recalled a saying about blue eyes, something straight from the old wives’ handbook – you were looking at the sky through the skull.

  The graphics artist printed off fifty copies and Stella posted several round the squad room on windows and doors. She left a copy on every desk. She asked Marilyn to liaise with DI Sorley about new personnel and to arrange for Bloss’s likeness to be transmitted to police stations nationwide but with special emphasis on west London. Finally, she pinned the portrait up on the whiteboard, right in the centre, so that he was surrounded by the scene of crime photos of his victims, the bloody wreckage, the blank stares, the heavy-limbed dead.

  So there you are. Mister Mystery. Whose blue-eyed boy were you?

  Slipper Wilkie was getting restless. He’d been bitching at Harriman for half an hour. When Stella walked into the interview room, he looked relieved. ‘I just need to make a couple of calls, raise the bail money, get out of here, okay?’

  ‘Not really,’ Stella said. ‘No.’

  Wilkie looked at her, slightly puzzled, a half-smile on his face, as if he hadn’t quite understood. ‘You said you’d talk to someone. Fix things...’

  ‘I did – my boss. DI Sorley.’

  ‘Good. So we’re set.’

  ‘DI Sorley wasn’t able to agree to police bail, in part because you were found with sixty-three illegal firearms in your possession, and also because there’s a strong reason to believe that a weapon sold on by you was used to murder a man named Oscar Gribbin, but mostly, DI Sorley tells me, because he expects that there would be a high risk of your absconding.’

  There was a silence. Wilkie lowered his head. He was shaking like a man with a fever, and the muscles in his forearms were jumping. When he looked up, his eyes were showing the whites. He said, ‘You’re dead.’

  ‘I found it hard to disagree with DI Sorley, but my reasons for refusing police bail are slightly different. They have more to do with being pistol-whipped and having a gun jammed against my head.’

  Harriman was standing very close to Wilkie now. The man looked like someone on the verge of a seizure, breathing hard, the veins in his neck cording and pulsing.

  ‘You’re dead, bitch.’

  ‘Also, you’re an arsewipe, Wilkie – and there’s the most convincing reason of all.’

  ‘You are dead. You’re a walking dead person. I guarantee it. You’ve got my promise. However long it takes, you cunt, you’re mine, you’re meat.’

  ‘I’ve heard it before,’ Stella said. ‘I’m still here.’

  She walked out of the interview room and along the corridor to the squad room and sat down at her desk and put her head in her hands.

  She hadn’t heard it before – not quite like that.

  75

  People went back to source. Officers went back to the pubs and the clubs, the minicab caves and the strip-o-ramas. Maxine Hewitt went back to Jumping Jacks. Louise said, ‘I break at ten.’

  They met at the bar, where CCTV picked up their images but not what they said. Louise sighed. ‘The whole place is on-screen, didn’t you know that?’

  ‘So tell them I looked at your statement; there was something I needed to clear up.’

  ‘I’m a good dealer. I’ve got good hands. I’ve been clean for a year and I don’t give head in alleys any more. Don’t fuck it up for me.’

  ‘When does your shift end?’

  ‘Tonight? One o’clock.’

  ‘And you get home –’

  ‘Twenty past. Half past, maybe.’

  ‘Give me an address.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Mrs Hewitt.’

  ‘But we could talk here if you prefer.’

  Louis
e had given an address in north Fulham: a custom-built low-rise in a back street surrounded by offices and small workshops. Maxine was parked at the door when she arrived. They walked in together, but Louise disappeared without speaking. Maxine helped herself to a drink and waited for Louise to come back. When she did, she’d showered and changed out of her dealer’s uniform. She topped up Maxine’s glass and gave herself a drink and smiled. That was new. Maybe it meant, I’m on your side now. The smile faded fast when Maxine showed her the computer-image.

  ‘You know him.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She sighed. ‘Leon Bloss. This isn’t going to be good.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He used to work for Billy Souza.’

  ‘Used to?’

  ‘He was security. Like JD.’

  ‘Have you seen him recently?’

  ‘A couple of days ago.’

  ‘A couple?’

  ‘Four, five, a week, I’m not sure.’

  ‘Can you peg it by what was happening that day?’

  ‘All days are the same. I deal blackjack.’

  ‘You saw him at the casino?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why was he there?’

  ‘Christ, I don’t know. Must’ve been to see Billy. He won some money, quite a lot of money, then JD picked him up at my table and took him upstairs.’

  ‘You say he used to work for Billy. Why did he stop?’

  ‘Well, first Billy took him off house security and upped him to minder.’

  ‘His own minder – Billy’s?’

  ‘One of three. I don’t know exactly what happened. I think some punter came up to Billy in the car park. You’d be surprised how many think the wheel’s fixed or the cards are stacked. No need, of course. The only sure thing about gambling is that you can’t win, not in the long run.’ Louise shrugged. ‘Things got difficult and Leon took the guy apart. Really hurt him. They put him in a car and dumped him outside A & E somewhere the other side of London. The next day, Leon didn’t turn up for work. Billy had fired him.’

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘It went round the casino. Came from one of the other security guys, I expect.’

  ‘The guy never made a complaint. The guy Bloss hurt?’

  ‘He couldn’t.’

  ‘He died?’ Maxine asked.

  ‘Not as such. He’s away with the fairies. You’re going to talk to Billy about this.’ Maxine nodded. Lousie wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold. ‘I thought it was too good to last.’

  ‘While I was waiting for you,’ Maxine told her, ‘I visited every table in the place, spoke to every croupier. After you left the bar, several others took a break. I spoke to them too. Billy won’t know where it came from.’ Louise nodded, but it wasn’t a nod of agreement or belief. ‘Give me your number here, and your mobile. If I need to speak to you again, I won’t come to Jumping Jacks.’

  Louise wrote the numbers on a Post-it note. She said, ‘He used to give me the shivers, Leon Bloss.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘There was a story he did snuff.’

  Maxine looked at her. ‘Snuff… what? Videos?’

  ‘No, no, not that… Contracts. Snuff.’

  ‘He killed for money?’

  ‘I heard it. I didn’t say it was true.’ She was silent a moment, as if thinking back, seeking clues. ‘He would look at you and there was no one there. No one there behind the eyes.’

  Maxine called Stella from her car. Stella was in bed but not asleep. She was listening to the radio and reading and drinking coffee and trying hard to be distracted from the insistent thought that Vigo Street was becoming a permanent address again.

  She said, ‘There are firms, we know that. There’s a tariff. Rates for a broken leg, rates for a kneecapping.’

  ‘Rates for a bullet in the back of the neck and another through the heart,’ Maxine suggested.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘She didn’t say that Bloss was a member of a firm.’

  ‘Well… there are freelances too.’ Stella turned the radio off. ‘Leon Bloss is our man. The connections are too close to mean anything else.’

  ‘Best if I didn’t go back to Jumping Jacks. My source there is getting very edgy.’

  ‘I think we’ll see Billy Souza at home. He won’t like that. But I’ll take Harriman or Silano.’

  Maxine pulled up outside her flat and looked up to the window. The light was on. When she got in, she found Jan asleep on the sofa and baseball on the TV. She knelt down and kissed her lover softly on the lips.

  Without opening her eyes, Jan said, ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Among the low-lifes and the high-rollers.’

  ‘Did you win?’

  ‘In a way.’ Maxine got up and went towards the kitchen.

  ‘Are you having a coffee?’

  ‘Tea.’

  ‘Me too.’ When Maxine brought it to her, Jan said, ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to say.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I love you. You don’t have to say it back.’

  Maxine did say it back. She didn’t quite mean it, but she said it anyway.

  76

  To most people, money simply means bank balance or pay packet or mortgage. It means credit card or cheque book or cold cash. To others, though, it’s a concept. There’s no question of having too much or too little; it’s not that kind of commodity. It comes in planks and tranches. It comes in multiples. It lies offshore like a small, independent state or it takes flight, a jet-stream of blurred figures setting off for somewhere safer or more profitable.

  It was the kind of money Billy Souza dealt in. It had given him an apartment in Putney Wharf and the consumer durables that went with it. It made him powerful and the power showed as arrogance. When Stella showed Leon Bloss’s picture to Billy, she’d been expecting deadpan, but what she got was a broad smile.

  ‘Leon Bloss,’ Billy said. ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Not surprised by what?’

  ‘That you want him. He’s trouble, that’s why I let him go.’

  ‘How long did he work for you?’

  ‘About six months. House security at first, then personal protection. He was good, but he was heavy-handed.’

  Stella had taken Pete Harriman with her; she’d decided that the scar worked to her advantage. Harriman had been looking down fifteen floors to the traffic backed up on Putney Bridge. Now he said, ‘Nearly killed someone, we heard.’

  ‘Not while he was working for me.’

  ‘That’s the story.’

  ‘No. Wrong.’

  Stella asked for background, but Billy didn’t have anything to offer. She asked for history, but it seemed that Billy didn’t feel the need to know where his staff came from or where they went after they’d left. He did, of course, have an address for Leon Bloss and he was happy to hand it over, though he suspected it might be a little out of date. Stella suspected the same.

  She said, ‘Here’s the problem. When we last spoke, I was asking about a man called Oscar Gribbin. He was murdered.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘He gambled in your casino.’

  ‘Many people do.’

  ‘Now we’re here again to ask about Leon Bloss. Know why?’ Billy spread his hands and shrugged. ‘We think Bloss killed Gribbin.’

  Something happened then: Billy’s gaze slid sideways before coming quickly back to meet Stella’s; there was a fractional pause that he tried to fill with a cough. He said, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What I said?’

  ‘What you mean.’

  ‘It’s an odd coincidence. A client murdered by an ex-employee.’

  Billy paused, regaining his balance. ‘I have a casino full of clients. And everyone is someone’s ex-employee.’

  Harriman asked, ‘Do you see him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He gambles at your tables.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. He knows his way aro
und.’

  ‘So you might have glimpsed him on CCTV.’

  ‘I don’t do that. People do that for me.’

  Stella put a few copies of the computer-image down on a vast, glass coffee-table. ‘Give those to the people who watch the screens. If they see him, call us.’ Stella thought it was a pointless request, but it would seem odd not to have made it. Souza smiled faintly and nodded, but let the pictures lie.

  They joined the northbound on Putney Bridge. Harriman said, ‘We should just lift him.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘He’s a gun-importer. Gribbin was a carrier. Bloss used to be Souza’s minder. Bloss killed Gribbin.’

  ‘We think all that. We don’t know for sure. And there’s the Serious Crimes Squad to consider; they’re still building a case. We’re on a different track. We need Bloss for Valerie Blake and the rest. Serious Crimes need Souza out and about for a while. They have to find the money and that’ll be off somewhere, a BVI account, several trips through the laundry. People like Billy Souza aren’t easy to box up. They’ve got intelligence networks, they’ve got fallback positions, they have their places swept for bugs on a weekly basis.’

  ‘For some you look in the court records,’ Harriman suggested; ‘for others you look in Who’s Who.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What’s BVI?’

  ‘British Virgin Islands,’ Stella told him. ‘No place for you.’

  Billy Souza drove along by the river without bothering too much where he was going. For a man who thought of money in block-units, Billy was carrying a large amount of change. In his business it was called shrapnel: the sort of stuff that punters collect from change-counters in polystyrene cups and carry from one fruit machine to the next.

  It didn’t matter to Billy where he drove because any pay-phone would do. The one he found was standard issue: whores’ cards and a strong smell of piss. He made a long-distance call, got referred, made a second, listened to an answerphone message, made a third. He said, ‘You know who this is?’

  The man taking the call had a slight Slavic burr to his voice, but his English was near-perfect. All business transactions are negotiated in English, the international language of opportunism and deceit.