Bolt was keeping an open mind on the two-killer theory. It certainly looked as though Hope had been warned that he was under surveillance, which would suggest a second conspirator and, more worryingly, someone connected to the police inquiry. It would also have made it far easier for The Disciple to target couples rather than individuals if there were two of them, rather than one. But Bolt was still far from convinced, and the reason was simple. In the last three days, the inquiry team had turned Hope’s life upside down, and in that time they’d been unable to find a single piece of evidence suggesting he was working with someone else. They’d checked all of Hope’s phone records going back more than three years and, with the exception of that last phone number, they’d traced every person he’d talked to who was still alive (there hadn’t actually been that many), and in the process eliminated all of them as potential suspects. There was nothing on his computer to suggest an online friendship with a kindred spirit (and the film footage didn’t show any accomplice), and none of his neighbours or work colleagues had ever reported seeing him with anyone they couldn’t readily identify.
Leonard Hope had, it seemed, been the classic loner.
Bolt took a big gulp from his second pint, tired of worrying about the case. Up until today, he’d put in fourteen-hour shifts since Hope’s escape and, realistically, there was little more he, or the inquiry team, could do, which was why he’d let most of them go at 5.30 and told them not to come back until Monday morning. There was still the matter of the unidentified DNA sample found at the Rowan/Hanzha murder scene – the one that matched the DNA found on Beatrice Magret’s body fifteen years earlier. The results for that were expected in the next twenty-four hours but, even if it was a match with Leonard Hope’s DNA, which Bolt assumed was likely, it wasn’t going to help them catch him.
The second pint was going down fast and pretty soon he was going to have to make a decision. Grab a takeaway from either the Thai place or one of the local Indians, and settle down at home in front of the TV with a bottle of decent red wine, or make a night of it here, get some food at the bar, and hope that somebody turned up interesting enough to chew the fat with for a couple of hours.
He was still mulling over the alternatives, and the second pint was sitting empty on the bar, when his mobile rang. It was DS Dan Grier, who was in charge of the skeleton crew manning the Disciple inquiry incident room overnight, and Bolt picked up straight away. He’d told Grier only to call him if he had something important, and Grier was the kind of guy who knew not to waste his boss’s time.
‘Sir, I think you need to get down here right away.’ Grier’s voice was grim.
Bolt slipped off his stool and moved away from the bar. ‘What is it?’
‘We’ve got reports of a body over near Maidenhead. They think it’s Leonard Hope.’
Thirty-five
‘JESUS CHRIST,’ SAID Bolt, as he and Mo Khan stared down at the ruined corpse of Leonard Hope. ‘I’m glad I hadn’t got round to eating dinner tonight.’ The two pints of lager he’d drunk in The Pheasant sat heavily in his stomach, making him feel nauseous.
‘I have to say, it’s not a pretty sight,’ said the DI from Thames Valley CID, a big round man called Joe Ruckley, who was standing to Bolt’s right, and whose face was far too cheery under the circumstances.
Leonard Hope lay on his back in a small culvert, partly concealed by brush, about five yards from a path that led down to a road around thirty yards away. The area was partially wooded and there were no buildings nearby. Hope himself was naked, except for a pair of grey boxer shorts. A ring of halogen lamps had been set up round his body to illuminate his many injuries, a significant number of which appeared to have been inflicted by deliberate torture. There were round burn marks the size of fifty-pence pieces all over his torso where a blowtorch, or something similar, had been applied to the skin. Both his nipples appeared to have been burnt off and, where his right eye should have been, there was little more than a charred lump of flesh. There was also a single stab wound to his neck that looked to have severed his carotid artery and was almost certainly the cause of death. It was difficult to tell how long he’d been dead for, or how long he’d lain here (although Bolt didn’t think it could have been that long, because there were no signs that any animals had been at him), but the body in front of them was definitely that of Leonard Hope.
‘There are also burn marks to the groin under the boxers,’ said Ruckley matter-of-factly. ‘Three of them. One to the end of his wanger that’s pretty much sealed the whole thing up down there, and one each to the bollocks. There’s not much left of either of them, and what there is just looks like a couple of half-melted Maltesers. Do you want to take a look?’
Bolt swallowed. ‘Thanks for the kind offer, Joe, but I think we’ll take your word for it. Unless you want to see, Mo.’
‘I think I can picture it well enough in my head,’ said Mo. ‘Far more than I want to.’
Bolt turned back to Ruckley. ‘So what have we got so far?’
‘The body was found by a dog walker at about two thirty this afternoon. The doctor took the body temperature at four p.m. He reckoned he’d been dead for between twenty-four and thirty-six hours at that point. As you can see, he was definitely killed elsewhere. Whoever did it put his pants back on him for some reason, then brought him here, but made no real attempt to hide the body. It’s possible they were disturbed, but probably more likely they just dumped it and left. Obviously, he was tortured for some time before he was killed. The doc reckoned some of those burns could have been done quite a few hours apart, so the killer went to town on him, then finished him off with a stab wound to the throat.’ Ruckley shrugged. ‘That’s pretty much it so far. We’re going to do a fingertip search of the area tomorrow, and SOCO have been over the scene taking samples, but we haven’t turned up anything useful yet.’
Bolt frowned. ‘And the doctor was sure it was twenty-four to thirty-six hours he’d been dead?’
Ruckley nodded. ‘Adamant.’
‘So that means the earliest he died was four a.m. yesterday morning, which is a full two and a half days after he went missing. We need to know what he was doing during that time, and who he was with.’
‘Do you go for that second killer theory they’re bandying around in the papers?’ Ruckley asked him.
Bolt took another look down at the body, no longer feeling any hatred for Leonard Hope. Now he just looked pathetic lying there, pale and mutilated; it was clear that, one way or another, he’d paid the price for the terrible things he’d done. ‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said, turning away. ‘Thanks for your help, Joe. It’s appreciated.’
‘Can we move the body now? The pathologist is waiting for it, and I want to get home for my supper. The wife’s cooking meatballs. I just hope to God she hasn’t burned them. I hate being reminded of work when I’m at home.’ He chuckled at his own joke.
Bolt didn’t join in the laughter. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’s all yours. Enjoy dinner.’
He motioned for Mo to follow him and they walked back in the direction of their parked car, and away from the bright glare of the halogen lamps. Mo looked tired and frustrated. The case, it seemed, was getting to him too, and he’d seemed uncharacteristically down when Bolt had phoned him at home – where he’d been watching a movie with his wife and youngest two kids – to tell him the news. Bolt had told him he didn’t need to come out to view the body, but he’d insisted, which was Mo all over. He had an almost annoying sense of duty.
‘Do you think that guy’s always a joker like that?’ asked Mo, when they were out of earshot of the dozen or so officers and mortuary attendants still at the scene, and away from the lingering smell of decomposing flesh.
‘Probably. You know what it’s like. For some people, it’s just the best way of dealing with it all.’
Mo grunted. ‘He just gets on my nerves.’
They walked in silence back to the car. ‘So what do you think?’ Bolt asked him.
‘Who we know about,’ Bolt pointed out. ‘There might have been another killer upstairs who Amanda Rowan didn’t see when she disturbed the murder of her husband and his mistress.’
‘It seems unlikely though, doesn’t it? If there were two killers, they could easily have ambushed and trapped her upstairs.’
‘As it happens, I agree. But that leaves us with an even bigger problem. Who the hell murdered Hope?’
They were both silent for a minute. Bolt was thinking. ‘Someone helped Leonard Hope escape,’ he said at last. ‘He never left the area on foot. We’d have caught him if he had. And he didn’t steal a car because none were reported stolen. So someone must have whisked him off, probably in the back of a car, and it’s got to have been the person he was on the phone to.’
Mo nodded. ‘That’s the theory that makes the most sense. Then he goes to ground, probably with the person who took him. They looked after him for a couple of days, then, for whatever reason, decided to torture and kill him, and dump his body out here in the middle of nowhere.’
‘But how did the person know Hope was being tailed?’
‘The only way would be if you already knew the police were onto him.’
The inference was obvious and it troubled Bolt. ‘You think it’s someone from the inquiry?’
‘Well, no. What would be the point? Everyone on the inquiry team’s trying to catch the killer, so why risk your career to help him escape?’
Bolt sighed. ‘There are over a hundred people on the team. All of them knew for three days that Leonard Hope was a suspect. I know we swore them all to secrecy, but some of them would have talked to friends, family and particularly other cops. So there are probably a couple of hundred people at least with access to that information.’
‘But we’re still left without a motive,’ said Mo. ‘Why would you help him escape? There’s just no reason for it that I can think of.’
‘It could be a vigilante thing. Maybe it was a cop who didn’t think Hope was going to get the treatment he deserved in prison. I mean, let’s face it, whoever killed him really wanted to make him suffer. He must have died in absolute agony.’ Bolt was surprised to realize that the thought of Hope dying in agony pleased him.
Mo shook his head. ‘I don’t buy the vigilante angle.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because most cops I know are professional, and detached enough not to take everything so personally. How many of them get so wound up in a case that they can’t think straight, and end up being prepared to risk their career, their pension, and twenty years behind bars just to make sure a man who’s going to go to prison for the rest of his life anyway dies in agony? And even if there was one prepared to put a plan like that into action, he couldn’t have done it alone. It requires organization, and real balls, because there’s no guarantee he’d have been able to get Hope in a car with him.’ Mo shook his head again. ‘I’m sorry, boss, but there’s no way it was some Dirty Harry-style cop.’
When he put it like that, it didn’t make much sense to Bolt either. ‘But someone helped him. Someone who hated him enough to burn his balls into Maltesers with a blowtorch.’
Once again they were silent for a few moments. Bolt took a deep breath and looked up at the night sky. It was a clear night but the stars were obscured by the thick orange glow of London to the east and the lights of planes as they queued up in a long, sweeping semi-circle for their approach into Heathrow Airport, the low rumble of their engines providing a constant background noise. He was stuck, and it irritated him. Worse, Leonard Hope’s death was only going to increase the pressure on him. Now it looked like they’d never find out exactly what had happened.
‘Shall we head back to town?’ said Mo, shivering as a gust of cold wind blew across the road, then opening the car door. ‘We need to get in touch with the victims’ next of kin and let them know that they’re not going to get their day in court.’
‘Jesus,’ sighed Bolt, opening the passenger door. ‘What a pig’s ear.’ And then, as Mo started the engine, a thought struck him. ‘The victims’ next of kin,’ he said aloud. ‘Now they’d have a real reason to hate Leonard Hope.’
‘Sure they would, boss, but none of them knew Hope’s identity before we announced it, and that wasn’t until after he was already on the run.’
‘What do we know about Ivana Hanzha’s family? You know, George Rowan’s mistress. I heard word that her old man’s one of those Russian oligarchs. Someone with a hell of a lot of money and good contacts.’ As SIO on the case, Bolt hadn’t had to deal with the next of kin, but now he was beginning to wish he had.
Mo sat forward, looking more interested now. ‘His name’s Vladimir Hanzha, and we haven’t gone into his background too much. I mean, it’s not as if he’s a suspect or anything, and from what I gather his daughter’s been estranged from him for the last five years. But, yeah, the word is he’s a bit of a shady character, like a lot of those guys. I still don’t see how he could have got hold of Leonard Hope, though.’
‘And maybe he didn’t. But we’re running low on leads, and he’s got to be worth talking to. I’m going to call Sam Verran.’
Sam Verran was a former colleague of both Bolt’s and Mo’s in SOCA, the Serious and Organized Crime Agency. A career cop with only a year to go until retirement, he was an expert in Russian and Eastern European crime networks, and the extent to which they’d impinged on the UK organized-crime scene. He knew all the key players, and quite a few of the not-so-key ones as well, and if anyone could give them a lowdown on Ivana Hanzha’s old man, it would be him. And if he couldn’t, then it meant the old man was clean.
Bolt hadn’t spoken to Sam Verran since he’d left SOCA, which was close to two years back now. They’d promised to remain in touch but, as was so often the case, they hadn’t, which was a pity because Bolt had always liked him. He hesitated for a moment, vaguely embarrassed to be calling Verran at 8.30 on a Friday night because, if he remembered rightly, he hadn’t responded to Sam’s last email about a SOCA reunion drink. But only Verran could give him the answers he needed, so he didn’t hesitate for very long.
Verran answered after the second ring. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said in a strong Essex accent. ‘The wanderer returns. I thought you’d retired and moved abroad, I haven’t heard from you in that long.’
Bolt chuckled, getting comfortable in his seat as Mo pulled away from the kerb. ‘You know how it is, Sam. Work never stops, does it?’
‘How’s it going on the Disciple case? I’ve seen you on the TV taking a lot of flak from those media assholes, as if they could do any better catching the guy. Any news on him yet?’
‘Nothing right now,’ said Bolt, who didn’t want to tell Verran about Leonard Hope before he’d spoken to his boss in Homicide and Serious Crime Command, ‘but we’ll get him eventually.’
‘So, what can I do for you, Mikey-boy? I’m assuming this isn’t a social call.’
‘Not entirely, no. I was wondering if you could give me some info on Vladimir Hanzha.’
‘Ah yes. His daughter was one of The Disciple’s recent victims, wasn’t she? She was the one killed along with her lover at his place. The wife disturbed them.’
‘That’s right. My colleague – you remember Mo Khan, don’t you?’
‘Course I do.’
‘Well, he’s been hearing rumours that Vladimir Hanzha’s involved in some dubious dealings, and I thought, who better to talk to than my old mate Sam Verran to find out if they’re true.’
‘But what’s he got to do with the Disciple case?’
> ‘Nothing as far as I know,’ said Bolt, deflecting the question. ‘I just need some background.’
‘Fair enough. To tell you the truth, I don’t know anything about Hanzha for sure, and he’s not under active investigation, but you’re right, there are rumours and, off the record, I reckon there’s some meat to them. The point is, though, he’s got big money, big connections, and a very big team of lawyers, so you’ve got to be very careful. The official line is he’s an entrepreneur who arrived in this country in the late 1990s with the equivalent of about ninety million in sterling in his pocket, which he made from the sale to Exxon of a natural gas company he owned back in Russia. Since then, he’s invested in a number of companies and projects in the UK and overseas – commodities, property, a couple of big holiday resorts. Even through the midst of the worst recession since the 1930s, he’s managed to double his personal wealth to a hundred and eighty million. He donates money to charities; he counts a number of big businesspeople, a few lords and ladies, and even a couple of politicians as his friends; and because he’s not one of the big billionaire oligarchs, he’s managed to keep a fairly low profile.’ Verran paused. ‘That’s the official line.’
‘And the unofficial one?’
‘That he’s a gangster. Back in Russia, the previous owner of the gas company that Hanzha sold was found face down in a swamp riddled with bullets, just after he sold his shares to Hanzha at a knockdown price, and there are more than a few tales of people who crossed him back then ending up dead. Since he’s been in the UK, there haven’t been any killings that could be linked back to him, but a few years ago a British businessman who’d had a dispute with him disappeared one day, and hasn’t been seen since. The businessman also had disputes with a few other people, so there was no way of proving it had anything to do with Hanzha, but there was another incident about a year ago when a South African bloke who’d shafted Hanzha on a deal involving a cobalt mine in Congo ended up shot along with his wife at their house in Cape Town. Again, nothing you can prove, but I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe in smoke without fire, and I always think that any man who employs an army of bodyguards, like Hanzha does, has got something to hide. There are other rumours too – that he’s involved in money laundering, that he’s connected to a major Asian illegal betting syndicate, all sorts – but you get the picture.’
Stay Alive Page 18