by Lee Weeks
For Roy Wallace
26/9/1952 – 21/9/2015
Thanks for all the love and laughter.
Prologue
18 December
‘Do you know how it is done?’
The question was directed to a man, hog-tied and gagged, lying on the concrete floor. It was never meant to be answered. The man was coming round from a deep, knocked-out sleep. He was trying to focus through the blood in his eyes. ‘No? Then I’ll tell you.’
He tilted the woman’s chair back, so it rested against his thighs, and leaned over her. Lifting her chin, he ran the blunt edge of the knife down her throat.
‘Many people believe the right way is to slit across horizontally before dragging the tongue through, but this is not correct.’ He looked over at the man on the floor who was screaming into his gag.
‘Here, this is where you begin your cut, at the base of the throat, insert here and then carefully drag the knife upwards.’ He paused and looked up. ‘Say goodbye to your colleague, Inspector Carter.’
Chapter 1
Ten days earlier
‘Christ, what a pantomime.’ Detective Inspector Dan Carter scrutinised the footage coming to him live as he listened to the commentary from the broadcaster. ‘We’re taking a big risk here.’ Carter crossed his arms over his chest defensively. ‘We’re fighting fire with fire. I have to justify this going ahead. We’ve already diverted the traffic. Will we get what we need? Will it lead us to the killer?’ He looked across to Robbo, the crime analyst, for an answer. Robbo looked poised to reply, but didn’t. Carter continued: ‘Are they in the crowd? There are three more gang members in the morgue this morning. This has to work.’
Robbo looked up and over at Carter and gave a smile that didn’t reach as far as his eyes. ‘It was the right decision. It’s going to be worth it,’ he answered decisively and gave his reassuring look, which left Carter nodding slowly, uncrossing his arms and tapping his fingers impatiently on the desk as he eyed the screen.
‘You don’t drop the body of your victim at his mother’s doorstep unless you understand the way these East End gangs work. He’s a national treasure in the criminal fraternity: lowlife royalty.’
‘It was the car park outside her block of flats. Not really at her doorstep. Anyway, Sandra doesn’t live there any more: she’s another of our prime exports to the Costa del Sol,’ Robbo said, scrolling through the images of mugshot photos on his screen. He made notes as he studied the faces. ‘Christ, there’s a slice of British crime history in the East End today.’
‘The apartment block is still family-owned, isn’t it?’ Carter wasn’t letting the point go.
Robbo shrugged, nodded, conceded the point: ‘That’s a big risk, it’s not a family you want to mess with.’
‘Talking of risk, the church took a massive one, allowing it to go ahead,’ said Carter. ‘I wouldn’t have been so generous, if I was them. Obviously they had no idea that we’d be using dead Eddie as bait.’
‘True, and they probably felt they had no choice,’ answered Robbo. ‘This was the Butchers’ family church. The old man had his funeral service there. Harold got married in it. Eddie was christened, even went to Sunday school here.’
‘Tony didn’t get married in it, though.’ Carter kept his eyes on the screen. ‘Too low-key for him: he had a big Essex wedding. And neither did Eddie: he ran off to Vegas when it was his turn.’
Photos of Marbella’s Golden Mile popped up on the screen with sunny scenes of Golden Bentleys and infinity pools. There was a photo of Eddie and his wife Della relaxing on sun loungers. Behind them was a shot of their villa, majestic in the sunshine. Eddie Butcher was raising a glass of champagne to the photographer.
‘And, what the hell does this commentator think he’s doing?’ Carter leaned forwards towards the screen, with his hands flat on the desk. ‘Let’s hear some home truths about Eddie Butcher and the damage he caused instead of treating him like a celebrity. Tell the folks how he got the money to build that Taj Mahal look-alike behind them. We really don’t need to see photos of him enjoying a luxury lifestyle on stolen money.’
Robbo mumbled his agreement while crossing to grind some coffee beans and make fresh coffee, his favourite thing. He blended his own beans in his quest for caffeine perfection. He kept the tools necessary for it on top of the filing cabinet in the corner of the room. His office was too small to allow for any other luxuries. Three desks were laid out in a horseshoe shape; whiteboards were on the walls. A printer and filing cabinets took up the rest of the space. Fletcher House had been purpose-built to house three major investigation teams but it had not allowed for the ever-expanding need each team had for space.
Carter continued monitoring his screen as the funeral procession was making its way along the cobbled road leading to St Matthew’s Church. As it passed the Old Jewish Bakery, the proprietor, Lev, a large man of Russian Jewish descent, born and raised in the East End, came to stand and pay his respects. He blocked the doorway of his bakery as he watched the cortège pass. He’d been busy all morning. He knew a lot about the life of East End criminals. He stood, head bowed, in deference to a family who had extorted protection money from his family for the last sixty years. He had gained security, stability in a volatile world, and it had allowed his business to survive even in the hard times – mostly in the hard times – but he had never been too ambitious, never got too big. He knew his place.
A voice came over the radio: ‘A group of gang members approaching across the railway bridge, from the direction of the Catherine Booth allotments, sir, I count nine youths.’
Carter looked at the images coming from the surveillance camera. The graffiti artwork up the steps and across the railway bridge was as bold as the spikes meant to deter the artists. He studied the swagger of the pack: hoods up, eyes down, furtive and jittery, their hands pushed deep inside pockets.
They paused at the painted ballerina on the wall, at the bottom of the steps. She eyed the youths as they passed her and the first few reached the arches beneath the railway line and the mini-cab firms.
‘Intercept now,’ said Carter. ‘Do not allow them to get any further.’
Carter pushed back his black, Italian-heritage hair. His temples were turning silver now that he was edging closer to forty. He’d joined the police force after leaving school. He had been in the major investigation team for the last eight years. ‘Who are they, do we know?’ he asked as Robbo scrutinised the footage and zoomed in on the group of hooded youths.
‘The Blood Boys. They’re rising stars in Whitechapel,’ he said. ‘One of their members was killed in the gang fight last week. They’ll be here looking for revenge. They must have decided today was a great day to earn their colours.’
Carter didn’t comment, his full attention was on the screen. He was watching plain-clothes officers moving past the ballerina on the steps. He watched them intercept the four youths; the others ran back over the railway bridge.
‘Let them go,’ Carter said into his radio. ‘We have more to worry about. We need every officer to be on high alert now as the crowds converge. Whatever you do don’t cause panic; don’t disrupt the procession. We are here to watch and observe. If you do make an arrest, make it discreetly.’
Robbo came across to look at Carter’s screen with him. Carter had switched the view back to see the horse-drawn carriage carrying the coffin. Eddie was spelled out in wreaths of red, white and blue flowers.
‘You’ve got to hand it to them – they’ve done it in style,’ said Robbo. ‘The horses look great.’
‘The only thing I’d like to hand to them is a grenade minus the pin and with two seconds already on the clock,’ answered Carter.
Robbo didn’t reply; he went back over to his desk. Behind him, on
a whiteboard was written ‘Operation Topaz’. It was the name given to the investigation into Eddie Butcher’s murder. It was Robbo’s job to piece together the timeline of Eddie’s last days, hours.
‘The cortège is nearly there,’ Robbo said, as he watched his screen.
Carter nodded, but he was focused on a mixed-race woman standing opposite the church gates. Her face was partially hidden by a black hat, the baseball type with a large peak. Her black hair was caught back in a low ponytail. Her hands were thrust into the pockets of her black puffa jacket. She was slim, taller than average, late twenties. She was watching the crowd, watching the church. She had the look of someone for whom life was a constant puzzle.
‘Move them back,’ Carter said into his radio. ‘The crowd’s getting too congested around the gates.’
His eyes went back to the woman in the hat. She was watching the mourners, watching the slow path of the cortège. She could pass for a downtrodden single parent with two kids in a double buggy. But there was no buggy. She looked like she was a gym user after a big night out. Her broad, strong shoulders were rounded a little as if she were trying to hide in the crowd. She wore no make-up. She didn’t want attention.
He switched to a view facing the oncoming cortège and zoomed in. The camera was searching for faces in the crowd. It was looking for faces that matched records. Interpol had sent lists of known criminals who had been on the move the last two months. They had crawled out of their Mexican strongholds, their Floridian beachside palaces and their Bogotá brothels, some to come and pay respects, others to cash in on the aftermath.
Carter spoke into his radio: ‘It’s reaching crisis point around the church gate. Control the crowd. Move them back. Do not allow them to get too close to the cortège.’
‘Shit,’ said Carter as a voice cut in: ‘Suspicious male, making his way in from left rear of cortège, possible concealed weapons. Jeezus Christ!’ Carter took an involuntary step back from the screen as the sound of automatic gunshots ripped through the air. Panic ensued as the crowd tried to get away. The driver lost control of the horses.
The voice of the commander at the scene came over the radio: ‘Stand down. Stand down. It’s just a firework, a firework. Get those horses under control. Calm the crowd, people are getting crushed.’
‘Something’s going on at the railway bridge,’ said Carter into his radio. ‘I can see a person on the floor, someone’s been stabbed.’
The firework whizzed and cracked into the air and the horses reared as the banger jumped around their legs.
The officer in charge appealed for calm over a loudhailer. But there was mayhem at the feet of the ballerina as the gangs took their chance to start fighting.
The carriage started rolling backwards. Three times the coffin thudded against the inside of the doors before it broke through and was ejected from the carriage, dropping with force onto the road. The carriage continued reversing, pushed backwards by six panicking horses – it backed over the coffin.
The volume of Sandra Butcher’s anguished screams was matched by the shouts from bodyguards and the loudhailer appealing for calm.
The smoke from the firework fizzed and died as it left a sulphurous cloud and Eddie Butcher’s body rolled out onto the road.
Chapter 2
The Marbella sun was strong, even in winter, but it was interrupted by the occasional storm, which brought clarity to the air. It was hot enough for an Englishman abroad. Tony Butcher had lived on the Golden Mile for over twenty years. And, over those years, he had grown to hate the sun. Where it used to warm his bones, now it scorched them. It shrivelled his skin and, when he looked into the mirror, he saw a parody of his former self. He saw the shape of his skeleton. He saw his skull pushing through his face.
He had been a smart man once, a ‘man about town’. His wardrobe was still stocked with brightly coloured silk ruffled shirts and brocade waistcoats. He had a large collection of hats neatly stacked in a temperature-controlled closet. Nowadays, though, he preferred his uniform of baggy, washed-out combat shorts with a canvas belt and a vest from Ibiza.
Tony looked at his bare feet as he walked through the long cool room, which had a veranda on three of its sides. He watched each foot spread across the cold marble as his weight shifted from one to the other. This was his trophy room. He would recount how he shot most of the animals on the walls, but, at best, he told half-truths. The killer lion, whose head had pride of place between the two sets of French windows leading to the veranda facing the sea, was a man-eater, so he claimed, but he had not shot it. He’d bought it from a restaurant in Namibia, where it had been hung on the wall. He had shot a giraffe. There was one jutting out from the corner of the room. With its long thick neck and small head, it had taken Tony twelve attempts to shoot the giraffe that day. In the end, a real hunter had stepped in to end the animal’s suffering. The giraffe was in such a mess that the giraffe on the wall wasn’t even the one that Tony had tried to kill. This was one that had been bred in captivity, and was killed by an Italian tourist who couldn’t be bothered to have it mounted and flown home and hadn’t even bothered to get out of his car to shoot it.
Tony stopped before the television screen on the wall. Sky News was relaying live footage from the funeral in Bethnal Green. The broadcaster was fleshing out the slow progress with a criminal history of the Butchers. For the umpteenth time that day Tony Butcher heard his name linked with the Great Diamond Heist of ’91. They talked about him and Eddie being sent down for their part in disposing of the diamonds.
‘Say something we don’t all fucking know. You didn’t know how it was done then, and you don’t know now.’ Tony laughed at the image of him and Eddie being led away to Wandsworth Prison in ’92.
‘Handsome-looking devil!’ he said about himself, and then turned away and sighed irritably. He went to stand by the open French windows and looked out to the sea beyond. The horizon was sparkling, the sea was a colder colour blue that you only saw in winter: deep, dark, sapphire. He could hear the noise of traffic coming from the Golden Mile. He heard the sound of horns beeping. The sparrows chattered in the garden below as they washed their feathers in the spray from the fountains. Years ago all these elements would have charmed him, made him feel relaxed and happy with his world, but not now. Tony ached to ride his motorboat on the sea; he wanted to drive one of his many cars at break-neck speed along the Golden Mile, beeping his horn all the way. He hated the noise of the sparrows. They seemed to say, What you going to do, Tony? What you going to do? Over and over again. He tried hard to ignore them but his senses were so highly tuned that he could not. It made his blood boil. He had bought a falcon six months ago; he was going to train it to pick them off one by one, but it had attacked him and escaped and sometimes he thought he saw it flying up in the sky. Sometimes he watched the vapour trails from planes and the brightness made his eyes water. It made him cry.
He turned his head to listen; his ears were too sensitive to every sound. Like a bat, he registered every small vibration in the house. Above the noise from the television and the sparrows, he heard the faint creaking of movement in the house. Somewhere, there were footsteps shuffling, someone was sliding, instead of walking properly. He felt instantly furious. If the maids didn’t start picking up one foot in front of another, he muttered to himself, he’d cut their legs off and make them shuffle around on their arses. Tony laughed to himself as he remembered a child he knew on his street. Disabled from thalidomide, small stunted arms and legs, and they carried him around as if he were a prince. Tony had envied him and so had stolen the boy’s pet rabbit and hung it from a tree in the woods. No one found the rabbit for days and Tony had been back many times to watch it decompose. Now the smell of that animal rotting was never far from his nose. The fizzy smell of decomposition both repelled and excited him.
Tony looked down at the hairs on his shins and felt each follicle open, breathe, and the hair grow, and he began scratching furiously until his legs were bleeding. He
stood wide-eyed and panting from the exertion, skin and flesh beneath his nails. He felt his skull throb as it pushed against the skin on his face.
He knew he was beyond stir-crazy. He had become part of the dust that spun in the sunshine, part of the walls that closed in on him, one piece of the mosaic floor. He was one of the sparrows. He turned at the words from the commentator.
Tony can’t leave his luxury villa.
He stamped his foot and swore at the television before crossing to the coffee table and tipping out cocaine from the packet he kept in a jewellery box. He tapped away angrily, chopping the cocaine up to a fine powder with a credit card, moving it around meticulously and scraping it into fine straight lines. He picked up a rolled note and hoovered up a long line. Then he sat back to allow it to settle down his throat.
‘ “Tony can’t leave his luxury villa,” ’ he mimicked. ‘Oh yes, he can, and he will, when he’s ready. When I come out of this place the whole world will know about it. I haven’t been sat here on my arse for nothing. I’ve been incubating and I’m about ready to hatch.’ He grinned at the image of himself he had in his mind. A flying moth, bigger than an eagle, flying above the planes fighting with the falcon.
He turned sharply at the noise of the fireworks on the television and ran towards the screen. He began to roar: ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’
Chapter 3
‘How are things now?’
In Fletcher House, DI Carter was still watching the scene from outside St Matthew’s Church, when his colleague Detective Sergeant Willis walked in. She’d come straight from Bethnal Green.
‘The paramedics had to perform CPR on one lad. He was lucky: the knife just missed his heart. No one from the crowd was hurt in the panic. Just the gangs causing trouble.’
Carter sighed, relieved. He knew that, even though the day hadn’t gone as well as he had hoped, it could have been worse.