Cold Killers

by Lee Weeks

  ‘Up to you, but we don’t have time to waste resources,’ said Bowie. ‘What did you find there at the Paradise Villas warehouse?’

  ‘There had definitely been some activity there in the last two weeks,’ Willis said. ‘I took some more samples.’

  ‘What is going on there?’ asked Bowie. ‘What do they do there?’

  ‘The Paddocks is not that big a business park. There are about twelve units,’ answered Willis. ‘Paradise Villas occupies one of the biggest. It has a warehouse facility, an office and a workshop. What you’d expect in an industrial unit.’

  ‘The other units on the site are a mix: printers, teak furniture importer, nothing of particular interest,’ said Carter. ‘It has twenty-four-hour security round the site.’

  ‘What’s being made in the workshop?’ asked Bowie.

  Carter looked at Willis to answer.

  ‘Not a lot, so far as we can see,’ she replied, ‘and, according to Manson, they buy everything in and it gets collected together to ship in the same container out to a job. When we went there, there were just boxes containing marble fireplaces, pretty average-looking.’

  ‘They farm the work out,’ added Carter. ‘I suppose they have a tried and tested formula and just tweak it for individual requests. Robbo, did you check out any more information on the villas they’re working on right now?’

  ‘One he’s building, the other doing alterations – that’s something he seems to offer – an after-service. The alteration is for a timeshare magnate who’s been inside once for cheating customers. His name is Peter Tully and he has links to the criminal fraternity here and in Europe. He’s one I think we should go and talk to. The new villa is still in its foundations stage – the owner is a football manager. We’re talking to him at the moment. He seems to be above board.’

  ‘And you saw Della Butcher?’ asked Bowie, looking at Carter. ‘You gave her a lift to a hotel, I hear.’

  All eyes were on Carter as Bowie asked the question. Willis hadn’t told anyone, but thought Carter would have to watch himself. She tried not to look at him, but, when she did, she saw that he was trying his best not to look fazed; he was expecting this question. Willis moved her gaze towards Chief Inspector Bowie. Something was obvious to her – he already knew about Carter and Della but he was disowning that knowledge.

  ‘I talked to her briefly on the night of the wake.’ Carter was doing his best to stay relaxed. ‘I provided the transport when she decided to leave the wake and stay in a hotel near the airport. She said Eddie had been the same as always in the month before he died although he did intend to break away from the family and he and Della were talking about moving.’

  ‘That must have been quite a big thing on the horizon. Would Tony have been all right about that? Did he have something to say about it, do we know?’

  ‘Della wasn’t sure whether Tony knew or not.’

  Bowie nodded. ‘Do we need to talk to Della officially?’

  ‘We may do. I’m keeping an open mind but for now I think she’s as much in the dark as we are,’ Carter answered. ‘I got some useful information this afternoon from my informant. I got these photos from his phone, of people of interest who were around and in the pubs the evening of Eddie’s funeral.’

  Carter nodded to Robbo, who had already loaded them onto his laptop and turned it round to show the others.

  ‘The identity of most of these has already been confirmed by Intel,’ said Robbo.

  ‘But there is one man that my informant wanted me to see. He wasn’t at the funeral, but he was here around November the 6th when Eddie was murdered. He’s been seen with Harold and is now known to be Tony Butcher’s new right-hand man.’

  Robbo obliged with a photo of Marco.

  ‘What do we know about him?’ asked Bowie.

  ‘Very little right now. I’ve just shown this to Robbo, so we’ll start on this straight away. We know his name, Marco Zapata, and we know he has a connection to a new and rising Colombian drugs cartel. No doubt, if we have informants with pictures of him on their phones, then the NCA, Organised Crime Command, will have a whole file on him. I believe we need to open up this investigation to them. They have all the contacts that can save us a lot of time. We need to work together.’

  ‘Plus, the Spanish police always inform the NCA when one of the family is on the move,’ said Robbo. ‘They carry out twenty-four-hour surveillance on Tony Butcher. Marco Zapata will feature in that.’

  ‘And do the NCA always follow Eddie when he comes to the UK?’ asked Bowie.

  ‘Apparently so,’ answered Robbo. ‘But only when it relates to Tony or Harold.’

  ‘Then we need to see the history of that,’ said Bowie. ‘Every visit he made in the last three years and all the surveillance on the family that they’ve carried out. We need to request cooperation from the Spanish police.’

  ‘Again we need to liaise with the NCA to save us time.’

  ‘Harold will have a lot of the answers we need,’ said Bowie.

  ‘I’ll interview him again,’ said Willis. ‘I’ll put some pressure on this time. He was not expecting Eddie’s death; I could see that when I spoke to him before. Whatever happened, something went wrong. If it wasn’t his fault he might feel like covering himself.’

  ‘Bring Harold in for questioning under caution?’ asked Bowie. ‘After all we are investigating the murder of a British citizen on British soil and, if necessary, we should take a trip out to talk to Tony.’

  ‘Softly-softly,’ said Carter. ‘If we rush things Harold will refuse to talk at all. If we keep things just about his brother’s death, no mention of the cartels, no mention of Tony, then we might get something out of him he didn’t mean to give.’

  ‘They’re due to fly back here tomorrow,’ Robbo said, looking at his notes.

  ‘Okay, we’ll meet and greet at the airport,’ Carter said. ‘Let’s put some gentle pressure on them.’

  Carter caught up with Willis as they left the meeting.

  ‘Spare a few minutes?’

  ‘Can it be over something in the canteen?’ she asked. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘All right, Teen?’ Willis asked as she walked in and saw her working on the hot-drinks counter.

  ‘Ebbers! Haven’t seen you for ages. Do you still live in my house? I was wondering if you’d moved out.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry, Teen, it’s a bit like that at the moment.’

  ‘I know, busy time. You text me if you’re going to get an evening off and we’ll hit the town.’

  ‘Or maybe just stay in and get a takeaway and a couple of beers?’ suggested Willis.

  ‘That’ll be the one; same as always. Do you want a curry now? We’ve got it on the menu tonight.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Is it edible?’ asked Carter.

  ‘Depends how hungry you are,’ answered Tina. ‘Ebbers always likes it.’

  ‘Then I’ll say no thanks.’ Carter put a chicken-salad sandwich on his tray and ordered a tea. Willis ordered a Coca-Cola with her curry and Tina loaded up their trays at the till. They walked across to sit at a table in the far corner. The canteen was at the end of the dinner service.

  Willis began demolishing her congealing curry and Carter picked at his dry sandwich before dissecting it and picking out the chicken. He pushed it to one side and waited for Willis to look up.

  ‘Eb, I haven’t been completely straight with you about something to do with the investigation,’ he said.

  Willis stopped eating and waited.

  ‘Is it more about Della? I could see the chief inspector knew about your relationship with her. He didn’t seem best pleased that you’d given her a lift to the hotel. I wonder what he’d have thought if he knew we went to see her parents.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t know. But, he’s worrying unnecessarily.’

  ‘Does he know her? You were all on Operation Argos together, weren’t you? I knew she was an officer after tracing her real name
. I’ve been waiting to hear it from you.’

  ‘Yeah, we were, and he did know her. But, not in the same way as I did. We started a relationship. I was already in the force and Della wanted to join. She came through quickly and then was recruited for Operation Argos. No one knew that we were in a relationship, they would never have let us work together if they had known. It seemed so exciting for us. To be undercover together was just incredible.’ He paused, Willis didn’t interrupt. She nodded. Some of the story she had guessed.

  ‘We both spoke Italian. We made a convincing duo. We were brought together to work undercover in an Italian restaurant, where the Butchers discussed nearly all the business. It was a small, family-run Italian restaurant in Walthamstow – Trattoria Verde, it was called. I know what you’re going to say.’ He held up his hand. ‘And you’d be right. We should never have gone into work undercover when we were in a relationship, but we did. We thought it was made for us. In our naivety, we didn’t see anything wrong.’

  Willis watched Carter as he went through the details of his past. She could tell it was painful. It was something he hadn’t had to think about for a long time and now it was bringing him so much stress.

  ‘It was a great time for me. I thought I’d landed on my feet: beautiful girl, Italian father. I thought my future lay with her family. You saw how much we all meant to each other. If Della hadn’t wanted to join the police force, we would probably be together now.

  ‘But, by the end of two years, the relationship was under too much strain and it was virtually over. She started to drift away from me; the talk became about materialistic things: where were we going with our lives; what could we hope to achieve? The police force wasn’t going to be something she’d stay in, she said. The restaurant was too much like hard work for little reward. But, basically, I would have been happy on a desert island with her. I didn’t want to think about what she was telling me. She’d changed. Or maybe she was always like that and I chose not to see it. Either way, we were under enormous strain and still trying to do the job we were paid to do. Bearing in mind that Della had come straight out of cadet school and into undercover work. She fitted their needs so exactly. It was all too much for her. It was just too hard.’

  ‘When did you find out she was involved with Eddie Butcher?’

  ‘I knew there was some flirting going on. I knew I was losing her and I thought there must be someone else, but I didn’t find out who, or how much they were involved, until the operation crashed.’

  ‘Was she responsible for the crash?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘But it would seem reasonable to assume she was.’

  ‘No, not really. It could have been anyone or it could have been a simple mistake made by loose talk.’

  ‘What do you want to do about her now? What do you think about this investigation?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You said you used to wait tables for the Butchers. That means they must all know you. They’re going to recognise you if you go near them. Did they know Della was a police officer?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If they recognise you they’ll suspect her. If they don’t already know it all, then they will find out. We’ve seen the way they deal with people. They are merciless. They might think she’s still working as an undercover cop. You could be putting her whole family in danger.’

  ‘No. I don’t see it like that. I’ll let you do the interviewing. I’ll keep a low profile. I don’t have to be seen by anyone. It’s a long time ago. They’re not going to remember a waiter.’

  ‘Unless they know that’s not what you were.’

  ‘I owe it to Della to find out who murdered her husband.’

  ‘I don’t think you owe her anything. She chose her own path in life.’

  ‘Okay, then there’s the added bonus that Della could lead us right into the centre of Tony’s organisation. It could lead to us shutting down a major drugs route into the UK.’

  Chapter 17

  ‘You know, in some cultures, Della would have been put in that ground with Eddie,’ Sandra said to the three men. Laurence had gone to bed. Harold was sitting slightly apart from the others; his mood hadn’t been helped by too much excess. He was so tired that he felt like a walking zombie with an overactive brain. Tony was still as manic as a meerkat.

  ‘Or,’ contributed Marco, ‘in some countries, if Eddie had been cremated, she would have had to jump into the burning fire with her husband’s corpse.’ Marco laughed and danced.

  ‘Christ, you’re a sick fuck,’ said Harold.

  ‘There is a big fire pit over at Della’s,’ Marco said, grinning at Sandra; she had come alive again and was sitting at the edge of her seat snorting more cocaine.

  ‘The fire pit is just about big enough to put her into,’ she said, wiping her nose furiously as it burned. ‘It’ll take a while of course.’

  ‘At least ten hours, slow roasting.’ Marco laughed. Sandra squealed with delight. Harold sat in the corner of the sofa. He was regretting staying up. He should have just retreated like Laurence, but then he wasn’t anything like Laurence and he had a lot to answer for. He had allowed his younger brother to be tortured and executed. He, the enforcer, was looking as if he couldn’t even protect his own family. Harold had already decided that he must take matters into his own hands. That this madness that Marco brought to the Butchers was a step too far.

  ‘Because, we’d make sure it was slow,’ said Sandra. ‘It can take a long time to roast to death. Slowly the skin blisters and burns through and it would start to peel like wallpaper down a wall and then it would fly into the air like lace, burning in the night sky.’ Tony was beside himself with excitement. Harold was staring at his mother, horror-struck. Marco was laughing hard.

  Sandra hadn’t finished. ‘She’s a skinny little runt. Not a lot of fat to work with. But, still, it takes a long time for the toxins to build up in organs from the shock and the pain and the fact that she won’t have no skin left to protect that skinny little body.’

  ‘We need to do it,’ Tony said, spitting more than talking. ‘Come on, let’s go. We need to head down to Della and roast her.’

  Harold was shaking his head. Marco was still laughing.

  ‘Hey, Harold,’ said Tony, ‘you better get out there, you and Marco, and get digging before our friend downstairs starts to smell.’

  ‘What friend?’ asked Sandra.

  ‘You don’t need to know, Mum.’

  ‘Have you got a body in this house?’

  Tony didn’t answer her.

  ‘Harold?’

  He nodded.

  Chapter 18

  Carter walked into Chief Inspector Bowie’s office. ‘You wanted to see me?’ he said.

  ‘Pull the blind, let’s have some privacy so we’re not interrupted,’ said Bowie.

  Carter came to sit opposite Bowie.

  ‘We need to be frank with one another,’ said Bowie. ‘We’ve known each other for a long time, Dan. I know this case is personal to you because of Della. I know we wasted two years of our lives undercover last time for Operation Argos. But, what I’m really concerned about now is that we have a conflict of interests going on here. What about Della?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I checked with the hotel where she was staying near Gatwick. She took a long time to check in that night.’

  ‘We went for a drive. We talked. She is a key witness for us.’

  ‘She is also your ex.’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  ‘Promise me you’ll be careful with this, Carter. Don’t let your heart catch you unawares and let your guard down. We don’t know that she’s Snow White in all this.’

  ‘Finished?’ Carter got up to leave.

  ‘Please hear me out. We messed up in 2003. We messed up big time. I don’t want to have to explain myself to my superiors and tell them how we got too cosy with the woman who may have been responsible for the fa
ilure of Operation Argos and who is enjoying a new, intimate relationship with the SIO investigating her husband’s murder.’

  ‘You won’t. Just leave me to do my job. The way I look at it, it’s a helping hand to bringing Tony down. Della has the kind of insider knowledge we can only dream about.’

  ‘As long as you keep a clear head when dealing with her.’

  Carter went outside for some fresh air. He walked down the street and popped out one of his nicotine chewing gums from its packet. He’d been an on/off smoker all his adult life. He’d switched his actual cigarette addiction across to the gum, for the moment.

  He walked down the waterlogged street. The cold fresh air whipped around corners and hit him in the face. The residue of a storm from across the Atlantic. The sky was a moving bank of grey cloud. No stars were visible tonight. Carter stopped and took out his phone. He’d had a missed call from Cabrina, damn! He’d said he would call her. He looked at his watch. It was too late now: ten thirty. He told himself he ran the risk of waking Archie up. He’d text her a ‘goodnight’ instead. But, really, Carter’s mind was too preoccupied. He looked at his other missed calls. Della had tried ringing him an hour ago, just before he went in to talk to the chief inspector. Carter stared at the screen. It was funny to see Della’s name written on the list of callers again. Carter knew Bowie was right. He had to make sure he didn’t let his feelings carry him to a place that never really existed.

  He pressed the call button and she answered after a few rings.

  ‘Oh, Dan, am I grateful you phoned me back. I’m sorry I keep ringing you. I don’t know who else to talk to.’

  ‘That’s okay. How are things?’

  ‘Not good. Worse than ever, if I’m honest. The family have turned on me.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m sitting on my patio, looking at the stars.’

  ‘No stars here tonight.’

  ‘Still, I’d rather be where you are.’

  ‘You have the option, Della. You must leave there if you’re so worried. Check into a hotel somewhere.’