by Lee Weeks
His burned legs were spread. His cock was cut at the base of the shaft. The blood had dried down his leg. His testicles were scorched like black coals. Skin hung as curled paper off his legs, crotch, arms, torso. It hung, curled and blackened in neat pulled strips. Someone had taken time over the torture. It was an expert’s touch of extracting maximum pain. Each strip of skin began with a slice and ended with a curl of crackling. Carter took a step inside the room and then recoiled. Every part of Carter’s instinct told him to look away, to run, to throw up. Every part, except the police officer part. He walked towards Melvin, who was sitting in the armchair behind the door.
Melvin’s arms were limp by his side but his hands were twisted palms up. His head was tilted back and from his gaping neck wound, slit beneath the chin, his tongue stuck out and was pulled down towards his sternum.
Four hours later, Della was done. She looked at herself in the mirror. Tracy fiddled with the long fringe on the shoulder-length brunette wig, swept the fringe to one side.
‘There, pretty sure no one would think you’re wearing a mask. You’ll be okay with fixing this on yourself with more liquid latex?’
‘Definitely.’ Della smiled at her reflection. She could see the face of a woman whom no one would look twice at. It was a hard face. It was a face that would be difficult to remember.
‘It suits you to go dark. The eyebrows look dramatic; they change your look completely. You’ll need to dye them if you want them to stay that dark. Use this brown dye and then add black with pencil, otherwise they’ll be too obvious without the mask. I think they’re important to finish the look. You just need to go and buy a new wardrobe now. I would stick to dark colours. What about going for trouser suits instead of your usual dresses or jeans? A smart Armani suit maybe. That would look fab with a straight wig like this.’ Tracy took Della’s brunette wig off and placed a long black one on. She made sure the shorter fringe was sitting properly. ‘That’s pretty chic. I prefer this one. It goes with your Roman nose, the cheekbones.’
‘So do I but, unfortunately, I don’t want to look great: I want to look like someone who doesn’t want to be recognised. The other wig is the one.’
Tracy swapped it back.
‘Great, thanks, Tracy. I love my new face.’ She laughed. ‘You’re a genius. I need to buy some cheap leggings, a big hoody, I need to scour a few charity shops, I think, and I need to take a passport photo now.’
‘Can you get a passport?’ Tracy asked, and then immediately shook her head. ‘No, don’t answer that.’
‘Yes. I can, if I pay enough. Eddie’s left me some names of people who can help.’
‘I’ll take the photo for you here, I use a good camera for taking photos of the models downstairs.’ Tracy picked up a camera case from the shelf at the side of the room and she cleared some space.
‘Come and stand here against this sheet. This will be fine. Tracy took several photos. ‘Where do you want me to send the photos?’
‘Better email me them to this phone, please, Tracy.’ She gave her the number.
‘Here, take it all off now and we’ll put it in a plastic box for you, I’ll bag up everything you need.’
‘What do I owe you, Trace?’
‘Nothing, you’ve often been kind to me in the past. If you could have Jackson and me out to stay, when you’re home and things have settled down? He would love it.’
‘It’s a deal.’ She hugged her.
‘Anything else you need, just ring me,’ said Tracy.
Della used the reception phone on her way out of the salon.
‘Where do you want to meet?’
‘Holloway Road, drive along it towards Archway from Highbury and Islington, left turn just before you pass Holloway Tube Station on your left, Hornsey Street. I’ll be waiting along there. If you are going to put it into your satnav, you’ll have to make sure it can be erased.’
‘That’s okay. I think I’ll be able to find this.’
‘I’ll wait for you outside and we’ll get the car off the road into the underground car park.’
Carter was standing just where he said he would be when Della pulled up beside him and he got into the passenger seat and gave her instructions for parking in the underground car park. He used his security code to gain entrance. There were mostly empty spaces.
‘This is a new development. I don’t remember any of this being here.’
‘Yes, new stuff being built all the time. But this place still has a few empty flats.
‘This is a fairly new acquisition by the police. My office is just up the road, maybe it’s a bit near, but I would feel better if I could get to you quickly.’
They took the lift up to the third floor and Carter opened the door to an apartment that was smelling unlived in.
‘The furnishings are a bit Spartan, I know.’
‘It’s fine.’ She smiled reassuringly at Carter. ‘Thanks for choosing this one for me. I know how grotty they can be. Are you okay, Dan? You look done in. Is there anything I should know?’
‘I’m fine.’ Carter was thinking to himself that there were a million things Della shouldn’t know. There wasn’t one positive thing he could tell her. He had decided it was best to withhold the information about Melvin and his necktie. ‘Let’s concentrate on you.’ He smiled. ‘What happened when you got to Shoreditch Mews, after leaving us yesterday?’
‘Nothing happened – not much, anyway. Laurence turned up acting weird, like he owned me. Marco was nowhere to be seen until about one in the morning, when he turned up looking like he’d been cage fighting. And Harold was his usual monosyllabic self. He disappeared again for most of the evening. He didn’t want to talk when he came in just before Marco, in the early hours. Marco was still up but they don’t really speak to one another. They’re not the best of mates, neither one trusts the other, but both of them are pretty focused on what Tony wants.
‘I had to make sure, if they want to get the diamonds, they both understand these are my rules. I think Marco will be meeting with the Zapata cartel this evening. He said so.’
‘We can put a tail on him. Do you think you can get a bug on him somewhere?’
‘I think if I try, and I fail, I’ll probably end up like Eddie. But, he’s going to expect to be followed, watched. He’s going to be suspicious if you don’t try.’
‘I feel so much stress about all this, Della. I wish you’d just run. I wish you’d hide away and we’ll figure out some other way of letting you live your life in peace. I feel responsible. It’s almost unbearable.’
‘Dan’ – she smiled – ‘you know it’s not possible for me to run, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your concern. Whatever happens, I know you’ll do your best, and that’s usually good enough. Just think like a detective, Dan, not like a friend.’
Carter nodded. ‘You said you had to follow leads, check security boxes, pretend to meet old cons. Have you worked out how it will look best?’
‘Yes, I’m starting with the security box this afternoon. I think I will go out to the countryside in Kent after that. That’s where Tony always thought the stash was hidden, in a lockup somewhere.’
‘What’s going to be in the security box to help your story?’ Carter gave her a sideways smile.
She held up her hands. ‘I really don’t know, believe me. It was Eddie’s style to sit on stuff, save it for a rainy day. Probably there will be cash. Maybe there will be jewellery. He used to give me a lot of jewellery. I know there will be something useful in there for us because he left me instructions about it.’
‘When does the shipment arrive from Mexico?’
‘I’m not sure even Marco knows that yet. I’ll find out from him as soon as he does but we’re talking days not weeks.’ She smiled, nodded. ‘It will be all right, Dan. I told you, just keep your detective’s head on and we’ll be fine.’
‘And you keep your wits about you.’
Della opened the curtains a little and looked down at the c
ourtyard below.
‘I will, I promise. This is the most important week of my life, Dan. I have to do or die. I know you can only help me so far. I know you’ll do your best for me, like you always did.’ She turned back from the window and smiled at him. He bowed his head.
‘Am I allowed a hug?’ she asked, cocking her head to one side and smiling.
He opened his arms.
In the courtyard below Laurence stepped out of vision of the apartment. He’d followed Della with the tracker he’d put in her handbag. During the day he’d lost her for a few hours when she went into a beauty salon on Upper Street but then he’d picked up her trail again and it had led him here, right into the arms of her old lover. He looked at his phone: he had a good photo of them both.
Chapter 47
Ross was laughing and joking with the café owner as he ordered tapas from the menu in perfect Spanish.
Willis was staring at him.
‘What?’ He smiled when he had finished talking to the owner.
‘You can speak Spanish? You told Ramirez and Garcia that you couldn’t.’
He shrugged, nodded. ‘I’ve been out here on many occasions. They must have seen that. Pretty sure they knew I could understand what they were saying because they were careful. They were cautious.’
‘Did you hear anything that would lead you to be sure about them? That they were corrupt?’
‘I’ve heard that they work in interesting ways from others. Garcia comes from a family of criminals and Ramirez has accepted hospitality from Butcher, stayed in his ski chalet in the Sierra Nevada, that kind of thing. But I have also heard they have been responsible for the arrest of two big drug barons. One was over here from South America. Another was Spanish.’
‘Are they selective, then, in who they go after?’
‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’ Ross poured out his beer into the glass provided. Willis was drinking Pepsi. ‘Are they choosy about when to be good policemen and when to be bad? And does the good outweigh the bad or is it always tipped in Tony Butcher’s favour? Or is it the way they work?’
Ross’s phone signalled he had a VIP email.
‘Excuse me.’ He picked it up to check it. ‘Interesting,’ he said as he turned it round and showed it to Willis. ‘This is a message back from the Dream Stone Fireplace Company. Or, to be precise, the message has boomeranged back to me undelivered. They can’t be trading at all with the public. It all stays in-house. What about Manson?’
‘It’ll be interesting to talk to people today who had villas built by Eddie Butcher and Billy Manson,’ replied Willis. ‘I want to hear what the people who did business with him thought of him.’
‘The main thing is to talk to the people he’s building for right now,’ said Ross. ‘If there is a dispute, we need to find out. I would love to look around a place properly. You okay? You’re quiet. What news is there from home?’
‘There’s been a development with Della Butcher.’
‘Yeah, I know about the deal with the diamonds. Thanks for deciding to tell me about it, though, I appreciate that you’re not one for holding secrets between partners.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Chief Inspector Bowie was obliged to, in the end. If we are to catch Tony we had to know something as big as this. What are your thoughts on it?’
‘It seems like an enormous risk for Della. It’s the riskiest plan altogether. To pretend to have the diamonds to give to a cartel in exchange for their cocaine. Is that going to work? And Della hasn’t even really got them? She’s lying to a cartel at the same time as she’s taking their cocaine.’
‘It won’t be her. All she has to do is convince Marco and Harold and therefore Tony that she has the diamonds. They have to know where they are and then the deal can be done. Counterfeit money has been used before to lure and trap drug dealers. We think it will work.’
‘We?’
‘The department.’
‘I suppose so.’ Willis wasn’t convinced. ‘But this is one cartel taking over another. If it goes wrong, a lot of people will be at risk.’
‘Yes. If it goes wrong Della will be dead. This is a risky business. We are in prevention now, not dealing with the aftermath. This is drug dealing, not murder. Everything about this is risky. If it goes wrong, if Della ends up dead, she probably won’t be the only one, and the news will read that she was killed by the same drug dealers that killed her husband. Tony, Harold, probably the whole family will be executed by one cartel or the other – or both.’
‘If it goes wrong, we may not catch the cocaine dealers but we may still seize the shipment, which is reputed to be the biggest ever to cross the Atlantic. For me it’s a win–win situation. Would I risk it if I were Della? Having seen Tony today, realising what he’s capable of, yes I probably would. Who would want Tony in their life?’
‘What are we going to do about Ramirez and Garcia?’ asked Willis.
‘I think we should meet them tonight, let them show us a good time, watch how they are in this place. I’d like to see the extent of their corruption, how people talk to them, treat them. We should learn a lot by watching them with their friends. Then we’ll head home tomorrow. Agreed?’
‘Agreed. I want to get back now. I want to be on hand with this plan of Della’s.’
‘You also want to watch over your partner, and see he doesn’t stray.’
‘You know that’s not going to happen. Carter is unorthodox but he’s smart and he’s a step ahead of most detectives. You wouldn’t think so, but it’s instinctive to him. I don’t have any worries about him.’
Chapter 48
After finishing with their visits to look at a few of the villas Eddie had built and to talk to the expat owners, they got in the car to drive back to the hotel.
Ross looked across at Willis as he fastened his seat belt and prepared to drive off.
‘Nobody who actually knows anything of value is going to talk to us. I’ve had enough. I’d rather spend my time having a nice cool swim than talk to lowlife, high-living scum.’
‘I thought you were enjoying it.’
‘What, talking to Mr Silver Fox, barrow boy turned billionaire by ripping off ordinary folks? No thanks.’
‘Should we talk to one of the others on our list?’ Willis scanned through the names on her iPad.
‘No. We could waste a week getting around half of these luxury villas and by then I will rethink my universe and I will turn to you and say, “You know what, my dear? Crime really does pay.” And we’ll drive off into the sunset like an alternative Thelma and Louise and live the rest of our lives on oysters and champagne.’
Willis frowned. ‘You’re quite bonkers.’
‘I know. Being a bit mad keeps me sane.’
They spent the next fifty minutes of the drive in silence as Willis rested her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. The warm air made her feel happy as they drove by the sea again on the coastal road. It filled her senses with a special memory of the rare occasions in her life that she had ever gone to the beach. The long coach ride, full of its own special intrigue, followed by the pile-out onto the beach of all the children from the home, and then the hours of laughter. Those were happy times in her childhood. There weren’t many and they never included her mother. Willis thought about what Ross said. Being a bit mad hadn’t kept her mother at all sane. But, then, her mother wasn’t just a bit mad.
‘You okay?’ Ross asked. ‘You’ve gone quiet.’
‘Fine, just enjoying the scenery.’
‘What do you want to do about this evening?’ asked Ross. ‘I sense you’re not that keen on seeing the bright lights of Puerto Banús?’
‘It’s just I haven’t come prepared. I don’t have anything to wear. I don’t have any money. I think it’s not my kind of thing. I have so much work to catch up on.’
Ross raised his hand for her to stop. ‘Okay, I get it, but do me a favour and just come out for a few hours. We can really check these guys out in thei
r natural habitat. This is all on me. I will claim it back on expenses. Wear your jeans and the white top again. It’s perfect for this place.’
‘Okay.’ Willis’s phone went off. ‘Robbo?’
‘The second set of samples you took from the Paradise Villas warehouse are back.’
‘Good, anything?’
‘Where the boxes were resting?’
‘Yes?’
‘Corresponds to distinct indentations, gatherings of dust and raised deposits of soil around the box edges, corners . . . Remember, you took photographs?’
‘Yes,’ Willis emphasised. She was getting irritated with Robbo.
‘They found substantial traces of Grade A Colombian cocaine mixed with a small amount of stone composite. Looks likely someone’s been making fireplaces out of compressed cocaine.’
Willis sat up in the passenger seat and turned wide-eyed to Ross.
‘When are you coming back here?’ Robbo asked.
‘Tomorrow. Have you told Carter?’
‘I can’t get hold of him at the moment but I will tell him asap.’
‘Manson has to be at the heart of this,’ said Willis. ‘With or without Eddie.’
‘Get Ross to help us on this. He had photos of Manson and Marco. We need him to check for more of the same. Any photo which includes Manson at all and sightings of the white van. We need that second location – the place he transports the boxes to. I’m thinking it must a laboratory of a fairly big size. The process of extracting the cocaine from these large features must involve quite a bit of space. It shouldn’t be too hard to find business parks with that capability.’