The Body on the Shore

by The Body on the Shore (retail) (epub)

‘You’ve got plenty of form for violence,’ Hoskins said.

  ‘I’ve never killed anyone, and neither did Asbo. Anyway, Asbo couldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he died on Christmas Eve. Like I said, he was addicted to spice inside, and got straight back on harder stuff once he was out.’

  Mulholland snorted with disbelief and shuffled through her papers, looking for any confirmation of this revelation. There was none.

  ‘Asbo Williams is dead, is he?’ she said, having found what she was looking for ‘If so, how come you rang him up three days after Christmas, on your own mobile, and spent an hour and 45 minutes talking to a corpse?’

  ‘Got a direct line to hell, have you?’ Hoskins chuckled.

  ‘I mean, come on, Ryan, don’t be stupid, we can check these things,’ she added, rolling her eyes. ‘If you are going to lie, pick something we can’t check.’

  Ryan Hardcastle leaned back on his chair, piggy eyes narrowed, and gave Mulholland a level stare. ‘Yeah, I rang his missus on the landline as soon as I heard the news. I was giving her me condolences. I liked the bloke. I read the eulogy at his funeral in Sparkbrook.’ He got out his phone and started to swipe through pictures. ‘There’s the picture of him in his coffin.’ He showed the police officers the image: a flower-surrounded casket, lid off. Asbo actually looked healthier than in his official mugshot, but it seemed convincing.

  Mulholland could feel the colour rising to her cheeks.

  ‘I can get the date off the pic if you want,’ Hardcastle said.

  ‘My client is clearly upset,’ said Mrs Singh, her head wobbling with indignation. ‘I think you should check your facts before making accusations.’

  Mulholland terminated the interview, feeling not only foolish but a bully. That Ryan Hardcastle genuinely missed his friend was not in doubt. A friendship is no less valid, she reminded herself, for being forged inside. Perhaps more so, given what jail camaraderie has to get you through. In some ways, she was happy that it seemed unlikely that Hardcastle was their perpetrator. The ballistics evidence indicated a handgun rather than a rifle, which would have been a near-impossible shot from Hardcastle’s flat, 50 yards across the road.

  Hardcastle hadn’t been on the bus; neither had Asbo Williams. Karen Davies hadn’t done it. So who had? It had to be the fair-haired man they had seen on CCTV. There was literally nobody else it could be.

  * * *

  Gillard arrived at Mount Browne on Saturday ten minutes early for the 9 a.m. briefing he had booked. While he’d been away in Lincolnshire the team had a whole day to establish exactly what had happened to the Lund kids. He stood there at the whiteboard as DCs Hoskins, Hodges, Tsu and Townsend walked in, followed by PR officer Christine McCafferty. He was about to start when a figure in a canary-yellow sweatshirt and tight, fashionably frayed jeans opened the door. Chief Constable Alison Rigby. No one expected to see top brass in at the weekend, particularly not this early. But Rigby, as they were learning, was something else. Every back in the place stiffened, every tie straightened.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ Rigby said, pulling up a chair and crossing her legs. ‘Just come in to see how things are going.’ She was the brightest thing in the room.

  Gillard had covered three whiteboards with notes. ‘We’ll start with the whereabouts of the children. Hoskins, what have you found?’

  Hoskins heaved himself out of his seat and lurched towards one of the whiteboards. ‘We’ve had no luck so far with pictures of the children.’ He pointed out a series of flight numbers that had been written down. ‘We’ve been through all the direct flights to Albania and most of the indirect ones. We’ve tracked down bookings for children and we have no matches. None of the cabin crews recall them either. So I think we can rule out aircraft, with or without false passports.’

  ‘What about ferries, Carl?’

  ‘No luck, sir. The catch here is of course that someone can easily drive a couple of undeclared kids either onto the Eurotunnel service or a car ferry, in the boot or hidden some other way, especially if they were drugged. The trouble is we have no description of who was driving the car that went from the school. If we had that, we would have a face that would have appeared in front of an immigration officer.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Gillard. ‘Rob, any luck on the car?’

  Townsend set up his laptop and projected onto a screen an image of a snazzy mustard-coloured Fiat 500. ‘This is a very distinctive vehicle. Countrypolitan yellow, they call it. As far as I can establish, not a single one in this livery has been stolen in the last two months, anywhere in the country.’

  There was a stony silence.

  ‘What about hire cars?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘There are about a dozen in this colour with the major rental chains. I’ve got the histories and credit card numbers, and I’ve run registration numbers through the ANPR. One or two have been flagged up near Colsham Manor, though not on the day in question. I’m still working on tracking down the hirers.’

  ‘Good work, Rob,’ said Gillard, and went to a flipchart.

  Alison Rigby interrupted. ‘All this seems to assume that they have been taken abroad, Craig. Is it not entirely possible they’re still in this country? If a ransom was paid the children would have to be returned, and that’s more easily done if they haven’t gone too far.’

  ‘Well, ma’am, we’ve been taking the Albanian angle pretty seriously. The children are of Albanian origin, we found Albanian symbols at Colsham Manor and one of the children seems to have had a conversation in Albanian with an intruder. It beggars belief that there is no significance in any of these clues.’

  ‘Unless someone is trying to mislead you, Craig. In which case they have done a fine job.’ Even from the back of the room, the blue stare was powerful.

  ‘We’ll certainly consider that, ma’am.’ Craig turned to Michelle Tsu. ‘I believe you are doing some work on the Lund family? Care to run us through it?’

  The young detective took over the laptop, and began a professional-looking PowerPoint presentation. ‘I looked at this from the other direction,’ she said. ‘Who would want to kidnap these children and why?’ She clicked the mouse and a picture came up showing the company name Drillvest AB. ‘This is the company in which Dag Lund has a controlling interest. It specializes in drilling equipment for the oil industry, mainly deepwater rigs.’ The next slide showed its billion-dollar revenues and healthy profits.

  ‘Any business in Albania?’ Gillard asked. He heard the chief constable clear her throat very loudly at yet another mention of that country.

  ‘Nothing significant that I could find,’ Tsu said. ‘So that’s one theory hit the dust.’ She then switched to showing pictures of the children, and the article that appeared in the local newspaper. ‘This would certainly have potential kidnappers salivating, because it even mentions the school that the kids go to.’

  ‘I’m interviewing Dag Lund this afternoon,’ said Gillard. ‘I’d wanted to speak to him weeks ago, but now the children have been kidnapped he’s cancelled all this business trips for the time being. Having said that, I’m not expecting any breakthrough.’

  ‘I’ve also looked in a bit more detail at the adoption background for the children,’ Michelle said. ‘All the paperwork looks to be in order. The children’s original names are Dretim and Albana Goga. I’ve even found an email address for the orphanage in Shkoder at which they were placed, though at the moment I’m just working through Google Translate, so communications aren’t brilliant.’

  ‘I authorized you an Albanian translator,’ Rigby interjected. ‘Why aren’t you using one?’

  ‘Ma’am, we were offered two by the agency we normally use,’ Tsu replied. ‘But when I asked them to provide visa proof, it turns out their best one, who we have used several times, is actually an asylum seeker with no Right to Remain granted as yet, and while the appeal is in process is barred from working. The second is actually a Serb who only speaks a little Albanian and
is the subject of an extradition request from Greece for class B drug offences.’

  Rigby’s eyes widened, becoming even more blue. ‘Well, it’s good that someone is checking, Tsu. But is there no one else?’

  ‘There’s a shortage, ma’am. The Met has a few, but won’t share them.’

  ‘I’ll have a word,’ Rigby said, making notes. ‘Leave it with me.’

  ‘Michelle, have you had any luck contacting the aunt?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘Yes. Sophie Lund gave me the number in Italy. This woman is Zerina Moretti. According to Sophie, the children adore her and call her Teto Zerina, which means auntie. She wasn’t in, but she rang me back on a mobile to say how desperately worried she was about the children. I asked her the same questions that I’ve asked the orphanage, and the answers she gave seemed to tally.’

  ‘Is she planning to come over?’ Gillard asked. ‘We really need to interview her.’

  ‘No, I didn’t get that impression. I’ll ring her again and ask if she would,’ Tsu said.

  ‘Now the wildcard,’ Gillard said, taking over the projector. ‘Yesterday I drove all the way up to darkest Lincolnshire to look at a body which DNA familial tests show is a close relative of Amber and David Lund.’

  He projected side by side the stencil version of the triple-headed eagle symbol and that from the head of the doll. ‘Now these, as we know, are what we found around Colsham Manor, one at Mrs Lund’s stable block and the other in Ms Hinchcliffe’s pottery.’ He moved on to the next image. ‘And this was what was branded into the back of the neck on the Lincolnshire murder victim.’

  There was a gasp from the gathered detectives as they looked at the seared image burned into the young man’s neck.

  ‘The Dragusha are sending a message,’ Gillard said. ‘You don’t need to speak Albanian to know they mean business.’

  Saturday evening

  After pulling 18-hour shifts for the last four days since the kidnap, Gillard had hoped to be home for nine o’clock to spend a little time with Sam, but it wasn’t to be. Rob Townsend’s ANPR analysis, now cross-checked with every single mustard-coloured Fiat 500, had been ready a little after six that evening. It had shown that every single vehicle in that livery in the UK had been accounted for. Every private and corporate owner had been checked, every car hire firm contacted, every stolen or missing vehicle accounted for. Three had been taken abroad, but in each case the owner had responded to police texts or phone calls and accounted for their movements. The truth, Gillard realized, was that they were dealing with professionals, who had switched the children to another vehicle quite soon after the abduction. More impressively still, the abductors had made the Fiat they had used simply disappear. Neither dumped nor torched. The car had just vanished.

  These thoughts had preoccupied Gillard as he had driven home, finally pulling into his drive at 10.15 p.m. The lights of the three-bed semi-detached offered a belated welcome to a house they had bought a few months ago and he’d hardly had any time to really explore. He’d relied on Sam to unpack and decorate because of the extended hours he had been working. Tonight though, as he let himself in, he saw she was stretched out on the sofa watching some slushy film.

  ‘Hello, stranger,’ she said, stretching her arms above her languorously. ‘Give me a kiss.’

  Gillard reached down to embrace her, inhaling her wonderful scent. ‘I’m so sorry to be late again.’ From behind his back he produced a bunch of mixed carnations, pink and white.

  ‘They’re lovely,’ she said, ignoring their slightly wilted heads. ‘BP or Gulf?’

  Gillard laughed. ‘Gulf. You got me bang to rights. I wanted a single red rose, but the florist was shut by the time I got out.’

  She stood and kissed him slowly. ‘Thank you. It’s the thought that counts. So, any progress on those poor kids?’

  He shook his head and sighed. ‘We’re still grasping at straws unfortunately.’

  She offered him some food, but he just settled for cuddling up with her while she watched the final few minutes of the film. There was, of course, a happy ending. In real life they just seemed harder to come by.

  Just after eleven o’clock Sam announced she was off to bed. ‘Are you coming, Craig?’ She said, holding out her hand to him. He yawned and stretched, then said: ‘Just got to do a bit of paperwork. Be up in ten minutes.’

  She rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘A Gillard ten minutes is normally an hour. I’ll probably be asleep by then.’

  He kissed her, and watched his wife make her way to the stairs. They had been married less than a year, and he was still surprised that such an attractive younger woman would want to take on a workaholic such as himself. Especially after the business with Liz Knight.

  Gillard got his briefcase out and took it into his office, which was in reality an upstairs box room with a view over their small suburban garden. He drew the curtains, logged on to his PC, and then jotted down a few notes.

  He had been meaning to research Albanian history as part of the Peter Young case, but with the abduction of the Lund kids he could no longer afford to delay.

  The basics he already knew. A small and mountainous Balkan country about the size of Wales, it sat on the Mediterranean coast on the top left-hand corner of Greece, opposite the heel of Italy. A few days ago, when he’d asked Tweedledum and Tweedledee what they knew about Albania, Hoskins gave him some football score from a recent European championship, and the name of some Albanian goalscorer, while Hodges mentioned a local car-washing business which employed lots of Albanians. Asked to summarize their knowledge, they agreed on three words: crime, communism and immigrants.

  Wikipedia gave some context. It was true that Albania had laboured under the Maoist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha from 1944 to 1985, but in the brief flourishing of democracy afterwards, something even more damaging happened. The savings of an entire generation had been lost through a series of government-backed pyramid savings scams. Tens of thousands who had scrimped and saved for a better life lost everything they had. Violent demonstrations from 1997 led to the overthrow of the government and a civil war in which 2,000 people died. This had hardly died down before the conflict in Kosovo, Albania’s immediate northern neighbour, caused further instability from 1998 to 1999. A million ethnic Albanians fled under Serbian threat, and there was a NATO intervention to protect them.

  The country had enjoyed a less ‘interesting’ history in the last 20 years. Under democratic civilian rule it adopted broader European standards of government and legislation towards a hoped-for entry into the EU, which still looked years away. But it still retained a few unhelpful legacies of wilder times: the highest road accident rate in Europe; enduring mistrust of the police and judiciary; well-entrenched mafia gangs, powerful enough to rival even those in Italy; and the world’s highest per capita possession of guns after the US.

  Finally, Gillard homed in on the essential research: who or what were the Dragusha gang? There was plenty of information in Albanian, but much less, at least in public forums, in English. The Dragusha family, based, appropriately enough, in the city of Fier, had a fearsome reputation and an unmatched arsenal that included some sophisticated weaponry looted from military stores during the civil war.

  The head of the clan was serving a life sentence in a special cell in the high-security prison of Tarduz. Vjosa Dragusha, aged 66, had boasted of personally killing more than a hundred adversaries. His nickname was the Butcher of Fier and he had a personal emblem.

  Gillard clicked on the image to enlarge it: a three-headed eagle in black and gold on a crimson background, poised over a pair of golden scimitars. He then clicked on the photograph that he had been sent by Sophie Lund of the graffito sprayed onto her stable doorpost. The stencil was only an outline. But there was no mistaking the resemblance.

  Three hours later the detective chief inspector lay awake, in the embrace of his sleeping wife, unable to turn off the anxiety that was bubbling in his brain. It seemed very likely that the man on
the Colsham Manor lawns, a man who seemingly spoke Albanian, was the same man who had sprayed the stencil and who abducted Sophie Lund’s children. Whether or not he was a genuine member of the Dragusha clan, the outlook for David and Amber Lund was very grim indeed.

  Sunday

  The Lund family certainly believed in closing the stable door. When Gillard had first visited Colsham Manor a few weeks ago, he was able to cycle in through the main gates and up the grand drive to the Georgian portico. Now, when he and Michelle Tsu took the same route, they found the gates were locked and there were at least two CCTV cameras covering the pedestrian gate adjacent to it. ‘I had intended to show you what a grand place this is,’ Gillard said. ‘But I’ll have to go round the back way instead.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Tsu said. ‘I’ve seen it all on Google Earth and Street View. I downloaded the floor plan, which is still on the estate agent’s website from when it was on sale a few years ago. I also know what the Lunds paid for it, thanks to the Land Registry. Did you know, the vendor knocked almost half a million off the asking price?’

  ‘I’m impressed with what you can do without leaving the office,’ Gillard said as they made their way up Tithe Lane. The car juddered as it negotiated the bumpy track that led past Geraldine Hinchcliffe’s little empire and to the outbuildings. A white BMW seven series was parked there, which he presumed belonged to Dag Lund, the man they had come to see. Gillard and Tsu made his way around to the imposing portico and rang the bell.

  The au pair came to the door and wordlessly let them in. She cut a diminished figure compared with the lively youngster that Gillard had seen previously. Her large dolorous eyes were dark-rimmed, and it was possible to imagine what she would look like in late middle age. She showed him into a large reception room where both Dag and Sophie were waiting, on their feet, for his arrival. Dag was a well-proportioned man with iron-grey hair and a dark, well-trimmed beard. He looked every inch the successful entrepreneur.