The Body on the Shore

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

  ‘I thought that was something you would do for me,’ Gillard said. He had already made the formal request, via Alison Rigby and her counterpart in Tirana. This was perhaps an example of the difficulties that Geoff Meadows had described in dealing with Albanian officialdom.

  ‘Why do you want to interview him?’

  Gillard explained about the Dragusha symbol branded into the neck of the Lincolnshire murder victim, the forehead of the doll found at the pottery and sprayed onto Sophie Lund’s stable. ‘He would know whether any of his underlings were involved in this.’

  Tokaj nodded. ‘I’m sure of it.’ At that moment Leila Tokaj came in bearing a large pie and a generous salad. After serving up slices of the lamb and cheese pastry to the two men, Mrs Tokaj withdrew. ‘I have, of course, put in the requests. But there is no certainty,’ he said, bending to eat.

  ‘Perhaps then you can answer a more general question for me, Besin,’ Craig said. ‘I have read much about the Dragusha family, their links with the ’Ndrangheta mafia group in Italy and so on. What mystifies me is why so many of the prominent members of this crime family still appear to be at large.’

  The Albanian detective smiled as he chewed. ‘In Britain, as I understand, no one stands in the way of the police doing their duty. Criminals are caught, convicted and go to jail, yes? A B C.’

  Now it was Gillard’s turn to smile. ‘If only it were that simple. Yes, you describe the process, but there are all sorts of checks and balances on police power, on prosecutors and even on the judiciary. Evidence found by prosecutors must be shared with the defence, even if that evidence might undermine the prosecution case. Forensic advances mean it is rarer now for innocent men to go to prison, but lapses in procedures mean it is still very common for guilty men to walk free.’

  Tokaj nodded. ‘Albania is very different. There are centres of power which must be respected. This was the lesson of the anarchy. The government has power, yes. But the people have power too, and powerful families cannot be ignored. The police and the judiciary are careful about what they can and cannot do, if you understand me.’

  Gillard mopped up the last of the gravy with a piece of bread, something he had just watched his host do on his own plate. ‘So the Dragusha clan are one of the powerful families, I presume?’

  Tokaj shrugged. ‘No one is above the law, they understand that. They know what is expected of them: stay subtle, don’t brag about your power, don’t kill the innocent, make your trouble abroad or at least within your illicit business rivalries.’

  Gillard nodded. ‘Okay, I see where you are coming from.’ He thought for a moment. ‘If the Dragusha clan was trying to kill two innocent orphans, then for the authorities that is surely overstepping the line.’

  ‘For sure,’ Tokaj said, wiping his mouth with a napkin and standing up. ‘If that is all they are. Now, we have to visit the orphanage to find out.’

  * * *

  The drive north to Shkoder was on busy but poorly maintained roads, with potholes the size of washbasins. While Tokaj drove cautiously, they were constantly overtaken at high speed by daredevils, most of them for some reason driving black Mercedes. Yet they also passed donkey carts and saw ancient agricultural machinery still in use. ‘In Albania there is only one rule for the road,’ Tokaj laughed. ‘Everywhere, you always have right of way.’

  After two hours they reached the medieval town of Shkoder, perched in the foothills of the Albanian Alps and overlooking a lake which formed the country’s northern border with Montenegro. ‘There are the Accursed Mountains,’ Tokaj said, pointing to the peaks ahead of them, the snowfields glinting in the watery sun.

  ‘That is where Teto Zerina’s family comes from, according to Sophie Lund,’ Gillard said. ‘So maybe that is where Amber and David grew up.’

  ‘Ah, up there they are very tough people,’ Tokaj said. ‘That is the land of the blood feud, where old scores are never settled but carry on, generation after generation.’

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘It is tribal land, jealously guarded. They have never trusted the police to deliver justice.’

  Gillard had expected the Orphanage of the Blessed Saints to be some crumbling medieval building surrounded by gardens in which wimpled nuns would smilingly watch children at play. In fact it was in the basement of a high-rise block hemmed in by busy roads near the centre of Shkoder. The orphanage was modern though quite small, with only three or four children visible. An even bigger surprise was that the Sister Giulia they had arranged to meet was an attractive young woman in jeans and an Oxford University sweatshirt who had a tattoo of Christ on the cross visible on her forearm. She greeted them in accented English. ‘I am happy to meet you both,’ she said, offering them coffee and pastries.

  Gillard reminded her of the details of the case.

  She nodded. ‘I wasn’t here when the two children came to us. I was still training. However, we have the full records in the church offices across the way.’ She led them out of the building and across a murderously busy dual carriageway to a much more traditional ecclesiastical building. ‘The original orphanage was demolished to make way for a wider road,’ she said.

  Sister Giulia led them through the nave of the Roman Catholic church and into a cramped office at the back occupied by an elderly but upright nun in a plain brown habit. They exchanged words in Albanian, and Tokaj joined in. The young woman unlocked an ancient wooden cupboard and drew out a hefty leather-bound ledger. She and the older nun pored over it and located the entry they were looking for. ‘See. This is the formal record for Dretim and Albana Goga. It means that the signatory has seen their birth and baptismal records, and the death certificate for both parents.’ She pointed to the four columns in which ticks had been made as the other nun nodded her head.

  ‘Do you keep copies of those documents?’ Gillard asked.

  Sister Giulia spoke briefly to the other nun, and got a reply which from her nodding head appeared to be in the affirmative. The older woman walked over to a bookshelf and selected a modern file folder, which she laid down on the desk. She looked through the ring binder, unclipped the rings and then brandished two photocopies. ‘Birth certificates,’ she said.

  Gillard and Tokaj looked at them. To Gillard’s eye they looked not dissimilar to a British birth certificate, with a signatory and in this case a counter-signatory which gave it an official imprimatur. From other ring binders Sister Julia produced copies of the certificates of baptism and the death certificate of the father. Tokaj nodded, indicating that everything appeared to be in order. Gillard was not so convinced.

  ‘This only proves the relationship between the various pieces of paperwork. It doesn’t prove David and Amber Lund are Dretim and Albana Goga.’

  Tokaj looked bemused. ‘You think these children were presented as orphans with false paperwork?’

  ‘It’s possible, surely. There have been many cases in the UK of children being trafficked from abroad with false paperwork.’

  ‘Of course that is very common, but in this case you said that the adopting family came here to Albania, and the paperwork shows that.’

  Sister Giulia nodded her agreement. ‘It is all quite clear.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gillard said. ‘The motivation of Sophie and Dag Lund is I think above suspicion. What I’m saying is that if it is true they were orphaned because of the murder of their parents, David and Amber may have been sent away for their own safety and presented here already with false identities.’

  ‘We know nothing of this,’ said Sister Giulia, handing them photocopies of all the documents they had seen. Gillard and Tokaj expressed their thanks and returned to the car.

  ‘Regrettably, what you describe was a very common occurrence, especially in the time of chaos,’ Tokaj said. ‘In Albania it is not uncommon for children to be passed within the extended family, perhaps if the mother is working or if the parents travel abroad. The ties of kinship are very broad, more so I think than in your country.’

  ‘M
aybe we will get an answer to this in the next day or two,’ Gillard responded. ‘The children are with their aunt, or a woman who claims to be their aunt, in Italy.’

  ‘This is the Zerina Moretti you mentioned?’

  ‘Yes. For many days after the abduction she claimed to be frantically worried about the children, but then we discovered that it was she who picked them up from school, took them on the ferry to France and drove down into Italy.’

  ‘So the children are safe.’

  ‘We are assuming so. After all, she has spent weeks with them over Christmas, and they know her well. We really need to talk to her, because if anyone knows the whole story, she does.’

  * * *

  On the way back from Shkoder, Tokaj took Gillard to meet his senior officers at the Tirana police headquarters. This was a modern glass and steel building which could have been in any European city. The British detective shook hands with at least 20 different officers, male and female, most of them dressed in smart blue shirts and trousers with a red shield on their shoulders. Many seemed genuinely delighted to meet Gillard, and had questions about Britain and policing in the UK. One or two expressed themselves to be devotees of British crime authors from Agatha Christie through to Ian Rankin. After a bewildering hour and numerous cups of strong black coffee Gillard was taken into an office decked with memorabilia and the flags of the police and Albania itself. Behind a large desk sat a dapper middle-aged man with a full head of dark hair and a worried, hangdog expression. Tokaj introduced him as the Director for Serious and Organized Crime. He had an impossible name, but urged Gillard to call him Mr Zok, an acronym built from his initials.

  Mr Zok spoke no English, but was eager to show the progress that had been made against gang violence and organized crime in his country. There were books of cuttings, photographs and reports, all of which were laboriously summarized for Gillard first in Mr Zok’s Albanian, and then in Tokaj’s translation. Pride of place was given to a photograph of half a dozen officers in combat gear and balaclavas standing over the restrained body of a large middle-aged man. Only the smiles visible through the mouth vents of their face masks showed that this was a moment of triumph.

  ‘The arrest of the Butcher of Fier,’ Tokaj translated, ‘ninth of April 2014. A proud day.’

  Gillard looked at the officer, who positively beamed. ‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘Do you have DNA samples for most of your prominent gangsters?’

  After hearing the translation, Zok insisted on arranging a visit to the adjacent forensic unit, which had been modernised with the help of the Polish police service. ‘This is just one of the improvements we have made in order to be ready, one day, to join the European Union,’ Tokaj said, summarizing his host. ‘We now exceed all required standards.’ Certainly the units looked modern, well staffed and appeared to be under the direct control of the police themselves.

  ‘I would like, if I may, to interview this man,’ Gillard said tapping the photograph of the Butcher of Fier. ‘We are trying to make connections to murders in the UK.’

  Zok permitted himself a brief smile and spoke to Tokaj who translated: ‘He says he can’t promise anything.’

  Gillard opened his briefcase and brought out some stills captured from the CCTV at Colsham Manor, showing the fair-haired man that Amber had spoken with. ‘Do you know this man?’ he asked Mr Zok.

  The Albanian policeman gave a nervous laugh and then turned to talk to Tokaj. ‘He says he cannot be sure, but there is a marked resemblance. But it would of course be very unlikely.’

  ‘Sorry, unlikely to be whom?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘The Angel of Death.’

  * * *

  Gillard had many more questions, but his phone rang. It was a call from Geoff Meadows, so he excused himself to the corridor to answer it.

  ‘Craig, we’ve got a bit of a snag,’ Meadows said. ‘I’m here at the Moretti estate in Italy with two social workers from Surrey and an Italian policeman, and it’s pretty much deserted. The husband is in Rome, and the gardener, who seems to be the only person here, thinks Zerina Moretti left yesterday. He was happy to show us around, but there is no sign of her car or the kids.’

  ‘That’s unfortunate.’

  ‘The social workers are off to Rome to interview the husband, but I think that is likely to be a waste of time. Look, as a private investigator I can’t officially request the phone tracking data from the Italian police,’ Meadows said. ‘You would have to do that. I’ve left a message with Claire Mulholland, but I thought I’d just let you know where we stood.’

  ‘Claire will be on top of this, I’m sure,’ Gillard replied. ‘I’m happy to pass on any location data that we get.’ He thanked him and hung up.

  Mr Zok’s office door was now closed and there seemed to be some meeting taking place. Gillard tracked Tokaj down in reception, where he too was on the phone. The British detective had to wait ten minutes for him to hang up.

  ‘So what do we know?’ Gillard said, hoping to hear more about the Angel of Death.

  ‘That was the local police in Pogradec. The address given on the passport is a derelict apartment in the south of the town, not fit for habitation. It is unclear whether anyone has been living there in the last few years. The name Kogan is not a common Albanian name, and my colleagues in Pogradec could not find any trace of a Jetmire Kogan in their records, nor through the regional registrar of births and deaths.’

  ‘So another set of false documents?’

  ‘It looks that way.’ Tokaj led him back to the car.

  As they pulled out of the police car park Gillard asked: ‘Now, about this Angel of Death.’

  Tokaj blew a loud raspberry. ‘I think Mr Zok was joking.’

  ‘He doesn’t look like a comedian.’ Gillard recalled Mr Zok’s anxiety-creased face. He would make a perfect sad clown, especially with that name. ‘So why do you think he was joking?’

  ‘Well, for one, it wasn’t a very good image. But more importantly it doesn’t seem very likely that such a man, the Butcher’s right hand and probably the most wanted man in Albania, would be interested in going to Britain to frighten some children.’

  ‘All the same, I’d like a DNA sample of him, if you have one,’ Gillard asked. ‘We’re hopeful that one of the murder weapons will turn up, or some fresh evidence at Colsham Manor, to try to get a match.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t ask Mr Zok that,’ Tokaj said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a sensitive subject with him. Soon after the arrest of the Butcher of Fier, we took a DNA sample from him and raided some of the properties of the Dragusha family to get as full as possible a sample of DNA from the family.’

  ‘That was an enterprising act.’

  ‘Yes. It was in the early days of the new forensic lab. Mr Zok’s predecessor believed we could crack organized crime completely by sidestepping what had been the major problem, which is that nobody had the courage to stand up and testify against them. Instead we would use the very latest forensics to put these criminals at the scene of the crime without needing witnesses.’

  ‘I’m getting the impression that something went wrong,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Yes. It was at the first major prosecution when the new DNA evidence was to be used. The prosecutors had all the test paperwork which connected several leading members of the Dragusha to the slaying of a rival in Elbasan. The Dragusha’s defence lawyer demanded an independent retest of the samples, and because of the newness of the forensic service, the judge granted it. The samples were couriered under high security to a laboratory in Switzerland. Its conclusion was simple: it wasn’t human DNA. The case collapsed, of course, and the credibility of the new forensic system was dramatically undermined.’

  ‘So the Dragusha have the power to infiltrate the forensic service?’

  ‘Yes. But they were even cleverer than that. I didn’t tell you what type of animal the Swiss found the samples were from.’

  ‘Pigs, donkeys?’

 
; ‘No. That might have reflected badly on the Dragusha. No, the DNA samples were from an imperial eagle.’

  Gillard blew a sigh. ‘That’s amazing. Straight from the Dragusha calling card, the triple-eagle emblem.’

  ‘Exactly. What this said to the world was: “Yes, of course we committed this crime. The mark of the eagle is on it. But you cannot catch us.”’

  ‘So where did they get eagle DNA?’

  ‘From Tirana zoo. It was a terrible place anyway, no one cared properly for the animals, and it has been closed down since 2015.’

  ‘This is all highly depressing,’ Gillard said.

  Once they returned to Tokaj’s house there followed another large meal, with copious raki. Gillard, never much of a drinker, wondered what his alcohol unit count for the day had been. Over dinner, after Leila had joined them, the British detective once again tried to chivvy some detail about the Angel of Death from Tokaj. But he shook his head. ‘I will not discuss such things in my house.’

  Leila picked up on her husband’s discomfort and asked him something in Albanian. He replied briefly and her eyes widened in alarm.

  Gillard was quick to apologize. ‘I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to cause upset.’

  Tokaj waved away his concern. ‘You weren’t to know. Just another of our superstitions. Name something and you give it power. Discuss it enough, and the ghost becomes real.’ He took a big draft of the raki and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘So, Craig, tomorrow I take you to meet a real Dragusha and you can see for yourself.’

  Eventually the British detective was shown into a tidy little room in the eaves of the house, with a traditional carved wooden bed, blankets and freshly starched gingham sheets. He dreamt of fierce, sharp-eyed eagles circling over his body.

  Wednesday

  The next day dawned bright and cold, with a hard easterly wind. Detective Sergeant Besin Tokaj drove Gillard south to the town of Fier for a planned meeting with one of the members of the Dragusha clan. He said he had been working on this rendezvous for over a week, and it was clearly something that required considerable diplomacy. The Albanian was quiet on the drive, and seemed a little nervous. It was only in the last few minutes before their arrival that he turned to the British detective and spoke. ‘Now, Craig, I caution you, that this may not come off. In Albania you must have low expectations and then be pleasantly surprised, not the other way around. He is not obliged to turn up, and there is nothing I can do to make him.’