The Body on the Shore

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

  It gradually began to dawn on him that his Albanian colleagues were not particularly concerned with the murder of Nikolai Dragusha as a crime: it was simply an opportunity to achieve a knockout blow against a long-time enemy. It was, he gradually realized, seeing the posturing and boasting of senior police officers in front of their colleagues, a feud. And it was just as intense as those between crime families, and would probably be conducted in the same way: with blood, bullets and plenty of machismo.

  That realization, and the inordinate length of the meeting, led Gillard to make a decision that he had been mulling for some hours. He was going to hire his own car, and go to the Accursed Mountains on his own.

  * * *

  An hour later, having sneaked out of the meeting, Detective Chief Inspector Craig Gillard had hired himself a four-wheel-drive Chrysler Jeep, in the requisite black of course, and had bought himself a complete set of Albanian-style winter clothing plus underwear, to replace the suitcase full of dirty washing he had left behind at Tokaj’s brother’s farm. Knowing that he would be hunted almost as doggedly as Teto Zerina and the children, he bought himself a new phone too. It wouldn’t surprise him if Dragusha spies within the Tirana police were trying to track him. He still had with him Geoff Meadows’s phone and the satnav from the hire car. He’d even splashed out on a pair of high-powered binoculars.

  A delightful woman at a Tirana deli had made him an enormous multi-day picnic, full of pickled meat and fish; tough, dark mountain bread that would not go stale for days; and a variety of goat’s cheeses. These, he was told, varied from the mild and creamy through to a particularly savage-sounding one from the Accursed Mountains which had been fermented for a year and rolled in boiled nettle leaves.

  It was almost 3 p.m. when, under a crystalline-blue winter sky, the detective drove north out of the capital on the busy main coastal road north to Shkoder. A call from Tokaj came through an hour later while he was parked to refuel. ‘Where did you go?’ the Albanian asked. ‘If you had waited another half an hour we would have been able to show you the first coordinated raids against the Dragusha’s headquarters and businesses.’

  ‘How’s it going?’ Gillard replied.

  ‘Well, there have been 175 arrests. No shootouts, and the drugs and weapons seized will take months to catalogue. The one significant guy we are missing is Qendrim.’

  ‘That’s the guy who took us to Peter Young’s funeral.’

  ‘Exactly. The Dragusha’s finance specialist. We really need to catch him, as he may end up the new leader.’ The Albanian cleared his throat. ‘So where exactly are you, Craig? I take it you’re chasing up the Moretti woman.’

  ‘Yes, that’s part of what I came here to do. I’ve really got to bring her and the two children safely back to Britain. Both murders now look to be solved.’ Gillard enquired about Leila and whether she felt safer now they were at Tokaj’s uncle’s farm.

  ‘She is certainly happier, thank you. Hopefully this will only be a temporary measure and we can return to our home soon.’

  The two policemen wished each other luck and ended the call. Gillard then tried to put himself in the shoes of Zerina Moretti. How confident could she be that the Dragusha had not got the details of her location? She probably did not know her sister had been murdered, and might, for now, feel safe in her ancestral lands. But what if she did know? Would she stay in the mountains or flee? And if so, where? He considered how much this middle-aged woman had achieved in her extended family’s generation-long fight against the Dragusha. The two murders, superbly planned and clinically executed, would make any hit man proud. But he wondered whether she had even stopped to consider what would happen to David if he could ever be brought back to Britain. Put into care for a decade, surrounded by social workers and psychologists into adulthood and, once given a new identity, hunted for the rest of his life by the media who would inevitably find out who he was. For Dag and Sophie Lund, the dreams of a new family would be shattered, and who knows what effect all this would have upon little Amber.

  That evening Gillard checked in at a roadside restaurant and B & B at Koplik, a sprawling agricultural village ten miles north of Shkoder. As everywhere in Albania, he was greeted warmly, and offered excellent food at extremely reasonable prices. The proprietor, a big man with grizzled grey hair, offered him free raki and a glass of the pungent local wine on the house. The detective bowed out at 11 before a serious drinking session got going, and stepped out into the moonlit but freezing-cold garden to make a call to his wife.

  Sam picked up on the first ring, and it warmed Gillard to hear her voice. ‘So everything is going okay?’ he asked, not wanting to mention again his worries about the long arm of the Dragusha.

  ‘Yes, basically fine,’ she said.

  ‘Basically?’ He knew her well enough to know she was hiding something.

  ‘Well, there was some eagle graffiti sprayed on Mum and Dad’s garage in Keswick, and on our front door,’ she said. ‘And someone put this funny little doll thing on the shed door handle.’

  ‘Our shed?’

  ‘Yes, they also tried to force the back door. And I was followed to the gym by two guys in a black BMW.’

  ‘Oh Christ. Did you let Claire Mulholland know?’

  ‘Yes. I did what you suggested and went up to Purley. Claire got the car registration from the traffic camera thing, but it seems the car was stolen.’

  ‘Not surprising, I suppose,’ Craig said. He paused. ‘I do worry about you, Sam. Are you following all the procedures?’

  Sam listed everything she was doing and then added, ‘Kelly from Caterham is driving past the house twice a day.’

  ‘Glad to hear your old uniform colleagues are looking after you.’

  ‘The kickboxing instructor was impressed with me too. He said my side kick would take the head off a gorilla.’

  Craig allowed himself a laugh. ‘Well, the good news is that the organized crime gang behind this is pretty much, as we speak, being raided by the Albanian police. The head of the clan died recently, and his right-hand man was assassinated at the funeral in front of about 1,500 goons and assorted hangers-on. It won’t be the end of organized crime in Albania, not by a long chalk, but what’s left of the Dragusha family should have plenty to worry about locally.’ Even as he said it he wasn’t completely convinced that a family famous for its feuding would ever forget a slight.

  * * *

  First thing next morning Gillard grabbed a quick but strong coffee for breakfast, and was out of the door before eight. The owner of the B & B had confirmed that the road to Xhaj was kept open throughout the winter months by the military who had bases further up in the mountains. He indicated that if the weather was good he should be able to get there in 90 minutes, but with this much snow, who knew.

  Gillard set off under brilliant blue skies with barely a cloud to be seen. In the village every home, every parked car, every fence or wall was cloaked under a glittering mantle of snow. Children were throwing snowballs in the street, and thin wisps of woodsmoke curled lazily above white-capped roofs and slid into the car through the air vents. As he hit the mountain road, the scenery soon became spectacular. Peaks soared like rocky knuckles, too steep to hold the snow, while the shoulders and saddles between were softened by snow-girt coniferous forest. The road was clear and well gritted for the first 40 miles. There was very little traffic: just one or two empty timber trucks, an ancient army lorry and a few pick-ups.

  Soon the weather started clouding up again, and a sharp wind began blasting powdered snow into the road. After another five miles, drifts were spreading like giant fingers across the carriageway, and small hard grains began to pepper the windscreen. Turning on the lights Gillard gunned the big vehicle over and through the spreading snow. The temperature gauge showed −2° C and a road sign marked a village at 1,000 metres altitude. The road from here on was marked by tall, red-topped, reflective poles to guide the snowploughs. Just as Gillard was beginning to believe that the road may
become impassable, an old Soviet-style army truck with huge yellow headlamps came barrelling down towards him with a plough on the front. The car was half buried by what it threw up, but after he got out to clear the windscreen he was able to follow the narrow cleared channel uphill. It was only a few minutes later when he saw the sign: Xhaj.

  There was nothing there but a few scattered stone-built farmhouses cloaked in deep drifts of snow, rustic fencing and drystone walls. Smoke rose from the chimneys of only three farmsteads of the dozen there. The first, on the left, had a long drive which clearly no vehicle had passed since the last heavy snow. It had a substantial barn whose open door was blocked by bales of straw. He drove past to the next where there had been many footprints and some tyre marks, now mostly filled in by fresh snow. There was clearly habitation here. He turned the Jeep up a steep and winding track until he came to a courtyard in which was parked a pick-up truck, vapour steaming off the bonnet. As he emerged from the vehicle, a large brindled dog with wolfish eyes came tearing out of the barn, barking furiously. The animal had its hackles raised, ready to bite, and Gillard was backed against the wing of the Jeep. An elderly woman, a big woollen scarf around her head and shoulders, emerged from the farmhouse and called the dog away. The detective felt annoyed that this mongrel should, at the sound of her voice, become a tail-wagging, friendly creature. It licked her hand as she rubbed its ears.

  Gillard had considered all sorts of ways of trying to find Zerina Moretti, but had settled on the simplest one, which was to show on his phone a photograph of her and the two children to anyone he came across. When he did so here, a smile immediately lit up the woman’s wizened features and she pointed back to the first farm which Gillard had passed. She then said a lot of things which he didn’t understand, so he merely used his rote-learned Albanian thank you, and returned to the vehicle. It took only two minutes to drive down to the main road, retrace his route a hundred yards and then turn right again up the long snow-choked driveway to the first farm.

  The detective eased the vehicle through the foot-deep snow, parking outside a two-storey building hewn of giant stones interspersed with ancient timbers. It had tiny windows and a roof tiled with rough-cut paving stone-sized slabs. A dog barked in the distance, but there was no other sound. Gillard waded through the drifts up to a pair of rough and sagging wooden doors, from which any paint had long ago peeled. The thick doors were chained and padlocked. There was no sign of any footprints apart from his own. Peeking into the gap between them, he saw a dark, wooden-vaulted undercroft, hung with ancient tools and containing a rusted baler. He knocked on the doors and on a small window next to them. No light was visible from within. He plodded around the left side of the building, the snow here overtopping his boots, and entered the barn by a side door. Dozens of murmuring sheep were crowded within, and eyed him nervously. A feeding trough still had pellets in it, and there was fresh hay on the stone floor.

  Someone was clearly looking after these animals.

  He edged his way through the ancient barn, looking up into the darkened timbers of the roof, where cooing pigeons gathered and shuffled on the rafters. A rear door, more modern than those at the front of the farm, gave a view over a small snow-covered kitchen garden and a rear extension of the farmhouse. He opened the door and immediately found himself facing both barrels of a shotgun.

  The gun was being aimed by a ruddy, middle-aged man wearing a sheepskin coat and hat that looked like it had just been cut just that morning. The man bellowed something at Gillard, his breath pluming into the sky. Gillard slowly raised his arms into the air and said: ‘I’m looking for Zerina Moretti.’

  In the next yell of interrogation, Gillard could pick out one now familiar word: ‘Dragusha?’ followed by the sound of a firing mechanism being cocked.

  The detective shook his head, and then heard above a higher-pitched voice. A child. The farmer lowered his gun and looked up over Gillard’s right shoulder. Turning to follow his gaze, he saw a rifle pointing from a high window in the back of the building. A boy’s head poked out. ‘Hello, David,’ he said. ‘I think you may have just saved my life.’

  * * *

  A few minutes later Craig Gillard was sitting in a comfortable chair in front of the fire holding a hot mug of some mysterious mountain tea. Opposite him was Teto Zerina dressed in russet woollens and stout boots. Amber Lund sat on her aunt’s lap sucking a biscuit and staring at this mysterious but familiar policeman who had just emerged from the snow. David Lund stood wearing a rough leather coat and a matching sheepskin-lined cap. The eight-year-old’s face looked serious, almost manly, though Gillard wasn’t sure whether that was just the result of him projecting upon the child the adult acts that he knew he had committed. In the kitchen beyond, the farmer, who was introduced as Zerina’s father, busied himself with the clatter and bang of crockery and pans.

  ‘How did you find us?’ Zerina asked.

  ‘Your sister was a little indiscreet,’ Gillard responded.

  ‘Ach, I’d warned her. But she is such a big mouth.’ She looked worried. ‘I thought no one could find us here. I still worry about the Dragusha.’ She eyed the children, and stroked Amber’s hair.

  ‘The Drash people are bad,’ Amber said, chewing her biscuit thoughtfully.

  ‘Dragusha,’ her aunt corrected. ‘They’re not people, they are devils.’

  Gillard looked at his watch. ‘David, your parents are missing you and Amber very much. I think more than anything in the world your mother would love to talk to you both.’

  ‘She will hate me for what I have done.’ He folded his arms and met Gillard’s gaze. His brown eyes were narrowed and shadowed by suspicion, innocence eroded.

  ‘No, I think she will be upset, very much so. But I think her love for you will remain.’

  Teto Zerina turned to David and said something in Albanian which sounded placatory and affectionate. She ruffled the boy’s hair just as if she had encouraged him to do nothing more serious than pinching a pencil from school. Gillard had plans to deal with her later, but first he wanted to speak to Sophie. He got out his new phone.

  ‘Be careful with the phone,’ Zerina said. ‘You can be traced. I’m keeping mine off.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Gillard responded. ‘This is a new phone nobody knows is mine.’ He tapped out the number for Colsham Manor. After a few rings, he heard Sophie’s voice. ‘Mrs Lund, it’s Detective Chief Inspector Gillard, calling from Albania. I have some very good news.’ He called David over and gave him the phone, and before the boy had started to speak he could hear the sobs of relief from the other end.

  Chapter 32

  While David and Amber spoke to their adoptive mother, Gillard asked to speak to Zerina in private. She led him into a formal dining room and closed the door. ‘You cannot arrest me, or take them,’ she said. ‘You have no power in this country.’

  Gillard smiled. ‘That’s not quite true. The European Arrest Warrant we have for you does not work here, but we are getting considerable cooperation from the Albanian police. Eventually, as you well understand, the Dragusha will kill you and the children if you stay here. But of course the moment you leave this country, we will be able to extradite you back to Britain for the murder of Peter Young. You will go to prison, but you will live.’

  ‘No, this is my family and we will not surrender our honour to the Dragusha.’

  Gillard shook his head at her obstinacy. ‘When the weather improves, I can drive you over the border north to Montenegro. It is your family duty to save these children from a terrible fate.’

  Zerina laughed. ‘You don’t have the first clue what our family has endured. Armend Kreshnik, the real father of David and Amber, was a peaceful man, a farmer. He didn’t know that his older brother had begun this financial pyramid scheme. It appalled him. He did not know that the wife of the Butcher of Fier had lost so much Dragusha money through her own greed. But blood is blood. The Dragusha began a feud with the Kreshniki and we had to respond. It is the way.�
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  ‘But to involve a child of eight…’

  ‘David is actually nine, almost ten. It was easier to get him adopted with a year deducted from his actual age on the papers. He was always small, but he is a giant in his heart, and in his veins flows the blood of princes. When his father was dying in the hospital with five bullets in him, he sent word that he wanted to speak to his eldest son. But Jetmire would not come. This was a time of anguish for his father.’ She shook her head. ‘Jetmire stayed in London and would not be part of the feud, even though his sister had been raped and killed, even though his mother had been violated and murdered, even though our family had been humiliated by this attack. He turned his back on our family.’

  ‘Someone has to stop the cycle of violence,’ Gillard said. ‘Someone has to forgive.’

  ‘He didn’t forgive, he was simply a coward. He was afraid. Those kind have no steel in their heart,’ she said, fluttering her heavily ringed fingers dismissively. ‘Jetmire’s craven spinelessness did not save his life. The Dragusha needed revenge, and they had probably already tracked down where he lived long ago should killing him become a necessity. He was no loss to our family.’

  ‘If you had not forced David to kill Peter Young, the Dragusha may not have retaliated against Jetmire.’

  She laughed dismissively. ‘Can you really imagine the Angel of Death deciding he had killed enough of our family? No, it’s us or them. That is the way it has always been. That is the way it will always be.’

  ‘That boy should be at school, he should be spending time with friends his own age, having a childhood, not being dragged into this pointless round of tit-for-tat killings.’

  ‘It was not me but the Dragusha who stole his childhood from him.’ The woman glowered at Gillard. ‘I did not force David to kill. When Jetmire did not return home to see his dying father, Armend called for David. Armend was by then very weak, but he was still determined to save the family honour. I brought the child into his hospital room, and he cried when he saw how diminished his father was. “Do not cry for me,” Armend said. “My time is past and yours is just beginning. You are young, but you are the head of our family, you inherit our honour. Lay your hand on my heart, and feel its faltering beat.” David did so. “Now place your right hand over your own heart. Feel the life, feel the courage. Now swear to me on your life and on the soul of your dead mother and sister that you will take vengeance against the killers of our family and preserve our honour.” The child swore that he would do so and I was so impressed at the man he had just become.’