The Body on the Shore

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

  The shooting from upstairs was desultory now, single shot rather than full automatic. The war had descended from full-on assault to sniping. Gillard guessed that the Dragusha, for all their urban power, would be feeling the cold as well as their losses in this rural guerrilla skirmish.

  The bruiser thrust his chin at Gillard and asked: ‘Kreshniki?’ He was clearly dubious about Gillard’s pale features. The detective shook his head. The words in the next statement he didn’t understand, but from the bloodthirsty expression and withering tone it might have been along the lines of: ‘You can kill me, but you can’t win. We have numbers and we don’t give up.’

  There was another shot from upstairs and a wail, which Gillard immediately identified as Amber’s. David came down the stairs at a run, a pistol in his hand, and called to the detective. ‘Teto Zerina has been shot. ‘Do you know first aid?’

  ‘I do, but can you guard these two? I’m not sure string is quite man enough.’

  The moment David came into view, the bruiser’s eyes widened in hatred and he spat insults and threats at the little boy, rocking his chair in fury. David calmly raised his gun and blew his brains out all over the kitchen. He then shot the unconscious prisoner too. The entire room was splattered with blood.

  ‘We Kreshniki don’t take Dragusha prisoners,’ he said to Gillard by way of explanation, and led the stunned detective up to the first floor.

  Zerina was lying on the mattress with blood pouring from a leg wound, which had soaked through her skirt. She was barely conscious. Amber was stroking her face and whispering: ‘Teto Zerina, please wake up.’ There was no further sound of shooting. Zerina’s father was keeping a lookout to the front of the farmhouse from his chair, with anxious looks over his shoulder to his daughter every few seconds.

  Gillard hitched up the woman’s skirt and saw that the bullet had narrowly missed the femoral artery. But it was still bad. ‘She’s lost a lot of blood already. David, call an ambulance. Use my phone,’ he said, passing across his mobile. Gillard watched the boy’s cool and emotionless face as he rang the number and spoke calmly to the operator.

  The detective pressed down on the wound to staunch the bleeding, and mimed to her father to tear some bed sheets for a tourniquet. Eventually he got the idea, and Gillard was able to limit the loss of her blood. Once David got off the phone, he said that an ambulance from Shkoder was on its way, and the police too. ‘Have the Dragusha gone?’ Gillard asked. David and his grandfather had a brief conversation.

  ‘Yes,’ David said. ‘The two cars have gone now, but my grandfather thinks they will be back tonight.’ He looked wistfully out of the front window and said. ‘We have killed six, maybe seven. But it is not enough.’

  ‘David, it is more than enough,’ Gillard said.

  ‘I am head of the Kreshnik family now,’ David said. ‘I have to make a decision.’

  ‘Surely, your grandfather here—’

  ‘No, he married into the Kreshniki. He does not have our blood. It falls to me.’

  ‘I think you should forget about blood, young man,’ Gillard said.

  ‘I have carried out my father’s wishes, but I don’t think I want to get sent to prison here. There are Dragusha everywhere.’ His face started to lose its composure, and childish fears began to ripple through his cheeks and mouth. He was trying very hard not to cry.

  Gillard took his hand. ‘Let me take you to Britain, David. You will be put into the care system where there will be people to try to help you understand what you have done. Your sister, too, needs help to overcome the experiences she has had.’

  David nodded, and sniffed. He spoke to his grandfather for a minute. ‘We are going to cross the mountains into Montenegro. Grandpa says his tractor can tow a sledge with the rest of us on it. It will take a few hours, but now the snow has stopped it will be possible.’

  ‘I must stay with Zerina until the ambulance comes,’ Gillard said. ‘I saw some skis and poles in the barn. I will catch you up.’

  At that moment sirens could be heard in the distance, and Gillard urged David to leave. His last view, staring through the arrow slit of the kitchen, was of an ancient tractor towing a wooden door, fitted with skis. On that door, covered by a couple of huge old coats, were David and Amber Lund. David had his arm around his sister, but an automatic weapon lay on the wood between them as they chugged off into the snow, and the bitterly cold track into Montenegro.

  Chapter 34

  The military ambulance arrived first, an ancient green truck full of grizzled-looking medics well versed in dealing with gunshot wounds. They soon had Zerina Moretti in the vehicle, with a professional tourniquet and a saline drip. Besin Tokaj arrived ten minutes later, alone in his black Golf. ‘I came as soon as I got your call. The others will be here in half an hour,’ he said.

  Gillard was relieved to see his Albanian colleague, who immediately realized this was a scene of carnage. A river of blood from the three dead Dragusha in the front drive had turned the snow flamingo pink all the way to the road. The kitchen was even worse. The two cops retreated to the barn and sat side by side on a bale of straw as the sheep, scenting the blood on Gillard, retreated to the far end. Only the cooing of pigeons above broke the silence.

  ‘So you let them escape?’ Tokaj asked. ‘Over the hills to Montenegro.’

  Gillard shook his head. ‘They won’t escape. I had wanted to get them out that way hours ago, but Moretti wouldn’t hear of it. She wanted her death and glory moment, and she got it.’

  ‘What about the children?’

  The detective shook his head, struggling to convey what he had seen. ‘I have seen a child of nine execute two grown men without a second thought. I didn’t think it was possible.’

  ‘In Albania, anything is possible,’ Tokaj said.

  ‘Even Amber, at five years old, knows how to use a gun.’

  ‘Well, as the Dragusha might come for her too, it has its own crazy logic.’ Tokaj broke open a packet of cigarettes, and offered one to him, with a box of matches.

  ‘I haven’t smoked since I was a teenager,’ Gillard said, lighting up and taking a deep lungful.

  ‘Neither have I,’ Tokaj said, lighting his own. ‘But it’s either this or raki right now.’

  Gillard pushed himself to his feet and squinted out towards the road.

  ‘Everyone will want to interview you, Craig. The police from Elbasan over the missing evidence, my boss in Tirana because you might have tipped off the Dragusha when you ran off from the briefing, and not least Qendrim, the new head of the Dragusha. I’m quite confident that he would like to pull your toenails out while asking you some searching questions.’

  Gillard nodded and retrieved the old wooden skis and poles from the rafters. He inspected the leather bindings, two loops designed to cinch over normal boots.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’m blaming everything on you,’ Tokaj said. ‘It makes Leila a bit happier if they aren’t coming after me. It might rescue my career too.’

  ‘You have to do what you have to do,’ said Gillard. ‘I’d best be going if I’m going to overtake that tractor.’

  ‘I’ll tell them that you had already gone by the time I arrived,’ Tokaj said.

  ‘I’d be grateful for that.’ Gillard went back to his hire car, now a bullet-riddled wreck, and found that he could still use the fob to unlock the boot. He took the remains of his picnic and filled his brand new rucksack, which already sported a bullet hole, from the boot. He put on all his winter clothing, and took a fur hat from the hallway of the farmhouse. Finally, he laid out the long cross-country skis and did up the bindings.

  ‘So you can ski?’ Tokaj asked.

  ‘Well, a few winter holidays’ worth of lessons, so yes. But I’ve never used any skis as long as these.’

  ‘Hold on a minute.’ Tokaj finished his cigarette and dropped the end in the snow. He waded out to his car and opened the boot, and brought back something in a tennis-racket-sized package. ‘These are my unc
le’s snow shoes. In case you have to go uphill. Take them.’

  Gillard thanked him and strapped them onto the rucksack.

  The sound of gunning engines carried up the hillside, and in the distance they could just make out dark vehicles carving their way up the road.

  ‘Here come the police,’ Tokaj said. ‘Or possibly the next wave of Dragusha. Either way, I think it’s time you hit the slopes.’

  Gillard nodded and used the ski poles to lever himself uphill out of the kitchen-garden, and onto the hillside. Soon the soothing hiss of the runners and his own laboured breathing drowned out the approaching traffic, and he made his way across the meadow until he picked up the distinctive wide tracks left by the tractor and its sledge. Pulling up his hood against the cold and turning his back on the mayhem, Craig Gillard pushed hard, left then right, following the mark of tractor tyres along the old shepherds’ path north into Montenegro.

  It was an hour later, on the downhill section and when the light was already fading, that Craig Gillard saw the tractor, wheezing its way down the slopes towards Montenegro. As he caught up, he saw the dark furs on the sledge behind move, and two children, wrapped up against the cold, clamber to their knees. David had a snowball in his hand, which he threw towards him, but it fell short. The boy dusted off his gloves and smiled at Gillard as he approached. They waved to him, and he waved back. Just like you would with normal friendly, innocent children, playing happily in the snow.

  Chapter 35

  Once in Montenegro, David and Amber Lund went with Gillard to the capital, Podgorica, where they were met by consular officials, a senior social worker and two female police officers from Special Branch. They were taken back to the UK on a specially chartered flight to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. Amber played with the dolls brought over for her during the flight, while David lost himself in an Xbox. They again behaved like normal children, and were treated as such, despite everyone in their entourage being made aware of what had happened.

  At the airport, Dag and Sophie Lund were waiting anxiously with liaison officer Gabby Underwood. The parents rushed out from the barrier the moment David and Amber came into view. A sobbing Sophie scooped up both children into her arms, holding them so tight they could hardly breathe. Tears ran freely down her face, while Amber’s piercing wails of ‘Mummy, I love you’, echoed off the steel roof. The police, social workers and other officials held back, allowing the family some space to pretend that after this terrible scare, things would revert to normal.

  Of course that could never be.

  Later that afternoon both children were placed with temporary foster parents under a care order.

  * * *

  A week later, at Surrey Police headquarters in Guildford, DCI Craig Gillard and his team were wrapping up the Peter Young murder inquiry, under the watchful eye of Chief Constable Alison Rigby. The usual crew of DCs Hoskins and Hodges, DC Michelle Tsu and DI Claire Mulholland was there, along with Ciaran Rhys, an extradition specialist from the National Crime Agency, plus Gabby Underwood, the liaison officer.

  Rigby spoke first. ‘You should all by now be aware that the National Crime Agency and the Met Police have a joint operation with the Albanian police, codenamed Operation Talon, which they hope will roll up a large section of Balkan organized crime in major British cities.’ She tapped at a document in front of her, then scanned the assembled detectives with a wry smile on her face. ‘I’ll believe that when I see it,’ she added.

  ‘Now, about those children. How did the Lunds take it, Gabby?’ Rigby asked.

  ‘Not well,’ she replied. ‘I think Sophie had braced herself, at some level, for the deaths of her adopted children, but this is a different kind of bereavement. David will be taken away from her. Poor, guiltless Amber is going to lose her brother just like she lost her birth parents. They are undeniably victims, even though one is a perpetrator too.’

  ‘Death by social worker, that’s what will happen,’ Hoskins said.

  ‘What about the aunt?’ Hodges asked. ‘She seems like the real villain.’

  Rhys spoke up. ‘Zerina Moretti is in the women’s section of the prison hospital in Tirana. My information is that she is making a good recovery from her gunshot wound, and will be transferred to the women’s remand wing in Tirana, where she will be kept under special protection until the trial over there begins. Our extradition will have to wait until she has served her sentence there.’

  ‘As the last adult member of the Kreshnik family, her chances of surviving long enough to be extradited are pretty slim,’ Gillard said. ‘The Dragusha have no shortage of allies in prison.’

  ‘Among both prisoners and staff,’ added Rhys.

  ‘Peter Young’s widow is taking no chances,’ Mulholland said. ‘She’s moving back to Peru with the kids. Somewhere even the Dragusha can’t reach them.’

  Gillard gave a wry smile. ‘Maybe I should consider that too.’

  Epilogue

  Next day Alison Rigby convened a further meeting at Surrey Police headquarters to consider what to do about David Lund. They were using the largest of Mount Browne’s meeting rooms to allow for the presence of senior lawyers from the CPS, a contingent of social workers, child protection specialists and two senior brass from the National Crime Agency. Gillard was almost surprised that he was thought qualified to be there himself. None of the others on his team had been invited.

  ‘Craig, perhaps you could begin by filling us in on what you witnessed,’ Rigby said.

  Gillard described the siege in the Accursed Mountains, including the killing of the prisoners, and projected from his laptop the footage he’d been given by the Albanian police which showed David Lund’s involvement in the killing of Nikolai Dragusha. When he finished, he looked around the room at the many shocked faces. ‘So, in total, this child has committed four murders, albeit only one on UK soil. It’s unprecedented in British criminal history for a boy his age.’

  The Crown Prosecution Service came next. Its senior lawyer Hugh Gilchrist looked and sounded like a high court judge, and had a weighty pile of documents in front of him. ‘I have here the report from the consultant paediatrician at Great Ormond Street Hospital. David Lund has not, in the opinion of Mr Medhurst, reached the age of criminal responsibility. There is no evidence of puberty, and his height, weight and general development are consistent with an age of nine years and four months, which matches that given by his aunt, and is exactly a year older than that recorded on the presumably forged birth certificate. Under the circumstances, we are not minded to contest these findings, in spite of some public interest consideration in favour of prosecution for such a high-profile homicide.’

  Surrey’s senior social worker, Barbara Harrington, concurred. ‘The child protection considerations dovetail with that conclusion. The welfare of David Lund is best served by taking him into care, as he is clearly beyond the care and control of his adoptive family.’

  ‘There will, no doubt, be howls of outrage in the media,’ Rigby observed. ‘That a young murderer is not being seen to be punished.’

  ‘We should then steer them towards the extradition of the real culprit, Mrs Moretti,’ Gilchrist responded.

  ‘David is a victim, quite simply,’ Harrington said. ‘Our multi-agency strategy meeting showed that conclusively. I would point out, however, that Mr and Mrs Lund yesterday launched a High Court judicial review to overturn our care order.’

  She reached for a laptop projector in front of her. ‘This is an edited version of an interview with David Lund and his sister.’ She set the video running. It showed the two children in a comfortable lounge, full of toys, playing on the floor with two young women in casual clothing. ‘This is the specialist interview suite for child crime victims,’ Harrington said. ‘The two women are senior family specialists Penny Jones and Harriet Skipworth, whom I believe a number of you know.’

  The two women asked both children a number of questions while playing with them: Is it important to tell the truth? Is it
wrong to hurt people? Do you feel safe now? Does anything make you worry? The answers were as expected: The truth is important, you can hurt people only to stop them hurting you. They both felt safer. Amber looked up and said: ‘I’m scared of the night. Because that is when the shtriga comes.’

  Neither interviewer knew what it was, and Gillard interrupted to explain it was an Albanian vampire.

  David at one point asked if he was going to go to prison. Ms Skipworth replied: ‘You might be sent to a special place where they can help you. But it’s not a prison. They don’t send children to prison.’

  ‘So I could leave when I want?’

  There was a pause. ‘No, not until you are judged safe.’

  ‘So it’s a prison.’

  ‘Not really. Your mummy and daddy could come and visit you, and sometimes you may be allowed to spend time at home.’

  He nodded. ‘Okay.’

  Ms Jones was playing with Amber. She was holding the Lost-Kitty, and hiding it behind a cushion, until Amber squealed with dismay. ‘Don’t hide her, that’s cruel.’

  She apologized and gave the toy back. Amber cuddled the kitten and stroked its nylon fur. ‘This was a present from my mummy.’

  ‘Really?’ said the social worker. ‘That’s nice of her.’

  ‘Yes. My mummy in heaven.’

  ‘Oh.’ The woman shared a pouted ‘so sweet’ gesture with her colleague, who smiled back.

  ‘An angel brought it down from heaven for me.’ The child kissed the kitten on its furry nose. ‘But the angel died.’