Lone Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  Even if it meant sitting next to Lucia Grossi on a crowded aeroplane, and facing up to Desmond Harris and his bosses at New Scotland Yard.

  He hadn’t said a word about the man with the tattoo.

  Lori would have told him he was looking for trouble. Wasn’t one gunshot wound enough of a lesson? He had almost bled to death twelve months before. The ’Ndrangheta had tried to kill him a second time just six months later. Why give them another excuse?

  He hadn’t mentioned the man with the tattoo to Lucia Grossi, either.

  He wasn’t going to tell her a thing until he was sure of it, though he still had no idea how to go about sounding out the British police on the subject.

  The British police …

  Now, that was a very sore subject.

  ‘What did they say when you told them we were coming?’ he had asked her on the plane.

  She hadn’t told them. ‘Why should I?’ she said. ‘Harris barged in on me, asking for help. Now it’s my turn. I mean to take the place by storm.’

  Outside the windows, white clouds appeared.

  A minute later, the plane began to shudder and bump.

  The pilot’s voice came over the intercom, asking passengers to return to their seats and fasten their seat belts.

  ‘There’s heavy turbulence over Paris,’ he announced.

  The turbulence turned out to be heavier in London when Grossi phoned Harris.

  He only heard one side of the conversation, but he got the gist of it.

  Lucia Grossi’s face was more eloquent than a thousand words. She had come to a dead stop in the middle of the Nothing to Declare lane, passengers bumping into one another as they tried to steer their trolleys and suitcases around her.

  ‘Oh, no car? Well, then … yes … yes, in that case.’

  He watched her face, saw the changes. Like a summer day when a squall swept through the mountains. Sun, then shadows, dark clouds gathering, then the tempest breaking. She snapped her phone shut. ‘A fucking pub? That’s where we’re going to meet our Mr Harris. And how the hell are we supposed to get there?’

  They got to Victoria station by express coach, then took a taxi. ‘Like plebs,’ Lucia Grossi snarled, cursing all the way. He reckoned it was down to her military training in the carabinieri. Her vocabulary of insults outdid even Loredana’s.

  The Feathers was full of coppers, detectives by the look of them. The other customers might have been snitches or bank clerks. It wasn’t easy to tell the difference. Dark suits, bright ties, scuffed shoes. The uniform of the working white-collar classes.

  Grossi was seething, mashing the peas on her plate.

  ‘We can’t get in without a pass, he says. After all I’ve done for them!’

  She turned to Cangio and stuck out her chin. ‘Is this Brexit kicking in? If this is the future, the British cops are going to have a shit-hard time of it, I can tell you, Seb!’

  Ten minutes later, the pub door swung open, and Desmond Harris walked in.

  He smiled and raised his hand, as he approached the table.

  ‘Excuse the gear,’ he said. ‘I came by bike.’

  He was wearing one of those duck-tailed plastic helmets that racing cyclists favour. The helmet was red, white, and blue with a black leather chin-strap, his trousers jodhpurised by a pair of metal bicycle clips.

  He looked more like a postman than a police inspector.

  Cangio saw the disillusion on Grossi’s face. Had she been expecting a Rolls Royce or the Coronation coach?

  ‘I had to be somewhere,’ Harris said, though he didn’t say where, or why. ‘The traffic was a nightmare coming back. So, then … well, yes, welcome to England! Er, did you … have a good flight?’

  He glanced at the batter, chips, and peas on Lucia’s Grossi’s plate.

  ‘Good choice,’ he said. ‘It’s the best thing on the menu.’

  Cangio looked away to avoid laughing. The expression on Grossi’s face was plain enough to a fellow Italian. Is this guy nuts, or is he just pretending?

  ‘I have an omelette usually,’ Harris was saying. ‘Otherwise my ulcer kicks in.’

  Lucia Grossi stared at Cangio with an air of desperation, seeking help.

  Cangio picked up a table-mat and studied a picture of a partridge.

  Her patience snapped. ‘We didn’t come to London for the food, Desmond. We’ve got important information which will definitely be of interest to Scotland Yard.’

  Harris smiled, clenched his fist, then gave a thumbs-up.

  ‘Sounds good,’ he said. ‘Now, just let me order some nosh, then I’ll tell you how things … er, stand. Can I get you anything?’

  Lucia Grossi shook her head.

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ Cangio said.

  Harris stood at the bar, chatting companionably with a pretty young barmaid who evidently knew him, while she tapped his order into a touchpad, then pulled him a pint of a beer the colour of mud.

  ‘Is this some sort of delaying tactic?’ Grossi murmured in Italian.

  ‘It’s a technique they used at the estate agent’s when I was working in Islington. Play it cool, act as if you don’t care whether the client buys the place or not. It’s a test of strength, a bit like arm wrestling.’

  Lucia Grossi nodded, never taking her eyes off Harris. ‘Did the technique work?’

  ‘In my experience, if they wanted the place, they bought it. If not, they didn’t.’

  ‘Let’s see if we can break through his defences, then.’

  Harris sat down, then tasted his beer. ‘Ah, just what the doctor ordered! Look,’ he said in the next breath, ‘I hope you don’t think I’m being ungrateful, dragging you off to the pub like this? It’s the Yard that’s the problem. It isn’t easy to get in there these days, what with terrorist bomb scares, and so on. Of course, some folk have more trouble getting out!’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘I doubt you’ll be able to discuss the case with anyone today …’

  Lucia Grossi let out a yelp. ‘When you turned up in Perugia, the case, as you choose to call it, was thoroughly investigated. We gave you all the help we possibly could.’

  Harris sank his nose into his pint, then nodded.

  ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘I … and my superiors, of course, we are very grateful. There will be an official letter of thanks in the pipeline, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He shifted in his seat, then looked at her finally. ‘We had a meeting the other day, Lucia … As the murder took place on English soil, the powers-that-be – the bosses, in other words – they decided … well, they thought that …’

  ‘Number 34,’ a voice boomed out of a loudspeaker.

  ‘That’s me.’

  Harris leapt from his seat like a whippet from a trap and made his way to the bar.

  ‘A letter of thanks?’ Her face was bright red. ‘They know where they can stick it.’

  Harris came back a minute later with an omelette, salad, and a bread roll.

  ‘As I was saying,’ he started, spearing a piece of omelette, popping it into his mouth, munching through the words that came out, ‘they’ve … mm … decided to restrict … mm … the enquiry to the English part of the case.’ He swallowed hard. ‘The man who was killed near Stansted Airport. That’s our priorit—’

  ‘Don’t give me that shit!’ Grossi said sharply, bringing her hand down hard on the tabletop, turning heads as people looked to see what the commotion was about.

  Harris stared open-mouthed at her.

  ‘There were two men in Italy, Desmond. Two English men, remember? One of them was killed near Stansted. But I have evidence in this file that the second man, Unknown Two, was murdered in Umbria,’ she said, patting the document case. ‘That is why we came to London. Not to eat fish and chips and drink warm beer. I demand your full cooperation. We want to know everything that you know. And we want to know it today!’ She narrowed her eyes and stared him down. ‘If not, I promise you, I will knock your so-called “case” out of court!’

  Cangio mentally ap
plauded her.

  Harris took a swig of beer, then stood up.

  ‘I need to have a private word with the boss,’ he said, as he ran for the door.

  ‘Let’s see what happens now,’ Lucia Grossi said.

  They watched Desmond Harris through the picture window, walking up and down the pavement, eyes on the ground, one ear clamped to his mobile phone. Then, suddenly, the phone snapped shut, he wiggled his finger at them, and he pointed up the busy road in the direction of New Scotland Yard.

  ‘I think I see a white flag waving,’ she said triumphantly.

  NINETEEN

  New Scotland Yard

  Desmond Harris broke his tight-lipped silence as they passed beneath the revolving triangle and he took them through the security check.

  ‘The building won’t be ours much longer,’ he said. ‘This may be your last chance to see inside. An investment company from Abu Dhabi got their hands on it. They’re planning to turn it into a five-star luxury hotel, I believe.’

  ‘Where will you be going?’ Cangio asked him.

  ‘A smaller place on the Victoria Embankment. They’ll probably call it New New Scotland Yard. There are staff cuts on the cards, too, apparently.’

  Was Harris up for the chop?

  Would Brexit downsizing start with him?

  The aluminium doors slid open, and they took the lift.

  Detective Chief Inspector Jardine’s office was on the seventh floor.

  Not so much an office, Cangio decided at a glance, more a place to dump things.

  There was a battered old desk with a black Formica top, a computer long past its sell-by date, a narrow slice of the Thames just visible beyond an unwashed window that looked out on the other modern multi-storey buildings crowding close.

  The man behind the desk glanced up at Harris. ‘These are the Italians, I take it?’

  The Italians … As if they were a gang of criminals planning to steal the family silver.

  He didn’t stand up, just waved his hand to a single chair in front of his desk.

  Lucia Grossi sat down, Cangio and Harris standing behind her like prison guards.

  ‘Mr Jardine, I take it?’ she said tartly.

  Cangio coughed to avoid chortling.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector,’ Jardine specified. ‘Inspector Harris tells me you’ve got something that might help us.’

  It didn’t sound like a question, and Cangio saw Lucia Grossi’s reaction. Her head came up sharply, she stretched her back and seemed to grow in height. ‘It would be more correct to say that we could help each other.’

  Jardine slouched forward, clasping his hands in front of him on the desk. A tall man in a silver-grey suit, he appeared to be in his mid-fifties. He had the look of a fifties bit-player, too, black hair going grey at the edges, swept back over his ears, and a Presley-type quiff plopping down on a wide, unfurrowed forehead.

  He pursed his lips, and a frown appeared. ‘We are grateful for your …’

  Lucia Grossi stood up and stretched her hand across the desk, waiting for him to shake it.

  ‘I am Captain Lucia Grossi, carabiniere, head of the Special Crimes Squad in Umbria,’ she told him. ‘And this is my colleague, Ranger Sebastiano Cangio.’

  Cangio nodded, but stayed well back.

  This was Grossi’s show, and he was curious to see how she would play it.

  Detective Chief Inspector Jardine sat back in his chair, though he didn’t look comfortable. ‘As I was saying, we are grateful for your input in Italy, Captain Grossi. Desmond speaks most highly of the assistance he received there. We have managed to identify the man who was murdered at Stansted Airport, as he may have told you. Now we are looking for whoever killed him. An investigation is under way which should tie the case up once and for all.’

  ‘You have half a case, Detective Chief Inspector,’ Lucia Grossi said, ‘but the other half … well, I have that.’

  ‘Young lady …’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ she warned him. ‘I may have the answer to a murder that you are still investigating. And you know things which could be useful to me. We need to understand each other, and work together, Detective Chief Inspector. It is in the best interests of both our countries, it goes without saying.’

  While she was speaking, she had taken a thin pink folder from her leather document case.

  She laid it carefully on the surface of the desk in front of her, then spread her hand flat on top of the folder as DCI Jardine began to reach across to pick it up.

  ‘This is what I have got,’ she said. ‘You can make a formal request to see the contents, of course. We call such a request a rogatoria internazionale. It may take weeks, even months, to be approved. Diplomats and ministers may be involved. Sometimes, a rogatoria request gets lost in the process. And Brexit may put the blocks on the free exchange of information between our police forces, as I am sure you are aware. However, I did take the precaution of making a paper copy of everything concerning my case before leaving Italy …’

  ‘And in return?’ Jardine had evidently drawn his own conclusions about Lucia Grossi.

  ‘I want to know whatever you have got on the man who died near Stansted Airport.’

  DCI Jardine let out a sigh, then rubbed his nose with his fist. ‘There are two ways of doing this, Captain Grossi. I can go upstairs to my bosses, and tell them what’s up. I may be there a very long time, and they mightn’t like the idea.’

  ‘British bureaucracy?’ Grossi asked him with barely concealed sarcasm.

  Jardine made no comment. ‘Or …’ He looked at Desmond Harris. ‘Des and I can pop downstairs to the canteen for a cup of tea, and I’ll forget to switch off my computer.’

  Lucia Grossi relaxed in her seat.

  ‘A cup of tea sounds like an excellent idea,’ she said, ‘especially if the correct case happens to be up on the computer screen.’

  ‘The correct case and all the related folders. That cuppa might take a little bit longer if we add a packet of crisps and take a look inside that nice pink file of yours.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lucia Grossi said, raising her hand from the file in question. ‘There’s one condition, though.’

  Jardine stared at her.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You’ll need to drink tea on your own, Chief Inspector. I want Inspector Harris here in case I can’t find something, or something needs explaining to me.’

  Cangio had to admire her pluck, dictating the law to a senior Scotland Yard police officer.

  Jardine took a moment to think about it, then he stood up, a head taller than anyone else in the small room. ‘I’ll be off, then,’ he said, sweeping up the file as he squeezed out from behind his desk. ‘If anyone comes looking for me,’ he said to Harris, ‘you can tell them where to find me, OK?’

  Carabinieri 1 – New Scotland Yard 0, thought Cangio.

  As the door closed, Lucia Grossi swung the computer around to face her.

  Harris grabbed his boss’s chair. ‘I can find you a stool,’ he said to Cangio.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Cangio said, ‘I can see well enough from here.’

  ‘OK, Desmond. Take me through what you’ve got from A to Z,’ Lucia Grossi said.

  A to Z proved to be little more than they already knew. Kit Andrews, the man who had used a false passport as he entered Italy, then left it again, going home to be murdered, had been identified as Vincent J. Cormack.

  ‘J stands for?’

  ‘James. Born in Belfast thirty-eight years ago. We were able to identify him easily enough with NeoFace, our facial recognition database, using that photograph from the restaurant. This is his crime sheet,’ Harris said, opening up an Excel spreadsheet. ‘It’s long, but it doesn’t amount to much. Petty theft, a bit of dealing, then housebreaking – he got three years for that. He kept his nose clean afterwards, except for …’

  He clicked on a passport image at the top of the document, filling the screen with the face and the profile of
the man who had been enjoying truffles and trout in Valnerina the night before he was killed near Stansted.

  Vincent Cormack had a long, narrow face – horsy, Cangio thought – greasy, slicked-back hair, a large nose, and large ears. Cangio read the description beneath the photo: height and weight, no birthmarks, scars, or tattoos.

  Harris clicked on another document.

  ‘This is his most recent file,’ he said. ‘He was arrested on suspicion last year of going armed with intent to rob. Unfortunately, nothing came of it. There was a whisper … a bank job, where and when it was going to happen, and who was likely to be involved. Vince Cormack was one of the gang. He was picked up near the bank as predicted, but he wasn’t armed, and there was nothing incriminating in his vehicle. Probably an armourer was bringing the guns.’

  ‘So he got away with it?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Harris said. ‘If he’d been in jail doing seven to ten years, he wouldn’t have gone to Italy, and he wouldn’t have got shot when he came back.’

  ‘What was he doing in Italy?’ Cangio asked. ‘Have you any idea?’

  What would a low-key criminal like Vince Cormack have to do with the ’Ndrangheta? That was what he was asking. For a start, Cormack wasn’t Italian. He hadn’t grown up in the shadow of a boss who told him who to kill, and rewarded him for each new notch on his gun.

  Harris turned and looked at him. ‘He was eating truffles, remember?’

  Cangio smiled back at him. ‘He wasn’t only eating truffles, was he, Desmond?’

  ‘We haven’t gone too deeply into what he was doing there, to be honest. As I told you, we’ve been more concerned to find out what happened to him when he came back.’

  ‘Somebody killed him,’ Lucia Grossi said. ‘But was he killed as a result of what he’d been doing in Italy? That’s the question that we need to ask.’

  ‘Something in that file of yours?’ Harris asked her.

  Lucia Grossi turned to face him. ‘We think the man who was with Cormack in Nora’s photo may be dead as well, Desmond. That’s what we are working on. The problem is, he doesn’t show up on any Italian database. We presume that he was English, too. We’d like you to run what we have got through your computers.’