by Gulvin, Jeff
Harrison looked coldly at Swann. ‘He ain’t from round here, girlfriend. He don’t get to talk.’
Webb sat in on the interview with Janice Martin. She was seated across from Christine Harris, smoking cigarettes, very pretty, except for bitten-down fingernails.
‘Third time, Janice. I think it’s bye-bye this time.’ Harris studied the nervous lines in her face. ‘We might charge you with intent to supply. There was a lot of crack in that flat.’
‘His not mine.’
‘There were two of you there.’
Janice rolled her eyes to the ceiling, but Webb saw the fear in the pupils. He could always detect the fear, sometimes he could smell it, even in the toughest. ‘You’ll do five years at least,’ he said.
She looked at him for the first time and gnawed at the edge of her little finger.
‘Tell us about The Regiment, Janice,’ Webb went on. ‘Tell us about David “Dog Soldier” Collier.’
Her face paled, eyes watery all at once, as if suddenly afflicted by the pain of some bad memory. Webb leaned his elbows on the table and thrust his chin at her. ‘What d’you know about the morning of February 5th?’
‘February 5th?’ She screwed up her eyes. ‘Nothing. What’s so special about February 5th?’
‘It’s the day that the terrorist known as Storm Crow escaped from the convoy taking him to trial. It’s the day that twenty-two innocent people, including sixteen police officers, were shot or burned to death. It was all over the news, Janice. You must have seen it.’
‘I did see it,’ she said, her accent beginning to show through. ‘I just wasn’t aware it happened on February 5th.’
‘We think your friend Collier was behind it.’ Webb was staring at her now. ‘He’s an ex-soldier, they’re all ex-soldiers. They know about weapons, they know how to plan attacks.’ He was watching her face as he spoke, the slight inward turning of her mouth, the way she avoided his eyes. ‘What d’you know about it, Janice?’
‘I don’t know anything.’
‘Nothing? Come on. You were Gringo’s old lady for a year.’
‘Well, I’m not any more. I don’t get to know any business. No girl does. They don’t talk business while women are there.’
‘What exactly is their business, Janice?’ Harris asked her.
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Motorbikes or something.’
‘Or something.’ Webb shook his head at her. ‘If you know something about what happened that day and you’re not telling us, you’re going to be in even more trouble.’
‘Well, that’s fine, because I don’t know anything.’
Harris clasped both hands together on the table. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘We can either charge you now or talk about something else.’
Janice listened while Harris explained the situation to her: two choices, either be charged with possession of crack cocaine and perhaps intent to supply, both of which would mean a prison sentence with the two convictions she had on record already, or she could go to work for them. ‘You play it cool,’ she told her. ‘Collier will know that you were arrested, his sources will tell him as much. Don’t try to hide it. Tell them your father put up bail for you, and in the meantime we’ll speak to the CPS on your behalf.’
Janice flicked at a long strand of hair which hung down over her eyes, and lit another cigarette. ‘What d’you want me to do exactly?’ she asked.
‘You’ve got your own flat, haven’t you.’
‘Yes. My father owns it.’
‘Do you let the boys come round?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. That’s all I want you to do. They get to sleep with you, don’t they? Any of them, whenever they want.’ Harris took a plastic bag from her case and laid it on the table. Inside were a dozen or more specimen bottles. Janice Martin stared at them for a long moment and then she burst out laughing. ‘Fucking them is going to keep me out of prison?’
Harris held up a bottle. ‘If you bring us these, marked with their names on, yes.’
Back at the Yard, she had a phone call waiting, and she picked up the phone at Webb’s desk. It was Combes, the US Secret Service agent from the embassy. He told her that he had sent the inventory over to Washington and they were checking it now. From what they could gather, the company who supplied the parts from Texas was legitimate.
‘We found that inventory in a plastic bag under a paving slab in the garden,’ Harris said. ‘There must be more to it than just motorbike parts.’
‘Hold on a second. I said we think the company is legitimate. It is on the face of it, but it’s owned by the Bandido Nation. We’re looking further, Christine. That company has a lot of dealings in Mexico, and they bank with Banco De California. We’ve been interested in them for a long time. They have branches throughout South America, Mexico particularly; and they also have some in the southern states of the US. That’s all I can tell you right now, but I’ll call as and when we make progress.’
‘Thank you, Peter. Thank you very much.’ Harris hung up and relayed the information to Webb, who sat toying with a pencil on his desk.
‘What d’you reckon about the girl?’ he said.
‘I think she’ll go for it.’ Harris sat down opposite him.
‘If you think about it, what have we asked her to do?’ She spread her palms. ‘Exactly what she has always done, let the biker boys sleep with her, only we get semen specimens. She doesn’t know why. In her mind, she won’t be informing on them. I think Collier will keep tabs on her for a while. She may even be banned from the clubhouse, given his attitude to drugs and the police. But that won’t matter. I think it’ll work, George.’ She smiled. ‘And if it does, we might just get a DNA match on the hairs we found in the crash helmets. Then we can really sow the seeds of panic’
Tal-Salem was in Shrivenham, in Oxfordshire. He had never visited this part of the country before, confining his activities to London and Birmingham. He sat in the small hotel where he had rented a room, using a false Kuwaiti passport, and began to thumb through a copy of the Yellow Pages. He stopped when he got to car hire companies and ran his finger down the page. There were not that many of them: the major ones, of course, and a few smaller ones. He picked up the telephone to Avis. ‘Good morning,’ he said, when the receptionist answered. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Webb of Scotland Yard. Could you tell me, please, how far back your records go? I’m interested in vehicles rented from you in August of 1997.’
Byrne and Kovalski had arrived from Washington by the time Harrison and Swann got back from the whorehouse. The crime scene had been cleared now and they moved back to the resident agency office in Reno. Logan briefed them on what they had got so far and then she ran through the rest of the case, trying to assemble some order. They conference-linked the briefing to the fugitive unit in D.C. and the field office in New Orleans, so everyone could be updated. Logan laid her notes in front of her and started running through them.
‘February 5th,’ she said, ‘Ismael Boese was broken out of a prison truck on his way to trial in London. February 16th, he shows up in the field office in New Orleans, walks into reception and delivers a feather and a photograph of Special Agent Dollar with a bullet hole in his head. This is classic Storm Crow behaviour, having first done it to Louis Byrne at Fort Bliss in March 1995.’ She looked across the table at Swann, seated between Kovalski and Byrne. ‘He did the same in London to three Antiterrorist Branch officers. It’s his calling card, his way of telling the authorities that something is about to happen.
‘Within three days of that delivery, he attacks an oil tanker on the Mississippi River, tricks us into believing he’s on board with hostages, and then he blows the anchor chain with four FBI SWAT teams still aboard. All the time this was going on, he was actually in the back of a radio station van by the spillway, negotiating through Louis Byrne’s wife in Washington. We find the van in Meridian, Mississippi, the following day, and the ground team is set up.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Back in
the fall of last year, a woman called Mary Poynton was murdered in Royston, Georgia. The VICAP team in Quantico call John Earl Cochrane, the VICAP co-ordinator in New Orleans, because New Orleans had been looking at a series of similar crimes. John Dollar goes up to see what the situation is and meets with Special Agent Mallory from the CASKU. Between them they agree that this is not part of the killings perpetrated by the so-called “garbageman”, but a copycat. The case is left with the GBI, whose number one suspect is a negro driving a tow truck. He is never apprehended. We can now link that killing to Storm Crow, the killer being Tal-Salem. DNA from a reefer butt confirmed his presence in that jewellery store.’
She paused for a moment and looked round the table. ‘The victim was known to Boese from his childhood. She was a friend of his mother during her active days with the Symbionese Liberation Army in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Boese stayed with her for two weeks before being adopted by the Maguires, IRA sympathizers.’ She paused then and asked, ‘Why kill her?’
No one answered her. Harrison sucked on his tobacco. ‘Maybe he wanted something,’ he suggested.
‘Like the name of Teniel Jefferson.’ Byrne rested his elbows on the desk.
‘But why, Louis?’
‘Cheyenne, if we knew that, we wouldn’t be sitting here.’
Harrison spat tobacco juice into an empty Coke can. ‘Why do all that shit in New Orleans?’ he said. ‘That was a helluva lot of trouble for very little. And why drive your stolen cab into the Holiday Inn at Meridian, then leave it for us with the radio station signs put back on the sides?’
‘Why indeed?’ Kovalski looked across the table at him. ‘He picked you out, JB, which to my mind indicates something to do with the past, and that has to mean Salvesen. But we’ve re-interviewed him and, as far as I can tell, this is nothing to do with him. We can’t be sure, of course, but my instincts tell me this is Boese’s own agenda.’
‘“Other endeavours.”’ Logan chewed on the words. ‘He said to Angie Byrne that he had other endeavours.’
Nobody spoke for a few moments, everyone mulling over their own thoughts, then Swann said: ‘He went to an awful lot of trouble to say hello to the FBI. He wanted you to be aware that he was in this country, just like he did to us in London.’
‘In London he was planning something really big,’ Logan said. ‘What’s he planning here?’
‘The jackal and the crow.’ Harrison was staring at the ceiling. ‘“When the prey is down, does the jackal or the crow eat first?”’
‘The jackal does,’ Byrne said. ‘In the pecking order, the crow gets the scraps the jackal leaves behind. The jackal is Carlos. That much we know. Ben Dubin was in D.C. recently and we talked about it again. He can confirm beyond any doubt that Boese was the protégé of Carlos. Boese might’ve denied it when interviewed, but then he was on remand in the UK. The jackal is Carlos and the crow is Boese. He’s linking the two in riddles. What he’s trying to tell us, I don’t know. Maybe they’re planning something together?’
Swann shook his head. ‘Carlos is tucked up tighter than a drum in Paris. They bring him to interviews chained to a pole. He isn’t going anywhere.’
‘But he is trying to tell us something about Carlos.’ Logan gesticulated with a red-nailed finger.
Swann looked at Byrne again. ‘Why should he ask your wife to be his attorney? What does he need defending against other than what we know about already?’
‘Maybe the motherfucker wants to turn himself in,’ Harrison said drily. ‘Whatever he’s up to, he’s giving us the run-around.’ His eyes narrowed, then glinted in the light that shone through the window. ‘There’s something else we need to think about. If he got Jefferson’s name from Greer, what did he get from Jefferson?’
The Reno agents were working hard on Teniel Jefferson, along with the city and state police. He had lived in the area since 1984, moving there from Virginia. He had worked as a prison guard at Carson City Jail, on the outskirts of town. Harrison, Swann and Logan went to see the governor. Swann stared at the wire fence and wondered at how strange life can be. He had never been anywhere near an American penitentiary in his life before, and here he was, visiting his second one in as many days. Harrison pointed out a separate brick building with double bars on the windows, set slightly back from the rest of the compound. ‘Death row, bubba,’ he said.
The governor was in his sixties, a big man with a tanned and lined face. White hair was brushed back from his scalp, exposing a forehead dappled with liver spots. He had liver spots on his hands and looked as though he had spent too many years in the sun. He sat behind his desk, with an elk head mounted behind him. Harrison counted six points per side. ‘How much meat you get?’ he asked.
‘Six hundred pounds. Weighed near on nine when I shot him.’
‘You get him round here?’
The governor shook his head. ‘North, almost in Idaho.’ He looked at Logan then and fisted his hands under his chin. ‘I knew Jefferson,’ he said. ‘He was a warder here for ten years. I fired him in 1994.’
‘Fired him?’ Logan looked across the desk at him.
‘Yes, young lady. Fired him.’ He stretched his hands out on the desk. ‘I run a clean ship here. Any infraction of the rules is taken very seriously. Jefferson bent those rules just about as far as a man could. He ran all kinds of rackets in this prison and it took me four years to figure him out. I shoulda had him indicted.’ He paused then, pushing himself back in the seat. ‘On the face of it he was a good man, but that was just bullshit. He ran drugs, cigarettes, whisky, the odd whore now and again. You name it, young lady. That man did it.’
‘Cocaine?’ Harrison said.
‘I could never prove it, but I imagine so. All I ever could prove was some illegal cigarettes and a buncha chewing tobacco. It was enough to get him fired, which was all I needed to clean house. That’s exactly what I did.’ He sat back. ‘I can tell you, I’m not a bit surprised to hear he wound up with a bullet in the head.’
Logan crossed her legs and Swann saw the governor’s gaze waver a little. ‘We need to look at your records,’ she said. ‘Inmate records. We need to run the names through our computers and see what we can come up with.’
He stared at her. ‘You’re talking about all the names of all the inmates during the period he worked in this facility?’
She nodded.
‘That’ll take you a while, lady. You’re lucky this is a state facility, otherwise you’d be asking the Bureau of Prisons and they’d hold you up for sure.’ He laughed then. ‘Ringing my own bell again, aren’t I. Like I said to you, I run things clean and tight. You’ll have the information by this afternoon. We got it all on computer disk.’
‘That’d be great.’ Logan looked at the pictures behind his head, some of his predecessors, some other men in uniform. ‘I’d like a list of the warders here during that same period,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to talk to any still serving that knew him. Can you set us up with an interview room?’
The governor reached for the phone.
They talked to various different warders, none of whom seemed to have a good word to say about Jefferson. After the fourth one had gone back to work, Harrison ran his hand over his scalp in frustration. ‘Goddammit. They musta been briefed or something. Governor’s so concerned about his fricking reputation. There must be one guy in this joint who liked him.’ He stood up. ‘You two can stay here if you want. I’m going back up to the cat house. Betcha the guy had his favourite hooker. She’ll tell us more than these guys ever can.’
They met up with him later that evening, Swann wondering if he had got everything he wanted from the whorehouse. They were in the field office in Reno, using the conference room to go through some of the information they had gathered. The computer records had been downloaded to the team back in Washington, who were also trawling every inmate’s card, looking for quite what, they did not know. Harrison sat down across the table from Swann.
‘Get what you went for?’ Swann asked
him.
Harrison cocked his head at him. ‘Yes, duchess. I got what I went for. You got a problem with that?’
‘Harrison, if you don’t crawl back under your stone, I am gonna bust your ass.’ Logan’s voice was sharp and cold. Kovalski and Byrne were working in the next office and Swann saw them look up. Logan lowered her voice but the tone was as cold as before. ‘If you got a problem with Jack, then get it aired, motherfucker, or keep your damn mouth shut.’
Harrison stared at her, then hissed air through his teeth. ‘I talked to a Mexican gal, Suela,’ he said. ‘Jefferson’s favourite whore. She told me he went up there at least twice a week, sometimes three times, so he was making more money than what he’d been getting in the autoshop.’ He took some chew from his chin and flicked off the unwanted strands. ‘My guess is, he was still running stuff into that prison—through one of the other bulls, maybe. There’s no way Carson City Jail is cleaner than any other. Stuff gets in, people get paid. That’s the game. The whore confirmed that he sold coke, but she didn’t say where he got it, and, of course, she never used any.’ He rocked back on the legs of his chair and rested his head against the glass partition. ‘His other vice was the blackjack tables.’ He let his words hang for a second before going on. ‘According to the whore, he played in the Big Whisky casino in Reno. Sometimes on her days off, he would take her.’ He sat forward again, with a bump of the chair legs. ‘Check the file, Cheyenne. Ten years ago, Mary Greer was a dealer in that casino.’
Byrne and Kovalski took a night flight back to Washington. Logan and Swann ate dinner together at the hotel. Harrison said he had things to do. Swann laid a hand on Logan’s arm. ‘Can I come to your room tonight?’ he asked her.
She laughed then, touching his nose with the tip of her tongue. ‘Honey, you don’t have to ask.’
‘What about the others?’
‘What others?’
‘You know. The team working on this thing.’