Hidden Witness hc-15

by Nick Oldham

  ‘It’s definitely Petrone,’ Donaldson was saying. He had a mug of filtered coffee in his hand and was standing in Henry’s back garden, looking out across the adjoining field on which sheep grazed and a pair of noisy Canadian geese pecked at the ground next to a pond. He was on the phone to Don Barber down in London. ‘Confirmed with my own eyes.’

  ‘Well, at least it’s some revenge for Shark’s death.’ Barber said, referring to the undercover FBI agent.

  ‘You could look at it that way,’ Donaldson conceded, ‘but it’s one less avenue for me to get to the American.’

  ‘Any leads as to who might have whacked him?’

  ‘I mentioned this witness before, who they’ve got in custody now. It’ll be interesting to find out exactly what’s been seen or otherwise.’

  ‘Where is he in custody?’

  ‘Preston at the moment, but being brought back to Blackpool.’

  ‘OK, keep me posted, Karl.’

  ‘Will do, boss… there is one thing.’

  ‘That would be?’

  ‘I’ve decided to review all the murders between the Petrones and the Marinis that happened since the Majorca shootings, if that’s OK.’

  Barber hesitated slightly. ‘To what end?’

  ‘Mm, maybe nothing, just an aside the SIO up here said to me. I just want to have a look at the patterns to the killings, see if anything strikes me as odd.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Again, not sure yet, but the SIO has a vague theory that we might not just be up against the Mafia… as I said, it’s a vague one.’

  ‘Don’t spend too much time on it.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Donaldson chucked the last dregs of the coffee over the fence and returned to the house. Kate had been studying him from the kitchen. He handed her the cup and said thanks, but wilted under her knowing eyes.

  ‘Please don’t say you’ve been unfaithful,’ she said, ‘not you.’

  Had Donaldson been accused of murder, not even the most experienced interrogator in the world, not even torture, would have made him reveal a thing. But the hurt, accusing glint in Kate’s eyes turned his stomach over and he had to hold himself back from prostrating himself at her feet and begging forgiveness for his transgression.

  ‘No,’ he said haughtily. ‘Can I use the study now?’

  ‘I should bloody well think so.’

  Mark Carter scowled at the remark made by Henry and rammed the mop head into the bucket.

  ‘Finished.’

  ‘Right, let’s get going.’

  He made Mark carry the bucket down the corridor to a tap and sluice sink where he poured the urine and water away, then rinsed mop and bucket.

  ‘You had a shower?’

  ‘Do I look like I’ve had a shower?’

  ‘You look like shit, actually. Come on, now you’ve cleaned up your mess, let’s clean up the mess that’s you.’

  Karl Donaldson slid his laptop out of its case, plugged it in, switched it on. It was a new one, state of the art, and was up and running in seconds. He connected to Henry’s broadband system.

  Firstly he checked his personal emails, then wished he hadn’t.

  There were four new ones, three from travel agents he subscribed to, the fourth from an unknown sender that the computer marked with a red flag warning and the perceptive words, ‘This could be dangerous’. He clicked on it, saw it was from someone called ‘VanLang’. At first he thought it could have been one of the many he received from online Viagra sellers — not that he needed any — but when he opened it he found it was from his sexy neighbour in Malta.

  ‘Arrived home. Missing you. Can still feel you inside me. You exploded!!! Want to see you again. Can this be arranged? I can travel at a moment’s notice. Husband not a problem. XXX’

  Husband? Donaldson squirmed, recalling she had mentioned a boyfriend, not a spouse. But not only that, how had she managed to get his email address? He wracked his brains for the moments when she could have got it. On reflection, she did have one or two opportunities. For a very serious moment he considered replying, but that would have compounded his stupidity and started an electronic dialogue that might get out of hand. Emails were dangerous, as many a person in power had discovered to their cost. As were texts. He pressed the delete button as though it was electrified.

  ‘Not good, not good,’ he mumbled, suddenly not liking adultery very much any more.

  Next he went on to his work emails and saw he’d received forty-odd of the bastards, all with ‘Read me’ and ‘Urgent’ flags. He couldn’t be bothered with any, his mood knocked for six by Vanessa’s message.

  Then he went on to the FBI website, logged into the staff-only section, and started his research.

  From a purely investigative point of view, Henry would have preferred not to tell Mark about his mother’s death — just yet. He wanted to bleed him dry of any useful information about the assassination of Rosario Petrone, and would have liked to extract this from the lad without having to deal with the additional burden of emotions that would come with telling him about Mandy’s death — and the manner she’d met it.

  It was a delicate balancing act, one that Henry hadn’t quite worked out.

  It was certain, though, that Mark had a right to know about her death, whether they got on well or not. Henry would also have to arrange for a message to be passed to Mark’s older brother, Jack, presently lounging for a long spell in clink.

  They were at the custody desk. Mark had showered and although he was in the same set of clothes, he looked fresher, smelled cleaner. Mark’s property was in a sealed bag, but Henry took a few moments to check that the contents actually matched the list on the custody record before signing for it. He whistled at the amount of money in Mark’s possession and gave him a questioning look. ‘Planning on being away for a while, were we?’

  ‘In case you’re thinking — it’s kosher. It’s my mum’s money. She gave it to me.’

  ‘Highly unlikely,’ Henry said. He signed the record and resealed the bag. ‘Come on, pal, back to Blackpool.’ Henry herded the crestfallen boy out of the custody office to the secure bay at the back of the police station, where his car had been moved by arrangement.

  ‘In the back,’ Henry said, opened one of the rear doors and shoved Mark into the car, then sidled in alongside him. ‘Child locks’re on, so don’t think you can just leap out at traffic lights.’

  There was a uniformed police officer behind the steering wheel of the car, who looked over his shoulder and nodded at Henry.

  ‘Who’s that joker?’ Mark said snottily.

  ‘That joker is none other that Constable Bill Robbins, our selected driver for the day, who, at great personal cost, has rushed down here from police HQ to assist us,’ Henry said grandly. ‘And if you do think of running away, I’ll get Bill here to shoot you. Not to kill you, obviously, just wing you, because Bill’s a sharpshooter who could shoot the nadger off a gnat, couldn’t you, Bill?’

  ‘Could that.’

  ‘What are you on about, idiot?’ Mark snarled.

  ‘Show him, Bill.’

  Robbins shifted on his seat and pulled something up from between his legs. A Heckler amp; Koch G36.

  ‘It has one of those red dots,’ Robbins explained, ‘which makes it very, very precise.’

  ‘Armed and dangerous,’ Henry said, ‘especially when provoked.’

  Karl Donaldson refreshed his memory. He started with the shooting three years ago in Can Pastilla. This was a file Donaldson knew well, for obvious reasons, and he accessed it through the FBI database with no problems, his computer taking him there almost instantly.

  Three men sat at a table. The fourth picking up a gun that had been planted for him and killing the others with deadly calm. A true professional, the only glitch being the traces left in the restroom and on a table by the slightly careless Mustapha Fazil. If the traces hadn’t been found and lifted, Fazil would never have been identified and Donaldson woul
d maybe have read his name in a crime circulation after his arrest on Malta, then filed it none the wiser.

  Two of the men at the table had been real players in the Marini Mafia clan that was in dispute with the Petrone clan. They were Carlo Marini, probably number three in the Marini clan, and a guy called Paulo who was just a bodyguard. A bit player, but a clan member nonetheless.

  ‘Bang, bang, bang,’ Donaldson said to himself. Three dead men and the start of one of the bloodiest Mafia wars in recent years. He re-read the police reports of the shooting, which he knew well.

  The FBI knew the meeting was to take place because of the information supplied by Shark, the undercover agent. He’d infiltrated the Marini clan several years earlier and had won the trust of the leaders. His information had stated that they were to meet a guy from the US who had a network of retail outlets and was prepared to sell Marini products — i.e., fake goods — in the States. A good toehold of business that would have been fantastic for the Marini people. But the whole thing had been an elaborate ruse by Rosario Petrone, luring Carlo Marini out to Majorca with a promise of amazing wealth, his greed being his downfall, as much as he might have checked out the credentials of the American. The desire to be rich simply led to death.

  All well and good. Except one of the three dead men was the FBI agent. And Donaldson had been tasked by Don Barber to find the killer, this ‘American’, a task at which he had singularly unsuccessful.

  Then the reprisals began. The streets of Naples were awash with blood.

  Donaldson went into another file that was basically a cut and paste job from newspaper reports detailing the murders that followed. Almost too horrible to contemplate, and he could imagine the chaos in the city.

  Outraged, the Marinis struck back. A Petrone scooter boy, one of the youngsters who delivered drugs in the Petrone sector of the Naples, hunted down like an elk by a pack of wolves. He was beaten, savagely mutilated, tongue cut off, balls hacked off and stuffed into his mouth.

  ‘Choice,’ mumbled Donaldson.

  Next a Petrone retaliation. The murder of a Marini lookout. Machete’d to death without finesse.

  Two very obvious Mafia style murders at that level.

  Donaldson tabbed down a page.

  Then the Marini clan struck back.

  The Petrone number two, Roberto — Rosario Petrone’s cousin — mown down by a car whilst on a secret visit to Rome. A similar murder, in fact, to Rosario Petrone’s in Blackpool. A quiet road in a residential area. A car running over him twice, a man jumping out and pumping two bullets into his head. Nothing unusual in that, except it was different from the two preceding murders, the feature of which had been frenzied horrific violence. Roberto Petrone died violently, yes, but in a more cold, calculating manner.

  Not that the Mafia weren’t capable of committing such murders, but the Camorra murders were often more bloody, as the next ones showed. A lieutenant in the Marini clan and his girlfriend found butchered in a hotel room, hacked to pieces, the room bubbling with blood and guts.

  And so on and so forth. Tit, tat, murder, counter murder. Many, many killings.

  And yet… Donaldson frowned. Some of the killings attributed to the Marini clan were of a more sophisticated, cunning nature than the others. Yes, there were the blood soaked, insane attacks in amongst them, but three were car related — knocked down, run over, shot — and three others were even better than that. Long range assassinations of major Petrone clan players.

  One was by a sniper at Venice Airport, an assassin secreted almost a mile away from the target. Another was a sniper taking one out at a Naples street cafe from a position in a high tower block half a mile away from the target, and a further similar job in Rome, when a Petrone clan member on a tourist visit to the city had his head blown off by a killer hidden near the Coliseum.

  Three good quality assassinations and three car related ones, four if the hit on Rosario Petrone in Blackpool was added.

  Seven that did not immediately fall into the category of the others, with all the targets being well-protected high-flyers and decision makers, not gofers or street runners or soldiers.

  Maybe the Marinis had brought in special people to carry out these attacks. They certainly had the money to pay for professional assassins, but it wasn’t something the Camorra clans often did. Why pay for seven professional killings when they had enough people of their own willing to have a try at earning their spurs?

  Donaldson could understand them bringing in one or two — as Rosario Petrone was alleged to have done by recruiting the ‘American’ to carry out the hit in Majorca.

  And the long-range hits were something special. Not many people outside the military were capable of carrying out such hits. Donaldson had a good knowledge of such people.

  He opened another file and studied the profiles of half a dozen professional killers. Two were actually in jail, another was believed to have been killed in Africa, leaving three operational. One of these was believed to be living in Thailand with young boys for company. Another was a British ex-special forces soldier who was supposed to have carried out a hit in the north of England recently and was lying low. That left one, and the chance of him being hired by the Mafia to carry out three assassinations was, whilst possible, pretty remote.

  Donaldson sighed, rubbed his neck. He flicked back to his personal email and his heart lurched when he saw another message had landed from ‘VanLang’. He opened it with trepidation. It read, ‘Please reply. Am desperate!! XXX’.

  He wondered if he had enough money in his bank account to bring a hired assassin out from retirement.

  Henry had known Bill Robbins for a long time. In the eighties they had worked briefly as PCs together, but more recently Bill had worked with Henry to help prevent the American State Secretary being blasted to smithereens by terrorists. Since Henry had become a superintendent on FMIT he had tried to get a role for Bill on the team, but the Chief Constable had blocked his efforts. Bill therefore continued to be a firearms trainer at the training centre at HQ, as well as being required to carry out regular operational duties in his ‘down time’. Bill had asked to be issued with a broom so he could shove it up his arse and clean the floors as well as everything else. He had submitted the report as a joke and a broom had been subsequently issued to him by stores with instructions for use.

  Henry had got permission from FB to have Bill dropped off at Preston nick, fully tooled up, to drive Henry and Mark back to Blackpool, and to provide armed protection should it be necessary.

  Henry leaned forward and whispered into Bill’s ear as they reached the roundabout at Marton Circle on the outskirts of Blackpool. Rather than going down Yeadon Way into Blackpool, a road that led almost directly to the police station, Bill veered left and went towards Lytham instead.

  Sullen, not even looking up, Mark did not even notice the change of direction.

  Henry sat back. ‘You’ve gone off the rails, Mark. I thought you were better than that.’

  ‘Than what?’

  ‘Shitting in people’s sheds, nicking bikes… robbing people. I really thought you were something different.’

  Mark eyed him. ‘What’s this? You a social worker now?’

  ‘No, I’m a cop doing a job.’

  ‘Oh, friggin’ spare me.’ Mark now saw they were headed somewhere other than Blackpool. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Somewhere I can talk to you.’

  ‘Somewhere to beat me up?’

  ‘I do that sort of thing in the cells.’

  ‘Last time you talked to me, you conned the shit out of me, then you got what you wanted and pissed off.’

  Henry reddened at the accusation.

  ‘True, eh?’ Mark rammed home his steel-tipped advantage.

  Henry’s lips tightened into a thin line.

  Bill reached the T-junction at the seafront. A right turn would take him to Blackpool, left towards Lytham. He went left, past Pontins, then right on to the sand dune front at St Annes and
drew up on the car park next to the beach cafe. Bill climbed out, stretched his legs. Mark caught sight of the holster at his side under his windjammer, and the Glock pistol in it.

  Donaldson stood up, exasperated. In his role at the Legat, he had access to many computer files at all levels, but as he clicked on to the ones he particularly wanted to see, this access was denied.

  ‘Goddamn technology,’ he said through gritted teeth and paced around the study. It had previously been a garage, but when the house had been rebuilt following the fire, the space had been converted into a fairly airy office. Donaldson’s mind went briefly back to the arson attack that had almost killed Kate. That had been a hell of an experience for both of them.

  There was a tap on the closed door. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course you can ma’am,’ Donaldson cooed as he opened the door.

  ‘I heard you muttering.’

  ‘Just annoyed at the computer. I can’t access something I need to see, but it’s probably because I’m doing it from here rather than in the embassy,’ he reasoned, not really knowing too much about such things. He used technology well enough but didn’t understand how or why it worked.

  ‘Could you use another drink?’

  ‘That would be fine.’

  He followed her into the kitchen where the coffee-filtering machine was dripping and hissing away. He leaned against a worktop as Kate reached for a couple of mugs from hooks on the wall. It was still on the tip of his tongue to admit his unfaithfulness, but he checked himself. Telling Henry had been as far as he was prepared to go in the self-torturing stakes for one day. To reveal all to Kate, he guessed, would be disastrous. He was of the opinion that men and women were wired up differently, that the picture they saw might be the same, but each sex viewed it differently. He knew Henry wouldn’t say a thing to anyone, but suspected Kate might see it as her duty to tell Karen.

  She filled a mug for him and handed it over, looking directly into his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t say a thing, you know,’ she said as though she’d read his simple mind.