by AJ Adams
Arturo was nodding. “I spotted a chambermaid. Not sure which one, though.”
“I’m sure we’ll find her.”
From Arturo’s smile there would be a well prepared chambermaid, dead keen to give Arturo an alibi – if Fred even bothered to track her down, which was doubtful.
“Do you have any information about Mr Escamilla’s death?”
“I’m afraid not. It’s all very shocking.”
Then it was my turn to join in.
Arturo ran a hand over my hair. “Solitaire was waiting for us, but we were late, and she was asleep by the time we got here. I don’t think she noticed the time.”
Fred’s blue eyes were on me. “What were your movements on Friday?”
“I’m not sure. I was fed up, and I knew Arturo was coming, so I ditched Escamilla and came to London.”
I sounded a total slut, and Fred was nodding and smiling, writing it all down.
“Do you remember what time you left?” Arturo asked.
I was onto the game now. “Well, it was after breakfast, but I didn’t notice the time. Maybe ten or eleven? It could have been a bit later, I guess.”
“You drove?” Fred spoke without a look or glance to show he knew we were all lying like rugs.
“She hitched,” Arturo said comfortably. “I was very upset when I heard. It’s so dangerous.”
“I walked for miles, and then I got a lift from a truck driver, but he wasn’t heading for London,” I was embroidering madly. “I got another lift and got dropped off about two Tube stations away from here or maybe three, I’m not sure. I didn’t have any money so I walked.”
“And you got here at what time?”
“I don’t know. It was already dark. A chambermaid let me into the room, and I had a bath and took a nap.”
“So you weren’t there the night José Escamilla was killed.”
“No. Just think: if I’d been there, I would have been killed too!”
“Any idea who did it?”
“No. If I did, I would have said something.”
Fred smiled at me approvingly. “Absolutely.” He stood up. “That’s all for now. I may be in touch later with some more questions.”
“Any time!” Arturo was up and smiling. “Always happy to cooperate.”
“And we appreciate it.”
Then Fred swept McClusky and Davenport out with him, and that was that. The crew disappeared, too, leaving Arturo and me alone.
Arturo touched my cheek. “You planned this? Why?”
“I reckoned I was the weak link. And I thought it would fix them, at least temporarily.”
“Sirena!” Arturo was shaking his head. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I knew that the second your mate Fred walked in. But until then, I didn’t know you had the Met in your pocket.”
“I should have told you.” He was examining my face. “I’ll kill him for this.”
“No more killing this trip,” I said firmly. “We’ve got trouble enough.”
“We, huh?” Arturo was grinning. “I can’t believe you planned this!” He was hugging me, clearly delighted. “I’m giving you a necklace. Sapphires, to go with your eyes.”
Typical Arturo. “It’s sweet, but my loyalty is not for sale.”
“Sirena!”
I knew that if I didn’t speak up now, Arturo would always think of me as one of the many girls he’d bought and paid for. I couldn’t bear that. “Arturo, I can be pushed about like anyone else, but it doesn’t stick. The threats had me going for a while, but that’s not why I did it.”
“Why then?”
“Because you took me on the Eye and out dancing. And also because of this.” I put my arms around him and kissed him. “Because no matter how this started, Arturo, you’re not a pig. That’s why.”
“I won’t hurt you. It was a mistake to threaten you. I’m sorry.” Arturo spoke quietly, calmly, but I knew he meant it.
“I know. Forget about it.” I was sitting in the circle of his arms, feeling light and happy. “Look, Arturo, I’m looking for a new life, and as I said, I’ll do my best for you. When you’ve finished your meetings, let’s go for a walk.”
Arturo shook his head. “Too many people know I’m here. But we can have dinner and go dancing.”
So that’s why he’d been so happy going out and about. He’d truly been on holiday, free as a bird. And now it was back in the cage. A gilded one, but a cage nevertheless.
His phone buzzed. “Solitaire, grab that pink bag from the room? The one with the Barbie Mermaid?”
By the time I’d unearthed it, Fred had returned. He was sitting in a chair, tequila in hand, talking to Arturo, Kyle and a bloke I’d never seen before.
“My cousin, Jorge,” Arturo announced.
It looked social, and I was curious so I sat down. There was a tiny hesitation, and then they continued talking.
“Nice job,” Arturo said. “You can expect a bonus.”
Fred was grinning. “Scratch my back –”
I didn’t like him, and although everyone was acting friendly, they didn’t like him, either. Fred was a bent copper and although he was useful, they despised him. Nobody likes a double-dealer, and quite right, too. Traitors are scum.
“There are questions being asked in parliament,” Fred said. “It would be nice to hang this on someone.”
“I’m sure you’ll find who did it,” Arturo replied smoothly. He handed the bag over. “For Lacey.”
Fred froze. “Lacey?”
“Sure. Cute little thing! All blonde bubble curls.”
Arturo was smiling, but Fred looked sick. I was missing something.
“They’re great at that age,” Arturo continued. “So innocent.”
“You want to take good care of them,” Kyle added. “Girls need their grandfathers.”
“Incidentally,” Arturo said. “I heard Yilmaz got his last week.”
Fred was sweating. “Nothing to do with me.”
Arturo was looking rather grim. “Yilmaz was shot while escaping arrest. Funny that. I thought you and he were close.”
“Arturo, I swear, it had nothing to do with me!”
Kyle showed him his phone, and Fred turned as white as a sheet. Whatever was on that screen had him scared to death.
“I like you, Fred,” Arturo said softly. “I’d be upset if we fell out.”
“Difficult to trust a man when you know you can’t turn your back on him,” Kyle observed.
Jorge said nothing, but his eyes were merciless. The way he looked at Fred said he was looking at someone who was already dead.
Fred put down his tequila. “Listen, you need me!” His voice was a squeak. “I know something. I was going to tell you!”
They watched and waited, three cats with a rat.
Fred reached into his pocket. “Here. A gift.” He pulled out a sheaf of papers. “From our files.”
Arturo looked them over and frowned. “Where did you get this?”
Fred shrugged. “Came across it by accident, actually. It was in the wrong file. It’s from the Met’s Intelligence Support Unit.”
Arturo handed the papers to Kyle. Both were inscrutable, but I sensed that whatever was on that paper had rocked them both.
“I thought so,” Fred said relieved. “You’ve got a leak.”
“Who’s this Songbird?” Arturo asked.
Fred smiled and looked at me. “I rather thought it was Solitaire.”
And suddenly it was all eyes on me.
Chapter Nine: Arturo
I felt like I’d taken a punch to the gut. My first thought was that it was a set-up and that Davis was fucking with me. He’s a slippery son of a bitch – a cop on the take always is –and I didn’t trust him.
I’ve got hundreds of cops on my payroll. Some, like the ones in the poorer countries in the Far East and Africa, are guns for hire. They often go unpaid for months by their governments, and everyone knows they’re corrupt. Hell, they’re expected
to make the bulk of their income on the side! But Davis didn’t need to be on the take. He was just a lazy, greedy bastard on the make.
As he wasn’t married and had never been married, he always boasted he was untouchable. “No wife, no kids, no ties,” he’d say. “Nothing to threaten me with.”
But we’d found the ex who’d had his kid, watched her baby-sit her granddaughter and knew we had a handle on him. Offering him a doll frightened the shit out of him because he loves that little girl to death, and he won’t do a fucking thing that might bring her into danger. Like trying to set me up.
So I had something on him, but there was always the possibility that he might figure out at some point that I’d never give the order to kill a kid. I never have, you see. Not once. In fact, it’s about the only crime I’ve never committed. And I hope to God I never have to, either. Kids are the world’s only innocents.
So I had Davis cornered nice and tight, but the hold was precarious to say the least. Luckily Davis had gone on to make a mistake, and it was a whopper. Davis was on the take, but he was clever. He only took money from a handful of top syndicates, and he busted everyone else. It made him rich, and it gave him a glorious arrest record.
He had taken Yilmaz’ money for two years, protecting every one of his dealers and turning a blind eye even when they sold heroin to preteens outside schools, but when internal affairs began to sniff a rat, and Yilmaz looked as if he might talk, Davis solved the problem by shooting his pal in the back – escaping arrest, he claimed.
He didn’t know at the time that we were watching Yilmaz with the aim of taking him out, so the second our man knew what was going down, he downed his gun, picked up his phone and taped it. I now owned Davis from dandruff to bunions, but I still didn’t trust him a fucking inch.
What he’d handed me was a list of payoffs. I own a record label, and the first set of names consisted of DJs and VJs who’ve been paid to plug my music. That wasn’t exactly earth-shattering, but the second half of the list covered my English customs contacts. With the right background information, it could link me to dozens of consignments. It was dynamite.
The list was limited to England and to the last six months. That meant the leak had happened under Escamilla’s watch. That was bad enough, but when Davis pointed the finger at Solitaire, all the air exploded from my lungs.
My first thought was, “Not again! Not another Gina!” My second was despair. “I can’t do it! I’ve only just found her! It’s not fucking fair!” I’d been so damn self-involved for so long that it wasn’t until later that I realised what a selfish fuck I was – this was Solitaire’s problem as much as mine. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Solitaire sat there, giving him the ice princess treatment and biting off every word, “I’m not a snitch.”
I was desperate to believe her. “You’d better have proof, Davis.”
He shrugged. “The file was triple coded.”
That meant top level security. In the movies, the leak always has a nickname, right? Like Songbird. Then people put together all the leaked information, figure out who had access, and whammo, the rat is iced. Well, life isn’t like the movies.
When a snitch gives up information, each item is assigned an ID, a tag made up of twelve numbers and letters. The first digit is a confidence level rating from 1 to 9, with 1 meaning it’s solid, no doubt about it, and 9 meaning it’s unreliable – in other words, drunken ramblings overheard in a club one night.
The rest of the tag is assigned randomly, so there’s no way of knowing what comes from whom or even how old the information is. Only the rat’s handler and those who ‘need to know’ can run the ID to see who gave it up. With a single coded agent, you’re talking about a street source. It’s nothing special, and practically every police officer in the country can find out who’s talking – if they don’t already know, which they probably do. They just plug in their ID (the single code) and get access.
With a double code, you need your own code and also the approval of senior brass, like the head of a division. With a triple coded agent, you need to be fucking God, and maybe even He’d get a knock back. This is because triple coded agents are gold. We’re talking like Big Joey Massino, the Bonanno family boss who ratted on Carmine Persico, the Colombo family boss.
Unlike everyone else, triple coded agents get nicknames, simply because the very few people who are in the loop can’t ever say the real name or put it on paper. So they go the movie route and use a nickname.
My gut was churning at the thought of a triple coder aimed at us, but the bottom line was that Davis had no proof. “So you’re blowing it out of your ass.”
“I checked it out, and rumour is that the hot new informant is a woman closely connected with Escamilla.”
“Who’s your source?” Kyle asked.
“Got it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
“Burnet?”
“Yes.”
Burnet was the head of the Intelligence division, incorruptible and determined to root us out. Luckily, he was hamstrung by his people, most of whom could be persuaded to turn a blind eye to anything if the backhander was big enough.
“Why does Burnet think it’s a woman?”
“Because this list came a week after Escamilla moved Solitaire in,” Davis said.
At this, Solitaire’s eyes snapped with fury. “You knew he had me, and it didn’t occur to you to do something?”
Davis shrugged. “You’re not exactly lilywhite. And you didn’t ask for a rescue.”
“I’m not Songbird, you blithering idiot!”
While Solitaire tore a strip off him, I sat and thought. All Davis had was rumour. Time to kick him out. Fucking sleaze-bag, drinking my tequila and trying to throw my girl under the bus. I wanted to kill him, but he was valuable. Too valuable to remove on a whim. I’d find a replacement, and then I’d take him out.
He knew I was pissed, so he disappeared quick. The second he was out the door, Kyle was giving me the look that said this had to be taken care of. He had sensed I didn’t want to deal, and he was reminding me I had no choice. You can ignore pretty much anything in our world, except for accusations that you’re an informer. Once it’s been made, someone has to pay.
We take loyalty very seriously, so if the accusation is found to be true, the accused dies. On the other hand, if you’re fucking with us, we get pissed at whoever pointed the finger. Sometimes they get away with a beating, but it can go further, especially when you’ve accused someone popular, because then everyone piles into the revenge. So you can see why everyone takes this kind of situation very seriously.
So Kyle was wondering why I was dragging my feet. Kyle was deadpan as he always is when it comes to business, and Jorge was trying to imitate Kyle’s unconcern, but it wasn’t working; Jorge was visibly nervous.
“Arturo, we need to talk.” Kyle spoke softly.
There was no avoiding this. Security is his province, and there was no way in hell he could let this slide. I knew I couldn’t, either. If Solitaire was an informer… I didn’t want to think about it.
Jorge was examining the list. “This needs to be dealt with,” he announced. “I’ll get on it right away.”
He’s a good man, Jorge. He’d deal with the fallout and let us, his seniors, deal with evaluating the accusation. “I’ll call you later,” I promised him.
Jorge disappeared, and then I had to deal.
Solitaire was still as a statue. She didn’t look guilty; she looked empty. The lovely face was lifeless. “I don’t tell tales out of school,” she said distantly.
It was a strange way to put it, and the way she said it was even stranger. “If you did, I’d understand,” I heard myself say. It was an automatic response. Always seek the truth. Even if it kills her and you. “You hated Escamilla. Maybe you talked to the cops?”
“Split on someone to a plod? No way!” Solitaire said angrily. “Danjuma beat me up because McClutsky told him I’d talked, but it was a set-up. He
couldn’t make me talk, so he screwed me over. Now he’s doing it again. I’m not a snitch!”
“You sold Escamilla out to us.” Kyle was watching her. “You helped with the E-field, and you knew the coke was hidden in his secret safe.”
“He held me hostage by blackmailing me just so he could rape me,” Solitaire spat. “He fucked me over, and I fucked him back harder. Got a problem with that?”
“No, but I have a problem with a security leak. You were on the scene.”
“I have no idea who was talking,” Solitaire snapped, “but it wasn’t me!”
“You had motive.”
“And I was locked up!”
“Escamilla didn’t lock down till a couple of days ago. You might have arranged to be taken and for a contact to visit.”
Solitaire glared at him. “You’re out of your frigging mind!”
“It’s been done.”
Kyle was silent, and I knew he was figuring out how he could get an answer.
We had an accusation, and we had Solitaire, but Christ, I didn’t want to hurt her. For the first time in my life I wanted to bury my head in the sand, pretend that accusation had never been made. But I couldn’t do it. If Solitaire was an informer, then she was playing a long game. That meant she’d not just bury me: she’d bury the whole family. And if she were clean, we’d still need proof, because Davis would talk. That meant that Solitaire’s past would come back to haunt her – with a bullet.
Most of her exes were small fry, but Miguel Fuentes was a player. We hadn’t met, but I knew him by reputation. The global economy isn’t just about smart phones and fast food, you know. In my business everyone above a certain level knows everyone else.
I didn’t need to look him up to know that Fuentes was an independent operator specialising in transport. He had strong connections with the Tarabin Bedouins in Egypt, the Guinea-Bissau gangs in West Africa and the Abergil crime family based in Israel. Given his contacts, he was probably in with a tonne of terrorist groups in the region, too – everyone loves a transporter who asks no questions.
I knew that if Fuentes thought Solitaire was Songbird, he’d hire someone to blow her away. In fact, it was odd that he let her walk in the first place. As administrator in his main office and his girlfriend, Solitaire must have seen enough to be dangerous. As he’d let her leave, Fuentes must have trusted her. That and the fact that he was still out there doing business might argue to some that Solitaire was clean, but I knew it didn’t mean much. The cops have a habit of letting time pass between getting the goods on someone and busting them. It protects their source, and by timing it right, they can haul in a raft of others, some of whom will talk in return for immunity.