by Tim Sullivan
'The fucking idiot,' said Kostas. 'So that's where all the money came from?'
'It would seem so. We thought from the regularity of his trade that he had a stockpile somewhere, and you've found it.'
'I don't believe this. Is this why someone killed him?'
'We're not sure, is the truth. Now you're saying you knew nothing about this?' Cross said.
'Absolutely nothing,' Kostas said.
'And that's where you now find yourself at a distinct disadvantage, Kostas,' said Cross.
'How d'you mean?'
'Well, in normal circumstances we would believe you. By normal, I mean if you hadn't been less than truthful on both previous occasions when we came to see you. You didn't tell us about Debbie, you didn't tell us about his drug-taking...'
'That's because I didn't know. Honest.'
'I'm not sure I believe you. You two were, according to both you and Debbie, extremely close, like twins. You talked about everything,' said Cross.
'Not this, I swear.'
'What about London?' Cross asked.
'What about it?' Kostas replied. This was an interesting reaction. Defensive, a little argumentative – a new attitude from him.
'You say that you knew about it at the beginning?'
'Yes, he wanted us to go into partnership but I wasn't interested.'
'And why was that?'
'We were doing just fine, but he always wanted more. To be the best, like I told you,' he said.
'No more than that?'
'I didn't want to upset my parents. They'd built the business up from nothing. They're proud people.'
'And that was part of his problem,' suggested Cross. 'It was their business, not his or yours.'
'But it is now,' said Kostas.
'That's the point. It wasn't of his making. You were both given it on a plate, if you'll forgive the pun, and that rankled with him. Did it rankle with you?'
'No. Like I said, I thought we were doing fine. There was no need for it.'
'Is that really true?' Cross asked.
'I don't know what you mean.'
'He's always been the competitive one. He was a leader, you were a follower. Isn't that true?'
'When we were younger maybe, but not so much now.'
'So you're a little more competitive now. A little more ambitious, perhaps?'
'Were…' Kostas corrected him. ‘Maybe; it's not a crime.' Again, defensive, thought Cross.
'But not to the extent that you'd join him in his extension plans.'
'Like I said, I told him no and that was an end of it,' said Kostas. Ottey noted how the tone of the conversation had changed ever so slightly. She had no idea where Cross was going with this, as they hadn't had a chance to talk after he'd emerged from his office.
'It wasn't an end for him though, was it?' said Cross.
'What's going on here?' Kostas asked.
'We're just talking about your brother's business ambitions. His plans.'
'Are you thinking I had something to do with this?' Kostas asked.
'DS Cross made it quite clear that he doesn't think you've done anything wrong. That you weren't involved in his drug dealing nor his murder. He's told you he thinks no such thing,' said Ottey.
'It doesn't feel like it,' he said, looking at Cross. If he was expecting an apology he was going to be disappointed.
'It wasn't an end for him, though was it?' repeated Cross, as if he hadn't just asked the same question.
'No, he wanted me to buy him out, like I told you. But when we did the numbers he saw it couldn't work. So he backed off and dropped it,' he said.
'So you keep saying. But did he? In truth, drop it?' Cross asked.
'He did try the bank again, to go on his own. But he already had a mortgage on his flat, and with all the costs of setting up in London he didn't think it made sense.'
'So he dropped it,' repeated Cross.
'Yes,' repeated Kostas.
'You're sure about that?'
'Yes.'
'You're completed committed to the Adelphi, aren't you? I mean, it's a time-consuming job. You're not married. Do you have a girlfriend?' Cross asked.
'Not at the moment, no. I don't have time; I'm always working.'
'Would it be fair to say that you did more than your share of the work? I mean you and Alex own the restaurant jointly, but it seems to me you carry the heavy load.'
'Maybe.'
'All the orders and invoices in your office were signed by you. The staff rota was in your handwriting. The reservations book is the same. And you double up as chef, Maître D'.'
'People like to see the owner. They like to build up a relationship.'
'Which is fine as long as the owner is there, or should I say, owners. Alex was spending less and less time at the restaurant, what with his cycling and his other extra-curricular activities. Was he not? The training for the race was always in the evenings, after everyone else had finished work. But for you and Alex that was one of the busiest periods of the day.'
'He'd make up for it at lunch service,' said Kostas.
'But going back to my original point: it wasn't exactly a fifty-fifty partnership, was it?'
'Less so recently, yeah. But I didn't have a problem with it. I enjoy what I do. Maybe a little more than Alex. I enjoy cooking and serving food for people.'
'Was it why he bought you the cars? To make up for it.'
'A bit, yeah, but now it looks like he paid for them, well, the deposits and the payments, with his dodgy money,' he said. 'Ironic really. You know what I just found out? The debt on the cars doesn't disappear with his death – it carries on.'
'It becomes the responsibility of the estate and the executor,' Cross affirmed.
'That's the problem, isn't it? What if there is no estate? I'm now lumbered with paying off two cars I never wanted in the first place.'
'Talk to the lender or car financier. They may well take Alex's car back off you as they're relatively new, but I think you may be stuck with yours. Still, not a bad car to be "lumbered" with.'
There was a lengthy pause.
'Would you like to go through the drugs you brought in and keep any that might be legitimate? By that, I mean not actually illegal?' asked Cross.
'No, just get rid of them, thanks. We done here?'
'We are.' Kostas got up and offered his hand to Cross. Ottey stepped in and offered her hand.
'Thanks for coming in, Kostas; we'll be in touch,' she said. Cross had gone back to his notepad and was diligently making notes. Kostas walked to the door and opened it. Cross looked up.
'Oh, one other thing. What do you know about Hellenic?'
'Hellenic? Hellenic what?'
'It's a holding company operates out of Athens.'
'Never heard of it. Should I?' he said.
'Not necessarily,' Cross replied, and went back to his pad. Kostas looked at Ottey, presumably wanting to know if it was still okay for him to go. She smiled, which he took as an indication that he could, and left. She sat back down and looked at Cross. He never wrote things on his pad to give the impression that he was finished with someone, that their meeting was over. It was because he laid great store by contemporaneous notes. He wanted to get his thoughts on paper so he could refer to his initial reactions later, when they were less fresh and instinctive. She waited for him to finish, but when he did he closed his file, picked up the table and left.
'For fuck's sake,' she said, and followed him.
'As a rule, when you are writing something in your notes and I stay in the room, it's because I'm expecting there to be a conversation about what has just happened,' she said as she walked into his office.
'Then you should say so. How am I supposed to intuit that you want to speak?' he said.
'It's not just me; it’s what people do. They have just done something together and if one of them is occupied at the end of it and the other waits, the implication is that they expect to discuss whatever has just happened,' she said,
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'Right, I shall bear that in mind.'
'If you could, I'd be very grateful.'
'Well, as I just said, I will know next time,' he said.
'Which is what you said last time,' she replied. He looked at her, not really knowing what to say, so she went on. 'I get it. These things don't occur to you naturally like they do with other people, and it's an effort for you to think about it. But I would appreciate the effort.'
'Of course, and I shall attempt to make such an effort,' he said.
'Thank you. So Kostas – nothing really there?'
'On the contrary...' He stopped abruptly, aware that this kind of contradiction annoyed other people, and bearing in mind what had just transpired, he knew to tread carefully.
'So, what’s your thinking?' she asked.
'Like everyone else in this case, he's holding something back. I'm curious as to why he felt the need to bring Alex's drugs in. Why not just destroy them? Why the need to even tell us?'
'Because he thought it was the right thing to do?' she suggested.
'Or because he's trying to steer us away from something else. To keep us thinking Alex's death was something to do with the drugs?'
'Why would he do that?'
'As yet, I don't know.'
'Why did you ask him about Hellenic?'
'Because I discovered something when I was looking through Alex's emails. Kostas claims to know nothing about them and yet he was copied in on an email Alex sent to their lawyer Theo Doukas.'
'When was this?'
'Two months ago.'
'Which is, what, four months after Alex turned down the bank and said London was off?' she thought out loud.
'Exactly. So Alex was going ahead, with sole financing from Hellenic and, it would appear, the support of his brother.'
'You think Kostas was involved in the London expansion?'
'I know he was. We just need to piece the narrative together. Why is he lying about it?'
She wanted to know why he hadn't asked the chef about this in the meeting, but she wasn't in the mood to worship at the altar of Cross' investigative process that morning. The fact was that Cross often wanted to know why he was being lied to, before he alerted the person in question to the fact that he was aware of their mendacity. The more he allowed them to maintain their false front, or story, the more it inculcated a sense of security on their part, which he would later rip away mercilessly. He always wanted to know why, because he wanted them to realise, when they discovered he was aware of it, that he also knew why. This, in turn, made them alarmed at the prospect of how much more he might know. Did he know the full story? Would it be better to come out with it now? It implied that he was in possession of more facts than, at times, he actually was. With Kostas, he knew he wasn't involved in his brother's demise, but he felt that whatever Kostas was shy about sharing might well be pertinent to the case.
Chapter 20
Cross had asked a Greek-speaking detective to get hold of the police in Athens and see if he could glean any information about Hellenic Holdings and Angelo Sokratis. He'd also got in touch with a contact in GCHQ and asked whether Hellenic was on their radar. Toby Fletcher's wife had been murdered a few years before in their home just outside Bristol. Cross had been the lead detective on the case. Toby had been initially sceptical about this West Country detective's abilities, and thought the secret service, that is to say people he knew in MI5, would be able to solve the appalling tragedy more quickly than Cross. There had been a lot of territorial posturing by those above Cross, including Carson, while he just quietly got on and investigated. Ottey thought that Carson couldn't believe his luck in having actual dealings with MI5. But in his usual, methodical way, Cross solved the case with some speed.
Fletcher was both impressed and grateful, and told Cross that if he could ever help with anything, he would be delighted to. There was also a female operative from MI5, Michelle, a university friend of Fletcher's, who had been intrigued by Cross' instincts and doggedness. She told him on one occasion that he would've made a great spy. Anyone else might have been really pleased by what was, essentially, the highest praise from someone inside MI5. He had responded that he didn't have a sufficient capacity for deceit or indeed a skewed enough moral compass to have been a great spy. This unintended insult endeared him to her even more, to the extent that she had been in touch no fewer than three times in relation to terrorist threats in the South West for his advice and help. No-one knew this in the department, as he hadn't shared it. But it explained how he sometimes had access to precious information that other detectives simply had no idea, even where to start to mine such gold.
A dossier on Angelo came back from Athens. He seemed to have started off as a legitimate businessman in Greece with interests in property and tourism. Once the most eligible bachelor in Greece, he had caused consternation a couple of years before by coming out. He and his partner had since been great advocates for same-sex marriage. Then, when they realised it was an impossibility in Greece at the time, they had spent their time campaigning for the equivalent of civil partnerships for couples of the same sex in their native country. However, they were still encountering fairly widespread opposition. Angelo had made a foray into construction a decade ago and suffered for it with the downturn and crisis in the Greek economy. Then he turned his attention outside of Greece. Again without much success.
But, according to the police, this man had money to lose – to an extent. When things got truly difficult he turned his attention to turning a profit from various illegal ventures. This interested Cross, because this man presumably had enough money, like his siblings, to live a life of luxury and not even have to work. But that wasn't for him. His major success, for which he was currently under investigation in Greece, was a large, pan-European, money-laundering business. A bit of an Anglophile, he made several trips over here seeking investments. But with laundering money came the associated problems. He was now linked to several murders in Greece, as well as a major drug-trafficking network. But there was also a strange philanthropic side to this man. He'd donated thousands of Euros to help the refugee crisis in Lesbos. It was an ethical nightmare for Greek politicians, as he lobbied for various causes and tried to make political donations. His reputation was now such that his donations were rebuffed. Politicians didn't want their reputations tarnished. But according to the police, Sokratis found a way round this, and the politicians were happy to take his money then, as long as no-one knew about it. It was fairly safe to assume, therefore, that this man had some influence in Greek political circles.
Hellenic was also on Toby and Michelle's radar. Angelo had been making several attempts, without success, to establish his laundering operation in the UK. He'd toyed with the idea of buying a country pile somewhere in the South West – even going as far as to look at a couple. The word was that he wanted to settle here so that he could marry his long-time partner. But he discovered that there was as much interest from the police in his business here as there had been back home. He had a reputation for stealthy corruption on a huge level, to oil the wheels of his operation in Greece. Cross wondered whether he'd come to the conclusion that there was maybe less use for that skill set in the UK – not that Cross believed that was necessarily the case. Also, if he lived in the UK he would attract the interest of the authorities here and therefore have two police forces monitoring his every move. Twice as much chance of getting caught, maybe.
Mackenzie had taken it upon herself to look into Tony Franopoulos and his business. As well as his wholesale supplier, he had a small but respectable property portfolio and several investments in other local companies. He was a big noise in the Bristol and Bath Greek community. He was on the board of trustees of some Greek charities and was a regular church-goer. But his reputation was fairly evenly divided between sainthood and the devil, because he'd got into the loan business few years before. It had started accidentally, but demand was such that he found himself able to charge extortionate inter
est rates and get away with them. But such a business inevitably flirted with the illegal in one obvious way. Enforcement. After all, what could you do if someone didn't pay up? Initially he'd taken businesses, or parts of businesses, as collateral. But with several of them it wasn't too long before he discovered why the owners had needed to borrow from him in the first place, and as a result they went belly-up, despite his efforts.
He got hold of a couple of good ones, though, where the money had been needed to settle gambling debts. Then the money borrowed had itself been gambled, in the belief that the next one was a "sure thing" and would solve all their problems. He had acquired a car dealership and taxi company in this way. The latter had done particularly well for him. He'd come up with a not completely original idea, admittedly, of it being a female-drivers-only cab company. It was for this very reason that he'd managed to fight off the threat of Uber – although he had lost business to them, of course. He'd acquired a computer programming company, which he then tasked to come up with an app to hire his women-only cabs way before the arrival of Uber, so his clientele were already used to ordering their cabs through an app. This was another reason his company stood up to Uber so well.
But it was the family business he'd inherited, the fruit and veg wholesale business, that was his main love. He embraced organic a long time before his competitors, and a few years earlier had realised there was a whole market he was neglecting – home delivery. Up until then the business had been entirely business to business – he only supplied restaurants, hospitals and large corporations. He was ignoring the single customer. The customer at home. So he set up an online delivery business. He did so well that he ended up buying a couple of farms in Somerset that were struggling. He told them what he wanted them to grow, including much that had been imported before. He installed polytunnels and was able to sell not only organic veg, but also veg which had no air miles – well hardly any miles at all – on them. Less transportation costs meant that he was able to sell competitively. He was suddenly at the forefront of a new breed of ecologically minded food entrepreneurs. Mackenzie even found a clip of him on YouTube talking on local news about his farms with a carefully orchestrated air of secrecy. He was growing Mediterranean fruit that no-one else in the country was, and he wanted his location kept secret.