‘You think the mystery caller planted the bomb?’
‘No…well, no…well, I don’t think so…I don’t know. What I do know is I’ve nearly died twice this week…’
‘Three times, Guv. Don’t forget Saturday. If we hadn’t disarmed him, you and I would be toast now.’
A thought started to form in the back of Vincent’s mind but it was too scary to genuinely contemplate, so he pushed it aside.
‘I think the bomb in my flat is linked to the plane cover up. Please, Kyle? You have to tell me what happened in France. What did you find?’
‘I can’t, Guv, I told you; Mercure would have my warrant card. But look, there is something you need to know. Nina Johnstone came to see me this morning. The airline have dismissed her.’
‘Really? For what?’
‘She thinks it’s because she spoke to us about what happened on the flight.’
‘But surely they’ve given an official reason? Otherwise she could take them to a tribunal for wrongful dismissal. Isn’t she part of a union?’
‘Yes she is, but she said the union won’t support her claim.’
‘And why not?’
‘They are claiming they have witness accounts of her drinking while serving on board a different flight. She swears to me she has never taken a drink during a flight and has asked to know the names of those who claim to have witnessed the incident. They have said they are not at liberty to divulge names as she could potentially intimidate them. She was phoned up on Tuesday afternoon and told that a disciplinary hearing was being convened for her behaviour and there was every chance it would result in her dismissal and possible criminal charges. They added that, given her length of service, they would accept her resignation if she went quietly and then there would be no need for the hearing.’
‘That sounds like constructive dismissal.’
‘I know, right? But she’s scared. She doesn’t want to be prosecuted or incarcerated so she has had to resign. She’s really cut up about it; she’s been a flight attendant since she left school. She doesn’t know how to do anything else.’
‘Did you tell anybody, apart from me, about what she said?’
‘Nobody, Guv. My wife knew but she swears blind she hasn’t told a soul.’
Vincent thought hard and slowly began to feel guilty.
‘I told Smart on Tuesday morning that one of the passengers on the flight told one of my team what really happened. I didn’t mention Nina by name but there were only a handful of people who knew the real story, so it wouldn’t have taken long to find a connection between the two of you. This is probably my fault, Kyle. I’m sorry.’
‘What else did you tell her?’
‘Just that we might follow it up. Why?’
‘Well, we found the pilot; Captain Adams.’
‘Why does your tone have me worried, Kyle?’
‘Uniform was called to a low cost hotel near the airport yesterday. A body had been discovered in one of the rooms. The man was hanging from a rope he had attached to the light in the ceiling. He was wearing a full pilot’s uniform including his identification documents. There was no suicide note, but there are no obvious signs of anybody else in the room. You know what hotel rooms are like as crime scenes: they aren’t the best cleaned areas and there are too many varying strands of D.N.A. to identify if anybody helped Captain Adams end his life. There is sufficient evidence to suggest he did it alone.’
‘Bang goes our chance of really finding out what happened aboard the flight.’
‘Exactly. I was there when we finally caught up with his wife. She was distraught. He had two young sons as well.’
‘My God, they really are tying up all the loose ends, aren’t they? Do you think he killed himself, Kyle?’
‘I don’t know, Guv. I don’t have any reason to doubt it. But, if you buy what the AAIB report said, then he was a hero, saving all those passengers’ lives with his piloting skills. Why would a hero commit suicide? It makes no sense. If you accept what Nina told us, that he was trying to crash the plane rather than save it, then suicide seems a more fitting conclusion. But it still doesn’t explain why he tried to crash the plane in the first place.’
‘Unless it is tied to passenger eighty three. Come on Kyle, tell me what happened in France. Please?’
Davies glanced around the room as if expecting somebody to jump out and start listening to their conversation.
‘Okay,’ he eventually whispered, leaning closer to the bed. ‘I saw on the news what happened to your flat, and I was going to catch the morning flight home, but then I heard that your body had been pulled from the wreckage and that you were still alive, so I decided to keep looking for our mystery man. I mean, if he really is the key to all of this, we need to follow it through to the end, right? So I returned to the airport and began to watch all the camera footage from Thursday. It took hours, I tell you.’
‘And?’
‘Well the problem we had was that most of the cameras at the airport are positioned at least six feet above head height, some higher than that.’
‘And?’ Vincent repeated, not enjoying the drip feeding of information.
‘We had managed to pull a rough image of mystery man’s face from the camera by the departure gate, but his clothes were quite plain, and only being able to view the tops of people’s heads from the remaining footage made it incredibly difficult to track him. It got to lunchtime and we hadn’t managed to find him entering the airport. I phoned the office and was put through to Agent Smart. She told me Mercure had placed her in charge of our active cases while you were in hospital and she asked why I hadn’t reported in that morning. I explained where I was, and why, and she told me to get my arse back to Southampton immediately. She said the AAIB had completed their report and it was not our place to try and disprove what they had found. I talked about the eighty-third passenger and she told me it was clearly a computer glitch on the French side.’
‘Bitch!’ Vincent muttered and then caught himself. ‘Sorry, must be the morphine.’
‘I couldn’t understand why she was so against us following it up, and then I remembered what Nina told me about the man in the Panama hat. I know Smart denied it when you asked, but what if he was M.I.5 or M.I.6 or whoever? What if she knows exactly who he is and what he was doing on that flight? It might explain why she wants to keep the cover up closed.’
Vincent nodded his agreement. ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing,’ he admitted.
‘So I ignored her command but said I would catch the next flight back. I went back to the footage and rather than looking for our mystery man, we started to retrace the steps of the man in the Panama hat. The airport isn’t that big, and whilst there was a slim chance another passenger might be wearing a similar hat, I figured we might as well look. We checked the entrance cameras first, but there was no sign of him entering the airport all day, which meant he either wasn’t wearing a hat when he arrived, or…’
‘Or?’
‘Or he flew into the airport that day, from somewhere else.’
Davies leaned in further.
‘We traced the hat backwards in time. The man that Nina Johnstone named as Scott Aldridge, was on a transfer bus from Charles de Gaulle airport. He flew in that morning from Miami International on an overnight flight. It took a lot of digging, Guv, but our two men flew into Miami from George Town in the Cayman Islands. I pulled the passenger lists of those flights and St-Jean is definitely listed on both.’
‘The Cayman Islands? Is that significant?’
‘I don’t know yet, but I haven’t got to the best bit yet.’
‘Go on,’ Vincent croaked excitedly.
‘Forty passengers were listed on the manifest of that flight, including crew and I counted exactly forty passengers leaving the flight at Orly-Ouest, including the man in the hat and…’
‘And?’
‘And our mystery eighty-third passenger. It’s definitely him. There is a moment as he enters the airport from the runway ar
ea where he happens to look directly at the camera. It’s definitely him.’
‘So we know where he came from. It’s not exactly a name is it?’
‘No, no, Guv, you’re right, it’s not. However, I managed to speak with the authorities in George Town. I emailed them an image of our man and having reviewed their records, they confirmed that the man in the picture checked in as Sam Jones.’
33
Nikolai Stratovsky was led from his cell to a private room, reserved for meetings between inmates and their legal representatives. He had been on remand for nearly three months already, following his failure to secure a bail agreement. He was understandably deemed a flight risk, particularly considering the volume of charges the C.P.S. were endeavouring to bring against him and his nephew, Victor.
The guard patted Stratovsky down as was customary, and, satisfied that the Russian was not hiding any means of passing a message or a weapon, he opened the locked door and allowed him to enter. The guard locked the door behind him but remained outside. Although no set time limit was placed on such meetings, there was a general understanding that meetings would not exceed two hours. The guard was only there to break up any kind of incident or to unlock the door should the prisoner or his barrister decide the meeting had run its course.
Seumas Bastille was a third generation member of the law community, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. He had wanted a career in football when he had been at school, but his father soon beat that notion out of him. Privately educated, Seumas practically walked into King’s College London simply by means of who he was rather than what he had achieved. The son of Sir Christopher Bastille, knighted for his charitable works, would attend only the best the country had to offer; Bastille Snr did not believe in the academia of Oxbridge.
Seumas was not naturally gifted when it came to researching statutory and case law, but he was a talented orator in court, clearly inheriting his mother’s flare for theatrics. Seumas discovered early on in his career that there was more money to be made in the defence of suspects, as opposed to their prosecution. Described by his teachers as ‘work shy’, it wasn’t a tag he had managed to shake in adult life, and he was still prone to doing the least possible amount of work for the greatest reward; it was this attitude that first brought him to the attention of the Stratovsky family. He knew they were a criminal family the first time he walked into the Soho club that Nikolai invited him to. The Russian seemed to recognise that Seumas was weak-willed as he placed a large brown envelope, stuffed with fifty pound notes, on the bar and told him that he would now be exclusive to the family and their associates. Seumas’ eyes had not left the envelope as his head had eagerly nodded.
Seumas had witnessed various clandestine meetings since that afternoon, but he was now in way over his head. Even if he tried to leave the family’s employment, he knew he would wind up dead; it was the choice he had made when he had agreed to work for Nikolai Stratovsky. It was the same contract all of his employees signed; a life of service with lucrative rewards, but signed in blood. Sure it breached his oath to protect the law from corruption, but it afforded him ten weeks of holidays abroad per year and at least two afternoons on the golf course per week.
Seumas was at a table in the middle of the room when Stratovsky entered. He had various sheets of paper on the table and stood when he saw the wily old Russian.
‘Good evening, Nikolai. Are you well?’
Stratovsky sat down across the table without a word and ignored Seumas’ extended hand.
‘What does Robert say?’ Stratovsky asked, cutting straight to the point. The move caught Seumas out and he stuttered as he tried to locate the notes he had written following the earlier telephone conversation.
‘He says things are progressing well. He hasn’t yet found the key witness but he feels he is getting closer.’
‘What about the father? Any word on him yet?’
Seumas studied the notes. ‘They’ve not found him yet either. The source had said he was in the Caymans but the supposed residence was empty when they arrived. It’s possible he is away on holiday, but Robert thinks he may have fled the islands and gone underground.’
‘Give me a cigarette,’ Stratovsky demanded.
‘You know you can’t smoke in here, don’t you?’ Seumas asked, opening his briefcase and throwing a packet of Marlboro Reds at his client.
‘What are they going to do? Arrest me?’
Seumas watched, too worried to question further. He removed a lighter from his trouser pocket and lit the end of his client’s cigarette.
‘Where is the case? When will I be released?’ Stratovsky continued, taking a long drag.
‘Well without McGee’s evidence, the case is starting to crumble. The police officer is still about, and is due to present his testimony after the weekend. Robert said he survived the bombing at the flat somehow, but is probably intimidated enough to walk away from the case.’
‘Intimidated? In my experience that’s never stopped a copper before.’
‘Robert assures me it is all in hand and we don’t need to worry about him.’
‘Is he still banging that spy? Is she proving a valuable source of intelligence?’
‘She is still on side, if that’s what you mean. It was her information that allowed Robert to get as close as he did to the police officer.’
Stratovsky laughed between puffs.
‘What about the Portsmouth gang?’
Seumas referred back to the notes once more, ‘He said he took care of that one personally. We got the money and there is nothing tying the event to the family.’
Stratovsky stubbed out the cigarette on the edge of the table and leaned in closer to the barrister, ‘How is Victor coping?’ he asked, obvious concern in his voice.
‘Victor is okay. I saw him yesterday and have kept him updated on progress. He has taken a couple of beatings, since he went on remand but nothing of a sexual nature.’
‘Tell him to keep a list of names of those who deserve retribution and I’ll see that they meet a sticky end once this mess is cleared up. He is sticking to the story, right? There is no danger he will turn?’
‘Turn? Nikolai, he is stronger than that. He feels terrible that he allowed that bitch to get as close to the operation as he did but he knows he owes you. He wouldn’t dare to do anything to disappoint you again.’
Stratovsky considered the response.
‘We’ll see,’ said the Russian, who had yet to decide whether his naïve nephew was worth the hassle or whether it would just be safer to extinguish him.
‘Tell Robert to keep looking for the witness. He is the C.P.S.’s last chance to nail us. We need to make sure he does not appear in court. Is that clear?’
The barrister nodded his understanding and began to pack up his things.
*
‘Sam Jones? Sounds British, but I can’t say I recognise the name,’ Vincent replied.
‘Oh,’ Davies replied glumly. ‘I thought maybe it might trigger a memory. You sure you don’t remember a Sam Jones?’
‘Did he have a middle name? Perhaps I know him by a nickname.’
‘There wasn’t one listed on the manifest.’
‘Have you got the photograph of him? Maybe I might recognise his face.’
‘I don’t have it with me, Guv. I’m not even supposed to be discussing the case with you, remember?’
‘What does he look like? Describe him to me?’
‘I don’t know, average height, average build, light hair.’
‘Is that the best you can do?’
‘Sorry, Guv, the image is black and white and quite grainy. It’s hard to say more. He just looks like your average Joe Bloggs.’
‘Have you been able to dig anything up on him? Where he was born? Where he lives? Anything?’
‘I’m looking into it at the moment. There are no arrest records for him in Southampton, in fact no records for him at all in Southampton. He travelled under a British p
assport so I have contacted the passport office for information but they said they wouldn’t pass it on without a warrant. I’ve got Emma Jarvis applying for one as we speak. I’m hoping his passport details will give us something.’
‘Have you contacted any neighbouring counties?’
‘Yeah, I’ve spoken with C.I.D. in Berkshire, Sussex, Wiltshire and Dorset. I’ve put a call into Scotland Yard that I’m waiting to hear back on. Do you know how many men called Sam Jones there are in the PNC database? Hundreds. It will take hours to check each of their mug-shots to see if they match our suspect. The quality of the image doesn’t allow for automated facial recognition.’
Vincent was growing frustrated by the conversation.
‘You look tired, Guv. I should go; let you rest.’
‘I’m fine, Kyle,’ Vincent lied. ‘My belly feels like it’s been kicked to shit, and there is still minor tinnitus in my ears, but otherwise I’m as fit as a fiddle.’
‘Okay, well there is one more thing we’ve found out. While I was chatting to Emma about why I wanted the warrant we got talking about the dead pilot. She said the name sounded familiar but she couldn’t remember why. She passed me the guest register for the M-Club casino in town…’
‘The casino where our dead office worker and the dead IPSA shooter frequented?’
‘The same, Guv.’
‘And he was a member too?’ Vincent looked like he was ready to jump from the bed in a Eureka moment.
‘No, Guv,’ Davies replied quietly, disappointed to burst Vincent’s bubble of excitement. ‘However, she then showed me the guest registers for one of the other two casinos in town and his name appeared on them both as a member. It seems his last visit was back in 2009 though.’
‘Oh,’ said Vincent unable to hide his disappointment.
‘It’s still a connection though, Guv, right? I mean all three men were gamblers who frequented casinos in the city. It’s worth exploring, especially when you consider the three casinos have an agreement that members can share venues.’
‘What do you mean?’
Shadow Line Page 20
