DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2

by Phillip Strang

  ‘I feel sorry for the woman,’ Wendy said. ‘She had a dreadful home life, and then scum like Becali treat her like a piece of meat.’

  ‘We’re not here to discuss the injustices of the world,’ Isaac reminded her. ‘Only who’s guilty and who’s not. And what about Seamus Gaffney? Larry, you knew him, what do you reckon, the sort of man to make enemies?’

  ‘Apart from informing, I’d say not. A likeable man, but he knew what was going on, and was willing to part with some of it for a price. But I reckon he kept quiet on some things, too dangerous otherwise.’

  ‘Would he have known about Briganti’s?’

  ‘Who knows? We’re assuming Cojocaru didn’t. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have met Ivanov in France.’

  ‘According to Oscar Braxton, you don’t debate whether to meet the man or not. A command is what you receive, and failure to attend is at your peril.’

  ‘Becali didn’t go to France,’ Wendy said.

  ‘No chance. He was here with us, and we were keeping a watch on him. And if he was in Ireland, then he was busy. Maybe he wasn’t summoned to France.’

  ‘Which means he could be working for the man.’

  The name of Stanislav Ivanov had filtered through to Westminster, and politicians on both sides of the House were out trying to gain brownie points by accusing the other of inaction over terrorism in the past, and now organised crime.

  The team in Homicide knew which of the two was the worst. Terrorism was ideological, organised crime was commercial, and money speaks, and Ivanov had an unlimited amount. Yet the man, with no criminal record, freely entered England on a regular basis, travelling in his personal jet, a retinue of staff with him, a Rolls Royce on arrival, a house in Bayswater. To those who would see him in the best restaurants and the best clubs, at the football or the races, he was an example of the new Russia. To those who had examined his history and that of Russian organised crime, he was the most malevolent and foul sore to blight that country.

  ‘Larry, the venue for the meeting with Cojocaru and Marcus Hearne and his colleagues?’ Goddard asked.

  ‘Colleagues? A generous term.’

  ‘Compared to what we’ve got now, they’re almost gentlemen.’

  ‘Hearne hasn’t got the venue yet. He’s on the way, diverting here and there. He reckons it’s a farce, but then he’s not a patient man.’

  ‘What would Ivanov say if he knew about it?’

  ‘The Russians hate the Romanians, and they’ll not take commands from Cojocaru.’

  ‘Bridget, follow up with Larry. Once he’s got the venue, attempt to set up the best surveillance we can,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Isn’t that a job for Serious and Organised Crime?’

  ‘We’re working together on this.’

  ‘I’m meeting with Davies,’ Goddard said. ‘The man wants answers.’

  ‘We’ve not given him much.’

  ‘I’ll keep him off our backs for now. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the team’s handling the case well. Mind you, I’d rather meet with Cojocaru. At least the man wants to negotiate. With Commissioner Davies, it’s a one-way decision-making process.’

  ‘The best of luck,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Don’t worry about me. The worst he can do is throw me out on my ear. You’re messing with people who kill.’

  ‘We’ll be careful,’ Wendy said.

  Chapter 16

  Marcus Hearne never made the expected phone call about where the meeting was to be held. Larry was at the crime scene within forty minutes of receiving the notification.

  ‘It’s a messy killing,’ Gordon Windsor said. He was standing to one side of the ditch, looking down at two of his team in the water. The body was face down, although its wallet had floated to the surface, a driving licence providing identification. ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Marcus Hearne, gang leader, someone I used to meet with from time to time,’ Larry said.

  ‘You pick your friends well.’

  ‘We needed Hearne,’ Larry said.

  ‘That’s why he’s dead.’

  ‘It makes no sense.’

  ‘Is this to do with Briganti’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Larry could see no more to be gained at the murder scene. He drove back to Challis Street. He was not in a good mood.

  The first person he saw on his arrival at the police station, the obnoxious and unwelcome Superintendent Caddick. ‘Bad day,’ the man said.

  ‘Not the best. What are you doing here?’

  ‘What are you doing here, sir,’ Caddick replied. Larry could see that the man hadn’t changed: overly impressed with his own importance, incompetent without equal. The man was a walking disaster, and he was in Challis Street.

  ‘Are you coming back, sir?’ Larry said, adding emphasis on the ‘sir’. It was close to impertinence, but he didn’t care, and if Caddick wanted to write a report about his attitude, then that was fine. Larry walked away and left Caddick standing where he was.

  In Homicide, the welcome face of Isaac in his office.

  ‘Caddick’s downstairs,’ Larry said.

  ‘He’s been in here. I gave him his marching orders. If the man wants to make something of it, that’s up to him. Marcus Hearne?’

  ‘Dead, one bullet.’

  ‘No idea where Cojocaru is?’

  ‘The general area, but it doesn’t help us.’

  ‘Stanislav Ivanov landed in his private jet ninety minutes ago,’ Isaac said.

  ‘To attend the meeting?’

  ‘We don’t think so. He’s at his house in Bayswater. We’ve got people staking it out.’

  ‘Is he on his own?’

  ‘A couple of women, they looked expensive. And then there are some bodyguards.’

  ‘Armed?’

  ‘Not on arrival.’

  ‘It’s all coming to us,’ Larry said. ‘And Caddick?’

  ‘He’s just sticking his nose in. The man’s come to gloat. He’ll wait until we’ve got the case almost solved. Then he’ll be back to take my seat or DCS Goddard’s.’

  ‘We’d better solve it sooner than later,’ Larry said.

  ‘Marcus Hearne, what did you expect him to tell you?’

  ‘If Cojocaru had offered him a sweetener, he might have told me nothing.’

  ***

  The revelation, coming later in the day, was a shock. So much so that Larry had taken the first flight to Ireland. Upon landing, Annie O’Carroll had been there to welcome him. To see her there, a half-smile on her face, lifted the dark mood that he had carried all day.

  ‘You’ve cracked it?’ Larry said.

  ‘One of them. I’ve booked you into the same hotel as before.’

  ‘Not sure if I can stay. The situation in London is fluid. Ivanov’s in the country, and Cojocaru’s missing, as are three of the West Indian gang bosses. There’s a palpable tension on the streets. No one wants to be caught in the action if anything happens.’

  ‘Is that likely?’

  ‘People panic, especially when they are being fed rumours from opposing sides. But if Ivanov has had Cojocaru and the others killed, then who knows?’

  The two police officers drove in silence; Larry took the opportunity to close his eyes for a few minutes.

  Inside the house they had driven to Sheila Gaffney sat silently in one corner of the room. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us before?’ Larry said.

  ‘I was upset over Seamus’s death. I did love him, but he was away for so long each time. I had hoped he would have come back to live with us, and when he said that he would, I told Ryan that it was over.’

  ‘How long had you been having an affair with him?’

  ‘Five years, on and off. Ryan couldn’t accept what it was, just a casual fling. He saw it as love, and no doubt with Dervla being difficult, I seemed the ideal choice for him. He became angry when I told him.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘The sa
me day as Seamus arrived, early in the morning. Long enough for, well, you know.’

  ‘We know now.’

  ‘Mrs Gaffney, you’re pregnant,’ Annie O’Carroll said.

  ‘It’s Seamus’s, I know that. I wouldn’t have done that to him.’

  ‘The full story, in your own time,’ Larry said.

  Sheila Gaffney got up from where she had been sitting and walked around the room before sitting back in the same chair. She seemed to have visibly shrunk.

  ‘It was after the third child. Before that, they came at regular intervals, and I was always busy looking after them. And then a spell where I failed to get pregnant. Seamus was still commuting, supporting us as he always did. I became lonely, maybe because I wasn’t expecting, and from loneliness comes melancholy and then reflection, and finally the need to do something. It was on one of Ryan’s visits. He was always dropping in to see how we were. Seamus, the rogue that he was, and Ryan, a police officer. It’s hard to believe the friendship between the two men, but it never wavered.

  ‘Ryan is here, and I knew that he always liked me, always commenting if only his wife could be more like me, and then it happened. I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t. And afterwards, I thought I should feel guilty, but I didn’t. I felt loved, and by two men. After that, he’d come over occasionally, but he started to become serious. He even spoke of my divorcing Seamus, he divorcing Dervla, and for us to get married. I had wanted to end it for some time, always too afraid to do it, and then Seamus is on the phone saying that he’s coming back for good.’

  ‘Ryan Buckley’s reaction?’ Larry said.

  ‘He stormed out of here, ever so angry. He said he was going to have me one way or the other.’

  ‘Which you interpreted as meaning that he intended to murder your husband?’

  ‘No. Ryan could be hot-headed but I could never have imagined that he would harm Seamus.’

  ‘We’ve proof?’ Larry asked Annie.

  ‘We had never considered Ryan as the murderer. A fellow police officer, a loyal friend of the family.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘When Sheila told me, we re-examined the evidence, checked on Ryan’s movements. His car was fitted with GPS monitoring. We backtracked where it had been driven and found a layby where he had pulled in. Our people went there and found the weapons. It’s conclusive. Ryan murdered Seamus,’ Annie said. She had her arm around Sheila Gaffney.

  Larry realised there were no words that he could offer that would alter the anguish and the shame that Gaffney’s widow felt. He left the house and returned to Annie’s car. Five minutes later she came out of the house.

  ‘It came as a shock, but we have our murderer,’ Annie said.

  ‘What about Buckley’s killer?’

  ‘That still remains unsolved.’

  ‘I should get back to London. If you could drop me back at the airport, I’d be grateful,’ Larry said. He had spent just under three hours in Ireland before he boarded the plane for the return journey; his despondent mood had returned.

  ***

  ‘It sticks in your throat,’ Oscar Braxton said. Isaac and Larry were at New Scotland Yard in Braxton’s office. On the television, a football match, and in the owner’s box, Stanislav Ivanov. ‘That’s the trouble, people just don’t care. Look at them fawning over him, making him out to be something special instead of the grubby gangster that he is.’

  Isaac could sympathise, knowing full well that there were more villains outside of the prisons than in, and with enough money anyone was innocent. He realised that it was a pessimistic view of the law, and any attempt at meeting with Ivanov, possibly bringing him into Challis Street, would be met with a barrage of Queen’s Counsels, all of them at the pinnacle of their legal prowess.

  The philanthropic businessman was how the football team saw him, the general public if they knew of him, but never as the head of a violent criminal gang, only separated from the hoodlums causing trouble of a Saturday evening after a few too many drinks by his wealth.

  ‘We can’t touch him, I suppose?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘He doesn’t break any laws in this country, and back in Russia, he’s protected. Friends in high places protecting his back, him protecting theirs. And now, the man is making a move in this country.’

  Larry, glad to be back home with his wife and their children, having arrived the previous night, said little, although the events in Ireland had unsettled him. Sheila Gaffney, the dutiful wife, a person who caused no harm to anyone, now tainted as a scarlet woman in the press; the reputation of Ryan Buckley in shreds.

  ‘Look at that,’ Braxton said. On the television, Ivanov making a speech about how he was honoured to be the owner of such a prestigious club, and how he was looking forward to making England his home.

  ‘He wants the place for himself,’ Isaac said.

  ‘He intends to run his criminal empire from here. And there’s nothing we can do about it.’

  ‘Any more on Crin Antonescu?’

  ‘He never left Ivanov’s villa. And now you have another death, Marcus Hearne. He’ll not be missed, I assume.’

  ‘Not by us,’ Larry said. ‘His family maybe.’

  ‘Not really relevant, is it? What about the other so-called leaders of their communities? Any chance of finding out what was said at the meeting with Cojocaru? He must be quivering in his boots with Ivanov coming here on a permanent basis.’

  ‘They’re not talking at present. Since Hearne died, I’ve not heard from them.’

  ‘Cojocaru has left the country,’ Braxton said.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Romania. He knows he’s the meat in the sandwich. It would help if we knew the story of what happened to Antonescu.’

  ‘We may never find out,’ Isaac said. ‘Was there a reason for us coming up here?’

  ‘We’ve had a lead on who may have killed Ryan Buckley.’

  ‘Who and how?’ Larry said.

  ‘We checked with our counterparts in Russia, the ones we can trust.’

  ‘Some you can’t?’

  ‘Corruption’s endemic there. You’re either part of the system, or you’re dead. But there are one or two who keep a low profile, take the backhanders, keep us informed. We checked on a couple of names we received from them, men who Ivanov uses outside of Russia.’

  ‘Do you have photos on file, any other details?’

  ‘We’ve checked on the movements of the two men. One of them is arrogant enough.’

  ‘Has he been in England?’

  ‘He’s French, and he’s been in Ireland, as well. We’ve checked with the police over there, and we’ve had our CCTV people looking for him. He came in through Belfast and then took a train to Dublin. From there, he disappeared for a couple of days, probably stole a car or hired one using false ID. From Dublin, he crossed to Wales on the ferry and disappeared. The French police have a lead on him. I’m going to France on Eurostar tonight. I assume you’ll both come with me.’

  ‘I will,’ Isaac said. He had promised to take Jenny out that night to a restaurant, a celebration of six months together, but he knew she’d understand.

  ‘I’ll pass,’ Larry said. ‘I need to be back in Ireland. If he’s been there, we’ll need proof that he spoke to Sheila Gaffney.’

  ‘Agreed, that’s a plan,’ Isaac said. He had a phone call to make at the conclusion of the meeting; he had to phone Richard Goddard. The wolves were closing in on the man again, and a fresh lead, a link between a murder and an organised crime leader, would give Goddard and the Homicide department a breather of a few days before further questions as to why the shooting at Briganti’s was still without a murderer.

  ***

  The three remaining gang leaders considered their position carefully. As had been agreed with Cojocaru, they were lying low for a few days, a house on the south coast, a supply of good food, good drink, and five women, recent arrivals in the country who did not speak English, other than a smattering. Of the five, two had been known to
Becali in the old country. They were there to ensure the men did not leave the house until the all-clear had been given. The other three were there for entertainment.

  ‘It’s either Stanislav Ivanov or me,’ Cojocaru had said. ‘You’re smart men, you’d not want the Russian mafia, and they’d not want you.’

  At the end of four hours, during which Cojocaru had stated his case and told the three about the barbaric acts committed by Ivanov, and that the man had admitted to the attack at Briganti’s, there was an agreement to give the Romanian three days. After that time, they’d decide as to whether the Romanians and the other gangs would combine against a common enemy.

  The second day. ‘We’re in trouble here,’ Devon Harris, a tall man from Barbados, said. Back in the West Indies, he had been hustling the tourists out of their hard-earned money, but with an English grandfather who had been white, and a brother who had permanent residency in England, he had managed to deal with the bureaucracy and to legally enter the country. His contribution to the country that had taken him in: two murders, another maimed for life. And what had it given to him? The opportunity to use his streetwise cunning to build up his gang until he was supplying Notting Hill up through Bayswater and Paddington with drugs. He would have said that he had done well for himself, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Cojocaru has given us his word that we are safe,’ Jeremy Miller, the second of the gang leaders, said. Second generation, born in London, he was a softly-spoken man, his Jamaican accent the result of growing up in Trench Town, a wild and lawless suburb of Kingston, the Jamaican capital. The left side of his face had a scar from just below the eye down to his upper lip, the result of a knife fight when he was fifteen. He shouldn’t have been in his parents’ place of birth, but his father had died after he had cheated on another gang leader in London, and Miller’s mother had quickly taken the three-year-old back to Jamaica. Not that the place was much safer, but the threat against her son was reduced by distance. At the age of eighteen, Miller had returned to London and had used his quiet yet authoritative manner to work his way up through his gang, using his innate intelligence and his ruthless ability to remove anyone in his way by whatever means seemed appropriate.