“Did you tell him where you were?”
“Good God no. I even used a friend’s phone and number withheld from a point an hour’s flying time from here, he said that he was suspended by one of the latest arrivals, a bumptious little irk called Housmann.”
“Haven’t heard of him.”
“No you wouldn’t, he went through the Manor shortly after you and was placed under Staunton at Babylon-on-Thames.”
Vaughan laughed at her description of the Vauxhall Cross building design that housed MI6.
“A Staunton man eh, well this is beginning to look more like a coup at every twist and turn.”
“That was my assessment as well. We must all watch our backs very carefully from now on. I haven’t officially received the news yet and when my leave is up in two weeks I have been told by the Commodore to stay away until he gives the order for me to return. Let’s hope it’s sorted by then and Staunton put back in his place.”
“I suppose that Staunton inherits all of the Commodore’s workload.”
“Yes, but don’t worry about him, he is famous for dumping the real work onto others while he runs up the air miles to arrive back in time to collect all the glory. He calls it ‘blue sky thinking’ the older group under him call it ‘brown nose lurking’,” replied Lorna acidly. “The only person that appears to have any time for him is Sir Andrew, God knows why.”
“Interesting, Lorna. It does seem strange that without any real team support he has got that far up the greasy pole of promotion.”
“Yes, doesn’t it. Anyway I will call again tomorrow on that number you have there then after texting me your new number you had better ditch that phone. Goodnight.”
***
“Natanael Raimundo de Lacerda, virtually our top man, had the search warrant issued in minutes of my request,” said Ascensao. “He obviously has a great interest in this banker.”
Ascensao had arrived at Vaughan’s yacht at seven o’clock in the morning waving the envelope that contained the search warrant.
“De Lacerda wants you to accompany me and the search team, as you may identify something that will make the link.”
“He is hopeful that there is a link then,” replied Vaughan, feeling a buzz of excitement. “I wonder whether our banker has crossed your boss’s path before?”
Ascensao shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe, Senhor Vaughan. I hope there is a link for all our sakes, for, if the place is clean, I am sure Leonardo de Oliveira will make a great fuss and I will lose my recent promotion.”
“Well, let’s go and have a look and see what we can find.”
The apartment was not far away from the mouth of the river and by the time they arrived the forensic team were already there awaiting the burglar alarm service engineer.
“What happened to the idea of knocking down doors?” Vaughan asked with a wry smile.
“That is reserved for the not so well off,” Ascensao replied, returning Vaughan’s smile. “They normally do not have loud burglar alarms to arouse the newspapers.”
The forensic team’s lock expert had already cleared the deadlock on the door so when the burglar alarm engineer arrived it was only a matter of a few seconds before they gained entry led by two armed response officers who confirmed that the apartment was empty. The forensic team then started their work and, suitably overalled, Ascensao and Vaughan joined them with Vaughan asking immediately he crossed the threshold, “Are either of those two ladies in your team wearing Givenchy Ysatis.”
Both women shook their heads, one saying, “I wish”.
“You recognise that scent?” asked Ascensao.
“Yes, Anna-Maria Ronaldo appeared to bathe in the stuff; the smell still lingers in the forward cabin and the heads on board my boat,” replied Vaughan, “But that doesn’t mean she has been here, it does however raise the possibility though.”
“In here, Sir!” called one of the search team from a doorway leading from the reception hall of the apartment.
Vaughan and Ascensao hurried over to see what had been found.
“We just pulled back the curtain and found this,” said the man pointing towards the window. “Look at the back of the curtain.”
Ascensao pulled the curtain across the window and stepped behind it. “Clever, yes very clever, come and look at this, Senhor Vaughan.”
Vaughan stepped behind the curtain and saw that someone had used what looked like beetroot juice to write the words, “Help get police” on the blackout curtain lining.
“Nice try but obviously nobody took it seriously, assuming of course that someone would have looked all the way up here from the street.”
“Here is what they used, Sir,” said another member of the search team holding up a slice of beetroot that he had just picked off the carpet under the bed.
Ascensao turned to Vaughan, “It seems that we have found where they were being held but where are they now?”
“We need to question the neighbours, hopefully they will be able to tell us something,” said Vaughan, “A few words with the owner of the apartment might be a very good idea as well.”
“I will leave the banker to Senhor de Lacerda to do the honours, he is very keen to disturb those in high places at the moment. I think the recent coup attempt has made him more suspicious of the people in banking circles and the super rich of our country.”
“I don’t see the immediate link between this and the coup but you never know, there may be something,” commented Vaughan.
The interviewing of the neighbouring apartments’ occupants revealed nothing of any interest and Ascensao and Vaughan left the building two hours later feeling disappointed and started to walk back out of the grounds to the public highway where they had left Ascensao’s car. A gardener was cutting back dead leaves on a fern planted in a large pot in the middle of a grassed area. Ascensao stopped and called the man over.
“Were you working here yesterday?” Ascensao asked, flashing his badge.
“Sim, Senhor,” the gardener replied, somewhat nervously.
“You are not in any trouble, we just want to know if you saw two young ladies being taken away from that apartment block?”
The gardener thought for a moment or two then shook his head. “No, Senhor, yesterday I was working over there, behind that building. Please you wait, I come back with my friend.”
Half walking and half running, the gardener hurried away, disappearing out of sight down a flight of steps to the terrace area below. Five minutes later he returned with a shabbily dressed young man with long hair.
“He has something to tell you, Senhor.”
The young man mumbled something and Ascensao stepped forward, and bending slightly, listened intently. “You are sure about this?” Ascensao said, stepping back a pace.
“Sim, Senhor,” replied the young man, quietly.
“Okay, I need your name and the address where you are living.”
It took some time getting the full details from the young gardener but with the help of the older man Ascensao was finally satisfied.
“Whether we will be able to find him again I have no idea, but I think he saw your women put into a dark green removal truck yesterday, around midday, that had foreign registration plates and big gold lettering on the side.”
“Does he know which country the plates represented?”
“No, but he said they were not Portuguese or Spanish plates,” said Ascensao. “He also tell me that one of the women had bright red hair and both seemed reluctant to get in the vehicle.”
“Were they just reluctant or did they really resist?”
Ascensao called the two men towards him again and spoke rapidly to the younger gardener.
“He says that they did not want to travel in the back of the truck and had to be pushed.”
“Did anyone travel in the back with them?”
“Yes, each of the women were pushed in by a man, then before the door was closed one of the men came back out and left the site in a car, whic
h followed the lorry.”
“Did he see which direction it took?” asked Vaughan.
“No, apparently he had a phone call from his girlfriend.”
“You don’t go in for CCTV on your roads do you,” said Vaughan, “So the chances of being able to track this vehicle are nil.”
“There may be some CCTV here that we could check on,” replied Ascensao looking around.
The only point in the gated complex covered by CCTV was the gate itself and after an hour of searching for the site manager Vaughan and Ascensao sat down to review the previous day’s recordings.
“There we are, that’s the lorry and there is the driver. Pause it there please,” said Vaughan. “Tough looking guy who appears to be on his own. Roll it on a fraction, hopefully we can see more of the cab door.”
Whilst the car driver contacted the person controlling the gate he was successfully blocking the view of the vehicle but when he moved away Vaughan said, “Stop it there, we can just see the name of the company on the cab door – Izzard and Sampson International Removal Agents. Right we can look them up on the web I would think, I can’t read the registration number though which is a pity.”
Ascensao immediately started tapping the details into his mobile phone. “According to this there is no such company.”
“Why does that not surprise me,” said Vaughan, “I would take bets that vehicle has false floors and hidden compartments in the fuel tank, in fact anything a well organised smuggling operation needs.”
“Let’s have another look at that driver,” said Ascensao. The site manager scrolled back to the point where Jacobs’ face was reasonably in focus.
“Ex-military I would say,” said Vaughan, “Clean shaven, and doesn’t look as if he’s driven very far to get here, in fact he looks quite fresh and rested. Not carrying any paperwork, unless that is in the cab. We need to know what reason he gave to gain access.”
“The log say that he came to deliver a refrigerator and take the old one away from apartment Christo Columbus 4b,” informed the site manager.
“And Leonardo de Oliveira’s apartment is on the next floor,” said Ascensao.
“Our gardening friend made no mention of a refrigerator being put in the lorry,” said Vaughan, “Maybe that was just an excuse to gain entry, I can see why he didn’t want the women up in the double cab with him, that would be far too risky.”
“Maybe,” said Ascensao, “or maybe the refrigerator was loaded before the gardener started to pay attention. It would be a big risk to assume that the gate man or somebody would not check inside the lorry both going in and out.”
Vaughan shrugged his shoulders. “True, but to do so would probably have been fatal based on this gang’s methods so far, though it’s not that important now, but what is, is where the vehicle went to.”
The CCTV record of the exit of the little convoy revealed the registration of the kidnappers’ car and within minutes the vehicle’s registration number had been circulated. “With luck the car followed the lorry to its destination in order to collect the man travelling with the hostages,” said Vaughan.
Ten minutes later Ascensao received news that the car had been found that morning at a place called Aldeamento Porto Dona Maria.
“They tell me that it was burnt out.”
“And that there were two bodies inside,” interrupted Vaughan.
“How did you know that?”
“Whoever is pulling the strings here would have known that Graciano’s little team have been identified and that it would be only a matter of time before they were hauled in for questioning. Now they cannot tell anyone where they drove to yesterday.”
Ascensao nodded, “Yes you are right, it would have been our next move to round up Graciano’s men. We know there is still at least one more out there, the third man on the bridge that Graciano’s girlfriend met.”
“If I were him I would be asking for police protection right now,” said Vaughan, “Or running as fast as my little legs could carry me away from here.”
“I think we should go and look at this car.”
“Does the location of the vehicle tell us anything?” asked Vaughan.
“It’s hard to say except that with both men in the vehicle it indicates that the lorry had reached its destination and the men were supposedly on their way back to Lagos.”
Under blue lights and two tone horns the journey to the scene took only ten minutes, two marked police cars were parked up together and the scene of crime van with two men wearing blue overalls standing alongside it.
“Who is in charge?” asked Ascensao.
One of the men pointed down the steep bank towards the blackened wreck where another two blue overalled people were leaning into the front of the wreck through where the windscreen had once been.
“Do we need to suit-up?” asked Ascensao, holding up his badge; both men nodded and one moved to the rear of the vehicle returning with two sets of protective clothing.
Standing at the top of the track made by the vehicle Ascensao asked. “What do you make of this?”
Vaughan looked down at the tyre marks in the verge and studied the first few feet of the vehicle’s run down the steep slope. “This car was just pushed off the road not driven, there are no skid marks either on the road or off it and I’m sure there are safer routes to the beach.”
“Exactly my thoughts, Senhor Vaughan.”
“They were obviously both dead before they took this last ride. A bullet in the head would be my guess.”
Vaughan took his time making his way towards the vehicle, carefully looking at the ground as he went. Arriving at the car he was introduced to Dr Monica Quintal and her colleague Francisco Brito.
“Senhor Vaughan here thinks that both men were shot in the head before the car was pushed off the road up there.”
“That is exactly what happened, Agent Ascensao, then someone came down here and with petrol from that can, torched the car,” Quintal replied, pointing to a discarded ten-litre plastic fuel can in the scorched bush a few metres away.
“Was everything torched?”
“Pretty much I’m afraid. We have gathered up bits of charred and burnt paper that the heat of the fire and wind scattered around, they are under that polythene sheet.”
Vaughan sauntered across to the sheet and, squatting down on his haunches, folded it back and started to pick through items that had retained some writing. Shortly he was joined by Ascensao.
“What do you hope to find, Senhor Vaughan?”
“I don’t know until I find it,” replied Vaughan, “But there may be a receipt for fuel or food that gives us a clue about their journey.”
“Okay let us see what we can find.”
The offshore breeze that had been blowing gently across the scene during the first half hour that the two men had been searching had at first faltered then died away altogether allowing the smell of burnt flesh to settle in a sickening cloud.
“Try wearing these, it will help,” said Quintal handing Vaughan and Ascensao masks. “We have removed one of the bodies and found these remains of a note fold where his hip pocket would have been located. I will ask Francisco to help you separate the contents.”
Francisco came down the slope carrying a folding table that he set up close to where Vaughan and Ascensao were working. Taking the note fold from Quintal he selected a pair of tweezers and carefully started to tease the leather fold apart revealing some bank notes and a credit card receipt all scorched and brittle but not completely burned.
“I do not know if this is of interest but it is payment for some food items from the Centro Commercial Supermercado in Burgau. The date is yesterday at just after twelve o’clock.”
“That is not long after they left the complex at Lagos,” observed Ascensao.
“Where is this Burgau?” asked Vaughan.
“Just a few kilometres west of here,” informed Francisco.
“Was that the turning point I wonder or was that much further
west.”
“I think it is about time we organised a GNR helicopter now we know the direction in which they left Lagos,” said Ascensao, pulling his mobile phone from his pocket.
Half an hour later they learnt that a search and rescue helicopter was taking off from Montijo airfield just south of Lisbon. “It should be with us in about three quarters of an hour and we have it for two hours max unless there is a search and rescue shout, then it dumps us and goes back to its proper job.”
“I am impressed, this boss of yours, De Lacerda, has a hell of a lot of clout.”
“And if you mess up, you feel that clout very hard, Senhor Vaughan, so we better get some good result from this.”
***
The Merlin helicopter, painted in full dazzling SAR colours, touched down on the road just above the car wreck. The winch man, running out under the moving rotors, issued them with helmets then guided them back, helped them on board, and got Vaughan and Ascensao seated one on either side of the aircraft, and checked their seat belts. As they took off, Ascensao gave instructions as to the search pattern. The only thing they had to go on was the road and the communities along its route. A false alarm at Salema had the aircraft hovering low over the town centre in order to read the writing on the side of a lorry only for it to be recognised as belonging to a local firm and having Portuguese registration plates. By the time they got to Sagres both men fully recognised the enormity of the task they had set themselves.
“This idea of ours is based on the lorry and hostages staying on this tip of the Algarve more than one night,” said Vaughan. “They would know that the car job would soon be recognised for what it was and want to get away from this area smartish.”
“Smartish?” queried Ascensao.
“Yes, I mean quickly, not wanting to stay.”
“I see, we had better return smartish then and think of something else.”
“We’ve done the coastal communities, can we go back a little further inland,” requested Vaughan.
The pilot turned the helicopter towards Horta do Tabual, circled the town, then continued east towards Buden, neither of which showed anything of interest.
In Treacherous Waters Page 19
