‘It’s what we do,’ he says. ‘Infil, exfil, plant the canary in the mine and see what happens.’
‘You recruited him. Put pressure on him. Bribed him.’
‘We did. You caught us on the hop, I’m afraid, getting all that help in so quickly. The lad was on the radar already. We knew all about his dodgy status, and the nursing qualification was a bonus. He’s been a good little soldier. Served us well.’
‘Us?’
‘Operation Plover. That’s my baby. We call it a cold case.’
I nod. I’ve heard the term before. ‘This is Sammy McGaughy?’ I enquire.
‘The very same. Sad old guy, like I told you. No one missed him but that’s not the point. People disappear and you have to wonder why.’
‘And that’s why you’re after that phone of Wesley Kane’s?’
‘Of course. If you’re a proper psycho you keep trophy snaps. It goes with the territory. We call it a marker.’ He pauses. ‘Any luck?’
‘None. I’m afraid I didn’t even ask.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘Always.’
‘Might I ask why?’
‘Because your gang’s not my gang. A week ago, maybe longer, I had no idea about this city of yours. Now I’m getting to know how it ticks.’
‘H has been asking the same question for most of his life. That’s why he’s so rich.’
‘And that’s why you have to bring him down? Lock him away?’
‘Of course. It’s our job to tidy up after people like H. He’s helped himself to whatever he fancies for years, decades, and there’s every sign he’s about to do it again. Do we simply watch? Applaud the clever bits? Help him on his way? Or might we do something about it?’
It’s Dessie’s turn to get angry. He’s on the defensive now, and it’s showing me another side to the man.
‘You leaned on Sunil,’ I say. ‘You took advantage. How does that make you feel?’
‘It’s a tactic,’ Dessie shrugs. ‘Small print. Means and ends. If he’d kept his nose clean it might have worked out for the lad. He’s bought himself some serious credits. The right word in the right ear can work wonders.’
‘At the Home Office?’
‘Of course.’
‘And now? After this conversation?’
‘Now he’s a dead man. First, we’ll bang him up. Then, if he’s lucky, we’ll deport him.’
‘There’s another option?’
‘Of course. In our game, there’s always another option. Thanks for the tip, though. Happily, we know where to look.’
I nod, wondering whether I shouldn’t be recording this conversation.
‘You said two operations. What’s the other one?’
‘Avocet. This is live, ongoing. My masters think H was about to get back in the game. There are ways of turning that suspicion into evidence.’
‘All that material you seized at Flixcombe?’
‘That’s part of it, sure. Avocet is driven by the figures. You’d be amazed at what a decent forensic accountant can unearth. People like H are good at burying the stuff that matters. It’s our job to dig it up.’
‘And?’
‘We have meetings. Endless meetings. Not everything goes to plan. There’s lots of shouting, more than you might think, and Detective Superintendents shout loudest of all.’
I raise an eyebrow, wondering just how rough a morning Dessie Wren has really had. He’s so plausible, so easy to be with. In another life, he’d have made a decent actor.
‘You’ll have that dreadful flat of ours under surveillance. CCTV maybe? People in cars? Am I right?’
‘You know that? You’ve got the evidence?’
‘No,’ I admit. ‘But tell me it isn’t true.’
Dessie says nothing. Then looks away and shrugs again.
‘H is a high-value target,’ he says softly. ‘He’s also an obvious flight risk. Believe me, we’re doing the nation a favour.’
‘By keeping him banged up?’
‘Yes.’
I nod, relieved and even proud that I’ve at last got to the question that really matters.
‘They keep a log? Those surveillance guys of yours?’
‘Of course.’
‘And you get to see it?’
‘Sometimes, yes.’
‘This morning maybe? At that meetings of yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what did it tell you about movements in and out of the building?’
‘When?’
‘Last night. Between midnight and dawn.’
Dessie eyes me for a long moment. Another trace on the sonar screen, I think. Something unexpected.
‘Is this important?’
‘Yes.’
‘Am I allowed to ask why?’
‘No.’
He nods, and I watch his fingers stray briefly to the little scar above his eye.
‘One note,’ he says at last. ‘At twelve fifty-eight. The boy Sunil leaving to go home.’
‘Nothing else? No one in or out?’
‘No.’
THIRTY-TWO
I’m back at Tim’s flat within the half hour. I’m not at all sure where Dessie and I now stand, but that’s probably deliberate on his part. Am I still a bit player in this little drama, an innocent bystander who needs the comfort of an encircling arm? Or have I become a suspect in my own right? To both questions I have no answer, but in a way that no longer matters. For the first time, like Captain MacWhirr, I think I might have glimpsed a way of surviving this typhoon.
Sunil is pleased I’ve come back. He asks again how long I think he may be staying here.
‘For a while, I’m afraid. You’ve really made up your mind? About going home?’
He nods, and when I ask him whether he has any money, he says yes. He has a little saved up, not much, but it’s all in the place where he’s living.
‘Don’t go there. Don’t be tempted. Here.’ I give him all the money I’ve got in my purse to cover any emergencies that might crop up. It comes to less than forty pounds. He takes the money with some reluctance but when I ask him for another shopping list, he shakes his head, says he’s got plenty enough to get by.
I nod, holding his gaze, hopelessly aware of how much guilt we share. On his part for ratting us out. And now, on mine, for adding him to Operation Avocet’s arrest list. Ghosting him away under lockdown won’t be easy – no ferries, no planes – but I know I have to find a way.
‘We need to be patient, Sunil.’ I give him a hug. ‘But I’m guessing you’re good at that.’
I return to Southsea Common and pick up Tony Morse’s car. It’s a ten-minute drive through largely empty streets, and then out along the spur motorway that loops across the upper harbour. Port Solent is a little pocket of masts and apartment buildings tucked into a corner on the mainland. I park up and retrace my steps to the nursing agency. Mr Wu, it turns out, is up at the hospital just now, but when I explain what I’m after, the receptionist lifts a phone.
Zophia is Mr Wu’s Director of Operations. She handles all the day-to-day financial stuff and helps him stay abreast of what she calls ‘the bigger picture’. Like many of the nurses, she’s Polish, a big, handsome woman with an air of easy command. She insists on brewing us both a pot of fresh coffee, and cheerfully admits that business has never been so good.
‘Nearly a hundred nurses,’ she tells me, ‘and every one of them employed. Mr Wu must have seen this coming. He doubled the staff after Christmas, which is just as well. The right people are impossible to find now. If this country of yours isn’t very careful, you’ll run out.’
I explain about the £55,000 I left with Mr Wu only days ago. I’m about to ask for some of that money back, but Zophia is already studying our account on her PC. I watch her eyes as she scrolls through entry after entry, an interminable list of line items that hauled H back from the near-dead. Finally, a blur of keystrokes produces a figure. Then she frowns.
‘You want a last deep-clea
n?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Then we owe you twelve thousand, one hundred and twelve pounds.’ She looks up. ‘And the patient? Am I allowed to ask?’
‘Fighting fit.’ I’m on my feet already. ‘Thanks to you.’
We agree that she’ll transfer the money into one of H’s business accounts, and I promise to phone with the details. On my way out through reception, I linger briefly beside the desk.
The receptionist is gazing at her PC screen.
‘You remember I mentioned a yacht when I was last here?’
‘Agincourt,’ she says at once. ‘Dennis Mortimer.’
‘You know him?’
‘I looked him up when you’d gone.’
‘You wouldn’t have any contact details by any chance?’
‘Playfair Construction.’ She’s back to the PC screen already. ‘Google it.’
Curiosity takes me along the edge of the marina to the pontoon near the entrance where Agincourt is berthed. My memories of her earlier namesake are sketchy, a tribute to H’s margaritas down in Antibes, but the moment I’m close enough, I know that this latest trophy buy is bigger, sleeker, and even whiter than the last one.
Back in Tony Morse’s BMW, I Google Playfair Construction. The website is nicely designed, quietly boastful, and showcases completed projects, chiefly in Reading and Basingstoke. These properties are modest commercial units, artfully sited, and come with state-of-the-art security, plus a whole list of other must-have gizmos. A portfolio of premises like these, I imagine, will have brought him serious wealth. Hence Agincourt.
There’s a listed contact number on the website and I ring it, only to get a pre-recorded message about Covid, lockdown, and the regrettable suspension of normal service. I’m about to hang up when a woman’s voice cuts in.
‘Justin? Is that you?’
‘I’m afraid not. I’m after Dennis Mortimer. Might he be there?’
‘You’ve come through to his direct line, God knows how. Who are you?’
I give her my name and wait to see where it gets me. Then comes a muttered conversation in the background, and – abruptly – a new voice on the line.
‘Enora? Enora Andressen?’ This is a voice I remember, Pompey-rough, full of mischief. H used to call him Den.
‘The same,’ I say.
‘Still at it?’
‘At what?’
‘Hooking all those punters? We had a little film festival, back last year. I’d found a buyer for the old boat and we wanted to give her a proper send-off and so we laid hands on a couple of DVDs and pushed off for the weekend.’ He names a couple of my more commercial films and then laughs. ‘The missus wasn’t amused but we had some of the Antibes crowd on board so who cares. Tooled around the Isle of Wight all weekend, and then got wrecked in Yarmouth. Quality movies. Great outing. What can I do for you?’
I explain briefly about H and confirm that he seems to be on the mend. This appears to be good news.
‘I tried to get hold of him last year but he’s a hard bugger to nail down. Shame. He’d have loved that weekend. So why the call? Que pasa?’
I tell him it’s hard to explain on the phone. Maybe a meet?
‘No problema.’ He gives me another number. ‘We’re at home at the moment. Bosham. Ring any bells? Lovely spot. Nice view of the harbour. Come to lunch one day. We’re on lockdown at the moment, but no one’s watching.’
Agincourt. Antibes. I put my phone to one side, bits of that evening beginning to swim up through the silt that is my memory. Dennis Mortimer, according to H, had always been a reliable client when it came to quality cocaine, and threw wild parties at his Craneswater mansion as his business career went from strength to strength. He worked hard, and played even harder, and H – who always had an eye for phonies – thought the world of him. In return, Den relished his arm’s-length rapport with Pompey’s demi-monde, and made a quiet investment or two which served both men extremely well. Hence his invite to H to join the cruise down to Antibes, and hence – two decades later – his warmth on the phone.
My next call goes to Jessie, at Flixcombe. I tell her about the rebate on the agency fees and give her the contact details so she can sort out the BACS transfer herself.
‘And Malo?’ she asks.
‘He’s back with us, Jess.’
‘In that flat?’
‘Yes.’
‘That must be nice.’
Nice? I’m staring at the phone. Either she’s being wildly ironic, or she simply can’t imagine the squalor of the place, plus the added challenge of trying to keep H in one piece. The latter, I suspect, probably hits the mark, and I end the conversation with a promise to get H home safe.
‘No hurry,’ she says. ‘Apart from the Filth, it’s been really peaceful down here.’
THIRTY-THREE
Tony Morse, when I make it to Craneswater, is a little better. I park on the street outside his villa, and raise him on the phone. It’s early afternoon now. Last night’s rain has gone, the clouds have parted, and it’s a truly glorious day. There’s a softness in the air, and I can taste the sea in the fitful breeze.
‘I’m in the garden, my darling. Take the path round the side of the house. The summerhouse is made for convalescents like me. Corinne has even found a plaid blanket. Can you believe how kind women can be?’
I lock the car and follow his directions. The summerhouse looks new, a testament to the earning power of talented defence solicitors, and Tony – exactly as billed – is sitting in a wicker chaise, reading a copy of The Times. He has a cheroot in one hand, and a glass of what looks like brandy in the other. He glances up at my approach and shades his eyes against the glare of the sun.
I stop the regulation two metres away and dangle the keys to his BMW.
‘I’ve brought it back,’ I tell him. ‘I can’t thank you enough.’
‘My pleasure, my darling. German engineering? Never lets you down.’
‘I meant the exemption certificate. It spared me a great deal of bother.’
‘You were pretending to be me?’
‘I was pretending to work for you. Next time I have to audition for a legal secretary, I’ll knock it out of the park.’
He finds this news amusing. Corinne has appeared with one of those chairs you take on camping expeditions. She unfolds it, and then asks me whether I want full sun.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘And a little Armagnac? Just to be sociable?’
‘Why, yes.’
She disappears and I settle into the chair, which is much more comfortable than it looks. I update Tony on the state of H’s health, and I’m about to go into a great deal more detail when he puts his fingers to his lips and gestures at the nearby hedge. His neighbour, it appears, is a Crown Court judge. Best to be on the safe side.
‘Safe side? You want me closer?’
‘God, yes. As close as you like, my angel, but not quite yet. Just phone me. If we need to exchange confidences, best to keep quiet. Capisce?’
Capisce is Brooklyn gangster-talk for ‘get it?’ and has recently served as a running gag between me and Tony. I get out my phone. He does the same. Bizarre.
‘Right-oh.’ He’s on the phone now. ‘How bad is it?’
‘How bad?’ I whisper. ‘You know about all of this already?’
‘Most of it, I suspect, but let’s pretend otherwise. Start at the beginning. H is in the shit. It’s payback time for the Filth, and there’s a long queue of even dodgier characters at your door. H was crazy to come back here at all. Thanks to our bloody virus friend, he can’t leave, and so now the past has returned to haunt him. I get the sense that’s page one in the script. Deeply promising, if I may say so. Over to you, my darling. I await your instructions.’
Bravo. I mime applause, which he accepts with a graceful nod, and then tell him exactly what’s been happening these last few days. Tony Morse is the one person in this city I’d trust with my life. Over the last few
years, he’s dug me out of a series of holes, but this is by far the deepest, and so I tell him almost everything, every last detail bar one.
The evening I spent at Shanti’s resto in Gunwharf, my blossoming relationship with Dessie Wren, the efforts of the nurses to keep H alive, strange messages to H’s mobile, the snuff pics on Wesley’s phone I dumped off the Round Tower, Malo coming to grief on the seafront, the efforts by some stranger to get at H, and finally the role of a sweet, gentle Sri Lankan called Sunil.
‘That Dessie’s a snake,’ I tell Tony. ‘A woman my age should have known that from the start.’
‘Dessie’s doing his job,’ Tony says mildly. ‘I could introduce you to some truly evil coppers, my darling. He’s not one of them.’
‘You say.’
‘I say. As a matter of fact, he’s one of the good guys. En passant, he also fancies you.’
‘I noticed that. Is this something you discussed?’
‘He phoned me at lunchtime to check I was OK. The jungle tom-toms had passed the word. Possible Covid. Morse might be a goner. I assured him that wasn’t the case, of course, and we ended up talking nonsense, as men do.’
‘About me?’
‘I’m afraid so. He thinks you’re wasted up there in London. A decade younger, he told me, and you’d see the error of your ways.’
‘There’s something wrong with being forty-two?’
‘He was talking about himself, my darling. Dessie does charm for a living, as you probably sussed. Ten years ago, he took some remarkable scalps in this city, and only some of them were villains. Women I credit with exquisite taste fall for him. Lately, I suspect it’s been more difficult. I get the sense he’s feeling his age. You’re definitely on his radar, prime target, but you’d know that already. Ten years ago, he would have pounced. Now he’s not quite so sure of himself. I told him not to be silly. Everything sorts itself out. Even a mid-life crisis. Was he grateful for my advice? I doubt it. Why? Because men never listen. Not even Dessie.’
I can’t help smiling. This is a tour de force, I think, on Tony’s part, proof that he’s very definitely getting better, and the real clue – the clincher – lies in the pay-off. Men never listen. Not even Dessie. What an acute judgement. Leading Seaman Jenny Wren, hunched over his sonar screen, hunting for those tell-tale echoes that will take him to his prey. Russians? Villains? Me? I’m in good company.
Intermission Page 26
