Marius

by Laurence Todd

  “Okay, Gary, from the top. I don’t have time to fuck about with you. I know you stole two cars last week. One was a Citroën from Tooting, and the other a Mondeo from wherever you lifted it from. Balham, wasn’t it?”

  Gary White said nothing. From the expression on his face, I wasn’t certain if it was bravado or because he was scared. It could even have been stupidity. I waited a few more seconds. Still nothing. I didn’t have time to waste on him, so I decided to focus on scare. Good interrogation technique is all about imposing yourself upon the other person, establishing an edge immediately, and I had one.

  “Gary, let me tell you why you’re here. Those two cars you lifted? They’re the two cars used in those bombings Friday and Saturday, and one person’s dead, so the fact you provided the vehicles for bombs to be planted automatically makes you complicit in an act of terrorism. That means serious jail time.” I was emphatic. “We’re talking years here.”

  “You’re kidding me.” He tried to sound blasé, but his eyes said differently.

  “No, I’m not. You provided the means for whoever it was to plant bombs. You know what the Terrorism Act 2006 says about aiding and abetting terrorism?”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said audibly. “I didn’t know what they were gonna be used for. Yeah, alright, I boosted the cars, but that’s all.”

  His voice was filled with the strain of induced panic. He looked like a stroke was imminent.

  “Doesn’t matter. The fact you did it makes you just as culpable as the bombers. There’re no shades of grey here, pal,” I said casually, sitting back and folding my arms. “Juries aren’t interested in semantic exercises concerning gradations of culpability. They take the view, you’re involved in any way at all, you’re liable. End of.”

  I waited a few seconds to let the tension build. I could see now it wasn’t bravado on his part. He was very scared. The word terrorism has that effect.

  “This goes beyond ordinary TDA, taking and driving away. This is much more serious. That’s why Special Branch’s involved.”

  “But I was promised protection if I got caught.” He sounded desperate. “I was told it’d be alright and nothing would happen to me.”

  Why would the likes of Gary White, someone so far down the food chain as to be invisible, be making claims about being protected? Protected from what and by whom?

  “Someone lied to you, Gary. Who told you that, as a matter of interest?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He shook his head vigorously, looking panicked. For the moment I decided not to pursue him about this. I changed approach.

  “You wanna see the pictures of the person who died in the second explosion? Trust me, you wouldn’t feel like eating afterwards.” I stared straight at him. I didn’t tell him the victim was one of the bombers.

  “So, your situation is this, and it’s a simple one.” I spoke slowly for the effect. “Either you tell me, right now, what you did with those cars, or this interview’s terminated, and I bring in the desk sergeant. You’ll be taken away and charged with several offences under section five of the 2006 Terrorism Act, facilitating the means for acts of terrorism to take place. There were still bits of the car we could examine, and we found your prints.” I nodded at his hands.

  It hadn’t gone down like this at all, but what’s a little white lie between friends, especially when it scares him into talking?

  “I mean, how’d you think we got on to you so quickly? Think about it, huh? You think we just pulled your name out of a hat?” I smiled at him.

  He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he wouldn’t have looked more surprised and scared if I’d produced a gun and pointed it between his eyes.

  “Someone died in that second car bombing, Gary, so that means someone goes down, and it might just as well be you,” I said, indifferently. “So, your choice is, talk to me and it’ll just be car theft, with probation or a likely suspended sentence if you get the right judge, or don’t talk to me and take one for the team, which means it’ll be a terrorism charge with the certainty of at least a fifteen stretch, which is the absolute minimum you’ll get because we’ll push for it. You’re twenty-five now; you wanna be in jail until you’re in your early forties?”

  This comment produced a very worried Gary White. He spent a long few seconds doing some deep breathing. I suspected his heart rate had now doubled.

  “I didn’t plant no bombs, I ain’t nothing to do with any of that. Honest, I’m not.” He was still looking nervous but was now calmer. “Yeah, I boosted the two motors, I ain’t denying that. But I was told to.”

  Progress at last.

  “Look, do yourself a favour, make things easy for yourself and tell me everything that happened. I know you didn’t want the cars for yourself, so I wanna know who told you to do this and who you gave them to as well. Start at the beginning.” I sat up.

  He did. He’d received a phone call from someone he knew who was something in the Chackartis, asking him if he wanted to earn himself a quick few hundred. “Doing what?” he’d asked. He said he was told to go steal two good-quality motors inside the next twenty-four hours. “Make sure they drive easily and they’re in good condition. Don’t nick no old shitboxes on their last legs. Get something good.” So he’d gone to Tooting with a mate, someone willing to help him for a quick hundred, seen the Citroën and boosted it. He had a set of skeleton keys he’d got from someone not quite legit in the motor trade, so taking and driving away the Citroën was easy; same in Balham with the Mondeo.

  “So, what then?” I asked.

  “I get back in touch with this bloke, told him I’d done what he wanted, described the cars and all that. He gives me the place where they’re to be dropped, so me and me mate, we take them there and give them to him.”

  “Who is he?” This was the big question.

  He hesitated for a few seconds, then asked if I’d keep the name to myself and not tell the person concerned where I’d got it from. I said I would. This reassured him.

  “I don’t know his full name. I just know him as Matey.” “Matey,” I confirmed.

  “Yeah, that’s it. He checks them over, likes what he sees, gives me three hundred, cash, counted it out into me hand.”

  “Where’d you take them to?”

  “Car park just off the main road in Wood Green.”

  “What did Matey do with them?”

  “He calls into the office and some geezer comes out. At this point, Matey thanked me, told me to fuck off and keep me trap closed.”

  “Who was the other man with this Matey?”

  “Dunno,” he said. “I didn’t hang around to find out either. When Matey tells you to fuck off, you do it if you got any sense.” He almost smiled.

  This was as much as I was likely to obtain from Gary White.

  “So, where do I find this Mr Matey?”

  *

  Matey was actually someone called Barry Mates. According to his file, he was in the top echelons of the Chackarti family, responsible for overseeing various aspects of their criminal enterprises. Since the recent arrest and imprisonment of Stanley Simpson, something I admit I was happy to have been involved with, Matey had moved up and was said to have become more important in the Chackarti family.

  But why would they get one of their top men to organise the stealing of cars? Something like this was usually the function of a low-to-mid-level factotum, someone looking to move up in the ranks. Matey had already made his bones, for want of another way to sum up where he stood in the Chackartis. Was he acting on behalf of the Chackartis, or was he acting as an independent in a freelance capacity?

  White was taken away to be charged and then released on bail after being sternly warned that, if he ever talked about where he’d just been and what he’d said, I would personally pick out a cell for him in Belmarsh prison. He agreed total silence would indeed be golden.

  I contacted a friend in the Gangs and Organised Crime division. He knew more about the Chackarti family and its aspirations and activitie
s than almost anyone in the Met. DI Paul Glett had once been in the drugs squad but had transferred over because of his extensive lists of contacts in the underworld. I knew Paul because we’d worked together when I’d been pursuing leads into David Kader. I asked him to keep my request to himself.

  What I wanted to know was, how likely were those at the top of the family to want to get into bed with the IRA? I told him about the cars used in the two recent bombings having been stolen to order because the IRA wanted them, and the order to steal them being given by someone high up and trusted in the family.

  “Oh, they steal cars, alright,” he chuckled. “Half the cars lifted in London and the home counties are probably stolen by people directly or indirectly linked with the family. But they do this for retail purposes, not to supply bombs in. They make a ton of money stealing and selling cars. Who’s supposed to have asked for these cars to be lifted?”

  “Someone called Barry Mates. You know him?”

  “Ol’ Matey?” He sounded like he was laughing. “Yeah, I know Matey. Stepped up when Simpson got put away. You sure it’s him?”

  “That’s what I was told.”

  “Dare I ask who by?”

  “You can dare, but I’m not telling you.” He’d understand why I was refusing.

  “Anyway, to answer your question, no, the top of the family would not want to get involved with bombings. I know Ali Chackarti, and even though there are three other brothers and a few cousins at the top, he pretty much runs the show now the old man’s more or less retired. His brothers defer to him and he certainly wouldn’t be keen on the family getting involved with the IRA. I mean, the family’s not anti-IRA. Part of their insurance protection,” he said lightheartedly, “involves protecting a few pubs where the hardline IRA sympathisers drink and raise funds, and all that, and they’ve done the occasional favour for them, but as far as I know, Ali and his brothers draw the line at bombings. Bombs mean aggro, and aggro means you lot, Special Branch, going after them. Why d’you think they’re as successful as they are, other than by putting police in their back pockets?”

  I was interested in what I’d just heard and saw an angle opening up. “So Matey could be acting without Ali’s say-so, then?”

  “Could well be. You wanna go ask the bastard?”

  *

  Matey was to be found working out of the Las Vargas nightclub on Wood Green High Street, which was now his operations base. Since the club had been raided a couple of years back, and Stanley Simpson had been arrested, the Chackartis had become very circumspect about where they stored their contraband. A raid on the club now would probably only find a few dodgy receipts and several health and safety violations.

  I parked across the road from the club. I’d been here before when I’d come to talk to Simpson about the recent death of someone connected to the club. It was a dump then and it didn’t look like much had changed in the interim. Twilight was descending and the interior lights gave the place an almost sinister vibe from the outside looking in. I would never bring any woman, never mind a woman who oozed style and class from every pore like Sally Taylor, to a place like this.

  I found myself wondering if she was home yet and, if not, where she was and what she was doing. I was still thinking about Taylor when Glett arrived just after seven fifteen. He smiled.

  “Where’d you get the mouse?” He nodded at the bruise on my cheekbone, which was now very vivid; my right eye was partially closed.

  “Walked into a wall.”

  “’Course you did,” he agreed jovially. “Matey’s here; that’s his car.” He nodded to the Range Rover parked at the edge of the alley adjacent to Las Vargas. “Come on.”

  There were about sixteen people standing around in the main part of the club, all men, drinking beer and watching NBA basketball on the big-screen TVs scattered around the premises. I was prepared to bet everyone in the room had made the two of us as police the moment we’d entered. We approached the bar.

  “Evening, DI Glett, you here for a drink?” the woman behind the counter asked whilst flashing a pleasant homely smile. Now they definitely knew we were police.

  “Not just yet, Sonia. Where’s Matey?”

  “In his office.” She nodded to her left. I knew where it was. All eyes in the room followed us as we walked around the corner.

  The office was behind the bar at the end of the corridor. In front of the door stood a lanky, surly-looking kid, maybe eighteen, with a spiky afro and a complexion resembling a pebbledashed wall, who stood up to his full height as we approached. He flexed his arms and shoulders as though readying himself for a fight.

  “Get the fuck out the way,” Glett snapped at him.

  The kid looked nervous but eventually stood aside. Glett tapped on the door, opened it and went inside. I was about to follow when the kid stood in front of me.

  “Only one at a time in there.” He tried to sound authoritative.

  I smiled, then feinted, and he recoiled. As he did I grabbed his left wrist and twisted it behind his back, bending his hand back towards his arm. We walked into the room in this position, with him complaining loudly I was hurting him.

  “Isn’t it this kid’s bedtime yet? Does his mother know he’s out this late?” I asked the man sitting behind the desk.

  “It’s alright, Mick, go on.” Matey nodded at the door. I released my grip and pushed him away. Clearly embarrassed, Mick shrugged his shoulders, attempted to look defiant and withdrew with whatever dignity he could muster.

  “Scraping the barrel a bit, aren’t you, Matey?” Glett laughed, looking at the door. “I bet Stan wouldn’t have had a gormless twat like that on the books.”

  Matey was a big-built, stern-looking man with salt-and-pepper cropped hair and a five o’clock shadow. His clothes were rough and tattered, like he’d just come off a building site. He had the rough-hewn complexion of a man used to doing physical work outside, and his gnarled hands were the size of small dinner plates. He looked out of place sitting behind a desk. I guessed he was mid-forties, but it was hard to tell in the artificial light. The room had no windows and was stuffy. I could see two small CCTV sets showing what was occurring in the bar.

  “My colleague here’d like a word with you.” Glett looked at me and stepped aside.

  I stood in front of Matey’s desk and showed ID. “I’m not local police, I’m with Special Branch. I’ll come straight to the point, Barry. I’ve a source inside the family claiming you ordered two cars to be stolen last week, and those cars were used by an IRA faction to cause explosions on Friday and Saturday.”

  “You what?” he scoffed disbelievingly.

  “I wanna know who you passed them on to.”

  Barry Mates said nothing for a few moments.

  “I’d answer his questions I were you, Barry,” Glett advised. “Like he said, he’s not local police.”

  I took the implication of that to be that local police would be cognisant of what went on in the club, but an outsider would be less so.

  “Did you give the order to lift these cars yourself, or did someone higher up in the family ask you to get it done?” I asked.

  No answer. Silence for around nine seconds. Mates was alternating between glancing at the CCTV and looking around the room.

  “You know Ali Chackarti’s number?” I asked Glett.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Call him, tell him Barry here’s helping the IRA plant bombs across London. Tell him also, because someone died as a result, we’re gonna start breaking up every operation the Chackartis’ve got going on in London, starting with this place. They’ve already busted this dump for stolen goods once, so who’s to say we won’t find any more lying about somewhere? What do you think his reaction’s gonna be when he finds out his family’s now involved in terrorism and, because of that, the family’s losing money?” I said this calmly, with a smile on my face.

  The sneer had left Matey’s face. He now looked like he’d run out of options.

  “Pro
bably won’t be too happy,” Glett said, nonchalantly. I waited a few more seconds.

  “Get Ali on the phone, then pass it over,” I told Glett whilst looking at Matey. Glett took out his phone and began to dial a number.

  “Alright, alright,” Matey said in a loud voice, “you pair of bastards.”

  Matey sighed and sat back in his chair. He finished drinking whatever liquid it was in the glass on his desk, which seemed to fortify him.

  “Look,” he said quietly, “I was just doing a favour for a mate, alright? It’s got nothing to do with the family.”

  “Is that what you were told?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Okay, explain,” I said. “I like your story, could be we leave you alone.”

  Matey sighed and took a deep breath.

  “Bloke comes to see me last week, says he needs a coupla motors boosted and can I arrange it. I said I could but, as it was unofficial, I wanted to know what he wanted them for and who needed them. Told me it was for some guy he’d a private arrangement with, and he’d owe me if I could do this on the quiet, like, and quickly.” He shrugged. “Bloke’s important in the family, I thought it’d be good having someone like him owing me. So I did what he wanted. I arranged it.”

  “This was someone else in the family, someone higher up?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

  “And you’re saying it wasn’t official?”

  “Wouldn’t have thought so.” He shook his head.

  “Who’d you use to do it? Who actually stole the cars? I’ll need to talk to them as well. You tell me the name, give you my word yours won’t be used when I see this person.”

  I was attempting to protect Gary White. Matey didn’t realise I’d found him through White, and I wanted it kept like that, because if he thought White had ratted him out, White’s future would not be looking too bright. Being honest, though, it was probably more of a favour to Jimmy McGlinchey than Gary White. Jimmy was one of a dying breed: an honest villain.

  “Some little toerag called Gary White. I got him to do it.”