“No, no, the people next door are called Francis. Thomas and Mary, they’re called. I know that’s their name because the postman occasionally leaves a package here for them if no one’s home. They don’t have a son, or if they have I’ve never seen him. They’re a nice family, keep themselves to themselves, don’t get involved too much. They’re not always there, though, they’re quite often away several weeks at a time. I don’t know where they go to.”
I produced Chandler’s pictures again.
“Would this be Thomas Francis?” I asked, showing her Cormac McGreely’s picture.
She took the pictures to her doorway where there was more light and looked closely at them for several seconds.
“No, I don’t think it is,” she said slowly. She peered closely again. “It’s hard to say from an illustration, but I’m pretty certain it isn’t Mr Francis.” Her husband looked over her shoulder and agreed.
I thanked her and put the pictures away. “Do you know what he does, you know, where he works?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“I think we’ve always assumed he does something in the City, haven’t we?” the man said, and his wife agreed.
“How long have they lived at this address?”
“Ooh, I don’t really know,” the woman said. “I’d say probably a few years, maybe four, but, as I said, they go away quite often.”
“Are they away now, do you know?”
“Yes. The family went off early this evening,” the husband said. “I think they must have been going away somewhere, because they had suitcases with them.”
“Who exactly left?”
“Mr and Mrs Francis.” The woman said this as though it were obvious.
“Did you see if they left with anyone?”
“Someone picked them up in a car, probably around seven, I’d say.” Her husband nodded his agreement. “I didn’t see who it was, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t suppose you know where they’ve gone, do you?” I asked optimistically.
“Oh, I’m sorry, officer, I don’t,” she said.
“That’s alright. Anyway, thanks for your help. Go on back inside now.”
They returned inside their house and closed the door. Shit.
I got back in touch with the Branch night duty officer, explaining the circumstances. I gave the address for the premises I wanted to search, stating that the man I’d brought in earlier over the weapons and explosives had given this as his address, which matched up with our records. He asked if I was sure. I told him I was.
Superintendent Lilley thought for a moment. “Right, there’s more than enough reasonable suspicion here. You’ve got an address from someone who you believed was storing explosives, so go in and search the place, but don’t cause any unnecessary damage. I’ll get a fingerprint team and more manpower sent down to the address.”
We’d been greenlit to go. I told the uniforms that in a few minutes, when more help arrived, we were going to break in and search the premises, but I instructed them to be careful and not cause any damage if they could help it. I told them to look upstairs and I’d take downstairs.
Five minutes later, two more uniforms arrived, one with a thumper, the thickly reinforced steel bar used for forcing open locked doors. The lock gave way on the first hit and we entered. I reminded everyone again not to touch any surfaces or handles unless they were wearing gloves. I put mine on and then began searching the lounge, opening drawers and looking underneath cupboards and a sideboard, whilst the uniforms searched the rest of the house.
Many of the drawers were empty. The cupboard in the small toilet under the stairs contained only toilet paper. In the kitchen the dishwasher had been run and was full of clean cups, crockery and cooking utensils. The fridge had several food items and two cartons of milk. There were a few recent newspapers on the coffee table, so someone had been here.
After over an hour I’d found nothing. I’d been hoping I’d at least find an envelope with a name and address for the premises, but I didn’t come across any. Whilst I was looking, a few more officers from the anti-terrorism squad arrived and began dusting surfaces for fingerprints.
I left them to it and went off duty at 12.50 am, after a day of almost fifteen and a half hours, arriving home thirty minutes later. It had been a frustrating day all round, with Gary White’s death, whoever Murray Kirkwall was having gone free, and now the address given for Kirkwall being empty. Tyler Watts had been taken into custody, though hopefully his son’s statement would see him released soon. Had Chappy made a statement earlier we’d have still had this Kirkwall in custody, and now we’d lost him.
Still wired, I made a tea and looked at my iPhone. There was something from Sally Taylor, and just seeing a smiling emoji blowing a kiss made it a lot easier to unwind.
E I G H T
Friday
THE SEARCH at the Kidbrooke house had turned up precisely nothing of any value. The premises had been stripped of anything which could offer any substantive leads. There’d been items of clothing found in cupboards but nothing of any real value. Fingerprints had been found and were being run through the system to ascertain the identity of the person or persons leaving them.
I ran a check on the house and discovered it was owned by a lettings agency in Victoria that rented it out to visiting businesspeople likely to be staying and working in London for several months, and who wanted something more than the anonymity of a hotel room. The agency claimed the house had been rented by a company called Hamlyn’s, who’d presented themselves as commodity brokers based in the City, and they’d paid six months’ rent in advance when the house had first been rented out nearly four years ago. Six months’ rent had been paid again seven weeks ago. A check of company records found no such commodity brokerage had ever existed.
I thought for a moment. The man who’d collided with Keith and Pauline Vernon’s car at Bluewater had given the name Adam Redlands and an address in Dulwich, and shown a driving licence with that address, which had turned out to be a red herring. No such address. Now Murray Kirkwall had given an address on what looked like a valid driving licence which had a family with a different name residing there. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to ensure the people I was convinced were the McGreely family had identities which were hard to uncover.
Both Adam Redlands and Murray Kirkwall had been in possession of valid UK driving licences, and I began to wonder how they could have come by driving licences which appeared to be legitimate yet were in false names. To do this they would need insider help, someone who’d be able to ensure they could get valid UK driving licences. But you can’t just ask for a driving licence. It’s necessary to show evidence of having passed a driving test first, so, if they did have inside help, it’d have to be someone with enough influence to get the DLVA to issue licences to them. This was worrying because anyone well connected enough to have this degree of influence would be buried very deep indeed. If this person existed, finding him or her would not be easy.
I contacted the DLVA, gave them the names and addresses of Adam Redlands and Murray Kirkwall, and asked when driving licences had been issued to both men. Fourteen and three years ago respectively, I was told.
What else about this Kirkwall character wasn’t standing up to scrutiny? He’d said he was a student of Financial Management at Greenwich. I contacted Greenwich University and explained what I was looking for. I was eventually told that the School of Business & Management Studies had a Murray Kirkwall in the department, and his fees had been fully paid up to date, but he’d yet to attend any classes or seminars and nobody could remember seeing him.
Did they have passports as well? Was this person juiced enough to facilitate this? I contacted someone I knew in the Passport Office and enquired whether passports had ever been issued in the names of Adam Redlands and Murray Kirkwall. I had no idea of ages but I said Redlands was probably in his mid-forties and Kirkwall early twenties. I asked her to go a few years either side of this a
nd I gave the addresses I had for each man. She got back to me a few minutes later.
“Passports issued in both those names, but none for the addresses you gave. Sorry, Rob.”
I then asked if she could send me the pictures of everyone around the ages I’d just given with the names I’d mentioned. She said it’d take a couple of minutes to process them.
When the pictures came through, I compared them all against the drawings Jacqueline Chandler had done, but, again, no matches. If they had passports they were under another name.
To travel in Europe they’d just need some form of ID, and a valid UK driver’s licence would suffice. So they’d probably not been jetting off outside Europe. But, while looking at the pictures, I received the first break we’d had in a call from the anti-terrorism squad.
“Lots of prints found but most not in the system. However, we did find one person whose prints we do have in the database.”
“Oh yeah? Who’s that?”
“Someone called George Duncan. You know the name?” “I do indeed.” I sat up, excitedly. “Where’d you find them?”
“They were in the kitchen, on the counter.”
If his fingerprints were in the house, this was all the reason I needed to bring him in for questioning. Yes. Divine providence was finally working on the side of the angels. “Thanks for that.”
I looked him up on our records. George Duncan was forty-two and known to be one of the top men in the Chackarti organisation. His résumé was as Glett had told me two days back, working his way up from doing the usual low-level street thug work, collecting debts owed and administering chastisement to anyone not paying the extortionate interest charged, to being the personal driver and bodyguard to Ali Chackarti, who, with his three younger brothers, controlled the family now the father had retired. Duncan was a suspect in at least one unsolved murder and had been brought in and questioned about the death, though there’d been insufficient evidence to charge him as an eyewitness had refused to testify against him. He had a police record, but for offences committed over twenty years ago.
I was aware, from what Charles Doyle had said, that the Chackarti family were not keen to be involved in terrorism. I knew there was the occasional tenuous link between the family and the IRA, and I knew of at least one occasion when the family had helped out the IRA by doing a small favour for them, procuring a handgun for Dennis Reagan when one wasn’t available through the usual channels. But this had been just business because there was profit to be made.
Bombings were something else altogether. Terrorism, involving the taking of innocent lives and greatly ratcheting up the fear levels in society, raised the ante considerably. This would bring a level of intense scrutiny from police and the security service that even the Chackarti family, known to have several police from all ranks in its back pocket, could not survive for too long. The more thoughtful and aware minds inside the family knew this, and they also knew the family had only survived and prospered as long as it had because it kept its collective head below the parapet and drew no unnecessary attention to itself or its activities. This explained why whoever Doyle had spoken to had given up Gary White’s name. The betting was probably that White would say nothing about who he was doing it for if he was caught. But he’d been put in a bind and hadn’t wanted to take one for team Chackarti, so he’d named Mates.
But who had Doyle spoken to? If I knew the name I’d have more leverage against George Duncan. I could use this person’s name against him. I spoke to Smitherman about an idea and he agreed with it, saying he’d pull strings to ensure it happened.
*
I parked outside Doyle’s house again. He was surprised when he saw me standing at the door, but he stood aside and allowed me in. He’d been tidying up the kitchen and I sat down by the breakfast bar. He poured himself a tea and offered me one, but I refused his offer.
“So, what do you need now?” he said neutrally. I’d seen him so often this past week I was beginning to think we were friends.
“I’ll be straight to the point. I need another name. You gave us Gary White’s name, and that’s been a major help to us, more than you know. Thanks to this we’ve traced him and, through him, we got to the next one up the ladder, and so on. But what I’d be interested in knowing is, who was it who told you the name? It was obviously someone very well connected inside the Chackartis and I’d like to know who this person is.”
“Why, so you can arrest him?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. You see,” – I leaned forward, almost conspiratorially – “if I knew this person’s name, given what you told me about the Chackartis not wanting to be involved in any terrorist activity, I could use this person’s name against someone at the top of the family whom I believe to be the person who sent the initial order down the chain of command to steal the cars for the bombers. Give you my solemn word your name gets kept out of it. Whoever it is’ll never know we got the name from you.”
Doyle poured himself another tea and sat back in his chair. I could see he was thinking about what I’d said, but I didn’t want this to take too long, so it was time to give his thoughts a gentle nudge in the right direction.
“Spoke to my boss before I came here,” I said, catching his eye, “and he assured me, you give us the name of this person in the family you got White’s name from, your son Rory’ll be in London by the end of today. He’ll be transferred down to either Brixton or Wormwood Scrubs within the hour, and you’ll be informed where.”
Doyle’s eyes opened in amazement. He paused for several seconds.
“Is it the truth you’re telling me?” He narrowed his eyes as he spoke.
“Absolutely.” I maintained eye contact with him. “Your name doesn’t get mentioned either. That’s guaranteed.”
He was silent for twenty seconds, thinking about his next step.
“And I can see Rory tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
He thought for nine more seconds, nodding to himself. “It was Ahmed Chackarti,” he finally said.
“Ali’s brother?” I queried. I was surprised. Very surprised.
“His youngest brother. I know for a fact he doesn’t want to get involved with the IRA and any bombings. He’s at odds with his brothers over this, and they’re just doing it because there’s money to be made, not for any political reasons. But Ahmed isn’t happy about this situation, neither is Ali.”
“How would you know Ahmed?” I was curious.
“Him and Rory are the same age, they were friends at school together, in the same class. I’ve known Ahmed since he was a kiddie, and I’ve kept in contact with him, which is how I was able to get Gary White’s name for you.”
“Okay, thanks for this.” I nodded.
I contacted Smitherman on my police radio.
“I’ve got the name we wanted,” was all I said.
“Okay.” He said a few other things, then hung up.
“Rory’s gonna be transferred to London now,” I said. “They’ll be telling him to pack his stuff ready for travelling in a few minutes, and you’ll be able to visit him tomorrow. When the authorities are sure she has a place to stay, your niece Shelia also gets released.”
An almost beatific smile came over Doyle’s face.
I stood up. “Whatever you do, don’t ever let on to Rory how and why he got transferred. Okay?”
“You think I’m a fecken’ eejit or something?” I thought he was still smiling.
He then looked directly at me. Very likely he utterly despised me and what I represented, and I’d no doubt, if this was several years ago in Belfast, he’d have thought nothing of lining up the sights of his Kalashnikov rifle on me. But I’d played straight with him and, whilst I wasn’t exactly keen on him either, he’d acted honourably in this matter. Without his help we probably wouldn’t have found Gary White and had our starting point. When it came down to it, Doyle and I had the same interests. Adversity sometimes produces the strangest alliances.
*
Ahmed Chackarti lived in a tree-lined avenue in an affluent part of Fortis Green. His home was a seven-figure, detached five-bedroom property with a large front garden, and probably something equivalent at the back. In the driveway were two top-of-the-range Mercedes. Looking along the road, it was noticeable his house wasn’t even the biggest in the avenue.
Glett and I were sitting in his car looking at the property. I’d contacted him to tell him I had a name, and he’d said he was keen to come along and help spoil Ahmed’s day.
“Why’s it you wanna talk to Ahmed?” he asked.
“Before I tell you, what do you know about this guy?” I replied.
“Ahmed? Probably less of a scumbag than his three older brothers, but he’s still a scumbag. He’s the family’s chief finance man, controls all aspects of their financial enterprises. He probably knows to the pfennig exactly how much money comes in and goes out the family kitty and, trust me, that’s a hell of a lot. There isn’t one company in the Footsie 100 showing the kinds of profit margins they do.” He smiled wanly. “But just because he’s a financier doesn’t make him any less dangerous.”
“Dangerous in what way?”
He gave me a knowing look. “Some while back, a high-ranking member of the family, Turkish bloke, been with the family years, a trusted employee, was caught skimming off the top. Earned himself several thousand pounds doing this. Apparently he’d been doing this over a number of years and thought he’d done it all the right way, you know, a little bit here, little bit there, nothing so big that it’d attract attention. But Ahmed, being as financially shrewd as he is, somehow discovered what’d been going on. Never found out how, but he suspected there was some fiddling, so he went back over every penny the family’d brought in up to that time, spent ages doing it, and traced it all the way back to this Turk.” Glett was nodding, as though he were impressed.
“Once he was absolutely sure of who’d done this,” he went on, “he had him brought to the club in Wood Green. Presented him with all the evidence of his cheating, and got the guy to confess to what he’d done. The Turk agreed he’d done it but said he’d used the money to pay for private medical treatment for a member of his own family, one of his kids. Ahmed wasn’t impressed and, after hearing the Turk’s story, strangled him with his bare hands, he did. As he was choking him, he kept shouting something like, Why didn’t you ask me? I’d have loaned you the money, you know that.” He stopped speaking and looked out the window.
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