Murder Has No Guilt

by Phillip Strang

  Isaac arrived at Challis Street just before 4 a.m. to be greeted by Bridget. ‘Work to do,’ she said. He phoned Larry.

  ‘Inspector Buckley, Ryan, is with me. He’s done a great job. We’re working with the crime scene team. We’ve got a hair sample, a shoe print, and a possible piece of clothing from where the shooter took the first shot. It could be the same man as at Briganti’s, but we’ll need Forensics to work overtime on this one,’ Larry said.

  ‘If there is the possibility of a gang war, then that’s what they’ll do. The murder belongs to the Irish police. Any issues?’

  ‘Not here. We’ll work together on this one. The inspector’s a family friend of the Gaffneys. We’re off to see the man’s widow.’

  ‘Do that, and then take a couple of hours to clean up and rest. Unless there’s any reason to call earlier, we’ll talk again at 10 a.m. We’re meeting Cojocaru at 11.30 a.m. I’m taking Wendy.’

  ‘I’ll stay another day, follow through on the same shooter possibility. I’ll aim to take the flight back to London late at night.’

  ‘Time for a Guinness?’ Isaac said.

  ‘Buckley’s fond of a drink. I’m sure we’ll manage a couple.’

  Chapter 10

  It was early in the morning in Homicide and activity was at a high level, Larry having phoned from Ireland, although he had been instructed to get some rest and not contact them before ten that morning. Detective Chief Superintendent Goddard was in the office as well. The death of Gaffney in Ireland, the possible forensic evidence connecting the shootings at Briganti’s and in Ireland, were at the forefront of the DCS’s mind.

  Commissioner Davies was watching closely to see how Goddard and his team were performing and whether he should bring in additional help. It wasn’t his decision to make, but as Goddard said to Isaac, ‘Don’t wait for the man to follow procedures, and don’t expect any civility from him. His skin’s more important than those that died, and if there’s to be warfare on the streets, he wants himself clean, he wants scapegoats.’

  Isaac, a detective chief inspector, did not need the old and by now tiresome reiteration that the sword of Damocles hung over his head. Davies was a difficult man, but sometimes Isaac wondered if DCS Goddard wasn’t using the man’s name for effect, in an attempt to impose his authority and to sharpen up Homicide by using the name of another. Whatever the truth, Isaac was pleased when Goddard left the department and retreated back upstairs to his office.

  It was still not eight, and Isaac and Wendy were on heightened alert, an adrenaline rush due to the impending meeting with the Romanian.

  ‘We leave here at 10 a.m.’ Isaac said. ‘That’ll give us plenty of time to get to the meeting point.’

  ‘Where?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘Cloak and dagger on this one. Cojocaru’s not given us the final destination. He’s frightened that we’ll get our people in there before and bug the place.’

  ‘Would we?’

  ‘I’ll not jeopardise the meeting for the sake of incriminating evidence against the man. What’s possibly brewing out there is more important than putting that man behind bars, or getting him deported back to Romania.’

  ‘It’s a golden opportunity. If the man’s frightened of others, his guard is likely to be down. He could say something, not to us, but to others, that could give the courts enough to deal with him.’

  ‘Serious and Organised Crime Command is interested in what’s discussed, and they’ll want a full report.’

  ‘Are we wired? Or are our smartphones on record?’

  ‘Not this time. We’ll meet the man in the pub, but Antonescu and Becali will not be far away. They’ll check us out first.’

  ‘I thought it was just him.’

  ‘It is. Larry met him in a pub full of patrons, but we have to go through this subterfuge.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It wouldn’t pay for him to be seen talking to me, and we don’t know who else is watching. The man’s neurotic, we can’t blame him for that. If others are coming in to threaten his empire, he’ll be weighing up the pros and cons, making sure to tell us what we need to know, not the full truth. Larry says he’s smart, so watch out for him manipulating the conversation. And above all, be agreeable with the man. We’re there to solve nine deaths now, not to express an opinion about the malevolence of the man.’

  ‘I’ll not say anything,’ Wendy said. She was not willing to admit that she was nervous. The man they were meeting had a bad reputation, and those in the area where he operated gave him a wide berth, some even crossing the street as he approached, others doffing their caps, standing to one side for him. She had not seen the man in the flesh, only checked him out through the police records. Nicolae Cojocaru, forty-six, formerly from Bucharest, Romania, although born about ten miles to the north. A list of convictions as a youth, and then, in his early twenties, the leadership of a group selling drugs. From there, a rapid rise in the criminal echelons until, at the age of thirty-two, he was one of the four major criminal leaders in the country. Suspected of widespread bribing of politicians, the police, and the judiciary, a dozen unsolved murder cases attributed to his name, but unproven. His move to England had occurred nine years previously on the election of a new government in Romania; the man who headed it was known to be honest, and he had campaigned on a platform of law and order.

  Of the four most significant crime figures in Bucharest, two had been jailed, one had been killed in a police shootout, and the other, Cojocaru, was in England, and not intending to go back. Apart from two judges and three senior police officers, nobody else had been arrested in the purge against corruption in the country. The honest prime minister had lasted twenty-three months before a bomb under his car had ended his period in power. After that, the habits of the past returned, yet Cojocaru, according to an Interpol report, was unlikely to go back to his home country. A new criminal elite had arisen in the intervening years, and Cojocaru would have had to start afresh, to forge new contacts, to acquire politicians, judges and police officers to protect him.

  Wendy put down the report and focussed on the current day. Larry phoned again, spoke to Isaac. The conversation was brief, and Isaac made no comment when he came out of his office and left Challis Street with Wendy. On the drive south, she asked him what Larry had said.

  ‘He’s just curious, disappointed that he’ll not be there when we meet with Cojocaru.’

  Wendy questioned no more, not sure that there wasn’t more to the conversation. The final destination had been messaged to Isaac who had entered it into his GPS.

  ‘I don’t trust Cojocaru, and he could end up feeding us nonsense,’ Isaac said. ‘Larry’s not so sure now that Gaffney and Briganti’s are related. There are some differences.’

  ‘Is that what he was talking to you about?’

  ‘Sorry. I was distracted before. Alwyn Davies is sticking his nose in, and then we’ve got Serious and Organised Crime Command to update.’

  ‘Superintendent Caddick?’

  ‘Davies will use any excuse to get his man back, and in truth, we could do with some help, not Caddick obviously.’

  ‘Serious and Organised Crime Command will be able to offer backup, more their case if Briganti’s is proven to be the result of organised crime.’

  ‘Cojocaru probably knows by now, although we can’t be sure he’ll tell us the truth.’

  Wendy looked out of the car window: at the people driving to work or to the shops, the school children in their uniforms, heavily-laden backpacks containing their books. Every other child she could see had a smartphone and was busy texting. In her day, there had been no smartphones, no internet, no ability to send a message to someone around the world, or ten yards down the road. She missed those times: calmer, safer, more agreeable. A time when a child rode a bike to school with no helmet, no fear of abduction, and where the mother would be at home on the child’s return after school, as her mother had been. But now, for most of those at the schools they passed, there would be an
empty house, a meal in the refrigerator for reheating in the microwave, a computer in the child’s bedroom for skyping, or Facebook, or for watching pornography. And now, she and her DCI were off to meet a thug, a man who prospered from the misery of others, a man who should not be in the country.

  Sometimes, on the days when her arthritis troubled her, she felt that her time for policing had passed. Those were the times when she missed her husband the most, difficult though he had been in his final years with dementia setting in and an increasingly narrow view of people other than Anglo-Saxon and white. She knew what he would have thought of a Romanian gangster. It was a good job he was not in the car with them as they pulled into the pub car park.

  ‘The Black Rabbit,’ Wendy said as she looked up at the sign outside the building. ‘Hardly seems appropriate, does it?’

  ‘It depends who’s the rabbit, him or us.’

  Across from their car, Antonescu and Becali.

  ‘They’ll want to check us for weapons, recording devices.’

  ‘We’ve no protection,’ Wendy said. ‘I don’t like the look of the shorter one.’

  ‘Crin Antonescu, a former wrestler, violent, and apparently he enjoys it.’

  ‘I’ve read their files. The other one, Becali, looks more agreeable.’

  ‘Socially, maybe, but he’s a murderer. We don’t think they were in Ireland with Gaffney.’

  ‘Any reason why not?’

  ‘They were in London four hours before the man’s death, and two hours after. We’ve got witnesses who’ll attest to that.’

  ‘Reliable?’

  ‘One was an off-duty policeman, the other, the publican of the Wellington Arms.’

  ‘We’re clean,’ Isaac shouted across to the two men.

  ‘Where’s Hill?’ Becali said.

  ‘In Ireland. I’ve brought Detective Sergeant Gladstone instead.’

  ‘What’s in Ireland?’ Antonescu said. He was standing on the other side of the car to Becali, alongside Wendy. She looked up at him; he, down at her. Neither smiled. Wendy could see that his eyes were too close together and his muscles bulged under a jacket two sizes too small for him. He reminded her of a Smurf, a cartoon that was still popular, but without the blue skin, and definitely without the smile.

  The two police officers got out of their car. Becali patted down Isaac. ‘Police business. I’ve left the phone in the car.’

  ‘And how about you?’ Antonescu said to Wendy.

  ‘Clean.’

  The man shrugged his shoulders and moved away.

  ‘He’s inside. Don’t trick us or he’ll not be pleased,’ Becali said as the four walked towards the pub’s low door.

  ‘Don’t worry. No one’s coming if that’s what you’re worried about, and no one’s listening in,’ Isaac said. ‘Let’s hope Mr Cojocaru is going to tell us something. It was a long drive for just a drink.’

  ‘What he tells you is not our business. We only follow orders,’ Antonescu said.

  Inside, the pub was typical of so many: horseshoes on the walls, old newspaper articles and photos of the area stretching back a hundred years and even longer. One picture of the pub, horses and carts outside, the men with their stiff collars and hats, the women dressed in their Sunday best.

  ‘I’ve bought three pints,’ Cojocaru said as he shook Isaac’s hand.

  Not wishing to be impolite, although not wanting to return the gesture, Isaac smiled and offered the typical, ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘I though Inspector Hill would have been here.’

  ‘He’s in Ireland. Seamus Gaffney was shot.’

  ‘I heard about it, tragic. I believe he was a friend of Hill’s.’

  ‘Not so much a friend, but Gaffney had his ear to the ground.’

  ‘Too close. No doubt he upset someone, spoke out of turn.’

  ‘This is Sergeant Gladstone,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Cojocaru said as he shook Wendy’s hand. She thought the man pleasant, dressed as he was in a navy suit with an open-necked white shirt. He smelt of aftershave, the same one as her husband had favoured. ‘You’ll not want a pint, I assume. Let me get you something else.’

  ‘Beer is fine,’ Wendy said.

  ‘No one’s going to disturb us,’ Cojocaru said. ‘I’ve paid the publican to keep anyone else out, at least for the next hour.’

  ‘Why here?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘Neutral territory. I prefer wandering eyes not to see us or to speculate.’

  ‘Here is hardly secret.’

  ‘I agree, but it’s better than nothing. And besides, what I know is not that secret anyway. I just wanted us to meet and talk, a mutual problem.’

  ‘Mr Cojocaru, if you don’t mind me saying,’ Wendy said, ‘we don’t have anything in common.’

  ‘Under normal circumstances, I might agree. But I thought that if I scratch your back, you’ll scratch mine. An English saying, I believe.’

  ‘It is,’ Isaac said, ‘but Sergeant Gladstone’s right.’

  ‘Let me finish. I’ve had feelers out overseas, back in Romania and elsewhere. There’s a group in Russia who are eyeing England and other countries for a major expansion.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Yes. They want to expand, cut out the middlemen, drive up the price. They’re ruthless, and nothing or nobody will dissuade them.’

  ‘This is England,’ Wendy said. ‘We will.’

  ‘Unfortunately, the typical English resilience won’t help you. Of course, you can stop whoever, but you know how English law works, how people think in general. A slow intrusion here and there, the occasional act of violence, the increased level of drug activity on the streets and people adjust. How many people are talking about Briganti’s now? Not as many as on the day and nobody stops outside the salon. They just walk by, their faces glued to the screens of their phones, or earpieces listening to music.’

  ‘I’ll agree with you there,’ Isaac said. ‘But why should we work with you on this one? You’re hardly a saint.’

  ‘An honest businessman, if you want our meeting to continue.’

  ‘Honest men don’t concern themselves with criminal activities,’ Isaac said, aware that he was testing the man, pushing more than he should, less than he would have liked to. He wanted the man in jail or out of the country, but for the present he was a man to be friendly with.

  ‘I’ll ignore your comment, a lady present. DCI Cook, there’s a problem bigger than either of us, bigger than the London Metropolitan Police, and that’s the Bratva. You know who they are?’

  ‘The Russian mafia, the brotherhood.’

  ‘They’re well-organised, structured along the lines of a large business: a CEO, board meetings, lieutenants, rank and file hoodlums. And they’re vicious.’

  ‘Proof, names?’

  ‘Briganti’s was the starter. A test to see how the police would respond, your weak spots, your strengths, not that there are many of those.’

  ‘Insults won’t get you far,’ Isaac said. He lifted his glass of beer and took a drink. He was aware that he needed to hold his own with Cojocaru, aware that the man was educated, able to converse in good English.

  ‘Not insults, facts. What have you done so far? Checked out those in Briganti’s, found out nothing, other than Abano was a criminal, two of the others used cocaine, and Hendry had good taste in women. While I, a man with contacts around the world, know more about the truth than you do.’

  ‘Seamus Gaffney, relevant?’

  ‘Not here. The man was useful to some, but he was an informer. His killer will be found in due course. You are aware of the gangs, the Rastas, as well as some others who are arming up, ready for a battle royal?’

  ‘We were told they were not arming against the Russians, and what about this shipment? Do you know when it’s coming in and how?’

  ‘Believe me, Cook, I don’t want this to escalate any more than you do.’

  Wendy was not sure what to make of the man. On the one hand,
he was pleasant, he spoke well, and he seemed obliging and generous in what he was telling them. Yet she had read his record: the violence, the torturing, the killing of others at his command.

  ‘What do you want, Mr Cojocaru?’ Wendy said. ‘An amnesty, that we’ll leave you alone for the duration?’

  ‘Not me. I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘We’ll not go further with that discussion,’ Isaac said. ‘But the Russians are disturbing. How do we find out more, and where are they? Who shot up Briganti’s?’

  ‘The name of the man is not important. It is the person behind the man, not the man behind the weapon. You know that as well as I do. I will give you a name, and we will talk again in two days.’

  ‘The Russians are not going to be satisfied with our part of London,’ Isaac said as he emptied his glass. The conversation was coming to an end.

  ‘They’re using us as the litmus paper, the toe in the water to check if the water’s warm or cold.’

  ‘Why us?’ Wendy said.

  ‘You’ll need to ask them,’ Cojocaru said.

  Isaac knew, but he chose not to mention it. It was because Cojocaru was the funnel through which the Russians had been working. They were testing him, ascertaining whether he was up to the task or not.

  ‘The name that you are going to give us?’

  ‘Stanislav Ivanov. Check him out.’

  Cojocaru shook hands with Wendy and Isaac and walked out of the door. Outside, he got into the back seat of his black BMW, Becali in the driver’s seat, Antonescu alongside.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Isaac said after the man had left.