[African Diamonds 01.0] The Angolan Clan

by Christopher Lowery

  They had a memorable trip. Jenny coming back feeling guilty, laden with gifts that neither Ron nor she could ever have afforded to buy. Excess spending always made Jenny feel guilty. Some memories in life were difficult to get over, and for her that was one of them.

  As Ellen was leaving, she said, “We’ll do it again next time I’m over. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Just a few months later she contracted septicaemia on a cruise ship in the Black Sea and died in a filthy hospital bed in Yalta, waiting for a helicopter to fly her to Istanbul.

  Ron had been distraught at losing his mother this way and Charlie had been suicidal. At the funeral in Marbella, there had only been Charlie, his lawyer, the housekeeper and gardener and a few local friends, some from the golf club. Ellen’s sister was too ill to travel and Jenny assumed that not many people would want to fly to Marbella for a funeral. A game of golf perhaps. But a funeral? No thanks.

  Such a waste. All that money and it makes no difference, Jenny thought. Her own mother, having gone from extreme wealth to almost abject poverty after the divorce, had been taken by cancer two years after their wedding, which had broken Jenny’s heart the first time around.

  She was still lost in thought again when Sergeant Harris coughed politely. “Sorry, Sergeant, I was thinking about Ron’s mother. She had a sister, but she died two years ago. You probably know that Ron and I were unable to have children, so there isn’t a grandchild either.”

  Remembering the adoption papers they had prepared after the accident and the children she met at the orphanage in Bulgaria, tears pricked at her eyes and she blew her nose violently.

  She racked her brains, but couldn’t for the life of her remember any other surviving family members. “There’s my sister, Emma, but I don’t suppose that counts. It’s only Charlie’s family that you’re asking about isn’t it?”

  She looked up at their concerned faces. “Do I have to do anything? I don’t think I’m up to facing death and funerals again so soon,” she burst out, “I don’t think I can handle it.”

  “Look, Jenny,” Sergeant Harris said gently. “What we need to do now is to go to the station and look at all the paperwork. Then I’ll call my opposite number in Malaga and we’ll see what has to be done. There’s been a death and we’ve got to follow the procedures. Can’t have the Spanish police criticising our ways. I’ll help as much as I can, alright?”

  Chief Inspector Espinoza, from the Policía Nacional in Malaga, spoke very good English, which made the conference call easier than she had feared. The death seemed to be an accident, but there were various formalities and administrative matters to be completed and she was the only person who could assist them.

  He said, “I’ve now been in touch with Sr. Bishop’s lawyer, Sr. José-Luis Garcia Ramirez, and he has also informed me that you need to come down here, Señora.”

  “Why can’t the lawyer handle things without my involvement?”

  “In the case of a suspicious death we need to have a member of the family to help us resolve the situation, you understand.”

  “Resolve what situation? You said it was an accident. No, I don’t understand.”

  “Señora Bishop, it seems to be an accident, nothing suggests otherwise, but I am waiting for the results of this morning’s post mortem to be sure. I will then prepare a report for the Examining Magistrate to determine whether to hold an inquest. In addition, it seems that Mr. Bishop’s instructions are that he be interred here in Spain, but I would like to get a signed confirmation from you before we take any action. I would also like to meet you and talk to you for a few minutes before I write my report.”

  Jenny was shaken. Meet me and talk to me? She asked herself what the policeman could possibly want to talk to her about. Charlie’s death was an accident, wasn’t it? Her mind filled with foreboding. She thought again about Ron’s death. Everything happens for a purpose.

  She started to formulate another objection, but Espinoza went on, “I am sorry to insist, Señora, but you must come here as soon as possible. I can’t force you to come, but you must.”

  So that was that, there was no point in trying to avoid the inevitable. She had another talk with Sergeant Harris and PC Dawson, who then drove her home and gave her a file with the relevant names and addresses.

  The policewoman dropped her off at the door and said, “If you want, we could arrange to have someone travel down with you to make it easier.”

  Jenny didn’t want a chaperone so she refused and thanked her, then went back into the dark, quiet house alone. Cooper was pleased to see her, it was supper time.

  She prepared the Westie’s meal, adding some raw carrots to clean his teeth. Then she went onto the Internet. She found there was a coach running between Ipswich and Stansted Airport every two hours. She opened up the easyJet website and booked a single ticket from Stansted to Malaga, for the next evening, Tuesday, for sixty-nine pounds. The coach fare was only fifteen pounds, so that wasn’t too ruinous. She didn’t book a return ticket, not knowing how long she would be there for and not wanting to risk losing the cost of a non-refundable ticket. Jenny liked to think of herself as a low-maintenance person, not a big spender.

  She called Linda at the kennels, whom she knew would still be answering the phone in the evening. She could take Cooper the next morning. Another tick in the box.

  Next, she called Cyril, who had now taken over the garage business on a buy-out arrangement. He was at home, she could hear music from the TV in the background.

  “Everything is going fine at the garage. Lots of work, no problems at this end.”

  She explained that she’d be away in Spain for a short while. “Just some family business.”

  “Good idea, Jenny.” His deep, cockney voice resonated in her ear. “’Bout time you took a holiday. Relax and get some sun. See you soon. Bye.” If only he knew.

  Her last call that evening was to her sister, Emma, in Newcastle, briefly telling her about Charlie’s accident and her visit to Spain. She kept the call as short as possible, not wanting to get onto the subject of the investigation into Ron’s death.

  Emma was understandingly sympathetic, but said she couldn’t come down to see her before she left. She was going up to Edinburgh to do a book signing the next day. She put the phone down and went back to picking up her teenage son’s clothes from his bedroom floor. She wished she could have done something to help. Jenny was going through a difficult period.

  Several more calls would be needed the next morning to cancel her hairdresser and therapists’ appointments, some gym sessions and a tennis game. Jenny wasn’t at all happy about this. She didn’t know what she’d find in Spain and she didn’t like not knowing things.

  Cooper was ready for his walk, so she spent half an hour leading him around the park, a plastic poop bag in her hand, trying to sort out her confused mind. After the trauma of Ron’s death and the months of anguish and unanswered questions, she had finally started to get her life under control again. A simplified version, with no complicated relationships. Just the pieces she could manage herself, until she could cope with new situations again. And now she was being thrown into events and circumstances beyond her control. Complications that she didn’t want and wasn’t ready for.

  She shivered and looked around the park in the gloom. There was no one else in sight and the trees were depressingly bare. The evening was freezing cold, just like Charlie’s body by now.

  NINE

  Tuesday April 15th 2008

  Washington DC, USA

  Sonia Nicolaides occupied a small cubicle on the third floor of the offices of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity section of the US Dept. of Justice, at 1400 New York Avenue. Since transferring from the New York Police Department to join the section two years previously, Sonia had been promoted to Senior Case Manager in CAPP, the Child Abuse Prevention Programme.

  She was currently working on six projects in CAPP. By monitoring and manipulating the exchange of messages and ma
terial that the department found, by accident or by diligent detective work, the CAPP team could send out ‘fishing’ material to expose and trap members of paedophile and child slavery rings. It was delicate and painstaking work that could take months and even years to accomplish. But the satisfaction she enjoyed when these sick, murderous perverts were convicted and imprisoned was worth all the work and sleepless nights. Nevertheless, she wasn’t sure how long she could cope with the dreadful, depraved, harrowing images and texts that she had to handle to obtain the proof necessary for conviction.

  She concentrated on her latest and most promising assignment. Project Fairy Tale had been instigated by the fortuitous discovery of a global paedophile ring, probably centred in Eastern Europe. A member of the ring, a Portuguese national named Rodrigo Pires da Silva, had been found dead in suspicious circumstances in Manhattan the previous weekend. His laptop was opened up by the police department to find out what they could about him. Family members or friends who could help to find out more about him and the sordid life he obviously lived. The department hackers had no trouble in breaking through the multiple passwords and protective devices that he’d used to hide the contents. But instead of finding information about the man’s family or friends, they found more evidence of his ‘hobby’, a treasure trove of the most revolting filth they had ever had the misfortune, or, in this case, the good fortune, to find.

  They passed the machine to a senior officer in the Justice Dept. who immediately called the director of CAPP. By Monday morning it was in the hands of an IT expert in their Washington offices. Opening up the laptop was like finding an ABC guide to the most evil scum imaginable on this earth. Once he had found the paths through da Silva’s cleverly conceived filing system, the technician uncovered dozens of files with names, email and physical addresses, web sites, bank account details and more. An Aladdin’s cave of information which would keep them busy for a very long time. And which could lead to a major coup in combating at least one strand of the spider’s web that was the global trade in the exploitation of innocent children.

  The case had been labelled Project Fairy Tale because of the place where da Silva had been on the night he died. A strip club called Cinderella’s, in New York. Some wag in case management had decided that it was an appropriate pseudonym.

  On the Tuesday morning the machine had been given to Sonia to manage. She had spent the first few hours becoming accustomed to the laptop’s log-ins and filing system. Da Silva had four login names, his real name and three pseudonyms. She had mentally labelled the three files ‘dirty’ and the fourth, ‘clean’. The dirty accounts had large address books and many files to do with his sickening hobby and which contained the valuable information that she could use. Her first action was to create an automated reply to any incoming messages on these accounts. “I will be travelling and unable to access my emails etc.” This would give her a few days to familiarise herself with the details of da Silva’s abominable activity and to read correspondence from the other members of the ring. Getting to know the game and the players.

  The address book for the clean r.da.silva account contained very few names, which didn’t appear in the dirty accounts. There were no other files in this account and it seemed that all sent and received messages had been deleted just before da Silva’s death, whether by him or by someone else, she couldn’t discern.

  There were a couple of messages received since his death in the infile, a British Airways confirmation of flights to London and Geneva and confirmation of a reservation at the Hotel Kempinski for April 24th to 26th. The BA flight would be a no-show, so it could be left without reply, but she wrote a quick message of cancellation to the hotel, in case the visit was somehow linked to his activities and might send a red flag to the other ring members.

  The clean account was now neutralised and she started going through the dirty files, her notepad on the desk beside her. Sonia still had some old fashioned habits. Keeping hand-written notes and drawing pencilled diagrams to jog her memory was one of them, even though she found it difficult to write down certain words or phrases to do with the filth she had to read and look at. She steeled her nerve and opened up the first file, labelled ‘Stuff 1 - 2005’.

  TEN

  Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

  Malaga, Spain

  Jenny was pleasantly surprised to have found herself a window seat. Unfortunately, she was sitting next to Melvyn, a rather flashy and pompous real estate agent, obviously doing well with the Marbella crowd. He was not in Ron’s league, she thought, but trying to sound high class, with a fake swanky accent. Jenny was from Sunderland and proud of it and she had never felt really comfortable with people from south of Doncaster. She was a slight woman and looked younger than her thirty-six years, with fair hair tied back in a pony tail. Still attractive to Marbella real estate agents, apparently.

  “So, I told the lady that I had five other offers for the house and she signed a cheque there and then for the deposit.” She turned away in irritation as Melvyn took a gulp of his gin and tonic and fortified himself to recount yet another of his triumphs in the property market, when the Captain announced, “Ten minutes to landing.”

  The cabin staff started rushing around with rubbish bags, checking on seat backs and safety belts. Melvyn knocked back the remains of his drink too quickly and belched rather noticeably. Those in window seats leaned forward, looking through the cloudy night sky as the plane banked over the ocean and started to descend towards the lights of Malaga.

  Déja vu, thought Jenny, as she glimpsed the welcoming lights. It was just over ten years ago that she had first met Ron at his father’s house in Spain. She was staying in Mijas Pueblo, the White Village, as the locals called it. The house was situated nearby, above the Los Lagos golf course. A big old hacienda with acres of land around. She was invited along with a couple she met at the Mijas Hotel during the summer break from her teaching job in Sunderland.

  “Very pleased to meet a visitor from oop North. Come onto the terrace and have a drink, Jenny. Make yourself at home.”

  “It’s a beautiful old house. Have you lived here long?” She hadn’t lost her north-eastern accent and Ron was quite taken with the sing-song lilt which reminded him of his mother.

  “It’s actually my parent’s house, but I came over from the UK to house-sit while they’re away. You can’t leave a big house for long without having problems when you come back.”

  His father was in Geneva on business. “Mother’s in Middlesbrough, with her sister,” he laughed. “Catching up on the Teeside news grapevine. How are things up there, anyway?”

  “Cold and wet. I’d rather not think about it. Mijas suits me fine for a couple of weeks.”

  Ron was three years older than her, but she was taken by his flattering attention and relaxed by the easy, laid back life style of the expats who were present. They had quite a lot in common, since before setting up his garage business in Ipswich he had spent some years in Middlesbrough, fifteen miles away from where she lived and worked.

  She came to the house several times to play tennis with him on an old clay court that had once had a proper net and lines. He was fit in those days and they sweated happily in the warm sunshine and had lazy lunches and suppers on the terrace. A magnificent old Steinway baby grand stood in the living room. Although she hadn’t played for some time, she couldn’t resist trying it and he was generous in his praise.

  Charlie kept several docile horses in the adjacent paddock and Ron, a poor rider himself, took on the task of teaching Jenny until they were both saddle sore and in hysterics at their lack of skill.

  There was a big unkempt orchard full of orange and lemon trees behind the paddock where they first made love after too much Rioja. They had got into a friendly wrestling match, in which she almost broke his arm, before succumbing to his love-making.

  She told him afterwards that her mother had insisted that she take judo lessons when she started working with difficult students at the Teesside Se
condary School. He was suitably impressed.“I suppose I’m lucky you didn’t give me a real beating.”

  They continued to see each other back in the UK, and the following Easter, Ron proposed. Jenny wasn’t one to chop and change. She decided she would be just as well off with him as with anyone, so she accepted.

  Her mother had called her a stupid bitch, Ron wasn’t good enough for her. But he made good money from his garage business and after witnessing her mother’s miserable life as a divorced parent, struggling to pay the monthly bills, Jenny needed to find love, stability and financial security. And, at twenty-five, she was ready to get married and have children. They bought a small house in Woodbridge, near Ipswich, with good views, near to the river and the golf club. Ron enrolled them both for membership. He was planning to take up golf now that his business was established and he signed her up for lessons as well.

  She stopped taking the pill and immediately fell pregnant. Jenny was more than content. A nice house and business, getting married next month, a child on the way, golf club membership. What more could she aspire to?

  The wedding was at St. John’s Church, in Woodbridge, on a warm, sunny July day. That was the first time she met Charlie and Ellen, who arrived the day before, stayed for the ceremony and the reception and left for Geneva the following day.

  Ellen looked lovely in a blue outfit, her hair curled down to her shoulders. Jenny couldn’t help comparing her to her own mother, who, even at the wedding, looked tired and listless.

  “I’m so happy for you and Ronny. Now I’ll finally have a daughter-in-law and a grandchild on the way! I can’t wait to come back for the christening. I’m just sorry that we can’t stay longer. But there it is, Charlie’s very busy.” She was charming to her new daughter-in-law, but somehow rather stressed. Charlie seemed like a man in a hurry to get away, and Jenny wondered why.