Kiss of Death

by Paul Finch

  Heck slipped his phone out, zoomed in and snapped three or four pictures – at which point someone addressed him. ‘Excuse me …?’

  Heck turned and saw an elderly woman, thin and rather prim-looking, with short, dyed-blonde hair and steel-rimmed glasses. She wore a buttoned-up blouse and a knee-length, tartan skirt. She had a local accent, but it was only slight; there was a hint of education and breeding about her, and also an air of disapproval.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to charge you for that parking space you’ve taken. I know there isn’t a sign, but it’s really only for use of customers.’

  ‘Oh, you’re from the Rope & Anchor?’ Heck said. ‘Do you have a room?’

  ‘A room?’ The question seemed to take her by surprise.

  ‘Yeah, apologies for not booking in advance, but if you’ve got a spare room, I’ll take it.’

  She eyed him again, curious rather than hostile. He’d left his jacket in the car, but after the long drive, his shirt was creased, his collar unbuttoned and his tie-knot loose. He couldn’t have looked much like a holidaymaker.

  ‘We do have a spare room,’ she said. ‘But it’s in the attic … and it’s not one we let out very often. The more comfortable rooms are fully booked at this time of year.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Heck slipped his phone back into his hip pocket. ‘The room in the attic will do.’

  ‘You haven’t even seen it yet.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He gave her his most easy-going smile. ‘It’ll do.’

  She shook her head at the enigma of non-Cornish folk and turned. ‘Come this way.’

  He walked across the road alongside her.

  ‘What’s the building over there on the island?’ he asked as they reached the front door of the pub.

  ‘That’s Trevallick Hall. It’s very historic, but it’s been neglected for quite a few years now. Still, we’re hoping that’s all about to change. If you’d like to come in, we’ll do the necessaries.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Inside, the place was agreeable enough; wood-panelled, with low ceilings, uneven floors, and walls clad with seafaring accessories like crab nets, cutlasses and spyglasses.

  Reception was a small counter in the hall, where Heck waited for his credit card to be processed, and as he did, glanced left into the main bar. Heavy beams, like ship’s timbers, crossed its ceiling, hung with tankards, and there was a huge granite fireplace. A TV on a shelf was running a newsreel about the latest ‘terror attack’ in London, its screen displaying the Newham flyover and its blockaded undercroft, but the pretty, red-headed barmaid, probably having heard the same ‘latest’ all day, ignored it and gossiped with several locals perched along the counter. There was one other customer in there, slumped behind his newspaper in a wing-backed, red leather armchair.

  ‘So, are you down here for a break, Mr Heckenburg?’ the landlady, whose name was Mrs Nance, asked. ‘Or is it business?’

  ‘Hopefully a bit of both,’ Heck replied. ‘Guess we’ll have to see.’

  ‘Just the one night, is it?’

  ‘At present, but if I need to stay here longer …?’

  ‘The room will be available. As I say, no one has booked it.’

  A shout of laughter drew Heck’s attention to a room on the right, to which the door stood only ajar. This afforded him a partial view of several rugged-looking guys in scuffed boots and grey overalls. They lounged on benches and drank beer as a couple of their number moved around a snooker table with cues in hand.

  ‘There you go.’ Mrs Nance handed him his receipt and a key with a wooden tab. ‘It’s number nineteen. Straight up the stairs. The very top floor.’

  Under normal circumstances, the room would probably have been unacceptable.

  It was located under the eaves, as its slanted ceiling attested, and if that bespoke a certain olde-worlde charm, this was undermined by the low-quality furnishings, which included a narrow, single bed, a free-standing wardrobe riddled with woodworm, and a rickety writing table with an uncomfortable, stiff-backed chair. The carpet was old and threadbare, and there was no en suite. But it was clean and tidy, and the bed looked freshly made. Better still, the window, which was arched and recessed, gave him good vantage of Trevallick Hall.

  He quickly texted Gemma, attaching the pictures he’d taken, and adding the message:

  Look familiar? Call me when you get the chance.

  After that, he got into jeans, a polo shirt and a pair of trainers and went back down to the bar. By now, only a couple of the locals remained. The chap with the newspaper had gone, but there was loud laughter from the workmen in the snooker room.

  Heck ordered himself a beer and took a leaflet relating to Trevallick Hall from a ‘local interest’ rack. He settled in the red leather armchair to read but found the info sparse.

  Trevallick Hall is a stately home occupying its own island, located approximately half a mile off the North Cornish coast, but considered to be within the parish council of St Ronan. The current building, which comprises remnants of several earlier buildings constructed on the same site, including a grand Regency dining room, a timber-framed Tudor banquet hall and a 116ft-tall battlemented tower dating to the 14th century, was acquired in 1849 by James Fowler-Horton, 8th Earl of Galloway, which is in the Scottish peerage. Work on the Hall as it stands today was completed in 1855. The Fowler-Horton family resided there until 1965, at which point it was sold to Cornwall County Council for use as a conference centre and wedding venue …

  He was distracted from this when his phone buzzed the arrival of an email.

  He expected it to be from Gemma, but in fact it signalled a sender he wasn’t familiar with. He opened it anyway.

  1/9. As promised. Sumitra.

  When he opened the attachment, the image displayed a pistol lying on the green van’s passenger seat. It looked like a Beretta M9, but that was no more than he’d expected.

  ‘Finished with that, sir?’ a voice asked.

  The barmaid had appeared at his side with a cloth in hand and was ready to remove his empty pint glass.

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ He pocketed the phone.

  ‘Can I get you another?’

  ‘Same again would be great, thanks.’

  ‘Not be a sec.’ She removed the glass and the leaflet and commenced mopping his table down. ‘Interested in local history, are we?’

  ‘Not generally. But I was a bit intrigued. Mrs Nance said something about Trevallick Hall looking forward to better times.’

  ‘We all hope so. The local authority made a right mess of managing it over the last few years. Tried it as a restaurant and function room for weddings and that. But it’s a boat-ride to get there, so it never did well. Plus, parts of the building are very old and have deteriorated. Bit of a money pit, as I understand. Anyway, they stopped using it, boarded it up, forgot about it … been empty for decades.’

  ‘But, now …?’ he prompted.

  ‘Now it’s been bought again. That very rich foreign lady who was in the news a lot earlier this year. Turkish, or something … or Armenian. Would that be right?’

  ‘Not …’ At first, Heck could hardly say it. ‘Not Milena Misanyan?’

  ‘That’s her, yeah. Got lots of interests in the UK now, apparently. She’s turning it into a hotel and casino, I believe. Luxury rooms, swimming pool, nightclub. Regular boat service to and from the mainland. We’ve all got our fingers crossed. Do the town a power of good.’

  As the barmaid moved away, Heck sat stiffly, flesh tingling.

  He didn’t exactly feel vindicated in having come down to St Ronan, but there was clearly no way that he wasn’t onto something here. The package of evidence he’d retrieved from Green Van Man had contained several shots of Trevallick Hall, along with photos of Ray Marciano, who worked for Morgan Robbins, the solicitor, and of Morgan Robbins himself, who’d worked for Milena Misanyan.

  Somehow, he’d squared the circle, though what kind of circle was it?

  On impu
lse, he looked the woman up on Wikipedia. Initially, it told a straightforward rags-to-riches tale. Misanyan, an Armenian billionaire and investor, who, according to Forbes, had a net worth of $6.6 billion, was one of the richest women in the world, but had emerged from humble beginnings. Born in a dirt-poor neighbourhood of Yerevan, where her father was a widowed rubbish-collector, she finished school early so that she could provide for her two younger sisters by working as a waitress. With the arrival of perestroika, and private enterprise tacitly encouraged in Armenia, she and her sisters began selling cheap, imported light bulbs from street corners, which, unlikely as it might seem, made them considerable amounts of money. After Armenia gained its independence in 1991, she moved to Russia, where she invested in farming, construction and bodyguard recruitment, the latter of which led her into arms dealing (particularly on the black market, according to rumours – the former Soviet countries hosting a wide range of burgeoning crime syndicates who wanted the latest hardware). By the mid-1990s, she was involved in real estate and the trading of oil and oil products, at which point there was no looking back for Milena Misanyan.

  Heck pressed on down to a section titled: Scandals

  Unsurprisingly, Misanyan’s rise to power had not been without controversy; she was several times accused of bribing government officials in the deal that landed her a controlling interest in one of Russia’s biggest oil companies and was again suspected of utilising her organised crime connections when it came to acquiring ownership of other industrial giants. Of course, such was the political and economic chaos in the former Soviet Bloc at that time that none of this was properly investigated or accounted for, and by the age of 30, Milena Misanyan was officially a tycoon, with powerful financial and political allies, not just in Russia and Armenia, but all across Eastern Europe.

  From what Heck could see, this was pretty standard stuff when it came to the rise of business moguls in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse – it didn’t really mean anything in terms of the current enquiry. Nevertheless, he read on, now reaching a section headed: Charitable Works

  Noting that his newly drawn beer awaited him on the bar, he stood up and ambled over there, still reading.

  Misanyan is believed to have donated millions to charitable works across Armenia, particularly in her home city of Yerevan, where she has set up several foundations dedicated to assisting, supporting and providing refuge for the survivors of criminal and sexual abuse. Misanyan rarely discusses it in public, but she is considered to be strongly sympathetic to female victims of male violence thanks to the events of 1990, when, as punishment for her refusal to allow a local street-gang to buy into her business, her two younger sisters, Anna and Maria, were raped and murdered and put on display on purpose-built frames erected at the city dump. Though she has never said so, this terrible incident is believed to be one of the main reasons that Milena Misanyan left Armenia for Russia …

  ‘They’re working on it now,’ a voice said. ‘The hall, I mean.’

  Heck glanced up. ‘Sorry?’

  The barmaid smiled brightly. ‘It’s in the middle of being renovated, as I understand. Long job. Started about a year ago. Ms Misanyan’s spending a fortune on it, but I’m sure it’ll be worth it.’ She nodded at the open doors to the vestibule, and beyond those, the single door to the snooker room. ‘That’s some of her workers in there, now.’

  Heck regarded the men in grey overalls with greater interest. Again, the door was only partly open, so he didn’t have a clear view, but those he saw had noticeably darker skin than you might normally get in Cornwall. He listened to them; though he could never have identified Armenian, they evidently weren’t chattering in English.

  He leaned on the bar to sip his beer. ‘And currently they’re on shore leave?’

  ‘Sort of,’ the barmaid said. ‘Come in here most evenings. Bit of a rough-looking bunch, I admit. But they’re well behaved. That’s about as loud as they get.’

  ‘Does Ms Misanyan ever come here?’

  ‘I’ve never seen her, but the first thing they built on the island was a helipad. On the roof of the tower, or so I’m told. So, I suppose she goes direct.’

  Heck pondered this. As he did, the phone again buzzed in his pocket. When he checked, it was another email from Sumitra Bharti:

  2/9

  He opened it and this time the attachment made him straighten up.

  It depicted a single document apparently lying in the van’s passenger-side footwell, but from the layout, which wasn’t completely distinctive on the screen of his phone, it looked like another of those wanted-persons sheets.

  Apologising to the barmaid, Heck moved to a chair by one of the pub’s front windows, sat down and expanded the image as much as he was able.

  When it lost definition too quickly for him to read it, he dashed back upstairs to his room, to boot his laptop up and look at it on a bigger screen.

  It was indeed one of the wanted-persons sheets, laid out exactly like all the others. The mugshot portrayed a young-looking black guy. The name read: SPENCER TAYLOR.

  Heck scanned down it, pulling out his pocketbook and flipping it open. The postcode where Taylor had presumably been collected married up with the London code in Green Van Man’s satnav. But more important than any of this was the time and date of Taylor’s rendezvous.

  Heck moved back to the window, gazing at distant Trevallick Hall, now a dark outline spangled with points of light. As he stood there, his phone rang.

  When he checked, the call was from Gemma.

  ‘Ma’am?’ he said, answering.

  ‘What exactly is going on?’ she said. ‘And where are you?’

  ‘Have you got a couple of minutes?’

  ‘As long as it’s worth my while.’

  He told her everything that had happened since he’d left her office that morning, and everything he’d discovered. For once in his life, he left absolutely nothing out.

  ‘Heck,’ she eventually said, sounding tired rather than angry, ‘what did you not understand about my telling you that you’re grounded at Staples Corner for the foreseeable?’

  ‘I understood everything, ma’am.’

  ‘You did? OK … now think very carefully from this point on, because you’ve just admitted to a serious disciplinary offence.’

  ‘Incorrect, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘If you’re accusing me of disobeying a direct order, I haven’t done anything of the sort. I can still get back to London tomorrow in time to sign on at 9 a.m. On top of that, I’m not even on duty at present, so actually you’ve no right to upbraid me about anything at all.’

  ‘If you’re not on duty, Heck, what’re you doing following this lead?’

  ‘That’s what I do.’ He slumped onto the bed.

  ‘Heck!’

  ‘I’ve said I’ll get back to London as soon as. Look, Gemma … all I’m doing here is what I get paid for. Solving crime. In fact, I’m doing what you specifically authorised me to do. I’m following my nose. Am I not your rogue angel? Do I have a roving commission, or don’t I?’

  ‘Heck …’

  He shut up, giving her the chance to jump in, to cut him down with some withering, acid-tongued response. But she didn’t. Because, as he’d suspected, she couldn’t. Though he’d doubtless infuriated her by playing truant once again, it was inarguably in a good cause. He’d found the next lead, and it was a strong one.

  ‘Tell me a bit more,’ she finally said.

  ‘This offshore island,’ he explained, ‘has an old stately home on it. Gone to rack and ruin over the years, but apparently it’s recently been bought and is now being renovated by Milena Misanyan.’

  ‘She’s turning it into a hotel, you say?’

  ‘Yeah, in the long term. The main thing is that this is where Green Van Man’s been bringing all the prisoners …’

  ‘Green Van Man had a name, by the way.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We’ve heard back from Interpol. He’s got a record in East Europe
as long as your arm. He was Narek Sarafian. A known Armenian gangster. Into everything, apparently.’

  ‘That would figure,’ Heck said. ‘There’s a bunch of his countrymen downstairs. Milena Misanyan clearly recruits from close to home. Look, Gemma, the point is … this is the place.’

  She paused to think. ‘Is there any sign of activity on the island now?’

  ‘It’s too far away to see for sure, and too dark. I could do with getting out there …’

  ‘Negative, Heck! Do you understand me? Negative! Gwen and Joe are with NPCC as we speak, and the signs are good. Do you want to blow the whole thing now? This firm may be missing a van and a van driver, which could put them on edge, but if you start a ruckus down there, they’ll know there’s something wrong for sure. Like you said yourself, they’ll disappear, and we’ll get no one of consequence.’

  He shook his head. ‘The problem is that we’re out of time.’

  ‘NPCC are well aware that we’re on a ticking clock …’

  ‘No, when I say we’re out of time, I mean we are out of time. Gemma, I’m going to send you an attachment in a couple of minutes. It’s another wanted-persons file … the subject on this occasion is one Spencer Taylor.’

  ‘Spencer …?’ Gemma sounded bemused. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be looking out for him?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the trigger-happy idiot from Tottenham and it looks like he’ll soon be a new addition to our list. Narek Sarafian had a file on him too. CSI found it on the floor of the driver’s cab. I suspect our pal didn’t have time to insert this one into his evidence bag, and I know why … because it’s very recent. The time of Taylor’s abduction was 5 a.m. on August 23.’