He looked towards the window, and the quality of the morning light told him that it was about eight. He should have gone into the office yesterday but there was no way that was happening; he needed time to think. And he needed to be far enough away from Joanne not to hit her. He’d never hit a woman, but he thought that he could make an exception for her.
He’d driven around for hours after he left his parent’s house on Tuesday, not even noticing where he was, until he’d found himself back on the familiar ground of the Upper Malone. He’d pulled into Newforge lane to think and had found Virginia Apartments; private, self-contained and rentable by the week. There was no way that she would find him here.
He couldn’t go home, he couldn’t go back to his parents and he couldn’t go to any of his usual haunts. She would find him at any hotel in the city. God’s knows he’d slept in most of them during their volatile marriage, when he’d had enough of listening to her shit.
The apartments were a bit close to home but Joanne never walked anywhere, smug in her hermetically-sealed little world. That would all change soon. He idly wondered how prison would suit her; it would be hard even for her to accessorise there.
The image made him laugh, and suddenly he had the energy to bounce out of bed and wonder what to do next, over a hot, white coffee. He knew that he should go to the police, but how could he prove that it had only been Joanne responsible for the Leighton’s deaths? And that he’d known nothing about them? And what about Horizon? She stitched him up completely there and innocence was pretty hard to prove when you’d signed a contract.
He flicked the local news on mute and watched the headlines sailing across the bottom of the screen. All of a sudden ‘Leighton’s Murder Claimed’ appeared and he clicked the sound on urgently, watching as the middle-aged newsman told the world that Bob Leighton’s killing had been claimed. What the fuck?
“A new dissident splinter group, the N.I.F. the Northern Ireland Freedom Brigade, has claimed the killings of Robert Leighton M.P. and his wife Irene. There is some dispute about this claim...”
The N.I.F.? He’d never heard of them and he bet that nobody else had. That would hack the big boys off.
The screen changed to a view of Donegal and the sight of crime scene investigators outside a house, but Declan ignored it, thinking frantically. He was totally confused now. Had he been wrong about Joanne’s involvement?
No...Definitely not. Joanne had known that Leighton was dead before anyone else. She’d done it. But she was even smarter than he’d realised, managing to give someone else the blame. How the hell had she managed it? Did the N.I.F. even exist?
If they did, either they were in cahoots and they’d done the job for her, or she’d framed them. In which case she was playing an even more dangerous game than he’d realised. The real boyos would be none too pleased.
But it changed things. If he told the girls that Joanne was involved now they’d never believe him. And what if he told the police? They might think that he was involved in terrorism, and that would bring him a whole world of pain.
He thought for a minute longer, and then decided to do what he’d always done, and what had always driven Joanne mad about him. He’d just wait and see. The news would change over the next few days, and when it did, he’d be ready to head for High Street station.
In the meantime...well, he might as well take in a race or two. The charity race meeting was on at Antrim this afternoon. He looked at his watch; six hours until it started, plenty of time for breakfast and another little reward. He lifted his mobile and scanned for ‘bookie’, smiling as it dialled.
***
Craig disembarked at Heathrow and headed quickly for the Express train, and the short fifteen-minute journey to Paddington. It had all changed from the fifty-minute tube ride on the cramped Piccadilly line, when he’d first been there in ’98. Stopping and starting, dropping and picking up. He almost missed it.
The occupants on the tube covered the whole range of Londoners, mixing with the newly-arrived from every country. They covered all age-groups, from excited kids to tired pensioners. But the Express was more like a mobile morning office, with businessmen stroking at their phones desperately, as if they were lovers. One or two hopefuls even tried to log-on or make calls, aborted mid-sentence at every tunnel.
He sat back and relaxed, remembering the city that he’d lived in for so many years. He loved London; it was constantly changing. People had too much variety here to divide themselves with arbitrary doctrinal differences. If only Northern Ireland could learn the same trick.
The journey ended too quickly and he disembarked, walking slowly along platform seven towards the coffee stand. The smell soon reminded him that his plane ticket hadn’t extended to breakfast and he’d just bought a coffee and croissant when he felt a light tap on his back.
He turned to apologise, assuming that he was blocking the way, only to come face to face with the tight muscular build and wide white grin of Yemi Idowu. A grin that he hadn’t seen for nearly five years.
“What the...? Yemi!”
Craig smiled broadly and put out his hand. It was grasped quickly by the other man’s and followed by an arm around his shoulder. “Marc, it is good to see you, my friend.”
“How did you know I was coming? Are you working the shootings?”
“Chandak is my boss. He didn’t know we knew each other, but when I heard that you were coming I insisted on picking you up. We need to catch up.”
“How are you? You look well. And how’s Bunmi?”
“She is well, but there are two more of us now. We had twin boys just last month.”
He reached into his pocket and produced a photo of a smiling Bunmi holding two tiny bundles.
“You know, Marc. Breeding is a habit, once you start.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Yemi. Congratulations. So are you involved in the cases?”
“Yes, yes. But we will talk about that in the office. The next twenty minutes are for gossip only.”
Without Craig even noticing, they’d reached the back slope towards Praed Street where Yemi had parked his car, using his charm and badge to stop them towing it away. He reversed rapidly up the hill and then headed the three miles towards headquarters, as they talked over each other and laughed the whole way.
As they approached the underground car-park, he paused and looked at Craig seriously. “You look well my friend, but too thin. You need a woman and a good meal.” He hesitated and Craig knew that there was something else.
“Bunmi will truly kill me for telling you this. She wants you at dinner tonight to relax. But I think it would be wrong not to.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Camille is in London.”
Craig didn’t react in the shocked way that his friend had anticipated, and Yemi looked puzzled. “I know. We’re in touch.” He explained her contact after five years and their long lunch in November.
Yemi relaxed visibly. “Do you know that she’s in a play here?”
Without waiting for an answer, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a ticket, handing it to Craig. Then he said nothing more. Craig put it in his top pocket nodding thanks, and they parked, walking towards the lift in companionable silence.
By the time the lift-door opened at the fifth-floor murder unit, the topic was snipers. And Craig had shifted back into his forty-two-year-old D.C.I. self, intent on ignoring the ticket for at least eight hours.
He walked confidently through the familiar neon-lit floor full of computers and shirt-sleeved men, feeling instantly at home. It could have been a newspaper office, but one where the news was always deadly.
Yemi led him to the door of the corner-office and knocked, leaving him there. A shouted ‘yes’ was his cue to push the door open, to be greeted with a more sophisticated and darker-skinned version of Terry Harrison. He wondered briefly if D.C.S.s were cloned, but any similarity vanished at the warmth of the man’s greeting.
Rajiv Chandak stood
up smiling, with his hand held out. “D.C.I. Craig?”
They shook and Craig confirmed his identity “Yes, sir. Thanks for arranging to have me picked up.”
The tall D.C.S laughed, showing large teeth. “I would have had a fight on my hands if I’d tried to stop Yemi. I believe that you two know each other?”
“Very well, sir. We started out in Fulham together, as youngsters.”
“Good, very good. Nice to have hands across the Irish Sea, especially as we’re getting more crime back and forth. I know your new Chief well from the Association of Chief Police Officers. He’ll do OK for you. He made a good fist of it in his last post. Take a seat.”
He gestured Craig to a comfortable, high, armchair set beside a small coffee table, leaving his desk to join him.
“It seems as if we’re dealing with the same shooter here. We’ve had two over the past year using the 338 Lapuas and now you’ve had one. A Mrs Irene Leighton, wasn’t it?”
Craig nodded.
“Our victims were both men, but very different backgrounds. Both in business, but nothing in common apart from that. We’ve been back and forth through everything and we can’t find any link. Yemi’s looking for anything that could tie them to your victim, and so far, there’s nothing there either. We have to assume that these are three separate hits.
What we do have is intelligence that leads us to these being professional hits, real ‘guns for hire’ stuff. One of our informants is linked-in to the Russians in east London.”
Craig nodded. When he’d lived there east London had been the home of decent immigrants, and less decent ‘gangs and geezers’. They’d moved into old commercial sites, and then out to towns around the M25, once they’d made their money and wanted to look legit.
Most of the original cockneys had left east London now, only kept alive in episodes of ‘East Enders.’ Their communities destroyed by developers, just like Sailortown. At least the Olympic legacy might improve things here.
“Any names yet, sir?”
“Not on the shooter. But there’s a nasty piece of work called Alik Ershov that we’ve been trying to link to organised crime for years. The word is that he’s mixed-up in this somewhere, although why he’d be involved in Northern Ireland is anyone’s guess.”
“There are a lot of people back and forth here for business every week, sir. So hiring a hit from here would draw less attention than using our local boys. And whoever hired them might have contacts here? Can you tie anything firm to Ershov?”
“You know what it’s like. We get two layers below him and then no one knows who they’re reporting to. He’s very well insulated. And every penny of his legitimate earnings is declared. They all got wise when Capone got nailed on his taxes.”
Craig laughed hollowly; the stereotypes of dumb crooks couldn’t be farther from the truth. At the top level, these guys were bright. The police had to keep up, or give up.
“He’s first-generation Russian, and into drugs, people trafficking, guns and gangs.”
The word gang made the hairs on Craig’s neck stand-up and he interrupted urgently.
“Gangs? Any particular sort?”
Chandak looked at him curiously. “Not sure that you’ll have heard of them, Ireland’s been lucky enough to miss this bunch. They’re called the Vory v Zakone. Mostly Russian and other ex-soviet republic. Ruthless bastards.”
“Is Ershov a Vor?”
Chandak was surprised by Craig’s urgent tone. He thought that the Vors had skipped Ireland, but maybe they had found it, now that there was peace. He nodded.
“There’s been talk of it, but they’re very secretive. You probably know as much about them as we do.”
“I know that they obey some sort of ‘Thieves' Code’ and there are estimates of about ten thousand of them dotted around the world. I heard Obama had to deal with some a few years back. The leaders are called ‘Thieves-in-law’ and have to show a long criminal record. Their trades and ranks are shown by tattoos.”
He filled Chandak in on the markings found on Irene Leighton. Chandak gave a low whistle.
“Ershov fits the Thief-in-law part for sure. Right, you only have a couple of days here, so I’m going to force-feed you with everything we have. Then we’ll get our teams working together. I’m hoping that someone got careless in your killing, and it might give us some fresh leads on ours. Whoever ordered your hit might be feeling twitchy by now.”
“Yes. Especially as the dissidents got blamed.” Then Craig brought Rajiv Chandak up to date with the latest twist in their crime.
***
Joanne had made up her mind long before dawn. Initially she’d just intended to get rid of the Leightons, but Declan’s parochial morality had taken things out of her hands. So what happened next was his own stupid fault. If she could be sure that he’d keep his mouth shut, he wouldn’t be dying in a few hours’ time. But he couldn’t do that. He insisted on saying that he would call the police on her, so he had to go.
She’d set him up nicely as the gambling swine that he was. Not that she’d ever given a shit about his gambling, as long as he didn’t use her money. And she knew that he’d never been unfaithful to her, although she often wished that he had, it would have kept him away from her bed. Then she could have just hired a photographer, instead of having to pay a fortune on photo-shopping.
The photographs had cost a fortune to mock-up, but they would serve their purpose when he died. She would look betrayed and vulnerable in every one’s eyes, the wronged wife and mother. She yawned and kicked off the duvet, none of it would matter in a few hours anyway. Declan would be dealt with by the end of the day; Alik had assured her of it.
It had been exciting speaking to Alik again last year, after all that time. Her mind drifted back to fifteen years before, when they’d still lived in London. She wished she’d never left it, but Declan and her parents were to blame for that. With their chorus of ‘it’ll be better for the girls Joanne, better schools Joanne, safer streets Joanne’...yap, yap yap, whine bloody whine.
Eventually she caved in, but she’d regretted it immediately. And hated them all for it ever since, even the girls. Although no one would ever have guessed.
She was the consummate actor, throwing herself into the endless round of fashion-shows and charity events that passed for Northern Ireland’s middle-class social life. London had been so much more exciting. The anonymity and variety, the people you met, the endless surprising opportunities. The men.
She’d thought about Alik often. Fifteen years before, he’d gone from just being a client that she was defending, to something more. Much more really; it had surprised her. They couldn’t have been more different. Her, with her well-bred, long tanned legs. And him with his Slavic rawness. Muscular, brutal and strong.
The sex had been fucking amazing, literally. She’d never had anything like it before, and definitely not since. She thought of Declan’s clammy, limp hands and shuddered. Alik was so male by comparison. Brave, fearless, dominant. He’d fought all his life to survive and she admired him for it. He was exactly what she needed.
All her life she had been stronger than the men around her. Sharper, quicker, braver, more successful. She’d despised them all for it, ridiculed them for it. But with Alik, she found her soft side, with him she could leave the warrior at the bedroom door. He was far more of a man than she would ever be.
And when she’d got him acquitted, his admiration had flowed even further. Out of the bedroom and into her bank balance, her jewellery drawer, her wardrobe. He was a provider and she wanted him.
Since they’d been in contact, she’d followed all of his instructions unquestioningly. The disposable phones and never calling him, always waiting for his call. And she loved it, she was being dominated and controlled by him and she really loved it. He had made her feel female for the first time in years.
It had only taken a few weeks of contact for Joanne to realise that she didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be there, with him,
for the rest of her life. The girls didn’t need her now, and she didn’t care if they did, they already had two sets of grandparents at their beck and call. And Isabella looked too much like Declan to feel comfortable with her gaze now.
She would go to Alik soon. They’d discussed it many times, he’d wanted her to leave Declan fifteen years ago, and he wanted her just as much now. . She was already packed - things were getting too hot in Belfast. Joe Watson’s big mouth had already earned her one police phone-call, and although she’d managed to wriggle out of it, they were getting far too close.
She just had to play the grieving widow for a few days after Declan died. Cooperate with the inevitable stupid questions from the plods, and then she could leave next week without suspicion. She didn’t know how she was going to survive the next few days, but she would keep her cool; it was one of her biggest talents.
And then...well, she was a widow after all. Her husband had just been murdered ...sob...and she was so distressed that she needed to go to the Priory Clinic in London, to recover from Declan’s death. Such a discrete venue was justified of course, to avoid the embarrassment for the girls, and the prying eyes at the Belfast Chronicle.
She rolled her eyes. That bloody rag would make a meal of the whole thing - she’d just seen their reporting of Bob’s death. Very undignified. She smiled sarcastically at the image of his last moments – killed in bed, after sex. He should have been grateful.
Of course she had to leave and recuperate after Declan died, everyone would understand, of course they would. And she might take the odd trip back, to see the girls, just for appearance sake. Before she eventually announced that she’d met Alik and found happiness. And who would begrudge her that, after Declan’s affair came out? She turned-on the shower and languorously washed her thick dark hair. It was all settled. Just a few days more.
***
Declan stared at the phone as his call dialled out again. The girls had refused to pick-up for two days and he was slowly getting the message. They thought that he was a scumbag. Joanne had got to them first. Shit, shit, shit.
The Grass Tattoo (#2 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) Page 22
