In Vino Veritas

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘A geezer called Zolton.’ Raysin turned to his left. ‘I’ve just grassed someone up … I can’t believe I’ve just done that.’

  ‘You’re kidding … come on, Milkie, get serious … he sounds like some character from a science-fiction comic … “Zolton the evil” from planet whatever,’ Brunnie growled. ‘Here we are making you a good deal and you play games.’

  ‘No games,’ Raysin wheezed. ‘Straight up, governor, that’s his name. It’s a Polish name, I believe … I heard it was Polish.’

  ‘First name or surname?’ Swannell wrote on his pad.

  ‘First, I think. He answers to it, so it’s likely to be a given first name. But he’s got a London accent. He’s a serious guy; no one calls him Mr Zolton, so I reckon it’s his Christian name. I mean, he snuffs people and you don’t call a man like that by his surname – not unless you want to be snuffed.’ Raysin took another difficult breath. ‘Not unless you’re tired of life.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Swannell nodded. ‘So where do we find him?’

  ‘Can’t help you there, governor, sorry. He’s very private like that,’ Raysin replied. ‘He just comes and does the business … offs people with his point twenty-two. He always uses the same point twenty-two. If you find his house, you’ll find the gun.’ Raysin raised his index finger. ‘And that you will be able to match but only if you find the body, and that’s very unlikely.’ Raysin paused. ‘Except maybe one body. One girl he didn’t have chopped into little pieces.’

  ‘You were there?’ Brunnie asked with growing interest.

  ‘Yes, there were a few of us,’ Raysin replied.

  ‘We know Danby was there … and his helper “Big Andy” Cragg.’

  ‘And another guy,’ Raysin advised. ‘He was scared. He was being shown a snuffing out … to make him behave for some big man I should think … I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘What do you know about the victim that wasn’t chopped up?’ Brunnie asked.

  ‘Not a lot,’ Raysin wheezed. ‘He’s good at his job … no messing about, just comes out of the shadows, puts the point twenty-two right up against the mark and pulls the trigger … cuts down the noise. If you put the end of the barrel up to the skin and pull the trigger it’s like the gun has a silencer – it don’t make hardly any noise. But there was something else about that girl; not only was she not cut up, he wore a mask when he shot her … a pig’s face mask, like he didn’t want her to know who was offing her. She was something to him.’

  ‘That,’ Brunnie turned to Swannell, ‘is very interesting.’

  ‘How were the victims brought to the lock-up?’ Swannell asked.

  ‘They were delivered.’ Raysin put his hand to his mouth and coughed deeply. ‘They probably still are if he’s still in business. They are left on the floor of the lock-up, then Zolton arrives. Does the business then the mark is left there. He calls it “curing” …’

  ‘Delivered,’ Swannell repeated, ‘by who?’

  ‘He has a small team of heavies on his payroll. Ex-soldiers. He tells them who the mark is then leaves his heavies to work out the how and the when.’ Raysin again coughed deeply and was clearly in some discomfort. ‘They’re not present when the business is done, that’s the deal I was told … it’ll help their defence if they get arrested. They didn’t know why they grabbed the mark and were not part of the murder.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t know their names?’ Brunnie suggested.

  ‘’Course not …’ Raysin forced a smile. ‘Besides, they move on. Zolton might have been icing people for top firms for twenty years but the boys on his payroll … they’re always coming and going.’ Raysin paused again.

  ‘Then when the mark has “cured” after a few days the butcher comes in … with a box saw … like those saws a gardener or woodsman uses: huge blade, cuts through tree branches like a hot knife through butter. Sometimes Zolton does it, sometimes he supervises it being done … sometimes a “butcher” is left alone with the job, but at the end of it the body is in about ten pieces: head, upper arms, forearms, thighs, lower legs … and the body.’ Raysin patted his stomach. ‘The stomach is always punctured to let the gases escape. The bits are wrapped up, put in bags and taken out and disposed of. I heard it’s into the Old Father, but I’ve never seen that done – that bit is done by the “clear-up team”, people like “Chinese Geordie Davy” and his helper, Andy Cragg, but you’re right.’ Raysin took a breath as if to fight a coughing fit. ‘That girl wasn’t cut up; she seemed special but the other girl was cut up.’

  ‘There were two girls shot that night!’ Swannell raised his voice.

  ‘No …’ Raysin managed to contain another wheezing episode. ‘Just one. Then two nights later the other was delivered and shot. Possibly they were three nights apart but more or less at the same time, and looked about the same age. I thought they might have some connection. Most of the people who end up on the floor at the lock-up have “villain” written all the way through them like a stick of Margate rock but not those two … they were not hard street-workers either. They lay there trussed up like normal but not looking like normal marks.’

  ‘Trussed up?’ Brunnie repeated. ‘How?’

  ‘Wrists tied together behind their backs,’ Raysin explained. ‘One or both feet pushed under the rope. You can’t escape from that. It’s the way the ex-soldiers do it. Anyway, both girls were shot, close up, in the head, but only one girl saw Zolton’s face and she was cut up … the other girl was shot by a geezer in a mask, taken out all in one piece and buried someplace.’

  Swannell ran his fingers through his hair. ‘All right, Milkie, this is good – this is something we didn’t know. We didn’t know about another girl being murdered at the same time – more or less the same time – and the way you describe it, it does sound like they had some connection. So what can you tell us about the other girl?’

  ‘This will make the prosecution go away for Old Milkie Raysin?’ Raysin asked.

  ‘Possibly,’ Brunnie growled. ‘Maybe even probably, but no promises. But you’re doing yourself a favour … so, carry on. What can you tell us about the other girl? Did you know her name?’

  ‘No.’ Raysin shook his head. ‘She was just another job.’

  ‘Can you describe her?’ Swannell asked.

  ‘Yes, a bit, from what I remember.’ Raysin coughed and wheezed. ‘She was a tall girl, really tall, possibly six feet … Very long legs … Body seemed normal but she had legs like a stork – they gave her height. Long black hair, and she had this odd birthmark on the inside of her left thigh … curved, it was … like a banana or a crescent moon.’

  ‘So, tall girl, long black hair, crescent-shaped birthmark.’ Swannell glanced at Brunnie. ‘She’ll be a missing person … same age as Victoria Keynes … a woman in her twenties. We’ll flag up Zolton as a name of interest.’

  ‘But that’s all I can tell you,’ Raysin insisted. ‘That’s all I’m going to say. I can tell you that Danby knows Zolton, so if Danby’s going into witness protection, get him to sign a statement naming Zolton. Milkie Raysin is signing nothing.’

  ‘We might just do that,’ Brunnie said. ‘We’ll have another chat with him; see if he can tell us about Zolton.’

  ‘So what happens to old Milkie now?’ Raysin asked. ‘You’ll be letting me walk?’

  ‘We’ll be taking you home.’ Swannell stood.

  ‘That’s kind, sir, I appreciate it.’ ‘Milkie’ Raysin grinned. ‘Very kind.’

  ‘No kindness involved, Milkie.’ Brunnie also stood. ‘We just need to know where you live in case we want another chat.’

  ‘I can give you my address,’ Raysin protested. ‘I can let you have it. No problem.’

  ‘You can give us any old address,’ Swannell opened the door of the interview room, ‘but we need your real address, and we only get that by taking you there and watching you unlock the door. Come on … on your feet.’

  ‘That,’ Brendan Escritt skimmed the black-and-white photographs across t
he table, ‘is what McLaverty looks like now. And he’s calling himself Woodhuyse … H-U-Y-S-E.’

  ‘Woodhuyse,’ Chief Inspector Meadows repeated. ‘Fancy spelling for a common enough name, but that’s McLaverty. How did you obtain this?’ Meadows looked at the print which showed Woodhuyse by the side of his car outside his house.

  ‘From information provided for us by the Murder and Serious Crime Squad,’ Escritt explained, ‘who are also interested in him, and by the sheer good fortune that a house is empty on the same street as his, opposite side of the road and just a couple of doors down. We had a word with the estate agents and they have let us use the house to mount a surveillance operation. Houses on that street sell very slowly; it’ll be weeks before someone is interested enough to want to be shown round the property.’

  ‘He looks like he’s washing his car,’ Meadows commented. ‘People with his sort of money always use the carwash, have it done for them.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but it means that he doesn’t know he’s under surveillance, and he thinks the police are only interested in him in respect of the murder of his wife, for which he apparently has a cast-iron alibi. We have a real chance of arresting him now, sir. With Ritchie’s evidence we can put him away for a long time.’ Escritt handed Meadows another photograph, also in black and white. It showed Woodhuyse leaning into the interior of an Audi. ‘No telling who he was talking to, sir,’ Escritt commented. ‘It might have been some geezer asking directions, but we checked the number plate anyway. It belongs to a bloke called Zolton Lis, address in Pinner. Dare say a guy with an Audi would live in Pinner, but he’s not known. The reason I really wanted to see you though is to pass on Chief Inspector Vicary’s request to interview Larry Ritchie about McLaverty … whom they know as Woodhuyse. We owe them a real favour so I said I’d arrange it … if that’s all right?’

  ‘Yes … yes.’ Meadows nodded. ‘Will you be sitting in on the interview?’

  ‘If I can,’ Escritt replied. ‘I’ll make arrangements now. I’ll be able to bring him down tomorrow.’

  It was Tuesday, 12.35 p.m.

  Wednesday, 11.45 a.m.

  ‘I hide in one of the old houses.’ Larry Ritchie revealed himself to be a nervous, fidgety, small, finely built man with quick darting eyes, one brown and the other green, as if he was constantly looking for both prey and danger and was seeking both at the same time. ‘The protected persons’ people put me up in a bungalow on the coast near the cliff top but right on the cliff top there is a row of empty houses. They’re about to fall into the sea – the sea has worn the cliffs away. When they were built the cliff edge was a hundred yards from the back door, but now if you step out of the back door you take three paces and you’re over the cliff edge. Those houses can be bought for a pound each, but they’re not even worth that to buy to dismantle them. It’s cheaper to buy new tiles and timber, you see.’

  ‘So why go there?’ Vicary asked.

  ‘I feel safer there, that’s why … safer than in the bungalow, even though only my police contact knows where I am.’ Ritchie scratched his ribcage. ‘But when you’re dealing with McLaverty … They say he can find anyone anywhere. If he can’t find them then he turns on your family. One old geezer he couldn’t find so he traced this geezer’s old mum and dad to their retirement bungalow, shoots them, shoots their dogs and torches their house. Not him personally – he contracts that business out. But that’s McLaverty.’

  ‘And you are giving evidence against him?’ Vicary asked. ‘You’re not afraid?’

  ‘I’m helping the Old Bill as much as I can … Don’t get me wrong, governor, I am not a reformed character. I haven’t got religious all of a sudden but I got the word that McLaverty was looking for me and that means only one thing …’ Ritchie drew his finger across his throat. ‘So I ran into the first police station I could find. It was the only place I was safe, otherwise it was the end of little me. All right, so I never amounted to much in life, but I don’t want to meet my maker before I have to. If I grass on McLaverty I won’t be safe anywhere but I’m safer in the little bungalow and even safer in the empty house on the cliff top. I leave the bungalow before dawn … I return after dusk, eat some food and then sleep. Just one meal a day but it’s all I need.’

  ‘You know McLaverty as a money launderer?’ Vicary asked.

  ‘I know him as many things, but yes, he is a money launderer and I can tell you that he is washing the money from the Southampton wages snatch … sixty million quid. He won’t wash that sort of money in a hurry but he has his methods. He learned the tricks from a geezer called Dominic Hughes.’

  ‘Yes, we know about Dominic Hughes’s methods,’ Vicary explained. ‘Mr Escritt told us.’

  ‘Where did Hughes vanish to?’ Escritt asked. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask.’

  ‘There’s no evidence, but the rumour is he retired,’ Ritchie explained. ‘He is said to be living in Malta with a couple of ex-dancers and enough money to see himself out. He lost a lot when he was arrested but kept enough hidden to see himself out. That’s the rumour.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Escritt commented. ‘We did wonder where he went.’

  ‘McLaverty wants to do the same,’ Ritchie advised. ‘One last big job, then retire to the sun, but where he is and what he calls himself now I can’t tell you. I was just a gofer, but gofers get to know things they shouldn’t and we little gofers are more dangerous … we have nothing to lose, see …’

  ‘So we have heard,’ Vicary commented.

  ‘It’s true, though – a big man’s lieutenants have investment in the firm; it’s in their interest to keep schtum but a gofer can talk to the police and help himself if he needs to.’

  ‘Well, we know where he is,’ Escritt said, ‘and we know what he calls himself now and has been calling himself for the last ten years. We’ll be arresting him soon once the Murder and Serious Crime squad have finished their inquiries. And you don’t know where he put the sixty million or where he is breaking up the sequences?’

  ‘No.’ Ritchie shook his head. ‘But I can tell you the names of his gofers. Once you have rounded them up and told them the big man is going to topple, they’ll start talking. One bit of information will lead to another and you’ll find his “factory” and his warehouse. I can give evidence about a serious assault that will put him away for five years but you’ll need more than that … and I’ve got more.’

  ‘The five years will be useful,’ Escritt replied. ‘If he has a conviction we’ll get a court order to allow the forensic accountants to look at his finances, but anything else, Larry … as much as you can tell us about McLaverty.’

  ‘I can tell you about Zolton,’ Ritchie said quietly.

  Vicary sat up. ‘That name has been flagged up by my officers,’ he exclaimed. ‘We need to find him. We don’t know where he lives.’

  ‘He lives in Pinner,’ Escritt advised.

  ‘You know him!’ Vicary turned to Escritt.

  ‘No … and we are not yet aware that his name has been flagged up, but a car pulled up outside McLaverty’s yesterday. He and the car driver had a brief chat. We thought it might just be a member of the public asking directions but we took a note of the registration number of the car … turns out it belongs to one Zolton Lis … address in Pinner.’

  ‘You’re watching him?’ Vicary gasped. ‘We had an agreement. Murder takes precedence over economics crime.’

  ‘And we are keeping to the agreement, Mr Vicary. I assure you we are being very discreet and we are good at our job. We are not moving against him.’

  ‘Still, you should have told us. I’ll be talking to your boss, Mr Meadows. I am not a happy man about this. Not happy at all. The ECU could have blown the whole operation.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Escritt replied. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘It’s essential the left hand must know what the right hand is doing.’ Vicary spoke calmly but coldly.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Escritt replied, sounding uncomfortable.

  ‘So.
’ Vicary turned to Ritchie. ‘What can you tell us about Zolton Lis?’

  ‘He’s a hitman. He’s not on anybody’s payroll. Gangland contacts him … and McLaverty uses him. When I first went to work for McLaverty I was told to wait on a street corner – I was told I’d be picked up. I was picked up by two guys. This was ten years ago. I was taken to a lock-up in the East End. There was a girl on the floor, tied up …’

  ‘A girl?’ Vicary repeated.

  ‘A young woman, tied up so she couldn’t move … she was about mid-twenties, long hair, long, long legs … A few other geezers were standing around and then this really small guy, Zolton Lis, comes out of the shadows, like from nowhere, walks up to this girl, puts a point twenty-two to her head and shoots her twice then once in the chest. Then he turns to me and says, “That’s what Mr McLaverty wanted you to see if you’re going to work for him. That’s what happens to people who talk to the police.” So I said, “OK … OK, but why did Mr McLaverty want her dead? She didn’t look like she was a villain?” So Zolton, he says, “He didn’t. I can tell you that was nothing to do with McLaverty, but she and another girl were going to the police about another geezer, a geezer I know well. They would have destroyed his life and his marriage; he thought it best if both girls disappeared. So I helped him out.” But I didn’t ask any questions. It’s just that Mr McLaverty likes all his new men to see an “event” so they know that he’s the man. McLaverty had told me a day or two earlier that I was a new man and there was an “event” planned, a “double event” in fact, but McLaverty said no need to see both, I just needed to see one. So I saw one and I got to know the triggerman over the years as being Zolton Lis.’

  ‘Will you give evidence to that effect?’ Vicary asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Ritchie nodded. ‘If I am spilling beans I may as well spill as many as I can. McLaverty uses Zolton Lis now and then. If someone needs to be chilled, McLaverty will contact Lis. If you can tie McLaverty and Lis together, you’ll bring McLaverty down and put him away for a lot longer than five years. An awful lot longer.’