The Hanged Man

by Simon Kernick

  Seventeen

  The location for the meeting with the handler for the undercover op against Ugo Amelu was a secure room on the top floor of a modern office block in Battersea, where the undercover team were based.

  Dan and I got there just after two p.m. and were met in reception by a tall, middle-aged woman in a smart trouser suit who introduced herself as Aideen King. After the usual formalities and introductions, she led us to a room at the back of the building and shut the door.

  ‘So, Sheryl tells me you’re interested in one of our targets, Ugo Amelu,’ she said, motioning for us to sit down at the long table dominating the room. ‘And you think he might have information relating to the Bone Field inquiry? I have to say, he sounds a pretty horrible man, but I didn’t have him down as a serial killer.’

  ‘Years ago he worked as a pimp,’ said Dan, ‘and one of his close business associates was a people smuggler called Kristo Fisha, who had strong links to the people we believe are behind the killings. Fisha was murdered, almost certainly as a result of these links, and we think Amelu may have information that could help ID them. We really need to speak to him, and you know what the pressure’s like on this case. It needs to be soon.’

  Aideen King looked at us both in turn. ‘Well, as you’ve no doubt been made aware, Amelu is the subject of a major undercover operation, and anything I say to you about it goes no further than this room.’

  We both nodded our assent.

  ‘Two months ago a police van was held up at gunpoint by two masked men in Shepherd’s Bush. The van was carrying large quantities of illegal drugs that were on their way to be destroyed, including ten kilos of very high-quality cocaine. The robbers clearly had good intelligence because they went straight for the cocaine and left everything else. This was hugely embarrassing for Ealing CID who were in charge of the load, so there’s been an effort to keep the story as quiet as possible. Then a local informant claimed that the two men responsible for the robbery were Amelu and a wanted Jamaican criminal called Ralvin Lambden, who were looking to offload the cocaine at a cheap price. Ealing called us in and we now have two undercover operatives posing as drug dealers from out of town, acting as potential buyers. The op’s been ongoing for nearly a month now and is very close to fruition.’

  ‘How close?’ I asked.

  ‘The deal’s set for tonight, so your timing’s very good. We’re hoping to catch Amelu and Lambden with the drugs, but it’s Ealing’s op and they’ll be the ones making the arrests and questioning the suspects. The important thing for them is finding out whether someone on the inside supplied the intel about the drugs being carried in the van, and my understanding is they think Amelu is ripe for turning. He’s recently become a father for the first time, and with his record he’ll be looking at a minimum fifteen-year sentence for armed robbery and possession with intent to supply, so he’s probably going to want to cooperate.’

  This was good news, since I was pretty sure he could shed some light on Kristo Fisha’s relationship with the Kalamans.

  ‘We need to speak to him as soon after the arrest as possible,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll need to clear it with Ealing, which in your case might be a bit difficult,’ Aideen King said, looking at me. ‘I hear you’re not too popular over there, and DCI Eddie Olafsson’s running the op.’

  I raised my eyebrows. I’d been working for Eddie Olafsson on Ealing’s murder investigation team until three months ago when I’d been suspended after an op he was in charge of went disastrously wrong thanks, at least in part, to me. ‘We’ve had our moments, but I’m sure he’ll put that to one side for the greater good,’ I responded, somewhat optimistically, remembering the last time we’d spoken, when he’d thrown a whole heap of abuse at me down the phone before hanging up.

  She smiled. ‘Well, we’ll soon find out. He’s on his way up here now.’

  True to her word, two minutes later there was a rapid-fire knocking on the door and DCI Eddie Olafsson walked in.

  Olaf was one of those old-school cops you don’t see much these days in the Met, a short, burly bald guy who looked like a nightclub bouncer. He’d passed his thirty years’ service a couple of years earlier and was into his fifties, but showed no sign of wanting to retire. He was tough, volatile, swore like a trooper, and – if truth be told – I liked him, even if the feeling wasn’t exactly mutual.

  He gave a nod and a smile to Aideen King, then the smile died instantly as he saw Dan and me on the other side of the table.

  We both stood up.

  ‘Fuck me. Ray Mason. I didn’t think I’d be seeing you for a while.’

  ‘How’s it going, boss?’

  ‘Thankfully I’m not your boss any more,’ Olaf snorted. ‘But I had heard they’d let you in at the NCA. How the fuck did you manage to get out of that suspension?’

  I smiled. ‘As you might recall, I was exonerated of any wrongdoing. Plus, I’m a good detective with a proven track record, as well you know.’

  Olaf grunted something and turned away. ‘How are you doing, Dan? You all right?’

  ‘Not bad, sir. Good to see you again.’ They shook hands.

  ‘What are you doing working with him?’ He nodded his big square head in my direction. ‘Don’t you know the trouble he causes?’

  ‘I’m keeping him under a tight rein,’ Dan said, winking at me.

  Olaf sighed and sat down. ‘Aideen’s told me you’re both working the Bone Field case and you think one of our suspects has information.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Dan. He filled in Olaf about our suspicions, embellishing them to make it sound like we had more than we did, because in reality we didn’t have much at all.

  ‘Aideen mentioned that Amelu might be tempted to cooperate with us,’ I said.

  ‘We’ve got more chance with him than Lambden,’ Olaf said, ‘but I want both those bastards to go down for a long time, so we’re not going to be doing any deals with Amelu. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.’

  ‘No one’s suggesting that at all,’ said Dan, ‘but you know how big our case is, and the pressure from up top for a result. We need to speak to him, and urgently.’

  Olaf’s face wrinkled with annoyance. ‘You’ll get your chance. But this is our op.’

  ‘All we want to do is be there when you make the arrests, so we can question Amelu,’ said Dan soothingly.

  ‘You want to come on the op? You must be joking.’ Olaf pointed a fat finger at me. ‘The last time I went on an op with him he dropped our suspect fifty feet from a tower block and left him as dead as a dodo, in front of about two hundred witnesses.’

  ‘He fell,’ I said. ‘And like I said, I was completely exonerated.’

  ‘You don’t do as you’re told, Ray. If all coppers were like you, the whole place would fall to pieces. This op is important. We need it to go smoothly.’

  ‘Look, we’d be there just as observers,’ said Dan, ‘staying right back from the action. That’s all. We need Ugo Amelu just as much as you do.’

  ‘If he fucks up anything … anything …’

  I assured Olaf I wouldn’t.

  He sighed and shook his head as if he was just about to make a terrible decision – which, in the light of later events, you could say he was. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘The final briefing’s at Ealing nick, 8.30. You remember the way, don’t you, Ray?’

  ‘How could I forget, sir? The best months of my life.’

  ‘Just be there.’

  And that was it. The meeting was over.

  ‘Olaf really doesn’t like you, does he?’ said Dan when we were back on the street.

  I laughed. ‘Ah, he’s got a right to dislike me. I almost got both of us killed on that last op.’

  He looked at me seriously. ‘Well, don’t be doing the same tonight. I put my credibility on the line for you in there.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I won’t let you down.’

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and saw I had a message from
Michelle. I listened to it as we walked down the street back to the car, then turned to Dan.

  ‘See, I’ve got some talents as a detective. It turns out that Lola Sheridan was living at a house in Kensington from 2003 to 2006, about a mile down the road from where Tracey Burn lived, and I’d bet my life that Tracey cleaned for her.’

  Dan nodded thoughtfully. ‘Fair enough, but it’s not exactly evidence of any wrongdoing, is it?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but it gives me an idea. I think it’s time we paid her a visit.’

  Eighteen

  There are few men in the world who’ve killed their own father.

  Cem Kalaman was one of them. He hadn’t done it personally of course. It had been a professional hit carried out by two of his most trusted lieutenants, the most senior of whom was Mr Bone. The year was 1998, and Cem was twenty-nine years old.

  His father had gone with his bodyguard to a café in Highgate for a meeting in a back room he liked to use. It had been a cold February night, and as they’d got out of the car thirty yards down the street, two men had approached from across the road, scarves pulled up over their faces, and opened fire with semi-automatic pistols. Caught completely by surprise, Volkan Kalaman and the bodyguard had been hit by a hail of bullets. The bodyguard had gone down immediately, but Volkan, who was a big man, had managed to stagger a further ten yards down the street before Mr Bone caught up with him and put two more bullets in the back of his head.

  Although his two sisters had never believed that Cem could have committed such a heinous crime, it was common knowledge within both criminal and police circles that he’d been the one behind the hit, sealing his reputation as an utterly ruthless operator.

  But it wasn’t ruthlessness that had driven Cem to murder his own father. It was rage. When Cem was twenty-one, he’d discovered that his father had a secret second family. It had been Mr Bone who’d told him about it. It would be wrong to say that he and Mr Bone had become close: Mr Bone wasn’t close to anyone. But he’d taken more and more of an interest in Cem as he’d grown up, describing him as the only man who could lead the Kalaman organization into the future, because only he had the necessary strength. It had, Cem knew, been Mr Bone who’d turned him against his own father, but then his father had deserved it. Cem had seen his second family. He’d watched them. His father and mistress and their young son. He’d seen them together, and it had filled him with an anger he found hard to describe.

  But he’d kept his rage on the inside, beneath a cool, calm exterior, and he’d bided his time. Only when his beloved mother had died of slow-acting throat cancer (and a broken heart, Cem was sure, for he felt certain she knew of his father’s betrayal) did he take his revenge in the most brutal form possible. Because it wasn’t just his father he’d killed. Within weeks of his death the mistress was found dead in her bath with her wrists slit, while the body of her eleven-year-old son was lying in his bedroom, where Cem had smothered him with his own pillow.

  Cem was keeping his rage on the inside now as he stared at the giant TV screen in what his wife liked to call the drawing room. The news was featuring the hunt for Hugh Manning, which had moved to the area in and around a small town in southern Scotland on the borders of the Galloway Forest national park. The female news reporter was standing in a Sainsbury’s car park where Manning had apparently been seen the night before by a customer and a checkout assistant. In the background, a group of uniformed officers were talking in front of a couple of parked squad cars. According to the reporter, police had already checked CCTV footage from the store and confirmed that it was indeed Manning, and that he was believed to be driving the car of murder victim Max Bradshaw. A photo of the model of the car appeared in the corner of the screen and she gave out its registration number.

  Cem had never met Hugh Manning but he had to admit the lawyer had shown remarkable initiative to get this far. In hindsight, they should have killed him years ago, after that incident with Alastair, but it was too late to worry about that now. Everything would be rectified if they got to him before the police. Then, when Manning was found dead, Cem could use his contacts in the media to blame him for the Bone Field murders. And then finally they could put this whole saga behind them.

  ‘Are we still playing, Papa?’

  Cem turned round. His youngest child and only son, Ruslan, had come into the room through the open French windows, carrying the ball they’d been kicking around the garden a few minutes earlier.

  ‘Sure I am,’ Cem replied, beaming at his beloved boy. ‘But give Papa a few minutes. I have some business to do, then I’ll be out. Practise your shooting in the meantime.’ He ruffled his son’s thick black hair.

  ‘I want to help you,’ said Ruslan, looking up at his father.

  ‘One day you will, boy, I promise. Now go outside.’

  Cem watched his son go, hoping that one day he’d be a wealthy businessman who wouldn’t have to commit murder, and who would sleep easily at night, knowing that he had no enemies. Then he turned and stalked through the house to his office suite. At the back of the main office was a fortified, soundproofed room with a biometric retinal scanner next to the door that allowed access only to him.

  Inside was a single desk and chair. Cem unlocked the desk drawer, took out a satellite phone and made a call.

  He was fully prepared to leave a message but the phone was picked up within two rings.

  ‘Can you talk?’ he demanded.

  ‘I wouldn’t have picked up if I couldn’t,’ said Alastair Sheridan.

  He sounded stressed. Cem ignored his tone. Alastair was one of the only people he tolerated talking back to him.

  ‘Have you seen the news?’

  ‘About Scotland? Yes. It doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘If the police don’t find him soon they’ll have to widen the search. We need to find him first. You know him, Alastair. I want you to find any link he has to Scotland. I’ve looked it up on the map and the place he was seen is in the back end of nowhere. He went there for a reason. Find it.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking already.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I remember him talking to me years ago about a friend of his who owned a house up there. I know he used to go there sometimes for shooting weekends.’

  Cem thought about this. ‘How many people worked at Manning’s legal practice?’

  ‘There was only him, a researcher and a secretary.’

  ‘He would have told them where he was going in Scotland, and might have mentioned the name of the person who owned the house. Or given them a contact number.’

  ‘The police will be all over the researcher and the secretary by now. We can’t get to them. Or his old work diaries. It’s all been seized as evidence.’

  Cem contemplated sending Mr Bone over to talk to the secretary but knew it would be taking too much of a risk. There had to be another way.

  ‘You of all people know what’s at stake here, Alastair,’ he said. His voice was calm but cold. ‘So my advice to you is to keep racking those brains until you come up with something we can use. And fast.’

  Nineteen

  Lola Sheridan lived in the middle of woodland about fifteen miles north-west of London, not far from the Buckinghamshire village of Little Chalfont.

  The security gates were open and, after dropping Dan out of sight of the house, I pulled into the driveway and parked next to a white Mercedes SLC convertible with the top down.

  The house itself was a large yet tasteful mock Tudor, with latticed windows set among snaking vines of wisteria. The lawn was neat and lined with mature shrubs and colourful flowers, and blooming hanging baskets hung down on either side of the front door. It didn’t feel like the home of a monster.

  I knocked on the door and waited. I hadn’t called ahead, not wanting to alert Lola to my visit, and there was no answer. I looked at my watch. It was just after five p.m. As far as I knew Lola didn’t work, being independently wealthy, and her car was here, but it was possible she w
as out somewhere. It didn’t matter. We weren’t expected at Ealing until 8.30 so I could easily wait.

  I was about to knock a second time when the door opened.

  Lola Sheridan was a tall, overly thin woman with long, dead straight jet-black hair running down her back, and a narrow face that would have been attractive if it wasn’t quite so bony. She’d definitely had work done to her face, but it didn’t cover up the fact that she looked older than her forty-seven years – something that could probably be remedied if she put on a bit of weight. She was dressed casually in a black top and tight-fitting jeans and her feet were bare.

  She looked at me with dark, suspicious eyes. ‘Yes?’

  I gave her my best smile and produced my warrant card. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Sheridan. I’m Officer Ray Mason from the National Crime Agency. I wanted to ask you some questions about Tracey Burn.’

  She looked puzzled, and slightly irritated. ‘Who?’

  ‘She cleaned for you back around 2004, 2005. At your house in Kensington.’ I didn’t know this, of course, but I was letting her know we’d been looking into her background in the hope that it might throw her off her guard a little.

  It didn’t seem to work. ‘I’ve got a very vague recollection of someone of that name. She may have done, yes. But I don’t think I can help you much. What do you want to know about her?’

  ‘Do you mind if I come inside? It’s also connected to the ongoing inquiry into the murder of your cousin, Kitty Sinn.’

  ‘I thought you people worked in pairs,’ she said, making no move to let me in.

  ‘This is a major inquiry using up a lot of resources and since I’m only here to ask a few friendly questions, it seemed prudent to come alone.’

  Seeing as I wasn’t budging, she reluctantly moved aside, and I followed her into a large country kitchen. She didn’t offer me a seat but leaned back against one of the worktops, still eyeing me carefully as I stood a few feet away facing her.

  ‘You’re the same Ray Mason who was behind the discovery of the bodies in the Bone Field?’