Dan switched back to the satellite map where the red flashing dot remained stationary about thirty metres south of the pub. In other words, right next to the phone box.
Like I said, criminals always make mistakes, however good they are.
Three minutes later, at 6.46 p.m., Lola’s car was moving again, going back the way she’d come, and we watched as she drove directly home.
‘So your idea paid off,’ said Dan, looking up at me. ‘She’s called someone. Now we just need to pull up the records from that phone box and we’ll find out who. Well done, Ray. I’m impressed.’
‘I’m not just a pretty face,’ I said, finally feeling like we were getting somewhere.
Twenty-two
Tina was sad to leave Charlotte Curtis behind.
They’d spent the afternoon in the garden after a leisurely lunch of cold meats and fresh bread from the local bakery. Charlotte had drunk two glasses of rosé. Tina hadn’t had a drink in eight years and usually seeing someone else drink didn’t bother her (if it had she’d never have lasted five minutes with Ray), but today, relaxing in the sunshine in the near silence of the French countryside, she’d experienced a powerful urge for just one glass, and it had taken an awful lot of willpower to stop herself.
She and Charlotte had never had much of a chance to talk before. The last time they’d met they’d been fleeing on foot across country, being chased by French associates of the Kalamans. But this time they’d had a chance to talk about Kitty Sinn, the woman who’d started it all, and Tina had let Charlotte reminisce about their time together at university. Kitty had sounded like a lovely young woman, and it seemed a terrible injustice that she’d lost her life in the way she did.
When it was time for Tina to leave, she and Charlotte had shared a long hug, and Charlotte had looked her in the eyes. ‘Do you know, Tina, I’ve spent so much of my life sheltered from all the darkness of the world – even Kitty’s disappearance didn’t affect me as much as it should have done – but now I feel like I’ve seen the very worst it has to offer. I have nightmares. How on earth do you cope?’
In truth, Tina had found it incredibly difficult to cope over the years. ‘Because I’ve got no choice,’ she’d said. ‘It’s either that or be defeated. And I’m not going to be defeated. Neither are you.’
And with that, she’d driven away, hoping that Charlotte would be able to return home again soon. Whether that happened or not depended at least in part on whether Cem Kalaman could be brought to justice, and Tina had a good feeling about the lead that Charlotte had provided. A double murder forty years ago might not look like much on the surface, but if Tina could establish a link between the Kalamans and the Sheridans, she could build a picture of how they’d murdered Dana Brennan and Kitty Sinn as well as the numerous women who’d died since. And somewhere in that picture she hoped would be the evidence to help bring them down.
While trawling the internet in Charlotte’s garden that afternoon Tina had managed to track down the only surviving sibling of Brian Foxley, an unmarried sister two years his junior, and had even found a landline number for her. The sister’s name was Pauline and she was seventy-five and still living in Northampton, the same town in which her brother had run his private detective business.
Tina was tired. It had been a long day. But she decided to call Pauline anyway.
The phone rang for a long time before it was answered by a woman with an uncertain ‘Hello?’
‘Miss Foxley?’
‘Yes. Who is this? Look, if you’re trying to sell me something—’
Tina thought she sounded pretty sprightly for seventy-five, with a healthy dose of suspicion. ‘I’m not. I’m ringing about your brother, Brian. My name’s Tina Boyd. I’m a private detective as well.’
‘Brian’s dead,’ Pauline Foxley said coldly. ‘He’s been dead a long time.’
‘I know. I’ve been hired by the estate of one of his last clients to look into what happened to him.’ Tina had rehearsed this conversation, and she kept to her script. ‘Their belief, and mine too, is that your brother and his wife were murdered, and it was made to look like a murder/suicide. I hate to bring up the past like this, Miss Foxley, but I’d like to ask you some questions.’
There was a pause, as if Pauline was gathering herself. ‘Look, I don’t know you …’ she managed eventually.
Tina gave her name again, as well as her website address and licence number. ‘Would you like to check them out and I can call you back?’
There was another pause as Pauline wrote everything down. Tina hoped that she would be as thorough with her memories as she was with her attention to detail.
‘Hold on,’ she said, and Tina heard the phone being put down on a surface.
It was a good three minutes before Pauline came back on the phone. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘The first question’s quite a direct one, but it’s important I get an honest answer. Is it possible your brother did actually kill his wife?’
‘No,’ she answered emphatically.
Tina had been prepared for that. Most people aren’t going to think their siblings are capable of murder. ‘Why not?’
‘Lots of bloody reasons,’ said Pauline, her voice suddenly full of righteous anger. ‘Brian was a good man. He was a police officer for ten years before he became a private detective, and he never had any trouble with anyone. He didn’t have a temper. He didn’t drink much. They said he was full up with whisky when they found him. He didn’t even drink whisky. And most of all, he had no reason to hurt Glenda. They had their ups and downs, of course, who doesn’t? But he never raised his hand to her, so when the police said they thought Brian had stabbed Glenda to death, and then hanged himself, I knew he couldn’t have done it, and I told them so.’
‘Forgive me, Miss Foxley, but I was also in the police force a long time and I investigated a number of murders, and relatives of suspects often say that.’
‘Well then, let me tell you something else. Brian was scared of the sight of blood, right from when he was a child. John, his brother – God rest his soul – used to tease him about it because he had to have a blood test once and he fainted. He’d never have done what they said he did to Glenda, stabbed her all those times. He didn’t have it in him.’
‘And you told all this to the police?’
‘Everyone told them. John, Mum, his friends.’
Tina suppressed a sigh. This wasn’t exactly evidence.
‘Were the two of you close?’
‘Yes we were.’ Again Pauline was emphatic. ‘We only lived a couple of miles apart. There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about him.’
‘Did he ever talk to you about a case he was working on not long before he died involving a woman who died in a car accident in Italy?’
‘No. He didn’t talk about his work. He was professional like that.’
‘Miss Foxley, I think Brian must have found something out about this particular case that got him killed. Is there anyone he would have confided in?’
‘Glenda. He would definitely have told her.’
‘Anyone who might be alive now?’
‘It’s such a long time ago.’ There was frustration in her voice.
‘Can you try and think?’ Tina persevered. ‘Anyone he was friendly with who might be able to help?’
‘You could talk to Ken, I suppose. Not that I’ve seen him for a long time.’
‘Who’s Ken?’
‘Ken Wignall. He was a policeman friend of Brian’s. He promised to talk to the officer in charge of the case and tell him that Brian wouldn’t have killed his wife. He might know something.’
Tina pulled up at the side of the road and made a note of the name.
‘And do you know where I might find him?’ she asked.
‘The last I heard he’d moved out to Brackley to live with his daughter and her husband. He hasn’t been that well. I can probably get a number for him if you want.’
‘No, but I remember he was a big fat lazy bastard and a bloody awful detective.’
Tina burst out laughing. ‘Why don’t you say it like it is, Miss Foxley?’
The older woman chuckled. ‘Well he was. And please, call me Pauline.’
‘OK, Pauline. Don’t worry, I’ll find out his name. Thank you for your help.’
‘You do believe me about Brian, don’t you?’ she said, serious now. ‘That he wouldn’t have done it?’
‘I need to look at the case further,’ Tina replied, ‘but yes I do. And I’ll do what I can to prove it.’
‘Thank you,’ Pauline said. ‘That means a lot to me.’
Tina gave Pauline her mobile number, asked her if she could find a number for Ken Wignall as soon as possible, then apologized for bringing up the past.
‘No, I’m glad you did,’ said Pauline. ‘When you get to my age, the past is all there is.’
When Tina ended the call she saw that Ray had sent her a message saying that the SIO on the Foxley case, DCI Melvyn Rogers, had died of a heart attack in 2002.
She sighed. Finding answers after all this time wasn’t going to be easy.
Twenty-three
It was just gone ten p.m. and Dan and I were sat in our pool car on a back street in Acton, waiting for the undercover op to get going.
The briefing at Ealing nick had been pretty straightforward, although it had been strange for me going back there after three months away. The two NCA undercover operators (who’d not been there, so there was no chance of them being compromised) had arranged to be in a pub on the Uxbridge Road at 9.30, from where they were to await further instructions from Ugo Amelu on when and where the deal was to take place. Two armed tactical support teams in unmarked vans, as well as two cars containing Eddie Olafsson and other detectives from Ealing, plus our own car, were in different positions within a hundred-metre radius of the pub. Although Dan and I were strictly observers, we’d found a good spot on the Uxbridge Road with a view straight up it. Both undercover ops were wired for sound and wearing miniature GPS devices, with their mobiles automatically connected to Olaf’s, so we had their exact location at all times. The plan was that when they received their instructions, either by phone or face to face, the back-up team would know about it and would follow them to the rendezvous at a safe distance. As soon as they confirmed the presence of the contraband, one of them would give the code phrase ‘great stuff – it’s all there’, and then, once they were safely out of the area, armed units would move in and make the arrests. If, on the other hand, things went wrong and they needed to be extracted immediately, the code phrase was ‘No way, we’re leaving right this second’.
I’d just finished eating an Italian BMT from Subway – my sustenance for the evening – and it had tasted exactly like the processed crap it was. Dan had ordered a twelve-inch steak and cheese melt and was still finishing his, along with a huge vat of Diet Coke.
‘You know,’ he said between mouthfuls, ‘I did undercover work for a little while back in my early twenties.’
‘You never told me that.’
‘I don’t tell you everything.’
‘What kind of cases were you on?’
‘Same as this one but on a much smaller scale.’
He took another bite of his sandwich, getting some sauce on his face. It made me wonder how he stayed in shape, because that was the thing about him. He always looked lean and svelte, with plenty of muscle and no fat. It was very unfair.
‘Did you do it for long?’
‘For a while. Most of the time it was easy. You turned up, pretended to be a buyer. The seller pulled out the drugs. You nicked him. It didn’t do any good, of course. You nick one, someone else just comes in and takes his place.’ He found a napkin, wiped his face, and took a drink from the Coke. ‘Then one day me and another undercover guy turned up on this estate in Brixton acting as small-time dealers from Harlesden wanting to buy some crack. We were still knocking on the door when these boys appeared out of nowhere and surrounded us. There were about six or seven of them – kids really, but a couple of them had knives. That’s when you realize how vulnerable you are. Back-up was a quarter of a mile away.’
‘What did you do?’
‘They were nervous, but there was one you could tell was the leader. All it would have taken was for me to give him one quick left hook and he’d have gone down just like that, and the others would have bolted. I thought about doing it too. The kid might have been holding a knife but his guard was wide open.’ He shook his head slowly, looking out of the window. ‘But I couldn’t. When you’ve killed a man with your fists, it makes you much more careful about using them again. Just the thought of it makes me nauseous. So we gave them the money. We were carrying five hundred quid and we gave them the lot. They called us pussies and ran. Back-up arrived two minutes later but never caught them. It was a set-up, must have been, and the thing was, it put me off undercover work. I didn’t want to be thrown in that situation again, which was why I applied for detective. But I’ll tell you something. I admire those two in there. You’ve got to have real balls to do that job.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I said, remembering the intensity of an undercover op I’d been involved in years ago in the military, one that had ended in disaster, and whose ramifications were still being felt years later.
Which was when I saw a car pull up opposite the pub and a tall black man get out and look around. I took out a pair of binoculars and focused in on him.
I recognized Ugo Amelu straight away. He was looking down the street towards us, but too far away to see me. I could see him though, and sense his body language. He looked pumped up and ready for this deal, and I wondered as I watched him take a mobile from his pocket what we’d need to do to convince him to talk.
The next second the radio crackled into life. It was Olaf.
‘Target 2 is here and phoning UC1. All units stand by. It looks like we’re live.’
Twenty-four
Stegs and Big Tone were sat at a corner table of the pub, facing the door and nursing drinks. Tone was drinking Coke but Stegs was deliberately breaking the rules and drinking Stella. He needed the drink to keep calm. The conversation between the two of them was sparse. Stegs had worked with Tone on several jobs, and he liked him, but the mood tonight was tense, and anyway, they had to be very careful what they said in case someone working for Ugo was listening in. The supposed African prince was a grade A prick, but he was also cunning, and in these sort of ops, where trust between the parties was non-existent, you could never be too careful.
The pub was busy with a sizeable crowd of white metrosexual twenty- and thirty-somethings that contained a hefty beard quotient. It was the type of place Stegs hated, inhabited by exactly the kind of people he also hated, and he had no idea why Ugo had chosen this pub as a meeting point, since all three of them would stand out a mile. But Stegs had long ago ceased to be surprised by the criminal classes whose behaviour was always erratic and often completely irrational.
He sat back in his chair and looked around, wanting to see if anyone was paying them undue attention. No one was. They might as well have been invisible, which for some reason irritated Stegs. He didn’t like the way all these people were sitting there gawking at their phones, or talking about their crap jobs in media, without a care in the world, while he and Big Tone were risking their lives on their behalf. Frankly, they didn’t deserve it.
He looked at his watch. Five past ten, and his pint glass was almost empty. He wanted another one but knew that would be the kind of move that could potentially cost him his job, and he couldn’t afford that, not with his outgoings.
His undercover phone began vibrating in his pocket. The number was withheld, but Stegs knew who it would be. He put the phone to h
is ear and leaned forward so he was out of the worst of the pub’s background noise.
‘Yeah?’
‘What’s up, bruv,’ said Ugo. ‘You in the pub?’
‘Course I’m in the pub,’ said Stegs, feigning righteous irritation at being messed about. ‘We’ve been sitting here waiting for you for the last half hour.’
‘Sorry bruv, I got held up. Come on out. I’m over the other side of the road.’
‘Right,’ said Stegs with an exaggerated sigh. ‘We’ll be out in a minute. Come on,’ he said to Tone. ‘He’s outside.’
Ugo was standing next to a Porsche Cayenne parked slap bang in the middle of a bus lane, which was typical criminal behaviour. Stegs bet he owed thousands in parking fines that would never get paid.
‘How you doin’, bruv?’ said Ugo, flashing a pearly white smile. ‘Your taxi’s here. You got the money?’
‘Yeah, I got the money,’ said Stegs.
‘Where is it? You ain’t hidin’ two hundred on you, are you?’
He was still smiling, and that was the thing about Ugo. He smiled a lot which, given the business he was in, always unnerved Stegs.
‘It’s nearby.’
‘Nearby ain’t no good to me, bruv. You’re going to need to bring the money with you. Otherwise there ain’t no deal.’
‘Where are we going?’
Ugo looked round. ‘Well, we ain’t doin’ it here, are we? We’ve got the stuff about a mile away. You jump in here and we can go and sort it out. But you need to bring the money.’
Stegs stepped right up close to Ugo, who was a good six inches taller, and glared up at him. ‘You want us to get in a car with you and go some place we don’t know with two hundred grand? I may come from the provinces but I’m not a complete fucking idiot. We’re parked round the corner so we’ll follow you to where the gear is. But I’ve got a friend, and the money’s going to stay with him until I’ve seen the goods. If I like what I see, and I know I’m not being ripped off, I’ll phone him and he’ll come with the money.’
The Hanged Man Page 13
