A bit of further truffling – phone records, computer stuff, some clever analysis of car movements by a specialist team in the Met – gives us a further two people. Thugs for hire. London muscle. Those two, Don Devonish and Jackson Small, we also collect.
So much for the London end.
The Welsh end is also nicely tidy.
The monks are behind bars, never to emerge again.
And Dylan Parry. We have him for multiple kidnap, yes, but also for murder.
Our forensics guys found remains of homemade ANFO explosive in one of the guy’s outbuildings: he’d mixed the stuff in a plastic water barrel, stirring with the shaft of a wooden yard brush. He’d cleaned out the barrel carefully enough – though we found traces in a drain – but the grain of the yard brush was still dense with the stuff. Since analysis has demonstrated that Parry is also the man on the agricultural merchant’s CCTV, our case against him is already pretty much secure.
Also – a curious point, not really relevant in evidential terms, but still a little missing piece of the whole puzzle – it turns out that Parry and Father Cyril went to school together. A Catholic, all-boys boarding place in Shropshire. At one time it must have looked like the two boys took very different paths away from that place. Now: not so much. And the little coincidence helps answer that question of how come Parry felt able to broach the whole anchorite thing with Cyril. The two men weren’t strangers. They knew each other from way back. Felt able to talk without constraint.
But that’s a by-the-by.
Truth is, our evidence comes in so sweetly that, for once, our interviews won’t make much difference: we can build a watertight case with or without a confession. But still: you work through the hard bits, so you can enjoy the fun bits, and Burnett and I intend to have some fun. And not just that but, as I say to Burnett, there are still some unsolved questions. Big ones. Ones that matter.
We run the interview in Carmarthen. Nugent has some fancy-shmancy London solicitor to advise him and we make a big show of welcoming him to the town. Showing him the views of the River Towy. Asking if this is his first time here, all that rubbish. Give the guy as much time as he wants with his client. ‘Don’t rush. Take your time. We like to do things right here. If you need teas or coffees, just shout.’
Nugent’s hair is short and already grey, though he’s only forty-seven. But he’s lean, and fit, and has the kind of tan that you only get from skiing and swimming and sailing, not quite year-round but regularly enough that the tan never really fades. The guy is with his solicitor for four hours. Burnett and I just piss around upstairs, doing little scraps of work from time to time – taking phone calls, responding to emails – but mostly just talking bollocks.
When we start, as the clock draws close to three in the afternoon, Burnett just drops a file of paperwork on the table and says, ‘Well, Michael, nice to have you here. Just . . . well, we wanted to give you the chance to talk to us. Tell us about things.’
He spreads his hands. Friendly. Welcoming. A conversation between friends.
Silence. Nothing. In the corner of the room, a video camera winks red.
Burnett waits. A full minute. That’s a hell of a long time. Even a ten-second silence seems long, but one minute filled only with waiting – that seems like for ever.
Nugent strokes the underside of his nose with his right hand index finger, but otherwise just toughs it out. Stays silent. Shows no anxiety.
Burnett: ‘OK, then. How about you tell us about the abduction of Alina Mishchenko? We could start there maybe. You could talk to us about how you identified her, abducted her, removed her to Dylan Parry’s cottage over here in Llanglydwen, then contacted Mr and Mrs Mishchenko with a demand for money. Why don’t we start there, maybe?’
Burnett glances at me, as though seeking my approval. I give it with a shrug and a nod. Yep. Good place to start. Nice idea, boss.
We each turn a friendly face to Nugent.
Another minute drags itself through the room, embarrassed.
Burnett tuts a little. ‘Maybe it’s the Welshman in me. The Celt, you know. We love a good chat, like after a rugby match, you go down to the pub and talk everything over. Every move, every play, every player. For me, that’s even better than the game itself.’
I murmur, ‘Boss . . .’
‘Quite right, Fiona, yes, quite right. I’m off topic, aren’t I? So, let’s start really simple. Just get the conversation started. Now, then, Michael – Mike, Michael, Mr Nugent? – we’ll settle for Michael, OK? So, this is your house, yes?’
The first item in Burnett’s stack of paperwork is a full-colour photo of Nugent’s house, with the address printed in block capitals underneath.
Nugent glances sideways at his solicitor, who just gives a half-shrug and opens his hands.
Nugent says, ‘Yes. Of course. That’s my house.’
‘And this would be your living room?’
Another photo. A nod from Nugent.
The camera captures Nugent’s nod anyway, but I say, ‘Mr Nugent nods in response to the question.’
Burnett says, ‘Yes, good catch, Fiona. Michael, if you speak your responses, it does help with the transcript. Would you mind? Thanks so much.’ He pauses before tossing another photo over and continuing, ‘And this is your home office, yes? And on your desk there, that’s your computer?’
Nugent shifts in discomfort, a movement he half-suppresses when he catches me watching.
He says, ‘Yes, correct.’
‘OK, good, this is really good. We’re making progress. Now, obviously we turned your computer on and took a look at things, and we found these emails. I mean, lots more of course, but these ones, for example.’
Burnett throws a few stapled pages across the table. Just subject headers, dates, sent from details. Ordinary things, restaurant business mostly, nothing encrypted.
‘Yes, you recognise these?’
Nugent nods.
I say, ‘Mr Nugent nods in response to—’
Burnett: ‘Yes, sorry, Michael, would you mind—?’
Nugent, loudly, irritated: ‘Yes, yes, these are my emails.’
‘Thank you. Yes. Your emails. Good.’
Pause.
Burnett again: ‘So what you’re wondering, what you’re sitting here wondering, is whether your encryption held up. I mean, you’re a restaurant guy, yes? I mean, give you, I don’t know, a steak and ale pie to make, and you’d whip the thing up, no problem. Or get someone to do it. Anyway, a task like that, you’d handle it. Computer encryption, though. That’s hard. Technical, now. And for a long time, it didn’t really matter, did it? You just ran your little operation, and nothing went wrong. So maybe you got a little sloppy. Or maybe your techniques didn’t evolve to keep pace with new technology. And, right now, you’re wondering whether you slipped up. You’re wondering whether our case against you is purely circumstantial or totally overwhelming. That’s right, isn’t it? I’m right. I should be a mind reader.’
Nugent has a frozen, almost spacey quality. When he moves, and he doesn’t very much, there’s something both jerky and gluey in his movements. Like some rusty machinery trying to rediscover its action.
The lawyer just sits there pressing the pads of his fingers against each other. Slowly, repetitively, wondering quite how fucked his client is.
Very fucked, the short answer.
After Burnett has waited long enough, he starts floating more papers out of his folder. The encrypted emails, decrypted. Page after page after page.
Burnett releases the papers one by one. Some of them land on the desk, some on Nugent’s hands or lap, others go fluttering past his head or float off the table completely, landing on the floor.
A snowfall. A drift. A whitening.
Nugent makes almost no attempt to look at the papers. He glances at one or two, but a glance tells him all that he needs.
The solicitor grabs for individual documents. Reads them. He’s not seen this stuff before and it takes him t
ime to understand quite how incriminating this snowfall is.
After a while – papers all over the table and floor, more papers still in Burnett’s folder, one or two sheets still floating through the air – I say, ‘Boss.’
Burnett stares at me. He says nothing, but he stops pulling pages out of the folder. He stays totally still until the solicitor has stopped reading whatever lethally damning piece of evidence he’s currently on. Waits until both men, the prisoner and his lawyer, have his full attention.
Then: ‘Mr Nugent – Michael – did you send these emails?’
No response. None.
A sideways glance at his solicitor. A small swallow. A look around for water, but though there’s a half-empty plastic coffee cup at hand, he doesn’t drink.
Burnett: ‘Remaining silent?’ Nods. Almost approvingly. ‘We’re governed by the laws of England and Wales. You have the right to remain silent. That’s your call.’
I say – and this whole thing has been pre-planned, the whole strategy chucklingly arranged while we were pissing around upstairs – I say, ‘Yes, but, boss . . .’
Burnett stares at me. A what’s-this-woman-on-about-now stare.
And then he remembers.
‘Oh.’ His face changes. Looks crestfallen, worried. ‘If you don’t say anything and then you come up with some trumped-up bit of nonsense in court, people wonder why you didn’t just tell us right now. When we’re asking. So: if you want to produce some kind of excuse in court, you really need to come up with it now. Like, right now.’
Pause.
A long one. An empty one.
One that rings with the clang of prison gates, the shriek of the prison yard.
I say, ‘Mr Nugent makes no response to the question.’
Burnett: ‘Michael, I’m asking you again. Did you or did you not send these emails from the computer in your home office?’
No answer.
The solicitor, clearing his throat, says, ‘Perhaps if my client and I—’
Burnett, interrupting: ‘Bollocks to that. You had a full four hours in which to prepare and I’m asking your client a perfectly straightforward question to which he knows the answer. Mr Nugent, did you, yes or no, send those emails?’
We leave it a long time.
After thirty seconds, I say, ‘Mr Nugent does not reply within thirty seconds.’
After a minute, I say, ‘Mr Nugent makes no response within one minute.’
Burnett looks at his watch, at Nugent, then makes a noise in his throat. ‘OK, we’re done.’
Starts scooping up papers. Not even doing it properly. Just stuffing the most accessible ones back, any old how, into his folder, then tucking the whole messy sandwich under his arm.
I scrabble around on my hands and knees picking stuff up from the floor. Nugent is almost frozen into position. The solicitor, unable to overcome his own instinct of politeness, helps me gather up papers, but does so stiffly. Never shifting from his chair.
Burnett stands angrily at the door, and says, ‘Kidnap. Murder. Attempted murder of two police officers. It’s life. Multiple, multiple life sentences. Category A all-male prison. And the age you are, the seriousness of those crimes? You’ll never get out. You’ll never, I don’t know, sit under a tree again. Have you thought of that? They don’t have trees in prisons. You’ll never see a fucking tree again.’
I say – still scrabbling after those fallen pages – ‘There’s mitigation, sir. He could try to mitigate.’
‘Mitigation? Bollocks. What is there to mitigate? Even if he made a full confession. Even if he told us every last thing, it’s too late. We don’t need a confession.’
I get up, hands full of paper.
‘Money. There’s the money.’
‘What? What do you mean? The Proceeds of Crime Act covers all that. We’ll take the house. Take the car. Take the restaurants. Take the fucking lot.’ Then, pointing down at Nugent, says, ‘You won’t just be a prisoner. You’ll be a bankrupt prisoner. A bankrupt prisoner for the rest of your life, trying to remember what a fucking tree looks like.’
‘Sir, actually though, there’s a lot more money.’
‘What?’
‘Mr Nugent’s assets, sir.’
‘What?’
‘They’re not enough. Not nearly.’
‘That house of his? Do you have any idea how much those things are worth these days?’
‘Sir, Mr Nugent extorted almost thirty million pounds. I mean, that’s the part we know about. The part we know about so far. And his assets are worth maybe a third of that amount, probably less.’
Burnett pauses at that. Seems to really pause, I mean. Not the tactical, obviously stagey pauses that this interrogation has been full of so far, but one that looks genuine – even, almost, to me.
He thinks a moment, then says, wearily, ‘Mr Nugent, where’s the money? You’ve got some offshore stash that you don’t want us to find? I can tell you right now, you will never get out of jail to spend it.’
Nugent’s eyes are flickering now. A foot taps rapidly against the table’s iron leg. His finger, unreadable, traces shapes on its melamine top.
I say, ‘Mr Nugent, what’s your accountancy background?’
‘What?’
‘Your accountancy background. Are you a trained accountant? Do you have finance training?’
‘No. I run restaurants. I— ’
‘You are not a trained accountant?’
‘No.’
‘Would you be capable of understanding, let’s say, the management accounts of a Ukrainian manganese mining firm? Would you be able to discuss alternative approaches to the valuation of iron ore inventories?’
Here, for the very first time, there’s something like a smile at the corners of Nugent’s mouth. Not a proper smile, nothing like that. But a ghost of muscle memory. The recollection that things like smiles were once possible.
He says, ‘No. I wouldn’t understand those things. I have no background in that kind of thing at all.’
Burnett pulls away from the door. Drops his folder on the table.
‘Mr Nugent, who were you working for? Who was your boss? It’s that person we want in jail.’
Nugent covers his mouth with his hand. Doesn’t even bother to conceal the calculation in his eyes.
Thinks for a moment, and says, ‘Inspector, may I have some time alone with my solicitor?’
Burnett pauses – grins – then punches the prisoner softly on the shoulder. ‘Take as much time as you want, Michael. Take as much time as you want.’
48
We leave them to it, Nugent and his solicitor.
On the way upstairs, I call Watkins.
I say, ‘Nugent’s going to tell us. He’s strategising with his solicitor now.’
Watkins thinks a second, then says, ‘OK, I’m coming over.’ Says that, which is nice, then to make up, adds, ‘But it’s a long shot, Fiona. Really long.’
Is it? I’m not sure. But she’ll be here in about an hour and we’ll find out soon enough.
Burnett goes out for coffee and something to eat. He doesn’t really care about this next bit. But me, I have my To Do list still:
(1) Find, arrest and prosecute Carlotta’s kidnappers.
(2) Revive Operation April in order to find, arrest and prosecute all its principals.
Item (1) is nicely ticked. But item (2)? Just exactly where have I got to on that?
We’re about to find out.
After about an hour, we get a call from downstairs telling us that Nugent is ready. Watkins is still about fifteen minutes away. She tells us to go ahead anyway.
We go back to the interview room. Burnett carries a cardboard tray with doughnuts and hot drinks. And we haven’t even sat down, haven’t even shared our bounty, when Nugent says, ‘I’ll give you everything. Everything I have. Everything I know. But . . .’
Burnett: ‘No buts, Mr Nugent. Everything needs to mean everything.’
There are no plea bargains in
Welsh or English courtrooms. Prosecutors can’t go easy in exchange for information. The way we look at it, arrangements of that sort create an almost intolerable incentive for a suspect to deliver the evidence he believes the prosecution wants. They rob the court of its power to choose its verdict and its sentence.
Even so, Nugent has something real to play for. He’ll get a life sentence, almost for sure, but the judge will still have to set a recommended minimum tariff. Given the nature of Nugent’s crimes, he’s looking at anywhere from thirty years up to a whole life term. Since his crimes include conspiring in the attempted murder of two police officers, most judges would be looking to sentence at the upper end of that range.
All of which means that if Nugent ever wants to remind himself ‘what a fucking tree looks like’, he needs to give the court some damn good reason to find clemency.
A damn good reason such as giving us everything.
No ifs, no buts, no exceptions.
Nugent whispers – croaks, ‘I’ve got everything except a name. “John Jones”. I never had a real name.’
‘“John Jones”, you say? He was Welsh?’
‘Yes.’
‘And, to the best of your knowledge and belief, he was the principal owner and beneficiary of this kidnap operation?’
‘Yes.’
‘Him alone, or him in collaboration with others?’
‘Alone. At least, as far as I know.’
‘And what was his role? What did he do?’
‘Everything. Chose the targets. Gave me instructions. Handled the whole money thing. Receiving the money offshore, hiding it, making my payments to a Cayman Islands bank account. My job was to oversee the actual implementation. Arranging the snatch. Getting the target over to Parry. All of that. But the big decisions were John’s. He just paid me my share.’
The Dead House: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller (Book 5) (Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series) Page 37
