by Lee Weeks
‘Okay, will talk to him now. See you tomorrow, Robbo.’
Willis came off the phone.
Ross’s head swivelled back and forth, from road to Willis, waiting.
‘Cocaine comes in many forms,’ teased Willis.
‘Don’t do this,’ Ross groaned. ‘Just get on with it, for goodness’ sake.’
‘It’s disguised in things like gel bras, woven Inca baskets, fresh yams with the centres hollowed out and, wait for it, bespoke, composite, marble fireplace surrounds.’
‘God, you’re kidding me. It was staring us in the bloody face all the time,’ Ross said as he swerved to avoid a chicken who had decided to cross the road at that moment.
‘Not quite,’ Willis frowned.
‘Almost,’ replied Ross.
Ross drove along the mountain road back towards the coast. He switched the mute button on the satnav so he could concentrate.
‘Where does that put Manson?’ he asked. ‘Does he work for Tony?’
‘We need to have more on Manson if you can help with that.’
‘Sure, I’ll get on it. He’s definitely made some bad life choices, if he thinks he can start working for the cartels and have some control over it. Unless he is the innocent party here? What if it was Eddie that was doing a sideline in making things out of cocaine and Manson’s just realised what he’s landed in?’ said Ross. ‘What’s Carter going to do? What’s his take on this?’
‘I don’t know yet. Robbo hasn’t spoken to him yet.’ Ross glanced across at Willis; she ignored it. She had her eyes glued to the road ahead. The narrow lanes didn’t allow for the speeds Ross liked to drive.
‘We definitely have a few more questions to ask Manson,’ she said.
‘Surely, now, this should be handed completely over to the NCA. This is our territory. It’s quite clear we are never going to solve this murder. This is way more complicated than just a murder and we both know the murder was just the cherry on the cake.’
‘It was always our case. We’re hanging on to it,’ answered Willis.
He laughed drily. ‘We’ve been specialising in bringing Tony Butcher down for so many years I’ve gone grey, or I would have if I’d let it happen. We have all the contacts in place now. We are very near. This is bigger than Eddie Butcher’s murder.’
‘Did you know about Manson?’
‘No, not directly.’
‘That’s a no, then.’
‘I accept we have been useful to one another but now the murder squad should step aside. The National Crime Agency has the powers that you don’t. We can cross boundaries; impound goods in customs; we have immigration powers. We are set up to deal with this situation.’
‘So, you never thought it might be made into things like fireplaces and put into expensive villas?’
‘No.’
Chapter 49
Carter left and went back to Melvin’s flat in Bethnal Green. He sat outside in his car. The body had been removed but the place was quiet with the work of the white-suited forensics officers, bringing a type of serenity in the methodical search of Melvin’s last minutes. Carter got out and came to stand at the door to the flat.
Sandford, the chief forensics officer, passed across the corridor in front of the door, and came back to talk to Carter.
‘Have you got anything for me?’ asked Carter. ‘It looked similar to Eddie Butcher’s injuries to me.’
Sandford nodded. ‘We might be in luck this time. He was killed where you found him; we might find something of the killer here. How far did you walk into the flat?’
‘Not far. You saw where the body was, just inside the lounge? I smelled it first, the smell of roasting flesh.’
‘I’m amazed he didn’t just set the house on fire. He’d used the blowtorch on just about every inch of the man’s skin.’
‘It was never his intention to hide the evidence with a fire. This man loves torturing his victims for no good reason, it seems. The killer wanted me to find Melvin like that. He sent me a message with Melvin’s missing dog. This man is a frigging monster.’
‘Did you know the deceased?’
‘Yeah, we used to talk.’
‘As in?’
‘He was an informant, of sorts, but just a casual arrangement; he never told me anything worth knowing in all the years I knew him. Certainly, nothing worth killing him over. The most he did was take photos of people on the evening of Eddie Butcher’s funeral. One of those used to be in a Colombian death squad.’
‘That would explain things.’
‘He was a nice bloke, been through the mill. Not the luckiest chap. He gave tours of this area, showing people where the Krays lived, that kind of thing. But he hadn’t worked for a couple of weeks. He was scared. Someone took his dog. He told me they were trying to frighten him off from giving his tours.’
‘I guess he didn’t listen.’ Sandford was standing still and listening to Carter for once. Normally he walked away when Carter started talking. The two irritated one another. Sandford was a rugby man and Carter was football. Carter spent money on designer clothes, he loved shopping. Sandford let his wife buy his clothes for him from Marks & Spencer.
Sandford smiled at Carter kindly. He had registered that this was different from the many murder sites they’d worked together. This was personal. And then Sandford remembered he needed to be somewhere else.
‘I’ll leave you to it. You don’t need me bothering you,’ said Carter. Sandford had already gone back in to continue his work. As Carter looked past him he could see the pieces of charred, curled skin stuck on the armchair.
‘By the way, what did you do with the dog?’ Sandford turned to ask.
‘Pam, who works with Robbo, has taken it.’
Carter walked back along the road to the Blind Beggar, looking at Melvin’s photos on his phone. He had a look at Melvin’s social media to see who had written on it. There were a few messages from locals. There were lots of reviews from happy clients who had experienced one of his East End Gangster tours. Carter decided he’d walk the tour himself. First he went to see Chrissie at the Blind Beggar and ordered a coffee. The barman went off to make it, annoyed: it always pissed him off when people ordered coffee in a pub. Chrissie came through from the back and stopped in her tracks when she saw Carter.
‘Can I have a word?’ he asked.
She nodded. They went through to the garden at the back, where they would have privacy.
‘Did you hear about Melvin?’
‘Yes. I feel sick to my stomach. Is it true he took hours to die?’
‘He was tortured for a long time. He died by having his throat slit, at the end.’
‘Sick bastard.’
‘Got anyone in mind when you say that?’
She turned away. ‘I can only repeat what I already told you about what happened last night. Like I said, Harold and Lev were in, and the tall strange-looking blond man with the bun; he left with Harold. There were a handful of others. They all saw Melvin drunk. They were all quite kind to him, really, except when he started getting aggressive. He started accusing them of trying to stop him working, stealing his dog, he got nasty. Even Harold tried to make him calm down but he couldn’t.’
‘Harold left at the same time as Melvin, you said?’
‘No, Harold and the blond man left half an hour after.’ She shook her head. ‘This isn’t Harold’s style. I know Harold Butcher’s style. I’ve seen it many times over the years. Harold is a mean, quick-tempered man, but he wouldn’t torture someone just for fun. I’ve said all I know.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ Carter looked at Melvin’s route for his tour, although he already knew it would take a circular route past the gym where the Krays boxed, past their old house, their school.
Carter walked down to St Matthew’s and along past the railway bridge and the ballerina graffiti. He crossed over and headed towards Lev’s bakery. He could see Lev watching him.
‘Hello, Lev, how’s it going?’
The caf
é was empty. Lev was keeping himself very busy behind the counter, chopping iceberg lettuce.
‘It’s going okay, thank you, Inspector.’
‘You heard what happened to Melvin?’
Lev nodded. His eyes made fleeting eye contact with Carter’s before he tipped the lettuce into a serving container and wiped his hands on his apron.
‘I hear you were in the pub last night when Melvin was there.’
Lev nodded.
‘What kind of state was he in?’
Lev shrugged, as if there was nothing really unusual in the evening.
‘He was drunk. He’d lost his dog. It’s understandable.’ Lev moved on to carving thin slices of cucumber with a mandolin cutter.
‘He was sure someone had taken the dog,’ Lev said as he concentrated on making the wafer-thin cucumber slices and trying to stop his fingers getting near the blade.
‘I think he was right. Someone did have his dog. I don’t know who or why.’ Carter got out a photo of Marco to show Lev. ‘How do you know him?’
‘I don’t know him, Inspector. I know of him.’ Lev stopped slicing and squinted at the photo. Carter knew what he was doing: he was trying to put a location to it.
‘That was taken from this bakery, taken from your shop by Melvin.’
‘He came in here most days.’
‘He said he was here when this man, Marco Zapata, came in. What did Zapata want?’
Lev raised his shoulders in an exaggerated ‘Am I supposed to remember details like that?’ He resumed slicing the cucumber.
‘Did you go in the Blind Beggar to meet with Marco Zapata last night?’
‘Damn and blast!’ Lev quickly grabbed some kitchen towel and wrapped it around a bleeding finger. He threw the cucumber in the bin as blood began dripping over it. ‘I’ve shaved the top of my finger off.’ He looked at Carter half-accusingly. Lev reached beneath the counter and pulled out a few plasters, then went to the corner of the bakery and put his bleeding finger under the cold tap.
‘Yeah, that looks nasty,’ said Carter in a tone and with an expression that said the opposite.
‘Look, Inspector, I know of Marco Zapata.’
‘What do you know?’
‘That he’s friends with the Butcher family.’
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘No, not really. They are all Mafia, aren’t they? They will all join up when they want something that benefits them all.’
‘What is it they want, do you think?’
Lev shrugged, he pulled his finger from under the cold water and wrapped it tightly to stop the bleeding.
‘You’re asking the wrong person. I serve them coffee and bagels, make polite conversation, laugh at their jokes and I give them a donation now and again. For that, I get left alone. I don’t have any reason to gossip or to speculate. I don’t want to lose my life.’
‘But you choose to drink in a pub where they go?’
‘I haven’t seen Marco Zapata in there before. I don’t go there often, maybe once a month. It’s my local. Do you need any more reasons?’
‘So last night was a once-a-month outing for you?’
He nodded.
‘What did people say about Melvin’s behaviour?’
‘Nothing really. He was just loud and drunk.’
‘Did you hear what Melvin said to Marco, or Harold?’
‘He said the same to all of us, that he knew things, that one of us had stolen his dog.’ Lev put plasters over his fingertip and then two latex gloves on top of that as the blood still seeped through and began filling the finger in the glove.
‘My God,’ he said irritably. ‘Inspector, do you mind? I have to call my cousin to help. I can’t cut the ingredients with this hand like this.’
‘That’s okay. Where is he, local?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want to call him?’
‘I’ll do it in a minute. When you’re done with questions.’
‘Okay, I just want to ask you something else, Lev, and I know you’re not going to want to answer it but I need you to. Did you hear who killed Eddie Butcher?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘I can tell you something for nothing, Lev, Eddie and Melvin were both killed by someone specialising in the Colombian cartel’s form of torture.
‘Melvin was killed because he was making a stand against the likes of Marco. If you locals don’t stand up to it, Lev, this place will sink deeper into drugs and gangs; is that what you want? I’ve walked Melvin’s route for his tour. It always went past here, always past the church, the old pub. Did something about the tour piss Marco off?’
Lev shook his head but at the same time he stood tall and faced Carter.
‘I can’t help you. Sorry, Inspector. I wish I could but I don’t know why Melvin was killed.’
Carter looked at the poster on the wall, the news clippings of Lev’s history, how his grandfather had come to the UK and had worked his way up to own the bakery and his famous bagels.
‘Your grandfather would be turning in his grave. If Melvin got killed for doing a tour of this area and pissing off some thug, what’s going to happen to you and your family along the line? Where’s the line in the sand, Lev?’
Chapter 50
After Carter had gone, Della had a good look around the apartment for hidden cameras. She didn’t find any. She put the television on while she went into the bathroom and got out all the things she had from Tracy. She looked at the latex mask and the dark wig. She had a big holdall-type bag, a short duffle coat with a hood, old trainers of Tracy’s, a dark blue baggy tracksuit and a T-shirt. She had an outfit she would never have worn in real life. She locked the things away in the cupboard and took the key with her. Then she drove back to the apartment.
She drove to 1 Shoreditch Mews and parked her hire car. She let herself into the apartment and walked up the stairs. There was the sound of a blaring television and football on.
Marco glanced her way. He was sitting on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table, watching the sports.
‘Where have you been?’
‘I told you, I have business to attend to. You look like shit. Go and have a shower and a shave. I need you to do some work for me this afternoon.’
He turned back to look at the television and Della went into the kitchen to make herself a coffee. She stood by the machine, listening to Marco swearing at the television and then the sound of him getting up and switching it off. He stood behind her.
‘What work, princess?’
‘Don’t call me that; I already told you not to.’ Della felt Marco breathing on her neck. She shivered. ‘And go and wash, you absolutely stink.’
Marco laughed as he swaggered out and Della heard the en suite bathroom door slam in his bedroom.
She went into her room and put the diamond into the safe in the wardrobe. The safe was only a small one. These flats had been designed and built for travelling businessmen to use instead of hotels.
She came back out and got her coffee as Marco came out of his bedroom with a bathrobe on.
‘So, what’s the plan, my lady?’
Della scowled at him; she picked up her coffee and went to sit at the Perspex dining table. He came to sit opposite her. He sat with his knees splayed; he slouched over the table. He grinned.
Della stared at him. ‘I’m going to Hatton Garden to get what I need from the safety-deposit box. I’m going to need you close by.’
‘I should come inside with you,’ Marco said.
‘No thanks. Stand outside and look like you are taking the job seriously and not casing the joint. Put a suit on.’
Marco’s mood was souring. Whatever amusement he had hoped to gain from winding Della up, it wasn’t happening. Now his face dropped visibly. He stood and allowed his dressing gown to fall fully apart. He had shaved his pubic hair. He had a semi. He looked at her and grinned.
Della didn’t blink. ‘Get dressed.’
The front door opened and
closed and she heard the sound of footsteps. Harold’s unmistakable light feet. He had never lost the boxer’s physique, like an old feather-weight you wouldn’t mess with. He was almost silent on his feet.
He came up level with Marco and ignored him and walked past into the kitchen. He poured himself a coffee and brought it across to sit opposite Della. Marco left the room.
‘What are you up to, Della?’
‘Up to? You know what I’m up to. I’m finding the diamonds.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, I’m sorry, Harold, I don’t.’
‘Where did you go this morning? What were you doing?’
‘Did you have me followed? Because, if you did, Harold, the deal is off, and try telling that to Tony?’
‘Laurence came here at eight this morning. He seemed to think you had made arrangements with him. You start getting cosy with Laurence before your husband’s cold in his grave and you’re not the person I thought you were, Della. Not at all.’
‘Why did he think that?’ Della felt a wave of relief come over her. But then she could never be sure about Harold. He would definitely have her followed, but she was sure they didn’t see her beyond Tracy’s this morning. Even then, she had walked around several routes before ending up at the beauty salon. She thought she was safe.
‘Then we have Marco with his tongue and his dick hanging out. This is turning into a Carry On film. You better stop playing whatever game you think you’re playing and get on with trying to stay alive.’
‘I’m focused, Harold, just try and keep the animals in their cages.’
‘Laurence wouldn’t just hit on you without encouragement.’
‘Wouldn’t he?’
Harold looked away as he thought about it, and then he raised his palms above the table and sighed.
‘Okay, I accept, he’s probably always had a thing for you and that animal in there is not fussy.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You know what I mean. You are a beautiful woman, Della, in your prime. You will get through this. We both of us stand to gain our freedom from this deal. Tony has promised me I can retire when this is all in place. I will build on the plot behind you. I hope I can be a friend to you, Della. My feuding days are over.’
