Lone Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

‘You’ll have to ask the DCI,’ Harris said, then curiosity kicked in. ‘What have you got?’

  Lucia Grossi took a moment to answer. ‘Seb and I have found evidence of a possible crime scene. We’ve got a sample of hair, a sample of blood, and a DNA profile. The only thing we haven’t got is a name.’

  She didn’t tell Harris about the medicine bottle they had found at the Argenti farmhouse. Nor did she mention the photograph that she had removed from the pink file, showing the label with a chemist’s address in London. If this was a contest about giving away as little as possible, then Lucia Grossi seemed to be winning it hands down.

  ‘Or the name of his killer,’ Harris said. ‘So, more or less, we’re even.’

  Not quite, Cangio thought, though identifying the man with the salamander tattoo would not be so easy.

  ‘More or less,’ Lucia Grossi agreed with Harris.

  ‘DCI Jardine will be pleased,’ Des Harris said, though he didn’t say whether Jardine would be pleased because the Italian visitors knew so much, or because they knew so little.

  As if on cue, the Chief Inspector arrived a moment later.

  Harris jumped up and vacated the DCI’s chair.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ Jardine asked, dropping into his seat like a fighter pilot.

  ‘We’ve just about finished,’ Lucia Grossi said. ‘But there is one thing. This man, Vincent Cormack. I noticed that you searched his house.’

  ‘We were looking for DNA evidence to confirm his identity,’ Harris said. ‘The usual things – toothbrush, comb, traces of blood on his shaving gear.’

  ‘I didn’t see that in your computer file,’ Lucia Grossi objected.

  ‘We haven’t got that far updating the reports …’

  ‘But you got confirmation?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jardine said quickly. ‘His flatmate identified him from that photo.’

  ‘Flatmate?’ Lucia Grossi stood up. ‘Someone who knows Cormack? That is good news. I want to speak with him, of course.’

  ‘We’ve questioned him already,’ Harris said.

  Jardine backed him up. ‘He didn’t have much to say for himself.’

  ‘I still want to speak with him,’ Grossi insisted. ‘That’s another good reason for coming to London. We, too, have our jobs to do.’

  Jardine set his elbows on the table. ‘As you mentioned earlier, Captain Grossi, Brexit means respecting protocols, following the rules. So, please take note. Inspector Harris will ask all the questions. And second, I’d like to run your DNA profile … not yours, Captain, the other man’s DNA, through our system.’

  Lucia Grossi beamed a smile at him, and stood up.

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ she said. ‘Can we speak to the flatmate now?’

  Jardine and Harris exchanged a glance.

  ‘Don’t you want to go to your hotel first?’ Harris asked her.

  Lucia Grossi glanced at her watch, then fixed Jardine with an expression of angelic innocence. ‘Surely your officers haven’t finished work for the day? It’s only half-past two.’

  Cangio saw the look that shot between Jardine and Harris.

  Who the hell does she think she is?

  TWENTY

  South of the Thames

  Desmond Harris wasn’t the greatest driver in the world.

  ‘I’m more of a dedicated cyclist,’ he said by way of explanation as he swerved past a woman with a trolley on a zebra crossing.

  Fortunately, he got them to Elephant and Castle without hitting anything, then heavy traffic on Tower Bridge Road slowed the car to a crawl. It took another ten minutes to get to Alice Street in Bermondsey.

  ‘Are you sure he’ll be at home?’ Cangio asked.

  ‘He’ll be in bed, I bet,’ Harris answered. ‘He works all night as a bouncer.’

  ‘What’s a bouncer?’ Lucia Grossi wanted to know.

  ‘A hired thug,’ Cangio told her.

  ‘A doorman at a nightclub,’ Harris amplified. ‘Someone who stops people coming in, or throws them out because they’ve drunk too much.’ He braked hard, turned left, then pulled the car into a parking slot. ‘In our case, naturally, he won’t be throwing anyone anywhere.’

  Harris held his finger on the buzzer for longer than was polite.

  A man opened the door in his vest and underpants, and Harris held up his warrant card.

  ‘Police,’ he said.

  Eddie Murphy was a big man. Not tall, but big. There might have been muscles under the rolls of fat, but there was plenty of fat.

  ‘Fucking hell, again?’ he grumbled, leading them into what might have been a living room. The furniture comprised a three-seat brown-leather sofa, two mismatched armchairs, and a huge plasma TV on a sideboard along with a stereo unit. Everything else should have been thrown in a dumpster a long time ago.

  He waded barefoot through a sea of empty pizza boxes, Chinese takeaway cartons, discarded clothes, empty fag packets, crushed beer cans, and an enviable collection of empty wine and whisky bottles, then flopped down on the sofa.

  ‘Mr Murphy,’ Desmond Harris began, ‘I spoke to you last week about Vincent Cormack.’

  ‘Now what a great pleasure that was,’ Eddie Murphy murmured, reaching for a cigarette, then lighting up. ‘You found him yet? He still owes me the fucking rent.’

  In the car, Harris had told them that no official announcement had been made regarding the murder of Vince Cormack, just a one-liner in the papers noting that ‘the body of a man had been found in woodlands not far from Stansted Airport.’ As there were no known next-of-kin, New Scotland Yard had decided to say no more until they had a juicier bone to throw to the press. So Murphy still didn’t know that his flatmate would never be coming back to settle his unpaid bills.

  Lucia Grossi didn’t wait for Harris, ignoring the pact with DCI Jardine. She started firing questions at Murphy like a tommy gun going off. Simple things at first, questions that the police had surely asked him. Where did Vincent Cormack work, what was his job, when had he last been seen at Alice Street, had he phoned Mr Murphy in the last two weeks, or sent any messages?

  Eddie Murphy’s answers came out pat.

  ‘Dunno. Don’t remember. Don’t think so.’

  ‘Just like the last time,’ Desmond Harris murmured.

  Lucia Grossi turned to Cangio, and said in Italian: ‘Why didn’t they beat the shit out of this devious arsehole?’

  Eddie Murphy watched them, a smile on his lips.

  ‘Where are you from, darlin’? You Spanish, or what?’

  Lucia Grossi turned on him with a menacing glare. ‘I come from Italy,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t like it there.’

  ‘Ooo, spunky,’ Murphy said, stubbing out his cigarette on the scarred window-ledge. ‘I like my women tough …’ Then he slapped the palm of his hand against his forehead. ‘Oh, I get it now. Italian, right?’ He scratched the hairs on his chest and smiled at Harris. ‘So you finally made the connection, eh?’

  ‘Connection?’ Harris echoed.

  He looked lost, Cangio thought.

  ‘You want me to confirm it, I suppose?’ Murphy pushed himself up from the sofa and crossed the room. He started opening the drawers of a sideboard, rooting around inside.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Harris asked him.

  Murphy didn’t answer, spilling things out on top of the sideboard. Then he held up what might have been a postcard, glancing from Harris to Grossi, then back again. ‘Who wants it, then?’ he asked. ‘Who’s the boss around here?’

  ‘Give it to Captain Grossi,’ Harris conceded, nodding towards Lucia Grossi, whose hand was already stretching out to take it.

  She glanced at the card, then looked at Murphy. ‘An Italian nightclub? What was Cormack doing there?’ she asked him. ‘Was this where he was working?’

  Murphy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Beats me, doll,’ he said. ‘Me and him share the same flat, but we ain’t living together. I don’t ask him where he goes at night.’

&nbs
p; ‘Why didn’t you pull that card out when I came the last time?’ Harris demanded.

  It wasn’t easy to say where his anger started and his embarrassment stopped.

  ‘You didn’t ask me what was hidden in Cormack’s drawers,’ Murphy laughed. ‘And I don’t mean his dirty underpants. I found this after you lot had gone. I haven’t got the time to waste chasing after you. You should have got your own hands dirty and looked in there yourself.’

  Cangio suppressed a smile. He would have said the same thing. And clearly Lucia Grossi thought the same way, given the expression on her face.

  ‘Yeah, all right, go on, then. You can keep it if you like,’ Murphy said, as Grossi pushed the card into her pocket.

  ‘Thank you for your help,’ Grossi said over her shoulder, turning towards the door.

  ‘Any time you wanna pay me back,’ Murphy said with a smirk, ‘you’ll find me right here on the sofa, ready an’ waiting.’

  Out in the street, Harris asked if he could see the card.

  Yet another point to Lucia Grossi, Cangio thought. She really did have it in for Scotland Yard. He wondered whether she would have shown it to him if Harris hadn’t asked.

  ‘Do you think you can get us to Brixton, Desmond?’ Grossi asked him.

  The Tarantella Club in Station Road

  Brixton looked quiet and peaceful, a nice place to live, apart from the big, yellow, police warning signs telling people that there were dealers on the streets selling crack, cocaine, and other illegal substances.

  Advertising, Cangio thought. If you needed anything, you knew you’d find it there.

  ‘The streets look deserted,’ Lucia Grossi said.

  She was sitting in the passenger seat beside Harris.

  ‘They come out once the sun goes down,’ Harris said. ‘A bit like vampires.’

  The entrance door was open to let in fresh air, and a woman was inside cleaning the club. She was Caribbean, Cangio guessed, dressed in a floral cotton wrap-around apron, a red woollen ski hat on her head, a wet broom in her hand.

  ‘Can we speak to the owner?’ Harris asked her.

  ‘He in’t here,’ she said.

  ‘The manager, then?’

  ‘He in’t here, neither. Who a’ you?’

  ‘Police,’ Harris said.

  ‘Tha’s wha’ I thought.’

  With each question, they took a step deeper into the club. It wasn’t large. A basement room, maybe two adjacent basements knocked into one. A bar on one side, a dozen tables, chairs, a space for dancing, a raised platform for a band or a sound system at the far end.

  ‘Do you know a man named Vincent Cormack?’ Harris asked her.

  ‘I don’ know no one,’ the woman said, shaking her head, and Cangio had the impression that she was telling the truth.

  ‘So who does this place belong to?’

  Cangio wandered away, leaving them to it. He ranged along the wall, looking at the photographs that were hanging there. There were pictures of parties, groups of people, people drinking, people dancing.

  Harris insisted. He wanted to write down the name, address, and phone number of the club owner.

  ‘I don’ know who owns it,’ the woman insisted back. ‘Willy G jus’ tol’ me to clean it.’

  ‘He pays you, does he, Willy G?’

  ‘Tha’s right.’

  ‘So maybe he’s the manager. Have you got a number for him?’

  ‘Willy G’s the one calls me.’ The woman looked at him, and scowled. ‘I don’ know where to find ’im at this time o’ day. I don’ know no one. I wouldn’ come in here at all if it wasn’ for the dosh.’

  Cangio was staring at a photo in a blue frame spotted with gold stars.

  It was hanging in full view on the back wall near the bar. Three men were holding up brimming champagne flutes to the camera. Vince Cormack was sitting on the left, wearing a blue waistcoat and a red dickey-bow. Cangio had never seen the fat man in the middle, but he did a double-take when he saw the man on the right wearing dark glasses, his face turning away from the camera.

  Was that a shadow on his neck? Or was it a tattoo?

  Cangio glanced at Harris, Grossi and the cleaner, then he plucked the picture off the wall and tucked it inside his leather jacket.

  A few minutes later, they were out on the street again.

  ‘What now?’ Harris asked.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Des Harris speed-dialled New Scotland Yard.

  ‘DCI Jardine here.’

  ‘It’s me, sir. I’ve just dropped them off at the Elephant and Castle tube.’

  ‘Seen enough for one day, have they?’

  Harris breathed out noisily through his nose.

  ‘Let’s hope so, sir,’ he said. ‘Grossi said something about shopping, but I reckon they’ll be heading back to their hotel for a kip.’

  ‘So, Des, what happened at Alice Street?’

  ‘That idiot, Eddie Murphy, pulled out an invite to that club in Brixton …’

  ‘Didn’t you search the flat thoroughly the last time?’

  ‘He said he’d only just found it, sir.’

  ‘And what did the Italians make of that?’

  ‘Grossi wanted to see the place, of course. I had no alternative but to take them. Luckily, there was no one there who would have recognised me. I’d sort of banked on that, too. Mid-afternoon. The place was empty, apart from a woman who was tidying up.’

  ‘Good work, Des. So Grossi doesn’t know that we’d been asking questions there?’

  ‘No, sir. She would have let on if she’d guessed. She’s not the sort to keep her thoughts to herself.’

  Detective Chief Inspector Jardine let out a sigh that might have been a groan.

  ‘You can say that again! Did they manage to squeeze anything out of the cleaner?’

  ‘Not a thing, sir. The woman didn’t know what day of the week it was. She didn’t even know who owned the place. They’ll be going home very soon now, sir … Grossi and Seb Cangio, I mean. OK, they may start wondering how the Tarantella Club ties in with their dead man, but what will they make of it? For all they know, Vince Cormack may just be one of the regulars. They’ll write it off as a dead end, I bet.’

  ‘I hope you’re right, Des. We’re at a crucial point in the investigation.’

  ‘We’re well ahead of the race, sir. We can get them for conspiracy to murder, drug trafficking, money laundering. Whether the stuff they’re selling comes from Italy or from Venezuela hardly matters, does it?’

  ‘It matters not a whit, not one tiny iota.’

  ‘I’m taking the Italians out to dinner this evening, sir. Is that all right with you?’

  ‘Good move, Des. You can charge it to expenses, obviously. No champagne, though. Just see if you can work out what’s going on in that woman’s head, then pack them off to bed.’

  ‘I was thinking of a place in Soho …’

  ‘Not the Imperial China, Des. We went there the last time, remember, Chas Bailey’s farewell do? I don’t want one of the waiters recognising you, and those two thinking that it’s all a set-up. A quiet meal, a quiet chat, then get shut of the pair of them fast.’

  ‘Not to worry, sir. I was thinking along the same lines. The simpler we keep it, the less overseas interference there’ll be. Once we’ve got the case tied up, the Italians will be left with just the crumbs.’

  ‘Phone me once you’ve put them in a taxi, OK?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Not too late, mind …’

  ‘Is this a good idea?’ Cangio asked her.

  They were on the Piccadilly Line heading north.

  ‘Shouldn’t we have told him what we’re up to?’

  ‘Why should I tell them a thing?’ Lucia Grossi said. ‘They aren’t giving much away. Giving it away? They’re keeping too damned quiet, if you ask me. I mean to say, they haven’t even announced that Vince Cormack is dead. Murphy didn’t know, and they had already spoken to him. And I would swear that Harris has been to
the Tarantella Club, too. He drove us straight to the door, despite being such an abominable driver.’ She tapped the side of her nose with her finger. ‘You disappoint me, Seb Cangio. I thought park rangers had a sharper sense of smell?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Something stinks,’ she said. ‘And our friend Desmond knows what’s causing the stink. Did you see the look on Jardine’s face when I told him that I wanted to see Eddie Murphy? Like a little boy who’d been caught with his pants down. They’re keeping something very close to their chests, Seb, and, until I know exactly what it is we are going to do a bit of sleuthing on our own account. If anything turns up, we’ll decide what – if anything – we want them to know about it. End of argument.’

  Determined was how Cangio would have described her. Bloody-minded, too. But Lucia Grossi’s nose wasn’t everything she thought it was. She didn’t know what he was hiding in his leather jacket, and he wasn’t going to tell her.

  ‘End of argument,’ he agreed.

  The train began to rattle and shake, braking to a halt.

  ‘Russell Square,’ he announced. ‘This is our stop.’

  The address they were looking for was lost in a maze of streets a bit further south in Bloomsbury, so they had to walk some way to get there, cutting through side streets, skirting squares with neat, fenced-off gardens, and passing two or three hospitals along the way.

  They came to a halt in Lamb’s Conduit Street, and stared at the little green shop on the opposite pavement.

  The Old Pharmacy.

  ‘They need to vamp the old place up,’ she said dismissively. ‘It looks like the shop that time forgot.’

  ‘It probably just serves local residents,’ Cangio said.

  ‘And the man that we are looking for, though served may be more accurate in his case, I fear.’

  ‘Perhaps he lived around here, and someone knows him.’

  ‘That would be a stroke of luck, wouldn’t it?’

  She stepped into the road taking care to look left, and a long-haired boy on a bicycle swung wide to avoid hitting her. ‘Fucking arsehole!’ he shouted back over his shoulder.

  ‘Vaffanculo, stronzo!’ Lucia Grossi muttered, as they crossed the street.

  She was like a hand grenade with the pin pulled out. Cangio hoped she wouldn’t explode in the shop.