Crossing The Line

by Catriona King

  Rory McCrae knew exactly what that meant and he clenched his jaw to stop his teeth chattering in fear until his companion moved on to more mundane things.

  “OK, so now we have dealt with our two traitors at Mahon we need to reinstate our separate businesses inside the prison. No more gangs working together inside. Yes? Your men sell, my men sell, and may the best win the trade.”

  McCrae unlocked his jaw, back on safer ground. “Sure. Same outside as well, yeh?”

  It earned him a nod.

  “That is as it should be. I can’t have my men mixing with your Loyalist scum on the streets. It will get them a bad name in our community.”

  Uninsulted and emboldened by the accord the UKUF boss leaned forward on his desk. “Except fer the two-drug combo op. We’ll both be involved in that, won’t we?”

  “In the clubs, yes.”

  The subtext was ‘But only because you have the men on the ground there that I need to help me sell’.

  “But you only get ten percent of the profit.”

  McCrae’s small eyes widened. “Ten? We agreed twenty!”

  The man shook his head slowly. “The drug combinations were my idea, I am taking the risk to acquire the raw materials and I am doing the moulding, so I should get the biggest cut.”

  McCrae didn’t back down, on familiar ground with haggling, his mother having run a market stall for years.

  “And ye need my men to get the drugs out to the kids. Every club in Belfast pays me fer protection, an’ awl their bouncers belong tee me.” He folded his arms defiantly. “Twenty percent or it’s no deal.”

  There was a short silence while the businessman put on a pretence of thinking about it and allowing the Loyalist to feel that he had the upper hand, then the fedora was tipped back even further and, “Fifteen percent, and that is my last word!” was barked out, followed by, “or I will move my product completely upmarket and take every penny for myself,” leaving the paramilitary with a very limited choice.

  When Rory McCrae finally conceded his opponent smiled inwardly; he would have stuck to his original twenty percent offer if the Loyalist had been a smarter man, but he was so stupid that it had seemed a pity not to lower it. Now he had an extra five percent for himself and he’d enjoyed the game.

  “Fifteen percent it is then. I will run the designer drug end for the high rollers and your bouncers will distribute the basic combos in the clubs, here and across the country. We will start with a choice of two combinations and low doses. I don’t want some teenager dying and bringing the police down on our backs. We can discuss pricing once we have trialled the free samples and got them hooked. Done?”

  “Dun.”

  It looked like some folk in the province would be having a high old Christmas that year.

  ****

  The C.C.U. Murder Squad. 7.30 p.m.

  Craig had run through the newest findings from everyone, John excluded, because he’d been summoned home by a still annoyed Natalie before the briefing had begun. First up was the UAV access to Mahon, Ash having found a drone small enough to conceal in a coat pocket when folded but whose expanded diameter of twelve centimetres would still have allowed it through the drains, albeit it could only have carried a small load and its operator would have needed to be close by. That had been supported by the entry point to the drain system being confirmed an hour before, in an automated petrol station opposite the prison’s back gates, its CCTV knocked out a year earlier and never repaired, such was the trusting, apathetic, or possibly paid to turn a blind eye nature of its owners, something that the analyst had already passed on to the Armagh cops to check out.

  Then there was the update from Vice that high-end drugs were being dealt nowadays through escorts, delivery services, and most interesting of all, casinos, something that from the combo point of view now warranted a closer look. Davy’s thrilled face when Aidan had passed on the Rosco Enterprises information said that the young man was definitely in the right job.

  From customs and the Harbour Police they had Mahon’s ex-guard Jerome Tomelty, who seemed suspiciously friendly to European and Russian boat crews, which, even allowing for his foreign wife and his familiarity with the language seemed just a bit too cosy, not to mention that the date of the next docking from the region that very night just happened to have been marked on Derek Smyth’s calendar.

  And almost last, but not least, Liam had reported on the delightful “Fuck you” defiance of the lugubrious Jimmy Morris, who had been placed in Filip Pojello’s cell not long before the Lithuanian’s death. With Morris’ own cell search then yielding one large, half-empty bag of goodies that looked identical to the poisoned ones found in Smyth’s and Pojello’s wall vents, and two smaller bags, each containing what looked like their normal diazepams that Morris had stolen, leaving behind the poisoned tabs in their stead, the Loyalist was in the frame for both murders. Yet such was his apparent fear of whoever had ordered the killings that he seemed prepared to go down for decades rather than give up their names.

  Liam wrapped up with, “For lots of reasons we don’t think it’s just McCrae that he’s scared of. We think McCrae’s working with someone else,” and then thudded back into his seat, glancing over at Craig, who had just taken a sip of his coffee, now too cool to give him pleasure but not yet a good enough reason to order a break. The D.C.S. picked up his cue.

  “OK, so-”

  He was interrupted by a pointed cough from Aidan, its tone indicating that he had something to say that wasn’t going to make Craig’s day.

  “Go ahead, Aidan.”

  “OK, so, you know we went to meet Annette’s mate, Fliss Kehoe-”

  He was cut off by an irritated tut from the D.I.

  “You didn’t call her that did you? I told you her name was Felicity.”

  Ryan interjected, in peacemaking mode. “We were going to, but she told us to call her Fliss.”

  There was no need for Aidan’s “so there” to be vocalised, it was evident in his arched brow as he continued smoothly on.

  “And she took us to meet the leaders of the Latvian and Lithuanian communities. They don’t have any Estonians there at the moment. Anyway...”

  He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether he could side-step Craig’s possibly explosive reaction to his coming reveal and deciding that he could, with a bog standard hand-off that no-one could possibly say was shifting the blame.

  “Andy, would you like to elaborate?”

  A look that should have rendered him stone-dead was followed by a heavy sigh.

  “What Aidan’s trying not to say is that the discussions got came round to someone you’ve met before, chief.”

  Craig wrinkled his forehead in curiosity. “Who?”

  “A man called Hugh Bellner. He’s a Lithuanian businessman that you interviewed during the Drake case.”

  Craig was nodding by the time ‘Bellner’ finished hitting the air. Hugh Bellner had been hard to forget. A wannabe gangster in the old school mould, all expensive cologne and elegant manners that try as they might couldn’t mask the man’s viciousness and greed. They hadn’t been able to pin the Drake murders on the bastard but he’d known even then that they would meet again someday.

  No explosion having happened Aidan decided that it was safe to take over again.

  “Fliss said Bellner was from Vilnius and he calls himself a businessman, but the Lithuanian community leader said that he was scum. Bellner made a lot of money when soviet rule ended in the Baltics, so they said we should check him out because he probably has a record back home.”

  Andy gave a smug smile and turned towards the analysts.

  “Luckily I’d already asked Davy to do that. Any joy, Davy?”

  Even the kind-hearted analyst laughed at the look on Aidan’s face as his substantially sized nose was knocked out of joint, then he decided that for the sake of peace he needed to put Andy’s out of place as well and he did it with a one word reply, “Yes”.

  Pausing very delibera
tely he turned to Craig, an unspoken, “Would you like me to elaborate, chief?” hanging in the air. It was his way of saying, “I’m not getting caught between your competitive D.C.I.s, so sort them out” and Craig took the hint.

  “Davy, tell me about Hugh Bellner, please.”

  A quick tap on the analyst’s smart-pad summoned up such a colourful slide on the LED screen that had Alice still been there it might have made even her jump, almost as much as the sight of her fluorescent pink hair and orange sequinned taffeta competition dress had startled him a few hours before.

  He answered Aidan’s “God, that’s a bit bright, isn’t it” with, “I’m keeping up with Alice” and continued, “ OK, this is a s...summary of Hugh Bellner’s life to date.”

  He highlighted a block of yellow arrows to the left of the screen. “Born in Vilnius, Lithuania in eighty-five, to a devoutly Catholic family that was very poor and got even poorer when the communists pulled out-”

  Andy White shook his head, his first perceptible movement since he’d swung his legs up onto his desk an hour before. “That can’t be right, hey. People were poorer under communism.”

  Craig responded first. “By our standards, yes, everyone was poor. But people rarely starved. But once the USSR collapsed The Baltics were like a lot of ex-soviet countries; they had no welfare state and the vulnerable really struggled.”

  He halted further political debate by waving Davy on.

  “OK, so post communism the young people in The Baltics generally fared better than the old, who’d been used to the communist system all their lives. Bellner w...was one of those young people and he became a member of...”

  He waited for someone to fill in the gap and Ryan obliged. “The Baltic Militia?”

  “Exactly. Some of the ethnic Baltic people formed gangs to fight against the ethnic Russian or s...soviet gangs still living in the countries, but the gang structure also encouraged criminality like it does here. There was money to be made and Bellner made his share.”

  Craig raised a hand to halt him. “So The BMs were like the Vor V Zakone in Russia?”

  The Vors were a group of gang based criminals who adhered to a strict set of rules. Originating in Russia in the eighteenth century the criminal culture developed further after the nineteen-seventeen Russian Revolution, with its own slang, culture and laws. and became known as Vorovskoy Mir or "Criminal/Thieves World".

  “Basically yes, but on a smaller sc...scale. There wasn’t as much killing either, although there was that Estonian assassin that Ryan mentioned. I don’t know if he was in The BMs or some other group.”

  “And like the Vors in London The BMs brought their gang structure with them when they moved here?”

  The analyst nodded. “Looks like it. Anyway, Bellner got himself a record in Lithuania for violence and some drug dealing. He was also heavily into the gambling scene, which is what he was doing when Aidan and Liam arrested him during the Drake case.”

  “In the Jack of Hearts in Gresham Street.”

  “Correct.”

  When the analyst saw no more questions looming he moved the highlighter to the middle part of his slide, which was a fetching shade of orange.

  “Bellner made money in the Baltics but he’s gone up even further in the w...world since he moved here. He has a house in Helen’s Bay and belongs to a yacht club, and his wife and two daughters are members of the horsey set in County Down.”

  Craig went to take another sip of coffee then frowned when he realised that there was none left in his cup. He distracted himself by asking another question.

  “What does Bellner make his money from?” Before Davy could respond he added, “Allegedly”, making everyone smile.

  “W...Well, I’ve accessed all the family accounts and there’s a lot of cash there. The payment trail shows Bellner depositing a large chunk every month, but where that’s coming from I can’t tell yet. It just appears. There are no properties in his name except the family home and no mortgage on that, and as far as-”

  Liam roused himself to interrupt. “Does he have shares in any businesses?”

  “He’s a member of two small business groups here: Rumbor Holdings and Avaton Limited. They seem to be wholesalers of some sort but we’re having trouble finding the details.” He turned to his junior. “Ash?”

  “I’m drilling down on them, but so far what I’ve found seems like nonsense given Bellner’s rep. Rumbor Holdings apparently sells kids’ toys and Avaton is an online cooking equipment business.”

  Liam chuckled. “Unless you count cooking up drugs, that’ll definitely be a front.”

  Craig nodded. “No argument there. OK, you two, good work so far. Get back on it tomorrow.” He was about to move on when Davy spoke again.

  “Don’t you want to hear about Pojello and the call from Mahon to McCrae?”

  Craig waved him on.

  “OK, so, Pojello qualified in mechanical engineering from the University at Kaunas, northwest of the capital, Vilnius; he got first class honours too.”

  Liam quipped. “So lifting a grate would have been no probs for him.”

  The analyst ignored him and continued. “And that call to McCrae was made on S... Sunday afternoon and recorded, like all outgoing prison calls are. It was a man telling him that Derek Smyth was dead and the voice has been identified as belonging to Jimmy Morris.”

  “Excellent. That establishes a definite link between Morris, Smyth and McCrae.”

  “There’s more on the calendar too. Ash has it.”

  Craig checked the clock. “Quickly then. We all need a coffee break.”

  Ash tapped his smart-pad to make a new and thankfully less lurid slide appear on the screen.

  “OK, this is a copy of the calendar found in Derek Smyth’s cell. And this,” with another tap that day’s date lit up in red, “is the date of a possible drug import coming in by boat tonight, marked on the original paper calendar by a red circular sticker.” A third tap lit up a series of dates as far back as September. “Judging on what we think will be an illegal drug shipment tonight we’ve represented several likely earlier shipments here in red as well. On Smyth’s calendar they were marked by stickers, although we can’t know if they were also red circles because they’ve all gone.”

  A quick glance said some people were confused so he explained.

  “With the help of Grace, who checked the paper calendar for adhesive fragments, and Chief Donovan at the Harbour Police who checked his records for the dates of European and Russian shipments since Jerome Tomelty began working at the docks in September, we found these dates that coincided. Of course we can’t prove now that those ships actually were carrying drugs, but if tonight’s is then it’s a fair bet that some were.”

  Craig’s eyes widened at the number of marks. There were so many the chart looked like it had measles, and if every single one of them represented drugs being imported then it couldn’t possibly all have been destined for the inmates at Mahon Jail. Smyth and Pojello had to have been running an outside business too, just as Liam had suggested, or someone else that they’d been working with was. Jerome Tomelty.

  He could see from his deputy’s suddenly upright posture that he was thinking the same thing and nodded him on to speak.

  “There’s no way Smyth and Pojello would’ve had a market for that amount of dope at Mahon, boss. The whole place would’ve been stoned twenty-four-seven!”

  Craig gave him an encouraging nod. “So?”

  “They were definitely dealing on the outside as well.”

  “With the help of Jerome Tomelty.”

  Craig paused as his mind raced. When he spoke again there was more certainty in his voice.

  “Derek Smyth, an Ulster Loyalist, and Filip Pojello, a Baltic Catholic had nothing in common before they ended up together in Mahon. Yes?”

  The question was directed at Ash who had done the men’s background checks, and he responded with a nod.

  “Nothing. Different gangs, different stampi
ng grounds. Smyth was a Belfast man and Pojello a Vilnius and Cookstown boy. It’s unlikely that they’d ever met before they went there.”

  “And Jerome Tomelty, the prison guard?”

  “The same. He’s from Ballycastle, miles away from the others. He has no gang involvement and a completely clean record.”

  Craig nodded. “OK, good. So... these three men meet in Mahon Prison. Smyth and Pojello bond over their drug addiction and Tomelty had the freedom to come and go. All three saw that there was money to be made from drugs. If we’re right about Tomelty’s involvement perhaps it just started with smuggling in small quantities of drugs for Smyth and Pojello initially and then escalated to the attempted drone drop in May-”

  Liam shook his head. “It couldn’t have done. Tomelty was the one who caught the drugs dropped into the yard in May and he passed them right over to Royston. Although... Pojello was one of the men waiting for them.”

  Andy White joined in. “And Wyatt who was there with him knew Derek Smyth well from the Sons of the Boyne years before.”

  Craig nodded. “OK, let’s go back a bit. What if Smyth and Wyatt had had someone else smuggling drugs in for them and that other person organised the failed drone drop in May. OK, so Tomelty was clean then and he caught the drugs and handed them over to the governor, but what if the whole episode gave him a bright idea?”

  “Like how to do things better and use the drains?”

  “Yes. That might have been when Tomelty spotted the opportunity to make some extra money. Maybe it started small, but then when he got the job at the harbour things grew and he began importing.”

  Davy nodded eagerly. “That would fit with the calendar. Apart from one sticker in May, everything w...was clustered around this end of the year.”

  Mary signalled to ask something. “Why did Tomelty need the money? He would have been earning a decent wage.”

  Craig smiled. “Good point. It could have been greed, or maybe there was some necessity we don’t know about yet. Tomelty may have been having financial problems of some sort and needed the cash. We’ll find that out once we’ve got him firmly tied to the smuggling.”