“Who owns the building?” I asked.
“Property company, Arnott Ltd. They own the lease on the building and have been trying to let the place since the shop closed a while back. They’ve not given anyone permission to use the premises since it closed. They want to know who’ll compensate them for any damage to their premises.”
“You got the address of this couple who saw him?”
*
Pat and David Longhurst lived in a top-floor flat on Fairmead Road, off the Holloway Road. Before driving to talk to them, I looked up their details on the Special Branch database, known to the Branch as the family album. They were both Labour party members and had been photographed at several demonstrations over the past few years, mainly to do with the Middle East. They were both involved with pro-Palestinian pressure groups and, last year, had spent two weeks in Beirut, ostensibly as guests of the American University in the city. David Longhurst was a lecturer at Westminster University. An interesting coincidence; so was Khaled al-Ebouli. Did they know each other? Pat Longhurst was a youth worker with Islington council, working with and counselling young persons who’d been excluded from school for whatever reasons. They were also subscribers to New Focus, a radical fortnightly left-wing magazine for which Smitherman’s son-in-law, Richard Clements, wrote.
I found a parking space along the road from their flat. The road itself was rather dreary, run-down and shabby in appearance: few trees and lots of houses with posters in windows, mainly written in Arabic. Many of the cars parked along the kerb looked like their only value to the owners would be if they were stolen and the insurance claimed. It was hard to imagine this being a Neighbourhood Watch area, with neighbours looking out for each other.
The Longhursts had been told to expect someone from Special Branch who wanted to talk to them about the events of last night. I was admitted to their flat after ascending a flight of stairs with endless lines of what looked like Arabic graffiti covering the walls. Death to Israel was prominently scrawled in English on the wall of the first floor, though I noticed Israel had been misspelt, the E placed before the A.
“DS McGraw, Special Branch.” I showed ID as I entered their flat. I was led into the small and very cramped front room, which overlooked the road. The room apparently doubled as a study as there were books and magazines piled on every surface, and a table with an open laptop in the middle. Next to the laptop was a pile of essays in the process of being marked. The concession to this room also being a lounge was the presence of a small flatscreen television in the corner, underneath a poster of the flag of the PLO and one of Yasser Arafat.
“I’m David; this is Pat,” he said, as though I couldn’t have made the deduction myself. She smiled and said hello. They were both extremely well spoken. Neither of them had attended the school Mulvehill had spoken at last night; that much was certain.
“I gather you want to talk about last night.” He gestured to the only available space on the settee while he sat down at the table.
I sat. I looked at him for a couple of seconds. He was early forties, though he looked older, nearer to fifty. He appeared very earnest and serious, as though a smile would cause a crease in his face that’d remain there his whole life. Not that you’d notice as he had a full sandy-coloured beard. He also had the kind of naturally curly hair many women would give their eye teeth for. Pat was dressed in an Arabic-looking dress with a shawl around her shoulders. I was trying hard not to lapse into cliché and stereotyping.
“Yeah,” I began. “We’re interested in what you saw last night behind the shop, particularly who you saw, as we think the shooter’s the man you saw coming from that building. Anything you can tell me would help.”
“Okay.” He looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows, in such a way as to suggest he was asking her permission. She didn’t respond to his gesture. “I saw a car parked at the end of the alley, by the road, where the man who used to have the shop parked. Someone was going in through the back gate. I think I assumed it was just someone from the property owner checking up. We didn’t initially think anything of it.”
“What time was this?”
“Not that long after nine, I think.” He looked at his wife. She nodded her agreement. “Went off for a stroll. But, coming back, the same person came out the back entrance, ran down to the car, got in and drove off.”
“How long after you first saw this person was this?”
“Oh, God, I dunno, maybe thirty or so minutes.”
“And you’re sure it was the same person.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “He was dressed as when he went in.” “But this time he was carrying something as well, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. He was holding what I thought was a snooker case. It was a few foot long, sort of thing snooker players carry their cues in.”
“But he didn’t have it going in.”
He paused for a moment and pursed his lips. “I didn’t notice, to be honest.”
“How close were you to this guy when he was leaving?”
“Thirty, forty yards maybe,” Pat said.
“You see his face?”
“Only a side-on view, but enough to notice he was white.”
“Could you describe what he looked like?”
“Big bloke from the look of him. Probably over six feet, I’d say,” David said. “Built like a rugby player. Wearing what looked like a military jacket, a sort of camouflage-type thing, kind of thing soldiers wear, and a beret.”
“Could you pick him out if we showed you the pictures we have of known shooters?”
“No, I don’t think so.” He shook his head. “I only saw he was white.”
“Anything about the face? Facial hair? Glasses?”
“No, I didn’t see him face-on.”
“What kind of car was he driving?”
“Just looked like an ordinary family-type car. I’m not very good on makes, and not from that distance. He got in the driver’s side and took off pretty sharpish. Turned right.”
“What then?”
“We came out onto the road.” Pat took over. “Police were asking questions to people out by the school.”
“Did you know what had just happened?”
“At that point, no, we didn’t.” David again. “I thought there’d been an accident or something, but then I realised there were far too many police on the scene for just a traffic accident.”
“Did you approach police?”
“One saw us and came across,” Pat said. “Asked if we’d seen anything unusual recently, anyone acting suspiciously, that kind of thing, and we mentioned what we’d seen in the passageway behind the shop. He called a detective, someone came across. We told him the same thing. We gave our names and address to the constable. He said police might well be in touch again and thanked us for our help.”
“And here you are,” David said neutrally.
The description of the shooter was disturbing. Something about it was revolving in my brain, but initially I couldn’t work out why this was.
“Anything else you can tell me?” I stood up.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
I thanked them for their cooperation and for coming forward as they had.
“Al-Ebouli’s one of your teaching colleagues, I believe?” I asked David. I was interested in his reaction.
“Yeah, we’re both in the same department, both History lecturers.”
“Must make life interesting, working alongside a known jihadist,” I offered, hoping I wasn’t sounding too facetious.
“You can’t blame him for his views, can you, considering what the West’s done to his country down the years?”
I didn’t respond.
He continued. “Are his views any more detestable than Tony Blair’s when he took this country to war on a lie? You remember the line he spun about there being weapons of mass destruction? There never were any such weapons.” He sneered. “It was just a pretext for this country doing America’s bidd
ing in the Middle East. The West’s ruined Afghanistan and didn’t achieve anything from going in. It’s done the same in Iraq and in Syria, and then we castigate people like Khaled for the supposedly extremity of his views when you can clearly see what we’ve done to his country? Please.” He waved dismissively, shaking his head.
It was too early on a Sunday morning for a lecture. I thanked them again and left.
*
Back in the office I was informed the car the Longhursts had seen leaving the alley had been found abandoned in a car park in Finsbury Circus. The car was a grey Citroën, which’d been reported stolen in Rickmansworth earlier in the week. It’d been examined for fingerprints but only the owner’s had been identified.
Police had caught a lucky break as an off-duty officer, collecting his car from the opposite row, had noticed the number plate of the car didn’t match the make. The number plate showed the current year’s registration numbers, but the car was at least four years old. On a whim, the officer had called it in to check and discovered his hunch had been correct. There was no such number plate for that particular model. The number plate had been taken from a stolen Ford Escort.
The car had been caught on CCTV and trailed along the Holloway Road, heading towards the City. The car had continued along the New North Road and into Finsbury Circus, where it had parked. The man emerging from the car hadn’t been carrying anything, and police hadn’t found anything resembling a snooker cue case in the car. Whoever had been driving was still in possession of it.
I looked at the CCTV images of the man emerging from the car. Even zoomed in, the facial images were too blurred and too grainy to make any positive identification possible. He matched the size Longhurst had said the shooter had been. But I was more intrigued by the description of what the suspected shooter had been wearing. Something about the apparel was familiar.
I logged on to the family album again, entered the description given by the Longhursts, in terms of what was being worn and the size of the suspect, and ran a search of individuals known to be shooters. Four possible matches were given. I scanned the names and took a deep breath when I realised one name stood out amongst the rest, flashing like a distress flare. Richard Rhodes.
Richard Rhodes was an ex-soldier who’d been cashiered from the army after half-killing a sergeant in a barrack-room brawl. He’d then enlisted to become a mercenary and was known to have fought on at least two continents. He’d been one of several Europeans named as likely to have been involved in an attack on a Lebanese hotel in Beirut by Shi’ite rebels nearly two years ago, where several women and children taking shelter from street shootings had died, but, despite a grilling from MI6 on his return to the UK, it hadn’t been conclusively proven he was involved.
I’d first come across him when I was investigating my suspicion a US Special Forces trained assassin, Phil Gant, had shot dead two brothers outside the pub owned by my friend Mickey Corsley. Rhodes and Gant were known to be friends, were known to have been in the Lebanon at the same time, and I’d seen footage of them together. Gant had never been arrested for what I knew he’d done but couldn’t prove, because, I was convinced, of the intercession of Christian Perkins, a senior Conservative MP known to have close links to MI5. Perkins also just happened to be Rhodes’ father.
I was also convinced Rhodes had been involved in the killing of an IRA man, Dennis Reagan, in November last year when both were linked to an attempt by the terrorist group Red Heaven to detonate explosives near the Royal Albert Hall, which we’d stopped from occurring. Again, no arrest had been made, and there was nothing connecting Rhodes to Reagan’s death, except my belief in his guilt. Given all the circumstances of the case as I knew them, I knew Rhodes was involved but, again, I couldn’t prove it. He was also friends with Debbie Frost, a woman close to Christian Perkins who’d once had an affair with Perkins. I’d encountered Frost on several occasions and suspected her of lying to me, including about her links to the brothers shot and killed by Gant, but I’d been unable to catch her out.
I entered Rhodes’ name and requested details of all known movements and travels in the past year. He was listed as being employed as a freelance security consultant for a firm named Titanomachy, which, inter alia, provided bodyguards for high-profile individuals who considered themselves in need of protection, as well as security personnel for strategic premises. He was listed as being in the UK and hadn’t left the country for a number of months.
My curiosity piqued by what sort of organisation would consider someone like Richard Rhodes suitable “security consultant” material, given the level of diplomacy such a position would entail, I entered Titanomachy’s name into the family album and requested details.
It had been established in 1993 by two American former Navy SEALS who’d based themselves in London after leaving the US military. The firm offered the range of services I expected to see, ranging from executive protection to full-fledged investigations into security breaches and routine surveillance of individuals suspected of industrial espionage. It also provided personnel to act as guards at sensitive strategic buildings and key installations likely to be vulnerable to attack, such as firms involved in using animals in their experiments, which was cited as being amongst its most recent experiences.
Titanomachy claimed to provide the security at several key Government premises, though names weren’t given. It also boasted an impressive list of private companies, including many worldwide household names and product brands I immediately recognised, which either had used or still used the firm’s services, and had written glowing testimonials about the service received. Anyone employed by Titanomachy would have been vetted to the highest standards and well qualified for their role. Professionalism was stressed at every stage of the recruitment process.
From my knowledge of similar firms like Prevental, I’d little doubt this was just what was on the surface. I knew, as did the security service, that it was the clandestine services such firms offered which were the main draw for those likely to want the services of the firm. I knew Prevental acted as a brokering house in the hiring of mercenaries by whichever firm and, in several instances, nation that had need of its services, and I didn’t doubt Titanomachy offered such a service behind the scenes.
If I remembered my Greek myths from school, the name Titanomachy was a reference to a series of battles fought in Thessaly between Titans and Olympians to determine who would exercise dominion over the universe. Or something like that.
There were several firms similar to this that had been merely an arm of US foreign policy, supposedly helping the US military in its peacekeeping and clean-up operations. The most notorious was the American private security contractor Blackwater, which had been involved in several unlawful killings in the Middle East.
I remembered reading, in 2014, about four ex-Blackwater personnel who’d gone rogue and, after being tried and convicted in America of direct involvement in the unlawful killing of fourteen Iraqi civilians and injuring several more, had been incarcerated for sentences ranging between thirty years and life imprisonment. These killings had occurred in 2007, and though Blackwater had since rebranded and relaunched itself as Academi, it still offered essentially the same services.
I needed to talk to Rhodes. He couldn’t be definitively identified from the CCTV images I could see but, from the size of the man on screen, he had to be a likely suspect. Rhodes was no longer living in Shoreditch, however, and was listed as being NKA: No Known Abode.
The woman I spoke to on the phone at Titanomachy’s main office politely informed me that personnel details, and indeed the duties of any personnel currently attached to or employed by the firm, could not be given over the phone. If these were required, and a good reason presented as to why it would be in the firm’s best interest to impart such details, a senior partner would be only too pleased to talk to me when head office was next open for business, which was tomorrow. I thanked her and rang off.
Where to find Rhodes? On a whi
m I drove to Chelsea.
*
I parked in the Vale, just off the Kings Road, and looked across Mulberry Walk, the home of Debbie Frost. She still lived in a flat on the second floor of number 9 and, up to earlier this year, had shared it with her fiancé, Darren Ritchie. Ritchie had been murdered, I was certain, by an American named Bartlett Poe, who was eliminating key people involved in a money laundering operation on behalf of Red Heaven. Poe had never been apprehended, despite the fact he was suspected of being involved in at least two other homicides, and the belief was he’d somehow slipped out the country. Richard Rhodes was Poe’s mirror image and Debbie Frost was his friend.
I rang the buzzer to her flat and the clicking sound indicated the latch had been released on the front door. I entered and went upstairs to her flat. I tapped lightly on the door.
“It’s open,” a familiar voice called out.
Taking a deep breath, I entered. She was sitting on the couch facing the window, feet curled up underneath her, holding a coffee in one hand and flicking through a magazine with the other. The various sections of the Sunday Times were spread out on the coffee table in front of her. I’d only ever seen her when she was dressed in professional work attire, but today was Sunday, so she was wearing a dark sweatshirt with Nike emblazoned on the front and grey tracksuit bottoms. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, which gave her an almost wan complexion.
The room looked roughly the same as when I’d last visited several months back, except this time there was a large framed picture of her late fiancé, Darren Ritchie, perched on her top-of-the-range Samsung stereo system. She was still a very attractive woman, but I knew her to be venal and very calculating, someone always looking for the main chance, who’d survived as long as she had because she was well connected in the Conservative party hierarchy and with influential friends on her side. If the parable of the Good Samaritan were to be written today, it’s a certainty the Good Samaritan would not be Debbie Frost, unless there was something in it for her.
The Rules Page 4
