Capital Punishment (24 page)

‘Irish,’ said Nelson, weighing his fork. ‘Most kidnaps I hear about are Yardies, nabbing someone’s sister because they haven’t paid their drugs bill. Or Ukrainians, grabbing illegal girls and sticking them in brothels.’

‘Sweet,’ said Mercy, finishing her beans. ‘But what I’m talking about is different.’

‘I hear what you’re saying.’

That was when Mercy knew for certain that Nelson had something and he was just putting her through the negotiation process. Either that, or he had something on someone a bit too close for comfort.

‘One of the things that concerns us about this kidnap is that we’re not convinced that they’re looking for a ransom,’ she said. ‘We think they’re going to tease, torture and kill. You don’t want to let people get away with something like that, do you, admiral? Not with a young woman.’

‘How young?’ asked Nelson, pushing back his plate, cleaning the nooks and crannies of his front teeth with his tongue.

‘Mid-twenties.’

‘What nationality?’

‘Half English, half Indian.’

‘The only thing is,’ said Nelson, playing the edge of the table with his remaining hand, ‘this’ll come back to me too easily. So, if I tell you, you’ll have to find another way in. You’ve got to promise me that.’

‘I don’t know how easy that’s going to be.’

‘You’ll see when I tell you.’

‘All right. I’ll guarantee you that,’ said Mercy, cocking her head to one side. ‘It looks as if there’s something else, Nelson.’

‘It’s going to be pricier than usual.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m more exposed.’

‘Is he a friend?’

‘What sort of a bloke do you think I am?’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘He’s connected. I could end up getting knee-capped.’

‘How much?’

‘Monkeys. Triplets.’

‘Now I’m going to have to go out into the cold and call someone,’ said Mercy, kicking her chair back, annoyed.

She went out into the street, walked up and down outside the yellow Vitrolite exterior of Pellicci’s café and called DCS Makepeace, told him Nelson was after £1500 for his grubby piece of information.

‘That’s pushing it,’ said Makepeace. ‘Doesn’t he read the news? Reduction in police numbers, public sector cuts, wage freezes...’

‘We’ve covered that already,’ said Mercy wearily.

‘Tell him we’re working on the CCTV footage of where Alyshia was taken and we’ve got a time on it too, so we’ll get there in the end with or without his expensive info. Five hundred’s the max, or if we’re quick enough, bugger all.’

Mercy went back into the café. Nelson was sitting in a food daze. Nev was clearing the plates.

‘Anything else I can get you?’ he asked.

‘I’ll take a latte, please,’ said Mercy.

Nev looked completely clueless for a moment.

‘All right, make it a white coffee,’ she said, sitting down.

‘I told you,’ said Nelson.

‘Bollocks,’ said Mercy. ‘You put him up to it.’

‘Are we on?’

‘We’re nearly there under our own steam,’ said Mercy. ‘We’re just checking the CCTV footage in Covent Garden of where the girl was last seen. The boss said you can have three hundred and that’s it—or sweet FA if he calls me back before you spill your beans.’

Nelson shifted in his seat, irritated, and she knew they were on the right track.

‘Make it up to a monkey and it’s all yours.’

‘Three hundred is tops.’

‘Bloody hell, Mercy.’

‘I’ve got it with me, too.’

‘Have you ever heard talk of The Cabbie?’

‘No.’

‘He’s not a cabbie, but he drives around in one: a London black cab. He runs a legit business off Violet Road in Bromley, buying and selling office furniture. He also employs illegals fresh in from Calais, pays them bugger all. They sleep in dormitories above the warehouse and he farms them out as cheap labour.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Jack Auber,’ said Nelson. ‘But if you’re talking about killing people, Jack doesn’t do that.’

‘But he does exploit people,’ said Mercy.

‘All right,’ said Nelson. ‘I’m just telling you he doesn’t kill people.’

‘So what did he do and how do you know he did it?’

‘There’s a builder in Stepney called Fred Scully. The building trade is dire at the moment. So when Fred gets work, he has to make it count.’

‘So he uses Jack’s cheap labour.’

‘Fred’s using two of Jack’s lads; been using one of the lads on and off for a year, trained him up good. Friday afternoon, Jack asks Fred to send the two lads over to his house on Grange Road, I don’t know the number, but it overlooks the East London Cemetery at the back and it’s the only one with a garage. Fred knows the place because Jack lets him keep his gear there. They’re working late and he can’t drop the lads off until after nine. Jack says as long as they’re there for midnight, he’s not bothered.’

‘So what time does he drop the lads off?’

‘Just after nine-thirty.’

‘Does he see Jack there?’

‘Yeah, the cab’s parked outside. Jack lets them in. Gives them some coffee. Tells them to clear the scaffolding out of the garage so that he can fit his cab in there and then stay at the house until he gets back. Fred leaves. The next day the lads don’t show. When Fred calls Jack, he says: “No problem, Fred, I’m sending you another two. They’ll be with you in an hour.” Fred wants to know what happened to his two boys, and Jack says there was an accident. Don’t ask questions.’

‘When are we getting to the kidnap bit?’ asked Mercy, looking up, head low down near the tabletop.

‘Look, I’m just telling you how I know Jack was involved,’ said Nelson. ‘Jack’s daughter, Cheryl, and Fred’s son, Vic, are having a thing with each other. Jack’s got Vic down as his future son-in-law. So Fred asks Vic to find out what happened to the two lads. This is the story that comes back. When Jack fetches up at the Grange Road house in his cab at around half past midnight, he parks the cab in the garage, because he’s got someone in the back, asleep. He goes into the house and waits with the lads. Half an hour later there’s screaming and shouting from the cab and he sends the two lads in there to dope the girl and bring her into the house.’

‘The girl? What girl?’

‘An Indian girl, in her twenties and a cracker,’ said Nelson. ‘The lads bring her in, put her in the bedroom at the back of the house. Then they wait. Half an hour later, two blokes turn up in hoods. Jack’s expecting them but not what they do next, which is ... strangle the two lads to death. They put the bodies and the drugged girl in their van and left. Jack was shocked. Hasn’t been able to get over it, which was why he spilled it to Vic, told him not to tell anyone, not even Fred, but you know how it is...’

‘Let’s you and I go for a little walk, admiral,’ said Mercy.

1.30 P.M. (LONDON TIME), 6.00 P.M. (LOCAL TIME), MONDAY 12TH MARCH 2012

Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai, India

‘Anwar Masood is a gangster,’ said Roger Clayton, making his telephone report to Simon Deacon of MI6 in London, with the
pav bhaji
he’d eaten with Gagan on Juhu Beach still chupping quietly in his stomach, encouraging soft burps and worse. ‘A big Muslim gangster who does what gangsters do: prostitution, girl trafficking, drugs, betting, protection and all the rest of it.’

‘How far back does he go with Frank D’Cruz?’ asked Deacon.

‘Masood was in the gold smuggling business on the Dubai to Bombay run twenty or thirty years ago. Before Frank got his break in the film business he was running an import/export business between Bombay and Dubai, where there’s always been a large Indian Muslim expat community. I’m sure that’s how he knows Masood.’

‘So what’s their relationship now?’

‘Difficult to know, precisely, but for some years he’s been an alternative security department for Konkan Hills,’ said Clayton. ‘He doesn’t pitch up at board meetings or work alongside Frank in any way that might link them publicly. But he makes sure that Frank is aware of all pertinent underworld intelligence, and he guarantees that nobody close to Frank will get kidnapped, as well as protecting his construction sites, warehouses and offices from being mysteriously fire-bombed.’

‘I’m assuming that this “Mister Iqbal” and Lieutenant General Abdel Iqbal are one and the same. He was mentioned by your source in the D’Cruz compound and Divesh Mehta from the Research and Analysis Wing.’

‘He’s a serving member of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency in Karachi and is known locally as “Mr Steel”. I think that’s as in the metal rather than corruption. He’s Frank’s main introduction to most of the steel contracts he’s picked up in Sindh province and there’s been a lot since the floods of 2010 and 2011,’ said Clayton.

‘How clean is he, given the multi-layered tendency of the ISI?’ asked Deacon.

‘They haven’t pinned anything on him—yet,’ said Clayton. ‘But they’ve got their suspicions based on the fact that Iqbal is known to collaborate with a retired ISI officer called Amir Jat.’

‘I’m just working my way through a CIA report on him: a rather sinister combination of piety and sadism with connections to the upper tiers of US Intelligence as well as to terrorist organisations, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and al Qaeda,’ said Deacon.

‘Divesh Mehta sent me an RAW report on him. Bloody hair-raising,’ said Clayton. ‘The man they’re particularly looking at as a possible terrorist connection for Iqbal is a protégé of Amir Jat’s called Mahmood Aziz, born in the UK in 1975 to Pakistani parents, left in 1987 full of ideas of joining the Jihad against the Russians at the age of twelve, for God’s sake. Latest activities believed to include training the Mumbai attackers of 2008 and bombing NATO fuel convoys in 2010 and 2011.’

‘So why don’t the RAW pursue Iqbal?’

‘Stretched resources,’ said Clayton. ‘I think if Frank D’Cruz is sending Anwar Masood to see Iqbal, it’s probably because of his more piquant connections to people like, well, Amir Jat, who can actually tell him things...’

‘Like?’

‘Whether his daughter being kidnapped in London is an al-Qaeda-inspired action, for instance,’ said Clayton, leaning back in his chair, giving his digestion a bit more room. ‘Maybe you’ll have to dig deeper across the border on that one.’

‘I’ll get someone digging around in Dubai, too. See if we can flush out any connections there,’ said Deacon. ‘Let’s talk about your last bit of intelligence: D’Cruz’s uber-apprentice, Deepak Mistry. Where is he? Why does D’Cruz want to find him?’ And if he’s got Anwar Masood on the job, Deepak must have gone underground. Why would an ex-employee have to do that?’

‘Because Mistry doesn’t want to be found?’ said Clayton. ‘So perhaps I should get out there and find him.’

‘Maybe,’ said Deacon. ‘It’s got potential, given this development in London.’

‘If Anwar Masood can’t find him it’s because he’s being hidden by a Hindu gang.’

‘So what are your connections in the Mumbai Hindu gang world like?’

‘I know a young gun from one of the Hindu breakaway groups from the old D-Company.’

‘D-Company? That rings a bell.’

‘That was the original gold smuggling outfit that operated out of Dubai in the 1980s. The Mumbai gang I’m talking about is run, in name at least because he doesn’t spend much time here, by a man called Chhota Tambe—that means Little Tambe. Small in stature, big in reach. All I can say about his gang members is that they don’t like the Muslims one little bit,’ said Clayton. ‘My contact knows all the other Hindu gangs. If Deepak Mistry is underground in Mumbai, he’ll know where.’

Mercy had given DCS Makepeace her report on Nelson’s information but had held off talking about Boxer and Isabel. She needed time to think, examine herself, before she did something as damaging as that. While she was waiting for Makepeace to come back to her with an independent sighting of Jack Auber picking up Alyshia D’Cruz on CCTV, she did a couple of drive-bys. One past Jack Auber’s house on Southern Grove, which was as silent as the graves in the Tower Hamlets cemetery behind.

The second drive-by was past Auber’s office furniture store on Violet Road, which looked closed. She parked up outside to watch and wait. Her mind immediately drifted onto the two people causing most turbulence in her life: Amy and Boxer. She couldn’t get over that vision of Amy with the couple in the waiting room. She realised that it had more than just stung her to see how appealing her daughter could be. She was mortified by her failure. And once her anger had subsided after their confrontation and she’d got Amy home, she’d felt sick at the atmosphere in the house. Yes, it had reminded her of her own family home in Kumasi, where even the most brilliant sunlit days, with the hibiscus flaming in the garden and the children singing on their way to school, had always felt dark.

She shook her head. Her father, the police officer. They were too alike. They even had the same posture. She knew it was why she was so driven. The guilt at having run away. And no man in her life to take the edge off. She hadn’t felt a flicker of interest in men since she’d split from Charlie. Little social life to speak of. The pub with colleagues, coffee with neighbours was about it. Nothing to make her want to relent on the work. And now, in the quiet of Violet Road, she could admit the other thing that was bothering her. That look in Charlie’s face. He’d found someone—and she was good for him. Yes, she didn’t like to admit it: she envied him. No. Worse. She was jealous.

At midday Mercy got the call telling her that Alyshia D’Cruz had been seen on CCTV getting into Jack Auber’s black cab on Wellington Street at 11.50 p.m. on Friday night. They gave her three possible addresses. The two she knew already, plus one on Grange Road. She hammered on the door of the office furniture warehouse: no answer. Back to the house on Southern Grove. The doorbell sounded a cathedral gong. A big girl answered the door in tight jeans, bare midriff hanging over the waist line, huge breasts in a creaking bra, one shoulder black with tattoos, blonde hair tied in a top sprout, blue eyeshadow, pink lips. She said nothing, chewed gum, having smelt cop from down the hall.

‘Police,’ said Mercy, holding up her warrant card, no pretence necessary now. ‘I want to speak to Jack Auber.’