Cold Killers (11 page)

Tony gave a bored roll of the eyes and made a tick-tock motion with his head.

‘Are you fucking in or out?’ he screamed in Harold’s sweating face.

Harold chewed on the inside of his lip. His rubbery features had begun to blur into dark purple.

‘They’re not going to forgive us, Tony. You made me part of this. You went behind my back and organised Marco to step in and get the shipment, and then he killed our man in
Amsterdam. Why the need to cheat them?’

Tony slammed his palms on the desk and the cocaine dust showered it. ‘In or out, out, yes? I don’t want their forgiveness. They can stick it up their Colombian arses. I want to cause
them maximum damage all along their chain. I want them to sweat while we get together enough money to go over their heads to the real men in the game.’

Harold paused as realisation kicked in. ‘You don’t want to fuck with these guys, Tony.’

‘Don’t I? Really, Harold? It’s too late for that. We’re taking over, Harold, and you better be ready. You want to be my right-hand man still? This is your time to shine,
Harold. I need someone who is a hundred and ten per cent. That you, Harold, hey?’

‘Any more on Billy Manson, the manager from Paradise Villas?’ Carter asked, as he came in and sat down to attend the meeting with Chief Inspector Bowie. It was
seven p.m. Willis and Robbo were already there in Bowie’s office.

‘How did his alibi fit in with events, Robbo?’

‘His wife confirmed that they were at the council fireworks display,’ answered Robbo. ‘There’s CCTV footage; we can see his wife Jo pushing the buggy with their youngest
child in it. The other child is walking beside. We can’t see Manson himself. His wife said that they separated while Manson went off to get them something to eat. It’s too crowded to
pick them up again.’

‘So, we can’t categorically rule him out,’ said Bowie, ‘but what would be his motive?’

‘He has a five per cent share in Paradise Villas,’ answered Carter with a half-shrug. ‘It’s not likely, but this could all have been about him wanting a bigger slice or a
disagreement about the way the business was going. He seemed to be really sacred of the knock-on effect with clients if they are put off by the nature of Eddie’s death.’

‘I can understand that, even allowing for the type of clients Eddie had, they’re going to wonder what kind of person gets killed like this. They’re going to wonder whose toes
he trod on. If Manson is in the frame then we need to ask ourselves what his plan would be,’ Bowie said from behind his desk. ‘What would he gain from killing his business
partner?’

‘It could be he gains nothing, but he is covering up some wrongdoing that could hurt his business. What if Eddie had started to go in a direction Manson didn’t approve of?’

‘What did you think of him when you met him?’ asked Bowie.

Carter answered, ‘Not my type. Public school gone wrong. Probably carried the hopes and aspirations of pushy middle-class parents who sent him to a low-quality, fee-paying school and he
didn’t make the grade, even then. He came out only good at working with his hands and they couldn’t afford or didn’t have the contacts to find him a job on the old boys’
network. So Manson ends up making bespoke kitchens for a living, not a bad job by anybody’s standards, but he still hankers after this rich lifestyle. He still feels like he just isn’t
good enough. That’s what Eddie saw in him when he met him. He saw a well-spoken, well-dressed carpenter, who might be perfect in his business. But, fifteen years down the line, did it all go
wrong?’

Willis was staring at Carter with an astounded expression on her face.

‘What?’ asked Carter. ‘Do you think you’re the only one with an insight into people’s characters?’ He grinned at her. ‘So, I’d like to delve
deeper into the life of Billy Manson.’

‘Up to you, but we don’t have time to waste resources,’ said Bowie. ‘What did you find there at the Paradise Villas warehouse?’

‘There had definitely been some activity there in the last two weeks,’ Willis said. ‘I took some more samples.’

‘What is going on there?’ asked Bowie. ‘What do they do there?’

‘The Paddocks is not that big a business park. There are about twelve units,’ answered Willis. ‘Paradise Villas occupies one of the biggest. It has a warehouse facility, an
office and a workshop. What you’d expect in an industrial unit.’

‘The other units on the site are a mix: printers, teak furniture importer, nothing of particular interest,’ said Carter. ‘It has twenty-four-hour security round the
site.’

‘What’s being made in the workshop?’ asked Bowie.

Carter looked at Willis to answer.

‘Not a lot, so far as we can see,’ she replied, ‘and, according to Manson, they buy everything in and it gets collected together to ship in the same container out to a job.
When we went there, there were just boxes containing marble fireplaces, pretty average-looking.’

‘They farm the work out,’ added Carter. ‘I suppose they have a tried and tested formula and just tweak it for individual requests. Robbo, did you check out any more information
on the villas they’re working on right now?’

‘One he’s building, the other doing alterations – that’s something he seems to offer – an after-service. The alteration is for a timeshare magnate who’s been
inside once for cheating customers. His name is Peter Tully and he has links to the criminal fraternity here and in Europe. He’s one I think we should go and talk to. The new villa is still
in its foundations stage – the owner is a football manager. We’re talking to him at the moment. He seems to be above board.’

‘And you saw Della Butcher?’ asked Bowie, looking at Carter. ‘You gave her a lift to a hotel, I hear.’

All eyes were on Carter as Bowie asked the question. Willis hadn’t told anyone, but thought Carter would have to watch himself. She tried not to look at him, but, when she did, she saw
that he was trying his best not to look fazed; he was expecting this question. Willis moved her gaze towards Chief Inspector Bowie. Something was obvious to her – he already knew about Carter
and Della but he was disowning that knowledge.

‘I talked to her briefly on the night of the wake.’ Carter was doing his best to stay relaxed. ‘I provided the transport when she decided to leave the wake and stay in a hotel
near the airport. She said Eddie had been the same as always in the month before he died although he did intend to break away from the family and he and Della were talking about moving.’

‘That must have been quite a big thing on the horizon. Would Tony have been all right about that? Did he have something to say about it, do we know?’

‘Della wasn’t sure whether Tony knew or not.’

Bowie nodded. ‘Do we need to talk to Della officially?’

‘We may do. I’m keeping an open mind but for now I think she’s as much in the dark as we are,’ Carter answered. ‘I got some useful information this afternoon from
my informant. I got these photos from his phone, of people of interest who were around and in the pubs the evening of Eddie’s funeral.’

Carter nodded to Robbo, who had already loaded them onto his laptop and turned it round to show the others.

‘The identity of most of these has already been confirmed by Intel,’ said Robbo.

‘But there is one man that my informant wanted me to see. He wasn’t at the funeral, but he was here around November the 6th when Eddie was murdered. He’s been seen with Harold
and is now known to be Tony Butcher’s new right-hand man.’

Robbo obliged with a photo of Marco.

‘What do we know about him?’ asked Bowie.

‘Very little right now. I’ve just shown this to Robbo, so we’ll start on this straight away. We know his name, Marco Zapata, and we know he has a connection to a new and rising
Colombian drugs cartel. No doubt, if we have informants with pictures of him on their phones, then the NCA, Organised Crime Command, will have a whole file on him. I believe we need to open up this
investigation to them. They have all the contacts that can save us a lot of time. We need to work together.’

‘Plus, the Spanish police always inform the NCA when one of the family is on the move,’ said Robbo. ‘They carry out twenty-four-hour surveillance on Tony Butcher. Marco Zapata
will feature in that.’

‘And do the NCA always follow Eddie when he comes to the UK?’ asked Bowie.

‘Apparently so,’ answered Robbo. ‘But only when it relates to Tony or Harold.’

‘Then we need to see the history of that,’ said Bowie. ‘Every visit he made in the last three years and all the surveillance on the family that they’ve carried out. We
need to request cooperation from the Spanish police.’

‘Again we need to liaise with the NCA to save us time.’

‘Harold will have a lot of the answers we need,’ said Bowie.

‘I’ll interview him again,’ said Willis. ‘I’ll put some pressure on this time. He was not expecting Eddie’s death; I could see that when I spoke to him
before. Whatever happened, something went wrong. If it wasn’t his fault he might feel like covering himself.’

‘Bring Harold in for questioning under caution?’ asked Bowie. ‘After all we are investigating the murder of a British citizen on British soil and, if necessary, we should take
a trip out to talk to Tony.’

‘Softly-softly,’ said Carter. ‘If we rush things Harold will refuse to talk at all. If we keep things just about his brother’s death, no mention of the cartels, no
mention of Tony, then we might get something out of him he didn’t mean to give.’

‘They’re due to fly back here tomorrow,’ Robbo said, looking at his notes.

‘Okay, we’ll meet and greet at the airport,’ Carter said. ‘Let’s put some gentle pressure on them.’

Carter caught up with Willis as they left the meeting.

‘Spare a few minutes?’

‘Can it be over something in the canteen?’ she asked. ‘I’m starving.’

‘Naturally.’

‘All right, Teen?’ Willis asked as she walked in and saw her working on the hot-drinks counter.

‘Ebbers! Haven’t seen you for ages. Do you still live in my house? I was wondering if you’d moved out.’

‘Yeah, sorry, Teen, it’s a bit like that at the moment.’

‘I know, busy time. You text me if you’re going to get an evening off and we’ll hit the town.’

‘Or maybe just stay in and get a takeaway and a couple of beers?’ suggested Willis.

‘That’ll be the one; same as always. Do you want a curry now? We’ve got it on the menu tonight.’

‘Sure.’

‘Is it edible?’ asked Carter.

‘Depends how hungry you are,’ answered Tina. ‘Ebbers always likes it.’

‘Then I’ll say no thanks.’ Carter put a chicken-salad sandwich on his tray and ordered a tea. Willis ordered a Coca-Cola with her curry and Tina loaded up their trays at the
till. They walked across to sit at a table in the far corner. The canteen was at the end of the dinner service.

Willis began demolishing her congealing curry and Carter picked at his dry sandwich before dissecting it and picking out the chicken. He pushed it to one side and waited for Willis to look
up.

‘Eb, I haven’t been completely straight with you about something to do with the investigation,’ he said.

Willis stopped eating and waited.

‘Is it more about Della? I could see the chief inspector knew about your relationship with her. He didn’t seem best pleased that you’d given her a lift to the hotel. I wonder
what he’d have thought if he knew we went to see her parents.’

‘Yeah, I don’t know. But, he’s worrying unnecessarily.’

‘Does he know her? You were all on Operation Argos together, weren’t you? I knew she was an officer after tracing her real name. I’ve been waiting to hear it from
you.’

‘Yeah, we were, and he did know her. But, not in the same way as I did. We started a relationship. I was already in the force and Della wanted to join. She came through quickly and then
was recruited for Operation Argos. No one knew that we were in a relationship, they would never have let us work together if they had known. It seemed so exciting for us. To be undercover together
was just incredible.’ He paused, Willis didn’t interrupt. She nodded. Some of the story she had guessed.

‘We both spoke Italian. We made a convincing duo. We were brought together to work undercover in an Italian restaurant, where the Butchers discussed nearly all the business. It was a
small, family-run Italian restaurant in Walthamstow – Trattoria Verde, it was called. I know what you’re going to say.’ He held up his hand. ‘And you’d be right. We
should never have gone into work undercover when we were in a relationship, but we did. We thought it was made for us. In our naivety, we didn’t see anything wrong.’

Willis watched Carter as he went through the details of his past. She could tell it was painful. It was something he hadn’t had to think about for a long time and now it was bringing him
so much stress.

‘It was a great time for me. I thought I’d landed on my feet: beautiful girl, Italian father. I thought my future lay with her family. You saw how much we all meant to each other. If
Della hadn’t wanted to join the police force, we would probably be together now.

‘But, by the end of two years, the relationship was under too much strain and it was virtually over. She started to drift away from me; the talk became about materialistic things: where
were we going with our lives; what could we hope to achieve? The police force wasn’t going to be something she’d stay in, she said. The restaurant was too much like hard work for little
reward. But, basically, I would have been happy on a desert island with her. I didn’t want to think about what she was telling me. She’d changed. Or maybe she was always like that and I
chose not to see it. Either way, we were under enormous strain and still trying to do the job we were paid to do. Bearing in mind that Della had come straight out of cadet school and into
undercover work. She fitted their needs so exactly. It was all too much for her. It was just too hard.’

‘When did you find out she was involved with Eddie Butcher?’

‘I knew there was some flirting going on. I knew I was losing her and I thought there must be someone else, but I didn’t find out who, or how much they were involved, until the
operation crashed.’