Cold Killers (39 page)

‘Plenty of the victim’s DNA on this chair,’ said Willis.

‘Are you all right? You look a bit more shaken than usual. I thought forensics was just up your street.’

‘Oh, yes, sorry. I haven’t been well. I’m just getting over some kind of a bug I picked up yesterday in Spain.’

‘Yesterday? You need to go back to bed for the day. You’re looking ill.’

‘I’ll be okay. Thanks.’ She smiled. ‘I just need some fresh air.’

‘You’re going to puke. You can be sick in the front garden. Mind the public doesn’t see you. It’ll be all over
News at Ten
. Here, have a bag.’ He handed her
a crime-scene bag and she went outside, hid behind a bin and was sick.

She emerged to the sound of an officer telling Harold Butcher he couldn’t go any further into the crime scene.

‘Okay, I’m standing here, all right?’

Willis walked across to him.

‘Mr Butcher?’

Harold Butcher stood in his expensive cashmere coat and wearing his black leather gloves and his face was maroon-coloured, he had five o’clock shadow. He was sad and angry, and he
didn’t care who knew it.

‘Is it Melvin?’

Willis nodded. It struck Willis as either arrogant or touching that Harold had come to make sure the rumours were true.

‘How?’

Willis glanced behind her. ‘As you can see, this is a murder scene.’

‘I know that; I’m asking you how. Like Eddie?’

Willis nodded. ‘But magnify his suffering tenfold.’

‘Shit.’ He dropped his head on his chest and breathed in deeply through his nose.

‘Can you help us with this, Mr Butcher? You saw Melvin last night, I believe.’

‘Yeah, he was drunk, shouting his mouth off; I gave him some money and I told him to go home. Was this definitely the same person as did Eddie?’

‘No, but it was the same type of torture. With Eddie, someone ran out of time. His heart gave out.’

Willis watched him walk away.

Willis left Sandford to complete his job as she took off the forensic suit and bagged it up. She walked back along the street towards the church. Lev was serving customers. He
had the demeanour of a man in deep thought, and the thoughts weren’t nice ones.

‘Coffee, please, milky.’

Willis paid and thanked him and went to sit at the window seat beneath the poster of Lev’s grandfather. Her eyes settled beyond the window and on the road outside. It was a good
winter’s day: the blue sky was dotted with clouds, the wind had dropped. The streets were dry. It felt more as if Christmas was coming. But it didn’t feel like that by the look on
people’s faces outside. Willis listened to the conversations as people came in to get their bagels. The talk was all about Melvin and ‘What’s it all coming to?’; ‘How
can this happen?’; ‘This place isn’t safe any more.’ She watched Lev having to engage each customer with a fitting response. She watched him struggle with the constant flow
of sorrow in and out of his shop. He was the centre of mourning, it seemed.

She waited until the shop was empty. She’d already eaten her bagel and had a second cup of coffee.

‘Tough times today.’

He nodded. He eyed her with mistrust.

‘You investigating it?’

She nodded and took out her badge to show him.

Willis picked up her plate and coffee mug and put them on the counter in front of Lev. She took a card from her pocket and paused as she passed it across.

‘Do you still have the card Inspector Carter gave you?’

‘Somewhere.’

‘I need you to find it.’ She smiled. ‘I’m in charge of the investigation into Melvin’s death. You knew him well?’

‘Yes. I’d known him for many years. He started his tours in the last few years and he was doing well. Maybe too well, I don’t know. I mean he gave talks about the villains in
the East End; he overstepped the mark sometimes. A lot of these villains are still living here. Maybe he saw things he shouldn’t have, and then he made the mistake of talking about
it.’

Willis was thinking how Lev seemed as if he’d been working on what he was going to say. It sounded rehearsed, right down to the pauses.

‘It was mentioned about him being warned off working. Did you hear that he’d been threatened?’

‘He said he had, but Melvin had mental problems sometimes. He said things that weren’t true. He imagined things. He said someone stole his dog, someone didn’t want him to give
his tours any more.’

‘Is he the only one who gives these tours?’

‘No, there’s a woman. I haven’t seen her either. They usually bring the people on the tour in for a bagel and I tell them a story about how my grandfather came over here and
how the bakery began, just to bring local colour. But I haven’t seen her either.’

‘Do you know her name?’

‘Janice. That’s all I know her as. Janice from the tour, that’s it. Wait, I have her card here.’ Lev produced a stack of cards and dealt them until he found the one he
was looking for. ‘Janice Lander from East End Lives. Here, you take it.’

‘How was he killed?’ Lev asked her as she was walking out of the door. She stopped, stepped back inside.

‘Tortured. Too many injuries to count. Finally killed with a Colombian necktie. Do you know what that is?’ Lev responded with the slightest lift of his chin. ‘Before that
moment he was burned so badly that it was down to the bone. He had his face burned off. He was still alive when that happened. It took him a long time to die. It took someone a very long time to
kill him – I hope I never have to see another murder scene like it but, somehow, I think I will. Colombian death squad members are moving in here. They come when there’s work for them.
They are the most ruthless, sadistic of all killers. You might know one already, Marco Zapata. He’s been one in the past. This is his kind of work, Lev. We can stop him if we act now. We can
stop any others getting a hold on this place. You feel like talking to me, you call.’

Willis walked down towards the church and made a call to the number on the card. A woman answered after a few rings.

‘Janice from East End Lives?’

‘Yes?’ Her voice was nervous, tentative.

‘Janice, I’m Detective Sergeant Willis. I’m investigating an incident. Can I just ask you if you’re still giving the tours?’

‘No. I’m not.’

‘Can I ask why?’

‘I decided to stop, that’s all.’

‘Any particular reason? I heard they were popular.’

‘I was told that I shouldn’t give the tours any more.’

‘Told by who?’

‘Look, I don’t know what he was called. He was a big man with blond hair and he spoke with a foreign accent. He’d booked on to one of my tours and he just intimidated me for
the two hours as I took my clients around. When he left he told me all about myself, he knew my address, my child’s school, her name. He knew what time I dropped her every day. He knew
everything about me – he told me to stop giving the tours. So I did. I noticed Melvin had taken his website down too. He must have been told the same as me.’

‘Would you know this man again?’

‘Of course, but there’s no way I’m ever testifying against him. I can see in his face that he would kill me without a second thought. Me, my daughter and anyone else with us.
I’m going to do exactly as he says, so please don’t bother me again.’

‘I may have to, I’m afraid, but no one can make you testify. Further down the line I may ask you to make a statement about what you just told me.’

‘Why? Why should I?’

‘Because Melvin has been murdered.’

Willis came off the phone, stopped and looked up. The gardens around the church were quiet. Only a couple sat on one of the benches. There was a mix of beautiful old housing and cobbled old
streets. There was the Albert, an old empty pub on the corner of the road past the church. Across from it was another derelict building. Willis wondered if the exit from Bethnal Green was already
unstoppable. But was the place being bought up by cartels and not middle-class folk?

Carter was waiting for Della when she got to the Holloway flat. She’d stashed her bag in the concealed luggage shelf in the car boot.

‘Did you manage to find any more gems since you’ve been here?’ he asked her as she came inside the flat.

‘Hello to you, too.’

‘Sorry, forgive me, I’m a bit wired. It’s getting tense, juggling all these balls in the air.’

‘I’m a ball now?’ she teased. She walked towards him and smiled reassuringly.

‘I found a good few, we can definitely use them. I estimate I have ten million pounds’ worth.’

‘Great, that will help a lot.’

‘I’m willing to put them in the pot. How are you going with sourcing the rest?’

‘We intercepted the expert at Heathrow, the man you told us about. We replaced him with one of us. He’s pretty confident that he can get hold of enough to make it look
real.’

‘He has to know something of the trade. They’ll know he’s a fake otherwise.’

‘He does. Marco’s been to see him. He was shown a rough diamond. I presume it was yours.’ She didn’t comment. ‘He told our man to sit tight and expect to wait a few
more days; Marco hasn’t been in contact since. Is there a hold-up?’

‘I overheard a conversation about it. The shipment is coming via Spain, being unloaded and then repackaged to come here. It’s delayed it slightly. Pretty sure that it’s still
close.’

‘Okay, good, that buys us a few hours at least and makes the shipment a bit more traceable if it’s unloading in Spain. We were hoping we’d have found the cocaine laboratory
that Tony uses. We keep looking. I thought it would be easy. I suppose I thought it would be a big outfit, chemical plant, that kind of thing. But it turns out it could be in somewhere as small as
someone’s flat. Still, I know Manson made regular trips to it. He would have wanted privacy unloading. He used a truck with a machine to help unload. Surely, he has to have been taking it
into somewhere at ground level.’

‘What about Manson’s paperwork?’ Della asked, staring out of the window.

‘There isn’t any. Has Marco or Harold mentioned what form it will come in? We are presuming it’s coming like the other shipments, disguised in boxes that contain things Manson
was importing for Paradise Villas.’

‘No one’s mentioned any of that side of things to me.’

Carter glanced across at Della a couple of times; she was deep in thought.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I’ll be glad when it’s all over. I bet you will, too.’ She smiled. He nodded. ‘What about Cabrina and Archie? Are they coming home soon?’

‘One more week. They’re fine. I’m glad they’re out of the way. One less thing to worry about.’

‘Who’d be a detective’s other half, eh, Dan?’

‘Pretty tough.’ He grimaced. ‘Worth it, though. What are your plans for the future, Della? What happens for you after this is over?’

‘I hope to still be alive and I hope to live happily ever after.’

‘Come on, bit more than that. Okay, here’s the scenario: we take Tony, Harold and Marco out of the equation.’

‘Can you add Sandra to that list, please.’

‘Yes, okay, Debbie?’

‘Debbie can stay.’

‘So, what then?’ asked Carter.

‘We forgot Laurence,’ Della said.

‘Oh, yes, lovesick Laurence. What will you do? How do you see the rest of your life?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Dan. I’ve only just lost my husband. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No, I know you didn’t mean it like that. But I seriously don’t have a masterplan right now. I will go home and sit down and think. I will probably knock my villa down and
start again.’

‘Wow, that’s quite a project. So money isn’t a problem for you?’

‘Eddie had a fair bit put away for a rainy day. He wasn’t a great one to put his trust in banks.’ She paused to allow for a smile from Carter. ‘So he left it to me in
various places and in various ways.’ She turned and smiled at Carter.

‘So you’ll rebuild the villa; maybe you can take over Paradise Villas.’

‘Perhaps. I’m not sure I want to work. I might get the villa done and bugger off. I might travel. I could let you know where I am in the world and you could fly out and join
me.’

‘Between taking Archie on the school run and being an overworked, underpaid homicide detective, you mean?’

‘Exactly. I could be your secret life.’

‘I can’t deal with secrets that big.’

‘So, if you had an affair, you’d tell Cabrina, would you?’

‘Probably not, but if I had an affair I would know Cabrina wasn’t the right one for me and I would tell her that.’

‘Will I see you here later?’ she asked Carter as he was going.

‘Are you sure about staying here now?’

‘Yes, I just have to go back to the Shoreditch flat. I’ve forgotten a couple of things.’

‘You be careful. I’ll text you later. Maybe I’ll come by.’

‘That would be nice. I don’t want to be on my own.’

‘I know. I understand.’

As Carter walked down the stairs to the car park he shook his head, disappointed in himself.
Stay focused, Carter, for Christ’s sake. Stay focused
.

18 December

Carter was called in to see Bowie.

‘Maxi says he wants out.’ Bowie closed the door as Carter entered his office. ‘He got in touch with me direct.’

‘What? He can’t.’

‘He can, unfortunately.’

‘Shit.’ Carter plonked himself down. ‘That’s the trouble with having to wait a few days. It’s made us all jittery. He’s done really well sourcing enough
diamonds, fake and real.’

‘He told me he’s pretty confident they can pass muster,’ said Bowie. ‘He reckons they might just pass for a couple of hundred’s worth with the big uncut diamonds
that Della’s handed over.’

‘She has another couple to give him,’ said Carter. ‘Marco has one that’s worth a lot.’

‘Maxi says he can just about make it look like we have over two hundred million’s worth of diamonds there but he doesn’t want to be the one who faces the cartels. Can’t
think why that is!’

‘He can’t mean it. Marco has seen Maxi. We can’t just change experts. I need to talk to Maxi. It can still work. It has to.’