Fogarty: A City of London Thriller (37 page)

“Come on, Sergeant Scott. I am an officer of the court. I wouldn’t run around shooting out windows just to get the police to raid a forgers’ paradise that has operated for years with a certain D
CI’s assistance, now, would I?”

Scott bristled at the accusation. “I hope you don’t mean DCI C
oombes,” he said, anger rising.

“No, of course not. Terry is one of the good guys. I was thinking more of a DCI whose name begins with Rad and en
ds with letting criminals go.”

Scott knew of the rumours surrounding Bob Radlett, and had purposely avoided serving with him on the advice of the Detective Sergeants who had worked with Radlett before. Nonetheless, DS Scott wasn’t going to launder the
Met’s dirty washing in public.

“I hear what you say, Ben, but if you want to make a complaint….” He left the sentence hanging as DCI Coombes came into the room. DS Scott mouthed the name Ben Fogarty silently and DCI
Coombes took the phone handset.

“Mr Fogarty, I need you to come in now, and if you don’t, we are going to come looking
for you….. after the weekend.”

“Why after the weekend? Why not i
mmediately, Inspector Coombes?”

“Way too busy, Mr Fogarty, so if you were to come in voluntarily on Monday, I think we might be able to clear this matter up withou
t inconveniencing you further.”

Ben was hurriedly trying to read between the lines. Did Coombes have
evidence that Ben was innocent?

“OK. Tell DS Scott that I will be at Scotland Yard Monday morning, nine o’clock sharp.” Ben paused. “Oh, and if I am still a free man by lunchtime, I’ll
take you both out for a pint.”

“We’ll see you then, but, as for the beer, we’ll pay. Wouldn’t want any corruption char
ges laid against us, would we?”

Surprise at his DCI’s flippant approach to a wanted man on the phone was etched into DS Scott’s features. DCI Coombes sa
w his discomfiture and laughed.

“Come on, son, if Ben Fogarty wants hide in London all weekend we can’t stop him, can we? It’s a big city and he’s got plenty of money. We have an alert out saying that he should be detained if he tries to flee the country. That should do for now. In any event…” He paused for effect and it worked as DS Scott leaned forward in his chair. Before he would continue, DCI Coombes led Scott into a
side room and closed the door.

“Keep this under your hat, but DCI Radlett is in custody on suspicion of kidnap and attempted murder. Obviously he’s denying everything, but IAB have been monitoring him and he has apparently been taking backhanders from Gavin Mapperl
ey, Ashley Garner’s assistant.”

“No way!” Scott exclaimed, and then lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “I mean, taking backhanders - no surprise there, really, but kidnap and attempted murder? No-one can sweep charges like that under the carpet, can they? But if he isn’t admitting an
ything, how does that help us?”

“The man he tried to kill is Connall Parker, one of Gavin Mapperley’s men and well known supplier of ‘passalong’ guns to the criminal elite,” Coombes told him. “As Conn is eager to get into protective custody, he’s telling the IAB boys everything they want to know, including the make and model of the gun that killed Lawrence Garner. It seems that Conn likes to keep track of his guns and so he acid etches them with his ‘tag’ once he has removed the serial numbers.

I’ve just been to the evidence locker. The gun used to kill Lawrence Garner and Grierson’s sidekick, Lenny, has an unexplained mark under the barrel. It looks like this….” DCI Coombes drew a crude diagram on a piece of scrap paper.

“And that is Conn Parker’s
Tag?” Scott asked expectantly.

“Too true it is, and he’s prepared to swear that he gave the gun to Gavin Mapperley the day before the Rectory murders. He is also prepared to say that Mapperley told him he wanted Conn to be absolutely sure it was a clean gun
, because it was for the Boss.”

“Ashley Garner!” Scott exhaled.

Hedo’s Restaurant, Warwick Street, Soho, London.

Wednesday 24
th
August 2011; 8pm.

Vicky Vesperton was the head chef from Hell. Nothing was ever good enough for her, it seemed. The minimum wage waitresses who were dressed as serving wenches were terrified of the five foot nothing chef, who weighed less than one of her signature dishes.

Hedo’s had been owned by a couple of Hooray Henry types, who had nurtured ideas of turning it into London’s favourite hedonist haunt, and to some degree they had succeeded, before the profits from the venture found their way up their noses. Eventually they went bankrupt, and a company called Cresty Group took over the lease and the goodwill. They also believed that they had taken over Vicky, but they were
wrong about that - dead wrong.

Vicky’s reputation as a slave driver was surpassed only by her reputation as a chef who turned out good, wholesome comfort food for ex public schoolboys and girls. With earls, counts and even a prince or two among its clientele, the restaurant was always fully booked and profitable. Why, then, Vicky wondered, did the owners insist on their little sideline
?

From the outside the white stuccoed building looked classy. The portico was supported by faux Doric columns. Inside was dark but beautifully appointed, with walnut and red velvet as far as the eye could see. Whips, manacles and instruments of torture adorned the walls as decoration. The booths had been furnished with manacles for the wrists and ankles so that playful guests could secure their dinner companions, enslave them and feed them morsels of food whilst they gorged on Vicki’s Beef and Venison roasts with garden vegetables followed by Jam
Roly Poly Pudding and custard.

It was a bustling restaurant and it was ideally situated right in the middle of Soho. It was also the favoured place for the well-heeled to pick up recreational drugs risk-free - in the VIP section behind a red velvet curtain, of course. A man dressed in flowing robes dispensed pills, powders and vials of liquid in all of their varieties, at prices dealers on the street could only dream of charging. Vicki had grown tired of the whole thing and had already planned her exit. She was heading to Dubai to set up a restaurant in partnership with a celebrity TV chef. As a result her mind was elsewhere when, in the late afternoon, two men came into the kitchen carrying boxes of wine from Gardner’s of Park Lane. They said the wine was a special order for the Earl of Dunsmore, a regular patron. Vicky argued that she was unhappy with guests bringing in their own wine, but she knew it wasn’t worth making an issue of it. She decided she would make the Earl pay full price for his own wine. He’d never notice. He was always out of his head when he left Hedo’s, anyway. She smiled at the thoug
ht as she signed for the boxes.

***

Max glanced at his watch again, for the third time in a minute. “The little buggers should be awake by now and making their escape,” he said to Ben, who just smiled and said, “It’s not a precise science, mate. I’m going to make the call anyway.” Ben took the mobile phone and dialled the stored number.

“Environmental Health, Jame
s Kershaw speaking.”

Ben, having practised earlier, did his best plummy E
ton accent as he smiled at Max.

“I say, you fellows ought to get down to Hedo’s on Warwick Street. We just ate there and my dear friend Harriet saw a rat. The place is teeming with them. I told them I would report them but they laughed and said they would have it cleaned up before the cretins at the council got their fat arses out of their soft c
hairs. Their words, not mine.”

“Did they really? Would you be prepared to be a witness if
a court case proceeded, Mr….?”

“Emmerich-Baines. Julian Emmerich-Baines. Most certainly I would, yes. You can ca
ll me on this number any time.”

“Don’t you fret, Mr Emmerich-Baines. We work every evening because that is when the restaurants are open. I might just cal
l around there myself shortly.”

***

When Lettie Stokes screamed everyone knew about it. Daughter of a Chartered Surveyor and Honourable Liveryman of the City of London, she had enjoyed a privileged upbringing and in all of her twenty two years she had never seen a rat close up. As she sat secured hand and foot at her booth whilst her German boyfriend teased her with food, she was already feeling vulnerable. That was when she happened to look down. A large male brown rat had stopped at her feet, risen onto its hind legs and was sniffing the air. The beef must have smelled good from down there, especially to a hungry rat. Lettie screamed at full volume. When customers looked around to see what was causing the commotion, the rat bolted into the crowd. Women fainted, men vomited and the hardier guests clambered on to chairs. Having been alerted to the disturbance, and attracted by the spilled gourmet food, the remainder of the rats, emboldened by hunger, ran around gathering up the fallen food. Chaos ensued, and panic spread quickly.

Vicky raced out of the kitchen and witnessed the carnage. She almost cried at the sight of her carefully crafted food all over the floor, but then she laughed and she continued laughing until tears filled her eyes.

***

James Kershaw and his team arrived just after the police, who had received a great many calls about the fracas at Hedo’s. The first of the calls had come from Max. As he pushed his way through the crowd of uniformed policemen and entered the kitchen, the Environmental Health Officer saw two rats on the stainless steel food preparation table, fighting over
a slice of venison. He smiled.

Vicky sat on a chair outside in the street waiting to be questioned by the police. They had already arrested Michael Tamblin, still dressed in his medieval robes, for possession of Class A drugs and for dealing in Class A drugs. She guessed that he would be in prison for a long time. She couldn’t help but smile as Viscounts and debutantes, who were used to being treated with deference, were manhandled into police vans, loudly complaining or crying. The Eton accented cries of ‘Do you know who I am?’ and “My father and the Home Secretary shoot together, I’ll have you know’ echoed across the street to where Max and Ben were standing. They had joined the crowd of onlookers across the street from the restaurant, to watch burly policemen carrying bag after bag of drugs and drug paraphernalia out of Hedo’s before depositing them into the ba
ck of the ubiquitous white van.

Max summed up their evening in an aside to Ben. “If Ashley and Mapperley want to mess with us, then we will mess with them.”

High Mead, Chigwell , London.

Thursday 25th August 2011
; 7:30am.

Gavin Mapperley had barely slept and now he had to head out for another day of crisis management. Hedo’s Restaurant had been the organisation’s most lucrative outlet for high-end narcotics and designer drugs, and now it was closed down, probably forever. They would never be able to sell on the lease in the current financial climate, and even if they could they would have to offer it at such a discount that they would lose a fortune on the deal. Mapperley’s carefully constructed criminal conglomerate was disintegrating. The main player in the conglomerate, Cresty Group, had suffered two big setbacks in a single week. Gavin wondered whether Cresty would survive without its two main sources of income. Neither Metal Tokens nor Hedo’s could continue to function or create revenue, but both had significant outgoings. There were rents to pay, extortionate business rates and huge utility bills, all of which would have to be paid without any income. In the eyes of any accountant the Cresty Group would now be considered insolvent, whereas just a week ago it had been pulling in around sixty five grand a week.

Mapperley mused that, i
f things kept going like this, there would be no empire left for him to rule over when Ashley took her fortune and ran. The low level criminal enterprises always paid their way, but it was the legitimate business front that made the real money, with its ability to launder illicitly obtained cash. Gavin rubbed his temples and tried not to worry as he slid into the soft green leather seats in the back of his green Jaguar.