Hunting for Crows (24 page)

Don Levinson was well agitated and when this happened, somebody usually got hurt. He waited twenty minutes outside Mat Street’s house in Brighton and as agreed, he called Derek, but the call defaulted to voicemail. He was not an impetuous man, a comment Derek would dispute, and so rather than rushing over to the door and sticking his boot into it, as he’d first suggested, he rang the doorbell. When the door didn’t open, he dialled Derek’s number but with the same negative result.

He lifted the letter box and listened but couldn’t hear the sound of people talking and moving, or the bloody annoying Ride of the Valkyries ringtone on Derek’s mobile phone. Feeling like a Peeping Tom, he peered through the front window but his heart sank when he realised neither Derek nor anyone else was sitting inside.

His Special Forces training bawled in his ear, ‘Kick the Fucking Door In!’ He turned around. It looked a compact little street and any one of half a dozen neighbours would be only too happy to lift the phone and call the bizzies, and he was sure a few of them had clocked his odd behaviour by now and were watching him or jotting down the ‘incident’ in their notebooks. Walking quickly, as if he knew which way to go, he turned into the path leading to the back garden. He saw only one doorbell on Street’s house, a sign to him that his son owned the whole house and it hadn’t been converted to flats, as he didn’t fancy wandering into the garden and meeting a dozen half-dressed students enjoying a foam party.

The back door stood at the top of a couple of steps, exposing him to all and sundry who might be looking out their back windows or walking past, but at least it was dark and he didn’t have a security light above his head. Using the width of the step, he charged forward and rammed the door with his shoulder. To his complete surprise, it gave way without trouble and he almost sprawled head-first over the kitchen floor. A quick inspection of the door confirmed wet rot in the door frame, the bloody cheapskates.

He didn’t need to be quiet as his ungainly entry had made his presence known to anyone inside, and the noise he made was an Army tactic used to scare the occupants and to make them think there were two or three other people with him. The downstairs area was empty, and without hesitation, and with the voice of his former RSM ringing in his head, ‘The bastard who hesitates is fucking dead,’ he charged upstairs. One by one he shoved open bedroom and bathroom doors but found nothing.

He headed downstairs and spotted a door under the stairs and was surprised to find it led to a basement, as the house looked too small to have one. The footprint of the house wasn’t large and neither was the basement, and so it was filled with only a couple of bikes, a spare bed and a few boxes.

Now if he was a titty sucker, and there were plenty of them around, even in the Army, this was the time when he would break down and blubber, as he could see his job, his credibility, and his future prospects as a personal protection specialist all go up in a puff of artillery smoke. He straightened his shoulders. This was not going to happen as Don Levinson was made of tougher stuff, one of the reasons they made him Captain. Instead of whimpering like a reality show contestant who’d just received severe criticism from a judge, he grabbed a seat in the living room and sat down to think.

Given the complete absence of expected personnel, it was safe to assume Derek had been kidnapped by the criminal Mathew Street and one or more of his accomplices, and taken to a place of their choosing, to be tortured, killed or held for ransom. He was convinced this was the case because if they’d instead popped out for a pint or were walking down the road munching a take-away Shish Kebab, Derek would have answered his phone or called him. Derek knew if Don said he would come to the door in twenty minutes, he would do so.

Ipso facto, this little episode was not some spur-of-the-moment jape, dreamed up for a laugh after one-too-many tinctures or a puff at the happy-baccy, but a well-planned and a bloody well-executed snatch. If all his assumptions were correct, the only thing left to determine was, where had they taken him?

Think Don, think. He knew this house was being used only as a bolt-hole for Street, as he owned a house in Eastbourne. If anything was written down or he’d received a glossy brochure of the castle-cum-dungeon or caravan-cum-prison where Derek was being held, Street wouldn’t know the good places in this house to hide it, providing of course, he didn’t take the bloody thing with him. He started to formulate a plan. He would take this place apart room by room and find an address, letter or photograph, anything to give him a clue, any clue, as he sure didn’t have one now. He hoped to God it didn’t sit on a computer, as kicking in doors and interrogating subjects was meat and drink to a man like him, but the one thing he hated more than the Taliban was computers.

He would first concentrate his search in this room, Street’s bedroom, and finish with the kitchen. He felt sure Street would keep anything important close to hand, especially if he was nervous about a visit from the bizzies. With the methodical approach of a man with dozens of house searches in numerous towns and villages in Afghanistan under his belt, he began to search.

After five minutes he realised most of the stuff he found didn’t belong to a sixty-seven-year-old man whose main interests were likely to be beer, right-wing politics and the weather, but a young couple with a couple of kids. He didn’t know any old geezer who shopped at Next, did a bit of hair styling on the side and owned a brilliant collection of
Top Gear
magazines. This place reminded him of one of the apartments he and his ex-girlfriend, Elaine, used to rent in the Lake District when they went hill walking. He remembered how strange it felt to be surrounded by someone else’s taste in CDs, DVDs and books.

He finished the search, moved to the door and took a last look, his eyes scanning across the room as if wearing a head camera, looking for anything odd or out of place. He spotted something in such an obvious place he felt stupid for missing it the first time and almost punched himself for the error. Tucked behind the clock on the mock-fireplace, he could see a small pile of mail.

He picked them up and one by one flicked through. He found utility bills, adverts for a pizza delivery service and unopened letters addressed to Neil and Angela Street, he guessed Mat’s son and daughter in-law. At the back he lifted out a folded sheet of A4 paper. It was a print-out of an email message sent to Mathew Street from someone called Malcolm Richards at Sussex Grain Ltd.

He read it, taking care over each word, feeling like a hard-pressed detective holding a clue, crucial to cracking the case, but he still didn’t like looking through other people’s stuff.

Mat,

The Baltic Star is due into harbour this Friday at four. It’ll be loaded with wheat and at five when we’re finished, we’ll take the ship’s crew down the pub. If everyone turns up for work on Monday morning and we don’t need to go out looking for them, they’ll depart for Tallinn mid-morning.

I persuaded Lenny the security guard to come down to the Propeller with us and I’ll make sure he stays even if it means spiking his drink, ha, ha - the old git doesn’t need an excuse to drink. Hope you sort out your problem mate, but don’t leave a bloody mess.

See ya,

Malc

He read it again and stood for a moment, thinking. He always did this, even in the heat of battle, as he needed to be confident the information he was about to use would move the fight forward and was not the fruits of wishful thinking or clutching the only straw left in the basket. Confident it was the real deal and not a ruse or diversionary tactic, designed to fool a harassed personal protection specialist, he pulled out his phone and used it to look up Sussex Grain.

The company was based at Shoreham Harbour, and just to confirm, he searched for the
Baltic Star
. This took a little longer but finally he found a web site tracking merchant shipping movements to and from the UK, and it confirmed the
Baltic Star
had indeed docked at Shoreham Harbour this morning. Yet again, the amount of information he could glean from the web amazed him, as he was a ‘touch-it, feel-it, kick-it’ sort of a guy and suspicious of computer geeks and their knowledge and nerdy ways; come to think of it, he didn’t like any kind of geek.

One day, he thought, as he strode back to the car, technology would be so advanced wars would be fought by computers and younger guys than him hoping for a career in the Armed Services would be sorely disappointed. Even now, the RAF flew drones over Syria and Iraq, flown by pilots who might never fly a real aircraft. In his mind, it was only a matter of time before armies of robots were deposited on battlefields and programmed to fight other robot armies or attack a town.

For the moment though, he would be delighted to have his finger on the trigger of a Predator drone equipped with Hellfire missiles. Its first target would be to find Mathew Street, then he would ram one of its lethal projectiles right up his arse.

From his vantage position in the neighbouring cabin, DI Henderson watched as Mathew Street paced up and down the cabin in the
Baltic Star
. He didn’t look like a sixty-seven-year-old pensioner with a heart condition anymore. He bent down and pushed his face into Derek Crow’s.

‘I’m asking you again Crow, where’s my fucking gold?’

‘And I’ll tell you again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Look pal, I know you nicked it, so where the fuck did you hide it? Tell me and all this will be over.’

‘Pigs might fly. What are we discussing here?’

Street grabbed a handful of Derek Crow’s hair and lifted his head. ‘The gold me and Blakey’s crew nicked from Gatwick airport in ’89; £20 mil worth.’

‘Ah right, that gold, but why do you think I would know anything about it?’

Street slapped his face. ‘Because you and your mates are the only other people who knew where it was hid.’

‘You’ve lost me there.’

‘You’re a fucking liar Crow,’ Street said, pointing a finger a couple of inches away from his face as if trying to decide if he should poke him in the eye. The prisoner coughed and spat blood on the floor, attempting to clear his throat and mouth. He couldn’t move much as his legs were bound together and his hands were tied behind him to the back of the chair.

The three men were in what Henderson assumed to be the captain’s cabin with a bed along one wall, a writing desk, a couple of chairs and little else. At least if the captain had a boozy night drinking too much high-proof vodka in the dining room, the place where he was standing, he didn’t have far to travel to fall into bed.

‘I’m telling you, I didn’t have anything to do with stealing your gold, and as far as I know, neither did my brother, Pete, or Eric Hannah.’

Street whacked him in the guts and raised his fist to give him another when his companion intervened. ‘Pack it in Mat,’ he said, ‘we need to hear what he’s got to say.’

‘Humph.’

In this setting, Street looked no longer the model pensioner who liked a little flutter and an occasional pint of ale, but a silver-streaked wolf circling its injured prey. His face was alive with emotion and expression and he was bursting with energy, moving around the debilitated figure in the chair like a man ten or fifteen years his junior.

Close-up, Street’s mate Ace was bigger than Henderson first thought. He was tall, although smaller than the DI, and towered over Street by a foot or more, well-built with thick, tattooed arms and large muscles. He would have been a menacing figure to look at from Derek Crow’s position in the chair, but the lack of emotion and the coldness in his eyes was worrying Henderson.

After allowing Derek a few minutes to recover, they resumed their questioning.

‘We’ll take it from the top. I went on the raid with Blakey and the boys at Gatwick, and we got away with £20 mill in gold, about 5 in cash and 10 in bonds. I was the one looking after the gold, Blakey the cash, and Ernie the securities. Are you cushtie so far?’

Crow nodded.

‘Right. Before I know it, we get fingered by some bastard and we all get sent down. I come out half a bloody lifetime later and when I get to my lock-up in Plaistow, the gold’s gone.’ He bent down to face Crow. ‘The guys in the team blame me and want my balls in a sling for nicking it, but I told them as I’m telling you now, it was nicked by you and your mates. You were the only ones who knew about the lock-up.’

‘I hear what you’re saying, but you’ve got the wrong guy. I didn’t nick any gold.’

The big guy made to hit him but a sharp look from Street stopped him. The little man seemed to have some control over his big mate.

‘If you didn’t nick it, how come you and the other guys in the band all had money to set yourselves up in businesses, where the fuck did you get it?’

‘Bloody hell. If I had a pound for every time I get asked this.’

The big man punched him on the side of the face but he must have been taking it easy as Derek’s jaw didn’t seem to be broken.

‘Stop flannelling Crow and get on with it, or you’ll get more of the same,’ Street said.

Derek winced, exercising his facial muscles, trying to dissipate the pain. ‘I found out later the guys were bringing in dope from Germany and Holland and they were making a packet, this was in the days before the big, organised drug dealers moved in on the scene. That’s where they got the money from, not from any gold theft at Gatwick.’

‘What a fucking fairy story. You expect me to believe they did it all behind your back? If I remember right, you couldn’t keep your snout out of the trough back then and you’re the same now.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘See mate, I might be sixty-seven but there’s fuck-all wrong with my memory.’

‘I always drove one of the vans, sure I did, but I didn’t know about the drug dealing and wouldn’t want to have been part of it if I had. When I left the band one of our albums started selling well in Japan and Korea, and since I wrote much of it, I made a fair bit from royalties. I would have given the guys some of the money but they didn’t need it.’

‘What the fuck’s this, Mat? This isn’t what you told me when we was in Wakefield,’ the big man said.

‘Shurrup Ace. He’s lying. I’ll handle this.’

‘If you lot didn’t steal my gold,’ Street continued with a sly smile, raising his voice, ‘how come we found gold bars from the raid in each of your mates’ fucking houses?’ His face betrayed a look of triumph as if playing a winning hand at the end of a twelve-hour poker marathon.

‘So, it was you, you bastard! You killed Eric, Pete and Barry!’

Street turned to Ace. ‘Give this guy a Mastermind rose bowl, he’s cracked it!’ Street said, guffawing at his own humour.

‘You bastard Street, you’ll spend the rest of your life rotting inside a jail cell if I’ve got anything to do with it.’

‘Fat chance of that happening is there, with you all tied up? So c’mon, tell me. How come your lot had gold?’

Derek shifted in his seat, the trace of a smile on his face. ‘I can see it now, you believe the crap some old con told you, don’t you? Somehow you think I nicked the gold from the raid and used it to set everyone up in business. Is this the reason you killed them?’

‘It was my fucking gold,’ he said tapping his chest, his face twisted in hate. ‘The heist was my idea and went off as sweet as a nut. If I hadn’t got sent down three weeks later, I would still have it.’ He paused for a second, reminiscing. ‘So if your mates didn’t get the gold from you, where did they get it from?’

Henderson could feel the last piece of the jigsaw falling into place, and for a moment he wished his voice recorder was switched on to capture some of this stuff, but he was sure if he pulled it out now, even the noise of it powering up would be enough to blow his cover.

Ace and Street began to argue but he couldn’t hear what they were saying as both men were shouting at the same time. The gist of it seemed to be that Ace felt he had been employed under false pretences, although Henderson didn’t expect to see him at an Employment Tribunal any time soon. Street told him everything was fine, as they had recovered loads of money and part of the gold, but it didn’t seem to mollify the big man who kept whining like a spoiled child.

‘Enough Ace!’ Street said.

‘But Mat!’

‘I said enough!’ Street looked livid, angry enough to deck the big man. ‘This is getting us nowhere.’

Ace stood for a half-minute, not moving, staring at him. Such odd behaviour would unnerve most people but Henderson was learning from this little show that Mathew Street was not like most people.

‘Ok,’ Ace said when normal service had been resumed. ‘We’ll get nothing more out of him, what do we do with him?’

‘Beat him up some more. I still think he knows something.’

Ace punched Crow in the chest, kidneys, the face and kicked him in the shins. It was horrible to watch and it took Henderson a strong measure of self-restraint not to go in there and give Derek a hand. After suffering this for a minute or more, Crow said, ‘All right, all right, I’ll tell you.’ At least that’s what it sounded like, his mouth was bloody and split and his nose distorted.

Crow tried to clear his throat but winced in pain at the effort and spat loose teeth on the floor.

‘I’m waiting.’

‘You’re not going to like it.’

‘Try me.’

‘Eric Hannah stole your gold. You and him were mates at the time and he knew about the gold. He told the other guys and hatched a plan to nick it, but first he needed to get you out of the way.’ He paused trying to clear something from his throat that was making his voice garbled.

‘He told the cops about what you and your thieving pals did–’

‘You bastard!’ Street made to punch Crow but in a lightning movement, Ace caught his fist.

‘Leave it Mat, I wanna hear the rest.’

‘I spent 25 years inside thanks to this fucking bastard.’

‘They would have caught you eventually,’ Crow said, ‘it was only a matter of time.’

‘No chance. We had–’

‘Finish your story,’ Ace said.

He shifted in the seat trying to get comfortable, wincing when his bruised kidney rebelled. ‘After they arrested you, Eric broke into the lock-up and nicked the gold. He gave some to Barry and Pete but I wouldn’t touch it.’

‘You expect me to believe this?’

‘Why the hell not? Did you find the remains of the stash at Eric’s place? He only cashed in a couple of bars each year to fund a holiday in the Caribbean. He must have had loads left.’

Street looked at Ace. ‘You searched Hannah’s place, didn’t you? You’re not trying to hold out on me are you, big man?’

‘No, Mat don’t be daft, I would never do that. I told you, Hannah’s woman’s been there all the time. I couldn’t get in, but I’ve still got her old man’s keys.’

‘Fuck!’ Street said.

‘I need to go back there and look again.’

‘Yeah,’ Street said. ‘Soonest. Tomorrow and if she’s still there, don’t fuck about, use the knife.’

‘What about him?’

‘We stick to the plan.’

Ace walked over to Derek. In a slick movement indicating the actions of a seasoned professional, he pulled a small cosh from his pocket and whacked him over the head several times until Derek lost consciousness.

‘Right,’ Street said, ‘let’s get him out of the chair and upstairs.’

Ace made to grab Crow but stopped. ‘What about the dope?’

‘Christ, I forgot about it. Good thinking big man, it’s in the bag.’

Ace reached into a holdall and pulled out a well-wrapped package about the size of half a kilogram of cheese and put it in Derek’s pocket. Henderson didn’t have a good view of the bag, but he saw it also contained cash, thousands of pounds in his opinion.

A bag of dope in the pocket was an old trick. When the body is discovered, the police assume the murder is the result of a drug deal gone wrong, leading them down the wrong path. The added twist to this one, and the reason he believed they were intending to kill Derek aboard this boat, was his body wouldn’t be noticed until the ship reached port and its cargo unloaded. Local police would have no idea if the murder had happened on their patch or in the UK, adding more fuel to a confused situation.

Henderson watched as Ace untied the inert figure, gripped him under the armpits and hauled him towards the door. When he pulled Derek into the corridor and clear of the narrow cabin doorway, Street moved out to join him. With Ace at the shoulders and Street at the legs, they lifted him and slowly made their way along the corridor. In a few minutes, when he could no longer hear any grunting and swearing, and it sounded like they were now negotiating a staircase at the end of the corridor, Henderson poked his head out of the dining room.

He stood there for several seconds until he was sure neither man would come back to retrieve something left behind in the cabin. He left the dining room and retraced his steps back to the galley. When he got there, he stopped and looked around to make sure everything looked the same. Satisfied, he climbed the staircase, and headed up in the direction of the star-laden night sky.