Cold Kill (33 page)

He said, ‘Is there a call out on this, Leon?'

Bloss shrugged. ‘There will be.'

‘Then best to keep it for a while. You know that. If the cops are interested, it'll have to be broken, in which case the price drops.'

‘I need to cover some expenses,' Bloss said.

‘You'll take what you can get?'

‘I'll have to.' Bloss gave a chirpy smile. ‘Christmas on the way...'

‘I can raise you ten-k on this. Maybe fifteen. Minus my commission.'

Bloss knew this meant that the Trader could raise twenty. He said, ‘I'll take eighteen, no commission.'

The Trader was a big man, broad shouldered, maybe six-four, dark complexioned. He gave Bloss a sorrowful look. ‘You don't sound as if you're in a position to cut deals, Leon. You sound like a man on the move.'

‘You're right. I could move on. Take it somewhere else.'

The Trader laughed. ‘Don't shit me, Leon. That's your plan, is it? Where are you going to take it – Harefield? Stonebridge? Some dudes down there be more than happy to do business with you. They'll take your fucking bracelet and shoot your dick off instead of saying thank you.' He had small hands for a big man. He slipped the bracelet over his wrist. ‘Fifteen,' he said.

Bloss shrugged. ‘Fifteen.'

It was the sum they'd both been reaching for. The Trader said, ‘A few days. I'll call you.'

He drove Bloss down to the tube at Notting Hill, facing down the faint-hearted in the one-lane rat-runs, the bracelet half hidden under his shirt cuff. It threw a glitter when he swung the wheel.

The Jumping Jacks logo was the knave of hearts and the knave of diamonds, each set against a bright white playing-card. The neon version was mounted on the wall of the casino. At night, the jacks hopped and bopped in alternating rhythms. At ten in the morning they were as dull and lifeless as the staff lined up outside Billy Souza's office. Billy had taken the morning off, so JD was deputizing. His method of doing this was to walk with a roll to his shoulders and rarely blink. He went for a stare-out with Frank Silano, which made Silano laugh out loud.

‘Is there CCTV in Souza's office?' Silano asked.

‘Works the other way.' JD was now eyeballing the croupier at the head of the line. ‘We look at them, they don't look at us.'

‘Recording devices?' JD shrugged. Silano said, ‘Who runs electronic surveillance?'

‘Woman called Arlene Pearce. The scrutineer.'

Arlene took Silano through to the room next to Billy's office where the CCTV cameras were racked and showed him the mikes. She showed him that they were deactivated: flick-flick, red light on, red light off. When they emerged, Silano asked her to lock the door, then he took the key.

They went through the staff one by one, as if they were shuffling a deck, looking for an ace to match the ten. And there she was, Louise, her pert nose, her vicious pony-tail, lighting a cigarette and saying, ‘I'm clean, I'm straight and I'm earning. Leave me alone.'

Maxine showed her Oscar Gribbin's photo.

Louise said, ‘Okay, he's a punter.'

‘When was he last in?'

‘He doesn't play blackjack. A couple of days ago, maybe. He's regular.'

‘What's his game if not blackjack?'

‘Craps, I think. Not sure. Roulette?'

‘Who runs those tables?'

‘It depends.'

‘All right. We'll ask JD.'

‘Ask Arlene, she'll know.'

Maxine nodded and Louise started to get up. Maxine said, ‘You didn't call me.'

‘Nothing to say.'

‘I might need some eyes and ears in this place.'

‘Find someone else.'

‘I don't need to.'

Louise sighed. She said, ‘I call you, never the other way round.'

Gerry Harris raised Stella on the third try. She had been waiting to hear from Tom Davison, but Harris had interesting news of his own.

‘One of your guys was over here. Silano?'

‘That's right.'

‘I was out, but someone took a message. He was asking about Oscar Gribbin. And now I hear you're having a look at Billy Souza.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘Are you kidding?

‘You have an interest in Souza?'

‘Yes. And what's fascinating here,' Harris said, ‘is that you go from Gribbin to Souza.'

‘Gribbin gambled at Jumping Jacks. That's the connection. Not much to it. It occurred to us that if Gribbin was in the casino the night he died, the killer might have been there too.'

‘It's not the connection,' Harris said. ‘Not the only connection.' Stella was silent. ‘Gribbin's an importer of metal goods, everything from scrap to vehicle bodywork and parts. Customs were looking, they tipped us off, we started looking too. We think Gribbin realized this because the only time we jumped him he was clean.'

‘You think he was sidelining.'

‘That's right.'

‘Sidelining what?'

‘Illegals at first.'

Stella saw the little group cowering in the warehouse, the upturned faces, the mother with the dead child at her breast.

‘At first –'

‘It's profitable, I mean, it's big business, but there are risks. Mostly your cargo is volatile. It has a mind of its own. It can tell tales.'

‘It can die,' Stella added.

‘Yes, that's right, it can.' Stella heard the snap of a lighter and waited for Harris to get his first lungful down. ‘We suspected him, but we never got a line on him – contacts in the countries of origin, finance, that sort of thing. Then he stopped, we were pretty sure of that. After a while, though, he started gambling at Jumping Jacks. Became a regular.'

‘And so?'

‘We were looking hard at Billy Souza. We still are.'

‘And he connects – how?'

‘Gribbin was a carrier, pure and simple. He moved merchandise around the world. But if he was carrying contraband of some sort or another, he needed a supplier and a
distributor. Gribbin hauled the cargo, but someone had to buy it – the importer.'

‘And you think that's Souza?'

‘Could be.' He paused. ‘DS Mooney –'

‘Stella.'

‘Right, Stella, I'll have to rely on you to keep us up to speed on this. It's your murder, but it's our ongoing investigation.'

‘I promise.'

‘Okay.'

‘So what's the cargo? What do you think he's importing?'

‘Guns.'

The call from Tom Davison came in at the end of the day. He said, ‘I've got what you want, DS Mooney.'

‘Tell me.'

‘Better than that, I can show you.'

‘Davison, you're persistent, that's all I can possibly say in your favour.'

‘No, I
can
show you. I've got it with me right here.'

‘Where are you?'

‘Sitting in the car park. Mazda sports with the engine turning over.'

Pete Harriman had a few stops to make. The first was to the pub, where Marilyn Hayes was waiting for him. They talked for fifteen minutes. The second was to out-patients, where a nurse checked his stitches and told him he was healing nicely. The third was seven floors up and through corridors that smelled of disinfectant and death. Ronaldo was out of ITU and in a private ward and the girl with him wasn't a nurse, unless nurses arrive naked under a full-length fur. Harriman waited while she buttoned up and sidled out.

Ronaldo said, ‘Don't go far.'

‘All the comforts of home,' Harriman observed. He showed Ronaldo a picture of Oscar Gribbin and got no response, which was pretty much what he'd expected. The Strip is home territory to some, a foreign country to others. Next he showed a picture of Trixie Gribbin's bracelet.

‘The last time you asked me a question,' Ronaldo observed, ‘I got a blade in the fucking kidneys. I'm paying for minders to watch my girls, which means that the girls are having to compensate. They're giving head so fast they nod in their sleep.'

‘I need to hear about the bracelet. Someone's going to want to offload it.'

Ronaldo looked at Harriman's stitching and laughed. ‘You didn't see them coming either, did you?' The laugh died. ‘Have you found them yet?'

‘Magna,' Harriman said. ‘We know who they are.'

‘Do me a favour, Mr Harriman. Leave them alone. I'm
thinking of taking a little trip over to Harefield when I'm back on my feet.'

‘Is that right? Friends of mine in the Drugs Squad fully expect to find them in possession of a very large amount of scag.'

‘They don't carry.'

‘They would be on this occasion.'

Ronaldo shook his head. ‘Here's a deal. I'll ask about the bracelet, I'll put people on to it, okay? You leave those cunts on the street.'

Harriman smiled. He gave Ronaldo his card, just a reminder, then walked out into the corridor where the girl was waiting. He said, ‘This must be your night off.'

The Mazda sat low to the road and cornered hard. They went down from Notting Hill towards Hammersmith, taking red lights on the second beat and lane-switching like Mad Max. Stella said, ‘So this is the family car.'

Tom Davison was late thirties and good-looking in a professorial sort of way. He had a mop of dark hair, slightly tangled, and wore combats and big boots to go with it. It was a style and it suited him.

He said, ‘No. Honda Accord, two kiddie seats, stained upholstery.'

‘Where are we going?'

‘Chinese food, remember?'

Stella had no idea why she'd got into Davison's car. She should have simply said,
Give me the reports
. They hit Hammersmith Broadway and slalomed through the home-going traffic, Davison finding a neat line into King Street. She said, ‘Give me the reports. I can get out anywhere here.'

He pulled over, put on the hazard lights and handed her
a large brown envelope. ‘Okay. I'll call you in the morning and talk you through it.'

She didn't get out. They sat together in silence for thirty seconds while cars lined up to get round them, flashing and hooting. She said, ‘There's a place in Chiswick High Road that cooks without MSG.'

Davison nodded. ‘I know. That's where we're going.'

It was early and the restaurant was almost empty. They ordered a bottle of wine and Stella took out the report. Davison said, ‘You only need that if you haven't got me.'

‘Tell me.'

‘Oscar Gribbin was shot three times, the third, fatal bullet being to the back of the cranium, though either of the others would have done the job eventually by way of blood-loss and shock. Ellen Clarke was garrotted. Technically, she died of asphyxiation, though there was a good deal of collateral damage to the thorax, etcetera, etcetera.'

‘I got all that from the PM report.'

‘I know. I'm just putting in the background. There were significant differences from the earlier killings. To begin with, there was a gun involved. That's new. One pretty obvious difference is that Oscar Gribbin was there at all.'

‘Other things were familiar.'

‘The way Clarke was killed and partially stripped.'

‘That's right.'

The waiter came back with the wine and asked if they were ready to order. Davison said, ‘The usual.'

Stella looked at him. ‘You come here a lot?'

‘All the time.'

‘Bring the family here?'

‘The kids love chow mein.'

‘What's the usual?'

‘It's what everyone eats in Chinese restaurants. The bullets were from a Glock forty-five, bound to be an illegal import, I suppose. There were no fingerprints, but there was DNA.' He took a sip of wine. ‘Robert Adrian Kimber, all over the place, thick as autumn leaves. We found hair: a very large and helpful amount.'

‘Kimber killed them both?'

‘On the evidence, you'd have to think so.'

‘Mister Mystery?'

‘Well, now, that's the interesting part.' Davison took a sheet of paper from the brown envelope and put it down on the table. ‘Quite often scene of crime material gets passed around the lab, this guy might run the tests, or that guy. I've done all of yours. It must be your phone manner; that or the black silk panels. It's allowed me to see a pattern.'

Davison pointed to the paper: he'd made a little evidence-tree.

‘Valerie Blake dies and we get Mister Mystery's DNA. Sophie Simms dies, we get the same thing. We could isolate these two because the guy that was responsible for the earlier attacks on women got caught.'

‘Martin Cotter. We think Mister Mystery was trying to make his killings seem part of Cotter's pattern: using a garrotte and so forth.'

‘Right. So we have Blake and Simms, both killed by Mister Mystery. Then Kate Reilly is murdered and we find Robert Kimber's DNA at the scene. And Mister Mystery's. And here's where I begin to see a difference. Mister Mystery is being very careful. He knows about forensic tracing. He's probably wearing latex gloves and I bet he's wearing some kind of tight coverall hat. The chances are he thinks he's leaving no trace at all. What he doesn't know is that it's almost impossible to perpetrate that level of violence and
not shake a few cells free, a few hairs. He's tricky, but I'm trickier.'

Davison topped up Stella's glass. He was talking, she was drinking.

‘At the Reilly scene, there were the usual scant leavings from Mister Mystery, but Kimber's DNA is all over the place. In fact, it looks pretty certain that Kimber did the killing. So, while Kimber is taking virtually no precautions – possibly because he doesn't know any better – Mister Mystery is trying to leave none.'

The last point on the evidence-tree said
Gribbin/Clarke
.

‘So now we come to this. Where Kimber's DNA is thick on the ground.'

‘And Mister Mystery's?'