One Fight at a Time (29 page)

Chapter Thirty

Daniel Zampa summoned Rodney Pride to a rendezvous in
El
Paradis
at 8 o’clock. The cast assembled in his office. He was wearing a light blue shirt without a tie. His grey sports jacket was hanging on the back of the chair behind his desk. He leaned his backside against the front of the desk and let it take his weight.

Pride sat two strides away, on a stool taken from the bar. He looked terrible. Bags under his eyes from lack of sleep, his face rosier than it should have been because his blood pressure was a problem again. He was drinking until late the previous night and had not appreciated being dragged out of bed before breakfast. Walter Scardale sat next to him on another stool, the fingers of his huge hands locked together between his knees. Jonathan and James stood at ease behind the stools. Zampa was giving no quarter.

“How many more times?”

Pride opened his mouth to speak.

“Don’t answer that,” Zampa said. “The question was rhetorical.”

Pride wasn’t sure what that meant.

“Okay...This is no way to start the week.” Words of one syllable, delivered with ice cold purpose. “You know the rules. No one, I repeat no one, does anything unilaterally.”

That was another big word. Scardale looked confused this time.

Zampa went on. “I don’t care how inconvenient Sam Nicholson was becoming to your policy of aggrandisement. You know the rules.”

Pride looked pained. He wasn’t sure what aggrandisement meant either.

“All problems,” Zampa went on, “Every single one of them, pass across my desk. You know this. I deal with all issues. I resolve all disputes. That way, nothing goes public and no one ends up facing questions from the police.”

He shifted his weight and stood upright. Pride flinched.

“In this instance Rodney, the gods may be on your side. The chances are, last night’s business behind
The
Broken
Gate
will escape detection, because Sam ended up with his head, and other significant bits of him, crushed. And whatever was inflicted in the alley is unlikely to come up for discussion. The only people who can talk about the incident, are in this room. So this is where all knowledge of that grimy activity will stay. I realise that working together, you two couldn’t pass the eleven plus, so do I make myself clear?”

Scardale nodded. Pride grunted ‘yes’. Zampa continued.

“Your actions last night will have repercussions. And somebody will have to pay for the subsequent loss in funds and local influence. So, I suggest you go back to that squalid fucking office of yours and raid the piggy bank.”

Pride looked suitably chastened. Or maybe he was just beginning to realise how much this was all going to cost him. And Zampa was not finished.

“Oh yes. Did you really imagine you could keep your little maternity ward caper from me?” Another rhetorical question. “Actually it’s not a bad idea. Might work for a while. Providing you are kept well away from it. So I’m putting someone else in charge.”

Pride looked as if he’d just been punched in the kidneys.

“And I’m going to take a look at your books.”

He moved around the desk, back to his chair. Gave an order to Jonathan and James.

“Escort them to the door.”

Pride stepped out into the lounge, as Roly Bevan pushed open the doors from the lobby. Bevan launched himself across the space between them. For a moment he was horizontal. The flying tackle sent Pride backwards onto a table top, which tilted and dropped both men onto the floor. They did one barrel roll, locked together, which ended with Pride with his back on the carpet and Bevan astride him. Pride looked up at Bevan. Tried to say something, but by then Bevan had both hands around his throat. He lifted up Pride’s head and banged it back down onto the floor. And again. At which point, he was grabbed by Jonathan and James and hauled to his feet.

Scardale moved across the lounge, pushing tables and chairs out of his path. He knelt down by his boss; who groaned and opened his eyes and then yelled out as a wave of pain washed over him.

The commotion had dragged Zampa out of his office. He took in the scene and raised his eyes to heaven. James pulled a table and a couple of chairs upright and Jonathan sat Bevan down. Zampa moved to the table. Bevan’s rage leaked away and he leaned back in his seat. He looked up at Zampa.

“That bastard is responsible for Robbie Mac’s death,” he said.

Zampa took a moment and then conceded the probability.

“Go on,” he said

“He locked Robbie into payments he couldn’t make, bled him dry, and then sold him the bullets he shot himself with. Robbie was desperate. He took the gun from my office and drove out to Leigh Woods. That piece of shit made him do it.”

Zampa sat down opposite him.

“You know the way this goes, Roly,” he said softly. “I’ll deal with it.” Bevan lowered his head.

“Right?”

Bevan looked up at Zampa again and nodded his agreement.

“Yes.”

Zampa swung to look at Scardale.

“Can he get up?”

He looked at James. Tilted his head to the right. James moved to assist Jonathan in getting Pride to his feet.

“Is he bleeding?” Zampa asked.

“Yes. And he’s unconscious now,” James said.

“Help the neanderthal get him out to his car. And come back for a council of war.” To Scardale he said, “Take him to Doc Wedderburn. No one gets to hear of this.” Then to Jonathan, “Escort Roly into the bar and get him a drink.”

*

Suzy sat next to Grover while he made his accident statement to a DC in the Traffic Division. Suzy nodded at Grover when he needed to answer; simply stared straight ahead when he ought not to. Grover told the DC he was in Bristol visiting friends, and that when the accident occurred he was on his way back to Gladstone Street after spending the day sight-seeing. He had not been drinking, other than cups of tea. The DC wrote all of that down. Grover went on to say he had taken up the morning with a visit to the Camera Obscura, spent the afternoon in Weston Super Mare, and early evening at the town hospital. Where he had actually talked with Detective Chief Inspector Bridge and Detective Sergeant Goole – the DC only had to check. Which he did. Then he inspected Grover’s passport and called Lieutenant Berger at Fairford. Swiftly, Suzy and Grover were back on the pavement outside. Ten minutes later, they walked into the meeting room at Fincher Reade and Holborne.

Mel slid Nick Hope’s address book across the mahogany table. Zoe asked Grover how he had got hold of it.

“If I tell you something which I swear is true, as my lawyer, will you believe me?” he asked.

“Yes of course.”

“Okay,” Grover said. “On Saturday, Jerry Wharton told me was holding on to the address book and, subsequently, gave it to me.”

“Who gave it to him?”

“He didn’t say?”

“Did you ask him?”

“No.”

“And is that the truth?”

“Yes. I can swear on a stack of bibles, that Jerry Wharton did not tell me who gave him the address book. And that I did not ask him.”

Mel grinned. Zoe nodded ‘well done’. Everyone was up to speed and aware of the questions to be avoided.

“So, I think we can consider this address book legally obtained,” Zoe said. “And therefore may be introduced as evidence by the defence. We will have to disclose it to the prosecution, of course, but we can have exclusive use of it, until we decide to do so... Now the envelope.”

“I called at Blenheim Villas yesterday,” Grover said. “Leroy’s on the mend. He and Rachel have been cleaning the place. They found the bank statements, taped to the underside of the kitchen sink unit shelf.”

He passed the big white envelope across the table.

“They show a series of regular cash payments into Nick Hope’s bank account.”

Zoe looked at the first two sheets – details of March’s transactions – and passed the rest of the paperwork to Mel.

“£100 pounds on February 3rd and £150 on February 23rd.”

“It’s the same here,” Mel said. “March 4th and then March 24th.”

“Month by month,” Grover said. “Those are blackmail payments, which Nick Hope collected from his clients on a twice monthly basis. I don’t know how many clients that money represents, but I’m hoping some sleuthing with the aid of his address book will give us the answers. If it does, we’ll come up with a fistful of people with motives to kill him.”

There was a knock on the door. Neil Adkins poked his head around it.

“May I sit in?”

“Yes, of course,” Zoe said. “Might help keep us on the right track.”

Adkins sat down next to her; the four of them, now two by two, on opposite sides of the table. Zoe opened the discussion.

“So, we are all convinced that our client is innocent of murder?”

.The three other heads nodded. Zoe moved on.

.“However, we know his alibi is both false and a stinker. Because at the time of the murder he was with his friend Mark Chaplin. Something he refuses to testify to in court, believing, with some justification, it will lead to all sorts of questions about his sexual orientation and his relationship with the son of a senior policeman. The contribution from Jerry Wharton, although well intentioned, has served only to complicate matters. The police will take the deceased’s confession into account, but they might decide not to believe it; given that Mr Wharton was dying and never likely to be questioned about it.”

She looked at Adkins. “Neil, if you were DCI Bridge, what is the first question you would ask concerning the death note?”

“Is this death linked to anything else we are currently investigating?”

“And the next question?”

“Is there any person, linked to this and anything else we are currently investigating?”

“And if so, that person is?...”

She looked around the table.

“Me,” Grover said.

“And that might be enough for Bridge to start making connections. He’s a very bright copper. All he needs is a moment of doubt, or intuition”

“And he won’t need either of those, if he begins to suspect that Wharton was protecting Harry,” Adkins said. “Which he will do, as soon as we disclose.”

Zoe looked around again, inviting responses. Mel tossed a guineas worth into the discussion.

“Once the evidence is out there and all relationships are known, there’s another question to ask. Why would Jerry Wharton kill Nick Hope and then be careless enough to implicate Harry?”

“He wouldn’t,” Grover said.

“We know that,” Mel said. “But the police don’t. As we’ve already discussed, they don’t know about the relationship.”

“Not yet,” Zoe said.”

There was a long silence. They had talked themselves around in a circle. The sound of a telephone ringing across the corridor, seeped into the room. Adkins weighed in with another idea.

“The prosecution has neither the address book, nor the bank statements. So we’re still ahead.” He turned to Zoe. “For how long? What’s our deadline?”

“Forty-eight hours. We have until the opening of business, Wednesday morning. At which time I need to prepare.”

Adkins looked at Grover.

“What do you think Ed?”

Grover picked up the address book. “Depends on how many suspects we unearth, from this,” he said. “But I’ve got a plan to short cut the process.”

He stopped talking. The others waited for him to go on. He said nothing more.

“But you’re not going to tell us what this plan is?” Zoe said.

“Only because it’s probably best you don’t know.”

Zoe tilted her head to one side and breathed out. Grover ploughed on.

“Hey come on. You’ve trusted my evidence gathering activities so far. Let me finish this on my own. That way, if for some reason something does go wrong, none of you will be implicated.”

He looked steadfastly round the table. There were no objections. Grover looked at Zoe. Then at Adkins.

“I’ve been going through all the contacts we don’t know,” Adkins said. “Made phone calls, pulled strings. Got the number down to fourteen. One of them, TD, might be Thomas Denning. The rest…”

He nodded in Grover’s direction. Grover got to his feet.

“I need all of those names and initials. But the book mustn’t leave the building. Neil, how many helping hands can you pull into this room now, to copy out the list? All names and addresses and phone numbers if they have them.”

Mel raised her arm. Adkins looked at her.

“The two of us. We’ll do it.” he said. “Along with a junior clerk if we need him. We’ll get it done and typed up in half an hour.”

Zoe went back to her office. Adkins found his junior clerk and put him on standby. Grover went out to reception and asked to use a phone. He made a call. Waited. It was answered at the other end.

“Hi,” he said. This is Ed Grover. Let me speak to the boss.” He waited again. Looked at the clock on the wall. He spoke again. “I need your help. I’ll be in your office by 10.30.”