See Naples and Die (14 page)

Angelo Tardelli rushed down Ealing
Broadway. He was incandescent. After the fracas in Hackney the victorious
troupe had returned to Caesar’s house in Kennington to debrief, and it was at
this point that Angelo queried the contents of the briefcase taken from the
Breckells’ club. Tigran had shrugged. He truly didn’t know what it contained,
but he had a feeling it could be interesting … and it was. The Breckell gang
had been planning a gold bullion robbery – and not just any bullion job, but one
of the biggest in history. This had been one year of painstaking, detailed
research, and it was set to happen two days later … But now the leaders were
all dead, and so was the robbery. Angelo had remarked that if they’d known
about this plan then they could have let the East Enders complete the heist and
then killed them – and taken the gold. However, as it was it was all too late.
But Tigran had seemed interested in the scheme, and Angelo had to expressly
forbid any attempt to be involved. There was too much to lose. The network of
assassins was in place. The web of terror they were trying to produce was taking
shape, and this was the grand scheme. Nothing was to interfere with the long-term
plans. The gold would be nice, but paled into insignificance compared to Zico’s
grandiose vision of European dominance. “Forget it,” Angelo had told Tigran. “You’ve
been brought here to do a job, and to obey orders, so sit tight until I give
you the next hit.” And that’s how it was left … but this morning’s news
headlines had hit Angelo like an express train.

On arriving at the six-bedroomed house
facing the common Angelo pushed past the Armenian who opened the door and
stormed into the lounge.

“Tigran, you sonofabitch, what the fuck
are you playing at?”

Tigran Sadorian sat on a white leather
armchair facing the door. The matching furniture throughout the lounge was
expensive, and the whole room reasonably clean … Things were looking up for the
Armenian leader.

Angelo came within two feet of the
armchair and raged, “I told you not to get involved in no robbery. I told you
to burn those goddamn plans, and to sit on your ass until I gave further
instructions. I said, ‘Don’t make any waves,’ and what do you do? You cause a
fucking hurricane. You go and take sixty-two million pounds of gold bullion … and
don’t say you don’t know what I’m fucking talking about, you dirty-faced Armenian
maniac.”

“I thought you’d be pleased,” said
Tigran, knowing full well that this would infuriate the Italian even more.

“Pleased …” Angelo’s face was as red as
a glass-blower’s bubble straight from the furnace. “I repeat: you were supposed
to keep a low profile. You were told to keep to the plan, which is scaring the
shit out of our enemies by becoming invisible assassins … and it was all going
perfectly … until now. Now you’re front-page news around the world, and the
whole of Britain’s police force has been told to find that gold at all costs.
How long do you think you can remain invisible now, you thick piece of shit?”

“If they’re looking for the gold then
they aren’t worried about a few dead gangsters turning up. This makes our
operation safer. I thought I’d give them something else to worry about.”

“Something else to worry about!” Angelo
looked like he was ready to have a seizure. “The first thing they’re going to
do is round up all the known criminals – who, by the way, will all know that we
did this – and they’re going to be asking lots and lots of questions, over and
over, until somebody talks.”

“No one will say anything … They are
afraid of us,” said Tigran.

Angelo started to pace the room. “If you
put enough pressure on people, someone always talks.”

“Then we make them even more afraid,”
said Tigran.

“And how do we do that? Go and shoot a
few more?”

“Yes.”

“That’s maybe what you do it in your
part of the world, but you can’t start wiping people out in the middle of
London. The police don’t really care about the ones we’ve taken out, and the
suicides can all be interpreted as just that: suicides. Diversifying into
robbery was never the plan. This is really bad.”

“Mr Angelo,” said Tigran, “As you say,
the entire police force will be looking for the gold – and anyone who was
possibly involved in trying to piece together the list of suicides will be
pulled off the case. We aren’t known criminals, so we are not on their radar.
We have safe house all over the country, and we always move around. How would anyone
find us? We don’t exist, remember.

“For the same reason that we are
invisible as assassins means we are also invisible as thieves. We don’t need to
quickly dispose of the gold. We can quite happily sit on it for years. Mr Zico
has funds, and this could be his pension. It was just too good an opportunity
to miss. All the preparation had been done for us. Those people we killed had
done a good job.”

“But whichever way you look at it,” said
Angelo, “We are now more high-profile, and that is exactly what we didn’t want.
Plus these London gangsters won’t mind us culling a few of them now and then – that
only provides an opportunity to have a fight for territory – but they won’t
take kindly to us taking the bread from their mouths. We aren’t bandits. We are
above all that, and I don’t want to be sidetracked by having to fight wars
along the way.”

Tigran always seemed to be only half
listening, and most of the time Angelo felt he was talking to a halfwit. “Are
you fucking listening to me?” he said.

Tigran lifted his eyes. “Fear is a
powerful weapon.”

Exasperated, Angelo said, “Yes, but only
if it’s controlled. Total fear makes people unpredictable. This isn’t Nazi
Germany, and we aren’t marching through the streets terrifying the population.
We live in a criminal underworld, and there is an order of things.”

“Mr Angelo, you are deluding yourself,”
said Tigran. “The Mafia have a hierarchy completely dependent on fear. Once
people fully realise the terrible consequences of provoking our displeasure
then they will not talk about who we are, or what we do … The greater the
retribution the greater the silence.”

Angelo felt the need to change the
subject. “Where’s the gold?”

“It’s in Lincolnshire,” answered Tigran.
“I have friends there who are legal … They have papers and work for farmers.
They live out in the fields in old railway carriages, and now they have tables
and chairs made of gold.”

“You are joking … aren’t you?” said
Angelo.

“It’s perfect. No one ever visits them.
They are a community in the middle of nowhere who pick fruit for a living, and
Lincolnshire is full of them.”

“And what if they’re not picking fruit any
more but melting down gold bars and working out how to spend sixty-two million British
pounds?”

Tigran smiled. “They would never do
that.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I’m sure because they are afraid.
People from Armenia have heard of me, and they know what I would do to them.
Fear, Mr Angelo …”

Angelo sat in the other leather chair,
his face not so red any more. “Tigran, you’re a fucking anomaly. You look like
you’d struggle to open a packet of biscuits, and yet you’ve just pulled off one
of the biggest bullion robberies in history … and you simplify the problems
this has created by wanting to go out and shoot a few people. You are a
murderous individual but there’s no denying you can organise your own people,
and crime is your forte.” Angelo rubbed his chin. “I haven’t told the don about
this yet, but I know his first instinct will be to tell me to kill you and take
the gold.”

“Which is why it’s in Lincolnshire,”
said Tigran.

“Zico will want to know exactly where,”
said Angelo.

“And I will tell him,” said Tigran, “when
our plans are more developed, and I have my role in the organisation.”

“You don’t call the shots, Tigran. We
all do what we’re told. That includes me, and it certainly includes you. If Don
Scarpone wants the gold then Don Scarpone gets the gold.”

Tigran stood up and towered over the
Italian. “Mr Zico is a businessman. The gold is safe, and it is his as long as
I’m around. I’m not like the others – you can see that – and I control my
people. They are used to living with the threat of death and are hard to
intimidate, but they know there is no escape from my vengeance. I will follow
them into the afterlife, and they will suffer for all eternity.”

“Nice speech, Rasputin, but it’s not my
call. I’ll tell the don what’s been discussed, and whatever he decides goes. He
might put a price on your head of sixty-two million and then it really is ‘Your
money or your life’. And if it’s the latter, without hesitation, I’ll be the
one to do it … and you can chase me around all you want in the afterlife.”

The duty room at Charing Cross police
station was chaotic. Every uniformed officer and detective had been called in,
and everyone was talking at the same time. It was like a school playground at
lunchtime with no order and a crescendo of noise. They all knew why they were
there, and the whole country was talking of nothing else but the audacious gold
bullion robbery. Names and accusations were being thrown about like confetti,
and everyone had a favourite villain to accuse.

Above the melee the superintendent was
trying to make an announcement. Short of firing a shotgun into the ceiling he
was struggling to get everyone’s attention and was losing patience rapidly. Then
Dave Hyman stood on a desk and started banging two tea trays together. One by
one everyone in the assembled masses turned. “I do believe the super is here,”
he said.

Without thanking his saviour the chief
began to address them. His ears still burnt from the rocket he’d received from
the chief inspector who, in turn, had also had to endure a roasting. Pressure
from the top is like a comet entering the atmosphere that builds in intensity
until a white-hot ball of flame hurtles to the ground, eventually crashing on
to the poor detective at the bottom.

“Whatever you are working on, forget
it,” said the superintendent. “Everyone is to go on the bullion job. This has
to be solved quickly, and the perpetrators caught and paraded before the media.
An example has to be made. The Home Secretary wants her photo taken sitting on
top of sixty-two million quid’s worth of retrieved bullion, and the press
already have their
Goldfinger
headlines written to describe the Mr Big
behind it all.

“We can’t look foolish on this, so it’s
all hands on deck. Put everything you’ve been working on in a box and stick it
in a filing cabinet until this is over. I want each uniformed sergeant in my
office now, and then the CID detectives one by one. We’re going to round up all
the faces in the manor.”

Elliott’s heart sank. He hadn’t had time
to touch base with Dave Hyman, and he’d uncovered some very interesting facts
about the Manchester development … and now this. The last thing he wanted was
to be running around like a headless chicken, bumping into every copper in
London trying to find Xanadu.

The assembled throng tried to form some
sort of queue to await instructions. Most seemed excited by the prospect of
hunting down these celebrity criminals and being given the authority to do so.
Search and detain measures would be agreed, and they could throw their weight
about with the full force of the Establishment behind them. To those who still
remembered it was like the miners’ strike all over again. They could knock a
few heads together and get double time to boot … Happy days.

But to Elliott it was a penance. He’d
signalled to Dave Hyman to get down from the table, and together they’d retired
to the staff canteen. Their interview with the superintendent wouldn’t be for
ages yet, so it was time to catch up and to come up with a strategy to get out
of this bullion fever.

To Elliott’s surprise, Dave Hyman was
just as worried at being taken off the case. He seemed to have sunk his teeth
into something, and didn’t want to let go. He’d spent the previous day and
evening visiting all his sources in the East End, and had spoken to gang
leaders and to Joe Public. Most seemed pleased that the Breckell brothers
weren’t running the show any more and felt it was time for a change, and there
was universal delight about Harry Hastings. A select few of the old mob had
made it obvious that there had been an altercation, but no one would admit to
witnessing anything. Whoever was involved had put the frighteners on even the
most hardened villain.

But Dave was desperate to carry on. He
got it now … if the Breckells had been killed in a gangland hit then that’s how
it would have gone down, not been wrapped up as an accident. A war would have
started, and there would be reprisals. A shooting here, a hit-and-run there … lots
of noise about who was going to do what to whom. The manor would be thick with
whispers – you wouldn’t be able to put a lid on it. But this whole thing was
out of sync … and Dave was intrigued.

Elliott was lifted by his colleague’s enthusiasm,
and keen to share his own findings from the department of business development.
He’d arranged the visit in advance and when he arrived was shown to the records
office, where he was given free access to any documents he required. It would
have taken him the best part of twelve months to read all the minutes of
meetings and proposals, so he concentrated on highlighting companies involved
in any part of the negotiations from day one. Including the businesses now
being given subcontractor status – and which ranged from pipe-laying to
catering – this gave a list of over 500 individual companies with some sort of
involvement. He then cross-checked these names at Companies House, and made
notes of all the directors and company secretaries. Even without taking a break
Elliott could only expect to get through perhaps fifty or sixty, so he had to
get lucky.

It had been a ball-breaking exercise,
and at nine thirty in the evening he was seeing double and had decided to call
it a day. In front of him were details of sixty-eight companies with their
registered addresses and directors, and for the past hour he’d been trying to
make a connection – but it just wasn’t there. He put the lists into his
briefcase and went for his coat. As he was about to hit the light switch the
nightwatchman came around the corner.

“Hello, sir,” he said. “Had enough for
today?”

Elliott nodded.

The watchman moved to one side to allow
Elliott to pass and, as a throwaway final remark, said, “I know it must have
been a boring day but I can tell you the atmosphere around here is much better
now that the Big Bear has gone.”

Elliott swung around. “What did you
say?”

The nightwatchman panicked. “Sorry, sir …
I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“No … don’t worry. You haven’t said anything
wrong, but what is the Big Bear?”

The man relaxed. “That’s what Walter
Monreal liked to be known as. He would often bellow, ‘Watch out: the Big Bear
is here’, as he came down the corridor. He liked to put a bit of fear into the
place … and he did.”

Elliott went back inside and switched
the light on. He opened his briefcase and placed the lists on the table. Among
this myriad of directors and companies Walter’s nickname had rung a bell. The
nightwatchman didn’t ask what was going on. He felt a little implicated, so
hurried away to another part of the building. One by one Elliott went through
everything again, and then there it was: Big Bear Xcel.

He quickly looked at the directors and
there was the name of Ian Spencer, the architect … but Monreal was the only
director. Then on looking further Elliott found that Big Bear Xcel was a
subsidiary of Main Beam Holdings, a company based in Geneva. This required a
phone call to check it out but then, ten minutes later, it was confirmed that
the directors of Main Beam Holdings were Walter Monreal and Angelo Tardelli.

There was the connection. The MP and the
architect weren’t only business acquaintances: they were business partners, and
linked in such a way as to be deliberately secretive. Now why would two business
associates both commit suicide on the same evening? Well, of course they
wouldn’t – and who was Angelo Tardelli?

This new information only served to
further fire up Dave Hyman. “Boss, we’ve got to get out of being taken off this
case.”

“What do you suggest?” Elliott asked.

Dave pulled at his earlobe and shrugged.

Elliott studied his partner before
speaking. “I have a theory that the suicides and the Breckell brothers’ deaths
have a common denominator and, although it’s stretching it a bit, the gold bullion
robbery could also be connected.”

“And what connects them?”

Again, Elliott waited before speaking,
as if he didn’t really want to divulge his private thoughts. “The Mafia,” he
said finally.

Dave Hyman was visibly shocked. “Th-th-the
Mafia? How could you know—? I mean, what makes you suspect that?”

“It doesn’t matter why, and we can
discuss the merits of it later, but if we tell the guv’nor that our current
investigations could easily shed light on the bullion robbery then we get to
carry on.”

“That’s brilliant, boss … but you don’t
really believe the Mafia are anything to do with it, do you?”

“Maybe,” said Elliott. And then their
names were shouted as next to see the superintendent.

Roberto Vialli paced the floor of his
suite at the Ritz: it had been four days since his meeting with the girls in
the Soho bar, and he still couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. He thought
they were under his spell, so why did they escape? And where did they run?

When viewing the sample information they
had brought he had found it hard not to punch the air in delight. It was more
than he ever dared expect. Zico had obviously thought it was the safest option
to store details of all the Scarpone dealings in one place – on a tiny USB
stick. It was safe in his villa, protected by his guards. It was the Scarpone Crown
jewels, and better than paper files or information on a computer that could
easily be discovered.

It was perfect. Zico always thought it
would take a genius to get to it … and yet he had been outdone by a simpleton.
Roberto smiled at the irony. Zico was from a generation who found it difficult
to fully embrace technology. He was fascinated by how much information could be
placed on to something he could hold in his fist, and yet he chose to hide it
in a wall safe behind a picture. Roberto ground his teeth. “The man is a fool,”
he said to the wall, “and deserves everything that is coming to him.”

Two knocks rattled his door and Armando
put his head in. “You okay, boss?”

“Yes,” said Roberto.

“I thought I heard voices,” said the
bodyguard and looked around the room.

“No, you were mistaken … but come in and
have a drink with me. It’s enough that we have Beppe on guard.”

It was a peculiar feeling to be a great Mafia
don and yet be afraid to walk the streets, or even sit in the hotel restaurant.
In Naples he was relatively safe, but in London he did not have the protection
he enjoyed on home territory. The Albanians ran most of this part of London,
and although he had no quarrel with them they were notoriously unpredictable
and violent. They may suspect he had ulterior motives in strolling around Soho
– as would the police – who, no doubt, would have had him under surveillance
from the moment he had stepped off the plane. And there was Zico … If the
madman found out that he was in London then he would be certain to connect that
to the girls and the missing memory stick, and he would soon have assassins on
every corner.

Roberto asked Armando to make coffee and
sat on the chaise longue with his fingers spread across his cheek and lips,
like Noël Coward deliberating on the title of his next play. He was still deep
in thought when Armando brought the coffees over.

“Thanks,” said Roberto, the smell of
coffee awakening him.

“What are we going to do, boss? We can’t
stay cooped up in here much longer,” said a clearly bored Armando.

Roberto was firm. “We have to find those
girls, and we have to have that data stick. Scarpone is ready for another war,
and we have to be one step ahead of him. We need to know his plans – both
against our family and whatever else he is involved in. We have to know who our
enemies are before we can fight against them … and I don’t care if I have to
live in this hotel for the rest of the year. I must have that data.”

“But how, boss? These girls could be anywhere.
They could have left London … left England, even.”

“No, I feel they are still near. I feel
it very strongly,” said Roberto.

“Yes, boss, but where? London is a big
place. Eventually we will find them, but it will take time – perhaps many
months – and we cannot leave our business interests for so long. If only we had
some kind of trail to follow or some piece of intelligence.”

Roberto was about to answer when two
more knocks sounded on the door. Both he and Armando drew their revolvers.

“Enter,” shouted Roberto and in walked
Beppe, alongside a small bald man with a snow-white moustache.

Beppe pushed the man forward. “Boss,
this man’s name is Luigi … and he says he has some information for you.”