worn rubberised Blair and Bush masks throughout and the Crown’s other evidence had been less than foolproof from the start. What had stymied the second case, even before the CPS had agreed to prosecute, was the disappearance of the confiscated cocaine from police hands. One of the officers concerned had been warned about his future conduct and transferred to other duties; another had resigned.
In neither instance, then, had Martin been convicted, but even so, the company he was shown to have been keeping was tasty indeed. One of the men charged alongside him for the post office robbery, Graham Arthurs, was currently serving five years for malicious wounding and causing grievous bodily harm; and Arthurs’ older brother, Les, had been questioned about his suspected involvement in a payroll snatch at a supermarket in High Wycombe. A second suspect, Kevin Martin, Terry’s half-brother, was on police bail, pending an investigation into an incident in Lewisham in which a fifteen-year-old who’d been doing grunt work for one of the local drug dealers had been beaten so badly as to lose the use of an eye.
And there were others in Martin’s circle, mostly around the same age, thirty-five to fifty, almost all of them, a couple of Glaswegians aside, from south of the river.
Dougie Freeman. Jason Richards. Aaron Johnson.
Michael John Carter. ‘Mad Mike’ to his friends.
Ramsden told Karen he’d seen Carter once, during a raid on a club in Peckham where he was employed as bouncer, lift an officer off the ground, two-handed, and hurl him against and almost through the windscreen of the nearest car. After that it had taken half a dozen men to overpower him and hold him down.
And then there was Martin’s involvement with the BNP. Several photographs and a short piece of video footage culled from Special Branch files. Martin at full throttle, mouth wide open, shouting racist abuse, singing ‘God Save the Queen’, the flag of St George fluttering behind him.
All of which was enough, Karen thought, to brace Terry Martin on his return from Tallinn. Taking Tim Costello along would give her a chance to see how well he handled himself, as well as, maybe, offering a little light relief.
15
Terry Martin walked through from airside with the look of an ex-footballer for whom life on Sky Sports News was always going to be a step too far. Close-cropped hair, stubble, pricey suit that he somehow managed to make look cheap. Carry-on held in one large hand.
Costello had written Martin’s name in marker on a piece of card and stood amongst a gaggle of minicab drivers and other meeters and greeters, holding it high above his head. His little joke.
Humour him, Karen thought. She was interested in seeing for herself how he handled himself in situations like this. ‘You do the talking,’ she’d said. ‘I’ll listen.’
‘What’s this?’ Martin said, his face too close to Costello’s for comfort. ‘Someone looking to do me a favour?’
‘Not exactly.’
The airport had allotted them a small room devoid of decoration save for a CityJet calendar for 2009, open at October, a picture of the Dundee Botanical Gardens in autumn. There was an air vent, a small window that didn’t seem to open out on to anything, several stacking chairs and a square metal table.
‘Whatever this is about,’ Martin said, sitting heavily, ‘make it snappy, okay? I ain’t got all day.’
‘How was Tallinn?’ Costello asked chirpily, sounding as if he really cared. ‘Successful trip? Business, was it? A little R amp; R? Bit of both? Sex tourism’s the big thing, apparently. Several hundred per cent rise in prostitution. AIDS too, of course. Hand in hand these days, unfortunately.’
‘What the fuck is this? Some kind of market fucking research?’
Close up, beneath the stubble, Martin’s face was slack and pale. His breath, in Costello’s face, was sour. Not enough sleep. Too much airline booze. Burning Tallinn at both ends.
‘We’ll say business then, shall we?’
‘Say what you fuckin’ like.’
‘What is the nature of your business, Mr Martin?’ Karen asked, stepping in, the voice of reason.
‘My business?’ A burly shrug. ‘Textiles, import and export. Tallinn it’s mainly sportswear, a little Gore-tex, women’s clothing. We bring it in, sell it on.’
‘We?’
‘My partners and me.’
‘Which partners might that be?’ Costello asked.
‘Never you mind.’
‘Dougie Freeman? Mad Mike Carter? Some of your pals from the BNP?’
‘You little shit!’ Martin slammed a fist down on the table, hard.
Holding his nerve, Costello had scarcely blinked.
‘Instead of losing your temper,’ Karen said firmly, reckoning Martin was disorientated enough, ‘why don’t you tell us where you were on the evening of December 21st last.’
‘What?’
‘December 21st.’
‘How’m I supposed to know that?’
‘21st December,’ Karen said, ‘the night you locked your daughter, Sasha, in her room, and left her there till the early hours of next morning.’
‘Who says?’
‘Sasha. Your wife. They both say.’
‘The fuck they do.’
‘I could show you the transcript,’ Karen offered.
‘I’ll show you a fucking transcript.’ Martin was half out of his chair. ‘I’ll transcript you into the middle of next fucking week.’
‘Sit down,’ Karen said. A voice that broached no argument. ‘Sit down and answer the question now. Either that or I can have you hauled down to the local nick and let you stew for an hour or so before you answer the same questions there.’
Martin tugged at the front of his shirt, hitched up his trousers and sat back down with a shake of the head.
‘Okay, okay. You’re just winding me up, I know. But I tell you, dealing with those people, it gets to you. It really does.’
Lowering his head, he pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb, then looked back up.
‘Trying to get some factory owner to realise if he doesn’t up his output without hiking his prices, he’s going to lose every ounce of his work to fucking China before he can turn around. Jesus!’ He shook his head, more vigorously this time. ‘To think we used to have a textile industry in the country served two-thirds of the fucking world. Now look at us. Having to import every pair of bloody women’s knickers from Eastern Europe or the depths of the Third fucking World on account of we can’t make jack shit.’
Costello looked impressed; he hadn’t been expecting a lesson in world economics. Karen gave it five seconds and repeated her question.
‘That evening?’ Martin said, Mr Reasonable, ‘I went down the pub, didn’t I? What else? Wife’d thrown a wobbly over nothin’ and gone stalking off, God knows where. Me daughter’s been lying to her back teeth, giving her arse away to some drug-dealing little shite from just about the poorest country on the globe outside fucking Africa. Went down the Four Hands and got stinking. Christmas piss-up on so it weren’t a problem. Someone must’ve poured me into a minicab in the small hours, ’cause I can’t remember getting home at all.’
‘And you were there all evening?’
‘When I arrived to when I left.’
‘So there’ll be witnesses to that?’
‘I suppose so. It was busy, rammed, I don’t know.’
‘That’s not very helpful.’
