‘What are we going to do?’ O’Shaughnessy asked.
Hughenden, brought back to reality, asked, ‘What about Pinto?’
‘Stiff as a board.’
‘He’s still complete?’ Hughenden asked.
‘We couldn’t chop him up there.’
‘That may be as well.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Pinto dumping the torso in Regent’s Canal was probably not the best idea.’
‘Are you admitting that you were wrong?’ Walters asked. He had advised against it in the first place. He had killed before, never been charged with murder, and why? Because the body had never been found, and there was no way of connecting it back to him. Fuentes had disappeared, and no one, at least no one official, had come looking for him. He had heard of a woman who had been enquiring after him, as well as some drug peddlers, but the woman was no longer around and the drug peddlers were now buying from them.
‘Has there been any trouble with anyone else trying to muscle in, attempting to cheat us?’ Hughenden asked. He knew the man on the phone would be listening to his reply.
‘Everyone is behaving themselves,’ O’Shaughnessy said.
‘I just think we could have disposed of him somewhere else; somewhere that didn’t focus police interest in our part of the city.’
‘Hindsight,’ O’Shaughnessy said.
‘That’s true.’
‘What about Pinto? What did he tell the police?’
‘You were there. You heard him.’
‘He told them all that he knew. He told them about you two.’
‘And you’re still in the clear,’ Walters said.
Alex Hughenden looked over at Walters. Your day will come, he thought.
The man on the other end of the phone listened intently. He did not intend to reveal himself to O’Shaughnessy and Walters. He pondered what to do about Alex Hughenden, a man now directly on the police radar. The man had performed well and protected him, but for how much longer?
The man knew that Hughenden was a sadist and had enjoyed watching the two men carve up Dougal Stewart. He also knew that if the police had any proof against Hughenden, he would grass on them all. The man knew that his position in society was more important than Hughenden’s, and the concealment of his identity was paramount.
***
A meeting of the board in the city was not unusual, although the topic was. Behind the veil of respectability, four men met. One was an MP, a member of parliament, another a well-respected businessman, another a peer of the realm. The fourth man, the mastermind who had put the business plan to them two years earlier, had been persuasive. He knew of the others’ vices. The MP had a penchant for expensive whores, the businessman needed to stave off a competitor, and the peer of the realm needed to save his family’s fortune.
It had been a pact that the four had formed when they had been at Eton College; an agreement that still held them together. Whenever one of them had an idea to float, he would put it to the others first, and if they rejected it, then they would respect that person’s confidence, no matter how ludicrous or criminal the idea.
Miles Fortescue was the MP for a constituency in the north of England, although he did not like the area, having only moved there because it was a secure seat and he was desperate to be in Westminster. Not that he saw his constituents very often, as his party could have put up a half-educated donkey and kept the seat. He had won fifteen years previously with fifty-five per cent of the vote, and he had only bought the run-down house there to satisfy the locals. As long as he went up there once a month to show his face, say a few words, kiss a few babies, he knew he would continue to be their local member in Westminster. Any more than that and he wasn’t interested.
His wife interested him more as she had money, but not much else. He would admit to the other three in the room that she was as exciting as an old prune and that he did not like her. To everyone else, she was the beautiful wife on the arm of an MP, and their open signs of affection were almost embarrassing at times.
‘You screw who you want,’ she had said after two years of marriage, ‘but no scandal. In public, we’ll be the perfect married couple, even if you are odious and contemptible.’
Fortescue, once free of the pretence, had turned to what he enjoyed more: expensive women who demanded overseas trips and luxury cars and upmarket accommodation. His latest, at the time when the fourth member of the group had put forward his plan, came with the need for a credit card with no limit. She had been bleeding him dry, and he knew he could not stop indulging her. He had been the first to embrace the idea of illegal drugs.
Fortescue had known then, as he had always known, that his wife had been right; he was odious and contemptible, and whatever was required to allow him to live the life he wanted, there were no issues about it.
Jacob Griffiths had done well in life. In the twenty-five years since the four had left Eton, he had been the most successful. A chain of supermarkets up and down the country, an adoring wife, three children and a sixteenth-century manor house, an hour from London. It had all come about through sheer hard work and talent.
The day that the fourth man had put forward his proposal had been a dark day for him, as an overseas competitor with even more supermarkets was undercutting prices, even below wholesale. Griffiths knew their game. He had even done it occasionally, aiming to drive a local competitor out of business,
