‘Isaac, I’ve got my seniors breathing down my neck, the same as I am down yours. What’s going on, and what are you doing to prevent a repeat?’ Goddard asked in the sanctity of his office.
‘We’re struggling on this one,’ Isaac admitted, knowing full well that his senior appreciated an honest answer, even if it was not the one he wanted to hear. ‘Apart from a minor villain in the salon, we can’t find any reason to kill the others in Briganti’s. We’re still conducting enquiries, interviewing the next of kin, checking on the street for what’s being said, who’s suspected.’
‘And?’ Goddard said from the comfort of his leather-backed chair. His DCI had to do with a wooden chair, and not very comfortable at that.
‘It appears to be a warning to the crooks in the area. Larry Hill’s been in conversation with Nicolae Cojocaru, and the man believes that’s what it is.’
‘We take the word of a gangster?’
‘Not normally, but it’s more his style,’ Isaac said. ‘Not that we can pin it on him.’
‘Men like Cojocaru don’t get their hands dirty, you know that,’ Goddard said. Isaac could sense a tenseness in the man. He’d thought he’d be heading up Counter-Terrorism Command by now, but was still stuck in Challis Street Police Station, courtesy of a police commissioner by the name of Alwyn Davies, an acerbic political animal who neither Isaac nor his chief superintendent liked, having had more than a few run-ins with him.
Davies should have been out on his ear after a string of terrorist acts in London. And then there was his bringing in of his own people into senior positions, temporarily removing both Isaac and DCS Goddard on one occasion and bringing in an incompetent to take their places.
But now stability reigned at Challis Street, even if there was an unease about the place. Isaac, in his younger years, had featured in a promotional for the television-viewing public as the face of the modern and cosmopolitan London Metropolitan Police: urbane, black, degree-educated. There were some who saw him as a future commander, even commissioner, but now he’d been languishing for too long in Homicide. Not that it concerned him unduly, not in the last year anyway, as his team were efficient, and he had just managed to upgrade his flat in Willesden for one in Hammersmith.
Detective Chief Superintendent Goddard was a political animal, but not with the savagery of Alwyn Davies, the senior officer in the London Metropolitan Police.
Goddard had gone out of his way to protect his protégé, Isaac, on a couple of occasions, both woman-related. The first time, a more youthful and less-experienced Isaac had slept with a woman who had later turned out to be a murderer. The second time was in the north of the country, when he had been snapped in an embrace with a woman. It had happened at a party in the hotel where he was staying during the hunt for a woman who had killed several men. A group of three women, all inebriated, had grabbed him to take a photo of them all before one of them had taken a picture of just the two of them, smiling, arms around each other. Isaac had thought no more of it until later that night when the woman – the murderer – had loaded the photo onto social media. For a while, he had become a laughingstock, although in the end he had regained some creditability by arresting her, but not before she had stabbed him with a knife.
‘How do men like Cojocaru manage to evade the law?’ Isaac said. He knew that it was a rhetorical question.
‘Have you met the man?’ Goddard said, choosing not to answer his DCI’s question.
‘Larry Hill has, I haven’t.’
‘Any advantage if you do?’
‘If the man is frightened, then there’s no harm done.’
‘If someone’s muscling in on his action, either they are planning to strike a deal with the man or to eliminate him.’
‘They could have done that instead of killing innocent people.’
‘Innocent?’
‘Alphonso Abano is no great loss, but the others didn’t deserve to die purely because there’s a war going on out there.’
‘Cojocaru was bad enough in dealing with the local villains before, but now this has taken a turn for the worse.’
‘It has been quieter for a few months, up until Briganti’s, that is.’
‘A temporary lapse. Meet with Cojocaru, see if he’ll help us. We can deal with him another time.’
Isaac knew that it was a compromise, in that dealing with one villain at the expense of withholding access to another, more violent, more unpredictable, more unknown, was necessary. He left DCS Goddard’s office with the intention of getting Larry Hill to set up a meeting.
***
An air of palpable tension pervaded the air as Larry, fishing for information, entered into his and most of the villains’ favourite pub, the Wellington Arms.
In one corner, propping up the bar, Crin Antonescu. He cast a steely glance over at the police inspector, a brief nod of his head in acknowledgement. Larry responded in the same manner, not pleased to see him there, not disappointed either. Ion Becali, the other of the two men closest to Cojocaru, was sitting down at a table, a woman in her twenties close by, her arm around his shoulder. Larry knew her by sight and by name: Betty Acton, black, beautiful, although starting to show the effects of selling herself and the drug abuse she had subjected her body to. It wasn’t often that she came into the pub, nor was it usual for Cojocaru’s two men.
