‘Inspector Buckley, Ryan, is with me. He’s done a great job. We’re working with the crime scene team. We’ve got a hair sample, a shoe print, and a possible piece of clothing from where the shooter took the first shot. It could be the same man as at Briganti’s, but we’ll need Forensics to work overtime on this one,’ Larry said.
‘If there is the possibility of a gang war, then that’s what they’ll do. The murder belongs to the Irish police. Any issues?’
‘Not here. We’ll work together on this one. The inspector’s a family friend of the Gaffneys. We’re off to see the man’s widow.’
‘Do that, and then take a couple of hours to clean up and rest. Unless there’s any reason to call earlier, we’ll talk again at 10 a.m. We’re meeting Cojocaru at 11.30 a.m. I’m taking Wendy.’
‘I’ll stay another day, follow through on the same shooter possibility. I’ll aim to take the flight back to London late at night.’
‘Time for a Guinness?’ Isaac said.
‘Buckley’s fond of a drink. I’m sure we’ll manage a couple.’
Chapter 10
It was early in the morning in Homicide and activity was at a high level, Larry having phoned from Ireland, although he had been instructed to get some rest and not contact them before ten that morning. Detective Chief Superintendent Goddard was in the office as well. The death of Gaffney in Ireland, the possible forensic evidence connecting the shootings at Briganti’s and in Ireland, were at the forefront of the DCS’s mind.
Commissioner Davies was watching closely to see how Goddard and his team were performing and whether he should bring in additional help. It wasn’t his decision to make, but as Goddard said to Isaac, ‘Don’t wait for the man to follow procedures, and don’t expect any civility from him. His skin’s more important than those that died, and if there’s to be warfare on the streets, he wants himself clean, he wants scapegoats.’
Isaac, a detective chief inspector, did not need the old and by now tiresome reiteration that the sword of Damocles hung over his head. Davies was a difficult man, but sometimes Isaac wondered if DCS Goddard wasn’t using the man’s name for effect, in an attempt to impose his authority and to sharpen up Homicide by using the name of another. Whatever the truth, Isaac was pleased when Goddard left the department and retreated back upstairs to his office.
It was still not eight, and Isaac and Wendy were on heightened alert, an adrenaline rush due to the impending meeting with the Romanian.
‘We leave here at 10 a.m.’ Isaac said. ‘That’ll give us plenty of time to get to the meeting point.’
‘Where?’ Wendy asked.
‘Cloak and dagger on this one. Cojocaru’s not given us the final destination. He’s frightened that we’ll get our people in there before and bug the place.’
‘Would we?’
‘I’ll not jeopardise the meeting for the sake of incriminating evidence against the man. What’s possibly brewing out there is more important than putting that man behind bars, or getting him deported back to Romania.’
‘It’s a golden opportunity. If the man’s frightened of others, his guard is likely to be down. He could say something, not to us, but to others, that could give the courts enough to deal with him.’
‘Serious and Organised Crime Command is interested in what’s discussed, and they’ll want a full report.’
‘Are we wired? Or are our smartphones on record?’
‘Not this time. We’ll meet the man in the pub, but Antonescu and Becali will not be far away. They’ll check us out first.’
‘I thought it was just him.’
‘It is. Larry met him in a pub full of patrons, but we have to go through this subterfuge.’
‘Why?’
‘It wouldn’t pay for him to be seen talking to me, and we don’t know who else is watching. The man’s neurotic, we can’t blame him for that. If others are coming in to threaten his empire, he’ll be weighing up the pros and cons, making sure to tell us what we need to know, not the full truth. Larry says he’s smart, so watch out for him manipulating the conversation. And above all, be agreeable with the man. We’re there to solve nine deaths now, not to express an opinion about the malevolence of the man.’
‘I’ll not say anything,’ Wendy said. She was not willing to admit that she was nervous. The man they were meeting had a bad reputation, and those in the area where he operated gave him a wide berth, some even crossing the street as he approached, others doffing their caps, standing to one side for him. She had not seen the man in the flesh, only checked him out through the police records. Nicolae Cojocaru, forty-six, formerly from Bucharest, Romania, although born about ten miles to the north. A list of convictions as a youth, and then, in his early twenties, the leadership of a group selling drugs. From there, a rapid rise in the criminal echelons until, at the age of thirty-two, he was one of the four major criminal leaders in the country. Suspected of widespread bribing of politicians, the police, and the judiciary, a dozen unsolved murder cases attributed to his name, but unproven. His move to England had occurred nine years previously on the election of a new government in Romania; the man who headed it was known to be honest, and he had campaigned on a platform of law and order.
Of the four most significant crime figures in Bucharest, two had been jailed, one had been killed in a police shootout, and the other, Cojocaru, was in England, and not intending to go back. Apart from two judges and three senior police officers, nobody else had been arrested in the purge against corruption in the country. The honest prime minister had lasted twenty-three months before a bomb under
