‘Where to?’
‘Romania. He knows he’s the meat in the sandwich. It would help if we knew the story of what happened to Antonescu.’
‘We may never find out,’ Isaac said. ‘Was there a reason for us coming up here?’
‘We’ve had a lead on who may have killed Ryan Buckley.’
‘Who and how?’ Larry said.
‘We checked with our counterparts in Russia, the ones we can trust.’
‘Some you can’t?’
‘Corruption’s endemic there. You’re either part of the system, or you’re dead. But there are one or two who keep a low profile, take the backhanders, keep us informed. We checked on a couple of names we received from them, men who Ivanov uses outside of Russia.’
‘Do you have photos on file, any other details?’
‘We’ve checked on the movements of the two men. One of them is arrogant enough.’
‘Has he been in England?’
‘He’s French, and he’s been in Ireland, as well. We’ve checked with the police over there, and we’ve had our CCTV people looking for him. He came in through Belfast and then took a train to Dublin. From there, he disappeared for a couple of days, probably stole a car or hired one using false ID. From Dublin, he crossed to Wales on the ferry and disappeared. The French police have a lead on him. I’m going to France on Eurostar tonight. I assume you’ll both come with me.’
‘I will,’ Isaac said. He had promised to take Jenny out that night to a restaurant, a celebration of six months together, but he knew she’d understand.
‘I’ll pass,’ Larry said. ‘I need to be back in Ireland. If he’s been there, we’ll need proof that he spoke to Sheila Gaffney.’
‘Agreed, that’s a plan,’ Isaac said. He had a phone call to make at the conclusion of the meeting; he had to phone Richard Goddard. The wolves were closing in on the man again, and a fresh lead, a link between a murder and an organised crime leader, would give Goddard and the Homicide department a breather of a few days before further questions as to why the shooting at Briganti’s was still without a murderer.
***
The three remaining gang leaders considered their position carefully. As had been agreed with Cojocaru, they were lying low for a few days, a house on the south coast, a supply of good food, good drink, and five women, recent arrivals in the country who did not speak English, other than a smattering. Of the five, two had been known to Becali in the old country. They were there to ensure the men did not leave the house until the all-clear had been given. The other three were there for entertainment.
‘It’s either Stanislav Ivanov or me,’ Cojocaru had said. ‘You’re smart men, you’d not want the Russian mafia, and they’d not want you.’
At the end of four hours, during which Cojocaru had stated his case and told the three about the barbaric acts committed by Ivanov, and that the man had admitted to the attack at Briganti’s, there was an agreement to give the Romanian three days. After that time, they’d decide as to whether the Romanians and the other gangs would combine against a common enemy.
The second day. ‘We’re in trouble here,’ Devon Harris, a tall man from Barbados, said. Back in the West Indies, he had been hustling the tourists out of their hard-earned money, but with an English grandfather who had been white, and a brother who had permanent residency in England, he had managed to deal with the bureaucracy and to legally enter the country. His contribution to the country that had taken him in: two murders, another maimed for life. And what had it given to him? The opportunity to use his streetwise cunning to build up his gang until he was supplying Notting Hill up through Bayswater and Paddington with drugs. He would have said that he had done well for himself, but now he wasn’t so sure.
‘Cojocaru has given us his word that we are safe,’ Jeremy Miller, the second of the gang leaders, said. Second generation, born in London, he was a softly-spoken man, his Jamaican accent the result of growing up in Trench Town, a wild and lawless suburb of Kingston, the Jamaican capital. The left side of his face had a scar from just below the eye down to his upper lip, the result of a knife fight when he was fifteen. He shouldn’t have been in his parents’ place of birth, but his father had died after he had cheated on another gang leader in London, and Miller’s mother had quickly taken the three-year-old back to Jamaica. Not that the place was much safer, but the threat against her son was reduced by distance. At the age of eighteen, Miller had returned to London and had used his quiet yet authoritative manner to work his way up through his gang, using his innate intelligence and his ruthless ability to remove anyone in his way by whatever means seemed appropriate.
‘Cojocaru’s word meant little when he came to England. Do you believe him now?’ Harris said.
‘He can never be trusted, but what can we do?’
‘If we are to throw in our lot with Cojocaru, what guarantees do we have that he will honour what has been agreed?’
‘What has been agreed? And what of Marcus Hearne? And these women can’t be trusted, junkies the lot of them, apart from those two over there.’
The third gang leader, Claude Bateman, older than the others, sat without saying a word. He looked over at one of the three women who had just walked in the door. ‘While you two debate, I intend to keep myself occupied. He grabbed the woman – blonde, no more than nineteen or twenty – and led her away. The two other women in the room, supposedly not available, looked at Devon Harris
