‘He uses contract killers to clean up his mess. One of them murdered my neighbour. She was eighty-five. That same woman was the one who tried to kill me today, and who killed the two officers.’
‘I know,’ said Bannister, ‘and she’s now dead, so she can do you no further harm. It was the murder of your neighbour which finally prompted me to contact you. I can’t stand it any longer.’ He paused. ‘Alastair’s got to go.’
‘When you say “go” …’
‘I mean permanently.’ He looked at her. ‘He has to die, Miss Boyd.’
Even after everything he’d said, Tina was still shocked to hear the words come out of his mouth. She’d seen this guy, a Home Office minister, so many times on TV, droning on about crime and asylum numbers, or standing next to Alastair Sheridan, his old school friend, the man he now wanted to have murdered.
‘And you want Ray to do it?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Jesus, he must have something very, very big on you.’
Bannister cleared his throat. ‘It’s enough. However, I want to make it clear that it has nothing to do with the crimes he and Kalaman and whoever else are responsible for. I’ve never killed, or indeed hurt, anyone.’
‘Maybe not, but like all politicians you like to get other people to do your dirty work.’
He ignored the barb. ‘Alastair Sheridan is currently on holiday with his wife and family in Dubrovnik. They went there this morning. However, Alastair has a number of business interests in Bosnia-Herzegovina and he will be leaving his family and travelling by land to Sarajevo on Friday, where he’ll be addressing a civic event in the City Hall. There’ll be tight security there. Alastair’s popular in Bosnia and he’s being wooed by senior government figures who want him to invest some of his hedge fund money in their country. But while he’s there, he won’t be staying in Sarajevo. Two years ago, he and Kalaman used a shell company to buy an isolated property up in the mountains ten kilometres north of the city. I think they were planning to turn it into an eastern European version of the farm in Wales where they murdered the girls.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Tina asked him.
‘I’m a Home Office minister, and I’ve also been close to Alastair for a long time. The combination puts me in a good position to unearth this kind of information. I don’t know if they’ve already murdered any girls there, but a lone female hiker from Hungary went missing not far away last summer. The point is, Alastair can operate with a degree of impunity while he’s there. He can’t kill easily but he can certainly indulge in his sadistic tendencies far from anyone’s gaze. Bosnia’s a poor country and money has a very loud voice there.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, Alastair will be staying for several days at the house before returning to his family. I suspect in that time he’ll want to indulge a little. He also won’t have his British police escort with him. The house is protected only by private security.’
Tina thought about what Bannister was saying. It made sense. Men like Alastair Sheridan – sadistic, violent killers – could never stop their activities. They might be able to control them temporarily but, in the end, the urge to kill or injure would always come to the fore. One way or another they would continue until they were either caught, or got too old, and Alastair appeared to be a long way from either.
‘How do I know this isn’t some sort of trap you’re setting up with Sheridan to catch or kill Ray?’
‘We both know what Alastair’s done, the depths to which he’s sunk,’ said Bannister, meeting her eye. ‘I’m a lot of things, some of them not that good, but I’m not a monster. I promise you this is no trap.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and took out a mobile phone. ‘The address and location of the house in Bosnia are stored in this phone. It’s unregistered. You have my word no one will try to trace it.’ He placed it on the bed next to her.
Tina smiled coldly. ‘You’re a politician. Your word isn’t worth shit.’
‘But you’ve got things on me now. That should be enough.’
She thought about it. The Wraith was dead, but this wouldn’t stop Alastair Sheridan: he’d only find another killer at a later date to silence her. Until he was in prison or dead, she wasn’t entirely safe. ‘I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to get hold of Ray. And I can’t guarantee that he’ll do what you want either.’
‘I know that. But will you try?’
‘Can you get the NCA off my back, and stop them from charging me with aiding an offender? And don’t give me any of that bullshit about not interfering in the legal process, because I know you can do it.’
Bannister sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Then so will I,’ said Tina. ‘But I’ll tell you this: if you try to betray either Ray or me, I’ll make certain you live to regret it.’
52
Night had fallen when I finally made it into Paris.
The drive there had been long because I’d been forced to avoid the toll roads in case the camera picked up the rental car which, as the man on the phone had told me, needed changing fast. That man, I was now sure, was the Home Office minister George Bannister, Alastair Sheridan’s close political colleague. I’d been following Sheridan’s progress with a mixture of cynicism and alarm during my time in prison, and consequently had seen and heard plenty of Bannister.
Why Bannister was helping me was anyone’s guess but he clearly was, because if it hadn’t been for his call, I’d have been in custody or dead now. I also felt bad for the Brennans. Somehow the police
