Hidden Witness (16 page)

‘None . . . the gaoler must've fixed that too, tampered with the recording equipment.'

‘What a mess,' Barber said.

‘Means we're running outta witnesses,' Donaldson said.

‘Yeah . . . you're certain Fazil was the gun-dropper?'

‘As can be.'

‘Then he got what was coming to him . . . I know it ain't the perfect scenario, but there's some justice in it. And he wasn't coming across to you, was he?'

‘But I'm still way behind the American,' Donaldson moaned. ‘Fazil was a helluva good lead.'

‘You'll get to him,' Barber reassured him. ‘That's why I put you on him, because I know you'll nail him sooner or later.'

‘Whatever . . .'

‘Hey, don't sound so despairing. A bad man's bit the dust, let's not mourn,' Barber tried to sound upbeat. ‘And you're still alive.'

‘OK, OK, I get the message . . . ahh!' A jolt of pain crackled through his head. He took the ice pack off his head and took a mouthful of the whisky mix. There wasn't much left in the glass.

‘What can you tell us about the killer?' Barber asked.

‘Not much. Biggish guy, mask on, gloves on, overalls, I think, didn't even make the weapon, which seriously annoys me, other than it was revolver with a silencer, probably a .38, so no ejected shells. And he's probably got one sore face, because I managed to land a good one on him.' Donaldson thought he heard Barber sigh at the other end of the line. ‘Sorry, Don?'

‘Nothing, pal. You sure you're OK?'

‘Positive. Heck of a sore head, that's all. And pissed off. I should've realized the danger, though, but I'm still trying to work out why Fazil was important enough to take such a risk to nail him. Real heavy stuff.'

‘Shit like that happens. We deal with desperate people, Karl.'

‘Oh God, do we!'

‘What are your plans?'

‘Ugh . . . tidy up here, make peace with the locals who are running around like headless chickens. Finish my statement for them, then I want to get back to Lancashire . . . see where, or if, Petrone's death fits into all this.'

‘I can deploy someone else to that if you like?'

‘No. I know them up there, especially the guy in charge of the investigation. We go way back and he always needs my help.'

‘Only if you're up to it, but don't overdo it, OK? If it's eyeties versus eyeties, let's not get too involved, eh?'

‘I hear ya.'

Their conversation ended. Donaldson groaned as he stood up, unsure whether it was injury or old age – or possibly a combination of both – and a lifetime of law enforcement. He stood by the balcony railings overlooking the harbour and noticed, peeking over the frosted glass panel separating his balcony from the next one, that the sliding doors into the room were open. Gentle jazz music filtered out. He edged along until he could see on to the balcony, also empty, although there were signs of recent activity on the lounger and table. An empty glass, a half-full bottle of wine, a paperback book, cigarettes and a lighter. Donaldson's eyes honed in on the cigarettes and something moved inside his chest. A yearning. He'd been a light smoker in his teens, but hadn't had a cigarette for many years and was very much against them – usually. But there and then, with a bad head, in a horrible situation, he found he had an irrational need for a cancer stick.

A movement caught his eye. He glanced up, moving his head a little too sharply, causing him to emit a muted howl.

Still clad in her bikini, the forward Scandinavian lady stepped out through her net curtains on to her balcony. There was a wry smile on her face.

‘Spying on me now?' she admonished him. Then she saw he was holding the ice pack to his head. ‘My, what happened to you?'

‘Long story, ma'am,' he replied, quickly pulling the blood-soaked cotton wool out of his nostrils and dropping them on the floor. ‘But I wonder if I could trouble you.' She regarded him with deep misgiving. ‘I know, I know.' He held up a hand to reassure her he wasn't the sick pervert she thought he was after seeing the photographs on his laptop. ‘I'd really love a cigarette. Been a bad day.'

‘O-K,' she said unsurely, but took the pack, shuffled one out for him and one for her. They were Superkings and as he inhaled the smoke spread into his lungs with a deeply pleasurable sensation.

He exhaled deliciously. ‘First one in twenty-five years.' He held the cigarette between his first and second fingers and pointed it at her. ‘I'm not going off the wagon, though, even though this is absolutely wonderful and I thank you kindly, ma'am.'

She too was smoking and regarded him through a cloud of her own.

He took another deep draw and as he exhaled this time it was with a growl of pleasure. Then he looked at his neighbour. ‘Sorry for freakin' y'all out earlier,' he said in his best Yankee drawl.

‘Yes, I was freaked.'

‘OK, understood. My name is Karl Donaldson and I'm an FBI agent,' he said, not even beginning to understand why he was telling her this, because he did not need to, nor should he have done really. ‘The photos you saw were of a dead guy, obviously, and I was asked if I could identify him.'

‘You're an FBI agent,' she asked in disbelief.

‘Really, I am.' He didn't wish to explain exactly what he did in the Bureau because that made things complicated. Everyone sort of understood the concept of an agent.

‘What are you doing in Malta?'

‘Interviewing a witness . . . that's where the bad day came in.' He showed her the ice-packed towel, then tilted his head. ‘Hit on head . . . long story. See it, touch it.'

She reached across the partition and felt his scalp and the quail egg-sized lump on it. Her fingers withdrew quickly.

‘Ooh, the witness did not like you?'

‘Something like that.' He took another drag, enjoyed it, then said, ‘I think that did the trick. And you are?' He knew she had introduced herself at their previous encounter, but that hadn't gone too well and he couldn't quite recall the name. Then it clicked. ‘Vanessa.'

‘Vanessa Langstrum.'

‘What are you doing in Malta?' he asked. The combination of alcohol and cigarette smoke was having an effect on his social skills. Normally, he was pretty shy and reticent with women, but for some reason he wanted to talk to this one.

‘I'm a photographer on assignment for a Scandinavian woman's magazine.'

‘Nice,' Donaldson said. He swayed slightly. Despite his bulk, he wasn't too good at holding his drink. ‘Care to step around and maybe we could restart our relationship?' He gave her a very childish smile.

The MIR was silent. The lights were lowered, the hush respectful as DC Jerry Tope took centre stage at the front of the room. He set up his laptop, wirelessly connected to the ceiling-hung data projector. For a few seconds it looked as though technology was going to let him down as the screen turned blue and the words ‘NO INPUT DETECTED' came up.

He pressed a couple of buttons and the screen came to life with the photograph of a man – short, grey-haired, sitting at a street cafe, leaning across the table pointing at someone who was out of shot. The man looked angry. In front of him was a large cup of coffee and in his left hand was a walking stick.

Tope positioned himself so that he could see his laptop screen without having to crane his neck to look at the projector screen behind him and the audience in front.

‘Let me present our victim: Rosario Petrone,' he said. The eyes of all the assembled officers flitted between the screen and him. ‘Although we have yet to have a formal ID, information suggests that this is the man who was murdered last night in Charnley Road. Comparison between the photographs of the dead man and photographs I have acquired are pretty conclusive – plus, this.'

He pressed the enter button and the next slide came up.

‘The photo you've just seen is one of a series of surveillance shots taken by an anti-Mafia task force in Naples – and this is a blow up of one section of that photo.'

And indeed it was. It showed, in quite good detail, Rosario's left hand, his fingers gripping the walking stick. ‘The head of the walking stick in this shot is the same as the walking stick found at the scene of the murder . . . so I have no doubt that Petrone is our victim.'

He picked up the remote mouse and right-clicked. The next slide came up – showing the first slide again of Petrone at the cafe table. Tope held up the walking stick that had been found at the scene, which, back from forensic analysis, was in a long, thin plastic cover, just to emphasize his point.

‘So, who is Rosario Petrone and why did he die?' he posed the question dramatically. ‘Why,' he went on, ‘did the head of one of the most ruthless Mafia families in Naples, otherwise known as the Camorra Mafia, end up dead on a Blackpool street?'

Everyone sat and listened earnestly.

‘But I'll come to that later,' Tope said, easing the tension in the room, rather like the evil quizmaster with everyone in the palm of his hand. ‘First off, I think it might be useful to give some background on the Camorra, so it'll give you an idea of what we might be dealing with . . .'

The next slide was simply entitled ‘Camorra' and had a series of bullet points under it, which came in with the special audio effect of gunfire, a simple device that seemed to please Tope no end. He spoke over the prompts.

‘The Camorra is like the Mafia and is based in and around Naples in Italy. Its activities include drugs, protection rackets, smuggling people and goods and the production of high quality fake goods in factories in the area previously mentioned. Murder levels are horrendously high in the areas it operates in and to put that boast into perspective, the Camorra have been blamed for . . .' With a flourish he jerked the remote mouse at the screen and a figure ‘4' appeared thereon, accompanied by a gun shot, then three zeros – ‘0', ‘0', ‘0' – each with their own sound effect. ‘Four thousand deaths in the last thirty years, mostly in that geographical region.' The next slide, mercifully appearing silently, showed a map of Italy with the Campania region highlighted.

‘Da-da-daah!' one of the detectives in the audience said dramatically, causing a ripple of laughter.

Tope shot the offender a look of stern disapproval. ‘Hm,' he muttered, not impressed. This was his show. ‘Anyway, the Camorra have probably been in existence since the 1700s and they've always operated in a decentralized way, meaning their structure has always been flatter than the hierarchical structure of the main Mafia clans. Because of this, the Camorra clans are always at each other's throats, but they are more resilient when their top men are arrested, or go into hiding.

‘The 1980s saw the number of clans increasing and today, if Wikipedia is to be believed, with over a hundred clans and over six thousand members, they outnumber the Sicilian Mafia. Rosario Petrone is – was – the head of one of the most ruthless clans of them all. No prizes for guessing its name . . . the Petrone clan.

‘This lot produce fake luxury goods in their factories in Naples, they traffic thousands of people across the world each year, they control unions in Naples – particularly in public service facilities. They deal drugs, prostitution, money laundering and kidnapping. They are huge and are reckoned to turn over about a billion Euros each year . . .'

‘Did you say a billion?' someone asked.

‘Yeah, you heard right, a billion and, depending on the exchange rate, about eight to nine hundred million pounds – ish – every year. They are phenomenally rich and well organized.'

‘So what was Petrone doing in Blackpool?'

‘He was in hiding following a particularly brutal fallout between clans, as a result of which it's believed about thirty people have been murdered in the last three years. Certainly a dozen have, and the figure may be as high as fifty. Lots of people just disappear and are often never found. Some have fled, like Petrone, others are encased in concrete or rotting on rubbish dumps . . . whatever.'

Henry Christie, watching and listening to all this at the back of the MIR, felt his arse twitch with excitement again. He loved it. Loved being in murder room briefings, loved setting off on the hunt for a killer. He knew it was the sort of thing he did well and the thought of having to hand it over to someone just because he was going on a short break made him sweat with frustration. Damn the holiday, he cursed inwardly.

‘Let me take you back about three years,' Jerry Tope was saying at the front of the room. ‘To a tale of jealousy, revenge and murder . . . and garbage.'

‘I should apologize for my earlier forwardness,' she said. ‘I was a little tipsy and a little annoyed, I suppose.'

‘Annoyed?' Donaldson said. He and his neighbour were out on his balcony, sitting alongside each other on loungers. He was sipping a small beer from the minibar and she had a gin and tonic from the same source. Donaldson's supplies were sparse now.

‘My boyfriend. He was supposed to be joining me but,' she shrugged, ‘pressure of work, or so he says.'

‘Where is he now?'

‘In Sweden . . . probably being laid by the twenty-year-old tramp I caught him texting last week,' Vanessa said fiercely. She took a long drink of the G&T. ‘So I was annoyed and I made a bit of a fool of myself because of my rocky relationship.'

‘Ah, rocky. I know that.' Donaldson raised his glass to salute that intangible phrase.

‘So I am sorry.'

‘Apology accepted.'

‘But.' She turned to him and despite his best intentions he could not keep his eyes off her cleavage. ‘I would still like to fuck you . . . you know, now that we have ironed out our misunderstandings. I know you are an FBI agent, not a pervert. You know I was a bit mad, but I've had some sleep since then and my head is clear.'