Bodyguard (16 page)

Paul and I gathered our thoughts for a moment, talking it through rationally and conferencing with Annie. There was only one thing to do. Ring Harry back. And let's raise the bar. It was time to
introduce
the money.

‘Boss not happy; he's wasted a trip over here. You promised the children would be available. He's tired, he's busy. What's the problem?' Paul did the talking as always.

‘Major problem, major problem, I promise you,' Harry snapped back.

Too fucking right there was. We had you, Harry, and soon the authorities would, too. ‘This isn't good enough. Is the boss going to see the children today or tomorrow?'

Harry told Paul it would be another two weeks.

I was fuming. ‘Harry, Harry, it's the boss here,' I grabbed the phone. ‘This isn't good enough, mate. You've called us over. I've got my wife waiting. You promised me.' I didn't want to hear about his big problems. ‘Listen, I don't fuck about and I don't expect you to fuck about. I don't want problems; I want solutions. I'm not hanging around. I'm going home tomorrow.'

His apologies fell on deaf ears.

‘Are you definitely sure you can't show me the children tomorrow?' I gave him one last chance.

‘I'm really sorry, Boss.'

I hung up. Then chucked the phone on the bed, punched the wall, and screamed out the biggest ‘Fucking hell' you would ever hear.

The next day we all flew back to London. There was only one thing on the table at the next day's meeting. It was time to pull the plug. Harry's Game was over with no result. At some point everybody had to move on, and that was now. I'd genuinely thought we had it
in the bag. We still had no explanation. It could have been Harry; maybe the kids had been promised to someone else; perhaps someone higher up the chain blocked the deal; or were we too slow in showing the money? I couldn't be sure. I just knew this was how dodgy people worked.

Alison Ford, now at BBC Breakfast, and Gary Smith, head of Home News, hadn't been on the trips – they had a slightly clearer perspective. Leave it a week, they urged, and let's see where we were up to. Wise old heads who hadn't been caught up in the moment and who were, of course, working on many things simultaneously so coming at it with a broader perspective, they didn't share our
frustration
. They would wait – it was a massive story, and it only lacked the ending. I rang Paul straightaway.

‘We've got a week, I think,' I told him. I urged him to call Harry once more.

For the next couple of days, Harry didn't pick up. That didn't concern me – that could just be lifestyle. If his problem was genuine and he still wanted to deal, he would call back. He wanted to see those batches of
£
20,000, he too had a paymaster to deliver to, and I was his ticket out of there with all the dodgy motors I would be farming out to him next time around.

Two days later, he came good. ‘Tell the boss, I am really really sorry. It was out of my control. I can't tell you what happened. It's definitely on now. If he can come out next week, I will definitely have children to show him.' He suddenly put us back in the game. This time, I thought we would get him.

I would need to get into the part one more time, and this really was it now for everyone. If he only wanted to fuck us about, he had done that more than enough – I wasn't jetting in for any more fun and games. The fact that he was calling us repeatedly in a week of phone tennis told me that it was happening. Just short of two weeks after our last visit, it was time to get back on the plane and run through the entire Boss drill all over again.

We didn't meet him the first night. He wanted to see us at McDonald's at four the next day.

‘Which McDonald's?' we asked.

‘I'll tell you which McDonald's when you get in the taxi. I will call you and you pass the phone to the taxi driver.'

From nowhere Harry was starting to get serious and operate like a proper crook. A man who never seemed to have a security tail was now getting into the role himself, keeping locations under wraps and on a need-to-know basis. We knew that we would have to be ready to go at a moment's notice, strapped up all day with the gear when the inevitable change of time came for the meet. If he said four, clearly that was the one time you could rule out.

I had also changed my game plan. I would openly show Harry some equipment – my Nokia N95 videophone would film the
children
so Sangita could take her pick later. He couldn't really argue with that, and there would be no need to pat us down if I had put my cards on the table.

The next day, the inevitable happened. ‘It's not four, it's now six,' said Harry. Then he hung up.

Fucking hell. Here we go again. I was pissed off big time. I would have done the same. You never set a pattern. At least there was no problem yet. Paul and Dom were a little more doubtful.

‘Do you think we've fucked up somewhere? Have we made a mistake? Maybe we're being led into something completely different?'

I felt Harry was just testing us and told them so. I knew we had covered our tracks, and there was plenty of time. It was summer so it wouldn't get dark here until half nine. I really didn't think he would bring the kids in pitch black.

At seven the phone rang. ‘Put the taxi driver on.' Harry was calling the shots. He had completely blanked us on the 18.00 call. He was playing it proper now. In a matter of twenty-four hours, he had gone from being an apologetic pimp who was putty in my cash-rich
gangster
hands to gaining my respect by knowing how to play the game
after all, and perhaps these had always been the rules of engagement. It didn't matter if you played shit for eighty-nine minutes, then nicked it in the ninetieth, you still walked away with the points. Harry had just subbed himself for someone much more impressive. Maybe Dom and Paul were right.

Then again, I thought, what will be will be. It looked definitely on, and Harry was obviously working with someone else. He may have been pulling my strings but I also recognised that every time he had called me, someone had just rung him.

We got to the McDonald's early – it was no more than fifteen minutes away. I checked for police first of all, but nothing. Then I looked for the heavies. I saw a couple of dodgy looking guys who may have been the muscle, but there was nothing obvious. Just around the restaurant was the standard play area. Next to it, one man was on his motorbike yakking on his mobile, looking in our direction. He hung up when I clocked him, and sped off. This was definitely it – that was a sign and an error. Harry had his scouts out and we didn't know who was or who wasn't. Maybe we were meant to see that or perhaps not but, either way, I knew it was on his terms and we wouldn't know how many he had brought with him. To stay in the part was the name of the game: do nothing you wouldn't normally do at a McDonald's. So I sent Paul in to fetch some burgers.

Then I spotted Harry. ‘There's the Audi,' I said to Paul.

Game on. He parked up. Next, I glimpsed what I thought was the business end of the deal. Right behind him as he wandered over to our car were a couple and a young girl. Was he really about to deliver?

Harry and I shook hands, apologising for last time amid our usual gangster greetings.

Fatia had a black-hair pony tail, and like half the kids out here had two little Gypsy earrings. They had clearly dressed her up to put her in the shop window. This wasn't some snotty little kid. She was a cute little three-year-old in a pink summer's outfit – dressed to trade.
I was told her mother was too poor to care for her; her father looked even more dubious – a fat slob with a massive gut, barely hidden by his stained t-shirt. Initially, she clung to her parents – though I don't believe they were actually related. To me, Fatia was just their cash cow. As un-paternal as I was, no parent, however desperate, could sell their off-spring. That was the bottom line.

I picked Fatia up, playing the doting dad. Of all the roles I had assumed over the years, this was my least comfortable. Mixing it with the football scum, wiping coke off a basin, or walking into a war zone – that was what Craig Summers did. I played out of my skin now with all that goo-goo nonsense. At my worst, I still beat their best when it came to parenting.

She responded a little – her brown eyes wide-eyed at what was probably more attention that she was used to. I held her, while her mother and father lit up a fag. They didn't strike me as poor.

Occasionally Harry would hold her, too, and I kept up the act, leaning across and holding her hand. The parents would only look me in the eye when I asked questions. She was as much a tool in my game as she was in theirs.

Within twenty minutes we were done. It was time to make our excuses and get out of there. We were all desperate to get back to check what we'd recorded. After all the false starts, it would be game over to try to set this up again – but if we had to, then we needed to know now. I definitely had the shots on the Nokia, and that would do if needs be, but the more you've got to pick from, the more you can ultimately nail them with. We also had a second meet planned for the next day, but you could never guarantee that these things might not get pulled at the last minute – especially if one of Harry's
back-watchers
had spotted anything untoward in the way we had been operating.

I took one last shot of Fatia to make a final fuss of her. As a sign of goodwill Harry urged Dom to give the parents twenty euros or so. That's how things were done out here. Let's face it, how much
goodwill can you afford a couple who are about to flog their child to the highest bidder? Dom told me that the mother had asked Harry in dialect if she could see the child again once she was sold. Clearly, that was bollocks. You don't ask a question like that without breaking down in tears and she didn't.

‘I need to know very very quickly if you want to go ahead,' Harry pushed. ‘This has got to be done very soon. Papers need to be sorted and money needs to be exchanged.'

‘I think the wife will like her but obviously I can't make that decision. It's a woman's decision with babies. You know that, Harry.' Craig Summers had finally found his maternal side. ‘I think this could be the start of big things between me and you,' I tossed him another big fat lie.

In the taxi, my mind was racing. Still in character for fear of whoever might be around, but buzzing inside, I knew it had all been worth it. Gary and Annie had been right to stick with it. I couldn't believe we had pulled it off and when I told the driver to floor it back to the hotel, I only did so to stop myself from ripping the wires out of Paul in the back of the cab. More than any shots I had filmed undercover, these were the ones I wanted to see immediately. I knew what we had. I just needed to know we had filmed it.

It was time to be professional. High fives were for later. At the hotel, we couldn't get out quick enough, almost forgetting to pay the driver. We legged it across the lobby to the lift. Going up, all anyone could say was ‘Come on, come on' and then back in my room Paul ripped his shirt off.

‘We've recorded something. The tape has gone.'

I was concerned for a second. He meant it had finished – all sixty minutes were used. ‘When did you start taping?' I asked.

‘Just when we met the kids,' Paul answered.

He rewound the tape. That next second lasted an eternity. It always does when you have your finger on the play button, waiting for the images to spring into life, hoping they're at the right height level to
ensure you've got the key players in rather than filming some
lamp-post
. We stared at the screen, waiting. Then they were all there. Harry, the parents, Fatia, McDonald's – the lot. We rushed the tape to Annie in a makeshift edit suite.

‘Where are the children now?' she asked like a mother.

‘I don't know – we went our way; they've gone with the parents,' I replied. I really didn't care. Just press play on the damn tape.

‘Where's Harry now?' she continued.

‘He's disappeared.' I didn't have the heart to tell her he was
probably
already unblocking powder from one nostril and pumping pussy.

We could have followed him to see if his dirty work took him back on himself, tidying up his day's work, but the truth was that if I rang him and said I had the deposit, he would have jumped any time. He would definitely be back for more. We had him. Harry was finished.

The next day, around lunchtime, Harry came to the hotel to pick us up. His guard was clearly down, and he had dropped the tail. This was rank amateur behaviour. You didn't see me turning up without Paul and Dom. After months of cat and mouse, he trusted us
implicitly
. The lure of the euro was too big for his coke-bulging eyes. What a difference a day made. He had gone from highly trained security operative back to the gangster he was.

We could have left first thing this morning. We had enough for the story, finally. We all agreed what a bonus it would be if suddenly after months of to and fro, he was the gateway to some sort of bigger network – the kind of conspiracy people said Madeleine McCann might have disappeared into. He had potentially promised us four children to look at. It was time to see how genuine his web was.

We pulled up outside the courthouse, not too far from where we had been staying. It was busy and sunny. A daytime outing in itself was a rarity for Harry; either the atmosphere was so touristy that the environment was brilliant to blend in to, or he no longer gave a toss. When we met our first ‘customer' of the day, I thought he was taking the piss. He had clearly put everything on Fatia. Today was just about
him looking like a player. In the same way that we wanted to unravel a web, he wanted to show it off so the boss would come calling again.

‘That's no good, Harry,' I stared at him. ‘I need to see the flesh.'