Cold Killers (17 page)

Carter was thinking it through. Willis knew him well enough to know that he approved of Ross’s actions. He would have done it himself if he’d had the authority.

‘So, what else have NCA authorised you to do that you’re waiting to surprise us with? What else have you got in the bag?’

‘It’s an ongoing situation,’ replied Ross. ‘We would be willing to make a few deals, compromise a few notches on the ethical scale to get Tony and to stop the carnage he
inflicts on the UK. We have to throw everything at it now before it’s too late and we end up with a bigger drug problem, gang problem, organised crime problem than ever before. This is the
chance now to stop Tony and the cartels.’

‘I wonder if Harold will go for it,’ said Carter. ‘He seems to have already written off any chance of justice for Eddie. He’s not even looking for it. He must know that
it doesn’t exist. Tony’s obviously managed to work his way out of responsibility just enough to leave Harold thinking that the investigation into Eddie’s death is now
closed.’

‘What about Laurence?’ asked Willis.

‘I think it’s time to give him a reality check,’ said Ross.

Billy Manson parked his white Range Rover on the harbour at Ramsgate. He picked a box from the back seat and headed up the hill to Fredo’s Ristorante.

‘Billy!’ Connie was preparing the tables for the lunch service. She greeted Manson warmly. He walked in carrying the box and put it on the bar while he went in for a hug.

Connie held on to him. ‘How’s it all going?’ she asked, pulling back to observe him. ‘You look tired, Billy. You been looking after yourself?’

‘I’m okay, Connie, don’t worry about me. How is Della coping? I haven’t wanted to bother her. But send her my best wishes. She knows where I am if she needs
me.’

‘Thank you, Billy. She’s struggling but she’s a tough cookie, as you know. How are Jo and the kids? Looking forward to Christmas, I expect. Can you get time off? You must be
very busy now, doing Eddie’s work as well as your own?’

‘The kids are very excited. Look, we are thinking of going away for a month; we could do with a break. Plus, I don’t know what will be happening with the business.’

‘What do you mean? Surely it will continue? It’s such a fantastic thing you have going there.’

‘Maybe. I was hoping Della would take it over but it seems there’s a chance Eddie either didn’t sort things out properly, in the event of his death, or there’s been some
manoeuvring going on by the Butcher family. Either way, it’s not Della’s business now: it’s Tony Butcher’s.’

‘That can’t be.’ Connie was shocked.

‘I got a call from Tony himself last night, really late. I mean three in the morning, telling me that Laurence will be coming to work with me and that they really wanted me to stay on, et
cetera. But it sounded like bullshit.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No, well, I wish I didn’t, but it sounds like they’re taking over.’

Connie was speechless.

‘Look, I wondered if you’d mind looking after this box of things for me,’ said Manson. ‘It’s nothing important, just stuff of Eddie’s: personal papers and
stuff. I’m not sure he’d have wanted Tony getting hold of them.’

‘Of course. Shall we give it to Della when she comes over next?’

‘I’d like to go through it with her, so if you could wait till we’re all together. There are a few things in there that I know Eddie would want me to give her myself. Some
things need explaining. Eddie and I didn’t always do things the easiest way or the clearest.’

‘Of course not. You and Eddie were a great team.’

Manson walked back down towards his car and he made a call on the way.

‘Hello?’

‘Jo, it’s me.’

‘I didn’t recognise the number.’

‘I know, it’s a new phone. Use this number for me, for now.’

‘Why? What’s going on? Are you okay? You sound out of breath.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Where did you go last night? I’ve been worried sick.’

‘Sorry. I got a call about business. I ended up shifting some materials all night.’

‘Poor Eddie. I didn’t realise they did all that to him. I read about it this morning. Why would someone do that? I feel so sorry for Della. Do the police know who did it
yet?’

‘No.’

‘Billy, are we safe? I worry for the kids.’

‘We’ll be okay, Jo, but I think we should get out and have a holiday for a month until it all blows over. Get the kids packed and get us on flights to Thailand. We’ll have
Christmas there. You book it. It doesn’t matter what it costs. Get us on a flight as soon as you can.’

‘He hasn’t got anything worth hearing,’ Carter said in Willis’s earpiece after twenty minutes of interviewing Laurence. ‘Let’s call it a
day.’

‘When was the last time you saw Eddie alive?’ Willis asked, ignoring Carter. He’d been irritable even before she’d started the interview. Ross wasn’t present:
he’d gone back to the day job. There was another officer standing by the door.

Laurence sighed. ‘I saw him three times when he was over here in the two weeks before his death. The last time was three days before he went missing. You know all this. I’ve told you
it I don’t know how many times.’

‘What was that meeting like?’

‘It was a quick coffee to talk through some recent acquisitions I’d made. They hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped and I needed Eddie’s advice. I needed him to look
them over and see how much they’d cost to renovate.’

‘Where were these properties?’

‘It’s an old warehouse in Shoreditch and a closed-down pub – the Albert, in Bethnal Green.’

Willis slid a pad and paper across the table. ‘Addresses, please.’

Laurence shrugged irritably.

‘I don’t have the exact postcodes to hand.’

‘Street number and name and area will do. We’ll call you if we need to gain access.’

‘Okay.’ He wiped his face, the strain and tiredness showing.

‘What about the business that Eddie has? Paradise Villas. Was it going as well as he’d hoped? Did you talk about that also?’

‘No, we didn’t. I never thought Eddie had problems with Paradise Villas. He had it all in hand.’

‘It wasn’t making as much money as it had done, was it?’

‘There was a lot of competition from other developers. Eddie had downscaled quite a bit. He didn’t want to work that hard any more. He’d made enough.’

‘Do you know the manager there, Billy Manson?

‘I’ve met him once or twice.’

‘How recently?’

‘Before Eddie died, when Eddie first came over in the middle of October, we’d been to see my acquisitions. We went for a drink in Shoreditch. Manson was with him when I got
there.’

‘Did everything seem okay between them?’

‘Things seemed a bit tense; they’d worked together for so many years, there were bound to be times when they got on one another’s nerves. What’s this about? Is Manson
under suspicion?’

‘No, we’re just trying to get a fuller picture of Eddie’s last couple of weeks, that’s all. He didn’t seem worried to you?’

‘He seemed a bit stressed. I suppose he was a bit more so than usual. He’s usually laid-back. He looked a bit tired, distracted.’

‘Would he have confided in you if something was wrong?’

‘Maybe. But I am always considered the baby of the family. I hope he would have confided in me, yes, but I can’t be sure. We discussed projects that I was working on. He told me
about the villas he was building.’

‘And now, is it right that you will be taking over Paradise Villas?’

‘News travels.’

‘Was that something you and Eddie had ever discussed? Was it always on the cards?’

Laurence thought about his answer but then shrugged non-committally.

‘Did you meet the lawyer, Mr Francisco, who wrote up Eddie’s will and witnessed the changes made to it? Did you meet him when you were in Marbella?’

‘I have met him before, but, no, I didn’t see him this time.’

‘He’s gone missing, along with his seven-year-old daughter. He was last seen when he visited Tony on the day of Eddie’s funeral.’

‘Well, I was here in London then, so, I don’t see your point.’

‘You didn’t see him in these last two days?’

‘No, sorry.’ Laurence was beginning to prickle.

‘He seems to have had time to draw up a new will. The original document left everything to his widow, Della. Now this new one, which appears to have arrived from nowhere, leaves everything
to Tony. Do you think that’s strange?’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘His widow being left nothing?’

‘I’ll make sure Della’s well provided for. I’ll take care of these things for her. I don’t know what’s happened about Eddie’s will. Tony has his ways of
doing things.’

Willis was studying Laurence.

‘I think you loved your brother, Laurence. I hear Eddie was a good bloke, and I don’t think he deserved to die like this.’ Willis opened her file and started to pass over the
crime-scene photos from the car park. ‘What if I told you that your family could have been directly responsible? That one of Tony’s deals went wrong and Eddie paid the price?’

He looked at her angrily. ‘You have no idea,’ he said. ‘I know that you lot don’t give a shit about our family or about who really killed Eddie. We Butchers don’t
expect justice to be delivered by you. Eddie’s death had nothing to do with Tony or Harold or anyone with Butcher as a surname.’

‘Why? Because, after all, Tony is an upstanding figure in society who just happens to have a sideline of importing a ton of cocaine a month into the UK.’

‘I know nothing about that.’

‘Okay. You can go, Laurence, but I want you to know we consider you to be in great personal danger. If Eddie can be tortured to death, then so can you.’

‘Thanks for your advice. I’ll take care of myself.’

Willis walked down the corridor so far with him, then headed back to talk to Carter. She found him still in the observation room but in a private conversation on the phone. She hung back as he
took a few minutes to end it. He came off the phone looking worried.

‘Is Cabrina okay?’ Willis asked.

He nodded, distracted. ‘Fine.’

‘Your dad okay?’

He nodded.

‘Can we talk?’ he asked.

Willis stepped back inside the observation room and closed the door. She perched on the desk there.

‘What did you think about Laurence?’ asked Carter. ‘If I was him I’d be seriously worried about my health. What have the cartels got to lose by killing him
too?’

Willis replied, ‘He doesn’t seem to have any idea what’s going on all around him, unless he’s just really clever at seeming naive. The Butcher family have protected him,
haven’t they? Now, Tony’s given him Paradise Villas to keep him happy, to bring him into the fold.’

‘Or to make sure Paradise Villas is steered in the right direction.’

‘Either way, he seems to have drawn a line under his brother’s death.’

‘Are you all right about going to Spain, Eb?’

‘Fine. I’m quite looking forward to it.’

‘What are your thoughts about Ross? What kind of man is he?’ asked Carter. ‘He ran us a bit of a dance in there, didn’t he? I want to be sure about him before we go any
further into this deal with the NCA.’

‘Broken marriage, two girls, he’s a Saturday dad. He likes to think of himself as a victim; everything is out of his control. Nothing was his fault. He hasn’t learned anything
from his broken marriage. He is always searching for the next high. Work is an adrenalin sport to him. He gets bored, he moves to another department.’

‘But?’

‘But he’s very clever, eccentric, impulsive. He has a low boredom threshold and he is obsessed with bringing Tony to justice, plus, and it’s a
big
plus, for me,
he’s drip-feeding us information relevant to Eddie at the moment, but, if we get him on our side, I think the floodgates will open. It’s a win–win situation, if we’re lucky.
If not, we may still get Tony and Harold shut down.’

Carter picked at his fingers, deep in thought. He looked tired, thought Willis. He was full of cold.

He switched off the lights in the observation room as he opened the door to the corridor.

‘You coming?’

‘Dan?’

Carter half stepped back inside.

‘What is it, Eb?’

‘Are you okay?’

‘I am fine, Eb. I’ve got man flu, that’s all.’

‘That’s the third time I’ve seen you take a private call and get funny with me when I’ve come within earshot. Even when it’s Cabrina on the phone you don’t
usually need privacy and you don’t usually say more than a couple of sentences. Whoever it is on the other end of the phone means a lot to you.’

‘You know who it is. It’s Della. She’s going through a great deal out there.’

‘Why are you talking to her?’

‘She’s not a suspect in any of this. She needs my help. They are trying to kill her over there in Spain. The Butcher family are literally trying to kill her.’

‘What does she expect you to do about it?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. What can I do?’

‘Find her husband’s killer and hope that she gets herself out of there fast.’

‘And go where? Where is she going to be safe?’

‘Can we do a deal with witness protection for her?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t even think that’s what she’d want; after all, what she wants is justice for her husband and to be left with the estate he
intended to leave her. Tony is threatening to bulldoze her house down around her ears. Laurence has been given the business. She knows there’s nothing I can do for her; all I can provide is a
friendly voice on the other end of the phone, which is what I am doing. When you and Ross go to Spain, you can try to talk to her, see if you can help her circumstances in any way, okay,
Eb?’

She nodded. ‘I don’t mind doing that. What I don’t want to be is a go-between for two old lovebirds who are thinking of rebuilding their nest.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It will never be like that.’

‘That’s what you say, what you think now; but I know you still feel raw about the relationship break-up. You still feel maybe she was the one that got away. But I just want to point
out that we’re all getting tired, we’re all beginning to feel overstressed with this investigation. The last thing you need is to feel emotionally involved in it too. Do you want to
step back from it? Do you think you should?’