One Last Lesson (31 page)

He dialled
, half-expecting to find the trip was now cancelled after Harris found a large hole in the budget or forgot to tell him about a memo banning all foreign travel. He was not a natural pessimist and regarded the beer glass sitting in front of him as half-full, not half-empty but for once he was involved in a trip that didn’t require a huge amount of work and was looking forward to enjoying a little bit of relaxation and chill after the intensity of the last couple of months and to give his ugly sores and scrapes a chance to heal in the warm, southern sun.

‘Hi Angus. How’s Portugal?’

‘It’s sunny and warm. The hotel is clean and well located and before you ask, I’m in the bar having a nice cold beer. Jealous?’

‘
Of course, I wouldn’t expect anything less.’

‘So what’s the big panic?’

‘Are you sitting down?’

‘
I am, but why?’

‘We’ve released Dominic Green.’

On Friday morning, the day after they arrived in Portugal, DS Hobbs and DI Henderson made their way to the local police station in Portimão in a rental car. To Henderson, it made sense to inform the local police of their presence as not only was it being polite, he felt he needed to warn them that a wanted murderer was in the area and to nobody’s surprise, Harris the great networker that he was, knew which cop they needed to talk to.

The waiting room of the large police station in Avenue Zeca Afonso was
muggy, save for a large, slow moving ceiling fan that merely circulated the warm air and was doing a fine job keeping them warm and sticky and at that moment, he knew what it felt like to be a suspect. They waited for fifteen minutes and far from relaxing him and easing him down to the more leisurely pace of Portugal, he was edgier than ever and itching to get out there and do something.

The release of
Dominic Green from custody dominated their conversation the previous evening and even though he was resigned to not seeing him in court, he vowed to get him back inside at the earliest opportunity, especially if it could be proved he had some connection with this case. They should have anticipated that the driver of the car John Lester, Dominic Green’s right-hand man and an ex-bare knuckle boxer who was built like the proverbial brick shit-house and feared no one but Green, would deny that Green was ever in the car. This was echoed by John Spicer, aka Spike and Green’s wife, a late-forties, ex-beauty queen whose loyalty to the Green cause was unwavering in over twenty-five years of marriage.

It was a small con
solation that Lester and Spike were still in the cells but no matter how many of his compatriots they nicked, nothing would give him, and many others in Sussex House, the satisfaction that nicking Dominic Green could offer. With him inside, a large part of the drug trafficking, prostitution and illegal gambling in the city would temporarily cease, giving the police a window of opportunity to clean it up before some plucky chancer decided to try his luck.

They both agreed more should have been done to hold Green once
he was in custody even if that meant blowing the overtime budget on analysing CCTV pictures, searching for witnesses, forensically analysing the car they were using, the whole nine yards. George Rudd was apparently no worse for his encounter with Green and the lack of visible cuts and bruises may have made assault charges harder to stick but if they could prove that Green was involved in the kidnapping of Rudd, that would have given him some serious jail time.

Inspector Giraldes of the Policia Judiciária led them into his cool office at the rear of the building and it was a relief when they were served with chilled lemonade as Henderson was parched, although more likely
due to the rich Douro they were drinking in a bar the previous night, than the warm and slightly oppressive early April weather outside.

Giraldes was casually dressed in an open-necked, white shirt with light brown trousers and looked cool in the heat. His jet-black hair was short at the sides and longer on top, parted to one side
, and in combination with a clean, well-scrubbed and tanned face, which sported no scars or marks other than a well-trimmed moustache he looked younger than the ‘Inspector’ title suggested.

Henderson explained the purpose of their visit, laying heavy emphasis on their instructions only to shadow Martin Cope and ensure he made the return flight home on Sunday, where a reception party would be waiting. On no account were they to approach or apprehend him and he asked
for the Portuguese Police to do the same.

‘When I spoke to Chief Inspector Harris,’ Inspector Giraldes said in a deep guttural voice
with just a trace of American twang, ‘he made that point clear and I complement you on what I regard as a sensible approach, although as you can no doubt appreciate, we are not comfortable with such a man in our midst.’

Henderson nodded.

‘Chief Inspector Harris and I met, as you probably know, at a Perpetrator Profiling Conference in San Diego two years ago and I was able to show him around this beautiful city, as I used to live there and in return, he taught me a lot of things I didn’t know about French wine.’

‘That’s interesting
, Inspector as many people in our office will tell you that he doesn’t really drink.’

‘He does
n’t drink?’ he said, waving his arms in the air theatrically and sitting forward in his chair, which creaked with every movement. ‘Every night I would be as drunk as a skunk and fall asleep at the table and he would still be there, glass in hand, trading funny stories with whoever was still awake.’

Hobbs recalled hearing a similar story from a Dutch detective and soon the little office
was filled with drunken stories about madcap conferences and legless bosses and was only interrupted when the desk telephone rang.

While
waiting for Giraldes to finish his call, Henderson looked around his office and quickly came to the conclusion that his job in Brighton didn’t look so different from this, as there were piles of files on every surface, no doubt a mix of cold cases and recent unsolved crimes, a bulging in-tray with numerous thick circulars from bosses on-high, Health and Safety warnings and copies of crime scene reports, and a computer that pinged every thirty seconds or so with yet another email. When he looked out of the window, the similarities were rammed home again as they shared the same boring view over a grey car park, although the sun was shining over this one.

No matter how similar
their jobs looked on the surface, there was a point where they diverged. Portugal was one of the safest countries in Europe with an enviable low incidence of serious crime. With a population of less than eleven million and only two major cities with more than one million inhabitants, it was markedly different from a densely-packed and ethnically diverse island like the UK, with a population of over sixty-one million and in London, if outer environs were included, a city as populous as Portugal.

Giraldes finished the call but his large jovial face suddenly turned serious. ‘I am sorry gentlemen but I have an urgent case to attend to and I am going to have to cut this meeting short.’

‘That’s fine, Inspector,’ Henderson said standing up, ‘we just wanted to check in and let you know why we’re here.’

‘I understand.’

They shook hands.

‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ he said, ‘and if I can help you in any way
, please feel free to call me.’ He handed Henderson his business card and the Sussex detectives did the same with theirs.

The car park was full of little white Seat’s just like
theirs, but it was easy to spot the hire car with its clean and spotless paintwork as it glowed like a beacon in a sea full of dusty and dirty cars.

‘So what do you think was the important thing the Inspector
was rushing off to do?’ Hobbs said as he climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Maybe it was a reminder to buy his wife’s birthday present or a neighbour informing him that the garage door was still open in his villa up in the hills?’

Henderson laughed. ‘No, it’s much more serious than that. The mayor’s wife needs a lift to the hairdressers.’

Hobbs eased into the street while he fiddled with the sat-nav and tried to direct them to the Alto Golf and Country Club Apartments. Impatient as ever, Hobbs couldn’t be bothered waiting for the technology to fire up and instead, forced his way into the flow of traffic on the main road outside the police station. More through luck than judgement, they were heading in the right direction as confirmed by the sat-nav when it chirped into life a few seconds later.

It was mid-morning and the sun was climbing into a cloudless sky and for the next few minutes, all conversation was temporarily halted as the air-con fan began to blow at its highest setting, trying its best to cool the inside of a warm and
humid car. The traffic was heavy and their progress through town was slow, passing sparsely populated streets with seemingly endless rows of shops selling beach accessories, smart clothes and light fittings and for a moment, Henderson imagined this was his patch. Could he go back to domestic burglaries, drunken assaults and the occasional stabbing in return for a nice lifestyle and more sunshine than he could shake a cocktail stick at?

The fan gradually subsided, its relentless whine suddenly replaced by the roar and rumble of traffic noise.

‘Harris is a bit of a dark horse, is he not?’ Hobbs said.

‘Just a bit, hidden talents for boozing, storytelling and networking. What’s next, he’s an expert at water skiing or para gliding? No wonder the ACC thinks the sun shines out of his
arse.’

‘I mean, I never knew…’

‘Hang on. There’s the place, over to the right. Do you see it?’

All other thoughts were instantly cast aside as they drove through the gates of the Alto Golf
and Country Club. The only receipt Pat Davidson could find relating to Cope’s trip was an acknowledgement email from Easy Jet for his flight and a leaflet about the golf club but they couldn’t find a booking receipt for the accommodation, leading them to assume he carried it with him, he was staying with someone else or it was an apartment owned by Samuels.

The first one could be discounted
on account of Cope’s flight itinerary, as he travelled out to Portugal last Thursday, the day before Samuels was arrested, and was returning to the UK on Sunday. This he was told was out of sync with the system tour operators and letting agencies used for their holidays and lettings as they worked on a week-by-week basis and most often, this meant Saturday to Saturday. Gut instinct pointed him towards the last option as Samuels was rich and he wouldn’t put it past him to own a property here, perhaps as a reward for Cope doing what he wanted.

It looked to be an easy job to ensure Cope stayed here for the next few days and follow him to the airport without being seen, but he was
a little concerned there was no Plan B. What if he suddenly disappeared from his apartment or didn’t make his way to the airport on Sunday? They didn’t have any jurisdiction in Portugal and no access to surveillance cameras, computers, police radios and no power over the deployment of police officers. He hoped Cope would play ball and stick to the plan, but was that asking too much?

When
they arrived at the Alto Golf and Country Club, Hobbs made a point of parking the car under the shade of a leafy tree. They strolled towards the main reception area, a white, two-story building with yellow edging around doors and windows, trying to look like tourists but feeling conspicuous with white faces and no golf equipment.

Through the trees
, Henderson could see sun-worshipers lying around a large pool and wearing a lot less than they were and he was momentarily thankful that the resort offered something more than golf otherwise they would have been forced to don the garish pullovers and check trousers favoured by some players, bad examples of which could be seen striding across a fairway in the distance.

They left a few minutes later, armed with a map of the
sprawling complex, given to them by the smiling, over-dressed, middle-aged lady after Hobbs charmed her into revealing the number of Cope’s apartment when he told her they were work colleagues paying him a surprise visit.

They drove slowly around the sprawling resort, one block of apartments looking much like another with long rows of terraced two and three-storey buildings, painted in eye-dazzling, brilliant white with a variety of coloured towels and bathing gear drying on pulleys or hanging precariously over balconies,
a welcome interruption to the all-white monotony.

The
Alto Praia do Vau apartments overlooked the thirteenth fairway and from where Henderson was standing now, it didn’t seem such a bad place to be. The buildings were uniform in design with clean, Mediterranean lines and well-maintained gardens with ample places to park and Hobbs particularly liked the wide, quiet roads as driving a left-hand drive car made him feel like a learner once again.

The narrow strips of earth beside the road were planted with geraniums, marigolds and several plants he didn’t recognise and bordered by large bushes of red-flowering bougainvillea. The planting scheme successfully brightened up the access paths in what was essentially the back of the building
and probably a place where few people loitered as he was sure all golfers wanted to do after a hard day’s play was to sit with a beer in their hand and gaze longingly at their playground.