Bridge of Doom (30 page)

Next morning, Jack was finishing off a huge breakfast roll, piled high with crispy bacon, a fried egg and sliced sausage, with the ensemble generously slathered in tomato sauce, when Annie staggered blearily into the kitchen. 

'Good morning, Annie, how are you?'
 

Annie stretched and yawned widely before replying with a scowl. 'Crap is how I am, thanks for asking, boss. Because unlike
some
people,
I've
only had two hours sleep.'
 

'Stop complaining, a slip of a girl like you should be able to go for days on end without any sleep. As a special treat I bought a couple of extra breakfast rolls and popped them in the oven to keep them warm for you and Jamie. That's the type of guy I am.'
 

'Oh, I know the type of guy you are all right, Mr Davidson. A complete chancer.'
 

'Okay, do you want the roll or not? I can easily eat all three of them myself.'
 

'Look, stuffing even one of those great big greasy baps down your neck is enough to bring on an instant heart attack. Don't you ever read any of the health warnings in the papers?'
 

'Never. So last call, Miss Sniffy, want … or no want?'
 

'Want,' said Annie, grabbing the plate and attacking the roll with relish.
 

‘So, once you finish wolfing the big greasy bap, are you going to bring me up to date on your nocturnal assignment? Did you manage to track down the purple Lexus?' 

'No,' said Annie, mumbling through a final delicious mouthful of breakfast roll.  

'Bummer, I was positive that …'

'Relax. I didn't find it, but Jamie did. It took us so long, because the car was parked behind a small block of flats down at the far end of Joppa, overlooking the seafront, and he missed it the first time he drove past. Look, he sent me a few pictures.'

Jack took her iPhone and scrolled through Jamie's pictures, showing an external view of the block of flats and a close up picture of the number plate on the Lexus.
 

'I don't know, but I was somehow expecting a big time drug dealer like Maxie to have a fancier pad than this.'
 

'Like I said before Annie, the Glen brothers are smart guys. Appearing respectable and keeping a low profile in their private lives is the key to survival for them. I bet, if you asked any of his neighbours, they would say
'oh, big Maxie's such a lovely guy, never any bother.'
He probably even takes a turn of washing the common stair and clearing snow from the car park in the winter.’

‘So how are we going to work this?’ asked Jamie. ‘Obviously we only have two vehicles and two drivers.’

‘You’re right, we’re going to have to play the percentages on this one, because we can’t watch him round the clock. But in my experience drug dealers aren’t usually early risers. So if we start surveillance of his flat at, say, midday and then keep going till midnight, that’s probably as much as we can do.’

‘But we don’t need to have both vans sitting right outside the block of flats where he lives. One van, with a good line of sight to the car park entrance, is all that’s needed. The other van can be parked up somewhere nearby, waiting for the call to say Maxie’s out and on the move.’

At midday they began the stakeout. The entrance door to the small block of flats was clearly visible from a convenient layby fifty yards away. At three in the afternoon Annie laid eyes on their target in the flesh for the first time, when Maxie Glenn emerged and got into his car.

'Oh my God, I wouldn't like to bump into him on a dark night. He’s absolutely enormous,' said Annie as she alerted Jack and swung out into traffic
,
three cars behind the Lexus. 

'You know what they say, Annie,' said Jack casually, over the hands-free set. 'The bigger they are, the harder they fall.' 

'Yeah, right. But
they
say a lot of things, boss, and I hope you won't ever have to put that particular theory to the test. Because I know who my money would be on. All of it.'  

'Oh ye of little faith.'

Annie was on her own in one van and Jack rode shotgun beside Jamie in the second van, as Maxie led them around Edinburgh for two days on a series of innocuous errands. There seemed to be no particular pattern to his movements in terms of time or destination. And they learned precisely nothing in return for their efforts, other than noting that even wealthy drug dealers enjoy takeaway pizza from Domino's and, apparently, also need to look after the pennies by grocery shopping at Lidl and Aldi.

After the second day spent tailing Maxie Glenn, the frustrated JD Investigations team observed him doing absolutely nothing illegal, apart from occasionally flicking a cigarette end out of his car window. Back in the kitchen at Moray Place they wearily reviewed the day’s events, over an Indian take-away meal and a shared six-pack of Budweiser.

‘Okay, let’s try and take the positives out of where we are right now,’ said Jack, attempting to keep up team morale and stave off boredom.

Annie yawned widely and gave him one of her
who are you kidding
looks, before dipping a large chunk of naan bread into a carton of fiery red gravy.

‘Look, I know we don’t seem to have made any great progress, guys, but that’s often how it goes when you begin a stakeout job. On the plus side we’re getting pretty slick at the changeovers using both vans. So that’s not time wasted and I’m pretty sure Maxie hasn’t spotted us tailing him either. I know we’ve only got a few days left to spend on this, so let’s just keep plugging away and maybe we’ll get a break.’

Jamie nodded and said, ‘I've been thinking about something you mentioned the other day, Jack. You know, about drug dealers having large amounts of dirty cash they need to somehow get into the legit banking system.’

‘That’s right, Jamie, go on.’
 

‘So to pass the time while I was sitting in the van, I’ve been using my laptop to try and find out more about how it’s actually done. It's quite incredible, really, the scale of what goes on here in Britain alone. It’s estimated that around fifty billion pounds, or more, could be involved every year.’

'Jeez, that's nearly as much as Jack spends on pies and beer,' said Annie with a smirk. 'But I thought we had all sorts of rules and regulations in the UK, to control money laundering.’ 

'You're right, we do. But this is where we enter the fantasy world of what
should
happen, as opposed to the reality of what actually
does
happen in practice.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Okay, what do you think would happen if an ordinary looking bloke, wanders into the same High Street bank every week, regular as clockwork, and makes large deposits, from plastic shopping bags bulging with cash. He pays the money into a fictitious business account and, within a couple of hours, the money is transferred back out again.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘Presumably the bank would think it was suspicious and want to run a full check on his identity, home address, date of birth and passport or national insurance number. And maybe, if all else failed, they’d ask a direct question about how he came by the money, followed swiftly by a discrete phone call to the cops, or HMRC.’

‘No, trust me,’ replied Jamie. ‘If you manage to pick the right bank, absolutely
nothing
happens in the way of checks and no red flag report will be passed on to the authorities either. I read an amazing story about this guy who paid around forty-four million pounds, from a drug gang, into the same bank somewhere down in the Midlands. He followed exactly the same routine every week and it went on for years on end, before he was eventually rumbled. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up.’ 

‘But how is that possible?’ spluttered Jack. ‘The system must have more holes in it than a string vest.'
 

'You got it in one, Jack. But after an hour reading about this stuff, I was starting to see double because it’s pretty heavy and technical. Then I remembered that my cousin, Caroline, works for a financial services company based in Jersey. She’s a real brain box and some of her private clients are apparently so rich they have people who breathe for them. So I sent her an email and she got back to me last night with the inside track on how it’s actually done.’

‘I take it that her company isn’t directly involved in any shady goings on?’ said Jack.

‘No. Allegedly. Anyway, short version, it seems that money laundering isn't that difficult to do. But, like most things in life, you do get what you pay for. So the more money you can spend on covering your tracks, the better your chances are of getting away with it. Of course, being careful costs money because, to do the job properly, you have to pay off all of the crooked professionals along the way.’

‘So that would be like crooked lawyers,’ said Annie.

‘Yes, but as well as lawyers there’s a whole other back-up team who also take a cut for their services. The accountants, estate agents, bank officials and also the owners of the money transfer agencies, or foreign exchanges. They all play a part in making money disappear into the global financial system with the click of a mouse.'

'From what I've been reading, if you can get the cash into the UK banking system without being challenged, basically you're home and dry. It’s then quickly transferred around the world a few times, passing through as many different legal jurisdictions as possible. Finally ending up in an anonymous shell company or trust, located somewhere like Panama or the British Virgin Islands.’

'Very neat,' said Jack ruefully. 'I must try and get my Post Office savings account located offshore, to see if I can get more than the one pound twenty pence interest I collected on it last year.'

Jamie continued with his briefing. ‘Don’t get me wrong, there are loads of big players in the money transfer game, who are totally legitimate and essential for international business deals and world trade. But, as you go further down the financial food chain, you come across hundreds of small money transfer shops and foreign exchanges. You know, the kind of place you see on every street corner in some parts of London. Where foreign workers send money back home to support relatives, or students studying here can get a cash top-up from their parents. So there's a massive amount of legitimate clean money whizzing electronically around the world every minute of the day.’

‘So that makes it pretty tough to police the system,’ said Annie.

‘That’s right and it means there's tremendous scope for dirty money to get lost in the mix, especially if the money’s transferred quickly inside the system. Then you can start to discretely funnel cash back to the UK, through an obliging lawyer or accountant, as legitimate investment capital, which is typically used to buy property.'

Jack nodded and said, ‘so the money can end up somewhere, not a million miles from here, like East Coast Ventures. Where a smart guy like Raymond Glenn uses it to buy blue chip property in Edinburgh, and across the rest of the UK. Simple and very effective. It sounds like we’re definitely in the wrong business.’
 

'I know, but wait, it gets even better for the bad guys, Jack. Because, if you do use laundered money to buy property here, the land registry records don’t actually require the true owner's name to be listed, which is unbelievable. All the official record will show is the name of some anonymous offshore shell company. And if anyone tries to find out who actually owns the company, they’ll come up against a great big solid brick wall.’

‘From what you say, Jamie, it's almost like the system was specifically designed to help the crooks and chancers avoid detection. But that explains where the Glenn’s investment money is coming from. It’s the dirty cash from tens of thousands of drugs deals done on the streets of Edinburgh.’

‘Exactly,’ said Jamie. ‘Washed squeaky clean by one of the biggest, most profitable businesses in the world. Money laundering.’

‘That was a good bit of work, Jamie. Depressing, but good,’ said Annie.

On the third day of surveillance there was a significant change in Maxie Glenn’s routine. At seven pm a dark coloured Ford Galaxy people carrier with three men on board, followed by a white Transit van with two occupants, drew up outside the block of flats and a minute later the man himself appeared. Instantly identifiable by his formidable size, broken nose and scarred features, Maxie Glenn climbed into the back seat of the people carrier, which sank down a couple of inches on its rear suspension, and the two vehicles drove off. 

Switching between the two hire vans every two to three minutes, Annie and Jamie followed the people carrier and Transit van around the Leith area for almost half an hour. The two lead vehicles in the convoy took an apparently aimless route, sometimes slowly driving around in circles, then randomly stopping and starting again. 

'What are they doing?' said Jamie, becoming exasperated. 'This is nuts.'  

'No, trust me, this is
good
,' said Jack, as Jamie pulled over to the side of the road allowing Annie to take the lead. 'This could be show-time, because Maxie’s not doing all this farting around with his crew in tow for nothing. I reckon he’s a belt and braces kind of guy and what you’re seeing is him making absolutely sure he's not being tailed.' 

Annie was following Maxie's convoy down a long narrow one-way street, when the Transit van stopped abruptly, blocking the centre of the road. As the people carrier accelerated away in front, the Transit's hazard warning lights started to blink on and off and two thick-set heavies got out and began to peer under the bonnet.
 

The young male driver of a small hatch back immediately behind the Transit began tooting his horn in frustration at that point. One of the gorillas advanced menacingly towards him and growled briefly in the driver's window, before directing a warning glare back towards the three other vehicles which were also stuck in the queue. No further verbal warnings were required and silence reigned. 
 

‘I'm completely jammed up here in Pirniefeld Lane,' said Annie, banging her fists on the steering wheel in frustration. 'The Transit just stopped dead in front of me, completely blocking the road. Shit, what do we do now?' 

'Do you think you've been spotted?' said Jack anxiously.
 

'No I don't think so, because there are two other cars ahead of me and we've been really careful switching the vans over. This is maybe something they just do routinely, to make absolutely sure Maxie gets to the garage without being tailed. How far away are you and Jamie?'

Checking his location using a large street map, Jack replied, 'I reckon we're two streets to the east from where you are. I don't know, maybe less than a quarter of a mile as the crow flies. And although we don't have a crow, we do have something even better, right Jamie?' 

'You want me to get the drone out?' asked Jamie excitedly.
 

'Yes, as fast as you like. I think Maxie must be pretty close to his final destination. Let's see if you can get our little eye in the sky stuck onto his arse and follow him straight to the garage.'
 

Jamie pulled the van over and quickly got the drone and his laptop from the back of the van. He had the drone pre-assembled and flight ready for just such an eventuality and within thirty seconds it was whizzing away over the rooftops in search of the people carrier.
 

Getting his excuses in early, Jamie explained, 'I've not had a chance to do much night flying practice with the drone and I'm terrified I'll crash into telephone wires or a lamp post, so I'll keep it quite high to begin with. But this is still a long shot, Jack, because we don't even know what direction they're heading in.' 

'Keep the faith, Jamie. Remember how you came by this drone, back in Bogside Park. You showed the bad guys a thing or two that day, right?' 

'Yeah, that
was
a good day.' 

'Okay, let's try and do it again.'