One Dead Witness (11 page)

‘
Enjoy, big boy?’

‘
Not in the slightest,’ Kruger lied, wiping his forehead with
his napkin.

Danny held the flannel tightly against her bleeding cheek.
Though some thirty minutes had passed since the brick had crashed
through the bedroom window, she was still shivering with
shock.

She had dressed in a tracksuit with her dressing-gown over it
and wrapped tightly. Even so she was very cold and numb.

She eased the flannel away from her face to inspect the damage
in the mirror. No doubt about it, medical treatment was required.
The cut was only about three quarter’s of an inch long, but was
quite deep. She prayed it would not need stitches.

Blood oozed out of it immediately.

She replaced the bloody flannel, stared blankly at herself,
thinking what a god-awful-tired-weary mess she looked.

‘
Dan?’ came a voice from the foot of the stairs. It was the
night-duty Patrol Sergeant, Lesley Elvin, one of Danny’s best
friends. She, along with two of her PCs, had attended Danny’s
999.

‘
Yep?’ Danny came out of the bathroom and teetered unsteadily
down the stairs towards Lesley who waited at the foot, a concerned
expression on her face.

‘
You okay, honey?’

Danny nodded, knowing she wasn’t.

‘
You look as white as a sheet.’

‘
I’m okay,’ she insisted.

Lesley shrugged. ‘A twenty-four-hour glazier will be here soon
to board up the window. Once it’s done I would not recommend you
sleep in that bed until you’re sure all the glass has been removed.
. . and you need to go to hospital to get that cleaned up. There
could be some glass in it.’ She pointed at Danny’s face.

‘
I don’t think I’m very likely to go back to bed now. I’ll
probably drop in to Casualty before work.’

‘
Do you want a lift? I can arrange one.’

Danny placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder. ‘No, it’s okay.
I’ll see to it myself.’

Lesley’s personal radio crackled, requesting her to attend the
custody office at Blackpool to assist with processing some
prisoners.

‘
Gotta go, hun.’

‘
Yeah, thanks.’

‘
The lads’ve had a good look around ... can’t see anyone. I’ll
tell ‘em to keep a passing eye on you until we go off-duty at six,
though I doubt there’ll be a problem.’

‘
Mmm.’ Danny sounded unsure.

‘
You got something to tell me?’ the Sergeant enquired. She was
usually pretty intuitive with things like this.

Danny shook her head.

She went to the front door with Lesley, offered her thanks,
watched her walk away up the driveway past the Mercedes. Something
in the light, the shimmer of the trees against the street lamp
focused Danny’s eyes on the front radiator grille of the car. For a
moment Danny could not see what it was that made her look. Then she
groaned out loud and rushed to the car.

Lesley spun round.

‘
The bastard!’ Danny uttered.

She stared down at the top of the radiator grille and the
jagged stump of metal upon which the famous three-pointed star used
to proudly sit. It had been snapped off.

Danny’s mouth tensed angrily. Anger boiled up inside
her.

When she checked the rest of the car, she found what she
feared. A track of scratches had been gouged down both sides, from
front wing to rear, making some sense of the noises Danny had heard
earlier.

Kruger thought it pointless to leave Kelly outside in the
comms van whilst everyone else was inside the club and they knew
the precise whereabouts of their target. Accordingly he teamed her
up with Jimmy Armstrong and, as a couple, they came into the club
after a lengthy period of queuing.

Dale played the part of a single, unattached male, targeting
various females throughout the evening. It was a part he played
well.

Meanwhile, Kruger and Myrna danced the night away. He began to
enjoy himself, despite sweating profusely because he was unable to
remove his jacket for obvious reasons.

Keeping tabs on Bussola was easy.

The mobster, his fat friend, and the two bodyguards occupied a
table in one corner of the room, constantly being attended by
waitresses. The two minders remained detached and alert, whilst
their boss and his buddy were fawned upon by a stream of
sexily-clad women, who mostly looked like hookers. The two men
spent some time on the dance floor, gyrating as rudely as their
bulk would allow with a number of these women who all seemed to be
very impressed with them.

Kruger hazarded an educated guess that if Bussola was playing
away at all, it was probably with prostitutes or women who were
only interested in screwing him because of his exalted position in
low-life. Having been fucked by the biggest mobster in Florida was
probably quite a thrill, Kruger assumed. They were probably not any
sort of threat to Felicity, other than by way of sexually
transmitted diseases.

Myrna enjoyed herself too. This was the first time in years
she’d been to a nightclub and although it was work which brought
her here, she decided to get full value.

She moved slinkily to the beat. So slinkily that Kruger often
found himself transfixed by her mesmeric gyrations. The sweat
poured down from her scalp, temple, neck, shoulders and cleavage,
making Kruger’s tongue flicker in anticipation of being able to
lick it off her body.

So near yet so far.

It was just as well he was a man of high moral values,
otherwise he could easily have been driven by lust.

Just before two o’clock, Bussola and company made a move to
leave.

Kruger and his employees left quickly, discreetly, ahead of
him.

Kelly returned to the comms van; Dale and Jimmy went to a car
each. Kruger and Myrna got into Myrna’s Lexus.

They had only a short wait.

Bussola’s stretch limo drew up to the hotel entrance. A
doorman opened the rear door in readiness. The two bodyguards
appeared ahead of Bussola, checking.

Moments later the man himself emerged from the hotel. His
friend - or whoever the hell the other guy happened to be - was at
his shoulder. They squeezed into the limo and the bodyguards got
into the front seat next to the driver.

‘
No women,’ Kruger observed. ‘He’s had plenty of opportunity to
pick one up.’

‘
Perhaps he’s faithful after all,’ Myrna suggested.

‘
And lions don’t have big teeth.’

The limo pulled smoothly away into the night.

Kruger’s team began to follow.

Despite the early hours, tailing the limo through Miami was an
absolute breeze because Miami is one of those cities which never
sleeps and the amount of traffic about was phenomenal. Kruger found
the experience exhilarating, though he would have preferred to have
been behind the wheel rather than passenger. It was too many years
since he had been involved in mobile surveillance. He’d almost
forgotten how much fun it was. He was also pleased to note that his
people had following techniques off a ‘T’ - because he’d taught
them all he knew.

The limo worked its way out of South Beach, down to MacArthur
Causeway, over the Miami Channel and into the city. From there it
meandered south. For a few blocks Kruger thought the tail had been
spotted, particularly when the limo executed a series of V-turns,
sudden stops and block-loops. The team held its nerve and after
five minutes of these anti-surveillance manoeuvres continued its
journey. Bussola was obviously going through the motions as he
probably did on every journey he undertook. However, they were
moves that a good following team should be ready for and act
accordingly.

The limo hit the Latin Quarter and eventually landed in
Shenandoah where it stopped outside a parade of rundown shops and
offices. Jimmy Armstrong just happened - to be the eyeball at the
time and the rest of the team, following his instructions, parked
discreetly in an arc 200 to 500 metres away, but not in visual
contact with the limo - which was intensely frustrating for all
concerned. They had to rely totally on Jimmy’s
commentary.

‘
It’s like some sorta shop,’ Jimmy said over the radio, trying
to describe the place where Bussola’s limo had pulled up. ‘Low rise
... dunno ... difficult to see properly without getting much
closer.’

‘
Roger,’ Kruger acknowledged.

‘
Well, boss, what we gonna do?’ Myrna asked with a yawn. Since
leaving the club her energy had dissipated and she needed her bed
quite badly. Suddenly she felt her age.

‘
Sit tight, I suppose.’

Myrna slid down her seat, reclined it and closed her
eyes.

Jimmy watched all the occupants of the limo, with the
exception of the driver, get out and go into what was probably once
a shop with a couple of floors above which could have been
storerooms, offices or apartments. The shop at ground floor, with a
massive plate-glass window white-washed from the inside, seemed to
be derelict.

Jimmy reported there was definitely a light on at both
ground-floor and first-floor level.

To Kruger it sounded like it could be some kind of illegal
gambling joint, but he had heard lots of things about Bussola from
his time as a cop and never was there a whisper of gambling.
Everything else imaginable in the criminal line, but not
gambling.

Still, you never could tell. Money was money to people like
Bussola and where it came from was immaterial.

‘
Update,’ Kruger snapped into his radio. It had been a good
thirty seconds since Jimmy had finished speaking and Kruger was
getting crabby.

‘
Very little going on . . . hang fire, the limo’s pulling away
without our man. He could be settled here for a while.’

‘
Is there much other traffic?’

‘
Naw - quiet as a grave.’

‘
Pedestrians?’

‘
Nope.’

‘
Anything else?’ Kruger said desperately.

‘
An all-night drugstore at the end of the block.’

‘
Dale - did you receive that?’ Kruger asked the other Armstrong
brother.

‘
Affirmative.’

‘
Go check the place over, will ya? See if you can find out
anything - discreetly, of course. Treat yourself to a packet of
Jiffs while you’re in there. Put ‘em down to expenses.’

‘
Roger. I need to renew my supply ... the last ones I bought
have gone right past their “best before” date.’

Kruger and Myrna chuckled.

A few seconds later, Dale’s car cruised slowly past. Kruger
settled back to wait for an update.

Five minutes later Dale was back on the air.

‘
The guy from the drugstore thinks it’s a telephone sales place
now. Used to be a barber shop. Closed down about eighteen months
ago. Guy didn’t have anything else to say voluntarily. I got the
impression he knows who owns the place and he ain’t too happy about
divulging. And I’ve walked past and tried the front door.
Locked.’

‘
Idiot,’ Kruger said to Myrna before replying over the radio to
Dale. ‘Received and understood. Now you pull outta there and don’t
try any more stunts.’

Dale acknowledged.

Kruger was puzzled. ‘Telephone sales?’ he said with disbelief.
He looked thoughtfully at Myrna. ‘Telephone sales at this time-a
day?’

She shrugged ... and something dawned on Kruger. He sat bolt
upright and thumped the dash triumphantly. ‘Not tele-sales -
tele-sex!
Let’s check it
out. I’m intrigued.’

Tracey was hot stuff. She was one of
the favourites on the sex-line. This was because of
her northern English accent, now so familiar to
millions of
Americans through the medium
of
the sit-corn
F
rasier
and
the character of
Daphne, whose dubious
vowels are supposed to originate in Manchester.

Tracey was in constant demand from a stream of
men who happily jerked themselves off with the
assistance of
her voice, a telephone and
whatever aids they had available.

She had just finished a particularly horrible call with one
of
her regulars who purported to be a Texan
billionaire. He was on the line every night and if he was calling
from Houston, as he claimed, it would be costing him a fortune ...
which, of
course, was the whole idea, with
Bussola and the phone company splitting the revenue.

Easy money. Big profits.

‘
Keep
‘
em
on the line!’
one poster proclaimed on the wall in front
of
Tracey.

‘
Premature ejaculations we
don’t
need!’
said another.