Rough Justice (47 page)

‘So what’s the hold-up?’ asked Shepherd. ‘If the Albanians can identify them, why don’t we just ship them back to Albania?’

‘They fight like hell not to be sent back,’ said Mansfield. ‘They’ll claim that they’ll suffer human-rights abuses if they get sent back, or that their trials were rigged in their absence and that they weren’t allowed to give their side. Albania’s legal system doesn’t have the best reputation and it wasn’t long ago that they had the death penalty.’

‘Even if they’re convicted murderers, we don’t send them back?’

‘Especially murderers,’ Mansfield said. ‘They can claim that they were caught up in the whole Yugoslavian thing and as a result got post-traumatic stress disorder so that if they did kill it was down to the PTSD. And then they claim that they won’t be able to get the proper medical care back in Albania. There’s loophole after loophole in the extradition laws and there’s a whole legal-aid industry geared up to exploit them.’

‘It’s no wonder this country’s in the mess it is.’ Shepherd sighed.

‘A lot of them marry as soon as they get here and once they’ve got British citizenship it gets very murky,’ Mansfield continued. ‘The 1988 Human Rights Act gives them protection because their family life would be disrupted. And once it goes all the way through the courts, which would take years, it’s still down to the Home Secretary to make the final decision. And if the guy can get enough friendly faces waving placards to say what an asset he is to the UK and if enough people petition their MPs, he can make a political decision and allow him to stay.’

Shepherd pulled a face. ‘So there’s nothing we can do to make sure that someone gets sent back?’

‘We can start the ball rolling,’ said Mansfield. ‘We can put a case together and pass it on to the CPS, but then it’s out of our hands. If the CPS decide to prosecute, they wouldn’t be looking for extradition, they’d just be looking for a conviction in a UK court. The judge might give a recommendation that the guy be considered for deportation after he’d served his sentence, but he’d have to do his time in a UK jail first. And, like I said, it’s not definite that he would be deported.’

‘What if the Albanians applied for extradition?’

‘Then they’d be dealing with the Home Office, and you know what a shower they are. They’re even worse than the CPS – couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery.’ Mansfield sat back in his chair and fiddled with a red disposable cigarette lighter. ‘Why don’t you tell me what this is about, Dan?’

‘What do you mean?’

Mansfield smiled. ‘The Met has its fair share of morons, but they don’t put them in Intelligence, generally,’ he said. ‘The clue’s right there in the name. Intelligence. If you need help, just tell me what you want. I know you’re one of the good guys, Dan, so unless it means me losing my pension then I’m at your service.’

‘Like I said when I phoned you, Kenny, it’s a grey area.’

‘Grey’s my favourite colour.’

Shepherd sipped his coffee and grimaced. It really did taste foul. He put down his mug and looked at the young intelligence officer. He instinctively trusted Mansfield, and had done the first time they’d met. And Mansfield was right: he was nobody’s fool. ‘There’s a man in Hereford wanted by the Albanians for rape and murder. He got British citizenship by marriage. Now he’s making my life difficult.’

‘Difficult in what way?’

‘He’s thrown a brick through my window, killed my dog, and now he’s threatening my kid.’

‘Because?’

‘Over nothing. His son Bluetoothed a video to my son of a boy being assaulted. I told the school, the school called in the local cops and this guy has taken it into his head that I can get the whole thing stopped. Which I almost certainly can’t. I’ve tried reasoning with him but he just keeps on crowding me and I’m pretty sure that if I don’t do something he’s going to cause me a lot of grief.’

‘You’ve spoken to the local cops about him?’

‘They were as much use as the proverbial chocolate teapot,’ said Shepherd. ‘I need to know everything there is about this guy so that I can do something about him.’

‘What information have you got?’ asked Mansfield.

‘The name he’s using is Jorgji Talovic and he claims to be a Bosnian. But I ran a DNA sample through the Europol database. He’s Albanian, his name’s Imer Lekstakaj and there are outstanding warrants for rape and murder.’

‘So I’m guessing you’d like a look at those warrants,’ said Mansfield.

‘You read my mind, Kenny. I was going to go all around the houses with you, but you’re right, I should have just asked you straight out. I’m sorry.’

‘No sweat,’ said Mansfield. He stood up. ‘Let’s take a wander upstairs and see what we can dig up,’ he said.

They left the canteen and took the lift to Mansfield’s office, a windowless box that was filled with stacks of reports, reference books and magazines, most of them dotted with bright yellow Post-it notes. ‘Whatever happened to the paperless office?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Went the same way as “peace in our time”, I think,’ said Mansfield. ‘Pretty much everything that goes across my desk has to be stamped and signed so emails just don’t cut it. Mind you, the number of times our system crashes means I just don’t trust anything I can’t hold in my hand.’ He cleared a pile of files off a chrome and leather chair and waved for Shepherd to sit down while he went behind his desk. Two computer terminals stood on it, along with more stacks of paper and three wire in-trays stacked high with internal memos. ‘I’ve told them that when I die they’re just to lay me down here and set fire to the office, Viking-style,’ he said.

‘They wouldn’t do that,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’d contravene too many health-and-safety regulations.’

Mansfield chuckled as he dropped down onto his leather executive-style chair. ‘Spell the Albanian name for me,’ he said.

Shepherd did so and Mansfield tapped the keyboard of the terminal on his left.

‘You won’t get into trouble for this?’ asked Shepherd.

‘I’ve got pretty much free run of the Europol databases, and our investigations are so wide-ranging our fingerprints are everywhere,’ said Mansfield. ‘But all I’m doing here is checking the Europol arrest-warrant list and that’s widely available.’ He sat back. ‘I can’t let you take a hard copy, but I seem to remember that your memory is close to photographic, right?’

‘It’s never let me down yet,’ said Shepherd.

Mansfield pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Look, I’m gasping for a fag. Why don’t you make yourself at home while I hit the pavements?’

Shepherd moved over to Mansfield’s side of the desk and sat down in his chair. There was a Europol file on the screen. ‘Cheers, Kenny. I owe you.’

‘Always useful to have a mate in SOCA who owes you a favour,’ said Mansfield. ‘You do fix parking tickets, right?’

Shepherd laughed. ‘Yeah, I wish.’

Mansfield gestured at the monitor. ‘It’s pretty self-explanatory,’ he said. ‘Anything sensitive is password protected so you can’t get into trouble.’ He took a pack of Rothmans and his lighter from his pocket. ‘I’ll be back in ten.’

Mansfield left the office as Shepherd began to read the file on the screen. At the top left there was a police photograph, a head-and-shoulders shot, face on, and two side shots, with a full set of fingerprints. Lekstakaj had served time in prison twice, once as a teenager for rape and again as a twenty-five-year-old, for attempted murder. He had pleaded guilty to knifing a man in the chest during an argument over a parking space and served just six years.

In 1996 Lekstakaj had raped a twelve-year-old Muslim girl, Elira Halil. Steve Renshaw had already given Shepherd the bare details of the rape and assault, but the file had the full Albanian police report and an English translation. And there were photographs of the girl’s face, showing the deep cuts Lekstakaj had inflicted with a Stanley knife. Shepherd grimaced as he studied the photographs. Only a psychopath could have inflicted those injuries on a young girl. She had told her father who had attacked her, and rather than going to the police, the father had confronted Lekstakaj at his home. Lekstakaj had produced a gun and shot the man in the chest, then fled his small village in the foothills of Mount Korab. He had moved to the Albanian capital, Tirana, where he had worked as a labourer and part-time enforcer for a local money-launderer for almost two years. Then he had pulled a teenage girl into an alley and raped her savagely. Her name was Zamira Lazami and she had been on her way home from school. This time Lekstakaj made sure the girl wasn’t able to identify him. He strangled her and stabbed her with a hunting knife.

The police found the knife in a storm drain and matched the fingerprints on it to Lekstakaj, but despite an extensive manhunt he was never found and the police assumed he had left the country.

Lekstakaj had no family, and had apparently never married or had children. There was a report from a prison psychiatrist detailing his mental instability and his tendency to be violent. According to the psychiatrist, Lekstakaj’s rapes were merely an expression of his anger rather than for any sexual gratification; he would always be a danger to society. At no point had he ever expressed remorse for his actions and, according to the psychiatrist, he was a textbook sociopath.

Shepherd scrolled back up the screen and looked at the police photograph. Lekstakaj was staring at the camera with a total lack of interest. There was no emotion at all: his face was a blank mask and his eyes were lifeless. There were more wrinkles now, and the man had less hair, but other than that he hadn’t changed. Shepherd knew now that he wouldn’t be able to talk any sense into Lekstakaj. He was a brutish, murderous thug and he would keep battering away at Shepherd until he got what he wanted. Or until he was stopped.

He went back through the police report, then reached a section that had been compiled by the Albanian police’s Europol liaison officer. There was an appeal for information concerning the whereabouts of Lekstakaj, with the officer’s email address and phone number.

He scrolled back up and read through the details of the rape and murder of the schoolgirl. It was a senseless assault, vicious and cruel, the work of a crazed animal rather than a human being. The girl’s mother was dead, and she had been living with her father, Aleksander Lazami. Shepherd frowned as he realised that there was a Europol reference number next to the father’s name. He used the mouse to click on it but nothing happened. He studied the screen and spotted a search button in the top left-hand corner. He cut and pasted the reference number into the search facility and hit enter.

He sat back as the screen changed. Aleksander Lazami was also on the Albanian police’s ‘Most Wanted’ list and an extradition warrant had already been served against him. As Shepherd read the details, he smiled slowly. ‘What a bloody small world,’ he muttered to himself. The Albanians had tracked Lazami down – he had changed his name to Jovan Bashich and was now living in north London. The file on Lazami had a photograph but no fingerprints as he had never been arrested in Albania, but there were details of a trial that had been held in his absence where he had been found guilty of extortion and fraud. It had taken place a year after his daughter was murdered. According to the prosecution statement, Lazami was believed to have bribed his way out of the country and crossed the border into Kosovo and from there travelled to England where he had claimed political asylum and was eventually granted British citizenship. The Albanians had applied to have him extradited and the case was now working its way through the appeals system. There were also charges of possessing a consignment of AK-47s and attempted murder awaiting him if he was ever returned to Albania.

Mansfield appeared at the door to the office. ‘Everything okay, Dan?’ he asked.

Shepherd grinned. ‘Couldn’t be better,’ he said.

‘Anything else you need?’

‘Can you run a PNC check for me? I need info on a Jovan Bashich in north London and I’d be happier doing it here rather than at my base.’ Shepherd stood up so that Mansfield could have his chair back.

‘No problem,’ said Mansfield, sitting down. ‘I’m running a couple of hundred names through the computer today, so the more the merrier.’ He turned to his PNC terminal, tapped in the name and sat back. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Runs a minicab company in Stoke Newington. Few motoring offences but nothing else.’

Shepherd studied the screen and effortlessly memorised the details. ‘You’re a star, Kenny.’

Shepherd caught a black cab from outside Scotland Yard and had it drop him around the corner from the offices of Lazami’s minicab business. Speed-E-Cabs was above a fish-and-chip shop, its location promoted by a yellow flashing light above a doorway leading to a flight of bare wooden stairs. Shepherd headed up and pushed open a door, wrinkling his nose at the pungent smell of urine, stale beer and body odour. To his left was a wooden bench on which sat two middle-aged women in tarty clothes arguing over a bottle of vodka. When they saw Shepherd’s police issue trousers and boots, they quietened and tried to sit up straight. ‘Good evening, ladies,’ he said. They both studiously avoided eye-contact with him.

Two middle-aged men with greasy hair and pockmarked faces were behind a thick sheet of glass into which was set a small wire grille. One was talking on a headset while the other was sitting on a plastic chair reading the
Evening Standard
. Both were wearing scuffed leather jackets with the collars turned up. Pages cut from pornographic magazines were plastered over the walls. To the left of the window, a wooden door had been reinforced with a sheet of steel that was dented in several places.

Shepherd went over to the glass and leaned down to speak into the grille. ‘I want to see Jovan Bashich,’ he said.

‘He’s not here,’ said the man reading the newspaper, without looking up.

Shepherd held up his Terry Halligan warrant card and pressed it against the glass. ‘Tell him if he doesn’t speak to me now, I’ll be back with a dozen colleagues and we’ll be going through the licences and immigration status of every single one of your drivers.’