Stealth (11 page)

‘My conversation French is much better than the written word and a lot of this is in medical language,' Patrick said. ‘You'll have to get an interpreter to look at it to get the full story. But in his conclusion there's something along the lines of investigators having to determine the circumstances preceding death before final conclusions are reached. Finally, I
think
he says he cannot possibly be expected to explain the cause of all the lacerations and bruising to the body and, in his view, there is unexplained bruising to the back of the neck and head.' Patrick looked up. ‘That's interesting if I've got it correctly. He could have been chopped across the nape of the neck or hit a couple of times with some kind of blunt weapon like a pickaxe handle. There's nothing in the police email about any witnesses, is there?'

Greenway shook his head. ‘No, and it could have happened after dark. There wasn't anything in the email about police intentions to determine the circumstances before death before they reach any conclusions either. End of foreign immigrant nobody cared about. Sad, but it's not our problem and I can't see that anything would be gained by going over there and trying to throw our weight about.'

‘The motive if he was murdered, though?' I queried. ‘Clement Hamlyn or someone else working for him tying up a few loose ends? That seems a bit far-fetched unless Morella had threatened to go to the police, blackmailing him, perhaps.'

‘Yes, I can't see Hamlyn having any strong connections with the South of France. Why would he?'

‘Is Daniel Coates still on the loose?'

‘Er, yes,' Greenway answered. ‘Didn't turn up in St Tropez. If the truth were known the cops there missed him if he only stopped overnight. But I'm hoping he's still in the sights of Operation Captura.'

‘He told me he didn't know the man who had fallen in the water. He could have been lying.'

‘And went back to Cannes and had some kind of drunken altercation with him,' Patrick ventured. ‘Or shoved him in the water just because he felt like it. It would figure.'

We then turned to the subject of Miss Smythe's murder and I forgot to raise the matter of tides and currents again and the likelihood of Alonso Morella's body finishing up in the sea off Cannes if he had fallen, or been pushed, off the harbour wall into the water.

Greenway reiterated that the Met had carried out comprehensive house-to-house enquiries in the immediate area of Miss Smythe's house and nobody had reported seeing anyone loitering or behaving suspiciously. Local known villains, those not detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, had been questioned with no useful findings there either and police informers had been silent on the matter.

‘This case cannot be allowed to go cold!' he finished by almost shouting.

I was beginning to see why the Met had been so delighted to hand everything over to us and afterwards had been so helpful.

‘I have a suggestion,' Patrick said.

‘Go ahead,' Greenway invited, calming down.

‘We want to get hold of Hereward Trent right now but can't. Clement Hamlyn probably has to be put on the back burner – for now. With regards to other iffy associates the Met has
advised
us not to stick our noses into the suspect cop investigation as he's under surveillance. Does that apply to his chum the football and boxing Johnny who it would appear also has dodgy connections?'

The commander consulted the relevant email. ‘No,' he said slowly. ‘Not in so many words. But anyone with a modicum of intelligence would read that meaning into it.'

‘But it doesn't actually say that he's under surveillance as well.'

‘No.'

‘I've always been a bit thick.'

Greenway frowned in the general direction of the window. ‘Can't say I've ever been that bright myself.'

‘Ingrid and I could go and take a look at him. What's his name?'

Burrowing into a wire tray on his desk, Greenway hauled out a thin file and opened it. ‘Some years ago he was a Russian film star by the name of Anatoli Tomskaya. It may not have been his real name, just a professional one. These days he calls himself Anthony Thomas, which is an Anglicization of sorts, and to confuse matters even more I gather he's known as both Tommy and Tony, depending on who's doing the talking. That's those close to him, you understand. To everyone else he's Mr Thomas. What name appears on his council tax demands is anyone's guess.'

I said, ‘And your file's on him because of the dodgy associates?'

‘Oh, no, in my view he's
über
dodgy as well. The problem is that nothing evidence-wise has stuck to him yet, not even a genuine identity, mainly because he's a slimy bastard.'

‘He's not likely to be on the Mystery Mobster Murderer's list then if we're right about his connection with Trent, Hamlyn and the policeman under investigation. He could even be the hit man responsible for the killings.'

‘That could easily be the case if the money's right as the football club's doing very badly right now. He's not been known to carry weapons but my guess is he'd subcontract that out anyway to avoid getting his hands dirty. By all means go and take a look at him.' Greenway continued, turning to Patrick: ‘Get a good photograph of him if you can. He's succeeded in keeping his face off television and out of the papers, God knows how. Records only have a couple of blurred shots of him taken at matches plus one good clear one where he's on a horse in some costume B-movie shot around twenty years ago on the outskirts of Moscow. I suggest you look at those first so you have some idea of his appearance.'

‘I know hardly anything about the football world,' said the one-time rugby-playing man of mine, planning how he was going to get close to Anthony Thomas without tripping over the Met, if they were there. Not to take his photograph, that was unnecessary with telephoto lenses, but to try to find out how the man
ticked.

‘But you boxed at school,' I reminded him. As head boy he had taken real bullies – male – into the ring with him for a couple of rounds, thoughtfully providing gloves. With the head master's blessing too. It would not be permitted now, of course.

‘Um, but that's a bit irrelevant these days,' Patrick muttered and went into a reverie, in his mental ops room.

I had begun noting down a few ideas for a new novel but having turned on my laptop to do a little more work on them I looked up Anthony Thomas on the internet instead. Understandably, or not, he did not have a website but as was usual the football club did. As well as lists of other officials there was one of the directors with his name included, each with a short profile. It stated that he had moved from Russia, where he had retired from acting four years previously, to promote boxing. He had come to London ‘to further his interests in sport', and no doubt, I thought, to better line his pockets. There was no mention of a family. Other interests were listed as classical music, the theatre and going for long country walks.

Did I believe a word of that hogwash? No. Did I think he had left Russia with the police in hot pursuit? Yes. In my heart of hearts was I sure that most of his earnings still came from crime? Natch.

Greenway had already told us that the man ‘only' had several convictions for speeding and non-payment of fines for the same offences. Frustratingly, as far as the police were concerned, was that his name had been mentioned by witnesses and suspects in several serious cases involving murder, extortion and drug-dealing. By the time these cases – which was where there was a link to the policeman under scrutiny – had come to court people had either changed their evidence, saying they had been mistaken, or failed to appear, two witnesses due to testify against men known to be in Thomas's circle, including a couple of boxers, having gone missing. The body of one of these had been found floating in the Thames in similar fashion to that of Fred Duggan, the small-time mobster recently murdered.

The commander had updated us on the investigations into the murders of the other two gang leaders and their ‘second-in-commands': Tom Berry, or Jerry, thought to be in league with Duggan, and the illegal immigrant, known only as Rapla, who appeared to have had no dealings with them. There was not a lot to tell: the Met was cautiously treating the killings as one case and were already finding links between them, mostly in the shape of thugs for hire. So far there were no links to Anthony Thomas.

Greenway had also given us the information that the investigation into Claudia Barton-Jones's, Hamlyn's girlfriend, expenses irregularities was now a police matter as larger sums of money than had first been realized were involved. She had been questioned but had been uncooperative and enquiries were continuing.

F
ortunately, SOCA had Anthony Thomas's Barnes address on file. We decided to go house-hunting, taking a camera.

‘How much are you looking to spend?' drawled the toothy young woman in the estate agents.

Patrick looked at me: he knows next to nothing about house prices.

‘Around a million,' I told her. ‘And preferably near the common. Not too far from the railway station either.'

‘It helps, you know, if people have already spotted something they like online.'

‘We prefer to see places as they really are without funny lenses effects and artificial lighting,' I retorted. Such superciliousness really does bring out the worst in me.

This, obviously, was heresy but she bore with us more or less politely and delved into the drawer of a filing cabinet, finally handing over the particulars of five properties. ‘You can phone us if you want to have a look round any of them and we might be able to arrange it for this afternoon,' she said in a manner that suggested such technology could well be beyond us.

‘Perhaps I should have worn my crown,' Patrick said when we were outside. ‘Anything in the locality of Thomas's place?'

I had my London A–Z open at the page. ‘There's one in the next road.'

‘Good, we can go and make sure there's no other riff-raff living in the area.' Patrick chuckled and walked off.

‘It's the other way.'

He paused to say over his shoulder, ‘I know, I had a look at the map before we came. But there's a nice little baker's shop over there with a board outside advertising sandwiches and coffee; it's almost two thirty and we haven't had any lunch.'

Later, the property details prominently in my hand, we wandered along the road next to the one where Anthony Thomas's house was situated. We then turned the corner at the end of the road, feigned interest in another house that had a For Sale notice outside with a different estate agent and then slowly wandered on until we approached the property in which we were really interested, also semi-detached. Patrick, I knew, was scanning the area with professional interest but there were no cars with anyone sitting in them parked nearby and, to me at least, nobody appeared to be watching from any of the houses opposite which were smaller and older, built in the thirties, I thought.

‘Perhaps no one's here because
he's
not here,' I suggested.

‘I'm not sure about that yet. Put your street map away and we'll call next door.'

A man was in the front garden which was very, very tidy, the kind of place where every stray leaf, twig and creature that moved has been eradicated by the regular, and ruthless, use of a garden vac. There were no plants growing up the walls of the house and no spring flowers in the borders around the lawn, just bare, neatly-dug earth.

‘Good afternoon!' Patrick said breezily in a plummy voice. ‘Sorry to bother you, old man, but can you tell us where Cavendish Road is? We're looking to buy a house round here.'

The man, who had been peering with distaste for any sign of misbehaviour at a tightly-clipped holly, shook his head. ‘Never heard of it, sorry.'

Crestfallen, Patrick made a play of consulting the details. ‘Oh, stupid of me. That place is in Roehampton. Sorry to have bothered you.' Then: ‘Perhaps I can pick your brains for a moment. We've been looking for a detached place. But are these semis solidly built? Do you hear your neighbours much through the party walls?'

‘They're not very often there and I haven't been aware of anyone for weeks, if not months, just the bloke who tidies the garden,' said the man. ‘So that's not much help to you. But all the property in this immediate area is good quality so I can't see it being a problem – unless people start having loud parties, of course. But everyone's very quiet and law-abiding. These gardens back on to the common too so it's open ground behind with nice views.'

‘Are there rear gates to these properties with access to the common?'

‘Yes. Very handy for taking the dog for a walk.'

We thanked him and left and I knew exactly where we were heading.

‘Not very often there, eh?' Patrick said softly. ‘My guess is that he doesn't live there at all except perhaps once in a blue moon and is more likely to be found not a stone's throw from Wanstead Flats because that's where all his hirelings hang out, so he can keep them all well screwed down.'

His mobile rang. It was a very short call, from Greenway I guessed, during which Patrick mostly listened and said little.

‘Change of plan,' he announced. ‘Hereward Trent has returned home – he was spotted by whoever it was from the Met who removed the crime scene tape from outside Miss Smythe's house and checked that the back door had been repaired – and I'm to interview him immediately. Greenway doesn't want us here any longer, especially as Thomas appears to be somewhere else. Not only that, he's been in contact with someone he described as his mole at the Yard who told him Thomas's place is being watched from a loft room in a house opposite. They must be rather bored so I think I'll wave to them on the way back.'