Quintin Jardine - Stay of Execution

‘Before I begin,’ said Huggins, ‘I need to know who will have access to this information.’

‘If it’s that sensitive, only two people: me and Bob Skinner, our deputy chief, my boss.’

‘It will remain secure?’

‘Bet on it.’

‘I’m betting my career. That’s why I was so awkward earlier. Okay, here goes. As you know, I am a member of our IAB. Before he was transferred to patrol division, Colin Mawhinney was also an IAB officer.’ Huggins hesitated. ‘You probably think of us in the way that most people do, that we’re real bottom-feeders, cops who persecute other cops. But everything we do, and every investigation we undertake, is in response to a complaint from the public of corruption or serious misconduct, with the emphasis on serious. We don’t go looking for work; we don’t have to. It comes to us, by telephone, by letter and these days even by e-mail.’

‘Understood,’ said McIlhenney. ‘It’s a dirty job, but it has to be done properly in everyone’s interests, cops included.’

‘Right. In Mawhinney’s time as a sergeant in IAB, he investigated a detective officer named Luigi Salvona. The complaint followed a killing in Brooklyn, a gangland execution in which the victim, one Al Tedesco, was lured to a restaurant in a quiet street and strangled as he ate. Salvona was at the table with him; he was the man who set up the meeting. He testified that the men who did the job wore masks, and that he was beaten unconscious. There were no witnesses; they were the only diners in the restaurant and both waiters were conveniently in the kitchen when the killing took place. Under questioning he said that Tedesco had been an informant of his, and that he assumed the execution had been a reprisal.’ Huggins leaned across McIlhenney’s desk, picked up his water carafe and a glass. ‘May I?’

‘Of course.’

He poured some water and took a sip. ‘The complaint came from the victim’s widow,’ he continued. ‘She said that her husband had been set up by Salvona, and that far from being a police informant, he was an organised-crime member himself, and that Salvona was on his payroll, not the other way around. When the FBI was consulted they confirmed that Tedesco had indeed been on their surveillance list, and that he had been under investigation, although not actively at that time. Such a complaint, a mobster’s wife admitting his past and accusing a policeman of complicity in his assassination, remains unique in the annals of IAB. Sergeant Mawhinney was the investigating officer; he saw a problem from the outset with Salvona’s story. He was a patrol officer, not a detective. How would he come to have an informant as connected as Tedesco?’

Huggins took another sip from the glass. ‘Mawhinney did all the correct things. He interviewed Salvona’s fellow officers, but learned nothing. He pulled his telephone records, but found nothing incriminating. He pulled his mother’s telephone records: nothing. He gained access to his bank account: nothing. So he returned Officer Salvona to duty, and he put him under surveillance. Three weeks later it paid off. The officer was married; he also had a girlfriend, as the investigators discovered when they tailed him to her apartment one night, and watched him leave at three in the morning.’

He drained the glass. ‘Bingo. Her name was Irene Falcone, and she was the sister of a senior figure in a rival family to that of which Tedesco was a member. Mawhinney pulled her phone records; he found regular calls to her brother, but crucially, two days before the hit, he found one to Al Tedesco. Then he checked her bank accounts: the day after Tedesco’s murder, the sum of one hundred thousand dollars was paid into a new joint account. It had two signatories, Irene Falcone and Luigi Salvona. That finished them both. They pleaded guilty to second-degree homicide and they were sentenced to ten to twenty years each. On the day he was sentenced, the judge asked Salvona if he had anything to say. He said, and I quote, “Yes, Your Honour, I would like to say the following. Sergeant Mawhinney, you are a fucking dead man.” This is not an unusual remark from a convicted felon but. .’

‘But what?’

‘Salvona and Irene Falcone were both released, on the same day, four weeks ago, and set up home together in an apartment in Queens. They had a scheduled meeting with their parole officer last Wednesday. They failed to appear: officers were sent to collect them but they were not at home. Then yesterday they walked into the parole office, apologised, and said that they had gone on vacation to Florida and had mixed up the date of their meeting.’

‘Can you prove they left the country?’

‘Not a chance. Irene’s brother is still a very large fish; they’d have used fake passports.’

‘But if we can match either of them to the hire of a Land Rover within the last week or so. .’

‘Yes, Inspector, only this is where it gets complicated. The day Salvona was arrested he was fired from the force. When he was arraigned, it was as a civilian, and his connection with NYPD was covered up. His presence at the Tedesco murder had never been revealed, nor was it announced in court, because of the guilty plea. However wrong it may have been, this was a decision taken to protect the image of the force. If it all becomes public now. .’

‘The shit flies ten-fold.’ McIlhenney looked at the American. ‘Are you asking me to fold my investigation?’

‘A colleague of yours used the word “discretion” to me this morning, Inspector. I use it now to you.’

The big Scot leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘I don’t have any,’ he said. ‘In these circumstances, discretion belongs with DCC Skinner. I think you’d better meet with him.’

The policeman and the soldier faced each other across a table in a corner of the big restaurant in Brussels airport’s departure area. They had barely spoken on the journey from Winters’s office, not wanting to say anything that their driver might overhear.

Adam Arrow picked up his knife and fork to attack his gammon steak, saw Skinner staring absently at his salad, and put them down again. ‘So?’

‘Do you need to ask, mate?’

‘Not really. The Belgians are throwing a fookin’ blanket over something, that’s for sure. What you said to my friend Pierre was dead right. He’s not usually such a wanker, by the way. He was reading from someone else’s script.’

‘Can you get to its author?’

Arrow shook his head gloomily. ‘I can do a lot of things, Bob, but this is the business of a sovereign state, one that happens, in addition, to be one of our European partners. I’d need a big wedge to get anywhere; first I’d have to persuade my own secretary of state, and he’d have to talk to his colleagues. Now if you were to tell me that, by withholding information, the Belgians were compromising the safety of the Pope, they’d listen to that.’

‘I can’t tell you that for sure,’ said Skinner, ‘or I’d have told Colonel Winters, straight out. This started as a murder investigation, pure and simple, and it still is, only being denied information by the Belgian military means it isn’t so simple any longer. There’s something in these men’s past that relates to all this. Maybe Malou’s acquaintance with the young John the Twenty-fifth has nothing to do with it, but maybe it has.’

‘Then why not go at it from the other side?’ Arrow could hold himself back no longer from his lunch. He picked up his cutlery and set to work, with Skinner looking at him, frowning.

‘You know,’ said the DCC, ‘you’re bloody right.’ He took out his cell phone and scrolled through his stored numbers until he found one under the name ‘Rossi’, and selected it.