Питер Ловси - The Finisher

Then he went rigid.

Ahead, caught in the beam a little more than a yard away, a hand was poking out from under the tarpaulin, the fleshy underside chewed to the bone.

“I won’t ask how you came to be in the wrong place at the right time.”

Puffed up by the overnight success of Operation Duke Street, Jones from ROCU was seated in the comfortable armchair in Diamond’s office for what he called a debriefing.

Diamond had no intention of being debriefed, a term he’d always thought unfortunate, so he didn’t comment. If Jones wished to expose himself, so to speak, that was his choice.

“But it’s a good thing you were,” Jones added after one of his long pauses. “My lads would certainly have found that box with the laptop and the phone when we made a wider search, not to mention the body, but you saved us valuable time and I’m grateful for that.”

“Do we know who it is?” Diamond asked.

“The corpse? One of the slaves. His name was Vasil, according to the others, and he attempted to escape months ago. He’s listed on the wall with the rest in Pinto’s room. They all knew he’d been killed. Pinto kept reminding them, to discourage anyone else from escaping. It was a rule of fear. He called himself the Finisher because he’d finish anyone who stepped out of line.”

“So they’re talking to you?”

Jones gave the smile of a seasoned interrogator. “You need to know how to get people like that onside. You tell them their cooperation will be taken into account when their applications for asylum are heard.”

“Where are they from?”

“Albania. We had to ring round to find anyone able to act as interpreter. Got there in the end.”

“What’s wrong with Albania that made them want to leave?”

“Where shall I start? Horrendous unemployment. Poverty. It was a Stalinist country until 1992 and vast numbers left when they got the first chance. About three million stayed on and ten million are living abroad. The economy has never really caught up.”

“I’m not even sure where Albania is.”

“Think north of Greece and south of Serbia and you won’t be far wrong. It’s a Mediterranean country with a good long coastline they try to promote for tourism. Ever heard of the Albanian Riviera?”

“I’m not much of a traveller.”

“Stunning beaches, I’m told.”

“Not much of a beach boy either.”

“You’re a miserable bugger, Diamond. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

“All the time. What happens next?”

“Most of the victims need medical treatment and counselling. Some of them were living rough in Tirana before they got here. Others were on the run from the police. They’re desperate men. They’ll be housed while their claims are processed.”

“And Tony Pinto was the gangmaster?”

“The cog in the machine that failed to function, which is why he ended up dead.”

“Was he Albanian himself?”

“Some of his childhood was spent there, but he’d lived most of his life here.”

“Where did he go wrong?”

“Two more of the group escaped, or tried to, only a few days ago. One, a man called Spiro, was picked up later by the police in Reading. We don’t know the fate of Murat, the second one. After it happened and the news of the escape got back to the mafia who ran this racket, Pinto’s fate was sealed. He was being monitored pretty closely and was caught out, so he had to go.”

“Orders from the top?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Do you have evidence of that?”

“We will. We’ve barely started transcribing all the data we seized.”

“How was the killing done, then?”

Jones had been talking freely up to now. Hubris loosens the tongue, even of a tight-lipped ROCU man. But the directness of the question made him hesitate and glance at the door to make sure it was closed. “What I am about to say is for your ears only. You need to understand that Duke Street was just one outpost of a vast international empire and only a handful of boss men had any idea of the full extent of it. Pinto was answerable to his controller in Bath and that was as much as he knew.”

“And who was the controller?”

“A Russian guy called Ivanov.”

“Konstantin Ivanov?”

“You’ve heard of him?” Jones frowned. “You’re better informed than I thought.”

Diamond could have added that he’d met Konstantin and had suspicions about him, but that would be the next thing to a debriefing.

“Until yesterday,” Jones went on, “Ivanov was living with his wife at a grand address in Sydney Place, a beautiful nineteenth-century terrace facing Sydney Gardens. Bath’s billionaires’ row. Kings and queens lived there when it was first built. Now it’s mostly expensive flats, but he and his wife occupied the entire house, bought by an anonymous company based in some tax haven.” The narrative flowed more easily again. “His cover story is that he’s one of those filthy-rich oligarchs who prefer to live outside Russia. Money-laundering is behind it, for sure. He buys top-of-the-range properties in Bath and rents them out. The Duke Street house is one such. The top two floors are used only occasionally by high-earning footballers who pay the rent and ask no questions about what happens in the basement. The ground floor flat isn’t occupied.”

“And Konstantin Ivanov oversees the modern slavery in Bath?”

Jones nodded. “What is more, he prides himself on his fitness. Marathon running, martial arts, wrestling. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“Did he run in the Other Half?”

“No, and this is my point. You’d expect him to have taken part. His wife Olga was in it. She speed-walked the course. And who do you think they employed as Olga’s personal trainer? The organisation had recruited Pinto from prison, where he had become super-fit in the gym and quite a fitness fanatic. But in Bath he was under-employed, just seeing off the slaves early in the morning and checking them in at night. What is that saying about idle hands?”

“The devil finds work...?”

“That’s the one. To keep him occupied, he had to make regular visits to Sydney Place and supervise Olga’s training. We’re not sure about Olga. She doesn’t seem to have played an active part in the slavery operation, so she wasn’t arrested yesterday. Ivanov was. He denies everything, of course, but we have his phone and hard drive and we’ll nail him. The DNA evidence will prove he killed Pinto.”

“Ivanov?”

“No question. He was in dire trouble himself if he didn’t take decisive action.”

“How did he do it?”

“Karate. He’s a black belt. There’s a framed certificate in their basement gym. The cause of death was a brain injury from a fall, as you know. There seems to have been a short fight, if you can call it that. Pinto was a fit man, but I doubt whether he had the slightest idea how to defend himself.”

“And where did this fight take place?”

“On Combe Down.”

“Where the mineshaft is?”

“There, or thereabouts.”

“Do you also know when it happened?”

“Late afternoon or early evening, long after the race was over. Pinto was one of the last to finish because he ran off course chasing some girl he flirted with.” Jones was coming down to earth and getting more matey. “The man was a goat. He couldn’t get enough. She quit the race to get away from him and he followed.”

“Belinda Pye.”

“You know the name?” he piped in surprise.

“I’ve interviewed her,” Diamond said, peeved at being patronised. Peeved, also, that ROCU knew details of the case he and his team had worked so hard to discover.

“Did they have sex?” Jones asked.