Danielle Ramsay - Vanishing Point

‘Look, this goes nowhere. Alright? The shit that’s going on now is dangerous. For me … for Madley … Even you.’

‘Who? Who are you scared of?’

Carl stared at Brady. ‘Who do you think?’

‘Ronnie Macmillan.’

Carl’s reaction told Brady he was right.

‘Why? What’s Ronnie got to do with this?’

‘Everything,’ answered Carl as he stared hard at Brady.

‘Go on.’

Carl shook his head. ‘Alright, but I’m only telling you because he’s leaning really heavily on Madley. Understand? He needs sorting and if that means banging him up to get him off Madley’s back then so be it.’ Carl paused for a moment, looking down the corridor which led to the entrance upstairs to Madley’s office.

‘A black Jaguar turns up Brook Street and then pulls into the Avenue car park at the bottom of the back lane. Right by the Merc van.’

‘What happened next?’ asked Brady.

‘Visa and Delta had hold of the copper. She was completely wasted by now. Whatever they had given her had kicked in. Couldn’t stand up. They were arguing with the two Eastern European guys. It looked as if it was about to get nasty. Looked like the two ex-military-looking guys wanted to put her in the back of the van, but Macmillan’s boys weren’t letting her go. Then Ronnie Macmillan gets out the back of the Jaguar and steps in. He said something to the Eastern Europeans. Whatever he said calmed the situation down.’

‘Who took her then?’

‘Who do you think? Ronnie Macmillan. He opened the boot of his Jaguar and she got dumped in there. Visa and Delta got in the front, Ronnie Macmillan got back in the back and they drove off, followed by the Merc van.’

‘Did you see the driver of the van?’ asked Brady, trying to keep his voice level. He needed to know. To know whether it was Nick.

Carl looked at him and shook his head.

‘No, like I’ve already said, it was dark.’

‘Which direction?’ asked Brady.

He was already thinking that he’d get Conrad to check out the CCTV footage they had along the Promenade. He knew that where they’d parked up there were no cameras, which was why Adamson wouldn’t have seen either the black Jaguar or the Mercedes van. Let alone Ronnie Macmillan’s boys dumping Simone Henderson’s drugged body into the boot of Macmillan’s car.

‘They drove along the Promenade and turned up Marine Drive.’

Brady had a feeling that Macmillan might have taken her back to his club in Wallsend. After all, he did have private rooms there which guaranteed his clientele anonymity. It was the kind of place where no one would ask questions. A perfect front for whatever Ronnie Macmillan and the Eastern European brothers were involved in. And then there were the abandoned warehouses and buildings that Ronnie Macmillan had been buying up. He could have taken Simone Henderson to any of those locations and mutilated her. Then again, Brady had to trust the fact that Claudia and her team and Kenny and Daniels had found nothing suspicious at any of Macmillan’s premises.

And, given the gravity of Simone’s attack, Brady couldn’t imagine that she had been taken far. Otherwise, Ronnie Macmillan and the Dabkunas brothers ran the risk of her dying in transit. And from the game that Macmillan was playing with Madley, he wanted the police to raid Madley’s club on a tip-off that a copper was lying with near fatal injuries in the gents’. Brady didn’t want to think of Nick. He didn’t want to think that his own brother could have had a hand in anything so heinous.

‘Why didn’t you contact the police when you saw her being abducted?’ asked Brady.

Carl looked at Brady.

‘I do what Madley tells me to do. I reported exactly what I saw to him. It’s then up to Madley what he does with that information.’

Brady simply nodded. ‘Thanks, Carl.’

‘This goes nowhere. Understand?’ demanded Carl.

‘Trust me.’

‘You’re a copper, what’s there to trust?’ replied Carl.

Brady nodded. He understood Carl’s point.

‘Right now being a copper is the furthest thing from my mind,’ he replied quietly. ‘And right now, I reckon I’m the only person Madley can trust. And with Ronnie Macmillan prepared to do anything to get him out, I’d say he needs me. Wouldn’t you?’ His voice was heavy with concern.

Carl didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to: they both knew that Brady was right.

No surprise then that Madley was shitting himself, thought Brady as he watched Carl start to get the bar ready for the crowd that would be in soon enough. He had every right to be. Mayor Macmillan was clever. A new threat had come to the North East: Eastern European gangsters. And Macmillan had made sure that he was aligned with them. After all, they were a breed apart from the likes of Madley and Johnny Slaughter and even his own brother, Ronnie. At least they had some kind of morality code, thought Brady. Whereas these Eastern European gangsters had no morals. And that’s precisely what made them so dangerous; that and the fact that they were ex-military.

Chapter Forty

He’d gone out for a tab first, before going up to see Madley. He needed an excuse to get out and make a call. One that had to be made in private without Carl overhearing.

He sucked hard on his cigarette to keep it alight as he stared up at the sky. It had been a dark, dismal grey day but now that evening had come there was a change in the air. The sky was lightening as the mute, overcast blanket that had covered it started to lift.

Brady could just make out a blood red sun, burning on the horizon. An omen if ever there was one.

‘Conrad?’

‘Yes, sir?’ answered Conrad.

‘What have you got?’

‘Not much, sir. I did get some background on Nykantas Vydunas, the Lithuanian Ambassador, and he’s on his third marriage to some French ex-model. He has one child, a nineteen-year-old daughter from his first marriage, currently studying at Oxford. From all accounts a bit of party girl. Spends more of her time in London clubbing it than she does at university.’

‘Did you get anything connecting him and Macmillan?’ Brady asked.

‘No, sir. Whatever business deal is going on between the Ambassador and Mayor Macmillan appears to be kosher. Vydunas is a multi-millionaire, old money. His business is shipping. Runs a highly successful cargo shipping company. And that’s the only connection I can make with Mayor Macmillan. He wants to use Vydunas’ cargo company to ship over Polish provisions to the North East. It’s all to do with some multi-cultural push between the North East of England and Eastern Europe, in particular Poland.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Brady.

‘That’s it, sir. Apart from …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, it seems that there’s a lot of activity around him just now. He’s called in extra security. Whether he’s expecting trouble in the North East, I can’t say but he has got an unusual amount of armed personnel surrounding him. He’s also booked in at the Hotel du Vin, close to Newcastle quayside. Ideal location given it’s off the beaten track. He’s booked the whole hotel for a week. The staff there have intimated that he seems obsessed about privacy and security. Especially when he’s holding business meetings or has clients visit.’

‘Like who?’ asked Brady.

‘I don’t know, sir. I couldn’t find that out.’

‘When you say clients do you mean women?’ asked Brady.

‘I honestly can’t say. The staff said that he’s extremely cautious and demands absolute privacy for his visiting guests.’

Brady knew the Hotel du Vin. He had taken Claudia there once for dinner to sample the delights of its noted wine cellar. It had commanding views of the River Tyne and the quayside. It had formerly been a shipping headquarters and had been renovated, as had most of the old buildings down that part of the quayside.