Cleanskin (4 page)

N
OT EVERYBODY THOUGHT
I was doing the right thing about the DNA. I’d barely walked through the door the next morning when my boss was on my case. ‘What’s the point?’ he said, face red as a baboon’s backside. ‘We know it’s Farrell. Right age, height, build. The tattoos, for Christ’s sake. If ever there was an open-and-shut case, this is it. Andy, it was you that ID’d him. But that’s not good enough for you, is it? No, now you want DNA tests. Do you have any idea how much it costs to even try to get DNA from a badly burned body?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s Jack Farrell. Better safe than sorry.’

He ran his hand across his stubble scalp. ‘They tell me they have to use something called SNIPS. It costs an arm and a leg, and most times it doesn’t even bloody work. And in this case it won’t prove anything either way. So what if the DNA doesn’t match? It doesn’t mean that body
isn’t Jack Farrell. All it means is that Martina Farrell was putting it about a bit.’ He threw his hands in the air. ‘It doesn’t even prove that. For all we know, they could have had fertility treatment. The only DNA comparison worth a toss is with the clothes on the beach. And the letter.’

He had a point, but I wasn’t about to admit it. ‘So, what? You want me to cancel the tests?’

‘No. I already did that, Andy.’ He pointed his finger at me. ‘You have got to stop running the show like it’s your personal bloody empire. I carry the can for you when things go tits-up. The least you can do is run stuff past me.’ He sighed. ‘I know it’s boring, but we’ve got budgets, Andy.’

‘You’re right,’ I said. He looked shocked, then pleased. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to burst his balloon. ‘It is boring.’ God, I missed Stella. She’d have done the tests and worried about the budget afterwards.

All day, people were dropping in to congratulate us. Like we’d had something to do with Jack Farrell not being our problem any more. Like it was a result. Nobody seemed to want to think about the fact that even if Farrell
was dead, his rackets were all still alive and well. Alive and well and being run by people with half his brains and a tiny fraction of his street smarts.

To my mind, that spelled trouble. Farrell’s empire had worked because the emperor ran it with a rod of iron. I once read that Nero had said something like, ‘Let them hate as long as they fear,’ and that was how Jack Farrell did business. I didn’t think either Danny Chu or Fancy Riley could hold a candle to their dear departed boss in the fear stakes. Things were going to start falling apart very soon. And then it was all going to be very messy on our patch.

Ben got it, though. ‘They’ll be fighting over the spoils like dogs with a bag of bones,’ he said. ‘The fall-out’s going to be something else.’

The first victim hit the ground two days after Farrell’s body was found. Joey Scardino’s family had come to Scotland at the end of the 19th century and had made their living from fish and chips and ice cream. But Joey had seen too many films about the Mob and he’d come to London in search of a more edgy living than
fast food. He liked people to call him Joey Scar, and a few sucked up to him enough to do it. I wasn’t one of them. I never dignify those scumbags by using their nicknames.

Anyway, Joey was just about clever and charming enough to pass as a gangster, but he’d never managed to be in the right place at the right time. He was desperate to be playing by big boys’ rules.

As part of his bid, he’d been snapping at Farrell’s heels for a long time. He’d seen how much money Farrell was making from people-smuggling and supplying illegal immigrants with false papers. Scardino wanted to carve out a chunk of the action for himself. But every time he’d tried to muscle in on it, Farrell had found a way to slap him down.

According to Ben, who had been running a low-level snout inside Farrell’s posse, Scardino had paid a load of cash to Farrell after the fire. The word was that the money was payment for the business he’d failed to steal in the past. The only trouble was that Scardino wanted a fast return on what he’d laid out. Unlike Farrell, he didn’t understand that making a modest amount every week for years was smarter than
trying to make big bucks straight out of the starting blocks.

As we drove to the scene of the murder, Ben told me his snout had said Scardino was already pissing people off, but he did seem surprised that it had gone so far so fast.

We already knew Scardino hadn’t died a clean or a pretty death. He’d been found by a security guard doing his rounds down the docks in Harwich. A container that should have been shut was standing open. When the guard went to take a look, he saw something that would trash his sleep for a very long time.

I didn’t have to ask the way. I kept passing grey-faced uniformed officers who pointed behind them, their eyes filled with horror. Splashes of vomit lined the final stages of the route.

Joey Scardino was naked except for the ropes. He was tied to the far end of the container, his body spread out in a big X facing the wall. There was a bloody gap where his backside should have been. According to the forensics team, someone had literally stuffed an explosive charge inside him then set it off.

I’ve seen a lot of crime scenes, but I’ve never
seen anything worse than that. Ben reeled away, his hand over his mouth, dry retching sounds coming from his throat.

Whoever had killed Joey Scardino was sending a message to the world.
You think Jack
Farrell was scary? Think again
. And it was my job to find him and to put him away.

Lucky me.

T
HE ONLY ODD THING
about Joey Scardino’s death – apart from it being totally disgusting – was that nobody was laying claim to it. The usual routine in murders like this is that the word creeps out. That’s how the Jack Farrells of this world create the fear that lets them exercise power. First the villains get to know. Then it filters down to us through our snouts and our undercover cops. There might not be any proof, but everybody who needs to know gets to know.

But with Scardino there wasn’t so much as a whisper. The usual suspects were giving each other the hard stare, wondering who had ordered the hit on Scardino. There wasn’t even an obvious motive. Yes, Joey Scardino had bought a slice of Jack Farrell’s action. And yes, his death meant that slice should end up on somebody else’s plate. Most likely the plate of the person who had seen him off. But that
wasn’t what had happened. Oh no, nothing that simple.

What had happened was that the business had fallen to pieces faster than Patsy Cline. It had split into splinters and now bits of Jack Farrell’s fake ID business were being operated by half a dozen slimeballs who had been quick off the mark. There was no single winner from Scardino’s death. It really didn’t look like he had been topped for the sake of stealing his crummy little racket.

And if not for that, then why?

The second body came five days after Joey Scardino. Brian Cooper and Jack Farrell had both started their lives of crime working for the same boss, a tough old East End gangster called Billy Boardman. They’d both started at the bottom of the totem pole with low-level drug running. But they’d both been too smart to stay at the bottom for long.

Jack had clawed his way up the organization, making it impossible for Billy to do without him. Then Billy had been killed in his bed, a single bullet to the head. What was worse was that his young bride had died alongside him,
shot in the same way. Nobody could work out how the assassin got past the security. Well, nobody who didn’t know that Jack Farrell had been giving one to the lovely bride.

Farrell got the respect, and most of Billy Boardman’s business. But he didn’t want Brian Cooper working for him. He knew Cooper was as greedy as he was. He knew Cooper would already be plotting how to get Farrell out of the way. So Farrell and Cooper made a deal.

Cooper would get fencing and faking, and Farrell would get the rest. And they’d stay off each other’s turf. Farrell wouldn’t send out teams to sell fake Rolexes, and Cooper wouldn’t run drugs or prostitutes. It was a split that had worked well for a long time. But in the past few months, some cracks had started to appear in the deal.

It was Farrell who had started being a bit naughty, by all accounts. He was bringing more and more girls in from the former Eastern Bloc countries, where a lot of the brand-name fakes came from. And instead of abiding by the old borders and selling them on to Cooper, Farrell had started a team of youths flogging the fakes round the pubs and the markets.

Cooper had been well pissed off. He’d even gone so far as to turn up at Farrell’s office in Soho to sound off about it. Farrell had been livid. The Soho office was for his above-board business. Nothing criminal crossed the threshold there. Least of all a gangster like Cooper who had failed to rub off his East End rough edges.

Cooper had demanded ‘tax’ on Farrell’s new scam with the fakes. The version I heard was that Farrell had laughed in his face. Farrell told Cooper the only reason Cooper still had a business at all was that he, Farrell, had a soft spot for him because of the old days. Then Farrell told Cooper that in future he, Cooper, would be paying ‘tax’ to Farrell as the price of being allowed to stay in business at all.

Cooper had stormed off, mouthing all sorts of threats against Farrell. The row had blown up a couple of weeks before the fire, and Cooper had been one of the evil bastards we’d taken a good look at. Of course, he had an alibi. Men like Brian Cooper always do because they are seldom the ones who do the dirty work with their own hands. But it wasn’t a very solid alibi. It sounded too genuine. It didn’t feel like one
he’d had in place because he knew he’d need it. And that made me think he wasn’t expecting Katie to die that night. That in turn meant he probably hadn’t ordered the hit. Still, he had been on my list.

But Cooper clearly had more people on his case than Jack Farrell. And one of them had got rid of him in a very ugly way.

B
RIAN
C
OOPER HAD TAKEN
a long time to die. And it hadn’t been a good time. He’d been murdered in the warehouse where he stored his stock. His killer had tied him to a chair then put his feet in buckets of fast-setting concrete. Once he was sure Cooper wasn’t going anywhere, the murderer had cut into his veins at the wrists and the elbows. Cooper had bled out, naked, trapped and most likely alone.

I stood in the warehouse, trying not to look at the bloody mess. But it drew my eyes back time and time again, as if it was a magnet and I was the iron filings. First Joey Scardino and now Brian Cooper. Somebody out there was trying to carve out an empire for himself and he was doing it in the most brutal and heartless way he could think of.

If I had been a criminal near the top of the tree, I’d have been gibbering with fear. I’d have locked myself into my most secure room, armed
to the teeth with guns and bullets, and stayed there till the war to fill Jack Farrell’s shoes was over.

I’d still have had to come out one day and face the last man standing. But at least the odds would be in my favour. I’d know where to look.

Of course, I was on the other side of the law. I was the one charged with finding out who was behind this before there was only one man left standing. If I left it till then, I’d be too late. Everybody would be locked into the new regime. They’d be too afraid to turn in the brute who had the power of life and death over all of them. The king is dead. Long live the king.

It was cold in the warehouse and I shivered, in spite of my warm coat. I turned to my sergeant. ‘Any ideas, Ben?’

He gave a weary sigh. ‘None that make any sense. We’ve got plenty of bad lads to choose from, but I can’t think of anybody as extreme as this.’

I knew what he meant. Violence like this doesn’t just spring up from nowhere. It has roots. It takes time to develop. And I couldn’t put a name to the person who had reached this
level of sadistic bloodshed. ‘It’s got to be a new face,’ I said.

‘Russians? Chechens?’ Ben asked.

‘Could be.’ I sighed. ‘Why can’t they just stick to football?’

‘Not enough money in it, boss. Not unless you’re David Beckham.’ Ben sneaked a look at what remained of Brian Cooper. ‘Whoever he is, he’s sending a message loud and clear.’

‘Yeah. “Farrell’s gone and I’m the new king of the world,”’ I said. ‘We need to put some pressure on our snouts. They seem to have gone very quiet all of a sudden.’ I roused myself, rolling my shoulders and stamping my feet on the cold cement. ‘Time to rattle a few cages, I think.’

‘Leave it with me, boss. I’ll put the word out,’ Ben said.

I nodded. It was good to have someone to rely on for the legwork. Ben had been the one person I’d been adamant about bringing with me when I made the move to Serious Crimes. We knew our way round each other and I knew I could trust him to do what needed to be done. It also didn’t hurt that he looked like the hardest bastard on legs. You had to see him
with his kids to understand what a pose that was.

‘We any further forward on who killed Katie Farrell?’ I asked as we walked back to the car.

Ben shook his head. ‘Not a whisper.’

‘I’d have thought with Farrell out of the way there would be no shortage of takers,’ I said. ‘Who could resist the chance to look so bold when there’s no chance of payback?’

Ben spat a wad of nicotine gum on the ground as we came out of the warehouse into the cold raw air of the morning. ‘Good point. But I reckon whoever did it knows there’s no mileage in claiming it. Killing Jack Farrell would have been something to shout about. But burning a nine-year-old to death? I don’t think there’s many would be too quick off the mark to claim that.’

‘Maybe so. But I still don’t like the fact that we’ve not had so much as a whisper.’ We headed for our car, walking faster as the wind cut into us.

‘When’s Stella back?’ Ben asked as he tucked himself behind the wheel.

‘A week or so.’

Ben gave a little snort of laughter.

‘What?’ I said. ‘You think I’m counting the days or something?’

‘I never said a thing, boss,’ he replied, starting the engine and reversing out of our parking spot. ‘I was just thinking how pissed off she’s going to be at missing all these good bodies. First we got Farrell, then we got Joey Scar, and now we’ve got Cooper. Not that there’s any mystery about any of them. But she likes something a bit out of the ordinary, does Stella.’

With anyone else, there might have been suggestive overtones in that last sentence. But Ben knew better than to try to be a smartarse about Stella in front of me. I was sure the two of us were the butt of squadroom jokes. Knowing cops, how could we not be? Still, as long as they kept their seedy little routines behind my back, I didn’t much care. The day they dared to try it to my face would be the day I knew I’d lost it. But I planned to make sure that day stayed a long way down the road.

‘Well, she can always pull out the drawers down the morgue and take a look at them when she gets back,’ I said. ‘It’s not like they’re going anywhere.’

Ben laughed. ‘Best place for them. It’s a
pity we can’t put more of the bastards in a mortuary drawer. It would make our job a lot easier.’

I remembered his words when the next body turned up. He couldn’t have been more wrong, as it turned out.