Alec felt the wind in his hair as he walked from a sandwich shop called ‘The Filling Station’. It was clean and the food was always fresh. He had invested in a chicken, bacon and mayo sub with jalapeno chillies and extra chilli sauce. His stomach was rumbling; he wasn’t sure if it was hunger or stress causing the gurgling. The Parker murder was as complicated as a case could be, but it was the thought of his wife packing her bags which left him feeling sick inside. He knew the next forty-eight hours would be crucial to cracking the case and the opportunities to eat would be few, and far between. The spicy sub would supply him with some sustenance to keep him going. Once the case was under control, he would go and talk to Gail and sort things out. He needed to push her up his list of priorities. She was correct though. There would be another Louise Parker, another big case. There always was another case. Maybe she was better off away from him where she could have the life she deserved with a man who could give her the attention she deserved. Maybe not. He was debating the why and wherefore of his marriage when his Blackberry buzzed. The screen displayed Will’s number calling.
“Hi, Will, what’s up?” It was twenty minutes since they had spoken.
“I’ve had a very interesting telephone conversation, guv!”
Alec unlocked the driver’s door and climbed into the seat. He placed the sub on the passenger seat and closed the door. “Oh, really, who with?”
“Jessie James. He wants to speak to you.”
“Well, we need to speak to him, did you tell him to come into the station?”
“He won’t come in, guv. He wants to meet you alone,” Will explained. “Jessie sounded frightened and stressed on the phone. He will be at the Mersey View at three o’clock this afternoon. I said that I would let you know.”
“Did he give you anything on the telephone?” Alec asked as he worked out the route to the Mersey View in his mind. If he took the coast road over the Runcorn Bridge, he would be there fifteen minutes before three, as long as the traffic was clear. The Mersey View was a hotel perched on the top of Frodsham hill, a huge sandstone outcrop whichhad been a cliff at the edge of the sea centuries ago, before the sea level had dropped. It offered a view over the River Mersey at its widest point and the mountains of Snowdon beyond. Alec remembered that the road to the hotel was steep and winding. He had been there many times with his wife when they were courting. A twinge of guilt pricked him as he thought of the last time he had taken her anywhere for dinner. He couldn’t remember when it had been. It was no wonder she was leaving him.
“Not really, guv, but he sounded frightened,” Will said.
“Interesting. Have we rounded up the others from the poker game?” Alec asked.
“Most of them are on their way in. There’s no sign of Leon Tanner or Jinx Cotton, but we’re tracking them down.”
“Call him back and tell him that if he isn’t prepared to come in, then I am too busy to meet with him.” Alec didn’t want to meet a known lag on the back of one phone call. Nine times out of ten when a villain asked for a covert meeting, they were trying to get a deal. Alec didn’t make deals with criminals.
“I thought you would say that, guv,” Will laughed. “I told him to come in if he wanted to talk to you, but then he threw in a sweetener.”
“How sweet?” Alec chuckled. This was getting interesting.
“He said he has the CCTV tapes from the club on the night of the fire,” Will explained.
“Okay. Good, I’ll drive over there, might be worth an hour of my valuable time. I’ll call you when I’ve finished with Mr. James.” Alec tucked the phone under his chin and started the engine. “Hopefully he will shine some light on what happened that night.”
“Okay, guv. I’ll oversee the interviews here as they come in. Talk to you later.” Will hung up. Alec put the mobile on the passenger seat next to the sandwich and pulled into the traffic. He mulled over the questions he needed to ask Jessie and decided he would wait to see what he wanted. It was unusual for a man like Jessie to come to the police voluntarily. He was in trouble. Someone had cut the tops of his ears off. That kind of thing had a habit of influencing people. Jessie was on the periphery of a dangerous world where the animals all had teeth. If you lived there, sooner or later one of them would bite you.
The traffic was light and moving freely as he drove toward the View. It was a sunny afternoon and the breeze was moving the branches on the trees. Alec reflected on the Parker murder and tried to connect it to the nightclub. The link was Salim Oguzhan. It had to be. Louise Parker had been seeing him and the killer had butchered her. Salim was missing and somebody had robbed and torched his nightclub. Could it all be a string of coincidences? Alec didn’t think so. As he turned onto the car park, he looked at the scattering of vehicles. None of them looked familiar or suspect. Jessie was sitting in the driver’s seat of a silver Ford Focus. His head was bandaged, making him look ridiculous. Alec parked next to him. The big Welshman looked washed out. He had dark circles beneath his eyes and the whites were bloodshot. Jessie got out of the Ford and moved gingerly toward the BMW. It was obvious his injuries were restricting his movement. He looked much older than the last time Alec had seen him. He had a disc in his right hand.
“Detective,” Jessie said as he ducked into the passenger seat. The car rocked as he wriggled his big frame into the car. “Sorry for the cloak and dagger shit, but if anyone knew I was talking to you I would already be dead. Could we just drive around, please?”
“Fine, but let’s get one thing straight,” Alec turned to him as he spoke and looked him in the eyes. Jessie looked terrified. “Whatever you say to me is on the record, Jessie. Is that understood?”
“Whatever, Detective,” Jessie shrugged. “Things can’t get any worse.”
“Okay.” Alec reversed the car and headed toward the exit. “What’s on your mind?”
“I’m not sure where to start.” Jessie bit his lip and looked out of the side window. His eyes looked watery. “I am in deep shit, inspector, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Start at the beginning, Jessie.”
“You know who I work for, don’t you?”
“The Oguzhan family.”
“Correct, and you will be aware of their reputation?” Jessie felt stupid, but he wasn’t sure how to explain his predicament without sounding like a grass. Talking to the police was taboo, but he had no other options.
“Yes, Jessie,” Alec shook his head and sighed. “Every police officer in the country knows the family name. What is the problem?”
“They have Rose.” A tear ran from Jessie’s left eye and he wiped it away quickly. “They’re going to kill her.”
“Rose is your wife?”
“Yes, sorry, I thought you knew her.”
“I think I met her at the club once when we were looking for you.” Alec looked for a reaction. He laughed, trying to lighten the tension. Jessie looked like he was at breaking point. “I think you were a witness to a serious assault if I remember correctly, but you couldn’t recall the incident when we spoke to you.”
“You are going back a few years, inspector,” Jessie nodded his head and smiled. “You never did let that one drop.”
“I can’t let anything drop, Jessie, or there would be bad guys running riot.”
“I think they still do run riot, no matter what you do.” Jessie stopped smiling as he thought about the men who were holding his wife captive.
“Sometimes I think we are fighting a losing battle, but we will never stop fighting it, Jessie. We can’t.”
“Don’t you ever get sick of dealing with murderers and scum?”
“Yes,” Alec nodded. “I do, but I never get sick of locking them up.” Alec was a tenacious detective and his reputation was in the underworld was fierce. The bad guys did not want Alec Ramsay on their case. “Do you remember the Shah family?”
“Yes, I remember them.” Jessie looked at Alec. There were similarities between them and his employers.
“Ten years ago, they were as big as the Oguzhan family are now,” Alec guided the car through the narrow lanes as he spoke. “Now they are all either dead or serving life.”
“You have a good memory.”
“All part of the job,” Alec laughed. “Why would the Oguzhan family want to kill your wife?” Alec looked across at the Welshman. He was obviously skirting around the reasons why the Oguzhan cartel had his wife. It could be any number of things. They were a nasty bunch with a reputation for brutality, but they tended to look after their employees, too. Something had made them turn on Jessie and his wife.
“It’s complicated.” Jessie didn’t want to incriminate himself, but he had to tell Alec everything for Rose’s sake. Her life depended on it. He was past caring about what happened to him.
“I am assuming you need my help to find your wife alive?” Alec asked.
“Yes, that’s why I’m here.” Jessie hung his head on his chest. He looked like a broken man. “I’ve brought the CCTV footage from that night as a peace offering.”
“Okay, that’s a start, but you realise that this is evidence and there will be no deals cut with you?”
“Yes. I want Rose back unharmed and I want out of that shithole club for good.” Jessie didn’t have a clue what they would do if they walked away from the nightclub. It had been their life for over a decade. He didn’t know anything but running pubs and clubs. The future would be uncertain, but as long as he had Rose, then they could move on together. “I can’t do it anymore.”
“I don’t think you were ever really cut out for the gangster lifestyle, Jessie.” Alec looked at him. He dealt with hardcore criminals every day and Jessie didn’t fit the bill. He was a big man with a reputation, but Alec saw a gentleman beneath the hard exterior.
“No, I don’t suppose I ever was, really.” Jessie looked the police officer in the eyes and tried to smile. “Jessie James, host to the gangsters and criminal elite. It’s a fucking joke.”
“I guess we all have to make a living, Jessie, some people choose to become plumbers and others chose a different path.” Alec looked at him again. “Is it true about you?”
“Is what true?” Jessie frowned, confused.
“Why they call you Jessie James.”
Jessie laughed and a tear ran down his face. “Now that is a classic.”
“How so?” Alec smiled.
“There was a local hard nut in the club one night.” Jessie took a packet of Lamberts from his pocket. “Can I smoke?”
“Go ahead. Just open the window a little.” Alec opened his window a few inches too.
“Thanks.” Jessie lit the cigarette and inhaled the soothing smoke. “He was a lunatic called Eugene Wells. Have you heard of him?”
“Yes,” Alec laughed. “They fished him out of the Mersey about six years back, right?”
“Right, you do have a good memory.”
“I locked him up in the nineties. He did a five stretch for armed robbery.”
“Yes, I remember him going down.” Jessie flicked the Lambert out of the window and exhaled the smoke. “Well, he kicked off in the club one night and the doormen moved in.” Jessie laughed as he recalled the night. “He dropped three of them without blinking and the others were too scared to go near him.”
“I remember he took a few officers down when they arrested him. He was a handful alright.”
“Well, we had a standoff and I was pissed off with him. I put a gun to his head and asked him to leave. He went without another word and never came back.”
“Smith and Wesson revolver?” Alec laughed.
“Yes, a very good replica!” Jessie laughed again. “I’ve never owned a real gun in my life, but the story spread quickly and it didn’t do my reputation any harm. All of a sudden, I was Jessie James.” They both laughed at the story.
“What would you have done if he had called your bluff?”
“Who knows?” Jessie stopped laughing. “I am no tough guy, superintendent.”
Alec nodded. “Do you think the Oguzhan family is serious about killing Rose?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then you need to tell me everything, Jessie. Otherwise we cannot help.”
“It started at the club the other night,” Jessie began. He took a deep breath and sighed.
“On the night of the fire?”
“Yes. There was a robbery.”
“At the club?”
“At the poker game,” Jessie corrected him.
“I am intrigued.” Alec laughed at the thought of the city’s villains being robbed. “What happened?”
“The game was ticking along nicely when there was a bit of friction over a hand,” Jessie recounted.
“Between who?”
“Jinx Cotton and Leon Tanner. They always have an attitude with each other. They hate each other with a vengeance, but that night, Leon pushed all in and Jinx suckered him with four of a kind. Leon was pissed off and got nasty.”
“How much did he lose?” Alec asked. In his mind, he could see Leon scowling as he lost his money. The man was always scowling. Alec couldn’t stand the man. He was connected to crystal meth dealing and prostitution, but so far, he had avoided prosecution.
“Twenty grand in total.”
Alec whistled. That was a lot of money in anyone’s world, even to a drug dealer like Leon Tanner. “I can see why he would be pissed off.”
“That’s the price of the ticket to sit down at the game,” Jessie explained. “I won twice my yearly salary last year playing in that game. It’s usually a good-natured game, sometimes there is a bit of banter, but nothing too heavy.”
“What happened then?” Alec didn’t see the connection between Leon losing and a robbery. He frowned and his forehead creased with the deep lines that lived there.
“Two men came through the cellar door while we were distracted by the argument. They had Uzi.s.” Jessie paused for effect.
“Uzis?” There were automatic weapons on the streets, but it was still a shock when they were used in robberies. Alec swallowed hard. “Go on,” he prompted. He concentrated on the road while he listened to Jessie talking, who seemed to be relaxing a little.
“They chained up the doors to the club and herded us against the wall. Then they asked me for the combination to the safe where the poker kitty was kept.”
“What do you mean?” Alec frowned again. “You didn’t play with cash?”
“No. We put all the money into a safe beneath the table while the game went on. We play with chips.”