Sweetman flopped back across the bed. ‘Who did it?’
‘No idea.’
‘We need to meet. . usual place. . one hour. . I want Theodore and Tony there. . we’re going to find out who’s responsible and crush the bastard.’ He paused. ‘Does the big man know about this?’
‘I haven’t told him. . but he may know something.’
‘He needs to be informed. . and he needs to be told that I’m back on the case, not fucking running things from a cell, for shit’s sake.’ He hung up and looked at Ginny. ‘Has Grant been coming on to you?’
Donaldson returned to the table and placed the drinks down. Henry looked enviously at his friend’s and wished he wasn’t on call. It was tempting to have just a wee one, but Henry knew it would be a mistake. Even after a pint he tended to drive as though he was Michael Schumacher and he could tell his judgement was impaired even from such a small amount of alcohol. He knew that fine judgement was an essential for an on-call SIO and did not want to take any chances. His own judgement and decision-making had been savagely questioned in the not-too-distant past and he was sharply aware that while several people in the organization were out to knee-cap him he had to be cleaner than clean at all times.
The wide American sat down and glanced around the pub. Henry clocked the sly looks he was attracting from most of the women, the good-looking bastard. Secretly Henry hated him for being such a handsome twat and also because he was such a goody-two-shoes; Karl would never have considered cheating on his wife, whereas Henry, despite his commitment to being such a changed man, remained weak and vulnerable around a pretty face.
‘How’s work?’ Donaldson asked.
‘Fraught,’ Henry admitted after some consideration. ‘Always being watched, always being tested, always being treated with suspicion.’
Donaldson nodded, knowing what Henry was referring to. ‘I thought FB said you’d be working to him? Anything come of that?’
‘Six weeks in and I haven’t had two words from the guy. He’s been too busy being a chief constable, I suppose. Still, he let me get back on the SIO team, so I can’t complain too much, though I do detect an undercurrent of resentment across the force in my direction.’
‘Like you’ve been given some sort of favouritism?’
Henry nodded.
‘Don’t let it get you down. . you’re a good detective.’
‘With a history. . and everyone’s just waiting to see me fall off my pedestal again.’
‘You won’t,’ Donaldson said confidently.
‘We’ll see.’ Henry sipped his lemon and lime, wiped his mouth, raised his eyebrows. ‘You were saying. .’
‘Oh, yeah, developments on the Spanish front. . mm, let me see. . none really after today.’
‘What about your informant?’ Henry probed, aware that the American was playing footsie with a guy very high up in Mendoza’s organization. As a seasoned — some would say ‘long in the tooth’ — detective, Henry knew how fraught informant handling could be, but this was the way in which the FBI had chosen to get to Mendoza, coupled with hi-tech approaches. Other ways had proved disastrous. Two undercover agents had been compromised and then ruthlessly murdered by Mendoza, which was why Donaldson was so focused on the target: Donaldson had personally managed the second u/c operative and when the man — codenamed Zeke — had been discovered and killed, Donaldson had taken it badly, personally. He now wanted Mendoza’s blood and it was becoming an obsession with him, one that Henry hoped would not destroy his friend in the process.
‘Ahh, my informant.’ Donaldson had bought himself a pint of San Miguel lager — a special promotion at the bar — which he raised cynically and toasted.
Whitlock was being held at Rochdale police station, the one with the jurisdiction over that section of the motorway on which the robbery and subsequent discovery of the bodies had occurred. He was only too glad to be sitting alone in a cell, his hands holding his head as his predicament whirled around in his mind like a sandstorm. How had it all happened? How had he been sucked in and duped? How had he got into a position from which it was impossible to extract himself?
He thumped his forehead into the base of his hands, but found this was not doing the trick. He stood up and on trembling legs he walked to the cell wall and began to smack his head against it.
Once Rufus Sweetman had realized he was going to be released from court, the quick plan of the day sketched in his head had been to spend time screwing Ginny — which he had done, though not as successfully as he would have liked; then he planned for them both to go into the city for a meal in Chinatown, then on to one of the clubs in which he held an interest to begin networking again, plan how the new stash would be distributed, then get totally and utterly smashed out of his head.
But suddenly, the goalposts moved.
The loss of the consignment was a major blow. It was a situation that demanded urgent attention.
Following the phone call from Grant, Sweetman dressed quickly. He tossed a couple of hundred pounds at Ginny and told her to go and meet some friends, have a good time, and catch up with him later. Naked, still, she eagerly grabbed the cash and ran giggling into the dressing room.
Sweetman’s face was hard as he pulled on his leather jacket, paused by the mirror and considered his reflection. He had lost a lot of weight whilst inside the joint, but this had given him a razor-sharp edge to his features. His close-cropped hair gave him the appearance of being haunted and desperate. His piercing green eyes stared sunkenly back and he quite liked what he saw. But he wasn’t standing there just to preen himself. He reached out to the edge of the mirror and touched a hidden catch. The mirror swung away from the wall on concealed hinges revealing the front of a push-button safe fitted flush with the wall. He prodded the four-digit number and the safe door opened silently to reveal its innards.
Stashed in there were bundles of tightly packed banknotes, a mix of sterling and euros, sitting on which was a small revolver and two speed loaders. Sweetman pulled out the gun and flicked out the cylinder. It was fully loaded with soft-nosed.38s. A good gun, easy to conceal. He slid it into his waistband at the small of his back, the speed loaders into his pockets, then relocked the safe, pushing the mirror back into place.
Then he ran his hand over his hair and gave himself the final once-over. ‘Definitely back in business,’ he said.
Karl Donaldson could have reeled off every known fact about the Spaniard: that he was believed to be one of Europe’s most successful criminals, that his wealth could be counted in millions and that most of his money had come from human suffering, be it drugs, illegal immigration, gambling, whoring or guns. That he was fluent in Italian and English. Donaldson could even tell you the Spaniard’s current mobile-phone number from memory. He knew that Mendoza’s tightly run organization dealt in everything on a big scale. He was known to have close links with the Sicilian Mafia and their American brethren. It had been those connections which had brought Mendoza to the attention of the FBI and caused two agents to be infiltrated into the organization — which ended up with those two agents dead. Donaldson was confident that the contract killer who had actually pulled the trigger had been dealt with, but that still left Mendoza, the man at the top, the man who drove it all. Mendoza was also suspected of ordering the assassination of a gangster from the north-west of England, a young man called Marty Cragg, who had welched on debts to Mendoza. He had been murdered at the same time and place as the second of the undercover FBI agents, and this double murder was still an ongoing investigation being handled by Lancashire police. However, because of its lack of success, it was being scaled down. . something else which made Donaldson even more determined to nail Mendoza.
There was no way in which another undercover officer would ever be put into Mendoza’s organization again, so other methods were being used against him, one of which was to cultivate informants who could provide damning evidence against him. . hopefully.