‘Indeed.’
Lopez extracted some papers which he scanned quickly. ‘Legit first,’ he said. ‘Acquisition of land south of the town. . some pressure needed to be applied.’ He smirked. ‘The pressure worked and the contracts were signed. . and you need to sign, also.’
Mendoza nodded.
‘Bulldozers will be clearing the site within three weeks.’
‘Good, good.’
‘Also the supermarket acquisition is going well. . the present owner has seen the error of his ways. .’ Lopez continued the briefing of his boss, who, he noticed, seemed only to be half-listening, slightly distracted. He continued, despite this. ‘Forty more en route to Zeebrugge,’ Lopez said, moving on to criminal matters. ‘That should gross four hundred thousand sterling. . twenty crossed yesterday, together with the other merchandise. . we haven’t heard about that yet. . but the money should start filtering through soon.’
‘That is good. . how is the cash flow?’
‘OK,’ Lopez said, but not with gusto.
‘You hesitate.’
‘There is a lot of money tied up in property. We are still borrowing. We need the drug money to help us out, otherwise certain people will become restless.’
Mendoza held up a weary hand. ‘I know. . but the omens are good, aren’t they?’
Lopez nodded. ‘Si.’
The maid brought out coffee and rolls for him and the two other guys.
‘I have been thinking,’ Mendoza said, ‘my mind has been wandering, as it often does. . I was thinking about Verner again. . I am still unsettled as to how he met his death. . have we made any further inroads into that situation?’
Lopez shifted on the pool-side chair and wished he hadn’t moved an inch. He cleared his throat, then wished he hadn’t done that either. Mendoza had noticed both things, things which betrayed inner tensions.
‘No, nothing yet. I have our contacts all over Europe probing and asking, but nothing has come out yet.’ Lopez screwed up his face.
‘Verner was a good operative,’ Mendoza said. He was so good that he had murdered over a dozen people on behalf of Mendoza and had been about to dispose of another — John Lloyd Wickson, an entrepreneur from the north of England who had tried to wriggle out of his obligations — when he himself had been assassinated by someone who remained, as yet, unidentified. ‘What concerns me,’ Mendoza said thoughtfully, ‘is that I do not know who could possibly have known Verner’s location on that night. . it worries me, as you know.’
Lopez felt his throat constrict.
‘Only you and I knew — isn’t that correct?’
Lopez nodded.
‘But clearly someone else did too?’
Lopez emitted a stuttery breath. ‘I think he may have got careless. He must have been followed for several weeks. . one of our rivals, is my guess. I won’t rest until I find out who, you can trust me on that.’
Mendoza fixed his second-in-command with a glare laced with acid. ‘When you find them, they must die, do you understand that?’
‘Si.’
‘Good. . now, where were we?’
With a hand which wobbled slightly, Lopez reached into the briefcase to extract more papers.
Henry tutted as he glanced skywards and saw the clouds beginning to thicken and threaten rain. ‘Please don’t,’ he whispered, knowing that if a downpour came it would destroy evidence. He had already got specialists up to the scene: a team from the divisional operational support unit were already planning how they would get a fingertip search underway, spreading out from the body; CSIs were in attendance looking for tyre tracks and doing their usual stuff with the body; scientific support were there and the Home Office pathologist was en route. Lots of other people were coming too, not least Dave Anger and the detective inspector who had been on night duty regarding the domestic murder in Bacup; the chief constable had also intimated that he would be putting in an appearance at some stage, as well as the ACC Operations. Henry was also negotiating the numbers of detectives for the murder team and also a location from where the investigation could be run.
There were many things to consider and Henry did not want to miss anything, especially as everything he did would be under the microscope.
‘I’m impressed,’ Jane Roscoe said, ‘you’ve got it all under control.’
Henry regarded her cynically. Before they had embarked on their ill-fated affair, she had thought of him as one of the best detectives she had ever met. Now, it seemed, she thought he was an incompetent idiot. He was about to open his mouth and tell her something he would regret, but he bit his tongue — literally — to stop his mouth from spouting before his brain got into gear. Instead, he decided to spend a few minutes in deep thought. The last hour had been task, task, task, but now he needed to have a bit of cogitation.
He gave Roscoe a wink and turned away from her, strolling back to where the body lay — using the now well-trodden, but carefully chosen and slightly circuitous route that had been decided everyone approaching the scene would use. This led Henry to the taped cordon which actually surrounded the immediate vicinity of the victim. This was an area that no one was allowed into, unless specifically authorized, the most protected area of all. Henry, even though in charge, did not cross this line. The fewer people the better was the best policy until everything forensically and scientifically had been done.
He knew that crime scenes were precious and that at every scene the offender leaves messages behind indicating motivation and drive for the crime and that investigators must try in their minds to reconstruct what has happened. The crime-scene assessment recognizes that when a murder is committed, three elements exist which are coincidental in time — namely, location, victim and offender. Henry knew that the process of concentrating on the relationship between these three elements can be crucial in the development of lines of enquiry.
Henry looked at the unidentified body lying in the grass. Burned to a crisp from the shins upwards, the skin blackened like overgrilled steak, the surrounding land charred. The body was unrecognizable but Henry could tell it was a man, which was a good start. Obviously he had been brought up to this out-of-the-way place and set alight, probably with petrol as the accelerant. Was he dead before being brought here, or had he been murdered here then set alight? The crime-scene examiners would be able to guess at that and the pathologist would confirm it.
And why here? In the middle of nowhere? Yet no attempt had been made to hide the body. . why here, on the boundary between Lancashire and Greater Manchester? Was that significant?
And who the hell was the poor victim? When the ident was made, that would give one almighty thrust to the inquiry, but Henry knew that whilst the ID was critical, it shouldn’t be rushed at the expense of anything else.
In Henry’s experience, this type of killing occurred in two areas — not to say they were exclusive — but he knew of several gangland murders in which the victims had been set alight, and also of several Asian family killings where victims had been burned.
Henry hoped it would be neither, but if he had a choice he would go for the gangland killing any day. This type of killing was usually driven by simple motives — business deals gone wrong, debts unpaid, whatever. . but Asian murders were far more complex to deal with and were usually related to family matters that could be impenetrable.
If he had been asked to make a guess, he would have said this was probably gang-related and that most of the work he and his team would have to undertake would be in Manchester. Not rocket science by any means.
‘Thoughts?’
Henry spun. Roscoe was behind him.
‘To quote from the Murder Investigation Manual,’ Henry said haughtily, ‘“Why, plus where, plus how, equals who,” and the old maxim, “Find out how a person lived and you will find out how they died.”’