‘Nice one, Prof,’ Henry said.
One of the problems in being a nomad investigator, going out to divisions all the time, was that you always had to find office space to make phone calls, or to get some sleep. It really was like being a nomad in some ways. Henry managed to find an empty office and slid in behind the desk into a big, comfy chair. He leafed through his pocket diary, found the number he needed, swung his ankles up on to the edge of the desk and picked up the phone. He punched in the number. And waited for the reply.
‘FBI Legal Attache Karl Donaldson speaking. How may I help you?’
‘I wish we could get our bloody employees to answer phones like that,’ Henry said.
Donaldson recognized the voice immediately. ‘Henry! You wearin’ your cloth cap and clogs?’
‘I am that, lad,’ he replied, dropping into his best broad Lancashire. ‘Eeh, look, I can see a red London bus drivin’ past and I can ’ear Big Ben chimin’ away — an’ look over yonder, it’s a London copper rockin’ up an’ dahn on his toes.’
Donaldson chuckled. ‘Actually I can see a London bus, but there are no coppers about these days.’
He and Henry had met several years earlier on a case Donaldson was dealing with in the north-west, when he was a field agent, concerning Mafia activities. Since then they had worked together on several occasions and had become very close friends, though they had not spoken to each other for a couple of months now. They exchanged a few pleasantries, gossiped about families and proposed holidays, then the American cut to the chase.
‘You only call me when you need me, H. What is it this time?’
Henry explained about the double murder with one unidentified victim with the mouthful of American-style dental work. ‘I was wondering. .’ he said hopefully.
‘Fast track? Sure, why not? What have you got?’
‘Description, photographs of dead person — not nice — fingerprints, dental observations. We’re waiting for a DNA profile.’
‘Fax ’em down and I’ll put them through our system as soon as I get ’em.’
‘Thanks, pal. They’re on their way.’ From his experience of life, Henry knew it wasn’t what you know but who you know that gets results.
It was good to have such a direct and personal connection into American law enforcement. It gave Henry access to FBI computers, albeit unofficially. His relationship with Donaldson, though well known in the higher ranks of Lancashire Constabulary, was not something he boasted about. He kept it to himself, knowledge being power.
He sat back and literally twiddled his thumbs, impatient already for a result from the information he had sent to Donaldson. ‘Get a grip,’ he told himself. ‘Even a fast track will take time.’
He riffled through his pockets and found a folded piece of paper from a jotting pad. He opened it and flattened it out. It was his ‘To Do’ list written with the splendid assistance of Mr Jack Daniels. One thing that sprang out that he could have done before was the item ‘four in a car’. The suspicious motor he had seen near to Ray Cragg’s home with four people on board. He dialled the PNC bureau and requested a check on the number he had committed to memory. The reply came back within seconds. Henry closed his eyes in despair. He sighed and kicked himself.
The car had been stolen from London two days earlier. The cop in him was extremely pissed off at having missed the opportunity to make an arrest. But more than that was the question burning in his mind: what was it doing there, within yards of one of the country’s biggest drug dealers? With four shady characters on board? What were they up to? Did it have anything to do with Marty Cragg’s untimely demise?
As soon as he had finished the call from Henry, the internal phone on Donaldson’s desk rang and he was summoned into Philippa Bottram’s office to discuss the progress of a case being run jointly with the Metropolitan Police. As the American left his office he heard his fax machine start up and much as he would have liked to wait for it to spew out the stuff from Henry Christie, he did not wish to incur his boss’s ire. With a ‘Damn’ under his breath he closed the door behind him and strode to her office down the corridor for what he knew would be a long meeting.
‘Just give me a break,’ Jack Burrows pleaded. Ray had been questioning her incessantly for over an hour, insisting she tell him exactly what Marty had been up to on the side to get himself into so much trouble and debt. ‘I don’t know, okay?’
‘You were fucking him.’
‘No, I was not,’ she said. ‘We were friends, that’s all. I’m with you, Ray. You’re my partner, not him. He never was, we just talked.’
‘Just talked? Just fucked, more like.’
Ray was beginning to steam up now. Burrows could see him starting to bubble and she knew she needed him calm. Otherwise she would be facing another beating and she wasn’t strong enough to maintain her lies. If he laid into her again, she would be unable to keep going and she was frightened that if she blabbed the truth about her and Marty she would end up as dead as him.
‘We never fucked,’ she said. ‘Never.’
An hour later and Henry still had not received any reply from London. Not that he expected a result but an acknowledgement that the faxed papers had been received would have been nice. He had spent the hour reviewing paperwork, so it had not been wasted, but he was eager to hear from his American chum because it would mean that something was actually being done to identify the unknown male. Henry knew that unless he could put a name to a face, this murder investigation might stall at the first bend. He needed to know quickly who the guy was. He almost picked up the phone to castigate the Yank, but thought better of it.
Instead he plumped for a trip to the canteen, although he was slightly reluctant to leave the quiet office he had discovered just in case he lost squatter’s rights.
Donaldson shook hands with the Metropolitan Police Commander, who had been a major player in the meeting which concerned Yardie activities linked to a Colombian drug cartel, linked to organized crime in Miami — hence the American involvement — and showed him to the elevator. Once he stepped in and was on his way down, Donaldson returned to Bottram’s office.
She was leaning back in her chair, waiting for him, tapping her pen on her desk top. Her breasts were pushed up tight against her blouse.
‘Worthwhile?’ she asked as he took his seat.
‘Certainly promising,’ Donaldson concurred. ‘We’ll all come out of it smelling of roses, I’d guess.’
‘Mm.’ She eyed him less than professionally. ‘Can you stay in the city tonight, Karl?’
His eyes grew wide.
‘Business,’ she said quickly. Too quickly. ‘Need you to meet the new Foreign Secretary. There’s a bit of a bash at number 10 Downing Street and I’m invited, plus guest. It would probably be in your interests,’ she said with an undercurrent to her voice. She didn’t have to add it might be professional suicide to refuse. But Donaldson was not daunted.
‘Too short notice — babysitting duties tonight.’ He tried to look sad, but there was no way in which he was going to end up alone with her in the big bad city.
‘I see,’ she said shortly, an icy disappointment on her face. ‘I’ll have to find someone else, then.’
He did not respond to that, but raised the cheeks of his bottom off his chair in a ‘Can I go now?’ gesture.
‘Heard anything from Zeke yet?’
He sat back heavily. ‘Nothing.’