‘Absolutely pure,’ says Chris.
‘And so you will be able to arrest Mitch Maxwell also,’ says Ibrahim.
‘I’d say that’s a result,’ says Ron. He motions over to the Daihatsu, and Bogdan emerges to bring Nina to them.
Jill meets them halfway, reads Nina her rights, cuffs her and leads her to the squad car.
Chris looks at Bogdan. ‘This lot lying to us, I understand. But you must have known you were due here at two?’
‘1.52,’ says Bogdan.
‘But you lied to us anyway?’ Chris continues. ‘You lied to Donna?’
Bogdan looks at Donna.
‘He didn’t lie to me,’ says Donna. ‘I knew too. Garth was the only one Nina would confess to. And without the confession we had nothing. I would have done anything to get her. Kuldesh was the first person who knew Bogdan was in love with me.’
‘I told a guy at the gym too,’ says Bogdan.
‘Don’t spoil it, baby,’ says Donna.
Chris looks at the motley crew in front of him. Ron and Ibrahim, Donna and Bogdan. He shakes his head.
‘And where’s the box?’ he asks.
‘Elizabeth needs it,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I hope that’s enough for you to forgive us?’
87
Hanif looks at his watch, and finishes his coffee. Mitch Maxwell isn’t coming. He’s not suddenly going to walk into the Gatwick Radisson holding the box.
So be it. Hanif had come up with the whole scheme. Sayed had had an offer for the box, from a Swedish guy who lived in Staffordshire with ten million burning a hole in his pocket. Rather than going to the trouble of finding some elaborate new route to smuggle it in, why not just send it through their regular chain? If they’d told Mitch and Luca what it was, they’d have asked for a cut. He actually should have cut them in; in retrospect, they might have taken a bit more care. Although Hanif is starting to hear that they’d been having trouble with shipments, so, really, he shouldn’t have trusted them at all.
A young cousin of Hanif had been tasked with following the box every step of the way, and retrieving it from Luca Buttaci. Hanif had even bought his cousin a motorbike for his troubles. But then the box went missing, and his cousin was only following ghosts.
Hanif had messed up, that was the long and short of it. Thought he was being clever, but didn’t do his homework. Everybody lost money, everybody died, and it was all because of him.
Still, you can’t go round apologizing for every little mistake, can you? That way lies madness. The chaos that follows in your wake is not your responsibility.
If he flies back to Afghanistan, he will be killed too, and so, on reflection, Hanif will stay in London, out of Sayed’s reach. The heroin trade has been a steep learning curve, not to mention very, very lucrative, but perhaps it is now time to take what he has learned and do something new? Fresh start, clean sheet, no regrets.
A friend from university has offered him a job at a hedge fund, and someone he met at the party suggested he go into politics and offered to make a few introductions.
Nice to have options.
88
Caroline kills people for Connie, always has done. If you need her, you call the number for a launderette in Southwick and ask for a service wash. She’s quick, she’s reliable, and she’s a breath of fresh air in a traditionally male-dominated industry.
Connie is emailing her with a bit of good news. Somebody else has murdered Luca Buttaci for them. Connie’s emails are all encrypted by a highly sophisticated piece of software that is illegal in every single country in the world except Venezuela. Naturally Caroline will keep the 50 per cent engagement fee for the job, as per their usual agreement.
Connie and Caroline have been very busy recently.
You have to spot opportunity when it falls into your lap. That’s how Connie has got where she is today. Not in prison, that part was unfortunate, but the leading cocaine dealer on the South Coast of England.
And now, as she reads another email from Sayed in Afghanistan, the leading heroin dealer too.
But Connie feels guilty. And she is struggling to work out why. She feels guilty, and she recognizes that this is a new emotion for her. She doesn’t like it one bit, but, for once, she will not hide from it. Do what Ibrahim says, let it all in. Sit with it, even if it’s painful for you. And the guilt is painful for her.
It all started when Ibrahim told her about Kuldesh.
Connie is very glad they caught the woman who killed Kuldesh, she really is. He wasn’t in the business, was he? If you’re in the business, you expect someone’s going to shoot you at some point. Comes with the territory. But Kuldesh just got involved in something he shouldn’t have. Connie prides herself on knowing everything, but even she hadn’t known who shot Kuldesh. No one in the drugs world seemed to have a clue about it, and now she understands why. It wasn’t anything to do with drugs.
But from the moment Ibrahim told her about Kuldesh, she had started planning. Mitch and Dom were in trouble already, and this had unbalanced them still further. Connie had sensed their weakness, sensed the opportunity to take their business, and gone on the attack. She had decided to kill Dom Holt the moment Ibrahim told her the story. Two hours later she was on the phone to that launderette in Southwick.
She remembers she and Ibrahim had had a discussion about whether killing someone and paying someone else to kill someone were the same thing. They had agreed to differ, but perhaps Ibrahim had been right.
Caroline had killed Dom Holt for her; she had subcontracted the killing of Maxwell’s third-in-command, Lenny Bright; and Luca Buttaci had been next on the list.
Samantha Barnes had come to visit her. With the same idea as Connie. She had suggested a partnership. Connie had listened, recognized some of the benefits that Samantha and Garth could bring to the business, and promised Samantha she would think about it. They shook hands, and minutes later Connie was on the phone to the launderette again. Word is the police actually think that Nina Mishra killed Samantha too. Poor Nina. Though, in Connie’s experience, when you start killing people you do tend to get stereotyped. Comes with the job.
When Caroline killed Samantha, she had intended to kill Garth at the same time, but he hadn’t come into the house. Must have been spooked by something. Fair enough, the Canadian fella clearly has a survival instinct. Now he was out of the country, so he’s a loose end that might need tidying up someday.
But why is she feeling guilty?
Everyone Caroline killed was in the business, so that’s not what Connie feels guilty about. They would all have killed her if the situation had been reversed.
The contracts with Sayed are signed, and she is now a major heroin importer, but that’s not what she feels guilty about either. Someone is going to import heroin, so why not her?
In truth she knows. Of course she knows. She has lied to Ibrahim. Worse than that, she has used him. She had wanted to say sorry when he left the other day, but she doesn’t yet have the words. Connie is not sure she has ever said sorry and meant it. Her florist had organized flowers for him, but that’s not saying sorry either.
Connie shuts her eyes. She tries to think about Garth, running loose. He’ll find out at some point that Connie ordered his wife’s death, and he’ll come looking for her. That’s fine – Connie enjoys thinking about that sort of thing. Garth v Connie, that’ll be a battle worth watching.
But the images of Garth keep getting replaced by images of Ibrahim, his kind eyes and his gentle soul. His belief in her. She tries to concentrate on guns, and drugs, and chaos, but Ibrahim’s kindness is stronger.