Dead if You Don’t

72

Sunday 13 August

11.00–12.00

‘Long night, officers?’ Jorgji Dervishi asked, politely, from behind his desk, seated as he was when Norman Potting and Velvet Wilde had first been here yesterday, the stub of a cigar in the ashtray. The room smelled of stale cigar smoke.

‘You could say that,’ Wilde replied.

Peering at Potting, Dervishi said, ‘No time to shave, eh?’ He grinned. ‘I could be a detective, right — your Sherlock Holmes might have noticed a detail like this!’

‘Mr Dervishi,’ Potting said, without responding to the remark, ‘we wish to talk to your son, Aleksander, again.’

‘You may,’ he said, ‘as soon as my lawyer is here.’

Potting shook his head, holding up a clutch of documents. ‘As I told you last night, we can either do this the easy way for you or the hard way.’

Dervishi playfully rotated his artificial hand again. ‘Is that right? Would you be threatening me?’

Potting leaned forward into Dervishi’s face and placed the document he was holding on his desk. ‘I have here a search warrant for this house. I can also call up the Local Support Team, who you saw last night, and we can take your house apart, and arrest you and your son. Your choice.’

‘And exactly what grounds do you have for arresting Aleksander and me?’

‘For your son, conspiracy to kidnap. For you, Mr Dervishi, a young woman, travelling on a false passport, with her intestines packed with cocaine with a street value of over £300,000, who died at Gatwick Airport yesterday evening. In her possession was a mobile phone with just one number programmed into the SIM card. It is of an ex-directory landline at a kebab house in Brighton that you own. Now, giving you the benefit of the doubt as a fine, upstanding local businessman, I’d like to think you would know nothing about this.’

‘You would be correct.’

‘Good, I am very pleased to hear that — although my governor might beg to differ. But let’s park that, shall we — and just have a chat with your son?’

After a moment’s reluctant hesitation, Dervishi pressed his intercom button, picked up his phone and said, ‘Mirlinda, bring Aleksander in here.’

A few minutes later, Dervishi’s wife, dressed in a purple tracksuit and slippers, her face pasty white without make-up, brought in a tearful Aleksander. He was wearing a Star Wars top and tracksuit bottoms. The pair sat on a studded leather sofa to the right of the two detectives. The woman looked scared.

As the two detectives had prearranged, Velvet Wilde spoke gently to the young lad.

‘Aleksander, your friend Mungo is in big trouble. The little joke that you and he plotted to play on Mungo’s dad has backfired and now we believe his life is in very serious danger. Are you willing to help us find him?’

The boy nodded, desolate.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘We know you had help getting him away from the Amex Stadium and driving you to that derelict farmhouse at Beddingham — Valbone and two men you say you didn’t know. Can you tell us where they are now? But first, I need to caution you, and as we’re carrying out an urgent interview to save life, I intend to continue here, rather than taking you to the police station.’

Aleksander sat twisting his hands together and staring down at them as if his life depended on doing this.

She prodded, still gentle. ‘Aleksander?’

He continued twisting his hands.

‘You’re not in trouble, Aleksander. We know you just did something silly and you probably thought it was a laugh, but now we believe Mungo’s life is in real danger, we need you to help us save him.’

His voice came out as a whisper. ‘Yes.’

She smiled at him. ‘Was there anyone else who was involved with you?’

He looked at her, then his father, then his mother. ‘I–I can’t — can’t get them into trouble.’

‘Tell her,’ his father commanded.

His face reddened, and he began crying.

‘Tell her!’ his father said again, more harshly.

‘Jorgji!’ Mirlinda tried to calm him. ‘He’s very upset.’

‘Yes? I’m upset, too. Tell her!’ he said again to Aleksander. ‘Tell the police officer otherwise you are going to be arrested and go to prison.’

‘No!’ his wife cried out.

‘It was just Valbone,’ the tearful boy whispered. ‘As I told you already, just Valbone and the two men I didn’t know.’

Valbone and Dritan had always been good to Aleksander, whereas his father’s other security guards treated him contemptuously. He hadn’t been able to help telling them about Valbone, but he was still determined to protect Dritan’s identity — and he genuinely did not know who the other man was.

Fuming, Dervishi stabbed the intercom then shouted into it, ‘Dritan! Come in here right away!’ Then he picked up his phone and hit a speed-dial button. He left an angry message. ‘Valbone, I’ve left five messages for you, where are you? Call me right away.’

The smaller of the two men who had let Potting and Wilde in last night came into the office. He was dressed all in black, as he had been before, with the coiled earpiece.

‘This is Dritan Nano,’ Dervishi said, by way of introduction, and turned to the man. ‘Dritan, these are two detectives from Sussex Police. Can you please tell them where Valbone is?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, boss. Valbone bring Aleksander home about half one this morning, then later he say to me he need cigarettes and is going out to buy some from a garage. When I wake this morning he no here.’

‘What vehicle would he have been driving?’ Norman Potting asked him.

‘One of the Range Rovers.’

‘You have the registration number?’

As soon as he was given it, Potting texted it through to the Intel suite, asking for an urgent ANPR trace on it.

‘Is there anything else you can tell me, Aleksander?’ Wilde asked the very scared-looking boy.

Before replying, he looked at his father, then his mother. ‘No,’ he whispered.