Dead if You Don’t

44

Saturday 12 August

20.30–21.30

Saturday night at Tosca Ristorante in Shoreham was in full swing, with every table taken by locals or residents of Brighton and Hove, just a few miles to the east, who had made the short journey here.

The entrance to the place, which served some of the best Italian food in the county, was on the buzzing Shoreham High Street and the long, narrow room stretched back to an open terrace overlooking the River Adur. Its proprietor, Enver Godanci, an energetic, bespectacled man of forty-five, sporting designer stubble and wearing a blue-and-white polka-dot shirt loose over black chinos, ran between his kitchen and his customers, anxiously supervising everything, ensuring, as he did every night, that his growing legion of regulars was happy.

Business was booming, so much so that he had bought the next-door building and knocked through, creating a second dining area, which was tonight filled with Albanians, celebrating at a party he regularly hosted for his fellow countrymen who lived locally. Their national double-eagle flag hung above a banner sporting the emblem and the words ALBANIANS IN SUSSEX.

Godanci had come a long way since entering the UK twenty years earlier, fleeing the Kosovan war. After a spell working for the prison service and then the social services in the late 1990s, he spent three years in the kitchen of one of Brighton’s Italian restaurants, before having the courage to strike out on his own. Now, through his understanding of what people liked to eat — and the environment in which they felt comfortable and pampered — he had not only expanded this restaurant, but had recently acquired a second premises in nearby Southwick, where business was also booming. As he emerged from the kitchen carrying a massive pizza for a group of youngsters celebrating a birthday, he noticed a familiar figure striding purposefully into the restaurant.

In her late forties, with cropped and gelled fair hair, she was dressed in a short-sleeve black T-shirt and dungarees and had a tattoo on her left arm of an elderly lady’s face ringed with flowers. A round metal badge, on which was the double-headed eagle symbol and the legend ALBANIANS IN SUSSEX, was pinned to her T-shirt.

Godanci delivered the dish then hurried over to the woman, Constable Nikki Denero, who was the liaison officer between the force and the Sussex Albanian community. For many years this community had shunned the police. Coming from a corrupt dictatorship with brutal, equally corrupt police, many Albanians found it impossible to believe that police in any other country could be decent, caring people. Accordingly, they never turned to the local police to handle any issues, preferring to handle disputes directly themselves.

The eye-opener for PC Denero had come five years ago, at 2 a.m. one morning, when an Albanian had been found impaled on railings, having fallen — or more likely been pushed — from his bedsit window five storeys above. First on the scene, she had stayed with the man, who was miraculously still just alive, all the way to hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. She had then been confronted by a wall of silence over his death.

That had been the start of her personal mission to break down the mistrust of the police and the bad name this gave Albanians in the local community, and she had made huge strides with many of them — much of it due to the support and help of Enver Godanci.

‘Përshëndetje!’ she said.

‘Nikki, good to see you! You’ve come for the Albanian evening?’

‘Actually, no, Enver. Could we talk in private?’ the officer said.

‘Sure.’

He led her through the kitchen into the tiny rest room behind it, where there was a table and four chairs, with a wall-mounted television. ‘Drink?’

‘I’m good,’ she said.

‘So?’

Looking worried, the Constable said, ‘We have a very serious situation. A fourteen-year-old boy has been kidnapped today — taken from the Amex during the match. His best friend, apparently, is called Aleksander Dervishi. He’s the son of Jorgji Dervishi.’

Godanci’s cheerful countenance fell away, and she saw the flash of concern.

‘Jorgji Dervishi?’

‘You know him, Enver?’

‘Of course. Everyone in the Albanian community knows him.’

‘A bad man, right?’

He looked around nervously, as if scared they might be overheard. ‘Very.’

‘What do you know about him?’

He shrugged. ‘My friends — we keep well away. He deals in everything — girls, drugs, you name it. He screws around with people’s heads. You arrive to see him early, he tells you that you are late. If you arrive late he tells you you’re too early. He offers money-lending at crazy interest rates. He is not the kind of guy I want to do business with — nor my friends.’

‘I need your help urgently, Enver. Is there any way you could find out very discreetly if any of the Albanians you have here tonight, for the party, have had any dealings — or know anyone who has — with a Brighton IFA called Kipp Brown? But it’s really important this is kept low-key.’

He looked at her. ‘Trust Kipp? That guy from the ads who promises he can get you a cheap mortgage or car finance?’

‘That’s him.’

‘I’ll ask around.’

‘Thanks, Enver. Tell them they’re not going to be in any kind of trouble, I just need to know.’

He looked hard at her. ‘Yeah, OK, I trust you.’

‘Tell any of them they can trust me, too.’

‘What exactly is your interest in Jorgji Dervishi?’ he asked.

‘I can’t tell you exactly — take a guess.’

He shook his head and looked at her quizzically. ‘You want me to tell all my Albanian friends to trust you? But you don’t trust me? How is that right?’