Dead if You Don’t

53

Saturday 12 August

22.30–23.30

Velvet Wilde looked at her watch. It was just after 11 p.m. ‘Does Mr Dervishi know we’re coming?’

‘Yes,’ Norman Potting replied. The Detective Sergeant’s driving made her nervous — he barely looked at the road, seemingly treating it as a distraction from their conversation and from looking at her.

He drove them up a steep hill at the far eastern extremity of the city of Brighton and Hove, the posh Roedean area, with clifftop views across the English Channel. High above them, to their left and lit up like a Christmas tree, was a white, colonial-style mansion with a columned portico, surrounded by large grounds. He pulled the car up in front of tall metal gates, put down his window and pressed the button on the elaborate panel. Instantly a light shone on them.

‘Who is this?’ a guttural male voice asked.

‘Detective Sergeant Potting and Detective Constable Wilde,’ he replied.

‘You are thirty minutes late,’ the voice replied, curtly.

Potting glanced at his watch. ‘We said we’d be here at about 11 p.m. It’s now 10.55 p.m.’

‘You are thirty minutes late.’

‘No, we are not late, we are actually five minutes early,’ he said firmly in his West Country accent.

‘Mr Dervishi has gone to bed.’

Potting turned, puzzled, to DC Wilde, who frowned, then again spoke into the panel. ‘I was told Mr Dervishi would see us at 11 p.m.’

‘You wait, please.’

‘No,’ Potting said, loudly. ‘You wait and you listen. Tell Mr Dervishi that if you don’t let us in, he will be arrested. So he has the choice of seeing us now in the comfort of his home or being taken into custody and spending the night in a cell.’

‘I will speak to my boss.’

‘You do that, sonny Jim.’

Potting and Wilde sat in the car, in the darkness. ‘Can we do that?’ she asked. ‘Arrest him?’

‘We’re in a fast-time kidnap situation. Dervishi is linked to a mobile phone that’s been used by the kidnappers. You bet we bloody can.’

She smiled.

Suddenly the gates began opening.

They drove through and up the steep driveway. Four large men, almost as motionless as statues, and dressed in black, lined the drive, watching them suspiciously. As they neared the house, which had a quadruple garage to one side, two rottweilers appeared out of the shadows, barking savagely. Potting slowed the vehicle, not wanting to hit either of them, and pulled up in front of the porch. The dogs jumped up at the sides of the car. There was the piercing, high-pitched screech of a whistle and the dogs turned their heads, suddenly calming down, and padded away. Two men, sporting coiled earpieces and dressed in black suits and shirts, appeared seemingly from nowhere. One was enormous, with hair reduced to stubble and wearing dark glasses, striding with an arrogant swagger towards them. His colleague had almost ridiculously broad shoulders from working out, that seemed out of proportion to his small head, as if he had been the victim of an erroneous transplant. He had short, dark hair that finished in a widow’s peak some way down his forehead, and dense eyebrows, giving him a permanent, worried frown. In contrast to the bully-boy appearance of his colleague, he seemed less threatening.

Potting and Wilde opened their doors and got out of the car.

Dark Glasses said, ‘You are thirty minutes late.’

‘No,’ Potting said. ‘I’m telling you we are not.’

‘You are thirty minutes late. Mr Dervishi is a very punctual man, he does not like people being late. You have upset him.’

‘Really?’ Potting said. ‘Well let me tell you, he has upset a lot of people also.’ He looked at the silent man with the widow’s peak. ‘You and baldy-pops work for him, do you?’

‘He is our boss,’ he said, unsmiling.

‘Fine.’ Potting looked at each of them in turn. ‘You have a choice. Either you take us to him this minute, or you are both nicked. Under arrest for obstructing justice. Understand?’

In reluctant silence, they ushered the two detectives through the front door into an imposing hallway that, Potting thought, could have been the entrance to a stately home. It was lined with classical oil paintings, busts on plinths and fine antique furniture, with a grand staircase at the far end. A distinct aroma of cigar smoke hung in the air.

From above they heard a cultured female voice with a trace of an Eastern European accent. ‘What’s going on, Valbone, Dritan? Is it Aleksander? Is he home?’

‘Two detectives wish to talk to Mr Dervishi, madam,’ one of the henchmen said.

‘Oh God.’

A handsome, immaculately coiffed woman in her late thirties hurried down the stairs. She wore a velour tracksuit and suede Gucci-monogrammed slippers; her hands sparkled with ornate but classy rings and she held an equally sparkly mobile phone in one. Looking at Potting and Wilde, she asked, anxiously, ‘Is this to do with Aleksander? Has he had an accident? Is he all right? Please say he’s all right, yes? I’m his mother.’

‘Mrs Mirlinda Dervishi?’ Potting quizzed.

‘Yes.’

He showed her his warrant card and explained who they were. ‘We’d like to speak with both your husband and your son very urgently, madam.’

‘Aleksander is not home. I was worried something has happened — I don’t know where he is. He was going after the football to a friend, to work on a school video project. I phoned the friend’s house a little while ago and his mother told me he never went there — unless I got it wrong and he is with other friends. I keep trying his phone and he is not answering.’ She held up her hands with a gesture of despair. ‘It’s after 11 p.m. and he is only fourteen. He was going to phone Valbone to collect him when he was ready — I—’

She was interrupted by one of the bodyguards who had greeted Potting and Wilde. He spoke to her in a harsh-sounding foreign language and immediately she looked relieved. Turning back to the detectives, she said, ‘Aleksander has just texted him, saying he will be sleeping over with his friends at a house in Hove — a different friend, I had it wrong. Everything’s fine.’ She smiled. ‘My husband is in his office. I take you.’

Mirlinda Dervishi turned and spoke briefly and sharply to both bodyguards, again in the harsh language. The shaven-headed one answered her back and she raised her voice in reply, clearly angry at him. Gesturing the detectives to follow her, she strode down the hallway and stopped in front of a door. She knocked, then opened without waiting for a reply and ushered Potting and Wilde through into a large, masculine study, which smelled strongly of cigar smoke.

High up, all around, above the wall-to-wall bookshelves filled with antique, leather-bound tomes, were mounted stuffed animal heads on wooden plaques. A stag with massive antlers, a wildebeest, a giraffe and a zebra, plus the so-called ‘Big Five’ — a lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhinoceros. Velvet Wilde looked at them in both revulsion and anger; she didn’t like anyone who could be proud of killing such beautiful creatures. There was a studded black leather sofa and two matching armchairs arranged around a glass-topped coffee table and at the far end of the room a vast, vulgar walnut desk with ornate gold inlays.

It was occupied by a man who immediately got to his feet. He was short and wiry, with a cocksure, arrogant demeanour that was barely masked by his welcoming smile. His hair was razored to a hard-looking dark stubble and much of his face was covered similarly. He was dressed in a thin, black polo-neck jumper and jeans with a flashy belt buckle. The fingers of his left hand were adorned with jewelled rings and on his right hand was a black leather glove holding a torpedo cigar.

Potting recognized him from his photograph and stared at him, trying to figure out which was his glass eye.

Dervishi pointed at the two chairs in front of the coffee table, and joined them. Speaking in a genial voice with a much stronger accent than his wife’s, he said, ‘Detective Sergeant Potting and Detective Constable Wilde?’ His gaze lingered approvingly on the female detective.

Potting held up his warrant card, but Jorgji Dervishi dismissed it with a wave of his hand. ‘It is good of you to come, my wife is getting very anxious about our son — you see, this is just not like him, not typical at all. Aleksander, he normally always tells us his plans.’

‘Mr Dervishi,’ Potting cut him short. ‘We would like to talk to your son urgently, but we also need to speak to you.’

‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Please sit down. May I offer you a drink? I have good whisky — you like thirty-year-old Craigellachie?’ He raised a cut-glass tumbler to display its amber content. ‘Or Napoleon brandy, a glass of wine, coffee?’

‘No, thank you,’ Potting said.

Wilde shook her head.

‘So, to what do I owe the pleasure of two detectives visiting me at this late hour?’ His eyes lingered on Wilde as he drew on his cigar and blew out a perfect smoke ring, as if trying to tease approval from her.

‘Does the name Fatjon Sava mean anything to you?’ Potting asked, watching the man’s eyes carefully — still trying to decide which was the glass one. But all he saw was a flicker of uncertainty as Dervishi stared fixedly back at him.

‘A man by this name worked for me once, yes. But he was an idiot. I dismissed him a long time ago. So, how else may I help you?’

Potting still could not spot the prosthetic. ‘A fourteen-year-old boy was kidnapped today at the Amex Stadium,’ he said. ‘His name is Mungo Brown and we understand he and your son are good friends at school.’

‘Yes, this boy has been here a few times — I think they play computer games. He has been kidnapped? When?’

‘He was last seen talking to your son an hour and a half before the start of the match this afternoon — around 4.00 p.m. Later, a ransom demand was made by text from a mobile phone that we have linked to a former employee of yours, Mr Fatjon Sava. What can you tell us about him?’

After a moment’s hesitation, Dervishi said, ‘I told you, Sava was an idiot. A psycho. The moment I realized this, I fired him. I’m trying to be a good citizen, you know?’ He smiled, unconvincingly.

‘Very laudable,’ Potting said, a tad more cynically than he had intended to sound.

‘Are you still in contact with Mr Sava?’ Velvet Wilde asked.

‘No.’

‘Are you able to give us an address for him?’ she persisted. ‘Or anyone who could?’

Suddenly, without any warning, Dervishi’s gloved right hand began to rotate.

Both detectives stared at it.

It went through 180 degrees. Then another 90 degrees. Then a complete 360 degrees. ‘The war in Bosnia,’ Dervishi said. ‘A grenade with a faulty timer. I was lucky, it could have been worse. As a result, I have a hand that is better than the one God made.’ He smiled at them. And now, clearly, Potting could see the glass eye, the right eye. Glinting. The one that, he had been told, looked warmer.

That was true, he realized.

Dervishi drew on his cigar again. ‘I would of course connect you to Mr Sava, if I could. I have the greatest respect for your police force in Brighton. But I have had no contact with this gentleman for over a year. I don’t know even if he is in this country or back in Albania or Kosovo. Is there anything else I can help you with? I am here, at your service.’

‘We need to speak to your son, urgently,’ Potting said.

‘I would very much like to speak to him, also. He went to the football today and has not come home yet.’ He shrugged. ‘But you know how kids are today.’

Potting stared hard back at him. ‘Actually, no, I don’t.’

The glass eye glinted. ‘They are very independent, Detective Sergeant Pothole.’

‘Potting,’ he corrected.

‘Forgive me. Sometimes my English is a little — how you say — erratic.’

‘Like your memory?’

Dervishi smiled. ‘Indeed. Now, if you have no more questions, I would like to wish you both goodnight.’ He stared at Velvet. ‘Such a shame not to get to know you better, Detective Constable Wilde. Perhaps another occasion?’

She stared back at him, facing him off. ‘Maybe in court, one day?’

Dervishi laughed. The confident laugh of an untouchable.

She asked, ‘We’d like the address of where your son is at his sleepover, please.’

‘He will be home tomorrow, perhaps it is better to talk to him then?’

‘This is a kidnap situation,’ Potting said. ‘Every minute that passes is important. We need to talk to him tonight, as soon as possible. He may have seen something of vital importance to our enquiry. We’ll need to pick him up and bring him here for interview.’

Dervishi pressed an intercom button on his desk and spoke in a foreign language. A gruff voice replied on the speaker. Dervishi picked up an ornate fountain pen and scrawled on a notepad. Then he tore the sheet off and handed it to Wilde. ‘This is the address where Aleksander is staying. I don’t think they will be pleased to see you so late.’

‘I don’t think Mungo Brown’s parents would be pleased to know we let a vital witness get his beauty sleep while their son is being held bound and gagged, Mr Dervishi,’ Wilde retorted coldly. ‘How would you feel if it was your son?’

‘If it was my son, I can tell you I would not be putting my faith in the police to get him back.’ He picked up his cigar, drew on it and blew out another perfect smoke ring. It coiled slowly upwards, expanding and dispersing towards the ceiling as the two officers left.

Dervishi waited, seething in silent fury, until he heard the sound of their car starting. Then he stabbed his intercom again and barked out an instruction. His two bodyguards hurried in. The consiglieri did not look a happy man.