Good Bait

48

This time the meeting was in a hotel close to the Westway, a conference room on the eleventh floor. Corporate anonymity. Silent through triple-glazed windows, three lanes of slow-moving traffic eased their way, ghost like, towards the city centre; drivers, whey faced, bored, listening absently to the radio, smoking, illegally using their mobile phones. On the table, jugs of water, glasses, a selection of sweet biscuits, notepads and pens bearing the hotel’s crest and name. At intervals the air conditioner cut in above the radiators’ low hum.

Sterile enough, Karen thought, should it be necessary, to perform an operation.

Burcher.

Cormack.

Alex Williams.

Charlie Frost.

Karen had made her report first, bringing them up to speed on her team’s progress: the links between Dennis Broderick and Gordon Dooley; the evidence that placed Valentyn Horak and two others on their way to Stansted inside the van Broderick had leased at Dooley’s request; Stuart Dyer at the wheel of the second vehicle — Dyer who placed five of Dooley’s known associates at the place where Horak and two others were tortured and probably killed.

‘No chance he’s going to recant?’ Cormack asked. ‘This witness?’

‘Always a chance,’ Karen said. ‘What I’d be more concerned about is someone getting to him. Persuading him to change his mind or shutting him up for good.’

‘We can cotton-wool him, surely,’ Alex Williams said. ‘Protective custody.’

‘Not something we’ve been conspicuously good at recently,’ Cormack chipped in.

‘We won’t lose him,’ Burcher said. ‘Lessons learned.’

‘The sooner, then, maybe,’ Karen said, ‘we pick up Arthurs and the rest, the better.’

‘Let’s not lose sight, though, of the bigger picture,’ Burcher said. ‘What we still don’t have, as far as I can see, is anything watertight that ties Dooley in to all this — Broderick’s assertion, aside, that it was Dooley talked him into leasing the van in the first place.’

‘Must count for something,’ Karen said.

‘Not a bloody lot.’

She flashed him a look.

‘There has been one other development,’ Cormack put in swiftly, ‘might prove useful. By dint of promising to revise his immigration status, we’ve persuaded one of the Chinese workers picked up at one of the raided cannabis farms to start cooperating, remembering a few faces. So far we’ve come up with Mike Carter, wielding a machete. And Carter’s links back to Gordon Dooley are, I think, pretty well documented.’

‘It’s something,’ Burcher said. ‘Still not enough.’

‘I don’t know,’ Alex Williams said. ‘Maybe Karen’s right. Lift Arthurs, Carter and the others now. If they think there’s mileage to be gained from shopping Dooley, that might just give us what we need. It could even panic Dooley himself into some kind of false move. Leave himself open.’

‘From our point of view there’s one big risk in going in too soon,’ Charlie Frost said, speaking for the first time. ‘SOCA’s main interest here, as you know, is at the money-laundering end of things. And as you also, I think, know, one of our principal targets, Anton Kosach, has — or, rather, had — links with Valentyn Horak which were starting to become more clearly defined at the time of Horak’s unfortunate demise. Quite large amounts which were being paid into one of Kosach’s subsidiaries, from where it would be moved around offshore, washed through a couple of shell companies and thence …’

A smile came to Karen’s face: she liked the thence.

‘… and thence to a numbered but otherwise anonymous account in the Caymans-’

‘Or Jersey,’ Alex Williams suggested.

‘Or Jersey. Either way, there’s some clear evidence that Dooley, after successfully moving in on Horak’s operations, has been in contact through intermediaries with Kosach, in order to move the extra money he’s been accumulating out of the country.’

Capitalism, Karen thought, such a wonderful thing.

‘Some evidence,’ Frost concluded, ‘but not quite enough.’

‘How much longer do you need?’ Burcher asked.

‘How much can I have?’

‘I don’t know.’ Burcher threw up his hands. ‘Warren? What do you think?’

‘Well, everything we know suggests Kosach’s a major player. And not just money laundering. His hands are dirtier than that. People trafficking. Prostitution. It would be great to bring him down. But I can see there’s a risk. Delay too long and we could lose everything. The whole shooting match.’

Burcher massaged his scalp. Thought. Waited. Thought some more.

‘All right, the way I suggest we proceed is this. Karen, your team, with some assistance, keep Dooley’s thugs under surveillance. Warren, you look to Dooley himself. This to give Charlie as reasonable a time to get the evidence as he needs — and no use SOCA being timid about this, Charlie, we’re talking days not fucking weeks — and the minute it seems as if Dooley or anyone else we’ve got tabs on shows signs of panic and starts to run, we bring the whole lot in at a gallop. No exceptions.’

He looked round the table.

‘All agreed?’

They were agreed.

Karen was hoping to catch Alex Williams on the way out, but Burcher made his own claim. ‘Alex, a few minutes of your time?’

The door closed behind them and Karen walked on to where Cormack and Charlie Frost were waiting, midway along the corridor, for the lift.