The Finisher

32

“I won’t ask how you came to be in the wrong place at the right time.”

Puffed up by the overnight success of Operation Duke Street, Jones from ROCU was seated in the comfortable armchair in Diamond’s office for what he called a debriefing.

Diamond had no intention of being debriefed, a term he’d always thought unfortunate, so he didn’t comment. If Jones wished to expose himself, so to speak, that was his choice.

“But it’s a good thing you were,” Jones added after one of his long pauses. “My lads would certainly have found that box with the laptop and the phone when we made a wider search, not to mention the body, but you saved us valuable time and I’m grateful for that.”

“Do we know who it is?” Diamond asked.

“The corpse? One of the slaves. His name was Vasil, according to the others, and he attempted to escape months ago. He’s listed on the wall with the rest in Pinto’s room. They all knew he’d been killed. Pinto kept reminding them, to discourage anyone else from escaping. It was a rule of fear. He called himself the Finisher because he’d finish anyone who stepped out of line.”

“So they’re talking to you?”

Jones gave the smile of a seasoned interrogator. “You need to know how to get people like that onside. You tell them their cooperation will be taken into account when their applications for asylum are heard.”

“Where are they from?”

“Albania. We had to ring round to find anyone able to act as interpreter. Got there in the end.”

“What’s wrong with Albania that made them want to leave?”

“Where shall I start? Horrendous unemployment. Poverty. It was a Stalinist country until 1992 and vast numbers left when they got the first chance. About three million stayed on and ten million are living abroad. The economy has never really caught up.”

“I’m not even sure where Albania is.”

“Think north of Greece and south of Serbia and you won’t be far wrong. It’s a Mediterranean country with a good long coastline they try to promote for tourism. Ever heard of the Albanian Riviera?”

“I’m not much of a traveller.”

“Stunning beaches, I’m told.”

“Not much of a beach boy either.”

“You’re a miserable bugger, Diamond. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

“All the time. What happens next?”

“Most of the victims need medical treatment and counselling. Some of them were living rough in Tirana before they got here. Others were on the run from the police. They’re desperate men. They’ll be housed while their claims are processed.”

“And Tony Pinto was the gangmaster?”

“The cog in the machine that failed to function, which is why he ended up dead.”

“Was he Albanian himself?”

“Some of his childhood was spent there, but he’d lived most of his life here.”

“Where did he go wrong?”

“Two more of the group escaped, or tried to, only a few days ago. One, a man called Spiro, was picked up later by the police in Reading. We don’t know the fate of Murat, the second one. After it happened and the news of the escape got back to the mafia who ran this racket, Pinto’s fate was sealed. He was being monitored pretty closely and was caught out, so he had to go.”

“Orders from the top?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Do you have evidence of that?”

“We will. We’ve barely started transcribing all the data we seized.”

“How was the killing done, then?”

Jones had been talking freely up to now. Hubris loosens the tongue, even of a tight-lipped ROCU man. But the directness of the question made him hesitate and glance at the door to make sure it was closed. “What I am about to say is for your ears only. You need to understand that Duke Street was just one outpost of a vast international empire and only a handful of boss men had any idea of the full extent of it. Pinto was answerable to his controller in Bath and that was as much as he knew.”

“And who was the controller?”

“A Russian guy called Ivanov.”

“Konstantin Ivanov?”

“You’ve heard of him?” Jones frowned. “You’re better informed than I thought.”

Diamond could have added that he’d met Konstantin and had suspicions about him, but that would be the next thing to a debriefing.

“Until yesterday,” Jones went on, “Ivanov was living with his wife at a grand address in Sydney Place, a beautiful nineteenth-century terrace facing Sydney Gardens. Bath’s billionaires’ row. Kings and queens lived there when it was first built. Now it’s mostly expensive flats, but he and his wife occupied the entire house, bought by an anonymous company based in some tax haven.” The narrative flowed more easily again. “His cover story is that he’s one of those filthy-rich oligarchs who prefer to live outside Russia. Money-laundering is behind it, for sure. He buys top-of-the-range properties in Bath and rents them out. The Duke Street house is one such. The top two floors are used only occasionally by high-earning footballers who pay the rent and ask no questions about what happens in the basement. The ground floor flat isn’t occupied.”

“And Konstantin Ivanov oversees the modern slavery in Bath?”

Jones nodded. “What is more, he prides himself on his fitness. Marathon running, martial arts, wrestling. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“Did he run in the Other Half?”

“No, and this is my point. You’d expect him to have taken part. His wife Olga was in it. She speed-walked the course. And who do you think they employed as Olga’s personal trainer? The organisation had recruited Pinto from prison, where he had become super-fit in the gym and quite a fitness fanatic. But in Bath he was under-employed, just seeing off the slaves early in the morning and checking them in at night. What is that saying about idle hands?”

“The devil finds work...?”

“That’s the one. To keep him occupied, he had to make regular visits to Sydney Place and supervise Olga’s training. We’re not sure about Olga. She doesn’t seem to have played an active part in the slavery operation, so she wasn’t arrested yesterday. Ivanov was. He denies everything, of course, but we have his phone and hard drive and we’ll nail him. The DNA evidence will prove he killed Pinto.”

“Ivanov?”

“No question. He was in dire trouble himself if he didn’t take decisive action.”

“How did he do it?”

“Karate. He’s a black belt. There’s a framed certificate in their basement gym. The cause of death was a brain injury from a fall, as you know. There seems to have been a short fight, if you can call it that. Pinto was a fit man, but I doubt whether he had the slightest idea how to defend himself.”

“And where did this fight take place?”

“On Combe Down.”

“Where the mineshaft is?”

“There, or thereabouts.”

“Do you also know when it happened?”

“Late afternoon or early evening, long after the race was over. Pinto was one of the last to finish because he ran off course chasing some girl he flirted with.” Jones was coming down to earth and getting more matey. “The man was a goat. He couldn’t get enough. She quit the race to get away from him and he followed.”

“Belinda Pye.”

“You know the name?” he piped in surprise.

“I’ve interviewed her,” Diamond said, peeved at being patronised. Peeved, also, that ROCU knew details of the case he and his team had worked so hard to discover.

“Did they have sex?” Jones asked.

“No. She got away, but she was so traumatised that she went off the radar for days.” He checked himself. He didn’t need to tell Belinda’s story right now, even though her experience was vivid in his memory. “What interests me is why Pinto went back to Combe Down after the race was over. All most runners want to do is rest up.”

“He hadn’t exerted himself,” Jones said. “He could have run it much faster. It must have been the pull of the girl. He had unfinished business with her.”

“More than two hours after he’d lost contact with her? I find that unconvincing.”

“There is another explanation.”

“Okay.”

“He was under orders. Ivanov had instructed him to report there at a certain time.”

“That’s more likely,” Diamond said. “It explains why Ivanov was there — which would have been my next question.”

“Ivanov has no alibi. He was supposed to be in his office in the Sydney Place house dealing with business matters, but of course his wife was in the race, so she can’t vouch for him. He’s the killer. He’ll plead manslaughter, but we’ll be able to show it was premeditated.”

“How?”

“Phone evidence. My people are going through Pinto’s call history — and Ivanov’s — as we speak.”

“You’ve got it buttoned up, then,” Diamond said.

Jones prised himself out of the chair. “I know this is disappointing for you and your team, but it’s crime on a scale you could never have known about. We at ROCU have the advantage over you fellows working at the coal face, but we do appreciate the work being done locally. Do you play golf?”

“No.”

“I wouldn’t mind meeting you again some time. Incidentally, my name isn’t really Jones. One of these days when we’re both off duty I’ll tell you what it is.”

Diamond was tempted to say it was Smart-arse, but he refrained. Inside he was seething, but his contempt for the man and his tinpot theory mattered less than pushing ahead and really cracking this case.

Alone again at his desk, he gathered all the information he had about the Other Half — the race-pack information, sponsorship rules, description of the course, the coloured map, the list of finishers and times at all the checkpoints. He turned on his computer and went to the race website and studied the photographs the organisers had posted. He was trying to reconcile Pinto coming in after four hours when he should have got round in two or less. Even if he had lost time chasing after Belinda, he should have finished sooner. He was a fitness freak, for God’s sake.

There was a limit to the amount of time the head of CID was willing to spend poring over details. After twenty minutes he’d had enough, so he took everything into the incident room and asked the efficient DC Sharp if she’d completed her searches into Pinto’s race at each checkpoint.

“Almost, sir,” she said.

“‘Guv’ is what most of them call me,” he said. “What they call me behind my back I can’t tell you, but ‘guv’ sits better with me than ‘sir.’ What’s your problem with the checkpoints?”

“He keeps up with the rest until Dundas Aqueduct. You’d expect him to get there with some of the people who started at the same time and he does.”

“You showed me.”

“But then we lose him.”

“He ran off the course, we think.”

“Yes, and I’ve looked for him at the next checkpoint after the two tunnels, but he misses that. He must have rejoined the race towards the end.” On the wall beside her was pinned a large-scale 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey map of Bath on which she’d highlighted the entire half marathon course in yellow. She placed a fingertip on one of the southernmost points and moved it upwards. “Here’s the first tunnel. If he stayed above ground and went over Combe Down, he could have taken a short cut through Lyncombe Vale and cut out a large loop.”

The short cut was obvious when she showed it.

“And still taken four hours? It doesn’t make sense. Can you bring up the clip of him finishing?”

“This is the problem, guv. I’ve been through the footage any number of times and I haven’t found him.” She went back to her computer screen, found the video of the finish and used the pointer icon to accelerate the action. “The race time is shown at top right.”

“Okay. He finished in how long?”

“Four hours, twenty-three minutes, twenty-six seconds. He ought to be obvious.”

Runners in various states of exhaustion were crossing the line. He saw the ostrich with swollen legs go by. “Four hours, three minutes. That’s when I gave up myself and stopped watching. Move it on.”

After a few more plodded through, a sturdy, smiling blonde woman approached the finish with her arms going like piston-rods beneath conspicuous well-contained breasts.

“She’s walking,” Diamond said. “It’s Olga.” He couldn’t hold back a smile of his own. “Show me again.”

Exuberant, confident and with a touch of self-mockery, Olga crossed the line again.

“Back to work.”

DC Sharp stopped the action at 4:23:26. “This is where we should see Pinto, but we don’t.” In slow motion, she ran the film through the next few seconds. First, another fun-runner came through with a polyester Royal Crescent curved across his shoulders. “He’s got so much superstructure you can scarcely see the guy immediately behind, but you do get a glimpse on one frame. Here.”

She had stopped the film again and the head and shoulders of the second runner definitely didn’t belong to Tony Pinto and wasn’t anyone Diamond recognised. The height was about right, but the physique was heavier, the face broader, the mouth wider and the kit was different, the cap and T-shirt black. The time was correct at 4:23:26.

“Run it on a bit longer.”

She worked the mouse again. “I must have watched this fifty times over thinking I missed him. If you can see him, you’ve got X-ray eyes.”

“This is all I need,” he said.

She blushed. “Sorry, guv.”

“I was talking to myself, not you. You’ve done all you can and done it well. It’s up to me to make sense of this.”

That evening he took a taxi to Lyncombe. Paloma had promised to cook. An appetising aroma was drifting into the hall from the kitchen.

She looked him up and down. “How are you on your pins?”

“Fine. I could almost manage without the stick.”

“Don’t you dare. In that case, I’m going to ask a favour.”

“You left the veggies for me to do?”

She shook her head. “They’re done. It’s Hartley.”

“Oh?” He’d forgotten about Hartley. “You’re still in charge of him?”

“Yes, and he’s being a pest tonight. He’s so restless. I had to shut him in the office. He had his walk earlier but I think he may need another.”

“No problem.”

“Are you sure? He’ll pull on the lead.”

“He’s just a scrap. He’s not going to pull me over. What time are we eating?”

“Take as long as you like. It’s a beef and ale casserole in the slow cooker and I can serve it whenever we want.”

“I caught a whiff of something special as soon as you opened the door. You know what? I can tell you why Hartley is playing up. The smell is driving him crazy.”

“It’s not for him. As well as the ale there’s half a bottle of Rioja in it.”

“A drop of booze won’t hurt him.”

“Take him for his walk, Peter, and we can argue later.”

He collected Hartley and clipped on the lead. He was about to go out of the door when Paloma handed him a small plastic bag.

“What’s this for?”

“There speaks a cat owner. On your way, guys.”

It was an open question who was being taken for the walk. Hartley set off at a fast trot, helped by the downward slope, head down and ears almost brushing the pavement, straining to get to the limit of his retractable lead.

Lyncombe Hill is paved on one side only. Ten-foot walls front the road on the other side, guarding large properties, so everyone uses the pavement on the side where two-storey terraces stretch down most of the way. Hartley hadn’t got far when he met quite a procession of men and women, twelve or more, toiling up the gradient from the opposite direction, mostly a few yards apart from each other.

Diamond’s first thought was that a train had come in and they were commuters on their way up from the station. On getting closer, he decided they didn’t have the tired look of office workers. Nor were they out for an evening on the town. Soberly dressed, the women mostly in heeled shoes and skirts and the men in suits, they had a sense of purpose about them — and that was all he could tell.

Being a cat owner, as Paloma had put it, he didn’t foresee what happened next. He was so interested in the advancing cohort that he forgot about Hartley. The excited beagle was already among the skirted and trousered legs. A sudden interest in a lamppost and the cord tightened behind the heels of a frail silver-haired woman with a stick, across the shiny black toecaps of a stout man and under the heel of a younger woman in stilettos.

“Watch out,” someone shouted.

Everyone watched out, including Hartley. To give the small dog his due, he stopped and looked round at Diamond.

The elderly woman felt the cord move against the back of her ankles and screamed.

Diamond yelled, “Hartley!”

A blonde woman who wasn’t in the tangle acted swiftly. She ran forward, reached down, grabbed Hartley around the chest, scooped him up and averted mayhem.

Mortified and shaking his head, Diamond stepped forward. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said to the people disengaging themselves. Hartley was immobilised, but because he was off the ground the long cord of the lead had ridden up the back of the elderly woman’s legs and revealed a white lace slip. She didn’t seem to have noticed.

“Excuse me.” Diamond moved around the back of her to slacken the cord. She said something he didn’t understand. The stout man spoke, also in a foreign language.

Order was restored, the cord reeled in. Diamond reached out with his free hand to collect Hartley and found himself face to face with Olga Ivanova.

“What on earth did you find to say to her?” Paloma asked later, when the casserole was served and he’d given his account of the incident.

“I forget the actual words. I felt like a horse’s arse at the time. I can’t blame Hartley for what happened. I didn’t see the problem coming. Olga’s husband, Konstantin, is in custody on suspicion of murder and she was on her way to chapel, to pray for him or herself, I suppose. That’s where all these people were heading in their formal clothes.”

“They’ll be from the Orthodox church,” Paloma said. “They have a chapel on Lyncombe Hill they use for Vespers, or whatever the evening service is called. How did she react to you?”

“She was as surprised as I was, but she wanted to talk when she recognised me. There wasn’t time, unfortunately. She would be late for the service, so I arranged to meet her tomorrow. She’s staying with Maeve, her friend. The house in Sydney Place is off limits while ROCU look for evidence.”

“Is Konstantin your murderer, then?”

“Some people think he is.”

“But you don’t? Have they caught the wrong person? How awful.”

“It’s not so awful as you might suppose. Konstantin is a trafficker and a slaver and deserves to be banged up for the rest of his life, but I don’t believe he killed Tony Pinto.”