Good Bait (DCI Karen Shields #1)(39)
‘How long?’
‘Check that through? Might strike lucky. This time tomorrow? Don’t come up with anything by then, I’m probably not going to be able to help.’
‘Thanks, anyway,’ Karen said. But he’d already rung off.
24
Twenty-four hours. Warren Cormack was as good as his word. They met, at his suggestion, in Victoria Tower Gardens, just beyond the Houses of Parliament and overlooking the Thames. Tide out, gulls scavenged along a narrow strand of muddy bank strewn with discarded rubbish. New Scotland Yard was no more than a brisk stroll away, pleasant enough beneath a wash of wispy cloud, a patina of palish blue.
Cormack proved to be younger than he’d sounded on the phone, younger than she’d anticipated, less abrupt. Slim features, neatly suited, off-white shirt, pearl grey tie, still the right side of thirty-five.
‘This okay by you?’ He gestured towards a bench facing out towards the river, Lambeth Palace and St Thomas’ Hospital on the opposite bank.
‘Fine.’
‘Not usually too many people around.’
‘Bolt-hole, then?’
‘Something like that.’
Sitting, he loosened his tie just a little; one arm, crooked, along the back of the bench. Making her wait. One of a brace of ragged crows hopped hopefully close, then hopped away.
‘Jamie Parsons,’ Cormack said, finally. ‘The pictures you sent over. A definite match.’
‘He’s known?’
‘Only tangentially. That’s why he wouldn’t have shown up on your radar. Bottom-feeder stuff, really. Does a lot of footwork for a guy called Gordon Dooley, who we certainly do have an interest in.’
‘Dooley?’
‘A dealer, fairly big-time, contacts all along the south coast, Margate, Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton. Main source of supply was through the Netherlands, Rotterdam, but since Border Agency and Customs seem to have succeeded in stemming that particular flow, for now at least, he’s been having to look elsewhere.
‘There’s no definite proof, but we think he’s behind a spate of raids on cannabis farms across the south-east. Most recent was in Essex, the outbuildings of a disused farm close to Manningtree; before that, a deconsecrated chapel just outside Great Yarmouth. Just those two raids, upwards of two thousand plants stolen, that’s going to yield around fifty metric tons of cannabis for illegal sale.’
‘And these farms, who’s behind them?’
‘Difficult to say. Precisely. The workers at both premises were mainly Chinese, illegally trafficked into the country, very little English. They’d been badly beaten, some of them, during the raids, tied up with baling wire. Terrified out of their wits. They’re not going to give us a great deal, even if they wanted to. But most of that trade – what isn’t still in the hands of Dooley and his ilk – it’s the province of organised gangs originating in Eastern Europe. Turkey. Albania.’
A pleasure boat went past them downriver, heading towards Tower Bridge and beyond that to the Thames Barrier, hardy souls on deck wrapped in scarves and fleeces, the voice of the tour guide torn by the breeze.
‘Dooley,’ Karen said, ‘if he is involved, presumably he’s not going to be carrying out these raids single-handed.’
Cormack shook his head. ‘South London, that’s his stamping ground. Home patch. Recruiting, that’s where he’d look. No shortage of possibles, keen for a ruck. Especially if there’s a good chunk of cash at the end of it. A couple of known associates with more than a propensity for violence. A few hangers-on.’
‘Parsons being one.’
‘Parsons being one.’
‘And Aaron Johnson another.’
‘Maybe. A reasonable assumption. But we don’t know for sure. As it stands, nothing to say they knew one another before Camden. Not much to link them together aside from a liking for Ronny Jordan.’
‘How about Terry Martin?’
‘You looking for a connection?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Any special reason?’
She told him about Petru Andronic’s murder, her suspicions that Martin might have been involved.
‘Well, it’s a name we know, more through the company he keeps than anything else.’
‘Company?’
Cormack smiled, shifted his position on the bench. ‘How about this? One of Dooley’s hard men got out of the Scrubs just a month before the raid in Manningtree. Went inside for going after some guy Dooley reckoned had been holding back on his payments; left him with a ruptured spleen and more broken ribs than you could easily count.’
‘Let me guess, Carter.’
‘Mad Mike himself.’
‘The link, you think, between Martin and Dooley?’
‘One of them, I’d say.’
‘So how involved in all of Dooley’s dirty work do you think Martin might be?’
‘Difficult to say. Anywhere between not at all and very. As muscle, maybe. More than that …?’ He shrugged his shoulders, dipped his head.
‘He’s not dealing himself, I suppose?’
‘Not as far as we know. There was a suggestion a while back that he might have been smuggling in drugs along with his shipments from the Baltic. Couple of containers were opened and searched – nothing but plastic wraps of cheap clothing on their way to small-scale shops and market stalls up and down the country.’