Cleanskin Read online

  Two hours later, I was sitting in the back row of a cinema out in the sticks watching a very strange Danish/Scottish film about a homeless transvestite. Sometimes this job is just plain madness. Half an hour into the film, a figure slipped into the seat next to mine.

  ‘All right, Mr Martin?’

  ‘I’d be happier if you had better taste in films, Shanky,’ I grunted.

  ‘I thought we’d be safe here from any of Jack Farrell’s mob,’ Shanky said.

  All at once I regained the will to live. ‘You got something on Farrell?’ I said.

  ‘Not on Farrell, as such. More about Farrell, you might say.’

  ‘Can we get to the point, Shanky? I haven’t got time for one of your round-the-houses tales.’

  ‘This is worth something, Mr Martin,’ he said. ‘More than the usual.’

  ‘Shanky, I’ll take care of you. Just give me what you’ve got.’ It’s always a bloody to-and-fro with snouts. All they care about is how much kudos or cash they can squeeze out of you. I hate having to deal with them, but it’s part and parcel of how the game works.

  ‘He’s shedding,’ Shanky said.

  ‘What?’ For a moment, I had a bizarre image of Jack Farrell as a shaggy dog, leaving his hairs on the chairs.

  ‘He’s off-loading. He’s selling off the business in chunks. All for cash. The girls have already gone to some Lithuanian godfather. Danny Chu’s selling his soul to raise enough cash to take over the drugs, and Fancy Riley’s got his name down for the loan-sharking. All the other stuff – it’s up for grabs. He’s talking to people he’s been at daggers drawn with for years. People who’ve tried to take it off him and failed. He’s sitting down with slags he wouldn’t normally be seen dead with.’

  I could hardly believe it. ‘What’s his game?’

  Shanky cleared his throat, a wet, sloppy sound. ‘They’re saying it’s his kid. That he’s lost it.’

  ‘And has he?’

  Shanky shifted in his seat. ‘Jack Farrell? I don’t think so. He’s still not taking any crap from anybody. He might be selling up, but he’s not giving it away. I think he’s just had enough. He wants to cash in his chips and fuck off to the sun.’

  ‘Where’s he living?’ I asked.

  ‘No fucking idea,’ Shanky said. ‘He’s got a boat down Southampton, that’s where he’s doing the meetings. But he’s not living there. What I hear, Fancy takes him off at the end of the day in a big fuck-off speedboat and they’re off down the estuary.’

  I asked some more, but Shanky had given me all he knew. I handed over an envelope of cash, promising him another wedge if he could come up with any more info.

  Back at the office, Ben and I chewed over Shanky’s info. It didn’t make sense to me. If he was so upset by Katie’s death, how could he be arsed to jump through all the hoops involved in taking apart something on this scale? But if he wasn’t upset by Katie’s death, why bother doing it at all?

  ‘Maybe he needs the money,’ Ben said.

  ‘You don’t think he’s got enough salted away in his various accounts?’

  ‘Can you ever have enough?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what I do wish I knew. I wish I knew what the hell he’s planning on doing with all that money.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IF I’D MADE A LIST of possible reasons why Jack Farrell was turning his business empire into cash, I would never have come up with the truth. But a couple of days later, it seemed as if my question had been answered in a very strange way.

  I was sitting in my office, working through what little material we’d gathered on Farrell’s bargain basement sale. I was glad to be back in my own office, glad to shake the country bumpkin dust of Hampshire off my shoes. Then Ben walked in, a sheet of paper in his hand.

  ‘What do you know about John Stonehouse?’ he said.

  ‘Labour Cabinet minister in the Sixties, fiddled a load of money he couldn’t pay back,’ I said, dredging my memory. ‘Faked a suicide by leaving his clothes on a beach in America with a suicide note. Turned up with his mistress in Australia, where the cops picked him up because they thought he was Lord Lucan. Got extradited, did time. What is this? You doing the Daily Mail quick quiz again?’

  ‘Ha ha,’ Ben said, dropping the paper on my desk in front of me. ‘Just in from our friends in Hampshire.’

  I read the memo and whistled. ‘And they believe this?’

  ‘His tailor says it’s his suit, his cobbler says he made the shoes for him, and Max Carter says he did indeed witness the signature, though he didn’t know what the note said.’

  ‘Do you believe it?’ I asked.

  Ben threw himself into the chair opposite mine. ‘No. You don’t raise a king’s ransom in cash then top yourself. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It does if you want to provide for your widow. Martina couldn’t run Farrell’s business. Even if he was shagging the Spanish nanny, there was still something there with the wife. They still shared a bed, Ben. The only way to make sure she was all right was to make a dash for cash and then stash it somewhere we wouldn’t find it.’

  Ben looked at me, his mouth open and his eyes wide. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You think Jack Farrell topped himself? You really think the king of smoke and mirrors did himself in?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not for a minute. But I can see how you could make an argument for it. The guy was destroyed by his kid’s death. He couldn’t go on. But he cared enough for the mother of his child to make sure she would be OK. It’s a strong case and if we’re going to knock it down, we need facts. And we haven’t got anything on our side of the argument except the fact that we don’t appear to have a body. What do we know about the tides and currents where he went in?’

  Ben rolled his eyes and got to his feet. ‘I’m on it.’

  Within the hour, we knew three things about the part of the English Channel where Jack Farrell’s clothes had been found. One was that quite a few people choose that part of the coast as their jumping-off point for suicide. Two was that bodies usually took a week to ten days to make their way to shore about fifteen miles west of where they’d gone in. And three was that the combination of marine life and shipping meant the bodies tended to be pretty well mashed up.

  While the official line might be that Jack Farrell had topped himself, in private we knew we had to wait and see.

  As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait very long. Eight days later, we got the call from Dorset police. A body had washed up on a beach near Poole and they had reason to believe (as some cops still feel the need to say) that we might be interested in taking a look at it. Why might that be, we asked. On account of the tattoos, they said, a bit stiff.

  Ben didn’t hang about. It was pedal to the metal with our blue light flashing all the way down there. I missed Stella every mile of the way. Sure, she wasn’t the only competent pathologist in the world. But we made a good team. She understood what we needed, she was fast and she was damn good in the witness box.

  Usually a body that’s been in the sea a couple of weeks is hard to identify. The face and head get bashed about against rocks. Fingerprints get nibbled by crabs. Bodies change shape in the water. They get bloated and stop looking like themselves. That’s when you need a pathologist to read the body and tell you what you’re looking at. And to take the samples so you can check DNA.

  We knew from the Dorset cops that this corpse’s head and hands were in bad shape. But as soon as we walked into the mortuary, I knew we weren’t going to need Stella to identify this particular corpse. The colours were faded, the shapes contorted because the skin was stretched and torn. But the tattoos were unmistakable.

  The dragon I’d seen on the night of the fire still covered his torso, its tail snaking down his naked groin to taper to an end on his left thigh. The flame of its breath was dulled now, but we could still see it clearly crossing the right side of his chest, climbing up to his shoulder. One arm was torn off halfway down,
but the top half of the samurai remained. On the other arm, the woman looked like she’d gained weight and needed an appointment with the hairdresser.

  I reckoned we didn’t need to bother Martina. I could ID Jack Farrell on the spot. It looked like I’d been wrong again.

  All the same, I did ask the pathologist to take samples for DNA testing. I wanted to compare it with Katie’s DNA and with the DNA we’d got from the clothes and the note left on the beach.

  Like they say, it’s best to use a long spoon when you sup with the devil.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NOT EVERYBODY THOUGHT I was doing the right thing about the DNA. I’d barely walked through the door the next morning when my boss was on my case. ‘What’s the point?’ he said, face red as a baboon’s backside. ‘We know it’s Farrell. Right age, height, build. The tattoos, for Christ’s sake. If ever there was an open-and-shut case, this is it. Andy, it was you that ID’d him. But that’s not good enough for you, is it? No, now you want DNA tests. Do you have any idea how much it costs to even try to get DNA from a badly burned body?’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s Jack Farrell. Better safe than sorry.’

  He ran his hand across his stubble scalp. ‘They tell me they have to use something called SNIPS. It costs an arm and a leg, and most times it doesn’t even bloody work. And in this case it won’t prove anything either way. So what if the DNA doesn’t match? It doesn’t mean that body isn’t Jack Farrell. All it means is that Martina Farrell was putting it about a bit.’ He threw his hands in the air. ‘It doesn’t even prove that. For all we know, they could have had fertility treatment. The only DNA comparison worth a toss is with the clothes on the beach. And the letter.’

  He had a point, but I wasn’t about to admit it. ‘So, what? You want me to cancel the tests?’

  ‘No. I already did that, Andy.’ He pointed his finger at me. ‘You have got to stop running the show like it’s your personal bloody empire. I carry the can for you when things go tits-up. The least you can do is run stuff past me.’ He sighed. ‘I know it’s boring, but we’ve got budgets, Andy.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. He looked shocked, then pleased. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to burst his balloon. ‘It is boring.’ God, I missed Stella. She’d have done the tests and worried about the budget afterwards.

  All day, people were dropping in to congratulate us. Like we’d had something to do with Jack Farrell not being our problem any more. Like it was a result. Nobody seemed to want to think about the fact that even if Farrell was dead, his rackets were all still alive and well. Alive and well and being run by people with half his brains and a tiny fraction of his street smarts.

  To my mind, that spelled trouble. Farrell’s empire had worked because the emperor ran it with a rod of iron. I once read that Nero had said something like, ‘Let them hate as long as they fear,’ and that was how Jack Farrell did business. I didn’t think either Danny Chu or Fancy Riley could hold a candle to their dear departed boss in the fear stakes. Things were going to start falling apart very soon. And then it was all going to be very messy on our patch.

  Ben got it, though. ‘They’ll be fighting over the spoils like dogs with a bag of bones,’ he said. ‘The fall-out’s going to be something else.’

  The first victim hit the ground two days after Farrell’s body was found. Joey Scardino’s family had come to Scotland at the end of the 19th century and had made their living from fish and chips and ice cream. But Joey had seen too many films about the Mob and he’d come to London in search of a more edgy living than fast food. He liked people to call him Joey Scar, and a few sucked up to him enough to do it. I wasn’t one of them. I never dignify those scumbags by using their nicknames.

  Anyway, Joey was just about clever and charming enough to pass as a gangster, but he’d never managed to be in the right place at the right time. He was desperate to be playing by big boys’ rules.

  As part of his bid, he’d been snapping at Farrell’s heels for a long time. He’d seen how much money Farrell was making from people-smuggling and supplying illegal immigrants with false papers. Scardino wanted to carve out a chunk of the action for himself. But every time he’d tried to muscle in on it, Farrell had found a way to slap him down.

  According to Ben, who had been running a low-level snout inside Farrell’s posse, Scardino had paid a load of cash to Farrell after the fire. The word was that the money was payment for the business he’d failed to steal in the past. The only trouble was that Scardino wanted a fast return on what he’d laid out. Unlike Farrell, he didn’t understand that making a modest amount every week for years was smarter than trying to make big bucks straight out of the starting blocks.

  As we drove to the scene of the murder, Ben told me his snout had said Scardino was already pissing people off, but he did seem surprised that it had gone so far so fast.

  We already knew Scardino hadn’t died a clean or a pretty death. He’d been found by a security guard doing his rounds down the docks in Harwich. A container that should have been shut was standing open. When the guard went to take a look, he saw something that would trash his sleep for a very long time.

  I didn’t have to ask the way. I kept passing grey-faced uniformed officers who pointed behind them, their eyes filled with horror. Splashes of vomit lined the final stages of the route.

  Joey Scardino was naked except for the ropes. He was tied to the far end of the container, his body spread out in a big X facing the wall. There was a bloody gap where his backside should have been. According to the forensics team, someone had literally stuffed an explosive charge inside him then set it off.

  I’ve seen a lot of crime scenes, but I’ve never seen anything worse than that. Ben reeled away, his hand over his mouth, dry retching sounds coming from his throat.

  Whoever had killed Joey Scardino was sending a message to the world. You think Jack Farrell was scary? Think again. And it was my job to find him and to put him away.

  Lucky me.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE ONLY ODD THING about Joey Scardino’s death – apart from it being totally disgusting – was that nobody was laying claim to it. The usual routine in murders like this is that the word creeps out. That’s how the Jack Farrells of this world create the fear that lets them exercise power. First the villains get to know. Then it filters down to us through our snouts and our undercover cops. There might not be any proof, but everybody who needs to know gets to know.

  But with Scardino there wasn’t so much as a whisper. The usual suspects were giving each other the hard stare, wondering who had ordered the hit on Scardino. There wasn’t even an obvious motive. Yes, Joey Scardino had bought a slice of Jack Farrell’s action. And yes, his death meant that slice should end up on somebody else’s plate. Most likely the plate of the person who had seen him off. But that wasn’t what had happened. Oh no, nothing that simple.

  What had happened was that the business had fallen to pieces faster than Patsy Cline. It had split into splinters and now bits of Jack Farrell’s fake ID business were being operated by half a dozen slimeballs who had been quick off the mark. There was no single winner from Scardino’s death. It really didn’t look like he had been topped for the sake of stealing his crummy little racket.

  And if not for that, then why?

  The second body came five days after Joey Scardino. Brian Cooper and Jack Farrell had both started their lives of crime working for the same boss, a tough old East End gangster called Billy Boardman. They’d both started at the bottom of the totem pole with low-level drug running. But they’d both been too smart to stay at the bottom for long.

  Jack had clawed his way up the organization, making it impossible for Billy to do without him. Then Billy had been killed in his bed, a single bullet to the head. What was worse was that his young bride had died alongside him, shot in the same way. Nobody could work out how the assassin got past the security. Well, nobody who didn’t know that Jack Farrell had been giving one to the lovely bride.

>   Farrell got the respect, and most of Billy Boardman’s business. But he didn’t want Brian Cooper working for him. He knew Cooper was as greedy as he was. He knew Cooper would already be plotting how to get Farrell out of the way. So Farrell and Cooper made a deal.

  Cooper would get fencing and faking, and Farrell would get the rest. And they’d stay off each other’s turf. Farrell wouldn’t send out teams to sell fake Rolexes, and Cooper wouldn’t run drugs or prostitutes. It was a split that had worked well for a long time. But in the past few months, some cracks had started to appear in the deal.

  It was Farrell who had started being a bit naughty, by all accounts. He was bringing more and more girls in from the former Eastern Bloc countries, where a lot of the brand-name fakes came from. And instead of abiding by the old borders and selling them on to Cooper, Farrell had started a team of youths flogging the fakes round the pubs and the markets.

  Cooper had been well pissed off. He’d even gone so far as to turn up at Farrell’s office in Soho to sound off about it. Farrell had been livid. The Soho office was for his above-board business. Nothing criminal crossed the threshold there. Least of all a gangster like Cooper who had failed to rub off his East End rough edges.

  Cooper had demanded ‘tax’ on Farrell’s new scam with the fakes. The version I heard was that Farrell had laughed in his face. Farrell told Cooper the only reason Cooper still had a business at all was that he, Farrell, had a soft spot for him because of the old days. Then Farrell told Cooper that in future he, Cooper, would be paying ‘tax’ to Farrell as the price of being allowed to stay in business at all.

  Cooper had stormed off, mouthing all sorts of threats against Farrell. The row had blown up a couple of weeks before the fire, and Cooper had been one of the evil bastards we’d taken a good look at. Of course, he had an alibi. Men like Brian Cooper always do because they are seldom the ones who do the dirty work with their own hands. But it wasn’t a very solid alibi. It sounded too genuine. It didn’t feel like one he’d had in place because he knew he’d need it. And that made me think he wasn’t expecting Katie to die that night. That in turn meant he probably hadn’t ordered the hit. Still, he had been on my list.