‘Just his wardrobe?’
‘No; the whole place, I’m afraid. Something could have been hidden without you being aware of it. I have to ask you this: Theo hasn’t given you anything to keep for him, has he?’
‘No, he hasn’t.’
‘Can you remember back to the Friday? Specifically, the clothes he was wearing?’
‘Yes, tan jacket, blue shirt and jeans. I washed the shirt for him and put it in his drawer, but the other stuff must be hanging in the wardrobe. When he left next day he was wearing a dark blue top and chinos. I’d just bought them for him in John Lewis.’
‘Good. Thanks.’
‘When do you want to do this?’ she asked.
‘It has to be now,’ Stallings replied. ‘We have a team of officers waiting out in the street. We’ll be as quick, as neat and as discreet as we can, I promise you.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Primarily, a gun: but generally, anything that shouldn’t be there.’
‘A gun! My God, this is unreal.’
‘I’ll bet. Before we start, do you know of anything in the flat that isn’t yours?’
‘There’s some shaving stuff in the bathroom, and a toothbrush, but other than that, no. Everything that’s his should be in his wardrobe and in the bottom drawer of the chest alongside it.’
‘Nothing is locked away?’
‘No.’
‘That’s helpful.’
‘Can I stay while you do it?’
‘You might find it distressing. We’ll be very thorough.’
‘Then let’s get it over with,’ said Mrs Weekes. ‘Once you’re finished,’ she continued, ‘can you do something for me?’
‘Sure, if it’s appropriate. What is it?’
‘If I box up his stuff, all the things you don’t need, will you take it away with you and give it to him, or dump it at his place, or in the first skip you find in the street? After tonight, I don’t want anything of him in this house, ever again.’
‘We’ll handle that for you,’ McGurk told her. ‘Have you got somewhere to go while the team does its work? We’ll be a few hours.’
She sighed despondently. ‘Not really, no.’
‘Maybe we can help with that too,’ said Stallings. ‘Jack, I’ll stay here while the search is under way. Would you like to take Mrs Weekes for something to eat? Cooking here’s going to be impossible. Is that all right with you, Lisanne?’
A small, sad smile crossed the woman’s face. ‘It’s the best offer I’m going to get tonight, that’s for sure. If it’s all right with you, Sergeant Jack, it’s okay with me.’
Thirty-six
‘Thanks, boss. Sorry, thanks, Bob,’ said Maggie Steele. ‘That contact may well come in useful. I have a feeling that I’m about to run into a brick wall. I’ve been digging into Dražen’s company. He’s no longer part of it: his shares have been sold to a Bermuda trust.’
‘What about his co-directors and senior colleagues?’
‘I’ve spent most of the day digging into their backgrounds. Leaving aside his mum, who’s taken over as chair of the company, there are only two of any consequence. Fishheads is a very tight operation: there’s no excess baggage at the top level. The CEO is an accountant named Godric Hawker. He was originally recruited as finance director, from one of the major accountancy firms, to impress the City, it’s said.’
‘Any connection with your man before that?’
‘None that I can see. I did find out something interesting about him, though, from a friend of a friend who did some asking around for me. Hawker jumped at the chance to join Fishheads because its headquarters are in London. He has a severe flying phobia; that meant that his promotion prospects with an international accountancy practice were a bit limited. It also means that if Dražen were to contact his old associates, Hawker would hardly jump on a plane to go and meet him.’
’That’s assuming Dražen’s not hiding somewhere in Britain.’
‘He isn’t,’ Maggie replied. ‘On the day the Met raided his apartment his father’s company jet logged a flight plan for Iceland. There’s no record of it ever landing there. Three days later it flew into our air space from the US and landed back at its home airfield. It was flown by Davor Boras’s driver, David Barnes. The day before that, Barnes was a passenger on the morning flight from Heathrow to Dulles International, in Washington.’
Skinner laughed. ‘Maggie, my girl, you really are good. Dražen flew the plane across the Atlantic, his friends in the intelligence community helped him disappear, and his dad sent his minder and pilot to fly the thing back.’
‘Why would anybody help him?’
‘For services rendered, and maybe still to come. What about the other business associate?’
‘He’s very interesting. His name’s Ifan Richards; he’s the public face of the company in the City. Age twenty-nine, a year older than Dražen, son of a Welsh printing millionaire. They were at Charterhouse, and they both attended Harvard Business School. Ifan majored in management sciences, and Dražen did international business. They were both on the students’ council board in their final year. Dražen was a vice-president and Richards was the communications director. Both graduated summa cum laude on the same day. Ifan was recruited by IBM in London, and was there until he joined Dražen in the start-up of Fishheads dot com.’
’Dražen’s best mate, from the sound of it,’ said Skinner. ‘What’s his personal background? Gay? Mind you, Dražen’s hetero: we found that out from Amy Noone.’
‘He’s still single, but he has a girlfriend called Chandler Lockett, who was a member of a girlie band when they were fashionable. Nowadays she’s mostly seen with him on the pages of Hello! magazine and the like.’
‘Legends in the surgery waiting room?’
‘And the hairdresser’s.’
‘So? What’s your thinking?’
’If anyone’s going to lead us to Dražen, it’ll be Ifan.’
‘Not his mother?’
‘I’m going to assume she wouldn’t put him at risk. We know for sure his father won’t. Anyway, Sanda’s a figurehead in the business. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was replaced as chair pretty soon by the non-exec that the LTN Trust put on the board.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Nobody I’ve ever heard of. His name’s Ignacio Riesgo.’
‘What? Spell the surname.’
‘R-I-E-S-G-O.’
Skinner’s laugh took her by surprise. ‘He wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Yes, he bloody would!’
‘What are you on about?’ asked Maggie, puzzled by his reaction.
‘His name. Riesgo, translated, means “risk” in English. You’re telling me that Dražen’s replacement on the board of the company he founded is called “I. Risk”. He’s pulled another one, the cheeky bastard. You find Ignacio, and you’ve found Dražen.’
‘But his shares have been sold. I checked with the company registrar: his signature is on the transfer document.’
‘Transfer being the key word. They’ve been moved into a trust, not sold to an individual. Mags, I don’t know anything about this LTN operation, but if the L doesn’t stand for “Langley” I’ll bet you it should. This will be a CIA front. I wanted to tell you this face to face, but Davor Boras has been enabling operations in the Balkans for years, and latterly his son’s been involved too. These guys have a stack of Brownie points with the Americans; now some of them have been cashed in.’
‘Maybe, but if I can find him. .’
‘There will be one significant problem with that.’
‘What?’
’Three of our people have met Dražen. Mario, and the two DCs down in Leith, Tarvil Singh and Griff Montell. But that was weeks, months ago. I’m pretty sure that by now they could all sit in the same room as the guy and not know him, at least until he spoke. He’ll have had cosmetic surgery, his hair colour and style will be different, he’ll be bearded and he’ll probably have been to fucking Specsavers. We’re going to need his DNA to identify him for sure.’