In her late forties, with cropped and gelled fair hair, she was dressed in a short-sleeve black T-shirt and dungarees and had a tattoo on her left arm of an elderly lady’s face ringed with flowers. A round metal badge, on which was the double-headed eagle symbol and the legend ALBANIANS IN SUSSEX, was pinned to her T-shirt.
Godanci delivered the dish then hurried over to the woman, Constable Nikki Denero, who was the liaison officer between the force and the Sussex Albanian community. For many years this community had shunned the police. Coming from a corrupt dictatorship with brutal, equally corrupt police, many Albanians found it impossible to believe that police in any other country could be decent, caring people. Accordingly, they never turned to the local police to handle any issues, preferring to handle disputes directly themselves.
The eye-opener for PC Denero had come five years ago, at 2 a.m. one morning, when an Albanian had been found impaled on railings, having fallen — or more likely been pushed — from his bedsit window five storeys above. First on the scene, she had stayed with the man, who was miraculously still just alive, all the way to hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. She had then been confronted by a wall of silence over his death.
That had been the start of her personal mission to break down the mistrust of the police and the bad name this gave Albanians in the local community, and she had made huge strides with many of them — much of it due to the support and help of Enver Godanci.
‘Përshëndetje!’ she said.
‘Nikki, good to see you! You’ve come for the Albanian evening?’
‘Actually, no, Enver. Could we talk in private?’ the officer said.
‘Sure.’
He led her through the kitchen into the tiny rest room behind it, where there was a table and four chairs, with a wall-mounted television. ‘Drink?’
‘I’m good,’ she said.
‘So?’
Looking worried, the Constable said, ‘We have a very serious situation. A fourteen-year-old boy has been kidnapped today — taken from the Amex during the match. His best friend, apparently, is called Aleksander Dervishi. He’s the son of Jorgji Dervishi.’
Godanci’s cheerful countenance fell away, and she saw the flash of concern.
‘Jorgji Dervishi?’
‘You know him, Enver?’
‘Of course. Everyone in the Albanian community knows him.’
‘A bad man, right?’
He looked around nervously, as if scared they might be overheard. ‘Very.’
‘What do you know about him?’
He shrugged. ‘My friends — we keep well away. He deals in everything — girls, drugs, you name it. He screws around with people’s heads. You arrive to see him early, he tells you that you are late. If you arrive late he tells you you’re too early. He offers money-lending at crazy interest rates. He is not the kind of guy I want to do business with — nor my friends.’
‘I need your help urgently, Enver. Is there any way you could find out very discreetly if any of the Albanians you have here tonight, for the party, have had any dealings — or know anyone who has — with a Brighton IFA called Kipp Brown? But it’s really important this is kept low-key.’
He looked at her. ‘Trust Kipp? That guy from the ads who promises he can get you a cheap mortgage or car finance?’
‘That’s him.’
‘I’ll ask around.’
‘Thanks, Enver. Tell them they’re not going to be in any kind of trouble, I just need to know.’
He looked hard at her. ‘Yeah, OK, I trust you.’
‘Tell any of them they can trust me, too.’
‘What exactly is your interest in Jorgji Dervishi?’ he asked.
‘I can’t tell you exactly — take a guess.’
He shook his head and looked at her quizzically. ‘You want me to tell all my Albanian friends to trust you? But you don’t trust me? How is that right?’
45
Saturday 12 August
20.30–21.30
Adrian Morris was doing a check of the stadium, as the crowds slowly dispersed from the bars. His mobile phone rang. It was the same male voice with the Eastern European accent as before.
‘Mr Morris, you will have learned by now that there was no detonator in the camera device. Please do not think this was an oversight, it was deliberate. I have no intention of killing and maiming hundreds of innocent people — that is a decision I leave to you.’
‘Who the hell are you?’ Morris said, calmly but angrily.
‘Just listen to me very carefully. Now you understand we are capable of making and delivering a viable device to your stadium, perhaps next time you will take me more seriously. I will be back in touch — you have many home games this season. Goodbye, Mr Morris.’
The call ended.
46
Saturday 12 August
21.30–22.30
Kipp Brown liked quoting to his friends something the head of design at Porsche, back in the 1960s, had once said: ‘The essence of a great car is that each time you get in and sit behind the wheel, it must make you feel it is your birthday.’ And, normally, that was just how Kipp Brown felt. Normally. Normally, he loved this car. The driver’s seat that hugged him. The smell of leather. The cockpit, with the red needles on the speedometer and rev counter. The blatter of the expensive, finely tuned engine and the feeling of the precision of its engineering. The adrenaline rush when he pressed the accelerator and felt the surge of the car in the small of his back and the pit of his stomach.
But not now. Not tonight as he drove fast along the narrow, twisting road, the lights of oncoming cars momentarily blinding him, then flashing past. He was feeling numb, enveloped in an aura of evil darkness. His soul was heavy.
Please be OK, Mungo.
Oh God, please.
Tall grass and hedgerows sped past either side of him in the beam of the headlights, the needle of his speedometer jigging between 60 and 90 mph, the engine whining behind him. He braked and slowed as he took the final right turn and accelerated up the hill, cresting it and entering the almost-deserted car park. Several cars were parked outside the red-brick structure of the Devil’s Dyke Hotel.
He pulled into a bay, switched off the ignition and sat, looking around in the darkness, feeling nervous as hell. The door of the hotel opened and a tarty-looking blonde came out, unsteady on her high heels, holding the hand of a thuggish man with a shaven head, wearing cut-off jeans and a wife-beater sleeveless vest. They made their way over to a pickup truck and got in. After a few seconds the engine started and the vehicle drove off.
He opened his door and got out, then stood, listening to the fading roar of the engine. The night air was chilly and dewy. He looked carefully around but could see no sign of anyone else. Slowly, and nervously, he made his way across the wet grass towards the crumbling brick structure he knew so well from his school days. As did almost every kid who grew up in Brighton.
During the Second World War the British military built a series of strategic machine-gun posts along elevated positions across the whole of the south of England. If they failed to down the German fighter planes and bombers on their way in, they would try again with their ack-ack guns to get them on the way back.
Decades later, with the guns long removed, these brick pillboxes were great places for kids to explore — and for playing Cowboys and Indians or any other kind of game. This one up here on the Dyke, with its dark, dank interior, often littered with cowpats, had always held a sense of excitement and mystery for him — and history.