‘What have we done?’
‘Nothing, I hope,’ he replied, the police-punter cliché conversation. ‘I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, that’s all.’
‘Fire away.’
‘Thanks. What sort of traffic do you get through here?
‘It varies; it’s mostly hobby flying, but we do get some commercial landings. There are a few swish resort hotels in the area and they use us when guests want to fly in, for golfing weekends or whatever. I keep hoping that a helicopter firm will decide to base itself here but, to be honest, I think we’re on the wrong side of Newcastle for that.’
‘Did you have anyone land last Saturday?’
She nodded. ‘The usual swarm of microlights, Mr Alexander in his Piper and, oh, yes, the Beechcraft.’
‘What was that?’ Cairns asked.
‘A Beechcraft Bonanza, twin-prop; a cracking little plane, although it’s bigger than it looks in terms of payload.’
‘Were you expecting it?’
‘No, it wasn’t booked in. He came on radio asking for landing clearance and my husband gave him the okay; he was in the control tower at the time.’
‘Family business?’
‘Yes. We own all the land around here, but the farming operation is all tenanted now. This is what we like doing.’
‘Did you see the pilot?’
‘Yes, I did. As soon as he had parked and offloaded his motorcycle he came across, paid his landing fee, and roared off. We’re a cash-only business,’ she added.
‘His motorcycle?’
‘Yes. I’ve seen that before. People fly in from other cities, land here and then bike it into Newcastle. Some even use pedal cycles.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘I’m afraid not. I never saw his face close up. He was wearing his crash helmet when he came in here, and when he came back, it was my turn to be up in the control tower, shepherding the microlights.’
‘Would your husband have seen him?’
‘I doubt it. The guy rode straight up to the plane, loaded the bike, up its little ramp, then climbed inside. He had to wait for take-off clearance, in the queue with the flying sewing-machines, but he got off all right.’
‘He didn’t refuel?’
‘Obviously he didn’t need to. Bonanzas have a range of around eight hundred miles with a low payload, as this chap had.’
‘Right,’ said Cairns. ‘That’ll be all, Mrs Ritter. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘My pleasure, but can you tell me what it’s all about? Has he crashed, or was he doing something illegal?’
He would have answered her question, but he knew no more than she did, and so instead he shook his head and fed her another cliché. ‘No, no, nothing like that; purely routine.’ He gave her a brief salute and stepped outside.
Seventy-eight
The security service safe house was in Millfields Road, a quiet thoroughfare well away from congestion zones, cars parked outside houses with the security of traffic-calming bumps, which prevented them being driven away at high speed.
David Barnes was waiting for Skinner and McGuire at a table in an upstairs room when they arrived just after two p.m. He was handcuffed and his ankles were secured to the legs of his chair. He glared at them as they entered and sat opposite him. ‘What the ’ell is this?’ he barked, in broad Mancunian. ‘Who are you barstards?’
The two detectives produced their warrant cards. ‘That’s who we are,’ said McGuire, as Skinner leaned back and stared coldly across the table. ‘And this is about you being done for the murder of two men, one of them a police officer.’
‘You’re crazy!’ Barnes screamed. ‘I never murdered anyone in my life.’
‘Of course you did,’ the chief superintendent told him. ‘You were in the army, a sergeant on duty with KFOR in Kosovo, about seven years ago. You were part of an interrogation team that interpreted its orders very broadly. You killed three prisoners under questioning in separate incidents, but the third one went public and you became an embarrassment. Consequently your death in action was reported, and you were quietly made to disappear, with the help of Mr Davor Boras, a facilitator with links to the CIA. You went to work for him as his chauffeur-cum-bodyguard. Your duties also included piloting the company’s light aircraft on occasion.
‘A few years ago, Mr Boras and his son decided that it would be a good idea if they appeared to be at odds, and so Dražen was seen to leave his old man’s business, set up on his own and take an English name. . David Barnes, on the basis that it might be handy to have two of you around.’
McGuire leaned forward. ‘Are you going to dispute any of that?’ he hissed. ‘Because my boss and I would love to interrogate you, just like you used to in Kosovo, only we’re better at it than you were. We won’t kill you, we won’t mark you, but we will fucking well waste you, in memory of our dead colleague.’
Barnes looked, and believed. ‘You’ve got all that right,’ he murmured, ‘but I never killed no copper.’
‘No,’ said Skinner. ‘This is what you did. On Saturday morning Davor Boras called you to see him. He gave you a return e-ticket for the Edinburgh shuttle out of Heathrow at twelve fifteen. He also gave you clothes, specifically jeans, a T-shirt, a very garish denim jacket and cap, and a pair of Oakleys. He ordered you to fly north, in that gear, and to meet the other David Barnes at a location in Edinburgh.
’You did just that. You met Dražen, you changed clothes, and you gave him the return ticket. Then you rode his motorbike back to Walkdean Airfield, near Newcastle, where Dražen had parked the company Beechcraft, and flew it back to the depot in London, returning to London in transport he had left there.
’While you were engaged in this pantomime, Dražen went to Wooler, in Northumberland where he killed a man named Daniel Ballester and, in mistake for two other people, Detective Inspector Steven Steele, a colleague and very good friend of ours.’
Barnes paled. ‘I read about that. He did that? Christ, mate, I never knew.’
‘I couldn’t give a shit what you knew,’ the DCC growled. ‘Tell me, David, do you love Sharon, your wife?’ Barnes nodded. ‘And do you love Wendy, the girl you’ve been shagging on the side in a flat in Victoria Park for a year now?’ The man gasped.
‘Actually, I don’t care about that,’ Skinner continued. ‘But I would like to know whether you would like to see either of them again, or whether you’re prepared to have your body fed through an industrial-sized tree-shredder, maybe before you’re quite dead. Because, mate, as you will have gathered from the depth of our knowledge, and because of the unconventional nature of your arrest, we are in a position to make that happen.’
He laid two sheets of paper on the table. ‘That’s your admission that everything within your sphere of knowledge happened as I have described. Did it?’ he snapped. ‘Yes or no?’
‘Yes!’ Barnes screamed again, but this time out of pure terror, as he stared at the nightmare across the table, pointing a pen at him like a dagger.
‘Then sign that, both pages, within ten seconds or Mario will start breaking your fingers.’
Barnes snatched the Pentel from Skinner, with both manacled hands, and scrawled his name, twice.
‘Thanks,’ said McGuire, amiably, as he pocketed the signed statement. ‘We’ll have you taken back to work now, hopefully before your boss notices you’re missing. But breathe just one word to him, and I promise you, the best that’ll happen is that your wife will hear about Wendy.’
Seventy-nine
‘You know,’ said Skinner, ‘I thought Barnes would have been tougher than that.’
‘Me too,’ McGuire agreed. ‘But I have to confess you scared me a wee bit, so Christ knows what he must have felt.’
‘Maybe we’re getting too good at it.’
‘Maybe, but I’d like to think that there’s still room for improvement when we get our hands on Dražen. He’ll be a harder nut than his namesake, I’m sure of that.’ The head of CID’s eyes narrowed. ‘I wish we could go in there first.’