LITMIR.BIZ

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right. He wants to get in touch with you. He wants you to know that he can help you.’

      ‘I don’t need anybody’s help.’

      ‘I think you do, Miss West. It really would be easier to speak face to face.’

      She stood for a moment in silence, wondering what to do. You were set up. The words in the text had hooked her, playing on her own suspicions. Was it possible he knew something?

      ‘Give me a few minutes,’ she said.

      She hurriedly threw on a pair of jeans and a pullover, then went downstairs. She opened the front door a few inches, wedging her bare foot behind it, her hand on the edge ready to slam it shut. A small middle-aged man, with glasses and thinning silver hair stood on the step below. He was smartly dressed in a beige mackintosh, with a dark suit and tie just visible beneath.

      ‘You may remember me from a couple of years ago, Miss West. As I said, my name’s Alan Peters.’ He enunciated each word clearly, as though trying to make a point. He held out a card, which she took. Alan Peters. Associate. Mercantile Partners LLP. A City of London address. She stared at him, but couldn’t place him.

      ‘Who’s John?’

      ‘John Duran.’ He gave a tight, little smile, as though she should have known all along.

      The mention of the name almost made her start. She had hoped never to hear it again. She opened the door a little wider to get a better look at Peters. His eyes were sharp and alive behind his steel-rimmed spectacles, his mouth still puckered by some inner joke. Perhaps he was amused by her bewilderment, enjoying the impact that Duran’s name still had on her. She saw a huge number of people on a day-to-day basis and there was nothing particularly memorable about Peters, but she suddenly placed him. He was John Duran’s solicitor, an unpleasant, little terrier of a man, who had been involved from day one of Duran’s arrest for murder right up until his subsequent conviction.

      Duran, however, was someone she would never forget. He ran a small off-shore investment bank, with a London office close to Fleet Street. It was the legitimate front for some well-known Eastern European crime families. According to the Met’s Organized Crime Command, he was the real criminal mastermind, the facilitator and fixer, managing their affairs and investments and laundering their money. He had been under long-term surveillance for well over a decade but no charges had ever stuck. Then a couple of years before, the body of one of his known associates, Stanco Rupec, had been found dumped on a stretch of grassland opposite the Old Bull and Bush pub, near Hampstead Heath. Rupec had been bludgeoned to death, his head and face beaten to a pulp. The crime scene photos had been some of the worst she had ever seen. CCTV footage recovered from two days previously, timed at around one in the morning, had captured Rupec’s blue Mercedes driving at speed along Haverstock Hill, pursued by a black Jaguar belonging to another of Duran’s entourage. The Mercedes was later found abandoned a little further along, just after Belsize Park Tube station. Neighbours had also reported hearing shouting around the same time, and some sort of a scuffle going on outside some nearby garages, but it had been a Saturday night and when the local police finally turned up, there was no sign of anybody. Appeals for witnesses finally produced a minicab driver who claimed to have seen a man being attacked in a street just off Rosslyn Hill, not far away. As luck would have it, the minicab had been fitted with both a dashcam and a rear-view camera, which together had captured a good part of the assault. Stanco Rupec could be seen running, then tripping over something. He held up his hands as he fell backwards. Even though there was no sound on the recording, it was clear he was screaming and begging for his life as Duran caught up with him. The blows rained down without even a momentary pause as the taxi drove past and accelerated away. Duran, himself, was clearly identifiable as the man wielding the crow bar and he was arrested and charged with murder.

      Eve had been the senior investigating officer on the case. It was unclear why Duran had risked so much to attack Rupec out on the street, in plain view. Why he had done it himself, rather than leave the job to one of his many associates, was also a mystery. She had watched the video footage several times and had been struck by the degree of violence. The repeated blows were far more than would have been necessary to kill Rupec. It looked like an act of rage. Yet the emotion and lack of self-control were wholly inconsistent with everything that was known about Duran. He had never got his hands dirty before, certainly never been caught with blood on them. It had to be something very personal. But despite repeated questioning, no matter what interview tactics were thrown at him, he remained extraordinarily calm and inscrutable, steadfastly refusing to comment on his motivation. She could still vividly remember the hours spent either watching from a distance or locked away with him in a series of windowless, stiflingly hot interview rooms. The closeness and intensity of the experience had been characterized by the overpowering smell of the Paco Rabanne cologne, which he habitually wore. One of her mother’s classier boyfriends used to drench himself in it, but the smell was now indelibly associated in her mind with Duran.

      Nor could she forget the sight of him later at his trial, at the Old Bailey, where he had sat almost motionless and upright in the dock for hours, his face an impenetrable mask. He was over fifty, but his natural hair colour was still black and his sallow skin almost unlined. He had taken to shaving his head shortly before Rupec’s murder and the five o’clock shadow of hair, with its pronounced widow’s peak, covered his scalp like a dark cap. Most defendants adopted some sort of a pose, whether defiant, shell-shocked, sorrowful, scared, or simply bored. Duran’s eyes never left her as she gave evidence, but no flicker of emotion crossed his face at any point. It was as though he were just an observer, listening to somebody else’s trial. She would have given a lot to know what was going through his mind, what he really felt and, in particular, what had driven him to kill Stanco Rupec.

      ‘John Duran’s still safely behind bars at Bellevue,’ she said. ‘Hopefully for the next twenty years or so.’

      ‘Mr Duran is still at Bellevue …’

      ‘Why’s he texting me?’

      The fact that, locked away in a category ‘A’ high security prison, he had access to a mobile phone was not much of a surprise. There had been much in the media about drones being used to deliver all manner of contraband over prison walls, including drugs, phones and weapons, in some cases, directly to a prisoner’s cell. Even without the help of new technology, old-fashioned corruption of prison staff could still buy you most things, particularly when you were as rich and powerful as Duran.

      ‘He wants you to know that he doesn’t bear you any ill will. He’s been following recent events and is aware of your situation …’

      ‘It’s got nothing to do with him.’

      ‘Mr Duran has some information that might be of interest to you.’

      ‘I don’t need anything from him.’

      ‘He has evidence that you were set up. You can do what you like with it, but you’d be wise to listen to what he’s got to say.’

      She stared at him. ‘What’s the price of this information?’

      ‘Mr Duran doesn’t want any money.’

      ‘But he wants something.’

      ‘He just hopes that in return, you may be able to do him a favour.’

      ‘A favour? For John Duran? I might as well kiss my career goodbye, or what’s left of it.’

      ‘It’s nothing illegal. You have my word.’

      ‘And that’s worth something, is it?’

      ‘Don’t shoot the messenger, Miss West. You have the disciplinary hearing coming up. From what I hear, you’re likely to be sacked, or at best forced to resign. Don’t you at least want to find out who sent you and your dead lover to that house in Wood Green?’

      His bluntness didn’t shock her, even though it wasn’t pleasant hearing it from him. In the days following the shooting, she had more or less accepted that the likely outcome would be that she would have to leave the Met. Whatever she felt

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