Dead at First Sight, page 7
‘Does it make you happy to destroy lives, Mr Barrey?’
‘Mr Tooth, after surviving my helicopter crash and spending the next two years on and off in the burns unit at Queen Victoria Hospital in Sussex, England, I had a lot of time to reflect. Do you want to know what I concluded?’
Tooth looked at him. ‘What?’
‘That life is a game. You win, you lose. Lots of people never understand that. But that’s all it is, just a dumb game. I’m helping all those poverty-stricken Ghanaian kids who never had a bean to count in the world, or an opportunity, because for five hundred years European colonialization enslaved them and plundered their country. Now, thanks to me, some of them are rich beyond their wildest dreams.’
‘From scamming decent folk in the West and ruining their lives? And now your trusted business partner has scammed you. You want me to stop him, and his charming lieutenant, Dunstan Ogwang. The machete boys, right? You know their background, don’t you? Boy soldiers. All they understand is brutality. Humanity’s not in their make-up. That’s why you brought them to Germany, right? To run your nasty little training camp.’
‘Academy, Mr Tooth.’
‘Academy. Right. Academy for internet scammers. You know, you have a very skewed moral compass.’
Tooth had visited the place, housed in the fortress of a hilltop schloss in Bavaria, the former residence of one of Adolf Hitler’s least charming buddies, who’d been executed at Nuremberg. Steve Barrey had exploited Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-doors policy to asylum seekers, bringing in over one hundred so-called Sakawa Boys. He arranged coach trips to England for them to help them better understand the culture and hone their skills at targeting their victims.
‘You’re a good one to talk about moral compasses, Mr Tooth.’
‘What we have to talk about, Mr Barrey, is renegotiation of contract terms. You hired me to protect Lena Welch against someone who was a threat to her. You told me to frighten them but you didn’t tell me it was two psycho crazies. The game is changing. For your business to survive, you may need me to take out Copeland and Ogwang, correct?’
‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘But not the size of my fee. Protection is one thing, eliminating is another. My fee is one million dollars per hit. Up front. You know where to find me. When I hear from my bank the payment’s made, I’ll start work. This Mrs Suzy Driver looks a nice lady. Your former business partner and his pal seem to think by applying the rules of violence they grew up by, they can protect their business. You’re worried they’re going to bring down their business – and yours, too, as collateral damage.’
‘Mr Tooth, I have over one hundred decent kids from Ghana who’ve been studying hard to try to better themselves and make a nicer life for their families. Copeland’s greed and violence is going to destroy all that.’
‘You really believe your own press release, don’t you, Mr Barrey? You glamorize your disfigurement and you try to justify your shitty business. Steve Barrey, Saviour of the Dispossessed Third World.’
‘So give me your press release, Mr Tooth – I’m all ears.’
‘Not really,’ Tooth replied. ‘Both yours were burned off by sulphuric acid.’
21
Thursday 27 September
The baby-faced sixty-three-year-old, with a boyish mop of greying hair, looked more like a cuddly grandpa than a man with Ryukyu Kempo ninth-degree black-belt status. Sat at a wobbly, beaten-metal table in the outside area of the Gas Monkey bar, on buzzy Duval Street in Florida’s Key West, wearing his best seersucker coat and reeking of his best cologne, Matthew Sorokin swallowed the remains of his Space Dust IPA draught beer, watching the early-evening holidaymakers strolling by. Watching more keenly than ever. Waiting, increasingly impatiently, for his date to show up.
She was over an hour late.
He had a surprise for her tomorrow: he was taking her down to the Wounded Nature Organization’s Coast Preservation Day. He thought she would be impressed by his concern for the environment and wildlife, and it would show her another side to him other than just being a cop.
Sorokin had put on weight in the seven years since he’d retired from the New York Police Homicide Department and moved down south. Actually, quite a lot of weight – thirty-five pounds of the stuff last time he’d looked at the scales. He knew what surplus weight looked like from the numerous autopsies he’d attended over the years. It didn’t look pretty. It was a greasy yellow colour. Most of that weight he’d put on had come during the past two years, since leaving Rozanna – or rather, her leaving him.
She’d just woken up one morning and told him she hadn’t liked him for at least ten years, and didn’t want to be with him any more. Their two daughters had long left home and started their own families, and there was nothing left in their bankrupt relationship, she had said, except for them to grow old hating each other more and more.
Rozanna was a very private person, who had, throughout their long marriage, kept a lot to herself. Including the serial affairs she’d been having, which he’d only discovered when he took her cell phone to work by mistake, one day, instead of his own – dumbly, they had the same model and cover. It had rung soon after he’d left their house in Queens and he’d answered it to hear a male voice saying, ‘OK, babe, I can see on Friend Finder you’ve left home. I’m so horny today. I’ll be at the hotel in forty. Are you wet?’
‘Not really,’ Matt had replied. ‘This is her husband, want me to ask her to take a shower?’
He liked to imagine the guy at the other end had shat his pants. The noise he had made had sure sounded that way.
For all her faults, Rozanna was a brilliant cook, and aware of just what rubbish cops ate most of the time when on duty, she had always done her best to ensure they both ate healthily. At fifty-five, she still had a terrific figure. And thanks to her discipline over food, throughout their married life he’d remained in trim shape, with virtually no middle-age spread at all.
All that had now gone out of the window – or, more accurately, into his belly and then elsewhere around his body. He had no idea how to cook and wasn’t even much good at heating meals up in the microwave. He always forgot to remove the foil or the lid, ending up with the oven looking like Old Sparky, or the food exploding. It was because he was impatient and could never be bothered reading the instructions, he knew. But hey, at sixty-three years old, if you hadn’t discovered your limitations, you weren’t ever going to. For Matt Sorokin, a kitchen was forever going to remain a place where he cooled beers in a refrigerator, unwrapped and ate takeaways, and opened tins for his surly cat that had come with him because Rozanna didn’t like the creature.
Most of those extra thirty-five pounds were from burgers and pizzas, and bingeing on the French fries that Rozanna had never allowed in the house. He didn’t like all this weight – it felt like he was walking around with hammers sewn inside his skin, and he had to buy bigger pants. On top of that, as his weight had increased, he realized he was no longer as fit as he had once been. He still kept up his Okinawan karate, which he had been practising for just short of fifty years. But he was starting to find some of the youngsters he was up against in the gym a struggle these days.
One of his former NYPD buddies, Detective Investigator Pat Lanigan, had been down here last summer and cheekily ribbed him that he looked like he had gone to seed.
Huh.
But the barb had prompted him into action. After several years of doing little except fishing, hunting duck and drinking beer on the deck of his condo, bored out of his mind, he had joined the Hernando County Sheriff’s office as an unpaid Reserve Deputy. Once more with a badge and a gun, he’d felt he had his life back. And within twelve months he’d made himself indispensable to the Sheriff by solving two cold cases, the first a serial rapist who targeted older women and the second a murdered schoolgirl.
Then, eight months ago, another old buddy, Gerald Ronson, a former New York firefighter he’d met during the aftermath of 9/11, and who had since moved to Minnesota, came to visit with his new wife, a delightful lady whom he had met through an online dating agency. Gerry had convinced Matt that he should try it, too. So he had, and met the woman, online, he was convinced he was going to marry.
Evelyne Desota.
A Brazilian restaurant manager who was from São Paulo, she had been left in financial ruin by her rat of a husband who’d deserted her. For the past five months she’d been stuck back in her home city, dealing with family problems. Her mother, suffering from cancer, had been unable to afford the medication she needed, so he’d helped get her decent treatment. He’d also helped out her brother and his wife – her brother had lost his job soon after having their first baby, Evelyne had sobbed, telling him they were destitute. Then Evelyne had been in a bad car wreck, and he’d funded her hospital bills and bought her a new car. But Matt didn’t mind. Hey, what was a loan of ninety thousand bucks – his fun money – to help this amazing lady. She was going to pay it all back, and interest too, but he’d generously told her he would not accept any interest.
And, finally, they were going to meet. Tonight!
He just hoped with all his heart that when she saw him she wasn’t going to be disappointed – he’d fibbed a bit with his photograph, posting one of himself some years back when he’d been a lot leaner and just a little younger – by ten years. But, hey, he would charm her. He was pretty good at that. Slipping his hand inside the front of his jacket, he pinched a roll of flesh on his stomach. It wasn’t too bad. He’d managed to shed three pounds this past week. More to come. Just had to remember to hold his tummy in tight when he stood up to greet her.
One thing that rather surprised him was her choice of venue for their first date. She’d told him this was her favourite bar on the planet, that it served the best cocktails and was the coolest – uber-coolest – place ever.
Right. Yeah. This was a bar that served a range of beers, but there was nothing cool about it, other than the name, in his view.
When had she last been here? Had she gotten the name wrong? Was there some other place here in Key West where she was sat, drinking a Martini, waiting for him?
He looked at his watch. One hour and ten minutes late now. He texted her, for the second time since he had arrived from his home in Brooksville, Hernando County – ‘Home of the tangerine!’ – a six-hour drive. But worth every damned mile for what lay ahead.
Here waiting for you, craving you, my honeybunch!
Then he left his perch, ambled over to the bar and ordered a second Space Dust, feeling pleasantly woozy, but unpleasantly anxious. Potent beer at 8.5 per cent, so he needed to be careful, but at the same time he needed the courage it gave him. This was, truth be known, his first date in over forty-five years, since he had first taken Rozanna to the prom.
As he headed back to his table, the calm of the early evening was shattered by the reverb of a bunch of tattooed, mostly shaven-headed beefcakes in singlets, throbbing by on Harleys, all thinking they looked pretty macho.
‘Dickheads,’ he murmured under his breath, and checked his phone. No response.
Evelyne Desota. What a babe. So sweet. He loved how much she cared about her family. So much more concerned than Rozanna had ever been. And what a night lay ahead! He’d blown a wad on the ocean-view honeymoon suite at the Hyatt Centric. Champagne on ice was waiting up there. He’d blown another wad on filling the suite with flowers. Petals on the bed read out, Evelyne, I love you!
He couldn’t wait to see her face when she walked in there.
He flipped down through the recent texts from her, the last one 12.02 p.m.
Matt, I cannot wait, finally to be in your arms! Tonight! At last.
My darling, my love, Matt. I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off you for long ;-)
God, why didn’t you and I meet years ago? My heart is exploding to meet you, finally! XXXXX
His phone pinged.
He looked down, hopefully. The display had a message in red below the one he had sent a few minutes ago.
Not Delivered
He tried again.
Almost instantly the same message appeared.
Not Delivered
Some of his recent casework had involved internet fraud, and he’d familiarized himself with all the workings of computers and phones. Familiarized himself enough to understand what was happening.
She had blocked him.
22
Friday 28 September
Jack Roberts had been at his desk, in his comfortable office, since 6 a.m., as he was most days. A tall, muscular man in his forties, with a shiny head and a light beard, he exuded natural charm which always inspired confidence in his clients. But he could be tough as nails at the flick of a switch, when he needed to be.
He retained the same enthusiasm for his work as he had as a youngster, when his dad had taken him to see The Spy Who Loved Me. He had been immediately captivated by James Bond, and determined, one day, to be like him.
At the age of twenty-one he began working for a firm that traced people, and four years later started his own private investigation agency, Global Investigations. His company, based in a modern low-rise office block, offered a range of services including carrying out background checks, tracing missing persons, surveillance of suspected unfaithful spouses and investigating fraud. During the past few years, much of their business was with online scamming, and increasingly with the new menace of so-called ‘romance fraud’.
With three beautiful daughters and a wife he still adored every bit as much as when they had first married, he loved the photographs of his family on his desk. They gave him an often-needed reassurance of normality in what seemed to him to be an increasingly toxic world – all the more so with the shameless targeting of the vulnerable and elderly by online predators.
He liked the early morning, the sense of being ahead of the world. In the silence of his company’s otherwise empty first-floor office suite with a view across the quiet high street, he caught up on his emails and the overnight reports filed by his field agents. He was smiling as he read through a surveillance report emailed from one of his agents.
The man had spent two days concealed in a tree, in pelting rain, watching a secluded cottage in Dorset, the suspected illicit love nest of a couple having an affair. It reminded Jack of a case early on in his career. He had spent three days concealed in a hedge bordering a lay-by, watching and photographing a man who had been claiming disability benefits, who was out every day, digging in his cottage garden. Jack had worn his ghillie camouflage suit to reduce the chances of being spotted. Around midnight on the first day a car had pulled into the lay-by, and a man got out and walked straight towards him. Convinced he had been spotted, he braced himself. Instead the stranger unzipped his flies, urinated on him, blissfully unaware of his presence, and drove off.
Some parts of being out in the field he really did not miss, he reflected.
‘Good morning, Jack, what are you looking so cheerful about?’ his long-standing secretary asked, breezing into the room.
He decided she might take it the wrong way if he said, ‘Being peed on,’ and instead simply replied, ‘Oh, nothing, Lucy.’
‘Your 8.30’s here.’
He glanced at his calendar on his screen. ‘Elizabeth Foster? Romance fraud issue?’
‘That’s her.’
‘Fine, show her in.’
He stood up as a smartly dressed fair-haired woman in her mid-thirties entered. She was a lot younger than most victims of romance fraud, who were more usually in their fifties and upwards. He shook her hand, ushered her to the black leather sofa in front of his desk, then sat down in a chair beside her and picked up a lined pad and a pen. It always put his clients at ease to sit beside them rather than the more confrontational position of facing them. ‘Would you like some tea or coffee, Ms – Mrs – Foster?’
‘Liz is fine – and just some water would be good, thank you.’
He gave the instruction through the intercom, then asked her if she would be OK with him recording the interview. She was. He placed the recorder on the coffee table in front of her. ‘So, Liz, how can I help you?’
Wringing her hands nervously, she said, ‘My mother is being conned blind by someone she met a few months ago on an internet dating site, and won’t believe the man’s not real. She’s in thrall to him. She’s already paid some cash and I’m scared stiff he’ll keep going until he’s bled her dry and she’s lost her home and everything.’
It was an all-too familiar story. ‘Cat-fishing’, the Americans called it. He did his best to put her at ease, mentally adding that she was probably worried about her inheritance, too. ‘OK, can you tell me about your mother – start from the beginning.’
She paused, as if gathering her thoughts. ‘Her name is Lynda Merrill. She’s fifty-nine and was totally devoted to my – our – father, who died four years ago after a horrible time with early-onset dementia. He worked in the Diplomatic Service and we lived abroad, moving around for much of our lives – my two brothers and I. When he retired, my parents came back to England and settled in Surrey, just outside Godalming, near Guildford. When he became ill they moved to Hove, to be near myself and my husband.’
Jack jotted down a note.
‘Dad did everything, taking care of all the bills, and Mum was totally dependent on him. She was lost for a long while after he died and they didn’t have many friends here. Both my brothers live abroad – one in California and the other in Australia – so it sort of fell to myself and my husband, Don, to take care of her. She wasn’t that tech-savvy, so Don pretty much taught her how to use her computer for more than just emails and changed her old phone for a smart one. The next thing I knew was that she very excitedly told me she’d joined an online dating agency. A recently widowed member of her book group had told her about a wonderful man she’d met online. So mother decided to join one.’ She hesitated.
