The Sweeney 02 Read online

  “You quote it.” Regan banged down the phone.

  “Now, Mr. Casey-Moore,” Regan turned on the banker. “I’d like a little information—”

  The man cut across him. “Inspector, I’m now approaching the point where I’m no longer amused. I demand you come to your senses and call a halt to this charade.”

  “I’m requesting a short answer to a simple question. What are the names of the five Americans?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t feel disposed—”

  “Are you refusing to give me this information?” Regan asked sharply. “Are you obstructing me from obtaining these names? It’s a technical, but legal, point, sir.” He felt the banker knew all about such legal points. He felt that Casey-Moore might well have a legal background.

  “I will give you their names, Inspector, as I have given you mine. The Americans are Mr. Angelo Galliano, Mr. L. Cohen, Mr. Seton Altbach, Mr. Ettore Senti, and Mr. Ricky Rossi. My colleague introduced himself...”

  “Yes,” Regan said, still writing down names. “Jerome Bates Carlton.” He completed the list. “Now may I ask you the obvious question? What was your business with them, sir?”

  “I’m sure you’ll appreciate that it’s inappropriate to discuss this with you, Inspector. I imagine my solicitors will be advising me to take legal action for false arrest. I feel it would not be in my interests if it appeared that after the idiocy of my arrest I had a friendly chat with you.”

  The phone rang. It was one of those phones where anybody within ten feet could hear the voice on the other end of the line. It was, in fact, the internal phone with the desk sergeant on the end of the line. “I phoned the Bank of England, sir. Mr. Casey-Moore’s last appointment this morning was at the Aerial Hotel, London Airport. She’s checked. It appears he went there and got himself arrested.

  I didn’t tell her anything. Anyhow it appears she’s been in touch with the Home Office. Mr. Casey-Moore is a personal friend of the Undersecretary of State. Would you like me to bring you a bottle of aspirin, guv?”

  Regan replaced the phone as Mr. Casey-Moore got up. “I will now be leaving this police station, Inspector, unless you immediately prefer specific charges against me.”

  “Sit down, sir,” Regan said hard and sharp. “Don’t you understand you’re under arrest? Now, who are your solicitors? I’ll inform them.”

  “It is my right to inform my own solicitors.”

  Regan glowered him into silence. “I think I said quite distinctly that I’ll inform them. Who are your solicitors, sir?”

  “Lord Edward Parris and Partners.”

  Oh Christ, thought Regan. “I’ll ask you again, sir,” he said. “What was your business with these men?”

  “Why do I have a problem making myself clear? I absolutely refuse to cooperate with you, Inspector.”

  “In that case...” Regan picked up the internal phone and asked the desk sergeant to come in and take the man back to the cells. Casey-Moore had an exit line. “By God, you’re going to pay for this.”

  Left alone in the office Regan went to the window, put up a smoke, one of the ten Benson and Hedges he allowed himself per day, and contemplated the situation. He studied the red roof tile suburbia of West Drayton. A light drizzle beginning to drift out of the sky like old Zeus himself was weeping for him. Or, more likely, pissing on him. He had arrested the contents of two Rolls Royces, four first-class ticket holders of TWA, a powerful merchant banker, and, indirectly, the Bank of England. Regan made a profession out of high risk, but it was weighing on him that this time he might have stepped not just over the mark but off the plane without a parachute.

  His eyes came away from the serried rows of wet red roofs and ornamental pines. Some secretary had pressed a mirror, handbag size with an adhesive back, onto the window in some bygone age, initiating a thousand hours of makeup, touch-up, and mascara adjustments, at the expense of the receiver of the Metropolitan Police.

  Now Regan saw his face for today, and most days. He was thirty-four. The face said forty. He was the hardest, sharpest, brightest Sweeney detective inspector. (“Sweeney” being Cockney rhyming slang for Flying Squad—Sweeney Todd, the notorious barber of Fleet Street.) Detective Inspector Jack Regan, the Sweeney’s best, bright incisive mind, steel hard in decision—that was his reputation. The mirror showed a puffy face, slightly flattened nose, standard airline hand baggage beneath each eye, red eyes the color of Scotch with lacings of Burgundy—which was a fair reflection of the derivation of their color and condition. And an untidy fall of mouse-brown hair, over the deep-etched lines of forehead. He felt like he looked—a refugee from a road gang.

  “This looks like a number-one blowout,” he thought. His jaws stiffened marginally. What else to do but see it through to the end and cross fingers that some indefinable something turned up to salvage the situation?

  The phone rang. It was the desk sergeant. “FBI New York office, on the line now, guv.”

  Regan could hear the hollow echo down three thousand miles of wire. “Thanks.”

  A woman’s voice said, “Federal Bureau, New York station.”

  “Put me through to your IC room, please.”

  The woman tapped an extension, which was immediately picked up. “IC”

  “Flying Squad, New Scotland Yard. My name’s Detective Inspector Regan.”

  “Yes, Inspector Regan?”

  “We have a red letter, reference A. Galliano, L. Cohen. We intercepted and effected arrest. Could we have your further instructions?”

  “On hold a minute, Inspector Regan.” The line went silent. Regan could picture the scene. The IC lieutenant turning and shouting across to his chief. The chief looking up instructions, seeing the red-letter telex, and going berserk. “What’s he mean, ‘further instructions’? We told those Limeys ‘surveillance and report four hourly.’ What the fuck do they mean, the guys are arrested? Kill the fucking call while I look into this. Get him off the line.”

  The IC man was back on the phone within a minute. “Inspector Regan, we’re looking into this. We’ll call you back as quickly as possible.”

  “How quickly?”

  “I can’t tell you that, sir. You will have our advice as soon as we have formulated it.”

  Regan replaced the phone. Carter walked in. “Hilliard’s back. Says the guy in the toupee split from the Aerial.”

  “Split?”

  “Gone. His room vacated. Disappeared. So bloody fast he left his passport with reception.”

  “Have you got it?”

  Carter was already digging it out of his inside pocket. He dropped the dark green American passport on the desk.

  Regan picked it up. “This should make it difficult for Mr. Ricky Rossi to get out of the country.”

  “Difficult, but not impossible,” Carter decided.

  “Get the description of Rossi on an all cars call.”

  “Done it. And I’ve got the search warrant for the Aerial.”

  “Right. Let’s go.” Regan headed for the door, gesturing Carter to go in front of him.

  They headed down the corridor. Hilliard was at the desk chatting up the desk sergeant. Still no sign of the local DCI. Obviously the indigenous CID at West Drayton had assessed the situation: they acknowledged Regan’s inalienable right to arrest the Bank of England, or any other bank, as his fancy took him, but they weren’t going to be summoned as witnesses on the Day of Judgment when Regan had to account for his excesses.

  The desk sergeant looked grim. “Inspector Regan. Just had a call from Lord Edward Parris and Partners. They’re hopping mad. They’re not going to mess about, sir. They are preparing a writ of habeas corpus. Which, of course, makes this very serious, sir. Shouldn’t the Home Office be informed, sir?”

  “I don’t know who you think you are or what you think you’re saying,” Regan snapped at him. “We have a man in cells claiming to be Mr. Casey-Moore of the Bank of England. I haven’t positively identified him yet. They can’t get a writ of habeas corpu
s until they can positively say that we are holding their client. I hope to identify him in the next few hours. Meanwhile hold him.” Regan turned and headed for the door. He walked out. Carter and Hilliard followed.

  They used Regan’s car to go back to the Aerial. Regan’s driver, Constable Len, drove fast, sensing from Regan’s expression that something was wrong and that it might help to get a move on. The silence in the car was profound. Regan, in the front seat, tried to let all thoughts wash over him, like the rain being pushed aside on the windshield by the pulse of the wipers. He concentrated on Len’s driving, considering how precisely the man was knit to the machine, how Len knew exactly when the Rover 3500 would begin the slight back-end slide on the greased macadam corners, and how precisely to correct it, with a minute powering up, maybe forty extra revs from the big engine, while easing up on the power brakes. Len’s face a mask, like Carter’s and Hilliard’s. Nobody had bothered to tell him the story of the VIP arrests. He had sensed the uneasiness. Fifteen years of Sweeney driving had taught him that sometimes the most beneficial form of social intercourse is total silence.

  The search warrant produced the hotel manager, assistant manager, house dick, and two porters. The two porters produced the luggage. For the second time that day Regan mentally ticked off the twelve Gucci and the six Vuitton cases. They were taken from the bedrooms to an empty suite on the first floor. The hotel manager said Ricky Rossi checked in at eleven and was last seen walking out a side entrance at one-twenty, and that was all he knew.

  Without ceremony Regan kicked out the manager, assistant manager, house dick, and two porters. Then he kicked out Hilliard, to check whether the gringos had phoned anybody in the half hour they occupied their rooms, and also to check for baggage or briefcases in the Rollses.

  Regan surveyed the baggage. “Right, let’s get this lot sorted.”

  Carter started to unbuckle and unzip. “What precisely are we looking for, guv?”

  “We’re looking for evidence. And if we fail to find it, George Carter, then I am fucked. But I may have company...”

  Carter mused about that for a moment, studying Regan, who was now squatting on the floor pulling silk underpants apart from shirts and socks. Then he settled down and started to pull the baggage apart.

  The FBI call came an hour and a half later, at four-twenty.

  The first touch of dusk pulling gray curtains across the windows. Regan was sitting at the desk in the room, desk lamp angled down, reading the mountain of papers. Carter was lying on the bed, papers spread out, plus a couple of copies of International Penthouse which he’d checked, page by page, for hidden papers.

  “Federal Bureau, New York, Mr. Broughton’s office calling Inspector Regan of the Flying Squad.”

  “Speaking,” Regan responded.

  “I am putting you through to Mr. Broughton.”

  Regan heard a couple of clicks and the low burr of a southern voice on the line. “Inspector Regan, my name is Broughton, assistant to Chief Lucas. Chief Lucas is away upstate for a few days. I have been able to contact him. He’s requested to know why Galliano and Cohen were arrested contrary to telex instructions...”

  Regan started to explain the problem of the unavailability of fourteen plainclothes cops in seven cars, but immediately he suspected Broughton was not interested in the excuse but in the mention of the three extra TWA passengers, and also the English bankers.

  “You say five guys got off TWA, booked into the hotel?” Broughton interrupted.

  “Right.”

  “Can you give me the names?”

  Regan glanced at his notes. “A. Galliano, L. Cohen, E. Senti, S. Altbach, and a Mr. Ricky Rossi, who unfortunately gave us the slip, checked out of his hotel, and has disappeared.”

  “All these guys Caucasian?”

  “All. And I think Italian extraction.”

  He could almost hear the wheels in Broughton’s brain turn over and slot into place. “And you think the Bank of England connection is legitimate?”

  “Yes.” Regan didn’t hesitate. “There’s no way Casey-Moore could be involved in any oblique business.”

  “So what business, Inspector Regan? You have any indication?”

  “I have a search warrant. I’m in the middle of checking their luggage. Among the luggage, in various cases, a pile of business paper work, bank correspondence.” Regan studied the heap of paper work on the desk and spread around the recumbent Carter on the bed. “I’m no expert sir, but it looks to me like the groundwork for some major international loan or business deal.”

  “Tell me more about the documentation.”

  “Well, it appears to be in four languages. English, Italian, German, and some language I don’t recognize, Arab or something, that turns up in some handwritten letters. They’re on Tunis Hilton notepaper.”

  “What?”

  “The Hilton, Tunis, North Africa. Maybe the writing is some African language. I don’t know. Now, Mr. Broughton, tell me if I’ve created a major setback arresting these people?”

  Silence on the end of the phone for a moment. Then Broughton spoke carefully. “I’ll have to come back to you on that, Inspector. Meanwhile I think you hold one card— the Casey-Moore arrest. He’s the straight man in a den of thieves. He has to talk to you.”

  “He’s refused.”

  “He must give you information. I’ll be phoning back as soon as I’ve talked to Chief Lucas again.”

  Regan spent another fifteen minutes on the papers, still unable to work out how the four piles from the cases of Galliano, Cohen, Senti, and Altbach interrelated, or even added up. Regan didn’t speak Italian, German, or the language on the Tunis Hilton notepaper. The English-language papers seemed to be about a borrowing or a loan on an investment. The highest sum mentioned in the approximately two hundred sheets of figures seemed to be $780,000. There were Xerox copies of certificates of deposit on Italian banks; both Cohen and Senti had those. There were Xerox copies of statements from three Swiss banks and two German banks. Regan could sit and weigh up the junk for another two months, or two years, and it might still end up meaning nothing. He told Carter to get four plastic shopping bags and bring the paper work back to West Drayton.

  It was now five o’clock. Len drove him back to West Drayton through dusk, low clouds, and heavy rain. His spirits were as low as the skies. He felt tense and nervous—a condition he reserved not for moments of physical danger, but solely for those rare occasions when he knew he’d made a fool of himself. It was obvious now that his actions this day would end up the subject of a full-scale CID internal inquiry. He could just see the whole formal idiocy of it stretched out in front of him—and a verdict against him almost implied in the decision to inquire. What possible excuse could he have for arresting four TWA passengers, a scion of a City of London’s leading merchant bank, and a major figure in the Bank of England? What possible explanation?

  Regan strode into the lobby of the West Drayton station to find the desk sergeant poised and waiting for him. He had an expression on his face like a hangman getting first sight of his victim. “Sir David Amon of Lord Edward Parris and Partners—he’s here. I put him in the interview room. I think he’s a little concerned at your statement that you had not established Mr. Moore’s identity...”

  “Good. Fuck him. Bring me two cups of tea to the office. And Casey-Moore.”

  Regan went down the corridor and into the office. He picked up a phone. “No calls.” Two minutes later he was installed behind the desk with two automat cups of gray tea. Then Casey-Moore was shown in.

  “Sit down,” Regan said. The man did, wordlessly. The tone of Regan’s voice intimated that he was in a dangerous mood. “Right,” Regan continued. “Your solicitor, Sir David Amon, is here. Now I want to tell you about an anomaly in English law. I can keep you here, if I so choose, for thirty-six hours, sitting on that chair. And there’s nothing Sir David can do about it.”

  Casey-Moore said nothing. He looked at his fingernails. He seemed mi
ldly bored.

  “So I’ve arrested you. And you know I’ve made a disastrous mistake. And now you can wait out the opportunity to really get me by the balls. Well, forget it. You won’t get the privilege. My own organization will preempt you. You’re looking at a career copper of a dozen years’ experience who’s about to lose his job. Question: does it give you any satisfaction that you’ll be some small pawn in the process of ruining me?”

  The banker was looking at the cup of tea. “Is this for me?” he said quietly.

  Regan nodded. “It’s a simple question. Will you get a laugh out of it? A few jokes at the golf club? After all, I’ve spent my life protecting you, yours, your property, your shares, your weekend in the country, your government, your system. Because I half-believe in it—just that, just half. However, I’m in a job, quite unlike yours, where a mistake like this gets paraded in public, and the guy who conscientiously served for twelve years is now in the stocks, with bad eggs, old tomatoes, and generalized shit about to be thrown at him. But to your sophisticated, educated mind, watched over at all times by the firm of Lord Parris and Partners, people like me are the crap of the gutters—creatures of function rather than worth...”