Rego sent Tamsyn back to Penzance with another uniformed officer as he continued to question witnesses. Ollie’s friend ‘Adrian’ had been found quickly, and DC Eagling said that ‘Spider’ was a face well known to Camborne officers. It took another couple of hours to find him, but by then, Rego was on a roll.
Kevern Moyle, aka ‘Spider’ was a tall, skinny man in his early thirties, wearing a dirty beanie pulled low over his bald head, and a Cornish flag tattooed over his left bicep.
His rap sheet was longer than both arms put together: 51 previous convictions for 104 offences, including supplying Class A drugs. When uniform searched his Alverton flat, they’d found nine wraps of heroin worth over £100 and one wrap of crack cocaine. Three years ago, he’d been sentenced to two years in prison, suspended, so it would only be cooperation on the murder investigation that would keep him out of prison this time.
As soon as he opened his mouth to confirm his name and date of birth, Rego was struck by Moyle’s strong Cornish accent – the long vowels and missing syllables were a dead giveaway.
When Rego had asked for his date of birth, Spider had responded, “Madder do it?”
Tom Stevens translated.
“He means, ‘it doesn’t matter, does it’.”
Rego wondered if Moyle could be the mysterious Subject F, the man that Lucy had overheard with Saemira Ruçi. But the evidence showed that all Moyle’s calls went to her burner phone, not the number Lucy and the family had used; and he didn’t seem to do much of anything until the evenings.
Rego had his doubts that Moyle was Subject F but couldn’t rule him out either.
But no matter what questions Rego asked, or how many times he pointed out that Moyle was looking at prison time, he never said anything other than ‘no comment’.
Rego leaned in, invading the foot and a half of Moyle’s space. It was a subliminal part of an interrogation, then you leaned back when you got what you wanted.
It wasn’t working today.
“He’s scared,” Stevens said as he and Rego discussed what to do next. “As soon as he saw that CCTV image, he clammed up tighter than a goose barnacle.”
Rego didn’t know what a goose barnacle was but he got the general idea.
“Maybe, but the Hellbanianz have a very efficient structure. When one of their low level dealers gets picked up, he’s told to plead guilty so it only goes to Magistrate’s Court – a lesser sentence and his family is looked after in the meantime. It’s a successful business model. Moyle knows he’ll only get a couple of years, and if he keeps his mouth shut, he’ll be well paid.”
“That’s why he isn’t talking?”
“Maybe,” Rego sighed. “Either that, or he knows the other man well enough to be scared even though he’s not working for him.”
“Spider’s a junkie,” said Stevens. “He won’t like being locked up.”
“We’ll hold him for the maximum allowed, let him sweat, then question him again. But he needs to be seen by a healthcare professional and monitored by the custody staff more frequently, if not constantly. Make sure he has one of our special toilets.”
Rego knew that detainees such as Spider often concealed drugs in an orifice, so he wanted the man to be given a special toilet which captured the drugs on their eventual exit. Kinder Eggs were a favourite, but drugs concealed inside the anus could take up to 36 hours to pass. Special measures were required for this, and medical staff deployed just in case the packaging ruptured and the detainee’s life became at risk.
“I’m certain Moyle recognised the guy in the hoodie,” Rego continued.
Stevens nodded.
“Yeah, and whoever he is, Moyle is definitely scared. Boss, we’ve had the police artist sketch back from Garrett – it could be the guy in the hoodie.”
Rego enlarged the image on Stevens’ phone.
“Maybe.”
It wasn’t as much as they’d hoped, so they decided to head back to the station. Rego was just pulling into the car park at Penzance when his mobile rang.
“Boss, it’s Jen. Where are you? I’ve got news and you’re going to like it: we’ve found the lorry driver on CCTV.”
“I’m back at the station now. I’ll see you in CID in one minute.”
He took the stairs two at a time as Stevens puffed behind him.
Jen Bolitho was at her desk and gave a bright smile as they walked into the office.
“Boss, we’ve traced the route the driver took from Harwich and have got CCTV of him at the docks, and cameras on the M25 pick him up five times heading west. He stops at Potters Bar services, three times on the M4 at Reading, Chieveley and Leigh Delamere, and twice on the M5 at Gordano and Exeter.”
“That’s a lot of stops,” Rego commented.
“Yes! And each time he gets a delivery of a propane bottle – but from different gas companies – all legit in theory but I’d bet my son’s new X-box that those deliveries aren’t the real companies.” She paused to draw breath. “But look at his sweatshirt – see that logo? I reverse-imaged it and that’s Klub Kukësi, a football club from Kukës in Albania. Kukës is only forty miles from Bytyç where Ruçi is from.” She stumbled over the pronunciations. “But that’s not all!” she said, her excitement barely suppressed. “The logo on his sweatshirt looks like an eagle and…”
“And a football, yeah. And?”
“Now look at the hoodie the guy from outside the Mackerel Inn is wearing!”
Rego peered at the two images, his pulse kicking up. The CCTV image was grainy, and only in Hollywood could the image be ‘cleaned up’ and digitally enhanced. He looked closer.
“It looks like…”
“It’s the same logo, sir, I’m sure of it!” Jen announced with quiet satisfaction.
Rego looked again. It would have been impossible to pick out the logo from the pub’s CCTV, but it certainly looked similar: the shading where the eagle and football were positioned was similar. It wasn’t conclusive and probably wouldn’t stand up in court, but Rego felt it in his gut, and looking around at the faces of his new colleagues, he saw it in their eyes, too: the man outside the Mackerel Inn with Ruçi was the missing lorry driver.
“Jen, I want his face circulated to all forces, and I’ll get onto the NCA now. Jack and Mimi, keep looking at CCTV images for him in the hours leading up to arriving at the pub and the hours after leaving. I want to know where he’s been and where he went.” He nodded at his DC. “Good work, Jen. Very good.”
She beamed at him and Mimi high-fived her.
Rego sat at his desk which was already piled high with paperwork and files. He made a list of things he needed to do: email the lorry driver’s image to Vikram; update his DCI and the Super; Ruçi’s car still hadn’t been found; he needed Tom to chase Vodafone for the data from her burner phone; he needed to circulate intel about the lorry driver to the relevant police forces where he’d stopped on the way to Cornwall and … Rego paused, a thought occurring to him: what had the driver been doing while driving from Harwich? Had he been distributing drugs or collecting payments?
“Fuck!” he swore softly, giving himself a mental slap.
He picked up the phone and called Traffic.
“Sergeant Goff, it’s DI Rego from Penzance. About that artic RTC at Crowlas … which way was the lorry heading: north or south?”
He tapped his fingers against his desk while he waited for the answer.
“It was travelling upcountry, sir,” came the reply. “The driver said he’d delivered an order of toilet rolls to Lidl in Wherrytown, near Penzance. The wagon was empty at the time of the collision.”
Rego thanked the sergeant and laid his phone on the desk. So what did that tell him? The wagon was empty – no drugs – but Scottish banknotes to the tune of £170,000 had been found along with £43,000 in English notes. Why had no drugs been found? It didn’t seem likely that the driver would have had time to retrieve hidden drugs after the accident. But the dogs had definitely found traces. Did that mean that the driver had been delivering drugs from the continent and collecting payments at the same time? Was Ruçi a local dealer? Had the driver been the one who’d killed her? His lorry was still in the police garage, so how had he left the county? The simplest thing would have been to take the train – so Rego needed to get someone onto CCTV at the station. It was also possible that he’d taken Ruçi’s car. Or had he been killed along with Ruçi? Would another body be washing up on a Cornish beach?
Another worrying thought occurred to him: maybe the driver had been collecting his merchandise from Penzance and the lorry was empty because something had gone wrong. Maybe Ruçi had been killed because she’d lost or stolen the drugs. Rego frowned. She’d have to be pretty stupid – or desperate – to do that. But then again, most criminals weren’t known for their high IQs.
The slow drip of intel had turned into a torrent. His team were working hard to sift through it all, but it was up to Rego to manage the flow of information and then to connect the dots. God, what a case for his first as inspector.
Rego wasn’t a man much given to doubts but right now, the pressure felt close to being overwhelming.
His mobile rang again and Vikram’s name flashed up.
“Vik, what have you got for me?”
“You’re going to like this, buddy. I’ve found your driver: Besnik Domi, younger brother of Dritan Domi.”
“Jesus!”
“Yeah, I know. Domi junior, aka ‘Tehu’ which translates as ‘the blade’. He’s a nasty piece of work – an enforcer with the Hellbanianz. A knife is his preferred method of torture – hence the nickname. NCA would very much like to get our hands on him.”
“Join the queue,” Rego said with feeling. “I’ve just got to find the bastard.”
“But it’s odd,” Vikram went on. “Besnik Domi has stayed in Albania since before you had his brother sent down. He’s run the family business from his home in Tirana, Albania’s capital. We haven’t clocked him doing any deliveries in person since pre-Covid.”
There was silence as both men considered the possibilities.
“So what was different about this trip?” Rego asked, thinking out loud.
“Either he wanted to check out the supply route himself,” Vikram said, “or maybe look at new supply routes…” he paused. “Or…”
“Or what?”
“Or it was personal.”
“Saemira Ruçi. The way she was killed, that wasn’t an execution: that was personal.”
“But what would make it personal?” Vikram pressed. “The Hellbanianz are criminals, but it’s organised crime – not chaotic and out of control. They’re businessmen, and killing someone like that was bound to be a giant red flag.”
“You’re thinking that she did something that personally pissed off Domi. Like what?”
“Buddy, she had her tongue cut out – he thought she was talking to someone.”
“Well, it wasn’t us,” said Rego.
“Then who?”
“Good question.”