Tartaglia managed to get hold of Mike McCann almost immediately and had arranged to meet him in a coffee bar around the corner from the PI’s office, just off Tottenham Court Road. Although the lunch hour was nearly over, the place was still full, with a queue stretching almost to the door. McCann sat hunched over a table at the back, reading a well-thumbed copy of the Independent.
‘Didn’t know you were a veggie,’ Tartaglia remarked, sitting down after the initial pleasantries and scanning the short but interesting-sounding menu.
‘I’m not,’ McCann replied, his Northern Irish accent undiluted by more than twenty years of living in London. ‘But it’s the best place for miles. I could almost give up meat if my wife could learn to cook this sort of thing.’
Of medium height and build, with thinning brown hair and regular features, McCann had the sort of unremarkable looks that helped him blend into any crowd. He had worked undercover, both in his native Belfast during the Troubles and then for the Met for several years, before moving to a less frontline role. He had happily opted for early retirement and the last time Tartaglia had seen him was a few years back at his leaving do, in a pub near the Peel Centre in Hendon. McCann had subsequently set up in business as a private investigator with another ex-policeman, and word on the grapevine was that they were doing very well.
McCann ordered a plate of Moroccan-style meze, while Tartaglia decided on wild mushroom-stuffed pitta bread and a salad. The place wasn’t licensed and both men chose coffees from a small but exotic list on the blackboard.
‘So, you think you’ve found Richard English?’ McCann said.
‘We’re not sure it’s him yet, but there’s a good chance. I need to find out more about what happened.’ He didn’t want to be evasive with McCann, but the less he said for the moment, the better.
McCann shifted in his seat, folded his hands on the table in front of him and gave him a look that said he understood the score. ‘Well, Ian Armstrong brought me in after about a week, when there was no result from the missing person investigation. I can’t fault what the team did, but you know what it’s like.’
Tartaglia nodded. Missing Person investigations were a question of priorities and resources, and he was familiar with the statistics. Every year, in the UK, roughly two hundred thousand people went missing, usually of their own volition. Almost all turned up within a year of their disappearance and only a small number were never found.
‘I got a look at the file,’ McCann continued, ‘and there was no indication that any crime had been committed. Armstrong insisted that English wasn’t in any sort of financial trouble, so the general view was that he must have had some sort of mid life crisis or breakdown and had gone off somewhere, either on his own or possibly with a woman.’
‘What’s your view?’
McCann shrugged. ‘He’s not the type. No history of mental illness or issues with self-confidence; if anything, the opposite. He’d just initiated divorce proceedings and had moved out of the marital home. I interviewed a good cross-section of people who knew him – immediate family and friends of course – and people he worked with, as well as a couple of his clients. Nobody gave me the impression he was the sort of man who’d just wander off without telling anybody, or be led astray by the female sex.’
Tartaglia nodded. McCann’s judgement was usually acute, and what he said tallied with the little he himself had already learned that day. ‘Could there be some other reason why he wanted to make himself scarce, I wonder?’
‘It’s one of the first things I considered. But the man’s the type who cares about how he puts his toothpaste on his toothbrush, and how the tube is squeezed.’
‘I’m warming more and more to him by the minute.’
McCann’s rubbery mask of a face cracked into a wide grin. ‘If he’d decided to disappear, for whatever reason, he’d have planned it all very carefully. Instead, he leaves all sorts of unfinished business and loose ends, not least a highly important meeting to raise more cash for one of his new little pet ventures, as well as on going divorce proceedings. I quickly came to the conclusion that something must have happened to throw him off track.’
A teenage waitress came over with their coffees, which she plonked down unceremoniously in front of them, before moving on to the next table to take an order.
‘Foul play, you mean?’ Tartaglia said, once she was out of earshot, mopping his saucer with a couple of paper napkins.
McCann tipped the contents of his saucer back into the cup and took a gulp. ‘Or something blew up in his face and he was forced to react on the spur of the moment. But I have to tell you, we found no hint of anything like that, so foul play seems the most likely. We know he arrived at Heathrow that morning from Edinburgh, and records for his mobile show he used it twice in and around the airport after he landed. One call was to the office, the other to a shop about a pair of shotguns he’d ordered. CCTV footage at Heathrow shows him going down into the tube for the Heathrow Express. He was carrying a small suitcase and that’s the last we see of him. The suitcase was never found, by the way. A couple of the cameras at Paddington were on the blink so we have no visual, but the last location we have for his smartphone was in one of the side streets off Paddington station. We assume he went out to look for a taxi. He was living in a serviced apartment in Mayfair close to the office and, according to what he told his secretary, he was intending to go back there to drop off his things and change. We offered a substantial reward for information, but no taxi drivers came forward to say they picked him up near the station and there’s no sign he ever made it back to his flat. The next thing we considered is that somewhere en route he’d had an accident or been mugged, and lost his ID. We checked with all the local hospitals and mortuaries, but nobody matching his description had been brought in either injured or dead. We monitored his bank accounts and credit cards but the last transaction was at Edinburgh Airport that morning, when he took out a thousand pounds in cash.’
‘That’s a lot.’
McCann shook his head. ‘Not for him. He liked to pay for things in cash.’
‘If he’d decided to disappear, he’d have needed help. Was the split with the wife genuine, in your view?’
‘From what I can tell.’
‘Then the obvious person to help him would be Ian Armstrong.’
McCann looked at him with watery eyes. ‘I agree, but why bring me in, then? Why not just leave it to the police investigation? They were going nowhere with it fast. Instead, he spends a small fortune trying to find out what really happened.’
‘Maybe it’s a smokescreen. He can certainly afford it.’
McCann shook his head. ‘I don’t see the point; plus he seemed genuinely worried, almost panicked, I’d say.’
‘He didn’t seem like a man easily panicked when I saw him this morning.’
‘This was two years ago. Maybe “panicked” is a bit strong. Let’s say he was surprisingly emotional, even a little paranoid, for someone like him. Unless he’s one of the best bloody actors I’ve ever seen, he wanted Richard English found, and preferably alive, PDQ.’
‘Had either of them received any threats?’
‘Armstrong said “no”, quite categorically. I have to say I didn’t come across anything to suggest it, although if they had been receiving threats from somewhere, it’s not something they’d be happy to advertise.’
‘But still, you’d think he’d say something about it to you, even if he didn’t want the police involved.’
‘I can’t disagree with that.’
Tartaglia sipped his coffee. As thorough as McCann appeared to have been, had he missed something? Maybe the pair weren’t as squeaky clean as they appeared. Maybe there was something Armstrong couldn’t risk anybody knowing about, particularly an ex-cop like McCann. But if so, why hire him in the first place . . . He looked searchingly at McCann. ‘If somebody was blackmailing English, who else would have known, apart from Armstrong?’
‘I can’t think of anyone. I got the impression they kept most things pretty tight between themselves.’
‘OK. Leaving that to one side for the moment, what about the wife, Lisa? Could she have either helped English disappear – or had him done away with?’
‘I don’t see her helping him, after the way he treated her. Nor do I think she’s capable of acting on her own.’
‘That’s what Ian Armstrong said.’
‘It was one of the first things he had me look into, but I found no trace at all of anyone else being involved, at least not during the time we had her under surveillance.’
‘OK. So, if we rule out Armstrong and the wife, is there anyone else close to English who might want him dead?’
‘His sons both seem pretty indifferent to him and his first wife hasn’t got a kind word to say, although she’s very happy to take his money. He had a few mates he kept in touch with, mainly people he’d worked with over the years, but other than the odd business dinner and such, he didn’t have much of a personal life. Except for Ian Armstrong, he wasn’t close to anybody.’
‘From what you’re saying, if something nasty happened to him it’s more likely to be to do with the business?’
‘That’s the line of inquiry I’d have prioritised, but Armstrong didn’t like it one bit when I suggested it. He insisted I was on the wrong track, and because he was paying for my time I couldn’t push it. In the end he told me I’d done enough. He settled my bill and that was that. I’ve often wondered when it would all resurface. I was sure it was only a matter of time.’
Tartaglia finished his coffee and put the cup down. ‘As I said, we’re not sure it’s English we’ve found, but his wallet and a set of keys belonging to him turned up at a crime scene a couple of weeks ago. There was no cash in the wallet, but it contained all the missing credit cards.’
‘You’re talking about a murder, obviously.’
‘Yes. A car was doused in petrol and set on fire in a car park in South West London.’ He chose his words carefully. He didn’t want to lie, but for the moment he felt it necessary to conceal the full details of what had been found in the car. The fewer people that knew the truth, the better. ‘What looks like the body of an adult male was lying curled up on the back seat, burnt to a crisp,’ he went on. ‘The only thing we have to go on at the moment are the wallet and keys, which were found on the ground near the car, presumably either dropped or planted there by the killer for some reason.’
‘No DNA match, then?’
‘The first sample came up negative, but it may not be relevant. We’re now waiting for another sample for confirmation. In the meantime, is there anyone else you think I should talk to?’
McCann pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘There’s a man called Colin Price. He’s the former manager of one of the hotels and his name popped up several times when I talked to other people. He and English didn’t see eye to eye and I think he was sacked, although there was some sort of threatened legal action and he was paid off before it got to court. I thought it sounded worth looking into, if only to get a different perspective, but I never got to talk to him. Armstrong put the brakes on, which I found interesting.’
‘You think there was something dodgy?’
‘I don’t know, but he was quite insistent I was wasting my time going in that direction. I was still planning on going to see Price when Armstrong suddenly told me I’d gone far enough with the investigation and to send in my report. End of. I’ll dig out Price’s details when I get back to the office. Last I heard he was running some fancy hotel near Oxford, and . . .’
Just then, Tartaglia’s phone started to ring and he saw DC Justin Chang’s name on the screen. With an ‘I must take this,’ gesture to his companion, he answered it.
‘We’ve got a DNA match for victim B, Sir,’ Chang said. ‘The torso belongs to an ex-con, name of Jake Finnigan. I’m pulling his CRO file now. When will you be back?’
Tartaglia looked at his watch. ‘About four, if I’m lucky. I need to find out where Nick’s got to.’ He hung up and got to his feet. ‘Sorry, Mike. Something’s come up.’
McCann stood up. ‘No problem. I’ll email you a copy of the report I did for Ian Armstrong, plus Colin Price’s details. If there’s anything else that comes to mind, let me know.’