CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
But Tudor wasn’t listening to the song. He was looking at her, thinking how striking she looked, remembering how things had been, and wondering quite what he was doing in her flat, drinking wine, when he should have been home with Emily.
A stab of rusty guilt, left over from their affair, twisted in his conscience.
Would he never be able to think of her without feeling guilty one way or another?
‘Come on, sit down. Carbonara waits for no man. Or at least, it does, but it gets claggy in the process.’
He smiled, taking the chair opposite her. ‘That’s a good northern word.’
‘There is something of my mum in me too,’ she said.
‘But you didn’t come here for my food or to discuss my family, lovely as they are.
’ She reached out to a shelf beside her chair and extracted a slim, brown file from between the books.
She handed it to him. ‘I give you, the Begovich clan. Or at least, their history. Seems old man Begovich… I think his first name was Andre, was that right? Yes, there,’ she pointed as he opened the file and pulled out the documents.
‘Andre Begovich, came to the UK sometime in the eighties, just after President Tito died and Yugoslavia opened its borders to the world.’
‘Lucky world.’
‘Indeed. Anyhow, he settled here and established a business - import/export.’
‘Ah,’ Tudor acknowledged the well-known term for dealing-in-anything.
‘Yes, ah. Usual system, on the surface, artefacts and antiques and generally traditional Slavic goods, pickled peppers, Slivovica, that sort of thing, but beneath it all, duty free fags, booze under the radar paying no tax. Small fry really, but a good business.’
‘So, why the file?’
‘Well,’ she paused to eat a forkful of pasta and then continued, stabbing the air with her fork to punctuate her words. ‘Mr Begovich got ambitious. Moved on to bigger things.’
‘Drugs.’
‘Not that we ever discovered, no.’
‘Guns?’
She shook her head, ‘That would have been too hard core for him, I think.’
Tudor wondered at this. There had been plenty of guns at Jagoda.
‘What then?’
‘Good old fashioned protection. Started working the local area. Wasn’t a hard sell, around then the property market had just collapsed, negative equity, lots of people got their fingers burned, businesses were struggling and you know how it is, when times are tough, scruples, little details like what’s legal and what’s not…
well they tend to get overlooked. And Mr B made it his business to know everyone else’s business. ’
‘So, you’re saying he became, what, the Shepherd’s Bush mafia?’
‘Nothing so edgy, nor so profitable. More the Shepherd’s Bush shepherd. He kept the peace. Well, his men did. And they kept a warehouse in the Docklands area. Businesses could sail as close to the wind as they liked as long as they didn’t tread on each other’s toes.’
‘Can you tread on someone while you’re sailing?’
She frowned at him. ‘Do you want to hear this or not?’
He held up his hands in a gesture of submission.
Deborah went on.
‘So, they jogged along for years. He got married, had a few kids, they opened the restaurant…’
‘And then…?’
‘Well, that’s the weird part. And then… nothing. Look at the last documented charge, it’s for something small, can you find it?’
He flicked to the back of the file. ‘A fine for letting their liquor license lapse? Eight years ago. That’s it?’
‘Hardly a hanging offence, is it? Eat your pasta. It’s vile when it’s cold.’
He put down the document and ate, washing mouthfuls of the creamy food down with the bone dry red. After a while he asked, ‘So why, then, did you give me the name Begovich when I asked you if there was a new Mr Big in town?’
‘It was just by chance, really. One of my DS’s runs a snout in that area. Weasel of a man, but he’s been useful in the past, and he’s never given us duff information. My Sergeant was looking into something else, following a lead on people trafficking, and, well, the name Begovich came up.’
‘And that was the first time you’d heard about him?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It was the first time I’d heard the name, but it wasn’t him. Wasn’t Andre Begovich.’ She waited, enjoying having him so attentive, pausing for effect before giving him the remaining piece of news.
Tudor put down his fork and stole her thunder. ‘The name you were told was Dragana Begovich,’ he said.
DI Chowdhury looked astonished. ‘How the hell? I’m supposed to be telling you things you don’t know. How did you know about the daughter?’
‘Ah,’ he said carefully, avoiding her eye, taking a sudden interest in his pasta again.
Deborah leaned back in her chair.
‘I know that look,’ she said. ‘What have you done? Come on, Tudor, don’t yank my chain, just tell me.’
‘Well, I might have gone to the restaurant, to take a look.’
‘Might have?’
‘OK, I went there. It’s a low key place, more of a cafe really. But the clientele are, shall we say, enthusiasts. And the family definitely run their operations from there. I was with the old man when Dragana showed up.’
‘You spoke to him?’
‘Hardly at all. To be honest, I don’t think he’s much of a conversationalist any more.’
‘He must be getting on a bit.’
‘His mind certainly wasn’t the clearest, but it wasn’t just that. When his daughter arrived, it was as if… as if he was afraid of her.’
‘What? That’s not exactly the close knit family bond I was expecting.’
‘She is a pretty scary woman.’
‘Well, by all accounts she’s the one in charge.’
‘People trafficking, you think?’ he asked, trying to figure out how such a thing could possibly put him in their way. Nothing he was hearing was explaining why they might be interested in him. Interested enough to try to kill him, more than once. ‘So why would they be watching the Aurora?’
Deborah shrugged before draining her glass and pouring herself another. She offered him a top up. He hesitated, then nodded. ‘I think you’re wrong about one thing though,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Guns. Papa Begovich might not have liked guns. His little girl seems to like them well enough.’
‘You saw them? Positive, definite evidence of fire arms?’
‘I’ve got bullet holes in my car. Proof enough for you?’
‘Fuck! What the hell happened?’
‘I decided not to try Serbian food after all. They were disappointed I wanted to leave.’
‘They shot at you!? When? Why haven’t I heard about this?’
‘No reports of a man breaking sprinting records to get to his car while several thugs shoot at him in the middle of the day? Seems your local intelligence is not all that, after all.’
‘Shit!’ she said slowly, pushing her heavy hair back over her shoulder and shaking her head.’Never mind informants, why did no-one call the police? And why do these sorts of things seem to happen around you, Tudor? What exactly have you got yourself mixed up in?’
‘That, Debs,’ he said, looking at her seriously for once, ‘is what I hoped you were going to tell me.’
Emily finished her own mushroom and anchovy pizza and toyed with the idea of starting on the pepperoni.
She wasn’t keen on spicy food, but she wanted to eat at least some of it.
Just so it wasn’t all sitting there waiting for her father, when he eventually bothered to come home.
She checked the time on her phone. Gone ten.
She had explored the flat, helped herself to coca-cola from the enormous fridge, and eaten her pizza while watching rubbish reality TV.
She had told herself she wasn’t waiting for her dad, but that wasn’t true.
As one hour turned into two however, her annoyance hardened into something more like hurt.
She picked up the remote and scrolled through the available films again. She sped past all the cheerful family movies, ignored the action film she had originally selected, and found the zombie horror flick he had not wanted her to watch. She selected it. A box flashed up demanding a password.
‘Crap,’ she muttered. She was about to give up when she remembered it was her father who set up the apartment for Charlie.
Her father who would have chosen a password that had nothing to do with the person using it, even if it was something as unimportant as the Sky package.
She thought for the briefest of moments before entering her own birthdate. Access granted.
‘Bingo! So much for Mr High Bloody Security, Dad,’ she said aloud.
As the movie started she settled back into the sofa, pulling the second pizza box onto her lap.
‘Might as well,’ she muttered, opening it and helping herself to a slice.
It was properly dark outside now and she hadn’t bothered to turn on any of the trendy lamps so that the only light in the room was from the TV.
She chewed and watched, trying to ignore her own building anxiety.
The film was full of gore and jump scares and the spicy food was irritating her stomach.
Quantities of highly caffeinated cola was doing nothing to help her nerves.
After half an hour she was jittery. There came a quiet point in the film, full of suspense, and into this silence came a small noise from the hallway outside the flat.
She heard it, but ignored it. Until it came again.
She looked at the door. It didn’t sound like footsteps.
It was more like scratching noises. She told herself she was letting the horror movie get to her, but the sounds were real and persistent.
And the more she listened, the more she knew whatever it was had not moved on.
It had stopped at her door. From where she sat she could see that the locks were properly closed.
She knew her dad would have ensured seriously strong mechanisms to keep the apartment secure.
Even so, the noises were unnerving. She hit pause on the remote, figuring the last thing she needed was a screaming jump scare at that moment. The sounds outside continued.