Chapter 3

Life carried on at its normal pace, but, for me, every hour seemed like two, except when I was with Bertie, and then it felt like twenty minutes. For the first time in a long time, I was thinking about a case, but it was a jigsaw puzzle with only a quarter of the pieces, and not even a picture to look at.

I had a number of tours to work out security for, so settled for that task to fill in time. We were organising three in the UK before the end of summer, and four in Europe. The one that had been in America had been our first, which was why Bertie had gone to make sure that it all went smoothly. When I could, I worked on my little side job.

Mister Spice would have far more access to details than I did, no doubt, so I limited myself to the things that I did know, having mixed with the bands. I made a list of the band members, along with what I did know about them from our records. With ‘Exarctics’, there was Vlad on lead and Igor on rhythm. These were the two Russians, but both had Polish passports that had been issued legally to help them assimilate into western society. They were both martial arts exponents and could probably be able to kill easily, but both were quiet and gentle, in that sort of dangerous way. I had got to like them both.

The singer and drummer were both Polish, and children of the revolution, as both their parents had been activists in the Solidarity Movement. Their names had more consonants than vowels, so they were generally called Elly and Butch. Elly was quite the diva, and deserved the accolades with her powerful, yet passionate, vocals. She had honed her craft in cafés and night clubs. Butch was her partner and looked like he’d stepped out of a Grimms story, a nuggety gnome who was a master percussionist. He had been the last to join the band, having spent his earlier years playing drums for a dance band in Italy. As I had noted, both spent their free time at any range they could find, with a pair of expensive rifles. I wasn’t sure if I liked them, but they hadn’t done anything to alienate me.

The bass player was pure musician, through and through. Klaus was like a statue on stage, letting his playing do the work. He was the only one from a classical background, graduating from a German academy with his skills being with the double bass. He had taken up electric after going to a few shows, seeing what freedom he would have if he moved over. He was quiet and studious, and the main writer of their own songs. I had the impression that he could be in a top-line band if he wanted, but he seemed happy to be where he was.

The only other regular was Rudy the road manager. He worked with temps who changed with every tour that they did, sometimes changing personnel during the season. Rudy was a bear of a man, full of life and a joy to see at parties, usually with a different girl on his arm, and I for one, could see the attraction. He was Bulgarian by birth, and a resident of Poland. In fact, they were all residents in Lagow, just a few miles from the border with Germany. I believe that they had clubbed together to buy a couple of houses with a forest across the road. The three guitarists lived in one, with the other three in the other, or so I had been told

As a band, they had been playing around Poland and Germany for some years, and all were in their thirties, with the Russians being somewhat older. They had opened for another band two summers before and had received good enough reviews for them to be added to the tour that we had organised.

The other band, ‘Dominerter’, were a different mix, all from more southern areas. They were a larger group, seven strong, with more brass and two singers out front, one playing keyboards. They did a compelling set of ska, bluebeat, and soul music. I hadn’t had a lot to do with them, as they were first on stage and usually had gone back to the hotel before the break. They had four members who were French, from Algerian roots, and three were northern Italian, with some Romany ancestors. They were very good at what they did and a lot of fun to listen to.

Their main roadie, who Rudy had been with at Laon, was Emile, a Spaniard from a small town north of Barcelona. That, I knew, from talking to Rudy at a party, where Emile had been getting on a few nerves, raving on about the Madrid government and the slave-like conditions they had placed on the Basque population. He had been a bit drunk at the time but had been quite strident in his disgust of democratically elected officials.

The new band, ‘Che Macello’, were all new to me, and we hadn’t been sent a listing of the group for the tour yet. I did look at their website and could see that they were an evolving band. That’s a nice way to say that the line-up looked different in almost every picture. The latest photos showed six on stage. Three guitars, drummer, keyboard and singer. All guys, and all looking like they could be members of one of those male revues. Magic Mike, Sixx Paxx, Dreamboys or Chippendales came to mind immediately. The best picture showed them playing beside the sea, in boardshorts and trainers. It was enough to raise ones’ pulse rate.

I went back to see who were named in the pictures. There seemed to be three who were the core, all from Turin. They played the three guitars. Previous photos showed almost identical looks, but the singer, drummer and keyboard players seemed to last about six months, with two changes of each player, all inside a year. I know of a lot of bands we’ve had similar turnover, but not inside twelve months.

Towards the end of summer, I had a phone call from Maria.

“Hello, Maxine. We have some stock for you to look at. Just you, this time. There will be more, later, that will suit your friend. If you’re outside your home at ten, tomorrow, I’ll pick you up and take you to the office.”

That was enough to let me know that there was more to be told, and that I should wear the office outfit to blend in. I told Bertie that I would be out the next day and gathered what information I had into a manila folder, putting it in a large shoulder bag. I expected that Lena would be brought into things once the case went operational.

The following day, at the allotted time, Maria pulled up in a Range Rover. I slid into the passenger seat with my bag in front of me and we were off. Although the vehicle looked like any other Rangie on the outside, I could see various slots under the dashboard for radios and other electronics.

She took me to Whitehall, not speaking much on the way, and waved a pass at a reader outside a quick-lift door. Once through that, there was another door and another card reader. Inside, we went down into a parking area, where she pulled into a space. That’s when she handed me a lanyard with my ID photo.

“This will get you through the doors that you’re allowed. It won’t get you through the entrance doors, so you’ll only visit when you’re escorted. Come along, and we’ll go to what I jokingly think of as the herb garden.”

She took me to the first door, which I had to get my card read, and then wait on the other side while she did the same. We were in a corridor with doors both sides and went along to one that had a button beside it. She pressed the button and we waited until the door slid aside to reveal a lift. We stepped into the lift, and she told me to put my ID against a panel, after which she presented hers. She pressed a button that was two under the one that was lit.

“As you can see, we have extreme security. A camera showed two entering the lift, so, nothing happens unless two IDs are presented. No numbers to show which floor, so the only people that use the lift have to know where they’re going.”

When the door opened, we had to present our passes to a soldier, who passed them over a reader and checked our names on a list. What was different was the other soldier, off to one side, with an assault rifle pointing our way. The first one gestured for me to let him look in my bag. Maria held hers out, having done this many times, no doubt.

They stood aside and Maria opened a door, leading me into a room like no other I’d seen, outside sci-fi films. We were greeted by a lady in standard office attire.

“Hello, Maria. Hello, Lady Woodward. I’m Rosemary. Welcome to our little hide-away. We don’t get that many visitors down here. Justin is in his office.”

Maria led me to one side and knocked on a door. Hearing the enter command, we went in. Justin was sitting at a desk with three screens, two showing a scene, somewhere, and the third one with data. He stood up.

“Welcome, Maxine. Thank you for coming and thank you for those photos. A lot of work has gone into this case since I last saw you, and there are a lot of strange links being thrown up. Firstly, some seventy percent of known assassinations have taken place within fifty miles of a venue where those bands have played, as well as within forty-eight hours either side of the show. That, alone, was enough to get the attention of the upper levels.”

“Was that when both bands were on the bill or were some when there was only one band.”

“You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you? That’s the thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s one, the other, or both. If they are the killers, then there must be a killer in both bands.”

“I’ve been going through what I know about them, if you want to compare it with what you already know.”

“Good. Sit here. I’ll call up our information and you can add to it. Maria, can you take the other seat with the keyboard and add anything new.”

We started with the band members. As we worked through the lists, I was able to add the odd bits that I knew, which Maria added to the file. I wasn’t surprised that they had both the Russians’ full details from birth, including their impressive military record, right up to the point when they deserted. They had a long list of martial arts clubs that they belonged to or were able to spend the odd session at. Elly and Butch were there, with a similar listing of firing ranges that they had used, as well as the fact that Butch had served in the Polish army as a sniper. Both were children of Solidarity activists.

Klaus had a few notes about his low-level drug use, mainly weed. When I saw the names of his parents, I was shocked, as both were famous senior players in orchestras. I did a little maths in my head and deduced that the mother would have been over forty when he was born. There was no record of his early schooling and the record only started with his last years in secondary, in 2010. That would put his birth at around the early nineties. I pointed to this.

“Don’t you think that you could find out more about his early days? That’s a big gap in his history.”

Justin nodded and we carried on. Rudy had a sheet a mile long. Mainly for drunk and disorderly, or warnings not to use his strength too quickly when confronted. They were all listed as living in the two houses, as I had been told.

The ‘Dominerter’ band were almost normal people in comparison. The only stand-out was Emile, who had been picked up several times in his earlier days, while protesting in support of Basque separatists. His only job, after he left school, was in a fish-processing plant in Port de la Selva, called the Vent del Nord Peixateria. I pointed the screen.

“If he was processing the catch, he would be well used to using a filleting knife. They are usually slim and thin. Does that match the wound in the French agent?”

“It does, Maxine. As well as the wounds in seven of the suspicious deaths.”

“I suppose that some would have been shot, possibly with a sniper shot?”

“Correct. That correlates with several of the deaths, as well as dates and venues for the bands. There are others, though, who don’t fit the picture. What do you know about this new group?”

“Other than they’re all very fit and use their bodies to advantage, you mean?”

Maria giggled. I asked him if we could pull up the website. When we had it on the screen, he could see what I meant. I pointed out the three core members, and then got him to go through the other pictures. I pulled my file out of my bag and showed them the band list.

“Other than those three, none of the other players have lasted more than six months. I have a list of names of the ones who left, but such a turnover is unusual. You may want to check them all out, on top of the current band. I’m not sure if you’ve looked at the band name, seeing that it translates to ‘What a mess’. The odd thing is that the word ‘Macello’ is short slang for a ‘slaughterhouse’.”

He sat and looked at me, at the screen, at the paperwork, and then back at me.

“Maria, can you get Rosemary in here, please.”

She got up and left, coming back with Rosemary. Justin gave her a quick outline of what I had told him, and then turned to me.

“Maxine. You’ve dealt with the oddest people in your career. Take a stab in the dark and give us the most outlandish scenario that you can think of.”

“OK. I’ll have to say that I think that the previous deaths are only linked by the people involved. The one person that we haven’t spoken about is the Italian with the car collection. I don’t know how it will be achieved, but I think that those who didn’t make the grade in ‘Che Macello’ failed in some way and were eliminated to ensure their silence. I think that the future tour will be for just one purpose, and that will be to have one, or more, cars explode with important people around them. The drivers will be pulled in, if they don’t die, and the rich Italian will have left the country well before the event. If Butch knows him from his time in Turin, and is already in the picture as a sniper, then he may well be in one of the cars.”

“So, you think that this may well be the big event, with all the bands being implicated, while the money man gets off.”

“If his car, or cars, have been invited to that event, it would be a brave customs agent who would strip them to the chassis, and that would be the only way to find any explosives. It could be something like C4, that doesn’t have an odour. It could even be nuclear, a small tactical weapon. They are already around. If it is, the crime scene would be pretty big, as well as being impossible to check forensically. If it happened, out of the blue, without any forewarning, it would be impossible to know where the initial explosion occurred, or even who had been killed.”

“I asked for outlandish. I didn’t expect horrific. Rosemary, can you organise a meeting of the Tactical Group, please. We’ll have to put this to them as something to consider. We do have time to make plans. Now we’re surer that the bands are involved, we’ll need to put extra security on every likely target between now and next summer, within fifty miles of their shows. If we pull them in, the big event may get changed to somewhere that we won’t have a lead, so will have to leave them out there, for now. Maxine. Do you have anything else to add?”

“My lists are here, in this folder. The only other thing that I can offer is the alternative meaning to the band names. ‘Exarctics’ not only refers to the two Russians from above the Circle, but the rabbit on the drumskin is an arctic hare, and if you add the ‘X’ you get ‘Crosshairs’ as in what you see in a telescopic sight. I expect that Butch thought of that. The other thing, other than the slaughterhouse tag, is that I have been doing those nine-letter things where you find lots of words, including one that uses all nine letters. Dominerter is such an odd use of letters, even in this day and age, that I wondered if it was an anagram. Seeing that most of the band are French, it was no wonder that I came up with ‘dernier mot’, meaning the Last Word.”

“Oh! Lovely. Three bands with really suspicious names and a scenario out of a scary movie. That’s all I need.”

“Have you found out who this Italian car collector is?”

“We have an idea. We have an agent getting pally with the Blenheim event, to find out what this years’ focus is, and also about next year. He’s acting as a serious collector from America with a hidden hoard. I do have an idea, but need it confirmed. Rosemary, do we have any updates from Sage yet?”

“I’m expecting something in a couple of days, Justin.”

I looked at the screen but didn’t see what I was looking for.

“Justin. You said that some killings were by knife, and others by a long gun. How many different ways did the others die?”

“The majority were strangled. The thumbs had been pressed into the neck hard enough to crush the thyroid cartilage. A few had been garroted with something very thin, but the garrote has never been left at the scene. The forensic guys have suggested cheese wire or similar.”

“Like the ‘E’ string on a guitar? Something that all the bands would have in abundance.”

“Exactly. Sit here with Maria and go through what we do know. I’ll go and talk to the Tactical Group to see what we can do. One thing depends on how the car is brought into the country. If I was organising it, it would arrive close to Blenheim by air. That would be expensive. If it comes in by sea or train, it could be diverted to a customs shed for examination,”

“If it’s a very important one, it may not be driven, so the train is out. The usual way of transporting very rare classics is by container. If it’s coming from Italy, there will have to be a time when it’s submitted for examination, whether at the point of departure or the point of arrival. If it leaves Italy from Genoa, it will likely pass through Mafia controlled customs, if enough palms were greased.”

“That means that well have to find an excuse to hold it here. Of course, all the paperwork will have to be submitted to get in into the country, so we’ll have some advance notice.”

He and Rosemary left us, and I sat with Maria to look at the evidence. There was an interactive map, with the positions of the deaths and the venues where the bands had been playing. All told, there were about twenty-five, and one of the bands had been within fifty miles within the four-day window.

As we looked closely, Maria typed up an algorithm to see who was more likely to be the assassin. Every one of them, by long gun, had Elly and Butch close by, and every one of the stiletto murders took place near a Dominerter gig. I pointed to the timing of those ones.

“Those killings must have taken place while the band was at the venue. There’s no way any of them could have made it to the murder site and back. All of those were found on the Sunday morning, so the killing took place on Saturday night. That points directly to Emile, as he would be free to move around.”

“So, if we can put a trace on him, we could track him to his next target. If we take him down, that may stop further attempts, so we wouldn’t get the others.”

“If the band doesn’t know about the killing, they’ll just get another roadie. It would be inconvenient, but not enough to stop a tour. If you take him out of the equation this year, it will narrow the focus for next year.”

“We have a small group that we can put onto that while he’s overseas. They’re known as the Paramilitary Action/Reaction Squad, Legal Elimination – Yonder. They’re not allowed to operate in this country and would be disavowed by our government if caught. That’s Parsley, for short. They’ve worked with the French security before, or so I’m told.”

I refrained from giggling, but it was hard to keep a straight face.

“Do you have a listing of where Dominerter is playing for the rest of the year?”

“We do. There haven’t been any killings for a while, so we’ll put our people on him to see if we can find out his patterns. I’ve made notes of what else you’ve told us. I’ll take you home, now. Justin won’t be back for ages if he’s with Tactical. They take forever to be convinced to get into gear. It does stop kneejerk reactions and ghastly failures, but Andy and I find it tedious. I know that you’d be pushing to round them all up and search their homes and devices.”

She led me back to the car, being checked over along the way for any items we may have carried out of the inner sanctum. When she dropped me off at Canary Wharf, I went up to my apartment and tried to do something normal. There was an email from Lena, telling me that we had a large group that wanted to display at the Festival of the Unexceptional. This year was at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire. A lot of our members had enough money to buy something fitting for this, just to have a good day out. I had a Cortina, the same model and year of the one that got shot up in Yarmouth, as it had been my favourite until I got the Daimler.

That event was to be a couple of weeks away, so I took the Mercedes to my lock-up and swapped it for the Cortina. I sent Lena a message to book me in for the event and get me some accommodation. I suggested that she try for Friday to Monday at the Royal Oak at Swayfield, a place I had been to previously.

That evening, I managed to convince Bertie that it could be fun, as well as something to release some of the tension of organising. It only took me telling him that they had Whitley Neill gin for him to agree to a weekend away, even if he did have to put up with traveling in a mere Cortina.

Marianne Gregory © 2025