A long way down, p.1
A Long Way Down, page 1
DI Castle Case Files #2
A Long Way Down
A Long Way Down
DI Castle Case Files, Volume 2
Paul Silvestri
Published by Belmont Books, 2025.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
A LONG WAY DOWN
First edition. October 30, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 Paul Silvestri.
ISBN: 979-8231418473
Written by Paul Silvestri.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
A Long Way Down (DI Castle Case Files, #2)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Further Reading: Moving Target
Also By Paul Silvestri
A fool will seek revenge; the wise man will allow God's karma.
Keshia Chante
Chapter One
The 911 call came in just before 8.30 pm.
The first officers that arrived at the scene at 8.41 pm, were patrolmen Wilkes and Davies.
Two detectives from the Twenty-fourth Precinct of the New York City Police Homicide Unit arrived shortly after.
By 2 a.m. the Detectives of Twenty-fourth Precinct New York City Police Homicide Unit knew six facts about the dead man's movements on the previous day.
He had bought three shirts at the Saks Fifth Avenue. He'd gone to The Strand Bookstore on Broadway and bought The Joy of Sex.
He'd eaten brunch at a Horn and Hardart, self-service restaurant on Forty Second Street and Third Avenue, and was remembered there for tipping a dollar to the girl who cleared the table, maybe thinking she was some kind of waitress.
With food still on his mind he'd d gone to Katz's Delicatessen and taken out enough cold cuts, lox, cream and bagels to feed four for dinner and two for breakfast.
He'd taken this shopping back to the service apartment he'd got on a one month's let on East Thirteenth, and then he'd headed downtown to the Staten Island ferry- the ticket stub still in the top pocket of his jacket.
Maybe he met somebody on the boat or the island, maybe he didn't. It would be no easy task to find a witness who'd seen this man on or off the crowded ferry. Even though he was unusual in that he was a black African tourist from Burundi, East Africa, and might do odd things like tipping a table-clearer.
The sixth fact was partly self-evident. Mr. Esi Abara returned to his apartment 7.30 and was murdered at exactly four minutes past eight.
It was not his death that singled him out for any special attention according to the statistics there are twenty-two murders every twenty-four hours in New York City. So not his death, but the manner of his dying.
The killer had a Walther P38 automatic. When Abara walked into his apartment the killer was waiting for him, aimed, squeezed the trigger, and the magazine jammed - which occasionally happens with Walther automatics. Whilst Abara was still recovering, the killer dropped the useless gun where it still lay near the dining-table, ran into the kitchen and grabbed a twelve-inch Ginsu carving-knife.
Abara was a big man. His murder took from close to 7.30 to four minutes past eight, when he finally went down, smashing over the TV set, ripping its cord and the cord of a digital electric clock out of the wall. Abara's right index finger and most of his thumb were cut off in the fight. He had a total of twenty-seven stab wounds, four of which could have proved fatal, and one of which did.
At some point the killer must have stabbed, and missed, or fallen on the knife. The apartment was blood-red with nine pints of Abara's life and maybe three pints of the killer's - that's what the police doc said. He doubted the killer would survive much longer than his victim.
The police checked every hospital in New York. There were no admissions that night of a guy with that kind of blood loss.
The cops checked the apartment next door. Abara's apartment was top of the building at the back. The noise of the murder would not have been heard in the apartment below him - that was vacant. But it would have been heard in the next apartment along the corridor. This had been rented to a man named Thomson.
The building's Security Officer never saw Thomson again after the night of the murder.
Thomson's fingerprints were collected from the apartment's door handles. They belonged to a man called Santino Cacciatore. Cacciatore had proven West Coast connections with the Mafia. So the detectives of Twenty-fourth Precinct had a straight case. A Mafia man had killed an African tourist. Find the Mafia man.
Unfortunately, it was not going to work out as simply as that.
Santino Cacciatore was not a contract artist, had no record of even one second of violence in his thirty-three years of life. The only record he had was a degree and Phi Beta Kappa at Boston University and a distinguished career at the bar. Santino Cacciatore was a lawyer, a brilliant lawyer. Certainly, most of his work was for the Syndicate. He was a Mafia 'Advocaat'. So, with this connection, why did he have to murder Abara?
People who work that close to the Syndicate have the benefit of a take-out service in torpedoes - all he'd have to do was to make a telephone call. But he didn't. He had premeditated and executed a bloody murder, and almost assassinated himself in the process.
The detectives of the Twenty-fourth Precinct had the suspicion that, if they located Cacciatore, the case and the questions would not be over. They would just be starting.
Chapter Two
The telex from the FBI to New Scotland Yard via the legal attaché at the US Embassy London read ‘TWA Flight 304 arriving 11.45 your time Aurelio Gianmarco and Leonard Henry Cauffman surveillance and report four hourly red letter.’
A sitex cable from the FBI closing 'red letter' means that the people named in the wire are to be subjects of a major criminal charge, and warrants for their arrest are in the pipeline. Any member of the CID at Scotland Yard who had come into contact with the FBI at any time would know that.
Detective Inspector Jack Castle of the Robbery Squad knew it. The knowledge was no source of comfort to him in his present predicament.
He sat in the lounge of the Sheraton Skyline Hotel near London Airport, his attention split between his copy of Sporting Life and a TV set, sound turned low, tuned to pre-lunchtime news BBC 1, displaying a group of rescue workers pulling two divers out of the North Sea. He looked from them to his paper, pen out marking off a few likely winners. But he was not in a position to go and call his bookie. He was not really in any position at all. All he could do was sit there, trying to work out a possible single move that he could make. And not succeeding.
Detective Sergeant Davies sat about fifteen feet away covering the east exit from the room. He was reading the Manchester Evening News. He was studying it intently. Probably the weekly article on police corruption, written by an Irish graduate of Leeds University who'd had his arm dislocated by a falling copper twenty years before on the third Aldermaston March. Davies read such articles. Castle didn't. He saw Davies's eyes flicker up from the paper to the group, and realized that Davies's attention was not entirely on the newsprint, but still with the job of work and the crisis which was slowly manifesting itself.
The third copper, Detective Sergeant Henderson, sat near the third exit from the room. He's just been served tea on a tray. Nobody else in the room had tea on or off a tray. Maybe Henderson had palmed his CID ident at the Sardinian waiter and mentioned, in passing, current Home Office thinking on illegal immigration. Now Henderson had an exclusive pot and was dispensing tea to himself like a maiden aunt, pinky of pouring hand stuck up in the air.
Henderson was a new boy, one month in the Robbery Squad and just a week in Castle's section. Castle was interested to see how Henderson would shape up. Castle already had plans for him. He intended to sort the lad out over six months and then set him up as a perfect foil for Davies, who was a little bit too bright and who still had the problem of employing intelligence as a complete substitute for experience.
Davies had appeared at first a faultless Robbery Squad prospect. Then a few cases had come his way which had developed problems where he should have backed off and sought advice. He didn't. He thought he could major in brainpower and pull off some coups uniquely on his own. He hadn't.
So after a couple of spills he was now playing it low key and not offering too much in the way of initiative. Castle was quietly pleased that the lad had learned something from a couple of tumbles.
He didn't realize that Davies blamed him exclusively for the messes he'd got himself into. And what was going through Davies's mind at the moment was the cheering thought that here in the lounge of the Sheraton Skyline Hotel a situation was developing which could land Castle in the biggest dung-heap of his career.
The telex said Aurelio Gianmarco and Leonard Henry Cauffman would be on TWA out of New York. What it didn't say was that there were three other guys with them.
At first Castle thought they were maybe pals or business associates they'd picked up on the plane. The five went through Immigration and Customs together, and the limo was waiting. The five got into the limo and a taxi was hired to carry a dozen Gucci and half a dozen Vuitton bags. The limo went off to the Sheraton Skyline Hotel and the taxi trailed it. And the five large American guys got out, went in, registered and went to their rooms.
Half an hour later they were showered and shining, changed from travel cottons to formal business suits, and were all sitting in the lounge sipping coffee. Fifteen minutes later another guy arrived, same Gucci shoes and expensive dark suit with a thin pinstripe. Castle heard the man introducing himself to the Americans. He had a posh English accent. Castle had also glimpsed the car that he got out of. It was a Rolls-Royce, with the current year's registration.
Six guys in the lounge. That was twenty minutes ago. Castle had got up quietly, left the room and asked a porter in the hall for a phone. The porter pointed out a pay phone booth. Castle went in and dialled his immediate superior at the Yard. Detective Chief Inspector George Hammond came on the line. He seemed cheerful - his mother must have died, or he'd seen an old man savaged by guard dogs.
“Mr. Hammond, I've just been to London Airport.”
“The FBI sitex - did the buggers turn up? You sound quiet, Castle. Have you shot them all?”
Castle let a pause float about for a couple of seconds before he continued. Hammond sounded like he was in a punchy mood and Castle didn't want to know about that.
"Gianmarco and Cauffman arrived.”
“Yes?"
“And three other guys. They all had bookings at the Sheraton.”
"Yes?” Hammond's voice thoughtful.
“They've been joined by an Englishman. That makes six. I think they're sitting in the lounge here because they're waiting for more people...”
“Stop there,” Hammond said sharply. He paused. Then he said, “Listen, Jack, I know what you're up to, and it works no way with me, cuts no bloody ice. You know what the alternatives are. You want me to make the decision?"
Castle groaned silently. Hammond was not going to be caught. “I don't,” he lied.
“It's your fucking responsibility.”
Castle put down the phone and hoped that he'd beaten Hammond to it and that Hammond had caught an earful of phone banging into cradle. He returned to the lounge and resumed Sporting Life.
Now a couple of them were looking at their watches, and a third was correcting his watch to London time. And the English gent whose voice was pitched higher and carried further said, “... should be here. I told him 12.30."
A Mulliner Park Ward Rolls limo whispered up along the outside of the large tinted windows separating lounge from hotel entrance and the rude air of wintertime London. The chauffeur parked and peeled out. The rear door of the Rolls opened and a fifty-year-old City of London type with puffy white face and pinstripes got out. And then one of the gringos in the lounge was signalling for the coffee bill, and Castle noted that Davies was looking from him to Henderson and back. Obviously both detective sergeants knew that the time was fast approaching when Castle would have to make the decision. But what?
The telex had called for surveillance on two men. Normally the Yard would assign four men for a competent surveillance. Two men per person just in case the quarry wises up to his shadows and pulls a stunt, like heading into a bar not for a drink but with the idea of heading out a back or side exit. One sergeant follows the guy into the bar - keeps in contact with the other sergeant outside in the car on his pocket radio transmitter.
Two cops per quarry. In the lounge of the Sheraton Hotel now seven guys in total - two wanted by the FBI and five possible associates in an unspecified crime. Some of the seven maybe innocent, others possibly more dangerous than the FBI's suspects. It has been a running sore in the history of the Metropolitan CID since the beginning of time that it has never been able to provide at the snap of fingers the sort of facility that Castle desperately needed now. He needed at this second fourteen plain-clothes detectives and seven mobiles who could join himself, Davies and Henderson in the routine trailing of this group when they split up - which they were doing at the moment. There was a telephone number at Scotland Yard for the Special Patrol Group, two hundred uniformed constables, armed and in large buses. But not fourteen plain-clothes men in seven mobiles. Castle could try his luck with twenty telephone numbers and maybe in an hour gather all of fourteen men together. By which time five of these guys could've done their business and be on their way back across the Atlantic, or to Brussels, or to Bangkok. Who would know?
Castle couldn't fool himself into thinking that if he stepped outside and jotted down the registration numbers of the Rolls he would have their owners. Most Rolls belong to hire-car outfits and are frequently hired for the day by blokes with mystery professions who answer to the names Smith, Brown or Jones. Castle reckoned he had a few Smiths and Browns in this lot.
Then one of the Americans, a smallish man with a badly made toupee which was showing the effects of travel, got up and walked out, like he was maybe going to the toilet. Henderson, who was nearest to the exit path of the small man, queried a look at Castle, but the inspector signalled him to stay put.
Then Castle stood up. He'd worked out a decision - there was no other alternative. He took one last look through the window at the two Rolls parked at the entrance, symbols of power and prestige, and nodded to Henderson and Davies, who took the signal and stood up. Then he stepped across the deep tread carpet to the group, now six strong.
The American who had called for the coffee bill had got it and was trying to interpret it, whether it had service on it or not. One pinstripe Englishman said yes, the other one was saying that it probably didn't.
Castle stepped among the group and pulled out his police ident. The conversation on tipping stopped.
“Detective Inspector Castle, Robbery Squad, Scotland Yard. I am arresting all of you on individual and specific charges which will be notified to you on your arrival at the nearest police station. You will accompany me and my sergeants in transport we will provide. And I warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you."
The silence that followed had what an insomniac experiences when his lousy tin alarm clock which has been pacing out the endless corridors of the night suddenly stops the silence of awe and strange vapid peace.
One of the two pinstripe-suited Englishmen, the first to have arrived, was the first to speak. “I'm sure I don't understand what you could possibly mean, Inspector. You've been kind enough to introduce yourself, let me introduce myself. My name is Jeremy Byron Chambers and you may know my bank.” He took out a Harrods Mark One business card - hand copper-etched on hand-made paper. It mentioned his name and bank. His bank was one of the most prominent merchant banks in the City of London. “And this,” he said, “is a friend. Mr. Gregory Christian-Mabery, of the Bank of England."
The Bank of England is the official money-box of the British government. Its integrity is beyond question.
Detective Inspector Jack Castle quickly noted Sergeant Davies's and Sergeant Henderson's expressions, or lack of them. Their eyes were looking down, studying carpet patterns. But it was apparent that they also did not think he had made the wisest move.
Chapter Three
It was 3 p.m. Castle had commandeered an office with two phones at West Drayton police station. They had arrived like a factory outing, in a hired minibus with seating for six. The driver, Castle and his two sergeants and the suspects, ten in all, crammed into it.
