Death Of A Devil

by Derek Farrell

  “This,” I nudged him playfully. “Us. Here.”

  “Oh,” he responded through a mouthful of margarita. “You mean you still haven’t told her?”

  “Well,” I twisted around, grabbing a slice of the pizza and sitting up on the bed so that I was facing him, “I was going to. At first. Only I was afraid she’d get all judgemental.”

  “Caz,” Nick intoned, taking another bite of his slice, “does not strike me as the judgemental type.”

  “I know,” I said, feeling a little crestfallen, “but maybe I was.”

  He reached out and stroked my face fondly. “Now that,” Nick smiled, “isn’t an entirely unfair statement. What was it? The lies? The secret wife? The deceit? Or the fact that you’d doomed yourself to a lifetime spent in cheap hotels?”

  “I don’t mind lies,” I bristled, and, at Nick’s gentle chuckle, I blushed, realising he had managed to not only find all my buttons, but play them like a green-eyed, full-lipped Liberace.

  “Okay,” I admitted, “maybe I do prefer truth. But, really, how much better would the world be if people only told the truth? I nearly lost you last year because you didn’t tell me the truth about Arianne.”

  “Two things there,” Nick smiled back, “firstly you never came close to losing me. But I came quite close to losing you because of what happened. And secondly, for a man who loves truth so much, you’re letting your best friend think that we’re not still together. Which is coming dangerously close to an outright lie.”

  “It’s complicated,” I said at last.

  “It usually is,” Nick smiled fondly, “with you.”

  “I should have told her, right at the start. But I didn’t, and now it feels really uncomfortable.”

  Nick took another bite of the pizza, swallowed it and said, “Well baby, this is going to go on for at least another three years, so you should probably bite the bullet and tell her. Soon.”

  The three years was a reminder of just what I’d signed up for. Nick had, last year, been sent on a police trip to Albania. Some villain had been tracked there and the Met had wanted to negotiate with the local cops to get him back.

  Only, while he was there, Nick had come across a young woman who had been sold as a slave to one of the local villains, and who was being slowly tortured and starved to death.

  No matter what Nick did, the local rozzers, unwilling to risk the wrath of the local gangsters, simply wouldn’t help the woman; whose name he had discovered was Arianne. And so, Nick – my Nick, who was snuggling me now on a hotel bedspread, but who had never been out at work – had, in desperation as his time to return neared, explained the situation to Arianne and suggested they get married.

  Arianne knew the whole story; she knew this was a way of getting her away from Tirana to a place of safety. She knew there was no romance or sexual interest there. And she knew, instinctively, she had since told me, that she was dealing with the first – the only – truly honourable man that she had ever met.

  So she and Nick had embarked on a sham marriage so that Nick could return to England with her.

  This was, of course, a criminal offence.

  Not, admittedly, one as serious as, say, shooting someone in the head and burying them in the cellar of my pub, but one which would, if discovered, result in criminal charges and dismissal from The Job – the one job that Nick had dreamed of his whole life.

  The couple needed to stay married for three years and, during that period, they would be monitored, investigated and interviewed at random, and so any suggestion that Nick was not really married to Arianne, but was, instead, bumping – as some are wont to say – uglies with me, would have ruined Nick and had Arianne sent back to almost certain death.

  So, here we were, sneaking around, checking into small hotels, paying cash, grabbing our time together when we could and lying to my best friend.

  “Talking of biting the bullet,” I said, desperate to change the subject, “any news on my cellar-based friend?”

  Nick frowned. “You know I can’t tell you anything about an ongoing case.”

  “Obviously,” I said, “but if you were to say anything to me, what would it be?”

  He laughed and shook his head despairingly at me. “Well, the first thing I’d do would be to ask whether you’re actually, like, making a thing of this corpses-in-the-pub, thing? I mean, are you going to rebrand or something? Y’know, like, ‘Come to the Marq. You might never leave,’ sort of thing?”

  “Not funny, Nick,” I said recalling Chopper’s use of similar phrasing today. “Someone was murdered and that body has been sitting under me for – I mean, Lord knows how long.”

  “Forensics reckon at least eighteen to twenty years. Based on the speed of decay and the Oasis at Donnington t-shirt,” he said, telling me something I hadn’t known.

  “Jesus,” I shook my head, “so he was down there all the time I was with Robert, and long before I took over the pub. I’m assuming it was a he…”

  Nick chuckled again. “Yes, Danny, it was a man. And no, Danny, we have no idea yet who he was. Fingerprints aren’t particularly easy to retrieve after that long behind your partition wall, though they’ve got some partials and are putting them through the computer.”

  “Did you find the gun with him?”

  He shook his head. “No. No sign of the gun, but the main suspect wasn’t known for throwing away guns unless he had to.”

  “Main suspect?” I frowned. How could they have a suspect already?

  “Oh come on, Danny,” Nick actually laughed this time. “Your boss Chopper. It’s his pub and this looks very like a gangland job. Clean, quick and then safely disposed of.”

  My frown deepened. I was certain that my last chat with Chopper had not been theatre on his part, but wary of letting Nick know that I had too much contact with a man he considered public enemy number one. “But why would Chopper leave the body here? Where he had to know it would be traced back to him?”

  “Cos he didn’t think it would ever be discovered,” Nick answered.

  “But he…” I sighed. Maybe Chopper was playing me.

  “He what, Danny?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Danny,” Nick’s voice was suddenly stern, his green eyes staring with concern into mine. “You’re staying away from him, right?”

  “Away from him?” I suddenly felt like a 50s housewife being ordered by the husband not to use that brilliantined butcher on the high street. “Nick, he owns the pub. I’m not popping round for tea and biscuits,” I added, glancing guiltily at the carrier bag full of custard creams on the bedside table, “but it’s not like I get to completely ignore the man.”

  “I know.” Nick sighed and pulled me closer to him, his back pressed against the cheap headboard, mine against his chest, the two of us spooning in a half-sitting pose, and he pressed his lips to the top of my head. “I love you,” he said, and my heart lightened.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m just sorry that life is always so bloody complicated.”

  “Complicated?” He laughed. “Mortgages and shift patterns are complicated, Danny. What we have is beyond complicated. It’s,” he searched for the word, and finally settled on, “byzantine.”

  I chuckled. “I know,” I answered. “And by the way,” I said, my voice catching in my throat, “I love you too.”

  I coughed to clear my throat, “Listen,” I said, forcing myself back to business, “I know how unprofessional this is, but I’d really like to know as soon as they put a name to that body.”

  “Unprofessional? Danny – that would be illegal. And why do you want to know the name?”

  “Firstly, I’m pretty sure it can’t be illegal. They do it all the time on the telly – calling their sources at the New York Times and telling them that they’ve found Jimmy Hoffa under the car park in Queens.”

  “Yeah, well this is the Met Police,” he answered dryly, “not Law and Order Southwark, and the last time anyone from my lot spoke to the papers – New
York Times down to the Borough and Bankside Bugle – there was a sacking and an internal investigation that made a lot of people uncomfortable for a very long time.”

  “Well, an internal investigation will do that,” I answered, trying – and failing – to lighten the mood. “Listen, he was down in my cellar for twenty years. I think the least I’m entitled to know is who he is. That’s all I’m asking.”

  He sighed deeply and kissed the top of my head again, reaching across to grab a bottle of beer from the bedside table. “I’m not promising anything,” he said, and I thought that that single phrase could have been the motto for my entire romantic life.

  But right now, as he swigged the beer and handed the bottle to me, as the TV in the corner continued to flash coloured drama at us, as the heat from him mixed with the heat of me, and the twelve-inch pizza shrank slice by slice, I didn’t need promises.

  Now, I felt certain, was good enough.

  NINE

  A sudden gust of wind caught me as I turned off Fulham Road on to Caz’s street, and the carrier bags in my hands were yanked as though the Gods themselves were trying to prevent my delivery.

  The deal with Nick and I was that we would meet every few days, have some time together, and then head back to our respective homes in the wee hours of the morning, which was, frankly, playing havoc with my sleep patterns and, so, having arrived into The Marq at four in the morning, having Caz telephone me at not much after 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday hadn’t been the most pleasant of experiences.

  I’d sat up in bed, my mobile jangling away, and, as I’d lifted it, I’d thoughtlessly lifted a packet of biscuits from the carrier bag beside it, my sleep-deprived brain clearly demanding cheap sugar and hydrogenated fats.

  “What are you doing?” Caz, without preamble, had asked.

  “Good morning to you, too,” I answered, tearing open the custard creams and pulling one out.

  “Yes,” she sounded distracted, “morning. Hope you’re well. Have a nice day. All that stuff. What are you doing?”

  I bit into the biscuit. It was soft.

  “I’m eating a stale biscuit,” I said through a mouthful of crumbs.

  “Quaint,” she deadpanned, “and guaranteed not to add to your already expanding hips.”

  “Cow,” I muttered through a mouthful of crumbs. “What’s up?” I asked, taking another bite and deciding that – despite the slight mustiness – the custard creams weren’t too bad.

  “Can you come around?” She asked.

  “Now?” It was Sunday, we were promising a roast this lunchtime, and I could imagine Ali’s face if I swanned out into the bar and announced I was going out.

  “Well, as soon as you’ve finished your biscuits, obviously,” she responded, somewhat testily. “How many have you got?”

  I dragged the bag towards me. “Two – no – three packs.”

  “Dear Lord. Are carbs the new No carbs?”

  “They were a gift,” I said shamefacedly.

  “Well you need to get better dates, sweetheart. A man who gives you stale biscuits on a first night will give you chlamydia by Christmas.”

  “I hope not,” I said, my throat going dry. “They’re from Chopper.”

  Caz was silent for a moment, then: “Neatly-jointed corpse Chopper? The one that had those three Russian gangsters hacked to bits?”

  “Allegedly.”

  “Allegedly if you’re his lawyer,” she said.

  “Which I’m not.”

  Caz snorted. “Clearly; I’ll bet his legal rep gets paid a lot more than a bag of broken biscuits. Anyway, I can’t wait for you to finish three packets of biscuits so you’ll just have to bring them with you. And stop on the way, would you, and pick up some Vermouth. And some lemons. What time do you think you’ll get here?”

  “Caz, I do have a pub to run, you know?”

  There was a moment of silence as she audibly swigged something from a glass which clinked against the phone, then: “Daniel, you have staff that run the pub. Your role is to direct and inspire, and right now I bet they’d be more inspired by knowing their leader is helping me rather than licking his wounds and a selection of rancid baked goods in the kitchen.”

  “I’m in bed,” I admitted shamefacedly.

  “Lord,” she sighed theatrically, “how the other half live. Listen,” she finished, “this is a Stage One Red Alert. I really need you, Danny.”

  I straightened in my seat. “What’s up?”

  “Look,” she said, “I know you have enough drama in your life, and I really wouldn’t ask if it was at all avoidable, but I need you. Can you come over? Now. And wear something smart and good shoes. The Sweeney’s.”

  I checked my watch. “What on earth is going on?” I asked.

  “Prissy’s in town,” she finally said, “and demanding an audience.”

  “Jesus,” I gasped, then realised I needed to remain calm for my best friend and released my breath. “This will be fine,” I said. “What time does she want to see you?”

  “Us, dear heart. It’s me plus you that’s requested, at The Savoy at six this evening.”

  “Caz, it’s just gone nine. What do you need me for this early?”

  “Because,” she announced, “I’m out of Vermouth and lemons. Oh, and you may as well bring another bottle of gin. Just to be safe.”

  “I thought Prissy didn’t drink.”

  “She doesn’t. The martinis are for us before we go. See you in twenty minutes. And thanks. I’ll leave the door open.”

  I’d called her back, of course, and negotiated a happy (for Ali and me) medium whereby I’d finish prepping the Sunday roast, leave it to be served by Ali and the twins, then grab the necessary liquid refreshments and make my way to Fulham.

  Which was where I found myself, now, at just after midday, the sudden leaf-filled gusts abating as I was buzzed into Caz’s apartment block and made my way up to the second floor.

  “Angel,” Caz said, offering an absent-minded air kiss as she relieved me of my carrier bags.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “Prissy’s staying at The Savoy,” she answered, telling me no more than I already knew, “and she wants to meet me and my lovely friend; the one – as she says – who runs that charming pub.”

  “Okay,” I slipped off my coat, noticing her nodding approvingly as she appraised the dark brown brogues, slim dark-blue jeans and super-soft flannel shirt that she’d bought me for Christmas the previous year.

  “Except she’s never been to The Marq,” I answered.

  “Clearly,” Caz answered, plucking absently at the shirt and adjusting the hang, “but to Prissy and her ilk, every pub is charming or interesting. She’s the sort of person who would look at a TB ward and describe it as ‘Characterful.’”

  “So what’s she want, do you think?”

  “Well I doubt she’ll want to ask you for decorating tips. Not if she ever sees the inside of your charming pub.”

  She ushered me through to her galley kitchen and I stood aside as she busied herself baptising some olives in a cocktail jug. “But you can be assured, my sweet, she will want something. That woman has never so much as smiled at someone without having an ulterior motive.”

  “Perhaps she wants to rent the pub,” I said trying not to think of what had happened last time I tried to pitch The Marq as a destination for poshos.

  “If she does, I strongly recommend you decline the booking. She’s never exited a room without leaving the sound of sobbing behind her. Mind you,” Caz mused, straining two gin martinis into tumblers and handing one to me, “on consideration – and recognising how regularly your patrons are bumped off – perhaps we should actively encourage her to come. What news of last night’s desiccated arrival? And why on earth were you biscuit shopping with the Maltese Machete?” she asked, referring to Chopper by the sobriquet The Daily Express had conferred on him

  I filled Caz in on the summons to the pound shop, the realisation that he seemed as blindsid
ed as we were by the dead man, and finished up by mentioning the fact that our crumbly pal had come with extra ventilation.

  “Chopper knew he’d been shot?” Caz asked.

  “Well,” I blushed. Busted. “Not exactly.”

  “Out with it,” she drained her glass, refilled it from the pitcher and waved the jug in my direction, frowning when I declined.

  “I spoke to Nick.”

  “Ah,” she smiled. Caz was rather fond of Nick, which was odd as she tended to react towards anyone who upset me in much the same way as Mary Queen of Scots would towards anyone knocking on her door trying to sell The Watchtower.

  “And how,” Caz asked, sipping her martini, grimacing, uncorking the gin bottle and pouring a slug of gin straight in on top of the cocktail (“Too much ice,” she muttered before returning to me), “yes how is the pretty policeman doing?”

  “Still married,” I said glumly.

  “And still gayer,” she said, “than Christmas on Christopher Street. So there’s always hope.”

  “Caz, he married a woman. And forgot to tell me.”

  “Firstly, dear, he didn’t forget, he deliberately chose not to tell you. And secondly, he did so for all the right reasons. The problem with The Gays these days – and you know, dear heart, how dearly I love you – is that you’ve all become so bloody decent.

  “He’s a decent man who married a woman so he could get her out of terrible abuse in Albania, and you’re a decent man who doesn’t think sham marriages – let alone sham marriages which your intended keeps from you – are acceptable events.”

  “Intended?” I snorted. “Thank you Emily Bronte.” Then, by way of changing the subject, I said, “Talking of intended how’s your latest boyfriend?”

  Now Caz went uncharacteristically quiet, finally muttering, “Ludo and I are no more.”

  I was shocked. Caz hadn’t mentioned the ending of the affair.

  “Well it’s not something you announce, really,” she said. “He went on that rugby tour of Europe. His wife decided to fly out to Heidelberg to surprise him.”