“Really?” Nick asked. “And yet you’re sure it’s him now, after two decades out of your sight?”
“Love,” Ali fixed him, once again, with her most basilisk-like stare, “my abiding memory of that man is flat on his back drunk. Add a few years, it’s still him.”
“Definitely?” Nick asked, and Ali nodded solidly.
“As sure as I’m standing here,” she said.
Nick met her gaze and then nodded to one of the functionaries, who tapped a few times on a tablet in her hands and then walked briskly off.
“What happened?” Ali finally asked, jerking her head towards the room we’d just left.
“We can’t really say,” Nick answered; nodding in what I assumed was his default ‘dealing with widows’ mode, “other than that he obviously drowned.”
“Well I didn’t think he dozed off in the fucking bath.”
Nick shook his head. “Look, there’s a bloody great lump on the back of his head. Looks like someone lamped him solidly with a rock-solid great weight. Some bruises on his chest and back, looks like he was pushed and held under – an oar, perhaps, something like that.”
Ali and I looked surreptitiously at each other. I couldn’t know what she was thinking, but I knew I was recalling the struggle at The Marq and wondering whether the lump had been acquired then.
“So could that bang on the back of the head have killed him?” I asked, feeling like Perry Mason.
“No, Danny,” Nick said, giving me the sort of look I imagined he’d give to someone who’d just asked if, maybe, an absence of positive reviews had killed the musical Martin Guerre, “but I doubt it helped.”
Ali sighed theatrically, “Maybe,” she said, digging for an explanation, “he just fell into the river, only he’d had a fight with someone earlier?”
“No,” Nick said, “the marks we’ve found clearly suggest he was pushed in and held under till he drowned. I’m sorry if this upsets you,” he added, and was met by a withering look from Ali.
“I was married to the bastard,” she snapped. “the only thing that could upset me right now would be if you said he was faking it in there.”
Nick paused, blinked, and nodded. “Make no mistake, Mrs Carter, this definitely looks like murder.”
“Well thank fuck for that,” Ali announced, squaring up, “only I’d hate to think he turned up after twenty years and accidentally toppled into the fucking Thames.”
Nick squinted. “Turned up? I thought you said you hadn’t seen him since he left you?”
“I hadn’t,” she shot back, “but he’s clearly turned up in there.”
Nick nodded, not entirely satisfied with her answer. “Well this was no accident. I’m glad we can allay your fears,” he said, ushering us out of the room.
It was half an hour later, as our taxi slowly made its way back towards The Marq, that Ali turned towards me.
“What if Carlton caught up with him?” she asked
“Carlton?” I asked, confused.
“Or Dash,” she added. “They both had bruises like they’d been in a fight.”
“I’d noticed,” I responded dryly.
“Jesus, Dan – what if one of them killed him?”
“They didn’t. Did they?”
“There’s more,” she announced, staring at the water below her. “The body, in the cellar.”
My blood ran cold.
“I think I know who it is. Jimmy used to hang around with a pretty rough gang. But there was one guy who vanished. Billy the Brick.”
“French, was he?” I asked, wondering whether perhaps Edouard Du Briquet had come over with the conqueror.
“No, you fuckwit. He was a brickie by trade and a nasty piece of work by preference. He was as nasty as Jimmy, only smarter.”
She stared out at the water as the taxi crawled along the embankment. “He vanished. I remember it vaguely. I wasn’t really paying much attention to anything going on with that lot at the time, cos I was too busy trying to get away from Jimmy, but I remember the shit hitting the fan when Billy Bryant vanished. And now I think about it, it’s obvious that part of that vexation was cos certain people thought he’d done a runner with them stones.”
“Until,” I murmured, as we turned off the main road towards The Marq, “he turned up in my cellar.”
Our taxi had clearly taken the scenic route because, as we pulled up outside The Marq, a couple of police cars were sitting outside the pub.
Ali got out as I paid the driver and we walked into the bar to be met by Nick’s boss, Detective Inspector Frank Reid.
“Evening Danny,” Reid sneered. “Long time no see.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, glancing around the room.
Three uniformed officers were on the opposite side of the room, surrounding the gangly figure of Carlton. As I watched, they moved, positioning him in front and surrounding him, his hands clearly cuffed behind his back.
“Carlton?” Ali stepped forward, and one of the officers held his hand up to fend her off.
“Someone called us,” Reid announced and I eyeballed the regulars wondering which of them could have been the caller.
“Apparently,” he continued, his voice a sing-song mockery of innocent surprise, “young Carlton here assaulted Mr Carter – the late Mr Carter – yesterday in this very bar, and was seen following him when he left this pub. Nice joint you’re running, Mr Bird.” He motioned to the uniforms to carry on taking Carlton out of the pub at which Ali, looking from Carlton to me and back, stepped in front of the boy.
“He didn’t do it,” she cried.
“Well, we’ll see what he has to say about that down at the station, shall we?” Reid sneered.
“You don’t need to take him to the station,” Ali insisted, as one of the uniforms attempted politely but firmly to move her to one side, “cos I did it.”
Everyone paused, turned and looked, first at each other, and then at Ali.
“Did what?” Reid snarled, his beady eyes looking piggier than ever.
“I drowned him.” Ali outstared him, turned her glance to me and looked back at Reid. Not once did she let her gaze fall on Carlton.
“He called me. Last night. Told me he was going to hurt me and Carlton. So I arranged to meet him, down by the river. And I drowned him.”
“Why’d you do it?” Reid asked; his eyes dancing from Carlton, whose horrified gaze was fixed on his mother; to Ali herself.
“He was Jimmy Carter,” Ali said. “Wouldn’t you?”
TWENTY-ONE
“Mum,” Carlton called out, “don’t do this. Please.”
“Shut it, Carlton,” Ali snapped back, her eyes never leaving Reid’s face, “I’m not gonna see you suffer for something I did.” At this, she tore her eyes from Reid and looked at Carlton, “For something I should have done a long time ago.”
“Right,” Reid gestured to the uniforms, “take ‘em both.”
“What?” Ali whipped back on him. “But he did nothing. I killed Jimmy. It was me that drowned him.”
“So you say,” Reid answered as one of the uniforms moved from Carlton towards Ali, “but Carlton here’s just confessed to the same crime and, until I get to the bottom of it, I’m taking you both in.”
“He said that to protect me, you fuckwit,” Ali shouted, as the uniform stepped behind her and attempted to jerk her hands behind her back. Ali squirmed out of his reach and Reid chuckled.
“Changed your mind, Ali?” he sneered.
“He’s fucking innocent,” she snarled back. “And you know it.”
The uniform paused, seemingly uncertain whether to cuff a woman who was now having a conversation with his boss, or not.
“Mum, please,” Carlton begged. “Don’t get involved.”
“And yet he’s confessed,” Reid shot back.
“Maybe,” he mused, “you both did it. Together. Carlton here, tells me that you recently told him that your husband had killed Carlton’s dear old dad. Maybe the two of you dec
ided to take revenge on Jimmy when he showed up here. Why did he show up anyway? Anything to do with that body that disinterred itself recently?”
“Carlton had nothing to do with this,” Ali shot back. “Nothing. Now stop being a complete twat and let him go.”
Dash stepped across to Ali but was held back by a glare from the uniform behind her. “Ali,” he said, reaching out a hand to her, “don’t do this. Please.”
Ali smiled at him. “I have to,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand, but I have to.”
Carlton, again, beseeched his mother to stop the argument and, as his pleas rang around the pub, and Reid laughed at both mother and son, I sidled up to Nick. “You know this is all wrong,” I whispered. “There’s no way either of these two killed him. He terrified them both.”
“And yet,” he said coldly, “an hour ago you and Ali were, apparently telling DC Fisher how you’d never met the man and she’d not seen him in two decades.”
“Okay,” I admitted, “we lied. But only cos we were…” I scrabbled to explain myself, “surprised to find him stretched out on a slab.”
“Not as surprised as I’ll bet he was,” Reid shot back. “Right,” he shouted, appearing to have had enough fun for the night, “take them,” he barked at the prevaricating constables.
Ali and Carlton were then cuffed, dragged out to one of the waiting police cars, packed into them and driven away.
“See,” a by-standing punter said to another as Caz and I, leaving the twins behind to man the bar, followed the parade, “I told you it was worth coming here on a Wednesday night. Better than the telly, it is.”
TWENTY-TWO
It was the early hours of the next morning when Caz and I returned to The Marq.
Dash, his eyes lighting up when we trudged through the door, slumped when he realised we were unaccompanied.
“What’s happened?” he asked tensely. “Where’s Ali?”
“They’re holding them both,” I muttered darkly, “for questioning.”
“Shit,” Dash gasped, his face paling.
“Sweetie,” Caz patted him on the shoulder as she headed to the kitchen, relieving the bar of a bottle of Captain Morgan en route, “it’s Southwark nick, not The Lubyanka. They’ll be fine.”
“Danny,” Dash scuttled after us, his brother switching off the lights and checking that the door was firmly bolted, following, “you’ve got to do something. She didn’t do it. She couldn’t have.”
“I know,” I said, dropping into an alarmingly creaky kitchen chair “Or at least, I think I know. But Dash, someone killed him.”
Ray put the kettle on while Dash and Caz also dropped into chairs around the table.
“What are we gonna do?” Dash groaned. “What am I gonna do?”
“You’re gonna drink rum-spiked coffee,” Caz said, “calm down and think.”
“Wait,” I held a hand up as Caz passed the bottle over to Ray, “when you say she couldn’t have, how do you know she couldn’t have?”
In the background, Ray got busy with mugs and a jar of Nescafe and, at the table, Dash suddenly became somewhat abashed.
“Because she’s a good woman,” he said. “She couldn’t kill anyone.”
“Are you certain of that?” I fixed him with my steeliest glare and watched as the blush crept from his neck to the roots of his hair. “Only, how well can we really know anyone?”
“Thank you, Soren Kierkegaard,” Caz muttered, as a huge mug of steaming black liquid was placed in front of me.
“Dash?” I pressed.
Ray presented a mug to Caz, put one down in front of his twin and then sat himself at the table. As one, he and Caz lifted and swigged from their mugs, Ray wincing and Caz reaching for the rum to top hers up.
Dash stared into his mug as though the steam might, at any moment, transform into an answer to the question he still hadn’t answered.
“How can you be certain she didn’t kill him?” I asked.
“Because I killed him,” Dash blurted out, tears springing to his eyes.
“Fuck!” Ray whispered.
“Indeed,” Caz responded.
“Explain,” I said simply and nodded at his mug as I, in turn, took a deep gulp of the almost coffee-flavoured hot rum.
“She was here,” Dash said, having sipped from his own mug, “until she left.”
“This much,” I noted, “is indisputable,” and received, for my comment, a kick in the shins from Caz. “And what happened then?”
“I followed her,” Dash said. “When I left here I rambled around for a while, until I realised I’d lost Jimmy and wouldn’t find him. Then I realised that he would probably come back for Ali. He kept coming back to her. Frightening her. And I didn’t know if she’d have anyone there, in case he came back. Or if he went to her house and stayed there, waiting for her. So I came back here and waited for her to leave, then I followed her home and waited there to see if he showed up.”
“So to get this straight,” I demanded, “how long have you been stalking my barmaid?”
Dash glared angrily at me. “She’s a bar manager,” he said, and I had to nod.
“Fair point,” I said, “but doesn’t really address the main point. Dash, stalking people is illegal. And creepy.”
“And unnecessary, I’d hazard, in this case,” Caz noted. “She really likes you, Dash.”
Dash blushed. “I’ve never followed her anywhere before. I promise. But I knew that this time I had to keep an eye on her. To keep her safe.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Still creepy.”
“You fucking muppet,” his brother muttered. “She could have brained you.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.” Dash turned tear-filled eyes on us.
“And besides,” Caz added, “moral opinions on dear dumb Dash’s stalking behaviour aside, he has just confessed to murdering Jimmy Carter.”
Which did, sort of, add some perspective.
At which point Caz topped everyone’s mugs up, turned to Dash and said, “Do continue.”
“I followed her home,” Dash said, miserably, “and waited outside. All night. And she didn’t leave the house.”
“But why did she go home?” I mused. “I mean, she had a place here. She could stay safely here all night if she wanted.”
Caz sipped from her mug and shook her head. “Carlton had a place here. That was all about keeping the boy away – and safe – from Jimmy. But as soon as Jimmy saw the boy, that plan was a bust.”
“So, what? She deliberately went home to lead Jimmy away from here?”
Caz shrugged. “Mothers have done worse to protect their kids,” she murmured quietly.
“Jimmy turned up,” Dash said quietly, “’bout one in the morning. Drunk. He was banging on the door, asking her to let him in and then demanding she open up. I…” he gulped, swigged again from the mug, looked up and around the table at all of us, “I was scared. I didn’t know what to do, but Ali never opened the door, never switched on a light. She must have been sat in darkness. Listening to him.
“Eventually, he said, ‘fuck you. I got somewhere to be. Someone who gives a fuck about me,’ and he turned to go. And that’s when he saw me.”
“Fuck,” Ray whispered again, and, once again, Caz nodded.
“Indeed. Top-up anyone?”
I glanced at her. She did not appear to be taking this as seriously as the rest of us.
“Jimmy came over and started having a go at me. Calling me her bodyguard, her pet. He was taking the piss out of me. Out of Ali. So I swung a punch at him.”
“Bravo,” Caz said. “And that,” she nodded at the bruises on his face, “is what, I assume, you received in return?”
“He was a better fighter than me,” Dash explained, “but I got lucky. Landed one punch that knocked him out. He hit the deck – I think he cracked his head – and I managed to get away to the opposite side of the road.
“Then I ran away. I left him, lying in the gutter.”
At which point, I began to see why Caz had not been taking this quite as seriously as she might have.
“But Dash,” I said, “Jimmy wasn’t killed by a blow to the head. He was drowned.”
“And unless you’re vastly overpaying your genial bar manager,” Caz murmured, “I had wondered how a fracas at her house could lead to her husband floating down the Thames. I mean, riverside accommodation is not exactly the standard for bar staff.”
Dash looked from one of us to the other, a flame of hope sparking up in his eyes, only to die as he considered what he’d done. “But the knock on the head,” he said. “It must have thrown him off balance. Maybe he staggered down to the river and then fell in.”
I sipped from my mug, noticed it was empty and, nodding at Caz, received a large slug of neat rum into it.
“If he fell in because of the blow to the head,” Dash went on, “then it was my fault. I killed him.”
I shook my head. “The person who held Jimmy Carter under the water killed him,” I said, and Dash frowned.
“Held him under?”
I nodded. “I’ve seen the body. He didn’t fall in and drift off, so to speak. Someone actually held him under.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Dash frowned.
“And it also doesn’t give Ali the alibi you thought she had,” I noted. “You ran off leaving Jimmy there, outside her house.”
“But she couldn’t have,” Dash insisted. “She couldn’t have,” he whispered, as though trying to convince himself as much as us.
“Carlton could have come home,” Ray said morosely.
“All we know,” I said as his brother’s head dropped further, “is that you didn’t kill Jimmy Carter.”
“So,” Caz said, as though announcing we might do a day-trip tomorrow to the coast, “all we have to do is find out who did, get Ali and Carlton out of the Chateau D’If and reunite Dash with his amour, and all will be well.”
“She doesn’t even know I exist,” Dash moaned onto the table.
“No. Well, there is that,” Caz considered, before brightening up. “How are you with explosives? We could always blast them out.”
Death Of A Devil Page 13
