Death Of A Devil

by Derek Farrell

  “And the apprentice was just named,” I nodded across the road, “by the fragrant Mo—”

  Realisation dawned on Caz’s face. “As Alex. The toerag apprentice.” She frowned. “But hang on a minute, there are a million Alex’s in London and there have to be at least a third of them in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It’s stretching belief to imagine that the son of one of our villains, none of whom seem to have had anything to do with each other in over a decade, would end up working for another.”

  “That assumes one thing,” I said as, across the road, the door of the salon opened and the hatchet-faced pensioner, a plastic cowl delicately tied over her new ‘do’ emerged, grimaced at the drizzle that was beginning to fall, shrunk deeper into her overcoat like a tortoise into her shell and tottered off up the street.

  “It assumes that none of them have had anything to do with each other in over a decade.”

  “You think, maybe, some of them kept in touch?”

  “Well,” I watched as the bright shop lights opposite were extinguished, leaving only a trace light bleeding from somewhere in the back of the store, “the idea hadn’t even crossed my mind but then Alex’s name popped up and Eve Stewart turned up at Tiny Tim’s when her fortunes dipped, and I begin to wonder just how tightly-knit the relationships actually were.”

  Across the road, the figure of Mo – bundled up against the drizzle and holding the bloody bird cage up like some badly-put-together Florence Nightingale – exited the shop and, her body language exuding belligerence, she stomped off in the direction of her only customer.

  “But Jimmy didn’t seem to have a relationship with any of them,” Caz murmured, sipping her DIY martini and intently watching the door opposite.

  “No,” I admitted, “but then he was a complete lunatic and more than likely a total fucking liability.”

  “Oh good,” she brightened up, “we’ve moved from Cagney, James to Ritchie, Guy. I look forward to the Tarantino section next. So you think they – what? – cut him out?”

  “I think it’s odd that the rest of them got on with their lives while Jimmy simply vanished.”

  “And then he returned,” she murmured.

  “Oh shit.” The hairs on the back of my arms rose. A cold chill went down my spine and I seriously questioned what was in the gin. “I’ve just remembered something.”

  Caz glanced at me. “Well if you’re waiting for me to drag it out of you, you’ll wait a long time. Get on with it,” she said, not for the first time.

  “When we met Alex, he was going off to – his dad said – his club.”

  Caz nodded. “Athletic gear. Running club? Gym?”

  “They live in Twickenham. It’s by the bloody river. His top had a little blue ‘X’ embroidered on it.”

  “Did it? I was far too busy checking out the rest of his Lycra-clad form. What of it?”

  “It wasn’t an ‘X’,” I said, “it was two crossed oars.”

  “A rowing club,” Caz exclaimed, the light dawning. “So your guess—”

  “Deduction,” I attempted to correct her, but she waved my objection away.

  “Guess, might have been correct. He had access to a boathouse where he could probably have held Jimmy underwater without being disturbed. Then, all he would have had to do would be to open the doors and let the body float away and off downstream.

  “She’s on her way.” Caz nodded across the road, where the final faint light had just been extinguished.

  We necked what was left of our drinks and hurried out of the pub.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “Rene,” I called the woman’s name as she was squatting down turning the key in what looked like the ninth lock on the door, and she looked up, a bare smile testifying to the fact that she recognised my voice.

  “Oh,” the smile that had been bubbling up was stillborn as she stood to her feet and stretched up for a security shutter that was just beyond the reach of her fingertips.

  “Here,” I said, “let me help,” and realised, as I said so and stretched upwards, that I was actually shorter than she was.

  Caz, stepping forward, gently moved me out of the way, reached up easily, grasped the shutter and, in one swooping motion, slammed it down to the ground.

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you two,” Rene muttered, bending down to lock the shutter in place.

  “Let me guess,” Caz said, “Mo wouldn’t like it.”

  Rene chuckled bitterly. “He’s in solitary confinement and he’s still running my fucking life.”

  “Al?” I guessed.

  She nodded. “He’s been in solitary for the past month. Stabbed some poor bloke with a knife he made out of paperclips. But Mo’ll be straight up there as soon as he’s out to give him the scoop on everything that’s happened here and on everyone who’s badmouthed him, or looked funny at her, or said so much as a ‘Good morning’ to me. He’s fucking obsessed that I might cheat on him. I mean,” she waved a hand at herself, “look at me. I’m clearly so fucking gorgeous the men round here are falling over themselves to shag me.”

  “You look great,” Caz said.

  “I look like what I am,” Rene responded sadly, “a middle-aged old-before-her-time bird with a bully for a husband, a bitch for a mother-in-law and no fucking chance of escape in this life.”

  “Well the hair and nails are good,” Caz smiled, and Rene chuckled.

  “Look,” she said, “I really can’t be seen hanging round here with you two. Word gets round. What d’you want?”

  “A coffee,” I said. “Ten minutes of your time. No more.”

  She considered this, and seemed about to reject the advance out of hand, then a smile alighted on her face. “Right,” she said. “Head to Hammersmith. There’s a caff round the back by the Hammersmith and City line. I’ll be there in half an hour. Forty minutes tops. I’m not waiting, so be there.” And so saying, she turned and walked away from us, vanishing, quickly, amongst the throng of people leaving the market.

  I glanced at Caz. “Suddenly, we’re in a Le Carre,” I said, but she didn’t smile.

  We turned, walking the opposite way to the one that Rene had, and made our way down North End Road until Caz spotted a passing cab, hailed it and instructed the driver to head towards Hammersmith.

  We got to the café early and sat nursing an Americano for me and an Irish for Caz. Admittedly, the café didn’t actually do Irish coffee but, since Caz had a small bottle of Jameson’s in her bag, that oversight had been swiftly resolved.

  Half an hour came and went, as did forty minutes, and I was beginning to think that Rene had had cold feet and stood us up, when the door opened and she entered the café, dropping into a chair opposite me and calling to the man behind the bar for a breakfast tea, two sugars, in a proper mug.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Couldn’t get parked. And we’ll need to keep this quick, cos Mo will be calling me at home soon. She does every night. Just to check I’m alright, she says. So I don’t get lonely.”

  “She’s checking up on you,” Caz suggested.

  “Of course she’s fucking checking up on me,” Rene flared. “I’d probably care less if she actually said, ‘I think you’re a skank and I’m checking up on you for my boy.’ It’s the fact she thinks I’m a skank who’s so fucking stupid she can’t see what’s going on that pisses me off. Ta, love,” this last said to the barista, who placed a huge mug of tea before her. “Oh, I need this,” she lifted it and slurped noisily from the mug.

  “So, yeah,” she said, “I haven’t got much time. Cos if I’m not there when she calls, she’ll want to know where I went after the salon. So what d’you want?”

  “You know you could leave,” Caz suggested, a concerned frown on her face.

  Rene snorted disdainfully. “And go where? I ain’t got much, to be honest, but every penny I do have is stuck in that stupid fucking salon. Which I could make such a go of, if I didn’t have to deal with my stupid fucking husband – who wouldn’t know a b
usiness deal from an armed fucking robbery if it hit him in the mush – and his bitch of a mother, who can’t decide whether she wants to be Vidal Sassoon or Alan fucking Sugar.

  “I mean, there was a time I had dreams of owning a nice little hairdresser’s. Maybe a little nail bar on the side. Now look at us. By Christmas, she’ll have us offering hand jobs while you get your phone unlocked. Anyways, you know what people like Al do to women who walk out on them? There was this bird once, I heard, walked out on one of the Massive, and got a face full of acid for her efforts. ‘If I can’t have you, nobody will,’ you know? No,” she shook her head, “my days for going anywhere are almost over.”

  “Almost,” Caz said, and Rene tilted her head.

  “Look, what d’you want?”

  I dived straight in: “Just a few things. First – was the apprentice that your husband had working with him Alex Chatham?”

  Rene frowned. “How’d you know that?” she asked, answering the question. “He knew the kid’s dad back in the day and, apparently, the kid was getting a bit big for his boots. Was a time when someone like Chisel would have had the little bugger taken out and taught a lesson. Only Chisel lost his wife – Alex’s mum – a few years ago, and it sent him – Mo and Al reckon – a bit soft.

  “So rather than have the kid hospitalised to teach him a lesson, Chisel cut off his money and told him to go find a job.”

  “And he ended up at Al Halliwell’s?” I asked disbelievingly.

  Rene nodded, agreeing with my cynicism. “I reckon Chisel was still not able to be totally hard to the kid, so he made some calls, found a mate – Al – who needed someone to work for them, and bob’s your mother’s brother. Only Chisel ended that relationship when he found out that Al was using the kid to get jobs in nice houses round Richmond and Twickenham that he’d burgle shortly after.”

  “So it was Al who was the brains there?” I asked and received a pitying glance for my question.

  “No,” she said sarcastically, “the kid led him – a man who’s spent more time in the nick than out of it in the past twenty years, and who has convictions for armed robbery, burglary, GBH, ABH and shoplifting on his record – into breaking the habit of a lifetime and lifting other people’s stuff. Jesus,” she shook her head, “you didn’t actually believe Mo’s sermon about her little saint did you?”

  “Not much,” I admitted, and she chuckled disbelievingly

  “Worst thing that little bugger did was try his luck with me. Said he liked a more mature woman and could show me a good time. All the usual guff about how he was at his sexual peak and I was too.”

  She laughed. “Al would have cut his bollocks off if I’d even mentioned the conversation. But no,” she shook her head,” Chisel junior was a decent kid. Just a bit cocky.”

  I considered this for a moment, then asked “Did Al have a yard?”

  “Yeah,” she nodded, puzzled at the question. “Out East. As far away from here as he could get it.”

  “Does he still have it,” I asked, “or did it lapse when the plumbers went kaput?”

  “No,” she sipped her tea, “he still has it. It wasn’t ever just for the plumbing. It’s a place he can use whenever he has a bit of business that needs doing away from prying eyes. I think you can imagine what I mean,” she finished.

  “Have you got the address?” I asked, and she gave it to me, still frowning.

  “I don’t understand why you want to take a look at a shitty lock-up.”

  So I told her about Alex Chatham going missing.

  “And you think he’s hiding out there?”

  “It’s as good a place as any to start,” I said. “His dad’s tried everywhere he can think of.”

  Rene sighed. “Charlie’s probably the better of them,” she admitted. “Wasn’t always, but I think losing his missus put him in a place where he suddenly realised how much the people he’d taken for granted meant to him.”

  “I need to know something else,” I said, leaning in to the table. “Did Jimmy Carter make contact with you or Mo?”

  “Contact?” Now, she actually threw her head back and laughed aloud. “Love, he didn’t make contact, he fucking moved in. He turned up one day while I was out getting a cheese roll for my lunch. I get back to the salon and Mother Courage is dancing around like the sugarplum fucking fairy. Twittering around him like one of her own’s come back to the fucking nest. Not even the bird had a bad word for him.”

  “And he moved in?”

  She nodded. “For a few days. She made me do his hair – horrible naff cut and the cheapest dye job you could want, but he insisted on it. Said it was his trademark. The old bitch was all over him like a cheap suit. ‘Specially when she hears that he’s going to get hold of them stones.”

  “He knew where they were?”

  “Not at first, but a few days later he announces he’s on to something, which was when Mother Courage insists on his having ‘a treatment.’ While I was doing his hair, she was pumping him for info, only he kept it close to his chest. ‘Got it narrowed down to two people,’ was all she got out of him.”

  “But if he knew where they were, why was he still pushing Ali to dig up details on the suspects?”

  “Aw, love, you ever met Jimmy Carter? Man was the biggest bastard on the planet. He could have had them stones in his sodding pocket and he’d still have taken pleasure in torturing that poor cow of a wife of his.”

  “Did he go visit your husband?” I asked, and she shook her head.

  “Like I said, Al’s been in solitary since before Jimmy came back. Not even the Archbishop of Canterbury’s gettin’ in to see him.”

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “He left. Day after the dye-job. Said he’d found better digs. ‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘Got somewhere much fancier.’ And that was it.”

  Somewhere much fancier? I glanced at Caz. Gethsemane Gardens was much fancier. “And did you see him again?” I asked.

  Rene smirked. “Love, if I never see that scumbag again, it’ll be too soon. Now,” she emptied the mug of tea in one gannet-sized gulp, gathered her coat around her and stood, “I got to be on my way before Big Brother’s Ugly Sister gets on the blower, but…” she paused, dipped into her pocket, a frown deepening on her face and extracted the bunch of keys as the frown blossomed into a smile, “here.” She fiddled with the jangling keys, finally removing one from the ring. “For what good it’ll do you, that’s the key to Al’s lockup and yard. I hope you find Chisel’s kid. Tell him, if he did do for Jimmy Carter, he did the world a favour, and he should go home so his old man can help him out.”

  And, placing the key on the tabletop, she turned and bustled out of the café.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  We found Alex Chatham at about eight fifteen that night in a builder’s yard off the East India Road; in an area towered over, in the distant, by the monolithic temples to Mammon in Canary Wharf and, in the foreground, by tower blocks where dim bulbs burned behind curtains drawn against the world.

  The taxi dropped us at the end of the street, the driver peering dubiously around him as Caz dived into her bag, withdrew a fuchsia-coloured purse and extracted his payment from it.

  “I’d keep that out of sight round here, darling,” he said, nodding at the brightly-coloured leather. “They’ll take your arm just for the Gucci logo on it, let alone what’s inside.”

  Caz slipped the purse back into her capacious handbag, zipped that, too, up, hooked it over her arm and smiled kindly at the cabbie; the steel in her eyes flashing as she thanked him for his concern, but advised him that she was sure she’d be fine, thank you.

  “You want me to wait?” he asked, gesturing at the darkened road, the yellow glow of the street lights and the remaining Victorian brickwork casting deep dark shadows.

  Caz shook her head, the smile remaining in place, and – the cabbie having muttered something about how he was sure she could have got whatever she was looking for couriered over to Fulham if she’d onl
y just planned ahead – turned to me.

  “Why,” she asked, “do some people always assume that just because an area looks less than pristine, the inhabitants will be either thieves or drug dealers? And why do they always assume that anyone who ventures into such places is either in search of drugs or kinky sex?”

  “Well you are a bit out of place,” I noted, taking in her designer jeans, wedgie shoes, the black nylon mac and flash of silk blouse underneath it. “Your manicure alone probably cost more than the average weekly wage round here.”

  “Which makes me lucky and profligate. I fail to see how it makes them thieves and pushers.”

  “People make assumptions,” I said, “for better or worse.”

  “Usually, for worse,” she groused. “And why aren’t we using your father’s cab these days?”

  “Cos he’s on holiday,” I said, taking out my phone and opening the Map app on it. “Him and mum have gone to Marrakesh for a month.”

  “A month?” She squawked in disbelief. “How on earth is a cabbie affording a month in Marrakesh?”

  “Now who’s making assumptions?” I answered. “Mum paid for it. She’s making good money now with the cleaning company she set up.”

  “Well I hope they have a lovely time,” Caz said, as we set off down the street looking for a turnoff to Larchmont Lane. “And that they hurry back soon so I don’t have to have too many more judgemental cab drivers.”

  I stopped at a junction and looked to the right.

  This was Larchmont Lane and someone in the council, in their infinite wisdom, had decided not to bother switching on the street lights here. Well, either that or some gang of thieving crack-peddlers had deliberately smashed all the bulbs so they could lay in wait for unsuspecting passers-by.

  The street, according to my map, was mostly builder’s yards, lock-ups and small factory spaces, so I thought the fact that most of the employees would be long gone had actually decided the local authority not to bother illuminating the space. Still, it didn’t make it easy in the dim glow cast by a half-moon, the clouds scudding across it as the wind picked up, to find number twelve.