Death Of A Devil

by Derek Farrell

  “That,” he smiled back and, oh, that smile worried me, “or a sadly misplaced amount of trust.”

  “Oh, listen,” Caz said, her voice firm, her gaze steady, “I spent most of last night being interrogated by the police about the incinerated remains of a young man. I hardly closed my eyes when I got back here because every time I did, all I could see was him as he was a week ago, and as he was last night, and you know what, Balthazar, old thing? I’m past caring.”

  “Caz,” I reached a hand out to stop her, as the smile – the shark under the surface smile – on Lowe’s face remained steady, but it was no use. She was off and running.

  “Yes, we tried to hack you. People who have been given no alternative way out tend to do stupid things. But guess what? It didn’t work. And guess what else? I still don’t have the money.

  “Yup,” she ran a hand through her glossy bob, “I had hopes that we’d sort this out without needing to pay you a sou, you vile little man but, since that hasn’t worked, I’m going to have to contact the folks and tell them to start liquidating assets.”

  At first, I thought she was lying: We’d already ascertained that the figure being asked was beyond Prissy’s appetite, but then I looked at her face – the set jaw and the blush on her cheeks – and I knew that she’d simply had enough of the game and was willing to settle just to be rid of Lowe.

  Despite the fact that it would give Prissy a failure to hold over her forever.

  Lowe’s smile widened as he dived, again, into the envelope.

  “The price,” he said, “has gone up. Considerably.”

  And he placed another picture on the table.

  I glanced at it.

  The planet, it seemed, stopped turning. The jukebox in the corner stopped tinnily kicking out Bananarama’s greatest hits and suddenly only the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my head filled the world.

  Caz, reaching for the photo, frowned. “That’s—” she said, and I finished the sentence for her.

  “Me. And Nick.”

  She peered at the shot. “I didn’t know he had a tattoo. Mind you,” she smirked at me, “when would I have seen that part of his anatomy. My, my,” she put the photo back down on the table, “but you are a pair of lucky boys. And you,” she turned to Lowe, “are a really nasty little peeping Tom, aren’t you?”

  “Caz—” I tried, again, to stop her. And again, I failed.

  “Why on earth would I pay a penny for these?” Caz asked as Lowe spread a sheaf of photos – more of the same, but also of Nick and I embracing in a lift, shaking hands in the street, me entering a doorway at night and him exiting what was clearly the same doorway in the early light of morning.

  “Unless you’ve been in a coma, you moron, the Sexual Offences Act 1967 made what’s going on in these pictures legal. And made you – as my dear friend here noted – a nasty little peeping Tom.”

  “Actually,” I said, my voice a tiny mouse-like squeak, “you said that. Not me.”

  Caz stopped and looked at me for the first time in a while, and something – perhaps the squeak in my voice, or the fact that she saw the terror in my eyes – made her stop.

  I remembered Chopper’s comment, when I’d challenged him about following me around. Something about having to rough up some other geezer that had also been tailing me.

  I’d put that down to either Chopper’s paranoia or one of the Old Kent Road Massive wanting to keep an eye on me. Only now, I knew who it had been.

  “Nick Fisher,” Lowe indicated a picture, his forefinger tapping perfectly on Nick’s left buttock, “a Detective Constable, who, I’m reliably informed, is currently studying for his Sergeant’s exam. Likely to get it too, which will please his superiors, and his wife.”

  Caz stopped speaking. She turned to me.

  “His lovely, fragile, Albanian wife, who he met on a business trip, who he married in something of a rush and who resides, now, in the United Kingdom, the only thing preventing her being returned to – I’m lead to understand – a very unpleasant reception in Tirana being the marriage to a British citizen which would, of course, be rather difficult to maintain if it were to be shown that said British citizen is not only gay, but – having married the lovely lady for no other purpose than to get her into the UK – guilty of a number of offences impacting section 143 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. I can quote it if you’d like.”

  “I’ll bet you can,” Caz snarled, turning back to me. “How could you?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have told you.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, Danny, I knew. I mean, how could you have been so careless?”

  “You knew?”

  “I’ve known you forever,” she said. “I knew you were still seeing Nick. Danny, you’ve been known to mourn for a month when characters are killed off in soap operas. Did you not think I’d notice that you were getting on with life, just days after you and Nick had supposedly broken up?”

  “But if you knew, why didn’t you say anything?” I asked. “Why did you keep pushing me to get back with him?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to know I knew, of course. It would have embarrassed you, and I just wanted you to be happy.”

  “An admirable hope,” Lowe smarmed, and Caz turned on him.

  “I don’t care what you’ve got,” she growled. “Keep out of this.”

  “What am I going to do?” I whined at Caz.

  “You’re going to find a lot of money,” Lowe – clearly ignoring Caz’s instruction – stated. “Or these shots, along with several others, various items of security footage, details of registrations at various hotels, oh, and the string of texts you sent to each other and which my software acquired in a Biter Bit way, will all make their way to the Home Office, DC Fisher’s superiors, a certain family in Albania and the Daily Mail.”

  “Look,” Caz turned to him, her natural sangfroid back in place, and attempted a placatory smile, “this is not Danny’s war. You wanted Bobby, and you got him. You wanted money from my family, and you’ll get it. Nick and he are,” she glanced at me, and blushed slightly, “nobody’s. They have no money. They can’t pay you. Why do this when there’s no profit in it?”

  “Because there will be profit in it,” he responded coldly. “Lady Caroline, you either invited or allowed Mr Bird here and his various assorted misfits to join you in attempting to destroy what evidence I held over your brother.

  “Yes,” he nodded, “Mr Bird was foolishly careless in his actions but you, I would suggest, were almost criminally negligent in yours, and so – like any employer whose workforce have breached an agreement – you’re going to have to pay compensation. To me.”

  He stood, waving at the pictures. “You can keep those. I have copies. And you have until midnight tomorrow night to arrive at my office with, shall we say five million?” he said, ending my life as he buttoned up his cashmere coat.

  “Otherwise,” he smiled his shark smirk, “these, along with everything I have on your dear brother, will be displayed where they can cause most discomfort to everyone involved.”

  He checked his watch. “That’s just under thirty-six hours. I look forward to concluding this business then,” he said, moving away from the table. “Oh, and,” he turned back, briefly, to us, “please don’t try any more silly stunts. One more, and I’ll press send on everything I’ve got.

  “Till tomorrow night.” He nodded at us and left the pub.

  THIRTY-NINE

  We sat in stunned silence for a few moments, the sounds of the world around us seeping in as the realisation that we were doomed settled.

  When I looked up at Caz, there were tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’m so, so sorry. If I hadn’t dragged you into this—”

  “You’ve never dragged me anywhere, Caz. And none of this is your fault.” I stood up, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. “What are you wearing?” I asked in surprise, as I finally re
gistered the ensemble she had on.

  “Jeans and a – I believe it’s called a sweatshirt,” she said, posing so that the ‘I heart Unicorns’ on my sweatshirt was fully displayed.

  “I’m horrified,” I said, “that it looks better on you than it does on me.”

  “That, my dear boy, is because no grown man on earth – no matter how gay he is – should ever wear an article of clothing with a unicorn on it,” she said, pulling me close and hugging me tightly. “Now, what I think we should do is have a nice breakfast somewhere lovely, my treat. I always say that a good breakfast will help kick the cobwebs away and set you up for the day.”

  “Caz,” I frowned, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat breakfast as long as I’ve known you. Besides, it’s half one. I don’t know anywhere round here that still serves this late.”

  “Who said anything about eating? Bloody Marys are a recognised breakfast food. I’ll go get myself beautified. Who was at the door earlier?” she asked, as though suddenly recalling the racket that woke her.

  I told her, nodding towards the kitchen. “He’s sitting in there with a freezer full of rancid meat.”

  “I hope that’s not a euphemism,” she murmured, frowning. “Well invite him too. We shall have a hearty breakfast, and then I shall telephone Prissy and tell her to start liquidating every asset she can get her hands on.

  “No,” she held up a hand to silence my protests. “Pas un mot, Daniel. We made a good stab at it, but when you’ve run out of options, it is, I feel, time to pay the piper.”

  We walked through the bar and Caz went off upstairs to shower and change.

  Carlton was just leaving the kitchen as I entered. “Mate, I can’t stay in there,” he said. “That freezer’s totally kaput and the stuff in it stinks.”

  “Well Caz and I are going for breakfast in a bit if you want to come,” I said, and he smiled but shook his head.

  “I think I might go and see if they’ll let me have a word with my mum. I mean, I don’t know the rules or anything, but surely…” and he rambled off, his mind still not quite catching up with the rest of him.

  Carlton was right about the stench. As soon as I walked into the kitchen the smell washed over me like a wave of vinegary sweet decay. I gagged then realised that, if I didn’t get the freezer emptied, the smell was only going to get worse, and with my luck I’d get a visit from Tavistock while I had a trunk full of rotten meat in my kitchen.

  “Right,” I muttered, diving under the sink and pulling out a roll of industrial-weight black bin bags, “it’s now or never,” and, having put on a pair of long yellow rubber gloves and shaken one of the bags open, I approached the chest freezer and hurled open the lid.

  Oddly, the stink didn’t really worsen. I’d half expected the plastic sacks of chicken and beef to have revivified and attack as soon as the lid was opened, but it quickly dawned on me that the seals on the lid had degraded so much that the stench was leaking from the box and out into the room, rather than being restrained within the enclosed space.

  Holding one of the bags open, I dived into the chest freezer and lifted out the first sack of putrescent meat, watching as the cloudy water below – defrosted ice that might, from the age of the freezer, have contained mammoth DNA – slushed around in the bottom of the box.

  “You’d be amazed,” I heard Chopper’s voice in my head, “what people will do out of fear. Or for love,” and I dug into the cold greasy soup and yanked out a bag of half-thawed chicken thighs, shuddering as they wriggled in my hand like slimy, nightmarish creatures attempting to escape my grip.

  The thighs, too, went into the bag, as did various sacks of mince, a grim grey pallor replacing their once vibrant red. Within a few minutes, knowing I would definitely need to shower and change before I went anywhere, I was into a rhythm; yanking bags from the box and dropping them into the bag, which was now so weighty it stood, of its own volition, beside me. This freed up my right hand so that I could go at the contents of the freezer double-fisted, so to speak.

  And go at it, I did, until, at length, there was nothing but the slopping, slushy water at the bottom of the chest.

  I ran my hand through it one last time to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, and frowned.

  Most of the ice had dissolved but here and there were still small, rapidly-dwindling shards. And then my rubber-gloved fingers hit something bigger than the usual shards.

  Something that didn’t dissolve at my touch but actually moved away from me.

  I put my other hand into the soup and surrounded the ice block in a pincer movement, squeezing it and realising that it still wasn’t cracking up as I pulled it from its dingy prison and looked down on the package in my hand.

  It shifted a little, catching the light.

  And suddenly, the pieces fit together.

  FORTY

  “Okay,” I looked around the table, “are we all clear?”

  Next to me, Caz, still sulking at being denied her cocktail brunch, noisily slurped a triple gin and tonic through a straw. “I’ll get on to them all and make sure that they’re at the funeral. Then I’ll get on to him and make sure he’ll accept the new terms. And then, perhaps,” she said pointedly, “I’ll have time for breakfast.”

  “Ray? Dash?” I asked, and the twins looked at each other and frowned.

  “I’m not exactly sure about this, Dan,” Ray said. “I mean, the public records are okay, but the other thing… I mean, we don’t know where it is, to begin with”

  “Ah,” I said, “but it’s bound to be on the internet, which is – slightly – where you,” I turned to Phoenix, “come in. You can help them locate the necessary.”

  “Listen,” Phoenix, clearly over the shock of having been bitten by Balthazar Lowe’s watchdog, had resumed his world-weary act and was exuding an air of being here under sufferance, “I’m not entirely sure what you think my skillset is, but Googling is not on the list, dude.”

  “Phoenix, mate,” I said, “your talents aren’t in question, but you’re not here just to help the boys here locate a needle in a haystack. I’ve got something more,” I glanced at Caz, “challenging for you.”

  This perked him up, and he was suddenly paying a lot more attention. “Go on,” he said, “I’m listening.”

  I held up a USB stick and told him what I needed him to do.

  “Dude,” his eyes bulged, “that’s insane. I still don’t know who you’re facing off against but if this goes wrong…”

  “Dude,” I smiled calmly (I hoped) at him, “this won’t go wrong. You’re a genius. You told me so yourself.”

  “But I don’t see how you’re going to get it to work. The executable has to be kicked off inside the network and, last I checked, you were having trouble getting in.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said, “I – along with Caz – will get us inside the network. All I need from you is the code on here.”

  He considered this for a moment. “Not easy,” he finally admitted, “but I think I can hide it in the basic docs so it doesn’t take up any obvious space. It’s gonna take some time, mind…”

  I checked my watch. “You’ve got a little over twenty hours.”

  Phoenix laughed. “I won’t need much more than two.”

  “Good,” I nodded, happily crossing off another item on my mental ‘to do’ list. “Carlton, you good with your job?”

  “She’ll be there,” he said, smiling. “But are you sure about this?”

  I nodded. “Absolutely. I know who murdered Billy Bryant, Jimmy Carter and Alex Chatham. So long as you boys,” I nodded here at the twins, “do your part, I’ll be able to prove it.”

  “So what you got on your list?” Phoenix asked, already pulling his laptop out of his rucksack and setting it up.

  “Me?” I glanced at Caz. “I’ve got to call a certain police officer, apologise for dropping him in the shit and ask for his help tomorrow to make sure we can nab a murderer. Easy-peasy. Right,” I stood, pushing my chai
r back from the table, “let’s get to work. Check in here at closing time.”

  The assembly, with the exception of Phoenix, who was already tapping furiously on his keyboard, stood and began to disperse.

  “And folks,” I called, and Caz, Carlton, Ray and Dash looked back at me, “thanks. And good luck.”

  FORTY-ONE

  “He looks almost alive, doesn’t he?” Eve Stewart leaned over the coffin, staring at the prone figure of Jimmy Carter as though she expected him, at any moment, to open his eyes and snarl threateningly.

  “You on crack, Eve?” Lilly Ho’s diminutive figure was swathed head to toe in black taffeta. Her hat – resembling a Victorian stovepipe that had been covered in tiny black silk roses, then sat on, hard, by an elephant – had a gauzy black veil hanging down in front of her face. Her every move left clouds of Joy by Patou into her wake and she had the air of someone who had looked up, ‘What to wear to a funeral of someone you loathed,’ and got the ensemble spot on.

  Eve – the picture of home countries propriety in a belted black mac, well-pressed black trousers and black court shoes, the only colour being a dark red scarf tied rakishly around her neck – turned, a simulacrum of ‘Aghast’ on her face, and, seeing the other woman, stiffened perceptibly.

  “Lilly,” she said coldly.

  “Jimmy Carter,” Lilly announced, adjusting the midnight black Hermes clutch purse under her arm and lifting her veil, the better to see the figure in the box, “looked half dead when he was alive. He looks worse than shit now. Who did his make-up? Abu Hamza?”

  “Lilly!” This time, Eve’s tone was one of genuine shock. “The man’s dead.”

  “He took his time,” Lilly snapped back. “And he was a nasty violent piece of shit to the end. Which, you know, Eve, I can forgive. But he was cheap too, and that, I can never forgive. I mean look at that fucking barnet. Looks like he cut it blindfold.”