“And what about your boyfriend?” Mo shouted back. “You think he’s a fucking saint?”
“No.” Rene was on her feet now. “No, Mo. I don’t. I know exactly what Charlie is, and what he was, and I’m not making any fucking excuses for him. You, on the other hand could have Adolf Hitler for dinner and still say he was always nice to his mum. You got to stop making excuses for them; they’re all bastards. And you got to stop sleeping with the fuckers ‘n’ all. You were old enough to be Jimmy’s mum.”
There was an audible gasp from the entire congregation.
“Fuck you!” Mo shrieked.
“If only you’d had kids,” Lilly sniggered at Rene, “he,” she nodded at the coffin, “would have been a grandmotherfucker.”
Mo inhaled, as though sucking in fuel for her fury and stood to her feet.
I glanced at Caz, who had already dived into her handbag and extracted a hip flask. Silently toasting me, she slugged from it, offered it to me and, when I gently shook my head, shrugged, recapped it, dropped it back into her purse and gestured for me to proceed.
“Fascinating,” she mouthed, her eyes glistening encouragingly. Or drunkenly; it was hard to tell. How many shots had she had already? And how many hip flasks were in the bag?
I coughed, but the catfight was, by now, in full swing.
“Fuck you, Lilly,” Mo snarled. “Just cos you’re a dried up old lychee.”
“Have you got a fucking mirror?” Lilly snapped back, laughing openly at Mo.
“I’ve got sex appeal,” Mo announced, seemingly forgetting that the last man she had exercised said appeal on was currently lying stiff and cold in an oak-effect box at the top of the room.
“What you’ve got, Maureen, is a pathological need to mother nasty bastards and a delusionary streak wider than your arse.”
I sighed, grabbed the mike, switched it on and, before Mo could respond, said loudly and clearly into it: “Alex was killed because he was driving Billy Bryant’s car.”
That shut them up.
“And Jimmy was killed because he’d found out who killed Billy Bryant.”
“Well after fucking Mo, it was probably a blessed relief,” Rene shot back, clearly having been encouraged by Lilly’s digs.
“Forget Al,” Mo barked back, “I’ll do you myself with a fucking cleaver. Just watch your back, Rene.”
“Ladies, ladies,” Tim sang in the voice I imagined he used when trying to persuade, say, Quakers, to chill the fuck out, “there’s surely no need for so much anger.”
As one, the trio turned on him. “Fuck off, Gandhi,” Mo snarled, as Lilly cackled and Rene shot him her filthiest look.
“You don’t get to talk anger, your holiness, when everyone and her dog knows you had that thing,” she nodded at Green, “shove poor Roxanne in the Serpentine while you set yourself up with a lovely little alibi.”
At this, Nick turned slowly in his seat and fixed, in turn, Green and then Tiny Tim – who, now, had gone a shade that I might have called frog-like but which I felt sure Caz, who was uncapping the hip flask once more, would have called crème de menthe – with a steely glare.
“Look,” I said, “Jimmy came back as soon as he heard the news of Billy’s discovery and tried putting either the charm or the frighteners on anyone and everyone he could find who had been associated with the OKRM.”
“Billy didn’t have the diamonds, cos someone had parked a couple of slugs in him.”
“Slugs?” Caz mouthed, her face a mask of almost cartoon horror. She paused in the act of recapping the hip flask, uncapped it again, swigged deeply and shook her head in approbation at me.
“Yes,” Chopper suddenly announced, “we’ve got it. What you haven’t said is – which of these fucking loonies did Billy the Brick, and who’s got the stones now.”
At this they all turned to stare at him and it was Lilly Ho who recognised him first. “Jesus Christ,” she choked. “Chopper Falzone. I heard you were dead.”
“Not lately,” Chopper shot back, pointing at me. “So who’s got the fucking rocks, Danny?”
“I’m getting there,” I answered. “But first we’ve got to go back to Jimmy. He returns, looking for the one who’d got rich in the intervening years, only to discover that most of you had done well. Some of you,” I nodded at Charlie and Lilly, “from business. Some of you,” I said, gesturing at Tim, “from luck.”
“Praise Jesus,” Tim crowed, throwing his arms in the air and receiving, for his troubles, another turn-around-and-glare from Nick.
“The only people who hadn’t done well,” I expanded, “were Al Halliwell and his women,” I nodded at Mo and Rene, “who’d had a number of failed business ventures; and Eve Stewart, who was living in rented accommodation and selling off her belongings.”
“Jimmy had been staying with Mo, and Mo had provided a nice haircut and highlights and was happily looking after him when he suddenly announced he’d been asked to move in with someone else and went off the radar.
“But the reason this ‘someone else’ welcomed him back was because they wanted him around. They wanted to keep an eye on him.
“Jimmy was looking for Billy’s killer and, I believe, when he left you, Mo, he moved in with the person who killed Billy. The same person who later went on to kill Alex Chatham.”
“Get. The fuck. On with it,” Chopper simmered.
I gestured at the coffin. “When Jimmy was found, he had a blueish tinge about him.”
“No shit,” Ali said. “He’d been dead a day. Blue was kind, compared to how he could have looked.”
I nodded. “Agreed. But death – whether by drowning or not – doesn’t normally turn your hair blue.”
“Turn your hair blue?” Mo Halliwell frowned, the phrase not making sense, but Rene suddenly sat up straight.
“I noticed it straight away,” I said. “His hair had a blue-green tinge and it took me a while to realise why. Because Jimmy was drowned not, as we’d all assumed, in the Thames but in chlorinated water.
“Chlorine will have a chemical reaction with some hair, particularly if that hair has already been treated with other chemicals. In that case, chlorine – the chlorine that you get in a swimming pool – can turn the hair bluey-green.”
“Cheap bleach,” Rene said in an accusatory tone. Her glance at Mo might as well have been accompanied by the words ‘porridge for mortar,’ so deep was her professional loathing of the other woman’s approach to colour and styling.
“It was Jimmy,” Mo protested. “I didn’t know he was gonna get fucking drowned.”
“I’m guessing,” I said, addressing Eve Stewart, “that he moved into the house you’re renting and, at some point, followed you – or was taken by you – to the other house; your beautiful house with eight bedrooms, seven en suites, a heated indoor swimming pool and a four-car garage, and you had to act fast.
“And there, you brained him and shoved him into the pool.”
There was a silence and all eyes turned to Eve who shot to her feet, a look of fury on her face.
“Bullshit!’ she cried. “I had nothing to do with any of this”
I shook my head. “I’ll be honest,” I said, “I’m not sure whether he would ever have worked it out, but he drowned in your pool because you couldn’t risk him figuring out that you’d killed Billy.”
“You’re wrong.” She shook her head, moving along the pew towards the aisle. But her route was blocked by Lilly Ho, who stood and pushed Eve back onto her seat.
“Let him finish,” Lilly growled.
“This wasn’t about the diamonds,” I said. “Well, not at first. This was about a woman who got horribly scarred for trying to walk away from one of the Old Kent Road Massive. Several of you told me that story – how the women were kept in line, made into not much more than property.
“You were kept in place,” I said to Eve, “by bullying and violence, and you expected that to be your life. And then you met Frank Stewart. You and Billy weren’t married, s
o you should have been young, free and single, but you knew you weren’t; you knew you were Billy Bryant’s property and always would be.
“But then Frank. Nice, well-to-do, upwardly-mobile Frank, proposed.”
“Bull. Shit.” she spat, her eyes blazing furiously.
“You told me that your son had to sell his car to pay his college fees. That car was the Mondial you’d kept ever since Billy vanished.
Now she laughed. “Why the hell would I have kept some manky old car for two decades? And even if I had, why would I give it to Frank’s child?”
“I’ll admit,” I said, “I don’t entirely know. Maybe because you were afraid that if any of the rest of the gang saw you selling off Billy’s motor, they’d ask questions you didn’t want to answer.
“Either way, eventually your son discovered it and you made out it was a gift you’d been keeping for him.
“So, instead of getting rid of the car, you gave it to him. Then Frank died, the money evaporated. and within a year or so, your son had to sell the car to pay his college fees.
“The records are public, Eve. You married Frank Stewart three months after Billy went missing. A bit odd for one of a group of women who lived in fear of what their men would do to them if it was even suspected that they were cheating.
“But you didn’t need to worry about Billy hurting you for marrying Frank Stewart, because you knew he wasn’t coming back.”
“So she took the stones?” Chopper called from the back.
I shook my head. “Like I said – this was never about the stones.”
“Well it fucking was for me,” he growled.
I ignored Chopper and pressed on: “Eve and Frank had a little boy – Eric – who was born three months after their marriage. Which means that Eve was already at least two months pregnant when she shot Billy.”
“Wait,” Tim shook his head, “a two-month pregnant woman shot a big burly man and bricked his body up behind a wall? Seriously? I mean look at her – she wouldn’t know one end of a brick from the other.”
“Billy the Brick got his name,” I said, “from the job he did for his girlfriend’s father. That girlfriend was Eve. Eve grew up around builders and building sites. It was her father’s company who was doing the refurb at The Marq, which was how Billy got the key. Not from Jimmy, as had been supposed. And as someone once said to me,” I added, watching as Eve shook her head in denial, “you’d be amazed what people are capable of, for love. Or terror.”
“Jesus,” Eve shook her head. “This is ludicrous. I’m getting out of here,” she said, but she didn’t stand and nobody in the room seemed to agree with her opinion.
“I’m willing to bet that you didn’t even know about the robbery.”
“Okay then, smartarse,” Eve shouted, “go ahead – tell us all why I would have killed Jimmy and Alex.”
“Jimmy, because he figured out that you had a reason, apart from the stones, for wanting Billy out of the way. And once he figured that out, you knew he had to go.
“And Alex, because you knew that when you killed Billy there were no diamonds on him. Then, once everyone started quacking about how Billy had been the last one with the stones, you figured that meant that he’d already stashed them, and you assumed he’d stashed them in the one place they’d be safe and close to him.”
“The car,” Charlie Chatham said quietly. “The fucking car.”
I nodded. “Billy’s pride and joy was the car. He was – how was it described? – a real petrolhead. Alex was murdered after he’d been persuaded to drive to a deserted plumber’s yard by someone he knew and trusted.
“You took him there, Eve, because you wanted to search that car. And once there, you shot him and tore the car apart.”
“So now she has the stones?” Chopper called, a note of hope in his voice.
“I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head. “I think, Eve, if you’d found those stones, you’d have gone as far away as fast as you could.
“No,” I shook my head, “I think that, once you’d deconstructed the car and found there were no stones in it, you realised that the state of it would raise difficult questions, so you torched it to hide the search. But the police,” I gestured at Nick, “have had forensics check and they can see that the inner door panels, the dashboard and even the seat covers had all been slashed, ripped and torn away before the fire started.
“You murdered Alex so you could search the car, and you burned what was left so the search wouldn’t be discovered.”
Rene Halliwell turned towards Eve, who was sitting silently in her seat. “Is this all true? Did you really do this?”
“You’ve got nothing on me,” Eve Stewart shouted at me, ignoring Rene.
I shook my head in sorrow. “I might not have anything on you, Eve, but Jimmy never left home without his chain – the gold one with an ankh on it. And that chain hasn’t been seen since he died.”
“So. Fucking. What?” Eve demanded, her eyes blazing at me.
“So he might have lost it in the Thames when his body was dumped there. Or he might have lost it in your pool when you were using – what? – The pool cleaning net? A discarded curtain pole? To hold him under the water, in which case it’ll be in the filter of the pool.”
I knew this was not the case, because I had had Ray and Dash break into the empty house and check the pool, filter and all.
“But I’m willing to bet,” I finished, knowing it was a rock-solid bet, “that it’s in the boot of your car – the one that got all muddy when you drove Jimmy’s body from your house to the river, where you could dump his body.”
“There’s nothing in my car,” Eve said, a flicker of uncertainty crossing her face.
“Well,” I said, knowing it was there, “the police will see. And then they’ll test the mud spatters on your car against mud from areas where you could access the river relatively unseen, and they’ll have enough circumstantial evidence to lock you up while they dig a bit deeper into dates of birth and marriage and so on.”
“So wait,” Chopper demanded, leaping to his feet in outrage, “there’s still no sign of these fucking diamonds?”
“So they all died for nothing?” Lilly asked, turning towards Eve, a look of total horror on her face.”
And that was when Eve snapped. “Nothing?” she spat. “Nothing?” She laughed bitterly. “They didn’t die for nothing; they died because they were nothing. Billy was a vicious, greedy psychotic fuck, who terrorised me. So I did what I had to do. And you’re right,” she said, nodding at me, “I used to be a real Daddy’s girl. I learned to lay bricks and make a wall as well as anyone on my old man’s teams, so dragging the fucker into the alcove and bricking him up was a piece of piss.
“If Frank hadn’t come along, I’d have been stuck with him forever and ended up like poor fucking Rene.”
Rene visibly bristled at this but didn’t say or do anything, though I noticed that Charlie had surfaced from his slumber and was staring fixedly at Eve.
“He would never have let me go, and he’d never have made me happy, and I didn’t want to live my live as terrified and bitter as bloody Ali.”
At this, I remembered my friend, the reason I’d been looking into this whole issue, and I glanced at her. Ali had turned her head and was looking at Eve in horror.
But Eve was, by now, on a roll. “Nothing? Jimmy Carter was as bad as Billy – a bully and an idiot, who knew only what he wanted. He never even met my son,” she acknowledged, “but he turns up this evening, covered in bruises. He’d been in a fight and his head was all over the place. Then suddenly he’s got the idea, ‘You wouldn’t have married that fucker if you didn’t know Billy wasn’t coming back.’”
She puffed her cheeks out; the adrenaline rush of her confession driving her on with righteous anger.
“I was so frightened. I didn’t know what to do, so I told him they were at the house. Told him I’d never spent the diamonds and they were all there. Said I’d take him to them.
/>
“Only you drowned him instead,” I prompted and her outrage at the life she’d been given trumped any of her previous attempts to deny involvement.
“I told him the stones were hidden in the filter system,” Eve said, “and he actually jumped into the sodding pool fully dressed. Which, of course, made him heavier and between that and the fact that I knew if he got out of that pool alive, I was dead, I had to make sure he didn’t get out of the pool alive. So I called him over to me, hunkered down by the pool and whacked him on the head with one of Frank’s Rotarian of the Year awards. Stunned him, then used the pool net to hold him under till he stopped moving.”
“And Alex?” I asked. “Was he nothing as well?”
“Alex…”she stopped, as though trying to find the words to explain. “Alex was like you said. I’ve never had much luck with men. I mean, I try, but even Frank – even Frank, who I loved with all my heart – turned out not to have been worth the effort. He was a liar and a thief who ruined my life, just like Billy would have, just like Jimmy was threatening to. And I knew those diamonds were in that car. They had to be,” she said, layers of disbelief at their absence still evident in her tone. “But I wasn’t going to share them. I’d been through too much. Way too much,” she said, glancing down at the floor momentarily.
And that was when Charlie Chatham moved.
I knew that Eve had a gun. She’d used it twice already. And I’d half expected her to pull it at some point during her explanation.
What I hadn’t expected was that Charlie Chatham would not only have a gun, but would have brought it to a funeral. And now, having pulled the gun, he stood and pointed it at her.
“You killed my boy,” he announced, somewhat unnecessarily as I slowly moved down the aisle so that I could be closer to the two of them.
“And how many people’s boys did you and your lot kill, Charlie?” Eve snapped back. “Boys get killed. Men get killed. They kill each other and women have to stand by and watch it, and wait to see if they and theirs will escape untouched.”
Death Of A Devil Page 29
