by C. T. Brown
When he eventually answered the phone Jim Courthald was clearly unhappy, it turns out the Police had already been to his garage and turned the place over looking for me. Jim is my cousin, ten years older than me and the only family member I'm still on speaking terms with. After a short debate he agreed to do me a favour but made it clear this was it, he didn't need the hassle from an association with me at the moment and was not going to spend another six months trying to help me get out from under another murder charge. Honestly, I could see his point. Sticking up for me and helping me the last time had cost him a lot of money, got him disowned by the family and cost him his marriage. He still had his business and now had a new girlfriend but felt I was too much trouble for him, I really couldn't argue with that.
Several buses later I was in a very posh street just off Kensington High Street walking past houses each worth more than the whole street I'd grown up on. About halfway up the street I found my favour, a dark blue Ford Focus. Five years old and obviously well used in London from all the small scratches and scrapes in the paintwork. As planned the keys were hooked on one of the mounting brackets for the front spoiler, awkward to get to even if you lie down flat but less likely to be found by a passing thief than if they are left under the wheel arch on top of the wheel. In the glove compartment were the correct documents for the car, registered in the name of a pensioner Jim used as cover for the odd slightly shonky car that passed through his hands, and an envelope containing a grand in cash. At least I now had transport and some readies just in case.
In the somewhat less expensive surroundings of Kilburn I obtained a pay-as-you-go phone that, for an extra twenty quid, was registered under the name Donald Duck and contemplated doing something the Police were bound to expect me to do, in the end I just shrugged my shoulders and did it anyway. I used the phone to call Lavinia Cartwright-Houghton, Emily's best friend and flatmate. As soon as she realised who was calling a stream of obscenities that would have made her freemason father so angry his pacemaker would have tasered him from the inside was hurled in my general direction. Lavinia had not liked me to start with due to my “unsavoury” past, unfortunately our relationship had only become frostier when I pointed out that the shortened form of her name, Lav, was also slang for the toilet. Once she calmed down a bit she told me the first thing she'd do after I hung up was call the Police and tell them I had called, I told her this was her choice and suggested that perhaps she could mention that I had called from Yorkshire? It was not a popular suggestion. Eventually I got around to asking the question that was the point of the whole call, did she know of anything Emily was doing which could have got her into potentially fatal trouble. Her answer was simple: me. Emily had been gathering details about the murder of my previous girlfriend on the quiet. She had told Lavinia that she wanted to help clear my name but as far as Lavinia knew Emily had not actually found anything but she had received a call around midnight and rushed out of the house straight afterwards. Following a further stream of abusive language, that may actually have polluted the air enough to contribute to climate change, she hung up.
To say this news wasn't well received by me was an understatement of the same order as saying that politicians may sometimes stretch the truth. It sounded a lot like Emily was murdered by someone for looking into my old charge even though she hadn't found anything. Someone really didn't want the truth about that to come out. They killed Emily and framed me for it. The only two people left with any real motivation to find out the truth, after all everyone else still assumed it was down to me. Emily was dead because of me. My fault. Two women I had loved, both now dead and the only common factor? Me. Enough. Time to find out what the hell is going on.
Keeping under the radar for the rest of the day was pretty simple, I joined the masses shopping in the Westfield in White City. I could have gone to the city sized Westfield in Stratford but the White City shopping centre (only the size of a small town) offered easier access back into town later on. Some shopping was done, but mainly things I need to collect and record anything useful I came across. Well that and an iPod, sitting around in Costa Coffee can get a bit dull after the first three hours or so but with a little music I was able to concentrate and go through everything I already had on two murders.
Starting with Emily's as the most recent I didn't have much but two broken fingers and several areas of uncomfortable soreness. Someone had lured her to Soho and killed her with a knife stolen from the toolbox in my room. The theft had been done well, I have a healthy dose of paranoia from the events of the last few years and I couldn't tell you whether the knife had been stolen the day of the murder or a week earlier, there had been no sign. Fingers Mackeye now had the knife and a healthy grudge against me. No other options, I'd have to reach out to him to get it back. Number one on the list of things to do, visit an old friend who can reach out to Fingers with a reasonable chance of success, on my own I'd just get another kicking.
Next up, the first murder. Carmen Spigarelli. My first girlfriend, the girl I had gone to school with since we were five years old, the girl who had finally noticed me when I turned fifteen. What did I know on this one? She went missing after our 'thank God the A levels are over' party. As usual she got into the car her dad sent to pick her up, a black Mercedes limo that looked like it should be carrying a family to a funeral. Two days later the car was found with the dead driver in the driving seat, he'd died the same night he had collected her - stabbed repeatedly in a really crazed attack. I had walked home that night, really late, no witnesses as the streets were empty. Sometimes her driver would give me a lift too, everyone assumed he did that night. Carmen was found the next day, dumped in woodland. Dead a matter of hours, stabbed but only twice rather than something like the frenzied death of the driver. The same knife used, forensics suggested a kitchen knife of some kind - they never found it but did find one missing from a set at my parents house. A knife that had been missing for months, even my parents thought I must have had it hidden away somewhere. Carmen had been raped, repeatedly. We were in a relationship from fifteen, we were eighteen when she died - of course we had slept together, which led to another strike against me. Our first time had been difficult, she had just freaked out at one point and I was left with scratches down my cheek – something the Police said hinted that there had been “sexual violence” in our relationship. She had explained it away the next day as nerves but there had always been some awkwardness, and I had never really found out why.
For me the big surprise when she went missing was how her dad acted. He owned several pharmacies in the area and seemed a nice, quiet guy until this happened. Several 'employees' of his asked me where Carmen was, when I couldn't tell them I found myself taken to her father's expensive house. Taken to the basement. Tied to a chair. The friendly local grocer soon proved he wasn't so friendly and wasn't a grocer. When they let me go no-one believed my story that this nice guy, one of those respected pillars of the community we often hear about, had beaten me senseless - especially the Police. Then again, as I later learned several of them took regular large bribes from him I guess that was not a surprise. Little shops made a good legitimate front he could use to hide his trade in illicit substances specially designed to get you completely out of your box, not that anyone would believe me once I found out. Number two on my list of things to do was probably suicidal, go to see Mr. Spigarelli. If I could convince him I hadn't killed his daughter then he'd have resources I could use to find out what really happened. It was that or go on the run, forever. No choice really.
Settling down with a pint of Guinness in the Old Bank of England I looked at Martin 'Dishwater' Carheux and he looked back, asking if I really wanted to get in touch with Fingers or if my drink had been spiked with LSD. Martin was typical of the denizens of Fleet Street these days, he was an accountant. Everyone associates the place with hard drinking journalists but they have long since gone. Lawyers, accountants and some very good pubs make up the majority of the street now - it has
been said that if they reopened the sewers and recreated the last days of the Fleet river, when it was known as the Fleet Ditch and was around ninety percent raw sewage, and dropped all of the lawyers into it then the quality of the area might improve slightly. Martin's public persona was as dull as his nickname, it did a great job of hiding the fact that he made an absolute fortune as the best accountant a criminal could buy. Martin's brother has been inside with me, he had upset a few of the wrong inmates and I'd had to jump in and help him avoid being beaten to death. I was not exactly a tough guy myself and all I had done was get us both a beating, although it was fortunately a survivable one. When I got out of prison Dishwater had helped me build up some cash reserves to keep up my investigation as payback, over time he had opened up and we had become friends.
After half an hour looking around the Waterstones on Fleet Street I headed back to the pub to see how Dishwater had got on with his calls. He did not look like it had gone well.
"You are in seriously deep shit my friend." he said.
"Fingers still threatening to take the knife to the Police?"
"Not so much, the Police already have it."
"He actually handed it over? The little bastard."
"Oh he didn't hand it over, it's much worse than that."
"What now?"
"He's dead."
"Seriously?"
"Yep. Your knife was found," he looked down at a notepad, "protruding from his chest, is the official description."
"Shit."
"Deep piles of it."
Dishwater made his excuses and left, leaving me in no doubt that if I needed his services in the future I should feel free not to contact him. I was considered toxic by one and all now. So much for action number one on my list, time for the potentially suicidal action number two.
Part Three
After London the mean streets of Hatfield did not exactly seem all that scary, I had to remind myself of Mr. Spigarelli's vendetta against me and of the fact that he was one of the main suppliers into several of London's big drug dealers. This might be a small place compared to London but his goons' knives and guns were just as deadly as any in the smoke. I parked in the large car park behind the big Asda in the town centre, at least I assumed it was still an Asda - supermarket chains seemed to swap the place back and forth every few years as they tried to extract a few quid from the remaining inhabitants of the town before it finally died. Hatfield had once been a fairly big new town in the Home Counties and most of the population had worked at British Aerospace's huge facility there. Once that closed down unemployment took over as the main profession and the centre of the town died, shops closed and the market dwindled. Every few years the local council refurbished something or rebuilt the shopping arcades and market area but the truth was that the centre of the town was on its knees as were most of the population. Oddly the area where British Aerospace had been was thriving thanks to the Galleria shopping centre and mass house building on the old facility grounds. Unfortunately all the residents commuted into London during the week and spent their weekends shopping in John Lewis in Welwyn Garden City or the Galleria, no-one went near the town centre any more.
Oddly enough the swimming pool was my destination, one of the local go-betweens operated out of the small cafe there and I was hoping he could help set up a meeting for me with Mr. Spigarelli with some sort of guarantee that I might survive it. In all honesty I expected more of a reaction when I met him but all I got was a shake of the head and some muttering under his breath about how dumb I was. It took three hundred quid out of my dwindling stash to get him to agree to try and set up the meeting, he left me drinking my lukewarm tea while he went to make a few calls.
Pretty soon the meet was arranged for that evening, when I asked what assurances I had for my safety the response of "how fast can you run?" did not really leave me feeling very optimistic.
As with any meeting like this the idea was to have it somewhere public and inconspicuous, so we met in the McDonalds under the Galleria. As it was right by the car park I made sure to get a parking spot as close as possible, a quick getaway might be useful. Mr Spigarelli took the (not quite as comfortable as it looks) faux leather covered bench seat while I got the (even flimsier than it looks) plywood and metal chair across the (nowhere near big enough for two trays) table from him.
"You really are even dumber than you look, aren't you?" he said by way of a greeting.
"I'm beginning to suspect I might be, yes."
"Remember when I told you not to come back here again? When I said what I would have done to you?"
"Of course I remember." I still have nightmares about it.
"Then why come back?"
I laid it all out for him, the complete story of the last twenty-four hours. Then I took out everything I had put together on his daughter's murder - the snippet of footage from a lone CCTV camera that showed the limo on the wrong route to be heading home (dismissed by the Police as a "different route"); the single, grainy, long distance shot of what could be me in the background walking home (dismissed by the Police as "that could be anybody"); the emails I had sent while she was being killed (dismissed by the Police as "insufficient for an alibi"); the other knife that had been found a hundred yards from her body (wiped clean and dismissed by the Police as "forensically inconclusive"); the sighting of a man who did not fit my description in the area around the time the body had been left there (dismissed by the Police as the report came from a slightly drug-ravaged ex lead singer of a punk band). He didn't look entirely convinced. Fortunately he did not look entirely homicidally inclined either, I decided that was probably a good sign that I had, at the very least, introduced some doubt.
"So, what do you want from me?" he said.
"I want a chance to find out what happened."
"You had that after your slimy lawyer managed to get you out. Months you spent without getting a result."
"Yes," I said as I summoned up the courage for the next bit, "but I didn’t have full cooperation from you then, did I?"
"What makes you think you will get it now?"
"Simple. We both want answers. You know there is something suspect about that ride home, I need to talk to your men about that. Who organised the ride home for her? Who was checking up on the driver? No-one reported anything wrong until well after they should have done. How come the police don't have the limo on CCTV? There must be something, somewhere showing its movements so why haven't the Police got it? Or, if they have got it, why keep it quiet? If I have the full force of your backing on this I can answer those questions, maybe then I will be closer to finding out what happened."
Mr. Spigarelli looked at me, it occurred to me that maybe he was trying to decide whether it was easier just to get rid of me. There were at least three of his men eating McNuggets that I could see from where we were sitting and I did not doubt there were more I could not see. "Ok, why not? I'll give you two days. And just to show you have my full backing and to ensure that if you don't get an answer I can get hold of you Davey will go along with you."
"Davey? Your son Davey?"
"Yeah, Carmen's big brother."
Great, the only person more convinced of my guilt than her father was going to be my shadow. Fantastic. We agreed I'd get to his home for nine the following morning to get started, until then he suggested I find somewhere to hide from the Police or, if I had changed my mind, to run to the ends of the Earth where there was a tiny chance he would not find me and kill me. It was a struggle to look nonchalant as I finished my burger and watched him and his crew exit McDonalds.
After a fairly uncomfortable night sleeping in my car in the multi-storey car park in Welwyn Garden City town centre I made the trip to the Spigarelli home on the outskirts of a village called Tewin. If I am completely honest I was getting a little ripe by then as I had not had a shower for a while, a liberal application of deodorant was the best I could manage. Built back from the road on a large plot of land the Spigarelli home was exact
ly what you would expect from a drug dealer who is trying to look respectable - brand new and utterly tasteless. Fortunately the high hedges, which hid high electric fences, surround the grounds meant that the inhabitants of the almost impossibly cute Tewin village could ignore the property completely. The house would have fit in much better in the huge posh area built onto the village of Brookmans Park but as most of his neighbours would have been Premiership footballers out there it was understandable why he had not built it there. Pulling up in front of the house I could see why Carmen had never liked me coming here, all the security cameras and the gorillas in suits looked really suspicious to me now. I guess back when we had been dating I just swallowed the lie that her dad was security conscious because he was wealthy because I loved her and did not want to believe anything else. Plus her dad had a black Range Rover Sport with tinted windows, I should have known - everyone who drives one of those is a drug dealer.
Davey stood on the doorstep glaring as I pulled up. He looked just as I remembered, angry. Unfortunately for him Davey is one of those people that even in the most expensive of tailored suits still manages to look a mess. Huge sums of money and vast teams of people could be employed to try and make him look his best but he'd still look like he had slept in his clothes for a couple of days. I made sure to put on a big friendly smile as I exited the car and walked up to him with my hand out ready to shake like we were old friends. Despite the situation I just could not resist a chance to piss him off.
