‘I’m April Lavender from the Daily Chronicle,’ she replied, her hand outstretched. ‘I wanted to talk…’
Des Gilmour cut her off. ‘About that cunt Bryce Horrigan? What do you want to know? Did I celebrate his death? Damn right. I’m still hung over. Or do you just want to stitch me up again like that other reporter? “Oh, look at the weirdo student, who’s calling the great, mighty Bryce Horrigan nasty names,”’ Gilmour said mockingly. ‘You wouldn’t believe the shit that story caused me. My folks didn’t talk to me for months. Said I’d embarrassed them.’
Cut off your allowance, more like, April thought to herself.
‘So I certainly don’t plan to go through all that again,’ he added emphatically.
‘I completely understand,’ April said truthfully, ‘but now Bryce is dead, maybe it would be good to give your side of the story? How it has affected you. Why you did it in the first place,’ April said hopefully, desperately trying to convince the scruffy young man with a serious attitude problem to talk to her.
Des went to respond then thought better of it. Eventually he said, ‘Okay, I’ll tell you the truth on the absolute cast-iron assurance you won’t print it.’
April maintained her smiley face but inside she was crestfallen. Post-Leveson, people who are interviewed can withdraw their consent at any time before it’s published. So if you had someone confessing all to an affair with a public figure, they could pull their story at the eleventh hour, even though it was all recorded. In the old days, when journalists played hard and fast with the rules, if it was on tape then it was going in the paper. Consent or no consent.
April replied, ‘Sure, I won’t print a word. Legally, I can’t now.’ Deep inside she wanted to cut the meeting short. For what was the point in someone speaking if you can’t use it? She also dreaded calling her news editor to tell him his much-hoped-for splash was now more of a plop.
It was Gilmour’s turn to smile. ‘Okay, come in – I’m about to blow your mind.’
69 #HelpingWithEnquiries
Tom O’Neill had been having an early morning coffee in the Starbucks across from the Baltimore City Hotel when he took the abrupt call from Lieutenant Haye.
‘Cap’n wants to see you. Be here in half an hour.’ The lieutenant hung up before Tom had a chance to ask any questions.
He knew from the tone and urgency it must be serious. But what could it be? Tom suspected Bryce’s vastly abbreviated personnel file was probably the source of the captain’s ire.
***
‘So that list you gave us…’
‘The personnel file,’ O’Neill said, interrupting Sorrell, earning himself a deadly stare.
‘No, the other list, with disgruntled employees, interns, etc etc.’
‘Yes, I gave you that one,’ O’Neill protested.
‘What about the one with Geoffrey Schroeder’s name on it?’ Sorrell asked, staring unblinkingly at O’Neill, whose eyes darted from the captain to Haye, once again leaning against the wall behind his boss.
‘Didn’t I give you his name? It must have been an oversight,’ O’Neill said, knowing how false and pathetic he sounded.
Sorrell stared at him for what seemed an age, before he finally replied, ‘But it wasn’t an oversight when you handed Schroeder’s name to that reporter, Presley?’
‘I must’ve got that information later,’ O’Neill stuttered just as unconvincingly.
‘I see. So you gave a list of potential people of interest to a journalist rather than the officers running the investigation?’
‘It was just a list of nutters. Elvis… I mean, Connor had asked for some leads. I was only helping him out. Giving him some steers.’
‘Let me give you a steer for nothing,’ Sorrell said, pointing his finger at O’Neill’s face. ‘You get any more information then you come to me first. Get it? Now get out.’
O’Neill nodded his head in compliance.
‘I don’t like him much, cap’n.’
‘There’s not a lot to like, Haye.’
‘Oh, and cap’n, I tracked down that bachelorette party. You know the one that got in the hotel elevator with ‘hat man’? They were so wasted they couldn’t even remember being in the hotel elevator, never mind some guy wearing a hat.’
‘Sounds like some party. It was worth a try,’ Sorrell said, his mind already elsewhere.
70 #LoveRival
Chrissie Hardie @HardieGirl89
Where shall I lunch today – any suggestions?
Patricia Tolan could recall the times she used to fly to America with Bryce, who boasted how he never turned right stepping aboard an aircraft. He always took left towards business or first class. But she’d had to get used to sitting in economy once his generous monthly allowance to her had gone.
She could remember the day it happened. Patricia had taken a call from her bank saying she had exceeded her overdraft limit. She always lived deep into her overdraft and needed Bryce’s $4,000 a month to get her back in the black. On the very same morning she took the call from the bank, Patricia had lost the one and only major client for her PR business. It could have been paranoia, but she was convinced she had been dropped because she was no longer the girlfriend of America’s fastest rising talk show host.
After being dumped by Bryce, it was proof of the old adage that bad things come in threes. Patricia had wandered from her soon to be ex-apartment in a daze. She was unsure where she had walked to or for how long, when she suddenly found herself standing outside her love rival’s towering office block, not quite sure what she was going to do.
Chrissie Hardie was tall, blonde, excruciatingly pretty. Patricia had only discovered the name of Bryce’s new flame the week before. That’d been when he had decided she should move out of their Manhattan penthouse. Patricia had exploded in a fit of rage, calling Bryce every name she could think of and some she made up on the spur of the moment. He had stood there like a typical man, just wanting the scene to be over and done with. She could see from his demeanour that he had already moved on in his head, eventually saying, ‘Come on, Pasty, we’ve had a good run. And it’s not as if we still won’t be friends.’
And that was it. The relationship, which began when they were eighteen at university, had ended twenty-seven years later with a casual shrug of his shoulders and the use of her nickname, which she despised. Suddenly, for the first time, she’d been able to see the loathsome creature standing before her. The man who she had defended at all costs. The man to whom she had been loyal, turning a blind eye to all his previous indiscretions. The man who had had his own way for too long and could move on from over a quarter of a century together as if switching to the next item on his chat show with a shuffle of his papers. Inside, she was experiencing every emotion, from pain, through devastation to anger, while Bryce glanced at his watch, eager to get off to the studio or perhaps to meet his new lover. God, how she hated him.
‘Right, pull yourself together and take your time. There’s no need to rush away. Just DM me when you’ve cleared out your stuff,’ Bryce had said, as if concluding a car deal. ‘Oh, and Pasty, don’t even think of cutting up my suits – I’ve had them moved to a safe place.’
The door had closed behind Bryce. Patricia checked the huge walk-in wardrobes. He hadn’t been kidding. All his precious designer suits, custom-made to try to cover his ever-expanding gut, had been removed. Which made matters so much worse as it meant it was all premeditated. ‘Poor old Pasty was going to slice up my suits once I’d dumped her,’ she said to herself, trying to mock Bryce’s voice, ‘so I had them locked away from the mad bitch.’
Patricia Tolan crumpled to the bedroom floor, where she sobbed uncontrollably for hours. Days later, she had found a far smaller apartment to move into across town. She’d only signed a three-month lease as she wasn’t quite sure what to do next with her life.
Then she’d discovere
d the name of Bryce’s new lover. Patricia had been standing outside ABT News, where her love rival worked as one of Bryce’s PRs, when she saw Chrissie Hardie’s post asking her followers where she should lunch. Patricia impulsively glanced across 42nd street to see a diner called Murphy’s Bagels. She opportunistically tweeted back:
Patricia Tolan @PastyGirl70
@HardieGirl89 You can’t go wrong with Murphy’s down your neck of the woods.
Seconds later her post had been retweeted by Chrissie, with the added comment: Murphy’s it is.
Patricia Tolan was just one of over 7,000 of Chrissie Hardie’s followers. Which is one of the inherent dangers of social media – you can never be sure of who you are talking to.
71 #Clinique
April Lavender @AprilReporter1955
@ElvisTheWriter I need to talk to you.
‘Hello, my perpetually hungry little friend. Tucking into your usual low-carb, high-fibre diet I trust?’
It was 4.30 in the morning Eastern Standard Time when Connor responded to the tweet from April to call her. By the background noise of chatter and clinking crockery, he had judged correctly that she would be eating the Peccadillo’s full fried breakfast before starting work.
‘Oh, it’s yourself,’ April said through a mouthful of food. ‘What time is it there?’
‘Half-four in the morning,’ Connor replied.
‘What are you doing up at that time?’ April asked in her usual role of concerned mother.
‘Still jet-lagged. Can’t sleep. I’m knackered,’ he said gloomily.
April gulped down a mouthful of milky, sugary tea, then spoke in hushed tones. ‘I interviewed Des Gilmour, like you said. He told me some very interesting things about Bryce. Real eye-opener stuff.’
‘Go on,’ Connor urged, his curiosity suddenly perking him up.
‘Did you know that after Question Time, Bryce met up with Des and his then-girlfriend outside the venue? He talked about perhaps hiring him as a columnist, dressed it up as Des becoming the newspaper’s voice of the UK’s students. Anyway, they met a few times socially after that. Apparently Bryce always made a point of saying to Des, “And feel free to bring your girlfriend along – I’ll pay.”’
Connor sat on his phone 3,000 miles away wondering where April was going with this.
‘Anyway, it turned out that Bryce had no intention of hiring Des as a columnist, but had designs on his girlfriend, who had sat beside Des on Question Time. She was a goth, but beneath all that ridiculous black lipstick was one very attractive girl. She was also a very unfaithful girl. Bryce must have slipped her his phone number in the pub when Des was at the loo. All he knows is that at some point his girlfriend and Bryce began an affair. He kept flying her from Glasgow to London, putting her up in nice hotels and all the rest. Wait to you hear this bit though: Des only became suspicious when she began wearing “normal clothes and make-up”.’
Connor laughed from the other side of the Atlantic. ‘So her flimsy excuses to cover her weekends away didn’t arouse his suspicions, but her new penchant for Clinique and Laura Ashley did? Brilliant.’
‘I know,’ April said excitedly, hurriedly gulping down another mouthful of sugary tea. ‘That’s when Des started his harassment campaign. He was desperate to spread the word that our Bryce was a bad bastard.’
The penny dropped with Connor: ‘Bryce never got Des’s address from the cops. He got it from Des’s girlfriend. And the reason he got me on the case is that it was too close to home for him to be sending his own attack dogs. He played me like a Stradivarius.’
‘You wouldn’t be the first. I’m starting to think that Bryce Horrigan’s whole reason for being was sex. That’s what his mum said, too,’ April said.
‘Thank God you ditched lust for gluttony, huh?’ Connor replied.
‘Yeah, most people eventually get bored with sex but I never tire of eating. Anyway, better go. I don’t want my fried eggs getting cold.’
Connor smiled again. April and her appalling eating habits always cheered him up. ‘Can you try to track down Des’s reformed goth?’
‘Already have,’ April replied, her mouth now half full of drippy egg yolk. ‘Des helped me out. Get this: she moved to New York about the same time poor old Pasty was being shown the door. ‘
‘He should have had revolving doors fitted to his apartment,’ Connor quipped. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Chrissie Hardie. She’s in PR,’ April said almost incomprehensibly, as she gave a square sausage a square go.
‘Public Relations. The one-size-fits-all job description. Be great to speak to her,’ Connor said.
‘You betcha,’ Connor heard April mumble as her desire to eat outweighed her need to communicate.
It was becoming clear to them both that Bryce had liked the thrill of the chase: there were plenty of willing partners to choose from, yet he targeted the goth girlfriend of a student who had berated him on Question Time. Bryce would have enjoyed his revenge, for he took any public humiliation as a personal slight. Connor now had some concrete leads to trade with Captain Sorrell.
72 #Tetchy
Baby Angel @BabyAngel
So what did O’Neill have to say about the other list?
Sorrell was beginning to loathe how Baby Angel knew his every move. Haye had suggested that perhaps the captain’s emails were being hacked, but Sorrell always preferred a simpler, more logical explanation.
Bernard Sorrell @BernardSorrell
No more games. Reveal yourself.
Baby Angel @BabyAngel
Oooh, we are in a tetchy mood. Get outta bed the wrong side this morning?
Bernard Sorrell @BernardSorrell
I’m getting bored with this.
Baby Angel @BabyAngel
I’m not. Now tell me what O’Neill said or you’ll get no more guidance from your guardian.
Bernard Sorrell @BernardSorrell
He said he was just throwing Presley a bone as Schroeder was one of the many on a watchlist.
Baby Angel @BabyAngel
But something doesn’t add up, right?
Bernard Sorrell @BernardSorrell
You could say that.
Baby Angel @BabyAngel
I do say that. What didn’t add up, captain?
Bernard Sorrell @BernardSorrell
Schroeder.
Baby Angel @BabyAngel
Why doesn’t that add up?
Bernard Sorrell @BernardSorrell
Because I don’t believe he killed Horrigan.
Baby Angel @BabyAngel
So what was Schroeder doing in Baltimore? Hmmm?
Bernard Sorrell @BernardSorrell
I think you’re playing me for a fool. You’re wasting my time.
Baby Angel @BabyAngel
You stupid black bastard. The truth is staring you in the face.
Bernard Sorrell @BernardSorrell
What’s my color got to do with it?
Baby Angel @BabyAngel
Nothing. Sorry. The only colour that matters is your grey matter. Use your brain.
Sorrell stared at the screen with a quizzical expression. And it wasn’t the insult that was puzzling him.
73 #OddManOut
Connor was doing some Internet research, sitting in his hotel room systematically working his way through the Twitter feeds from the six names passed to him by Tom O’Neill. The first five fell into the Bible-bashers category. They were all a bit too obvious: either damning Bryce Horrigan to eternal hell and warning he’d pay for his sins, or starting in a biblical vein before moving on to torrents of abuse and threats.
But Connor thought the sixth must have been some sort of mistake – compared to the others, it was relatively tame. Although Geoffrey Schroeder was one of Bryce Horrigan’s ten million followers, his timeline revealed
he had had just one major online spat with the TV presenter, which had ended with a very abusive slanging match over Bryce’s pro-abortion stance. It was just heat-of-the-moment stuff, nothing particularly startling compared to the chilling nature of the others on the list. Connor could even track the moment Schroeder calmed down, explaining why he had flown off the handle at Bryce because he lost his wife and unborn to an abortionist. Although his tweets were dripping with emotion, you could tell he was being genuine in his sorrow and beliefs. Schroeder had recently retweeted the pictures of Bryce’s death scene, but that was about it.
Connor checked who followed Geoffrey Schroeder. It was a quick search as he only had a dozen followers. But the last one – Baby Angel – caught his attention. He clicked on the profile, which read, God’s assassin. My mission is to destroy all baby killers. The Twitter profile certainly had a fire-and-brimstone feel to it, but it was the timeline that intrigued the reporter: Baby Angel had first made contact with Schroeder three weeks before Bryce’s death.
Connor thought long and hard before deciding he had no other option but to take a chance. He wrote:
Connor Presley @ElvisTheWriter
@GeoffreySchroeder we may be able to help each other?
Connor posted the innocuous tweet not really knowing what to expect. A minute later, he was notified he had a new follower.
Geoffrey Schroeder was online.
74 #CallMe
‘April, it’s Lacey Lanning. I need to speak to you. It’s important. It’s about Bryce. Something I never told you. I’m in trouble. I have no one else to turn to. Hope you get this message.’
April had missed Lacey Lanning’s call as her phone had been at the bottom of her bag, as usual. It wouldn’t be the first, or last, important call April would miss. It always amazed the journalist when she went to check her mobile, after a few hours of forgetting about it, to find reams of texts and voicemails of increasing urgency.
DM for Murder Page 17
