by John Moralee
Jeff filed a $25 million malpractice lawsuit the next day.
It was settled out of court.
For $15 million.
Bad Advertising
When I met Anne outside our building that warm evening, I had no idea it would be the last time I would see her alive.
I was hot and sweaty after a long journey home from London, where I worked in advertising, but she looked like she had spent her day in a salon making her beautiful. She was dressed in a short summery dress that showed off her perfect legs, which I admired from behind as I walked up to the front door. She was carrying some heavy M&S bags so I stepped ahead of her and used my key on the door.
“Thanks,” she said.
We exchanged warm smiles, then entered the dark hall where hardly any sunlight penetrated.
Mr Tariq - our Iranian landlord – was in the hall repairing a light at the bottom of the stairs. He was a short and stout man in his fifties with very little hair on his head but incredibly hairy arms and knuckles. He kept one of the downstairs flats for himself, but he didn’t stay in it often because he owned several houses across Brighton and spent much of his time at the others. Though I suspected Mr Tariq of being quite wealthy, he always dressed in scruffy grey overalls and repaired things himself instead of hiring professionals. We had to step around his big toolbox and an assortment of electrical tools.
I grunted a sort of “good afternoon” to him, but Anne smiled at him, saying: “Oh, Mr Tariq! I would love it if you could have a look at my shower. It’s leaking. Can you fix it?”
“I fix later!” he said. “I fix later!”
“Great!” she said, and headed up the stairs. Anne lived in the flat below mine. She was almost at the top of the first flight before I started climbing the stairs. From my angle, I caught a glimpse of her sexy pink knickers that literally took my breath away. Then she was gone into her flat.
I was thinking so hard about what I had just seen that my foot missed the next step, but I grabbed onto the banister and stopped myself falling. Feeling foolish, I looked back at Mr Tariq, who grinned at me. He had clearly seen Anne’s knickers, too. We shared a moment of male-bonding – grinning at each other like schoolboys – then I continued up the stairs.
I slowed down passing Anne’s door, tempted to knock and ask her if she need help unpacking her things, but since we barely knew each other I didn’t dare do it.
Later I would wish I had done it. Maybe then she would not have been killed. Maybe then – one day in the future – we would have been happily married with three or four wonderful kids. But I continued up the next flight of stairs to my flat, where I had lived alone since my awkward break-up with Susan.
I sighed as I opened my door, wishing I had a girlfriend like Anne. I hated living alone.
I took a long shower and changed into jeans and a T-shirt before cooking a sirloin steak that had tempted me despite the dangers of BSE, growth hormones and coronary heart disease. While that was in the oven, I opened a beer and started what I planned to be a night’s session of Call of Duty on my X-box 360.
About a couple of hours later – I was not watching the clock because I was too busy sneaking up on an enemy stronghold – I heard some noises coming from Anne’s flat. Banging. I assumed it was Mr Tariq fixing her shower like he had promised. To block it out, I turned up the volume of my TV and kept playing.
I had no idea I was hearing a murder.
*
The next day I came home to find three police cars and an ambulance parked at the front of the building. Some people across the street were looking up at the first floor windows. I also saw Norman who lived on the ground floor. He liked wearing garish wool cardigans probably made by an eccentric colour-blind aunt. Today’s was blue, green and yellow with some kind of flower pattern.
“Here’s Tristram now,” Norman said. Norman was standing with the other tenants Ben and Sapphire. They all looked pale. Sapphire was crying. She was attractive in a willowy art-student way. She had lots of freckles, light skin and downy red hair. She was probably twenty-five to my thirty.
“What’s happened?” I asked them.
Norman answered: “It’s Anne. She’s been murdered.”
No. I couldn’t believe it. “Who killed her?”
“I don’t know, but the police are in her flat right now. The body’s still in there. She was raped and beaten.”
At the mention of that Sapphire groaned and looked like she was going to faint. Ben held her tightly, keeping her on her feet.
Norman pointed at a blonde woman being treated by paramedics. “That young lady is a friend of Anne’s. Her name’s Vicky. Apparently Vicky came to her flat this afternoon because Anne hadn’t gone to work today. She wasn’t answering her phone either – so her friend let herself in with her spare key. She discovered Anne’s body inside. I was in my flat at the time when I heard her scream. I called 999 after running up the stairs. I saw what that animal had done. It was horrible. It looked like her head had been smashed in with some kind of blunt instrument. She was half-naked. There was blood everywhere. What kind of person would do that?”
Sadly I had no answers.
A white-haired detective in a grey suit strode towards me. He asked me to walk with him to a place where we could talk privately. He said his name was Chief Inspector Cassidy. He was in charge of the murder investigation.
“Sir, did you see or hear anything suspicious last night?”
I told him about the noise I’d heard. He seemed disappointed when I couldn’t give him an exact time, but it had to have been between eight and ten. Probably nine.
“When did you last see the victim?”
“I saw her around five when I came home. We both arrived at the same time, you see. Mr Tariq can confirm that.”
By the way his eyes widened that appeared to be new information. “Mr Tariq was there? The landlord?”
“Yes, he was fixing a light switch in the hall. Anne asked him to have a look at her faulty shower, which he said he would do later.”
“I see,” the detective said. “Do you know where Mr Tariq is at the moment?”
I shook my head. His white van wasn’t parked on the street. “No – why? Do you think he did it?”
He didn’t answer that. “I’d like you to give a full statement to one of my officers.”
Another man asked me more questions – like had I ever been in Anne’s flat. I told them no. Because I had no objections, they took my fingerprints and DNA. After they had done, I was told that I couldn’t go back to my flat until the SOCOs had finished with their forensic examinations.
Since I didn’t have many friends living in Brighton, I booked in a room at a B&B. The bed was hard and uncomfortable, making it impossible to sleep. I lay awake all night thinking about Anne. I had not known her well, but I found myself missing her. Who would kill her?
*
The next morning the weather turned wintry. A bitter wind blew off the sea down the streets, chilling me to the bone as I walked back to my flat. There was still a police presence outside, but I was allowed to go into my flat again. It was strange walking past Anne’s door, which was being guarded by a police officer.
“Morning, sir,” he said.
“Morning,” I said. “Are they still working in there?”
He nodded sadly.
“Found any clues?”
He didn’t answer.
I went up to my flat. I felt exhausted by the time I had fumbled my key into the door. There I slumped on my couch and made a phone call to the ad agency. I didn’t feel like going in to work, but I doubted my boss would accept the death of my neighbour as a valid excuse so I was quite prepared to say I was ill. Luckily, my boss had heard about the murder and sympathised with my situation. He asked me some questions before telling me to take the whole week off if I needed it.
I had never heard him be so reasonable.
I had seen him fire a temp for spilling some coffee.
“See you
soon, T-Man,” he said.
T-Man was my ad name. Nobody at the agency used my first name Tristram because it seemed too posh and snobby. Though three-quarters of the guys had been to private schools and Oxbridge, none of us advertised the fact. We talked and acted like Cockney wide boys.
“Thanks, Boss,” I said, hanging up.
My flat was too quiet. I could hear the SOCO people rummaging around in the flat below, which started to get on my nerves. I went into my kitchen and stared out of the window, looking down on the small garden behind the house. The police had been digging it up. Looking for what, I didn’t know. The murder weapon?
I decided to use my laptop to find out the latest news about the murder. Unfortunately the police had not released much information. There was no mention of any suspects or any reason for her death. I learnt Anne had been a volunteer for a homeless charity with no enemies in the world. Her family were stunned by her brutal murder. Her second name had been Hargreaves. I had not known that. I logged off.
I didn’t know what to do with the rest of my day. I had not cleaned up my dishes from the night before, so I thought about doing some spring-cleaning – but I couldn’t be bothered. I decided to just laze on the couch watching TV. I wasn’t even in the mood of playing Call of Duty. The real-life killing had sucked the fun out of that.
Just then someone knocked lightly on my door. I almost jumped out of my skin.
“Who is it?”
“Sapphire!”
I opened the door.
“Hi,” she said. She was dressed in tight black jeans and a thin white blouse that looked very fetching on her slim body. “Everyone else is having coffee in Norman’s flat. We want to talk about Anne’s murder. We were wondering if you’d like to join us?”
The thought of being on my own depressed me so such I agreed at once.
*
Norman’s living room had the feel of a Victorian study. It was filled with antique furniture and books. There was a grandfather clock in one corner tick-tock-ticking. A hardback biography of Oscar Wilde was on a coffee table in front of his fireplace, where a log fire burned. Some classical music played in the background, too low to identify the piece.
I sat on one sofa opposite Ben and leaned forward so I could warm my hands on the crackling fire.
Ben was wearing nothing but black – black shirt, black jeans, black shoes. He looked like a cool vampire, the Twilight-kind, not like the gruesome blood-and-fangs monsters seen in Hammer Horror movies. He was so pale he probably had not seen sunlight in years.
Norman sat on the other sofa wearing another lurid cardigan. He went to make me a coffee. As soon as he was out of earshot, Ben asked a question.
“So do you think Norman’s gay?”
“Yes,” Sapphire said. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” Ben said quickly. “Just thought he’d like to know my nightclub has a special gay night every Tuesday. That’s what I do – I run a nightclub. What do you do, Sapphire?”
“I’m an artist,” she said.
“What kind?” I asked.
“Photography, painting, drawing, mixed media,” she said. “What do you do?”
“I’m in advertising.”
Norman returned with my coffee.
I soon learnt that Norman ran a rare bookshop with his partner Carter, who was also his boyfriend. Carter liked knitting things for Norman, which explained his choice of clothes.
“You and Carter should come to my club on gay night,” Ben said. “Just mention my name at the door and you’ll get free entry.”
Ben had some cards on him with the name of the nightclub on it – The Night Light. He gave one to Norman, then me. He boasted that his nightclub was the place to go to be seen. It had three floors each with different DJs playing music for all tastes. Now I knew what he did for a living, I understood why I rarely saw him during the day. Ben lived vampire hours. I sometimes heard him going into his flat at four in the morning with a giggling girl who would slip out of his flat the next morning dressed like a hooker. I had thought they were hookers – until now.
I wished I owned a nightclub, but you had to be as cool as Ben to get away with that.
“This is the first time we’ve all been together like this,” Sapphire said. “It’s sad that we didn’t get to know each other before now.”
We drank our coffees and talked about what the police were doing downstairs. Unlike me, Sapphire had known Anne quite well. “The last time I saw her she talked about meeting someone on Facebook. I helped her pick out her dress for her date. Did you guys know her well?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
“I saw her in my bookshop once,” Norman said. “She bought a couple of Jodi Picoult novels. I love her books.”
“Me, too,” Sapphire said. “And I loved the film of My Sister’s Keeper.”
I had never heard of Jodi Picoult, but I nodded as though I knew what they were talking about.
“Did you know Anne well?” Sapphire asked Ben.
“Yeah, kind of,” he admitted. “I had to tell the police that we slept together a few times. It was nothing serious, but I kind of liked her. She was sweet. Who was the loser she met on Facebook?”
“She didn’t tell me his name,” Sapphire said. “I suppose the police have found it on her computer. Anne never told me she slept with you. When did that happen?”
“Oh, just a few times when she first moved in. I could tell she wanted a serious relationship, but I don’t do that so I had to break it off. But we were still friendly,” he added.
How did he manage that? I wondered. All my ex-girlfriends absolutely hated me. I felt the urge to punch Ben in the face for sleeping with Anne when I never got the chance.
We were all still chatting when there was a knock at the door. It was Chief Inspector Cassidy.
“I’m glad to see you’re all here because I can now tell you we’re officially finished examining the crime scene.”
“What evidence did you find?” I asked.
“I’m not at liberty to go into details,” the detective said. “Though I can say we did find fingerprints from a possible suspect.”
“Mr Tariq?”
“He is a person of interest,” he said, which was cop-speak for yes. “We are now looking for Mr Tariq. If you can think of anything that will help us locate him, please call me directly on this number.”
He handed out cards with his cell number on it. Then he excused himself. A minute later Norman went to his window and looked out at the street, saying, “I can see their vehicles leaving.”
“So,” Ben said, “if Mr Tariq is the killer, does that mean we no longer have to pay any rent?”
Sapphire and Norman gave him stony looks. Personally, I had been thinking the same thing, but I would never have actually said it.
“I’m joking!” Ben said hastily.
“Well, it’s not very funny!” Sapphire said. “Anne’s dead! You can’t make jokes at a time like this!”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m just trying to relieve the tension. I’m just as freaked out by everything as you. It’s not every day your landlord turns out to be a killer. Did any of you guys see him doing anything weird?”
Norman shook his head. “No, he always seemed like a perfect gentleman to me.”
“I caught him in my bedroom once,” Sapphire said. Suddenly she had our complete attention. “One day I came home and found him there. He said he was there to bleed one of the radiators. He said he’d only let himself in because I didn’t answer. I didn’t like him letting himself in when I was out, but it seemed reasonable at the time because I don’t even know what bleeding a radiator means. But now I wonder. The weird thing is I did notice some of my underwear missing a couple of days later – but I assumed I’d lost them doing my laundry.”
“I bet he stole them,” Ben said. “I heard from one of the police that the killer took Anne’s underwear as a memento. You were lucky he didn’t kill you, too.”
�
�God!” Sapphire said. “What if he comes back? He might want to kill us all.”
“We’d better keep an eye out for each other,” I said, sounding much braver than I really felt. “And we should get in a locksmith to change our locks. We don’t want him letting himself in to our flats.”
“I’ll get the Yellow Pages,” Norman said.
*
After the locksmith had done his job, I decided to go out for a walk around the town. It was too cold to be outside long, so I picked up every newspaper with the murder in it and read them in a warm café.
Mr Tariq might not have been named as a suspect by the police, but it was clear every tabloid was gunning for him. They had a wedding picture of him looking creepy accompanied by lurid descriptions of his tough life growing up in Iran, where he had been a student arrested at a radical political protest. He spent a year in jail before leaving the country for the UK, where he took a job with British Gas. After a series of short-term jobs he had married another Iranian immigrant, the daughter of a property developer. His father-in-law encouraged Tariq to join his family business - buying houses to be converted into rental flats. Eventually Tariq took over the buy-for-rent business. The tabloids estimated he had made a personal fortune of at least a million pounds. He had no criminal record – but the journalists had found a number of complaints made against him for shoddy repairs. One tabloid headline called him a “Slumlord Millionaire”, which I thought was a big harsh. I thought he had always been a pretty good landlord – for a murderer.
