A Pleasure to do Death With You

by Paul Charles

  “That makes perfect sense, Mrs Littlewood.”

  “Oh, Maggie. We’re Maggie and Roger to everyone.”

  “Of course, Maggie, and any information you give me will be very helpful, no matter how small or unimportant you think it might be, and I promise I’ll be as discreet as possible with the information you give me.”

  “Thank you, Inspector,” she said and squeezed his arm as she continued. “Patrick spoke to me about this a couple of times, mostly when I’d tried to fix him up on a blind date, and usually when he’d a few drinks. He told me he wasn’t comfortable with women in that way. When Nealey came on the scene, I started to get my hopes up. He genuinely seemed to like her, and she’s such a beautiful girl, so wholesome, I thought it was a match. But he claimed he couldn’t make that natural connection with Nealey or ‘anyone for that matter,’ he said. He told me he had women he enjoyed a physical relationship with when he needed it. The way he described it to me, it was more like a business arrangement. He wouldn’t say any more. I told him to be very careful. He told me not to worry; it wasn’t like that. He said, ‘We’re not talking about ladies of the night.’ I told him, ‘Just because it isn’t dark doesn’t mean they won’t rob you blind.’ He got a fit of the giggles at that and changed the subject.”

  “Could you tell me what you were doing between the hours of four o’clock and eight o’clock on Saturday last?” Kennedy asked.

  “Oh my goodness, it sounds so much like police-speak from the telly. Is that the time of the poor boy’s demise?”

  Kennedy quickly pulled himself up. “If we can rule people out, it allows us to concentrate on people we can’t rule out.”

  “I understand,” she said, nodding along to the beat of her reply. “On Saturday afternoon I always go down the West End. I have this circuit of shops I do, including a few pit stops for liquid refreshments like espressos and maybe even a sherry as a little treat for myself. I usually get back here just before eight o’clock, by which time Roger has dinner ready for us. He does all the cooking in this house. He’s very good, you know. He’s got his wee vegetable patch over there behind his shed.”

  “Do you have a few pals you do your shopping run with?” Kennedy asked.

  “No, I’m very selfish in my shopping; I hate hanging out with people who only want you there as a back-up opinion on their purchases. I find that such a bore. I’d rather put on my lipstick with a paintbrush than be all girly. I see something I like, I buy it.”

  Kennedy considered this and tried to shake the image out of his mind as she showed him some blood-red roses.

  “Do you think maybe one of these girls, you know… maybe?” Maggie said nervously, returning to her earlier thread and nodding her head furiously.

  “You never met any of them?” Kennedy asked ignoring her question.

  “No, never,” she said, dropping her voice considerably as Roger and Irvine crossed the perfectly manicured lawn towards them. “Not a word to Roger now, Inspector, you promised.”

  Kennedy didn’t remember that particular promise, but neither did he have a problem keeping it. What he was having a problem with was Maggie’s claim.

  Kennedy and Irvine left Roger and Maggie to their memories and to their garden. Irvine advised Kennedy that he was a bit uncertain about Roger’s alibi. Roger claimed that he spent all of Saturday in the garden by himself.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After a few phone calls, DC Dot King discovered that Tony Stevenson was self-employed and worked from home. In fact, Mr Stevenson was at home at that very moment and was happy for her to come around to ask him a few questions about his recently departed friend Mr Patrick Mylan. She wasn’t expecting him to be exactly slumming it, but she half expected him to be living on the Islington side of Camden Town, where house and garden space was as rare as tattoo-free Camden Marketeers. To her and Allaway’s surprise, he lived in a grand house up on leafy Chalcot Square.

  Tony wasn’t exactly overweight, but he looked as if he enjoyed his food and might even possess a bit of a sweet tooth. He was dressed in brown cords, a light blue Ralph Lauren traditional shirt, black socks (no shoes), and he favoured his black hair short but not so short you could see the skin. He had tortoiseshell Harry Potter glasses which magnified his brown eyes, a pleasant ever-ready smile and red flushed cheeks.

  “Come on in, will you?” he said, shaking their hands in turn.

  He showed them through to his house office, which King reckoned just might be bigger than the entire flat she shared with “my Ashley.” The office was sparsely furnished and extremely tidy, so it appeared to be even bigger than it was. He had a fine Nick Botting self-portrait above his fireplace and a large map of the world centred on the wall behind his black shiny desk. On his desk he had two Apple computer screens, which pulsed continuously and beeped a wee electronic attempt at two notes every time a message came in on one of the screens. The other screen was filled with ever-changing, non-stop, stock market information. Stevenson put both screens to sleep and invited King and Allaway to join him on Perspex bucket seats around a circular glass table. They each had a spare seat on either side.

  “Have you worked out what happened yet?” Stevenson asked in a faint Mancunian accent, which King immediately tied in with the Man U scarf hanging on the back of the office door.

  “No, we’re still carrying out our investigation,” King replied as she pulled out her notebook.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Allaway asked.

  “Saw him or spoke to him?” Stevenson asked, drumming all eight fingers and occasionally the thumb of his right hand on the table.

  “Both,” Allaway said.

  “Okay,” Stevenson said expansively, “I spoke to him last on Saturday morning, and I saw him last two Saturdays before for dinner at his house.”

  King wrote in her book for longer than she needed. She was trying to signal to Allaway that she wanted him to keep asking the questions. She liked to watch people when they were answering questions. People gave a lot away to a third person they weren’t directly engaged with. She wasn’t yet sure what all the signs were, but she was sure they were there; she just had to figure out how to interpret them.

  “What did you speak to him about when you rang on Saturday?” Allaway asked.

  “I was returning a call of his I’d missed on Friday.”

  King sighed impatiently.

  “Okay, look, we were involved in some shares together with another friend of ours called Martin Friel, and with what’s going on at the minute in the marketplace, we have to watch everything like hawks. Right? If we hold our nerve, we could make a killing, but if we’re careless, we could suffer a severe hit overnight.”

  “On that particular share,” King asked, “or on everything?”

  Stevenson smiled. “It’s only a fool who puts all his eggs in one basket these days. What I like to try to do is hedge my bets. Right? I work on something, and I’ll put say ten grand in, and then if and when that share takes off and starts to produce dividends, I’ll take 150 per cent of my original investment back out. The additional 50 per cent is to cover my bad investments, and then I’ll let whatever is left stay in for the ride. Right? You obviously still have to monitor it closely, but you’re never scared of losing it because you can afford to lose it all.”

  “Do you have many losses?” Allaway asked.

  Stevenson smiled before replying.

  “I was just thinking, most gamblers I know would always say, ‘Over the year I’m up.’ But if that’s the case, how come the bookies smile so much? Right? But if you do your homework, pay attention and you are not greedy, you can do well out of this.”

  “How do you know what to invest in?” Allaway asked in a way that suggested he might fancy his chances.

  “Well, there’s the blue chip stuff, right? It’s expensive to buy any volume of it, and you’re rarely going to make a lot on that, but it’s usually solid and stable and gives you a bit of a foundation.”


  Allaway looked to King. He seemed to be glaring at her notes, as if he were checking to see she was getting all the relevant details down.

  “Did you, Martin Friel, and Patrick Mylan invest together on everything?” King asked.

  “No, Patrick was fearless. He…” Stevenson paused, collecting his thoughts; “I need you to know that I’m not speaking ill of him when I say this, but he was a lot like a gambler. He loved to gamble; he loved the risk, well maybe more pitting himself against the risk.”

  “Are you talking about instances of him buying into things other than shares here?” King asked.

  “Well, of course.”

  “For instance?” King pushed.

  “Buildings, houses, vintage cars - you know.”

  “Do you invest in other areas yourself?” Allaway asked as King slumped slightly in her seat.

  “No, not like that,” Stevenson replied, seeming to King to be a little relieved, but she couldn’t be sure. “I like to put money into business and then spend time helping to make the business work.”

  “For instance?”

  “For instance,” Stevenson replied, and then obviously started to think what business he was going to reveal his interest in. “Right. This man I know, an ex-copper as it happens. He and his younger girlfriend were making quite a good living out of manufacturing candles and selling them down Camden Market. One thing led to another; a couple of Americans, a German, and someone from Scandinavia picked up on how special the candles were, and they start ordering more and more. Now it turns out that Noreen, my daughter, had gone to school with the girlfriend’s younger sister, and the girls, both of whom were waiting to go to university, were roped in at the weekends to help out. I go over to pick up our Noreen one Saturday. They’re all buzzing away. I had a chat with the ex-copper, right? He filled me in, told me he couldn’t cope. Over a glass of wine, he and his girlfriend showed me their books. It was all very solid, but there was no planning, right?

  That’s what I’m good at. I’m good at organising and getting systems together.

  “I bought into the company, but I also provided expertise. I went down there, rolled up my sleeves and got my hands dirty, no bother to me. I raised the money for us to buy premises, so we were no longer throwing away money on rent. I helped them find more staff, and now they’re not having to work anywhere near as hard and are making more money. So now it’s working well. I’ve made back my investment and am making good money out of it. I reckon in another year or so we’ll be able to sell the entire operation to the Americans, and if and when we do, I’ll feel fine over what I take out of if because I’ve made myself part of it. And as Noreen is really the reason I found this, I’ve told her that, as a reward, I’ll pay the deposit and help her with the mortgage when she wants to buy her own flat. Obviously I could buy her a flat outright, but that’s not the point is it. Right? We’re all the same, aren’t we? We all really only appreciate things when we have to work for them.”

  “Did Patrick Mylan have any similar projects?” King asked.

  “No, he always put distance between money and the product. Which is surprising really, because he used to tell us about how when he was growing up and working on his uncle’s farm, he’d have to work all the hours of the day, so he couldn’t have been scared of work, could he?”

  “Was he forced to do the farm work?” Allaway asked, jumping to the obvious conclusion.

  “He never said as much. I think his parents died when he was young, and he went to live with his aunt and uncle on their farm, somewhere in the west of Ireland. I suppose he had to muck in.”

  “Did he have cousins?” King asked.

  “No. When his aunt and uncle died, he said it was the end of the line.”

  “When did his aunt and uncle die?”

  “A good few years ago. He only told us this story about his family after his aunt and uncle died.”

  “You never met them?” King pushed.

  “No.”

  “Did any of the group get to meet them?” King asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Out of your group, who would you say was closest with Mr Mylan?” This time Allaway asked the question.

  “Oh, probably Maggie Littlewood. Maybe Roger as well.”

  “When you spoke to him on the phone that day, how did he sound?”

  “How did he sound?” Stevenson asked. “He sounded like he wanted to get back to his lazy solo Saturday morning. He didn’t like to do business at the weekend. He didn’t have Jean Claude or Cynthia Cox come around on Saturdays; he kept Saturdays to himself. I think he’d just read the papers, potter around, and unwind, right? Most Saturday nights he’d do something though.”

  “Was his girlfriend around much do you know?” King asked.

  “He didn’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Was he gay?” Allaway asked.

  “Ah, no, he wasn’t gay.”

  “You say that like you know it for definite?”

  “I mean I know he had an eye for girls. I’d catch him looking at our Noreen sometimes. She’s at that stage where she turns heads.”

  “There was nothing…” King asked gently.

  “No, no, no. Patrick knew better than trying any of that auld carry-on with our Noreen.”

  “Was everything all right between you and Mr Mylan during your telephone chat?”

  “Yeah, perfect. We both agreed that we should stay with the Villa Bridgen wine shares.”

  “French?” King asked.

  “Nappa Valley, and we’d heard they were very excited about this year’s crop. Patrick asked, as he always asked, when were the bastards going to send us over a case so we could taste it for ourselves. We’ve been in there for four years, bailed them out, and we still hadn’t even tasted it. We had our usual chuckle at that, and that’s how we ended the call.”

  “But he didn’t seem depressed to you? He didn’t tell you about anything or anyone who might have been bothering him?”

  “As I say, the last I heard of him, he was chuckling away to himself as he set the phone down.”

  “Could you tell me please what you were doing between four o’clock and eight o’clock last Saturday?” King asked.

  “That’s easy. I took my wife and kids on a day trip to Paris by Eurostar. We left at eight o’clock in the morning and got home just after ten o’clock that evening. I know that because the news had just started as we got in.”

  “But,” King said, “you’ve just said you were on the phone to him at the same time you were on the Eurostar?”

  A nod in the direction of his iPhone from Stevenson was all it took for King to realise she hadn’t stumbled upon anything of importance.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The interview Irvine and Alloway conducted with Cynthia Cox did not work out the way that DC Dot King had planned. In fact, it was quite a disaster.

  The gossip King had felt was there to be had, hadn’t exactly flowed freely for Irvine either. She insisted that JCB - as she referred to Jean Claude Banks in the third person - remain around and accompany her for the interview. Once more, the interview had to be conducted in the small back garden so that Mrs Cox could continue her chain smoking.

  Irvine, working on King’s tip-off, knew of course that he should have separated JCB and Cox, but to do so would have antagonised her and risked shutting her down. Irvine was determined to remain civil with this woman, but some people reminded him how far down the social scale of respect the police had slipped. There was a time - and a time, Irvine would agree, when maybe some members of the police had abused their position - when being a policeman was enough to warrant respect from the general public. But Cox was making it clear that she had no time for Camden’s finest. She “knew her rights” and would tolerate being involved only on her terms. Even if he’d asked for Jean Claude to leave them alone for the interview, Irvine sussed she would have insisted on the presence of her solicitor.

  “Well, what have you discovered then?” she asked i
mpatiently, before either police officer had the chance to commence proceedings.

  “We’re still working on our investigation,” Allaway offered.

  “I’ll take that as nothing then,” she replied, smiling insincerely for Allaway.

  “If you ask me,” she volunteered, as Irvine’s hopes for the interview clicked up a few notches, “Paddy needed a proper job. He had too much time on his hands. Isn’t that right, Jean Claude?”

  “Yes, that is right, Cynthia.”

  “When you’ve too much time to do nothing, that’s when the auld idle mind clicks in. Now my father, he’d never have been found hanging around on the back of a door.” She stopped talking briefly to acknowledge Irvine’s wincing. “What? That offends you? Oh please, let’s call a spade a spade. As I was saying, my father would never have been found doing that, and the reason is that he had to work every hour God sent him to feed and clothe his family: my mother, my six sisters, and my brother. He had no time for tennis or grand dinner parties or sitting on his arse looking at a fecking computer screen for hours on end. For all we know, Mr Patrick Mylan could have been up there playing computer games or… well, we all know what you can find on the internet. Isn’t that right Jean Claude?”

  “Yes, that’s right, Cynthia.”

  “Did you ever see him have an argument with anyone?” Irvine asked.

  “He wouldn’t have had the bottle for an argument. He’d have done his arguments through solicitors. Isn’t that right, Jean Claude?”

  “I do not know of his private business, Cynthia.”

  “No, Jean Claude, I didn’t mean you knew of actual arguments he had through his solicitors; I meant generally speaking…”

  For one split second, Irvine felt she was going to add, “Isn’t that right, Jean Claude?”

  “Did you ever discuss your families or your times in Ireland?”

  “No, he was a Johnny-come-lately type. I imagine if you traced both our roots, we’d be from similar working-class families, but I think because technically he was my employer, he felt that made him a better person than me.”