The Charmer

by Mandasue Heller

  ‘Joel?’ Maria gasped. ‘Didn’t you see him?’

  ‘No offence, darlin’,’ one of Leroy’s mates said, ‘but checking up on that dude wasn’t part of the bargain. If he got a kicking, it sounds like he deserved it. And I wasn’t about to shove no plasters on him.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Leroy agreed, kissing his teeth angrily. ‘He treated you rough, Maria, man.’

  Maria couldn’t argue, but she still felt bad for Joel. No matter what he’d done – to her, and to Nigel – she had loved him with a passion, and that would take time to completely die.

  ‘What shall I tell the police?’ she asked, dreading having to face yet more questioning.

  ‘The truth,’ Vicky said. ‘Up to the part where you went outside. We’ll have to think of something else for after that.’

  ‘You’re gonna have to say someone jumped the guys,’ Leroy cut in. ‘There’s too much blood around to say nothing happened.’

  ‘And none of it ours!’ His mate laughed, sticking a roach in the fat five-skinner spliff he’d rolled.

  ‘Say you were being shoved into the jeep when a gang of men walked past and saw what was happening,’ Davy said. ‘There’s always gangs walking round at this time of night, so they’ll believe you. You haven’t got a clue who they were, but when they started laying into the men, you ran. You didn’t see anything, because it all happened too fast, and you were just glad to get away. And if the police want to know why you didn’t ring them straight away, you say you were too scared to stop running in case they came after you. You just wanted to get to Vicky’s, ’cos you knew you’d be safe here. Vicky gave you a brandy to calm you down, then told you to call the police.’

  ‘Check brainbox,’ Vicky said proudly. ‘That’s perfect. Just stick to it whatever you do, Maria. Get it tight in your head, and don’t change a word – no matter what they say. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Maria murmured, her stomach already twisting up inside.

  ‘Say it back to me,’ Vicky said.

  Listening as Maria repeated the story, she nodded. ‘Great. And you’re nervous, which is really convincing.’

  ‘’Cos it’s not an act,’ Maria said, biting her lip.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Vicky assured her, handing her the phone. ‘The sooner they get to your place, the sooner you’ll know if Joel’s all right. Not that he deserves your concern,’ she added scornfully. ‘But I know you – you’ll get yourself all worked up about him and end up taking him back out of pity.’

  34

  DI Seddon had asked to be informed if anything came in on his murder suspect. After many long hours of interrogation, Parry had finally gotten smart and asked for a duty solicitor. And it just so happened to have been Dan Reddish who came – one of the sharkiest twats Seddon had ever come across.

  Within minutes of arriving, Reddish had insisted that they released Parry, smugly informing Seddon that he had no grounds for holding his client given that the only ‘evidence’ was a somewhat grainy CCTV image – which, he successfully argued, really could have been anybody and would never be allowed as actual evidence in court. That, and the unsubstantiated word of two people that there was animosity between Parry and the victim. And one of these so-called ‘witnesses’ had reason to incriminate Parry out of spite, having discovered his infidelity earlier that same day, making her testimony unreliable.

  Other than that, they had no actual eyewitnesses, no fingerprints, and no DNA to link Parry to the scene. In other words, they had nothing.

  And, to top it all, Parry’s alibi had checked out, because once Honey Mason had been confronted with the videotape of her and Parry quite clearly together and on intimate terms at Quiro she’d finally admitted that he had spent that night with her. She’d also begged Seddon not to leak it to the press, or she would lose her part in the soap.

  Seddon had had to let Parry go, but he’d warned him in no uncertain terms that there was no way he would let it rest until he’d found something – anything – to place him at the scene.

  ‘I do hope you’re not attempting to intimidate my client?’ Reddish had said – nearly getting himself a smack for being such a pompous git.

  ‘Not at all,’ Seddon had replied, smiling icily. ‘Just letting him know that I never give up without a damn good fight.’

  Ironically, a fight was part of the reason he’d been woken now, as he was about to find out.

  ‘Better be good,’ he grumbled when he snatched up the receiver. ‘This is the third time this month I’ve been pulled out of my bed. And if my missus wakes up, I’m putting her on to you, so get ready for a rollicking!’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘But you left word that you wanted to be told if anything came up about that bloke you had in yesterday – Joel Parry.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ Seddon was already reaching for his pants.

  ‘We’ve just had a call from a Maria Price, reporting that he’s holed up in her flat. Seems he had a run-in with some armed men who kidnapped the pair of them.’

  ‘Do what?’ Seddon grunted, wondering what the hell that was all about.

  ‘There’s a couple of ARUs en route to the scene,’ the sergeant went on. ‘Girl’s pretty freaked, though. Won’t go home till we’ve got Parry out and made sure the attackers have gone. She reckons two of them were forcing her to go round the cashpoints and withdraw money for them, but a passing gang saw what was happening and jumped them.’

  ‘Shit!’ Seddon muttered. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘At her mate’s . . . Just give me a minute, I’ll get the address. There’s some uniforms already getting a statement off her. DI Cooper’s already at the scene.’

  Writing the address down, Seddon said, ‘Thanks. I’ll go and have a word when I’ve seen what’s going on.’

  The car park was off to the side of the block, overlooked by the stairwell, but not by the main apartment windows, and shielded from view of the road or canal side by high hedges. The developers had done this deliberately to give the residents maximum privacy, but they had also created the perfect arena for a crime.

  Pulling in by the gates behind the ARU vehicles and the two riot vans that were already there, Seddon got out and looked around. Seeing Sergeant Dalton from his station, he waved him over to get the low-down.

  ‘What’ve we got, Paul?’

  ‘Lot of blood over there.’ Dalton pointed through to where a lot of activity was going on. ‘No bodies, though, and no sign of the vehicle that was parked there last. Definitely a mass fight, ’cos we’ve got plenty of foot disturbance in that general area.’

  ‘People must walk up and down here a lot, getting in and out of their cars,’ Seddon remarked, squinting back at the scene. ‘Can’t be sure it was tonight, can we?’

  ‘Well, it’s mainly loose, like this,’ Dalton told him, kicking at the gravel underfoot. ‘This is still dry and relatively light. But over there, the wet stuff underneath is exposed, so it’s a lot darker.’

  ‘And the blood?’

  ‘Most of that’s in two areas on either side of where it looks like a vehicle was parked up before it skidded out,’ Dalton said. ‘Looks like they were jumped getting into it – which is basically what the caller told us. There are a few other patches scattered about, but they’re the main bits.’

  ‘Tyre prints?’

  ‘Mainly skid marks, but we’ve not been here long and they haven’t set the light up yet.’

  ‘What about the guy in the flat? Parry. Anyone spoken to him yet?’

  ‘No. There’s a unit up there at the moment figuring out a way to get in. They’ll let us know when it’s safe to go in, but we’ve been told to stay out till then. And you know how long that can take.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’ll nip over and have a word with the girl in the meantime,’ Seddon said, gazing up at the windows. Not that he expected to see anything. It was pretty much in darkness, the good residents sleeping soundly in their beds, blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding below. ‘
Give us a ring if they get Parry, will you?’ he said then. ‘I had him in as a suspect on a murder yesterday, and I had to let the bastard go. If this is anything to do with it, he’s mine.’

  ‘Will do,’ Dalton agreed. ‘But you’d best have a word with DI Cooper. This is his shout.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  The uniforms had finished taking Maria’s statement and were on their way down the stairs when Seddon arrived at Vicky’s block. He didn’t know the bloke, but he recognised WPC Claire Weeks.

  Nodding to the lad, he asked Weeks, ‘How’s the girl?’

  ‘Pretty shaken, sir,’ she replied. ‘We’ve said we’ll call in tomorrow, go over this again.’ She flapped the papers she was holding.

  ‘She on her own?’

  ‘No, she’s got a mate with her. Girl whose flat it is.’

  ‘Good. Right, well, off you go, then.’

  ‘Night, sir.’

  Seddon got a mouthful of peach air-freshener when he walked into Vicky’s flat, and a blast of ice-cold air from the open window. They’d obviously been having a good old smoke of the naughty stuff before calling the police in, but he couldn’t blame them. Maria had probably needed something to calm her down after the horrors of the last couple of days.

  Maria was sitting on the couch looking completely drained and shell-shocked, her lovely blue eyes clouded with shock and the pain of betrayal. The poor girl had certainly been through the mill, and Seddon felt truly sorry for her. He’d spoken to her at length yesterday and she’d seemed like a perfectly nice, respectable young lady. But that type always seemed to attract the lowlifes like Joel Parry. That kind of man could smell a soft touch a mile off.

  ‘How you doing?’ Seddon asked, sitting down at the other end of the couch.

  ‘All right,’ Maria said quietly. ‘I just . . .’ Pausing, she shrugged. Seddon was here to talk about what had happened, not how she was bearing up. ‘Joel’s at the flat, so I didn’t want to go back there,’ she said, as if to explain why she was here.

  ‘Probably just as well, under the circumstances,’ Seddon said.

  ‘Would you like a tea or a coffee?’ Vicky asked.

  ‘Er, yeah, a tea would be great, ta.’ Seddon smiled at her. He could murder a cup, as it happened.

  Looking back at Maria then, he said, ‘I know you’ve already given a statement, but do you think you could go over it again with me? I’ll try not to drag it out, but I just want to get a bigger picture of what’s going on; see if it’s related to Nigel Grayson, in any way.’

  ‘It’s not,’ Maria said, her hands still shaking as she reached for her cigarettes. Lighting one, she said, ‘Sorry . . . you don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Help yourself, pet.’ Seddon wished he could have one himself, but he’d have to wait till he got outside. ‘So, you say this is nothing to do with the murder? Sure it wasn’t someone trying to get revenge?’

  ‘No, the men that came to my flat have been after Joel for a long time,’ Maria told him, feeling guilty for talking about Joel as if he was a criminal – even though he was.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Well, last year when they were following me, Joel said it was because one of the men had thought he was a grass. He wasn’t, but he had to leave Scotland because everyone wanted to kill him when the man was sent to prison, but then the man got out and found out where Joel was, and that’s when they started following me.’

  Seddon held up a hand. ‘Sorry, love, but you’ll have to slow it down a bit. I didn’t really get a word of that. Start at the beginning, and bring it up to date from there. Joel lived in Scotland . . . ?’

  ‘Yeah, but I think he might have changed his name when he left, because the men were calling him Kyle.’

  Jotting this down, Seddon thanked Vicky for his tea when she carried three cups through. Then he listened as Maria told him everything she knew, and everything that had happened last night. She’d just reached the part about the gang jumping the men who were trying to take her to the cashpoints when Seddon’s mobile rang.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Standing up, he took it out of his pocket and answered it. Listening quietly then, he wandered into the hallway to finish the call in private.

  ‘Sorry, ladies, I’ll have to leave this till later, if you don’t mind,’ he said, coming back in. ‘Something’s come up and I’ve got to go. You’ll be staying here, won’t you?’ he asked Maria.

  ‘Well, I was thinking I should go back to the flat and get my things,’ she said. ‘I was just waiting for that policewoman to get in touch. She said she’d find out if Joel had gone yet.’

  ‘Stay here,’ Seddon told her firmly. Then, to Vicky, ‘Under no circumstances let her leave till I get back, okay?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Vicky said, frowning.

  ‘Wonder what that was about,’ Maria said when Vicky had shown Seddon out.

  ‘Probably got more questions for you,’ Vicky suggested, flopping down beside her.

  ‘Mummy . . .’ A little voice called from the hallway.

  ‘In here, Siobhan,’ Vicky called back. ‘Come and say hello to my friend.’

  A beautiful little girl in pink Barbie pyjamas came in, rubbing her huge dark eyes with a tiny hand. Going to Vicky, she climbed onto her knee and looked at Maria sleepily.

  ‘This is Maria,’ Vicky said, cuddling her. ‘Know how Cerisse at school is your very best friend? Well, Maria was mine when we were little like you.’

  Nodding, Siobhan rubbed her eyes again.

  ‘Ahh, did we wake you up?’ Vicky asked her.

  Siobhan shook her head. ‘The man did, talking on his phone. What’s a stiff, Mummy?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Vicky drew her head back and looked down into her daughter’s face. ‘Where did you hear a word like that?’

  ‘The man said it,’ Siobhan told her innocently. ‘He said, “Where’s the stiff – inside or out?”’

  Vicky and Maria exchanged a horrified look. Then Vicky shook her head, as if to say ‘Don’t say anything.’

  ‘Come on, sweetcakes,’ she said, lifting Siobhan up. ‘Let’s get you back to bed.’

  ‘But what did he mean, Mummy?’

  ‘Never you mind. That’s for big people to know.’

  ‘Oh God, Vicky,’ Maria said when her friend came back a couple of minutes later. ‘You don’t think . . .’

  ‘I don’t think anything,’ Vicky told her calmly. ‘That was probably nothing to do with this.’

  Carrying the cups through to the kitchen, she bit her lip. She hoped to God it wasn’t, because that meant that Leroy and his mates just might have killed somebody after all. And didn’t even know it.

  ‘Where is it?’ Seddon asked, finding Dalton by the security door, which was now propped open.

  ‘In the apartment,’ Dalton said, indicating upstairs with a jerk of his head. ‘Had a hell of a beating.’

  ‘And that killed him?’

  ‘No, the bullet through the head finished him off. Going up?’

  ‘Yeah. I want to know if it’s Parry.’

  The apartment’s lounge area was spacious, but filled with so many people that it looked cramped.

  ‘Where is it?’ Seddon asked, flashing his ID at one of the uniforms who was trying to block his path.

  ‘Bathroom, sir.’ The copper stepped back. ‘Forensics have just arrived.’

  ‘Don’t come in,’ a white suit called to him as he reached the bathroom door.

  Looking through, Seddon saw the body slumped beneath the running shower, a large hole in the centre of its forehead. Bloodstained water surrounded the body which was sitting over the plughole, stopping most of the water from escaping.

  It was Joel Parry.

  ‘You are?’ the attending pathologist asked, turning round now and pulling on his waterproof shoe protectors.

  ‘DI Seddon,’ Seddon told him, wondering how come there were so many faces he didn’t recognise around tonight. He’d been in the job too long if the new recruits were overtaking the
old crew.

  ‘Derek Corbett. Do you know him?’ Corbett nodded towards the body.

  ‘Yeah. I had him in as a suspect for a murder yesterday. Had to let him go for lack of evidence, though, so I was hoping this would have something to do with it and I’d get another shot at him.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Corbett said philosophically. ‘At least you can sleep knowing justice was served – one way or another.’

  Muttering something incomprehensible, Seddon left Corbett to it and went back down the stairs. What was the point of saying that he wouldn’t sleep, precisely because Parry had eluded his justice?

  ‘Is it your man?’ Dalton asked down below.

  Nodding, Seddon sighed heavily. ‘Yet another one gets away with murder, eh?’

  ‘You wanted him, huh?’

  ‘Wanted him . . . I wanted to nail his thieving backside to the wall – and Dan bloody Reddish’s next to it!’

  ‘I see,’ Dalton murmured, understanding his disappointment. Dan Reddish was getting quite a reputation for getting his clients off, only for them to reoffend almost immediately.

  ‘Ah, well . . .’ Seddon sighed again. ‘Nothing left for me to do here. Do us a favour and let Cooper know I’m breaking the news to the girlfriend, will you? I’m sure she’d rather have me tell her than that cold bugger.’

  Epilogue

  When Seddon told Maria that no one had come forward to claim Joel’s body, she offered to pay for the funeral – even though no trace had been found of the money he’d stolen from her. Bad as he’d been, she couldn’t let him have a pauper’s send-off when he had once meant so much to her, and an extra few grand on top of what he’d already had was hardly going to kill her. She didn’t attend it, though, so the mourning was left to the other women in Joel’s life: Angela, Honey – and Jippi.

  But she did go to Nigel’s funeral a few days later, and was shocked by the number of mourners that turned out. Apart from family, of whom there were relatively few, the rest were friends.