The Darkness of Death

by David Stuart Davies

  The Darkness of Death

  David Stuart Davies

  © David Stuart Davies 2010

  David Stuart Davies has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 2001, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in the U.K. in 2010 by Robert Hale Limited

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd

  To Katie

  the bubbles in my champagne

  the froth on my coffee

  the chewing gum on my bedpost overnight

  the love of my life

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Extract from Forests of the Night by David Stuart Davies

  Prologue

  London. Midnight. November 1943. A clear blue sky canopies the darkened sleeping metropolis. A few stars sprinkle the heavens and occasionally an errant spotlight scans the skies in search of alien aircraft.

  But it is a quiet night.

  The Thames rolls its leaden way through the city and, down by the Embankment, just beyond Westminster Bridge, the area is deserted until a large motor car, its hooded headlights carving a faint track along the road, squeals to a halt. The driver gets out and casually surveys the scene. It pleases him. There is no one in sight. No patrolling copper, no ARP Warden, no drunk wandering home, or no sex-starved couple taking advantage of one of the benches by the parapet. No one around to see him.

  The driver opens the boot of the car, still keeping an eye out for intruders on the scene. Slowly he heaves a weighty object from the interior. It flops heavily on to the road. The driver closes the boot and, with practised nonchalance, drags the object towards the parapet.

  And leaves it there.

  Mission accomplished, he hurries back to the car, a broad smirk on his face, and in a matter of seconds he has driven off into the shadows of night as though he never existed.

  *

  It is quite some time before anyone else appears along this stretch of the river. Shortly before 1 a.m. Police Constable Barraclough arrives dragging his weary feet on his nightly patrol. He is bored and fed up and longing for his bed. To his mind, quiet nights are the worst. He longs for a bit of action, something to liven up his lonely shift. In due course he notices the large shape huddled by the parapet. Mildly interested, he approaches it and very quickly determines that it is a body.

  Another drunk, no doubt.

  He bends down and shakes the chap’s shoulders. ‘Come on, matey. You can’t kip here,’ he says. ‘You’ll catch your death. Get yourself home and sleep it off.’

  There is no response. He shakes the man again, this time hard enough for his body to flop over on to his back and his pale face to stare up sightlessly at Constable Barraclough. He shines his torch on the man to get a better look. He is smartly dressed, white-haired and well nourished. Not the usual sort of drunk that the policeman encounters on his nightly perambulations. But what is really unusual about his appearance, something that causes Barraclough a great deal of consternation, is the amount of congealed blood around the man’s neck and splattered down the front of his coat. Then the astute constable observes the reason for this. This man is not drunk: he is dead. He has had his throat cut.

  One

  Leo Bernstein left behind the fug of smoke and the cacophony of the gaming room and made his way by the back stairs to his office. He felt weary, depressed and old. His body seemed to creak in unison with the old wooden stairs. Even the two brandies he’d consumed at the bar had done nothing to lift his spirits or dull the pain. In these last few days he had really felt his age. There was no longer a spring in his step or a fierce twinkle in his eyes. He was conscious of his overweight body with all its accumulated minor aches and pains and the tired, haggard face that glowered back at him from the shaving mirror. It was as though the cushion of enthusiasm and delight had been extracted from his soul.

  And he knew why.

  Apart from the dim rays of moonlight that slanted through the Venetian blinds, his office was in darkness and he decided to leave it that way. With care he made his way to his desk and lowered himself down in to the large leather chair. He sighed and reached out in the gloom for his silver cigar box, scooping up one of the fat Havanas. As he did so, a match flared in the darkness and hovered near his face.

  ‘Allow me,’ said a voice, a rich, velvety, female voice.

  ‘What the…’ he cried in surprise, reaching out swiftly and switching on the desk lamp.

  The room materialized around him in shadowy relief. Standing by the desk was a woman holding the proffered match. She was tall and slim but her face was beyond the pool of light cast by the lamp.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  The girl held the dying match to her face just long enough for him to see her features clearly before she blew it out.

  ‘Gina!’ he cried.

  ‘Yes, Gina.’

  ‘My God, you nearly gave me a heart attack.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Uncle Leo. I guess I’ve got used to doing things in secret for so long, they become a habit to me and I forget the effect that this might have on other people.’

  Without a word, Leo rose from his chair and moved around the desk to face the girl.

  ‘Is it really you?’

  She grinned and nodded. ‘In the flesh.’

  ‘Oh, Gina,’ he said, embracing her and kissing her lightly on the cheek. She responded by hugging him tightly. They stood like that for over a minute, each one not saying a word.

  At last Leo broke free and switched on the lights. ‘Let me look at you properly. It is ages since I last saw you. You had pigtails then,’ he said, standing back to gaze at the girl. She was in her late twenties, very pretty with boyish, narrow features, dark lustrous hair and two astonishingly vibrant grey eyes.

  ‘Will I do?’ she said mischievously.

  Leo smiled. ‘You are beautiful, my dear.’

  She returned the smile but said nothing.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he asked. He could not keep the concern out of his voice.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘You’re not planning on going to the funeral?’

  ‘Of course. As soon as I got your letter I flew here immediately. How could I not? But don’t worry, I will not be part of the official party. I don’t want to upset any apple carts just yet, but I do intend to be present when they bury my father.’

  At the mention of Gina’s father, his brother, Leo felt a wave of despair crash down upon him and his shoulders slumped once more. ‘I am so very sorry.’

  Gina perched on the arm of a chair and lit a cigarette. ‘I need to know the details. Your letter was sketchy.’

  ‘The details are sketchy, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He was murdered, wasn’t h
e?’

  Leo nodded. ‘We assume so.’

  ‘Assume.’ Gina spat the word out in disgust.

  ‘Well, yes, Michael was killed but whether this was a result of a robbery that went wrong or whether he was targeted…I don’t know.’

  ‘Please don’t give me that hogwash, Uncle Leo. My father was found on the Embankment with his throat cut. This wasn’t the result of a bungled robbery. You know more. Who is in the frame?’

  Leo hesitated for a moment, but realized that to prevaricate would be foolish and wrong. The girl had a right to know. ‘We think it was Paulo Ricotti.’

  ‘Who the hell’s he?’

  Leo afforded himself a sour grin. ‘He fancies himself as one of the new big shots around town. A bully boy and a gangster. Your dad and he were involved in a big deal for some illegal booze. But it was a deal that was going wrong. Paulo wanted more than his fair share.’ Leo shrugged. ‘You know your father: he wasn’t going to allow that. I told him, warned him, let the boy have his head on this deal. Don’t rock the boat. But he wouldn’t be told. He knew that Paulo’s a ruthless, volatile bastard, but when Michael smelled a big profit, he went for it despite the risks.’

  ‘But he was always careful.’

  ‘Up to a point. Less so of late. Old age, I suppose, made him less astute. Anyway, I stayed clear of the business. To be honest, your father and I had not been seeing eye to eye all that much recently. I wanted to back pedal a bit on the illegal side of things now that the war is in full swing. It seemed a bit unfair to cheat on your own country…the club does all right. We have a healthy turnover without the need…’

  ‘You wanted to go legit?’ Gina made no attempt to keep the surprise and disdain out of her voice.

  Leo shrugged his shoulders. ‘In a way. I’m getting a bit long in the tooth for the other stuff now.’

  ‘You’re only two years older than my dad.’

  ‘I guess I sucked on a different teat.’

  ‘So you reckon this Ricotti got rid of Dad because of him being a bit of a threat to his profits.’

  That’s what Leo thought, but he hadn’t really admitted the fact to himself, let alone verbalized it. He shifted awkwardly and then nodded. ‘I suppose so,’ he said quietly.

  ‘There’s no other likely candidate?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it’s Paulo Riccotti.’ Gina’s pretty face had turned sour and her lips creased into a snarl.

  ‘The police thought so, too—but the swine had a watertight alibi. There’s not a speck of dirt on him. He is a clever son of a bitch.’

  ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Do?’ Leo swung round and faced the girl again, his eyes moist.

  ‘You’re not going to let him get away with it, are you? This Ricotti. He killed your brother—my father.’

  ‘What can we do? We’re in a strait-jacket here. If anything happens to him, the police will be down on us like a ton of bricks.’

  ‘So you get yourselves a bleedin’ watertight alibi as well.’

  ‘It’s not that easy.’ Leo mumbled the words, embarrassed at their weakness.

  ‘What about “the boys”? Have they got no backbone? Are they bloody milksops? Don’t they want to revenge their uncle’s death?’

  ‘We’re not killers, Gina. We run a small family business that steps over the legal boundary from time to time but we’ve never been involved in violence…murder.’

  ‘Apart from the early days,’ she sneered.

  ‘The early days were a long time ago.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ Gina snapped, her eyes flashing with anger. ‘You are a bunch of bloody cowards. Well, I can tell you, I’m not going to stand by while some jumped-up little creep gets way with murdering my father. I’ll sort the bastard out myself. It’s my call anyway, I suppose. Don’t you worry, Uncle Leo, I’ll make sure that you and my lily-livered cousins don’t get any blood on your delicate hands.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Gina, don’t do anything rash. We can sort it out in time.’

  ‘I’m going to sort it out now. But, as I say, don’t fret, it will be my affair. However, I can tell you this, Uncle Leo. I’m back. I’m back for good and, as the eldest, I shall be taking over my father’s share of the business—that’s fifty-five per cent which gives me the controlling interest. I think it is time that Vic and Anthony found out that they’ve got a cousin, don’t you? A cousin who, you can assure them, is a tough, hard-hearted bitch. A chip off the old block.’

  Two

  The funeral party was small. Less than ten in attendance and two of those were policemen. They looked conspicuous like official twins in their identical belted raincoats and brown trilbies, standing somewhat apart from the real mourners. No doubt they were there not just to pay their respects to a murder victim, thought Gina, but to keep an eye out for any suspicious character who might turn up—the murderer for instance, gloating over his triumph. How naïve, she thought, but that’s the bleedin’ police for you.

  One thing was for sure: they hadn’t clocked her standing some twenty feet off in the shrubbery watching the proceedings. She scanned the faces of the others gathered around the graveside. There was Uncle Leo of course, his haggard face eloquently displaying his pain and anguish, and his two sons, her cousins Vic and Anthony. She’d never met them and had only seen photographs, but she was able to identify which was which. Her dad had told her quite a lot about them. He confessed to her that he didn’t think much of his brother’s offspring. ‘They haven’t got that Bernstein spark,’ he’d said, cradling her face. ‘Not like you, angel.’ She smiled at the memory.

  Vic was tall and dark and quite handsome in a gaunt kind of way. He held himself in a stiff awkward manner and his face was a taut bland mask. She had no idea what he was feeling or thinking. Occasionally he would look off into the distance as though his thoughts were miles away—but what thoughts they were she could not begin to fathom. Anthony was shorter and plumper with large bulging eyes set within a flabby, flushed-red face. He seemed to be acting out the role of diligent mourner, trying to look suitably sad and distressed, but Gina observed that he kept shifting from one foot to the other and twisting his hat around in his fingers as though he were bored. There were two grey-haired men in their seventies whom Gina assumed were friends of her father. And there was a middle-aged woman she had never seen before. Her deferential behaviour suggested that she was a secretary or some kind of employee. It was, thought Gina, with a sharp pang of sadness, a small number indeed to mark the passing of a man’s life.

  An image of her father flashed into her mind. It wasn’t the man she had last seen some six months ago, the overweight ageing fellow who had developed a stiff gait and rheumy eyes. It was the young Michael with the spring in his step and the irresistible smile that constantly lit up his face: the man who had been a regular visitor to her at the convent in Ireland. He always bore gifts and flowers and crushed her with firm loving embraces. He had always wanted a better life for her—a life away from shady deals and crime, but to her he always carried an aura of glamour with him that Gina wanted for herself. Her father was, in many ways, her hero. She saw nothing wrong in what he did. Just as his charming exterior masked a ruthless iron will, she fostered the same qualities in herself. Pretty as she was as a child, a prettiness that developed into beauty as she matured, she made herself immune to sentiment. Self-contained, determined and ferociously ambitious, Gina Bernstein was very much her father’s daughter.

  When the coffin had been lowered into the grave, Leo cast a handful of earth on to it and intoned a few words. His voice was hoarse and hesitant and Gina could not make out what he said but she could tell that he was close to tears. Hesitantly Vic put his arm around his father for support while the priest concluded the ceremony.

  It was all over in ten minutes. A man’s life erased in such a short time. Sixty-odd years of living now encased in a wooden box stowed in the damp ground to rot. An overwhelming s
ense of grief threatened her, but Gina fought it off. She was not going to cry. It was not in her nature. She was not going to mourn until her father’s death had been revenged.

  When the funeral party had departed, Gina emerged from the shrubbery and stood by the open grave. She dropped a single red rose down on to the earth-strewn lid of the coffin.

  ‘Goodbye, Pops,’ she said quietly.

  Her eyes were dry but clearly mirrored the pain and the determination she felt. As she gazed down at the grave, the breeze blew the stray wisps of her dark hair which had escaped her hat down across her forehead but she ignored them, her attention never wavering. She had come to make a promise and a promise she would make. As she stood alone with the early morning mist shifting gently around her tall, slim silhouette, the over-riding passion that filled her heart and mind was anger. It gave her strength and shielded her from the fierce autumn chill and, more importantly, the real pain of loss. She was her father’s daughter. There was no doubt about that and she drew comfort and determination from all that this implied. As she made her silent promise to the man she had loved and worshipped now lying in the wooden box before her, strangely she found herself smiling. Not a broad, bright smile, but one that was gentle but also cruel. The edges of her red lips curled slightly and her eyes brightened for a moment. She had given her word. Now it was time to act.

  *

  Paulo Ricotti gazed at himself in the mirror of the gentleman’s lavatory at the Chameleon Club and grinned back at himself. He was pleased with what he saw. He thought himself handsome. Rudolph Valentino reincarnated: the slim, sallow features with the aquiline nose and brooding brown eyes, the black hair slicked back with a patent sheen and, above all, the sardonic aura of vain Latin arrogance which not only informed his features but all his gestures and body movements also.

  However, what Paulo Ricotti did not possess was the alluring Italian accent to match his appearance. Born within the sound of Bow Bells of Italian immigrant parents, he spoke with a soft and slightly grating Cockney brogue.