by Geoff Small
“Did either of you want the relationship to become more than ‘frolicking’?”
“No.” Frau Fuchs answered without hesitation, a little too fast for Curzon’s liking, and her eyes seemed to wander guiltily after declaring it.
“So – and I want the truth this time – he was at your party wasn’t he?”
“Yes. But we never had time to speak. I was busy attending to everybody and then, when I did go looking for him, he’d gone.”
“Did you invite him to the party?”
“No. Like I said, it would not be good for me to be seen with him. In fact, I was angry with him for turning up like that.”
“So how did he find out then? About the party I mean.”
“I don’t know, it was either just coincidence or he maybe heard me talking to Anne about it…she’s my colleague up at the centre.”
“By coincidence, do you mean he could have been invited by a friend of his, who was also a friend or a friend of a friend of yours, without even realising it was your party?”
“Yes. Yes, that’s right.”
Frau Fuchs spoke as if the idea had never entered her head until now, but liked the sound of it because it helped her situation.
“Ok. Ms Fuchs, we have acquired a paper napkin from your property with Bobby McQueen’s blood on it. Can you provide any explanation as to how that blood might have got there?”
She shook her head, suddenly looking extremely worried.
“No. No, I’m sorry, I can’t. You are frightening me now…I would like to speak to a lawyer please.”
“Ok, ok. Just one last thing if you could. Was there anybody up at the probation centre who Bobby might have had issues with, anybody that might have had a reason to harm him?”
“No. Definitely not. He was very much liked by everybody. He was, how do you say – a bit of a lad?” Curzon smirked. “Hold on a minute though.” Frau Fuchs pointed her right forefinger at her interrogators as if having a ‘eureka’ moment. “A carload of guys who had nothing to do with the centre turned up one day looking for him…didn’t seem very friendly either.”
“Can you remember what they looked like? What sort of car they were driving?”
“Crew cuts, tracksuits, a white BMW convertible.”
“Ok. Well, we’ll speak to you again, just as soon as your legal representation arrives. In the meantime, feel free to enjoy the amenities in one of our ‘custody suites’.”
Outside in the corridor, Curzon turned to Deegan.
“I want her house turned upside down. Obviously we’re looking for any serrated knives first and foremost, but cameras, phones and computers could be key I reckon…give us an idea of who exactly was at this party.”
Within two hours the mission had been accomplished, evidence bags full of knives from kitchen draws were being analysed at the lab and over two hundred images of the party had been taken from a digital camera. Among these Curzon discovered that several featured Tommy Franklin: a recently retired, three times Scottish title winning soccer player who now managed lowly St. Clyde F.C. These photos were of particular interest because they showed Franklin manning the barbeque, where, of course, he’d have had instant access to a murder weapon. Curzon was just getting excited at the prospect of ruining a millionaire’s day when something more gripping attracted his attention in the background of one of the snaps. It was Frau Fuchs’ daughter – the same daughter who was supposed to be in Germany. When he mentioned this to Deegan she explained that they’d also found flyers from the Ménage à Trance nightclub in her bedroom, flyers which could only have been handed out in the early hours of the morning before the party. This was significant because one of the few things they had learnt about the deceased was that he’d been a regular at this very trance music club.
Clutching the photo, Curzon stormed out of the office and jogged downstairs to Frau Fuchs’ cell, where she was sat on a blue rubber mattress on a concrete bed, crying and moaning to her lawyer about the police searching her home and the violation of her privacy. They both looked up on hearing keys jangling in the door and were startled by the violent manner in which Curzon burst in, skimming the photo into the suspect’s face.
“What’s the story Frau Fuchs?!” he roared.
She fumbled the photograph which had fallen on her lap, then stared at it in evident horror.
“Did our local Casanova unwittingly have your precious little daughter at the Ménage à Trance nightclub last Friday night?”
Frau Fuchs looked away as if unable to entertain the thought. “Please.”
“Then, on Saturday, he turned up at your party as invited by her. One way or another she found out about you two. There was a big argument. You stormed off to your room, had a bit of a cry. You don’t know what happened after this point and because of that you’ve been protecting your daughter, because you’re frightened that she may well be the murderer.”
Frau Fuchs’ lawyer had been just as taken aback by Curzon’s entrance as she had been and, as a consequence, took about thirty seconds to make his presence felt.
“D.C.I Curzon! I will not tolerate this aggressive and intimidating approach…what’s more, neither will the law! My client has nothing to say and when and if she does, it will be in a proper, Criminal Procedure Act abiding environment!”
Curzon completely ignored him. “Where is she Ms Fuchs? Where is your daughter?”
But Ms Fuchs, although shaking, remained silent, staring dead straight ahead at the chipped grey wall in front of her, irritating Curzon to such a degree that he slammed the cell door behind him on his way out.
Chapter 9
Now that he had to find the daughter, Curzon returned to Frau Fuchs’ house and personally went through every detail of the nineteen-year-old’s bedroom, until he found a red, leather-bound diary, its final entry made the day of the party, chronicling her kiss with a ‘hottie’ called Bobby the previous night at Ménage à Trance and describing how she couldn’t wait to see him at her mother’s barbeque. The fact that there’d been no entry since seemed to validate his hypothesis: that its owner, Monika Fuchs, had rushed away quite suddenly and unexpectedly in the wake of some tumultuous event. The other important thing he gleaned from the diary was the first name of her best friend, meaning that poor DC McKay would now have to draw up a shortlist of all the nineteen-year-olds in the city by the name of Lauren. Once the machine went into action, though, things moved remarkably fast and, by nine o’clock that evening Curzon and Deegan were stood on the landing outside Lauren Smith’s apartment in Hillhead, badges in hand. They only had to knock once before a jovial girl with hazel coloured curly hair answered the door, filling the stair with the trance music which was playing on the stereo behind her. She wasn’t the least perturbed when they asked for Monika and didn’t hesitate to ask them inside, where their quarry was sat on the sofa in the lotus position, drinking red wine. If anything she was even more attractive than her picture, because not only was her hair as blonde as lightening, but she had the most striking baby blue eyes that had to be engaged to be believed. When asked what she knew about Bobby McQueen’s murder she looked genuinely nonplussed and claimed not to have spoken to her mother or seen any news or papers in the intervening period since Saturday night. Either way, Curzon was obliged to take her to the station, where he wasted no time in going to Frau Fuchs’ cell to announce the fact triumphantly.
“So maybe you’d like to tell us the truth now, before she does?”
Frau Fuchs jumped from her rubber mattress and made a dash for the open cell door, where she was restrained by Curzon while shrieking down the corridor:
“Monika! Don’t say anything! Don’t say a word until you have a lawyer! Whatever you may think of me, don’t go and ruin your life by speaking to these people!”
Not that Monika would have heard anything, because she was already sat in one of the interview rooms with DS Denise Deegan, ready to go. When Curzon arrived and took a seat, he slammed her red diary down on the table, c
ausing her to experience the same harrowing sense of violation her mother had complained about earlier.
“We know that you kissed Bobby in the early hours of Saturday morning. We also know that the last time anybody saw him alive was at your mother’s party on Saturday night.”
“At least I’ll never have to see him again.” Monika sniffled, trying to hold back the tears of frustration and anger she felt at being effectively kidnapped and having her private thoughts mulled over by middle aged strangers. “The very thought of him makes me feel sick,” she said, in a very soft and attractive, educated Scottish accent.
“Sick enough to kill?” Curzon asked abruptly.
Monika shook her head and turned her face to Deegan for a moment, as if expecting her to understand what a man obviously couldn’t.
“Because the way things are looking, Bobby was murdered round at your house.”
Monika shook her head again, lower lip hanging as if in disbelief.
“So, I take it you witnessed him leave the house in good health then?” Curzon continued.
“No, no I didn’t actually see him leave.”
“Who else did he speak to at the party?”
“Nobody really.”
“Nobody really? He didn’t speak to your mother then?”
“Oh yes, they were doing plenty of talking when I found them, if you know what I mean?” Monika raised her eyebrows. “I still can’t believe they were actually doing it in my bedroom.” She turned her head towards the wall, screwing her face up in disgust. “But then nothing that woman does really shocks me anymore…she’s a whore! That’s why my dad left us…you know, she only does that social workers job so she can get laid by rough young criminals. I honestly think she’s systematically trying to fuck her way through every one of Glasgow’s young offenders.”
Indeed, it had been a source of great puzzlement to Curzon as to how a social worker managed to afford a seven hundred thousand pound townhouse. After further investigation, it transpired that Frau Fuchs’ ex-husband had accumulated an estimated ten million pounds from his Silicon Glen based electronics firm, at least fifty per cent of which had found its way into her bank account as part of their divorce settlement. Knowing this, it seemed highly probable that young Monika was right and that the social work centre was nothing more than a stud farm for her nymphomaniac mother. Frau Fuchs’ anxieties about jeopardizing her job had had nothing to do with losing her livelihood, but everything to do with losing access to an environment which provided rich pickings for someone with her particular sexual proclivities, i.e. working class bad boys. In fact, Curzon had noted parallels between her distress at the prospect of losing her supply of young men and that of junkies he’d had in custody, when they think that they’re not going to get out of the cells in time for their next hit.
“So what did you do when you discovered them then? How did you react?”
Monika shrugged her shoulders self-consciously. “Screamed, called my mother all the names under the sun, threw a perfume bottle at that horrible creep Bobby then ran out. I thought I was gonna get a slap, coz he chased after me.”
“Really?” Deegan interrupted, exaggerating her concern in an attempt to get Monika to gush information. “My God, did he catch you?”
“No. I hid in the stairwell that goes down to our cellar and watched him run outside.”
“I thought you said you didn’t see him leave?” Curzon interjected, retaking exclusive control of the interview again.
“He came back. I was upstairs, packing stuff into a backpack in my room and I heard his voice outside in the garden, right below my window.”
“What was he saying? Can you remember?”
“I didn’t hear that much because of that horrible modern jazz crap my mother and her cronies all listen to. But there was a brief moment when the music stopped and I heard him saying to someone: ‘Remember me? Eh? Do you? Do you remember me?’”
“And was there a reply?”
“Don’t know. The music resumed and I never heard another thing.”
Curzon decided they’d asked enough questions for the time being, but before terminating the interview he got Monika to look through the photos from the party, asking her to name any of the people he simply didn’t like the look of; most notably a weedy, weasel-faced, middle-aged man with wispy fair hair, wearing a banana yellow and white Hawaiian shirt with chinos. This garishly dressed character was helping out on the barbeque, next to Tommy Franklin, the ex-footballer.
“Oh that’s Alistair.”
“What’s he like?”
“Alistair? Oh, he’s a lovely fella…it’s a shame.”
“A shame? Why, what’s up, is he ill? He looks ill.”
Monika afforded herself a little laugh. “No, it’s just that he’s really, really liked my mum for years…he’ll do anything for her, hence the reason he’s operating the barbeque.”
“And your mother’s not interested?”
“Not in that way, no. She’s too busy screwing axe murderers to have time for someone normal like him. But he won’t give up. No matter how many affairs my mother has, he’s still always there, hanging about on the periphery of their crowd, following her around just in case she changes her mind. He’s definitely totally in love with her, the poor fellow.”
Chapter 10
Another angle had opened up now, which Curzon couldn’t really pursue until ten o’clock the following morning, when he visited Alistair Meaks, the lovesick weasel, at his West End flower shop. Initially posing as just another customer, the policeman observed this nervy, weak looking man smarming round elderly female customers with a trembling, inoffensive voice and even more shaky hands as he gathered the bouquets, which became almost invisible against the multi coloured, short-sleeved shirt in a Picasso print he was wearing.
Eventually, after about twenty minutes of browsing the flora, Curzon was the only ‘customer’ left in the shop.
“Hi there, can I help you sir?”
The fawning proprietor’s palsied voice slithered tentatively up Curzon’s spine and into his ear, exciting the very opposite effect to that of the innocuousness intended. ‘Oh God, please let it be him,’ he thought to himself as he turned to face the weasel, whose eyes – of a weak piss yellow – darted away before the detective could capture them with his own. On seeing Curzon’s badge, the creature immediately turned his back and scurried to the door, putting the catch on and changing the OPEN sign to CLOSED, preventing his visitor from witnessing his initial facial reaction in the process. He seemed to hesitate a moment before turning back round, almost as if he were taking a deep breath and bracing himself, psyching himself up even for his big act. When he did finally turn to face Curzon again he was sporting a nervous grin, of the ‘please don’t hit me’ variety, which made the investigator want to do precisely that.
“How can I help you chief inspector?” he asked in his terminally servile manner, before disappearing behind the central display of flowers, so that Curzon really did feel as if he were conducting a conversation with some neurotic stoat.
“It’s about Matilda Fuchs’ party last Saturday night.”
Even more irritated now, Curzon raised his voice so that it would carry across the tiered display of foxgloves, tulips and red roses that stood between them, all huddled together in their black plastic buckets of water.
The weasel re-emerged round the opposite, shop counter end of the central display, clutching several dancing sunflowers.
“I thought as much,” he said solemnly. “It’s a terrible affair, not least for poor Matilda.”
His nervous grin had now given way to a priestly simper, trying to exude sympathy for everyone involved in the tragedy. It was so sickening in fact, that Curzon felt an urge to grab him by the scruff of his trembling, chicken neck and drown him in one of his buckets.
“Mr Meaks, you were in charge of the barbeque on the night in question, is that right?”
“Yes, yes I was?”
Li
ke a piece in a kaleidoscope, Meaks’ permanent smile changed character yet again, this time looking smug and self-congratulatory, as if to say: ‘yes, I help people all the time you know, it’s what I do, I’m a really nice guy.’
“Can you tell me what you recollect about that night…anything that might be of relevance to the case…anything about anyone, even something little like somebody being in an unusual mood, maybe?”
“Yes, yes I can actually. It was just past ten o’clock – I know that coz dusk was starting to fall – when this young hoodlum I’d never seen before came swaggering into the garden, crew cut hair, jeans, navy blue T-shirt, football tattoo on his forearm. He walked straight past us and up on to the lawn, then washed his face in the birdbath…I suppose that counts as unusual doesn’t it?”
Curzon nodded. “You said ‘us’? Who else was there?”
“It was just me and Tommy out there at the time cooking up the rest of the venison burgers.”
“Tommy?” Curzon inquired disingenuously.
“Yes, yes, Tommy Franklin, the footballer? Great guy…we’re great friends,” Meaks gloated nauseatingly. “Anyway, while this character was doing his ‘ablutions’ Tommy made a sharp exit, before he was recognized and no doubt harassed about football for the next three hours…that happens a lot to the poor fellow when he bumps into these morons with nothing else in their lives except ‘the match’.” Meaks rolled his eyes exasperatedly before continuing. “So, muggins here was left alone with this individual. I was a bit on edge, coz I’d never seen him before and, at the risk of sounding snobby, he didn’t really belong…if you get my drift?”
As somebody who’d never belonged himself and had been excluded as a child simply because of circumstances beyond his control, Curzon knew exactly what the weasel meant and detested him for it.
“Once he’d finished his wash, sure as God made little green apples, he came down to me at the barbeque, all familiar and matey and domineering like these lot from the schemes usually are: ‘Eh ‘pal’, chuck us one of them there burgers ‘pal’ will you ‘pal’?’ So I reluctantly stuffed one in a bun and handed it to him, hoping he’d be on his way, but it only encouraged him, and I couldn’t slip off coz the barbeque kit would have probably been gone by the time I’d got back!” Meaks giggled self-consciously. “Anyway, once he’d wolfed his food down, in about two seconds flat, he began banging on about what a ‘top guy’ I was, and what a ‘great burger’ I cooked, then started rummaging in his pockets until he found a little plastic wrapped lump of cannabis and thrust it into my hand. In the process he accidently dropped a couple of wraps of what looked like harder stuff on the floor. I was just about to point this out when Matilda appeared, looking pretty damned angry. She shouted at him: ‘What are you doing here?’ At first I assumed she was vexed because some passing stranger had gate-crashed her party, so when she turned to go back into the house and he followed her, I thought I’d better tag along to make sure everything was alright.”
