Tom approached circumspectly, weaving through the maze of desks in the newsroom, greeting workmates, slapping raised palms and returning smiles. Fitzgerald remained head down, eyes fixed on his screen, pretending he didn’t know that Capgras was descending on him.
Tom waited behind his old friend, a print-out clutched in his paw, like a cub reporter, anxious to please and not sure where he stood. Fitzgerald didn’t turn or say a word, but he held out a hand and took the paper, read it through slowly. Several times. Jon was a proper news man. He knew this was a smokescreen. “Murder?”
Tom nodded.
“The writer?”
“It’s that obvious?” So why couldn’t the police see it?
“Any evidence?”
Coincidences, strange resonance, too many to ignore, nothing you could bank on. Nothing a lawyer wouldn’t toss into the waste bin. “Nothing that would stand up in court.”
Fitzgerald snorted through his nose and rolled his jaw as though chewing on stale hay. “What more you got?”
Tom gave him details of the unpublished manuscript, how a sculptor who turns serial killer out of revenge at being slighted, and for publicity for his new work.
“Still not much,” Jon said. “You sure there’s anything to this?”
Tom told him about the book blogger.
“Police in the states? Get them on record?”
“Hard to do, unless I come on strong about Middleton. Might give away an exclusive.”
“It’s not much without it,” Jon said. “Think it over. Give it a try. And go see Middleton. It needs something from him. Come back with those and we’ll look at it.”
Tom sighed. “Don’t blame me if this breaks all over. He’s famous enough. It’s front page tabloid: crime writer turns serial killer, bumps off his own publisher.”
“We’ll take the chance,” Jon said. “But you know how it is. Can’t accuse a man of murder. Need an arrest to hang it on. The real story waits until sentencing is done. But see what you can get and we’ll look at it again.”
Tom thanked him and made small talk, asked about wife and kids, the normal stuff. He dropped by the desk of a former colleague, slipped him a piece of paper. “Find out where he lives.”
Five minutes later, before he’d even left the building, his phone chimed at him to say an email had arrived. He checked it in the lift on the way to reception. Two addresses: one in the west country, a holiday home. And the other in central London. A city man? He didn’t seem the type. Tom had been sure Middleton would live in Surrey or Hampshire, a leafy village full of nice folk and old houses. But maybe he thrived on the energy of the capital. It gripped the strangest of people.
The address gave him an idea. He knew the area: expensive, but not posh. Too close to dangerous streets for that, too close to squalor and noise, to traffic and rough sleepers bundled in doorways once darkness fell. There was an opportunity. Surveillance wasn’t his thing. Too slow, too dull. But getting the right people for the job: that was a Tom Capgras trick of the trade.
✬✬✬
He needed to find a homeless gent, which in central London around dusk in Autumn ought to have been like searching out flies on a dungheap. Not just any old vagrant, though – someone hungry for cold, hard cash, willing to brave foul weather and perform a stake-out, overnight and into the following morning, no matter what.
He pulled his collar up, his hat down, and glanced towards the surveillance camera mounted on a nearby building. He scowled at it, his mouth hidden by his scarf. They’d need more than facial recognition software to track Tom Capgras as he moved around town.
A lusty wind hurled scraps of rubbish and a storm of dust down the street. He turned his face away to protect his eyes and surged onward like a Grimsby trawler battling a North Sea gale. He ducked into an alleyway that he knew well, often used as a makeshift dormitory by gentlemen of the road. The first of the evening shift was already setting out his cardboard, claiming his space.
The tramp eyed Capgras suspiciously. Tom was used to it. There was an irony to his build and posture. Even coppers thought he was police at times. He looked like plain clothes or special branch. He’d interviewed the Prime Minister once that way, when all the other press had been cleared out. None of the uniforms approached him. It could have been a scoop, if only the man had found something, anything interesting to say for himself. But that’s politicians for you. Even caught off guard, they’ve got a soundbite. Never any truth. Never any darkness.
Capgras nodded at the vagrant and held up a twenty pound note. “There’s another two of these,” he said. “If you’ll watch a door for me, all night.”
“Watching? What door? Why? You police?”
“Press.”
The man spat on the floor in disgust. Capgras didn’t blame him. He felt much the same way himself about the grand old fourth estate. Of all the hundreds of reporters and editors he’d worked with and met, he couldn’t think of one he’d trust with his grandmother’s diary. Not even Jon Fitzgerald.
Definitely not Jon Fitzgerald.
“This ain’t sleaze,” he told the tramp. “It’s about justice.”
The man’s eyes danced with mockery. The press didn’t do that kind of thing, the eyes said. Newspaper men took photos of celebrities, oozed opinion and twisted truth. They didn’t fight for what’s right. Not any more if they ever did.
I’m different, Capgras wanted to say, but there was no point in arguing. The man would do it for money or not at all. “Believe what you want,” Capgras said. “But I’m good for the cash and no one gets harmed except a bad guy who hurt some nice folks.”
“Do it yourself, if it’s so noble,” the tramp said. But his eyes were fixed on the prize: two twenty-pound notes which Capgras clutched in his fist.
“All you have to do it watch a door, overnight. There’s two more, just like these, if you see this man.” Capgras held up a photograph of Arthur Middleton.
“He don’t look so special,” said the tramp. “Where is this door?”
“Follow me.”
“There somewhere to keep warm?”
“There’s a shop entrance opposite that will be ideal for your needs.”
“I ain’t staying awake all night.”
“Until midnight is fine. You up early?”
“Before dawn. Always.”
“I’ll be back at six. If you see this man arrive or leave, you let me know?”
“How.”
Capgras handed him a cheap pay-as-you-go phone with ten pounds of credit on it. “Keep it, after the job. My numbers in there. Call or text, up to you.”
“Let’s have the money then.”
Capgras handed it over. “I’m Tom, by the way.”
“They call me ‘Captain’. Don’t ask why.”
“I won’t.” He’d learnt the hard way not to put too many questions to a man such as this. The answers were always too real, too close, reminding him how anyone might end up here. It could be him, or Ollie. It could be dad. Or his mum. No one was immune. Not even Arthur Middleton, with his Mercedes and his town house, his country bolt hole and his steady sales.
The tramp rearranged his cardboard. “If I get moved on, the deal’s off,” the man said.
Tom grunted his agreement. “Text me if it happens.”
He went around the corner, bought a burger and chips and hot tea, took it back to the tramp. “Anything else you need?”
“Good book to read, maybe.”
“In the dark?”
“I’ve got a torch.”
Tom handed him a paperback copy of Unchaste Action he was carrying in his shoulder bag. “Your man over there wrote it.”
“Really? A writer? What’s he done?”
“Killed someone,” Tom said. “Don’t approach him. Don’t go near. And don’t let him see you with that. He’ll know something’s wrong.”
“Don’t you worry, lad, I ain’t so foolish. I wasn’t always like this.”
Of course he wasn�
��t. That was the first rule of investigating anything. It was close to being the first rule of life: no one is ever what they seem.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Yesterday's News
The man looked, at first glance, to be fast asleep, slumped into the corner of the shop doorway. The tramp whom Capgras had paid to watch Middleton’s door was in severe dereliction of his duty. Extenuating circumstances included the total absence of any breath in his lungs, life in his eyes or a soul to animate his sorry corpse. Capgras felt for a pulse in the man’s neck, though there was little doubt he was dead and had been for several hours. His skin was cold to the touch.
There was no sign of a struggle or injuries. Capgras eased a half bottle of whisky out of the man’s hand and sniffed it. Nothing there, as far as he could tell. But a strong, blended scotch could overpower most scents and plenty of poisons were odourless and tasteless. And someone who has spent a career writing crime novels probably knew all about the best ones to use.
Tom sighed, looked up and down the street. No one was around at this hour. He took out his phone and stared at it: to call the police or not? There would be awkward questions about the surveillance. They still wouldn't believe this was the work of Arthur Middleton. It would be dismissed: just another vagrant who drank himself to death on a cold night.
Tom cursed himself for leading this man into danger. What had he seen, what could he possibly have witnessed that meant he had to be murdered? Or had Middleton lost all sense of perspective? Was he killing for the fun of it? Or as a taunt?
The police took twenty minutes to arrive, even though he called it in as a suspicious death. The uniforms that attended looked askance at his story. He referred them to DI Whitaker at Charing Cross CID, told them it was linked with several other deaths, and that they needed to do a proper post mortem, keep the whisky and get it tested for poison. Sweep the area for DNA and any other clues they could find.
The coppers pretended to thank him but they told him to move along and the way they said it implied they were tired of nut-cases and conspiracy freaks.
Capgras phoned Charing Cross and left a detailed messages for both Whitaker and Lock but didn’t, for one moment, believe that either of them would take it seriously. He shuffled away from the scene, taking one last look back at the man he had sent to his death, and vowed to deliver vengeance, one way or another. Then his thoughts turned to Kiera Roche and to Hannah both. They were in danger. Middleton had shown his hand. This murder was a message. He would strike at anyone who helped Capgras. And he was smarter than he looked. More vicious too.
Tom glanced back at the coppers to make sure they weren’t watching, then marched up to the Middleton’s door. He rang the bell. He hammered on it, but the door didn’t open. No curtains twitched. He was tempted to break in, but it was too risky with the police around.
He needed a drink, badly, though it was not much past seven in the morning. He found a cafe and settled for strong coffee, checked his email and sent messages to Hannah and Kiera, urging them to be careful. No need to say why, just that he suspected Middleton was getting desperate and had struck again.
Minutes later, Hannah called. She wanted to know he was safe and what had happened. He told her the story of the tramp, and she went quiet on him. He knew what she was thinking: he shouldn’t have been there. She was right not to give him the address. “Leave it to the police,” she said. “Another body, they’ll have to do something.”
“It looks like an accident.”
“Outside his house though.”
“Coincidence.”
“They have to question Middleton.”
“They won’t. But I will. I need to find him, fast.”
She went quiet on him again.
“I need quotes,” he said. “I have to get a denial, or reaction. Anything. But it has to be on the record.”
She stayed quiet, hanging on the line. He knew the trick. His mother did the same thing at times. He’d noticed Ruby do it once or twice as well.
“Are you there?”
“Don’t go and see him. Stay away.”
“It’s my job. I’m a journalist.”
“But you’re not a detective. Or a policeman.”
“You’re breaking up,” Tom said, “it’s a bad line.” He hung up. He felt bad about it. But he hung up all the same.
He called Kiera next. She listened intently as he told her the news. “He wouldn’t hang around in that house,” she said, “not with a dead body on the doorstep. He’ll go somewhere quiet. Somewhere he knows, where he feels safe.”
“He has a second home in Cornwall. But if the police were looking for him…”
“It’s worth a try,” she said.
“Long way to go, on the off chance.”
“I’ll drive. I like a trip to the countryside. We can find a quiet hotel, stay overnight.”
It was Tom’s turn to go quiet as he explored the possibilities and the night they would have together, his imagination on hyper-speed, revisiting every inch of her soft, strong body. “Okay, but you’re not to approach Middleton. I’ll do that alone. And the hotel’s on me, petrol too.” Why not be generous? It was Evelyn Vronsky’s money after all.
“Whatever you say, Tom. It’ll be fun.”
It would be fun. Lots of fun. “I’ll run home, get some stuff. Meet you at your house. When?”
“I’ll need time to sort out some things,” she said. “One o’clock. I’ll see you then.”
Capgras slung his bag over his shoulder and headed for the side-street where he’d left his bike, a spring in his step, a hope in his heart and an unseemly, ungentlemanly, obscenely large grin on his face.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Death In the Margins
Tom killed the headlights as they approached Arthur Middleton’s holiday cottage. He turned off the engine so they could glide in unheard but by the look of the place the caution was unwarranted. The eighteenth-century farmhouse of stone and cob stood alone on the edge of the village of Morval a mile or more north of Looe, with clear views of the sea to the south. There were no lights, no sign of life and the house appeared empty and deserted. It was for sale, according to the notice board out front. Was Middleton disposing of his assets, so he could flee the country? Tom left the keys in the ignition and patted Kiera’s knee. “Stay here, I’ll look around.”
“Take me to the room first,” she begged.
“Two minutes. I’ll check it out properly later. But we’ve come this far.”
They had driven for five hours and Capgras was dog-tired. Part of him longed for the hotel which Kiera had booked by phone from the car. It had sea views and a double bed, apparently. He pictured Kiera, naked except for a bed-sheet, waiting for him. He dismissed the thought, though it wasn’t easily done, but there was work to do.
“If anything unusual happens, drive off. I’ll meet you in Looe, somehow.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
“This man’s a maniac. Take no chances.” He eased the car door shut. The garden gate squeaked like a schoolyard swing and he winced, cursing whoever had neglected the oil for so many years. Maybe it was deliberate, he thought: an early warning signal for someone who didn’t like unexpected visitors.
Tom turned off the torch and padded towards the house. It was utterly dark. Kiera must have been wrong. Middleton was sure to be in London. This place had been empty for weeks by the look of it. Or months. Or years. He tried the front door. Locked, as he expected. He moved around the back. The sound of a vehicle approaching made him stop and wait. The cottage was down a lane, off the main road. There was a farm further along and a few houses, according to the map. But there couldn’t be much traffic here.
Capgras moved away from the window of the house and across the front garden, crouching low. The car cruised past, funeral slow, as though they were curious who was parked there and why. It kept going, but Tom watched it round a corner, then stop and manoeuvre. They were turning.
He
hoped over the fence and ran for Kiera’s Audi. He threw the door open and leapt in beside her. She’d moved into the driver’s seat “Get moving. They’re coming back.”
She reversed away from the house, span the car around, accelerated towards the main road. “Trouble?”
“Could be the police for all we know. Maybe they’re checking up on Middleton. I'll try again later. ”
He loaded the map on his phone and gave her directions for the hotel set on a ridge on the edge of town, with views across the bay and the English Channel. They barely spoke the whole way there, each lost in their thoughts. The tyres scrunched to a halt on a gravel car park. He got out and stared out at the darkness where the sea must be though there was nothing there now but the distant lights of a tanker and a great emptiness. All the same, he could sense the presence of the ocean and smell it on the air.
Kiera let him carry the bags as she led the way into the reception area. It was more of a boarding house than a formal hotel: an old Victorian residence converted for visitors and run by a husband and wife who looked older than the building. Older than the hill on which it stood.
Tom paid in advance, in case they had to rush off at short notice, and led the way up the steep stairs to their third-floor room. Kiera headed straight for the shower and emerged ten minutes later smelling divine, wearing only a towel.
Blood Read: Publish And Be Dead (The Capgras Conspiracy Book 1) Page 12
