Die Twice

by Simon Kernick

  ‘Are you all right, Max?’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah. Just dreaming, that’s all. All this humidity’s sending me into a trance.’ I pulled from my pocket a pack of cigarettes Elaine had bought me that morning.

  Joe gave me a dirty look. He was like that, always wanting to make sure I stayed on the straight and narrow. ‘When did you get back on them?’ he asked, not worrying, however, about taking one off me.

  ‘Well, getting shot at by one of my best employees started to break my resolve, but then, after spending most of yesterday running away from various members of the local law enforcement, I thought, fuck it, lung cancer’s the least of my worries.’

  We both laughed and drained our beers. ‘Are you in a hurry,’ I asked him, ‘or have you got time for another one?’ It was rare these days that we sat and socialized, and now I had the feeling that we might not get the chance for a long time to come. It seemed important to make the best of things.

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, course I’ve got time.’

  So I poured the other two beers and we sat back and smoked and talked about the old days: people we’d known, experiences we’d shared, places we’d served. Only once did things go quiet, when Joe mentioned Elsa and his eyes clouded over as he thought back to what could have been. And I felt guilty again and hurried on to the next subject, maybe just a little bit too quickly.

  It was early evening and Elaine had yet to reappear by the time Joe said he had to go, and there was something a bit gloomy about the formal handshake we shared. As if we both knew that for some reason nothing between us was ever going to be the same again.

  Sunday, fourteen days ago

  Gallan

  The station was quiet that morning. The busiest night of the week had come and gone and the cells were slowly being emptied of the drunks, the brawlers, the low-level dealers and anyone else unlucky enough to have had their collar felt. It was another glorious day. The weather woman on the radio had announced chirpily that it was the seventh in a row with more than ten hours of sunshine. Temperatures expected to touch twenty-nine degrees Celsius, eighty-four by the old measurement. No-one would be working who didn’t have to, even though crime often went up in heatwaves. Tempers got more frayed, particularly in an over-crowded city; domestic burglary increased as people left their windows open at night. So, too, did rapes, for exactly the same reason. But who wanted to catch criminals on a hot August Sunday?

  And that was the thing. I did. I wanted to find out who thought they were clever enough to kill Shaun Matthews and get away with it. I wanted to prove them wrong.

  It didn’t seem as though too many of the squad shared my wish, or were at least prepared to break their backs over it, and the incident room for the Matthews murder was empty for the second morning in a row when I walked into it at just after half past eight. Berrin was expected in, as was DI Capper, my immediate boss. It didn’t surprise me that neither had arrived. Berrin had been particularly reluctant to work that day because he’d had to break a date, and had only had one day off in the previous fourteen, so it was unlikely he was going to make it in before nine. As for Capper, he was never on time if his superiors weren’t working. Which was the bloke all over. It was a testimony to his arse-licking skills, and the talent he had for creating a wholly false image of commitment and hard work, that he had reached the level of detective inspector on the back of having absolutely none of the skills required. He was a detective who couldn’t detect, a civil servant who didn’t like to serve, and a man manager who truly couldn’t manage. Every word he ever uttered reeked of insincerity, and his habit of backstabbing colleagues was legendary. He had the luck of the devil, too. His predecessor in the DI’s post had been a guy called Karl Welland, by all accounts a good no-nonsense copper who’d been forced to retire after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, paving the way for Capper to slip into his shoes in the absence of any other suitable candidates. Welland had been dead close to a year now, and Capper continued to thrive in a role he genuinely didn’t deserve. Who said life was fair?

  There was a message from Knox on my desk, giving me the telephone number of one of the station’s former CID men, Asif Malik, now of SO7, Scotland Yard’s organized crime unit. Malik had left months before I’d joined, but I knew of him. Everyone knew of him. He’d been the guy who’d worked most closely with Dennis Milne, the part-time hitman. From what I heard, Malik had had nothing to do with any of his former boss’s many crimes and was supposedly as straight as a die, but after what had happened he’d found it difficult to remain at the station, and had transferred to SO7 a few months later. Knox hadn’t been keen initially to get SO7 involved in the Matthews murder investigation because he didn’t want control of the case taken away from him and CID. But when I’d spoken to him the previous afternoon, he’d been interested in the Jean Tanner/Neil Vamen lead and had agreed that someone at SO7, one of whose jobs it was to keep tabs on organized crime figures in London, might at least be able to offer some insights. He’d added on the message (Knox liked his messages) that we were to continue to try to locate Fowler and if necessary widen the search for him, particularly in the light of his continued absence.

  I got myself a coffee and tried Malik’s mobile. It went straight to message so I left one, explaining who I was and why I was calling, and asking if we could meet up.

  After I’d hung up, I reluctantly phoned my ex-wife. The live-in lover, Mr Crusader, answered, sounding like he’d just woken up. ‘It’s the man whose career you fucked,’ I told him evenly. ‘I’d like to speak to Cathy, please.’ He told me angrily to try phoning later next time as Sunday was their day for lying in. ‘Just put her on,’ I said. ‘It’s about Rachel.’

  Cathy came on the line sounding equally knackered and I heard Carrier telling her in the background that I’d sworn at him. You had to hand it to the bloke, he was a born whistleblower. There wasn’t a tale he wouldn’t tell. Cathy told me that she thought we’d got over all the childish namecalling and I apologized, thinking that that would be the easiest tactic, and asked whether I was still having Rachel the following weekend.

  ‘Well, can you fit it in round your work?’ she asked, with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. ‘The last time you were meant to have her—’

  ‘I know, I know. I’ll make sure I’ve got the time off. I haven’t seen her in close to a month. I won’t let her down.’

  ‘You promise? I’m not having her looking forward to seeing you and then you dashing her hopes.’

  ‘He can’t be allowed to do that again,’ said Carrier in the background. ‘Just because he’s unreliable.’

  Not for the first time, I tried to understand what Cathy saw in the bastard. I’d always thought of her as a pretty decent judge of character, someone who knew a creep when she saw one, so it was doubly disheartening to have my view proved so emphatically wrong.

  ‘I promise,’ I said wearily. ‘I mean it. I’ll come and get her Friday evening and bring her back Sunday.’

  ‘Thanks, that’d be nice. Come about six, can you?’

  ‘Sure, six is fine.’ I started to say something else but she cut me short, saying she wanted to get back to sleep.

  ‘See you on Friday,’ she said, trying to sound pleasant, and hung up, leaving me staring at the phone and thinking that she never used to lie in that late on a Sunday.

  ‘Morning, John. Nice to see you in bright and early.’

  I looked up to see Capper come walking in, his suit jacket slung jauntily over one arm, a cheesy smile on his face. There were already sweat stains appearing on the underarms of his faded yellow shirt. It was, I thought, strange how unpleasant people often had unpleasant side-effects to their normal bodily functions. Perhaps it was some sort of divine justice, a punishment from God. I liked to think so.

  ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Everything all right?’ He motioned towards the phone and I wondered if the bastard had been listening in. Probably.

  ‘Fine. And you?’

 
; ‘Very well. Had a quiet evening in and an early night for once. Done me the world of good.’ He dropped the jacket at his desk, and walked over to the kettle. ‘Do you want a coffee?’

  ‘No thanks. I’ve just this minute finished one.’

  Capper made general small talk as he prepared his coffee and waited for the kettle to boil, and I played the game, sounding interested and occasionally making comments of my own. The thing about Capper was that he was nice to you if he thought you were going to be useful to him and he clearly thought I had potential, that maybe I wasn’t going to be stuck under him for ever, which I suppose was one good thing. I think he also thought we got on well and, although I couldn’t stand him, it suited me to remain cordial. One thing I’d learnt in the Force was that you never make enemies unless you have to. Pragmatism. That was what it was all about.

  Capper grabbed a chair and sat down on the other side of my desk with his coffee. ‘How did it go with the doormen yesterday?’ he asked, after explaining that his absence from duty the previous day had been down to a ‘family matter’, whatever that was meant to mean. Capper was a bachelor who looked like the sort of person any right-minded sibling or parent would avoid like greasy dogshit on the pavement. He sat there now with a think-of-me-as-one-of-the-guys smile, showing yellowing teeth, etched firmly on his face.

  I gave him a brief rundown, explaining that we hadn’t got much that we didn’t know already, but mentioning the possible girlfriend lead, as well as John Harris, the doorman who’d fallen out with Matthews.

  ‘Who’s chasing Harris?’ he asked.

  ‘The DCI gave it to WDC Boyd. She’s on it today, apparently.’

  He nodded, satisfied. I didn’t tell him about the Vamen/SO7 angle. Knox would probably bring it up at the meeting the following day but for the moment it could wait. I didn’t want Capper sniffing round and taking hold of leads I’d worked hard to build up myself. ‘No sign of Fowler yet, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing at all. He might have a connection to this Jean Tanner, though.’

  ‘How’s that, then?’

  ‘You know I said she was a prostitute? Apparently she used to work at a brothel which was or is supposedly run by Fowler.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘A place called Heavenly Girls.’

  Capper tried to hide it but I saw immediately that he knew the name, and that for some reason he wanted to keep that knowledge quiet. ‘Hmm, that’s interesting.’ His words tailed off, and we sat in silence for a few moments. ‘Where did you hear about this brothel?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘From McBride, the one who gave us most of the information.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of the place,’ he said, a little too forcefully. ‘Do you reckon he was telling the truth?’

  I shrugged, not bothering to mention that we’d effectively blackmailed the information out of him. ‘I would have thought so. There’d be no point lying about something like that, would there?’

  Capper nodded, acknowledging this fact. ‘No, I suppose there wouldn’t.’

  At that moment, Berrin came in, looking dishevelled but considerably better than he had the previous morning.

  ‘A bit late, Berrin,’ said Capper, getting to his feet.

  Berrin quickly apologized to both Capper and me in that order, and took a seat. Capper told him bluntly to get his house in order and went back to his own desk. He might have thought that I was potentially useful, but he clearly didn’t feel the same way about the younger officer. Plus, Berrin was a graduate, and though he never said as much, Capper didn’t like graduates. Berrin looked suitably chastised for a couple of seconds, then pulled a face at Capper’s back, before sitting down in the chair he’d just vacated.

  As the two of us went over the day’s itinerary, I stole an occasional glance at the DI, who was now staring intently at his computer screen. I couldn’t help but wonder what he knew about the Heavenly Girls brothel and how much of a bearing his knowledge might have on the investigation as a whole.

  * * *

  Roy Fowler wasn’t answering any of his numbers; the Arcadia was closed; it was proving impossible to locate any outfit called Heavenly Girls; and the day was getting progressively hotter as Berrin brought the car to a halt about twenty yards short of Jean Tanner’s apartment building. According to the Land Registry, she’d bought it in 1998, while it was still being built, and now owned thirty per cent of the equity, while the other seventy belonged to her mortgage lender. According to them, she’d never missed a payment. Obviously Jean was getting quite a lot of money from somewhere, which pointed perhaps to a relationship with a wealthy gangster like Neil Vamen, who was going to have a lot more cash than most of the punters she’d ever been with. The question was whether he cared for her enough to kill a possible love rival like Shaun Matthews.

  However, once again she wasn’t responding as I pressed the buzzer on the flashy-looking intercom system for the third time.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Berrin eventually.

  ‘What all coppers have to get used to doing,’ I told him. ‘Wait.’

  ‘She might have gone away. We could be waiting for days.’

  ‘Look, Dave, I’m not driving back out here again, and I’m not phoning her and giving her advance notice of us turning up just in case she’s got something to hide, so, for the moment at least, we’re going to stay put.’

  ‘But even if she is Vamen’s girlfriend, where does that leave us?’ he asked, leaning back against the wall of the porch. ‘We don’t even know if she was seeing Matthews. And where does Fowler fit into it?’

  ‘I don’t know is the short answer,’ I said, thinking that he had a point. ‘But at least we can hear what she has to say. If Vamen’s got something to do with it, and if she thought more of Matthews than he deserved, then maybe she’s feeling bad about it, and we may be able to get her to talk.’

  Berrin nodded wearily. ‘Fair enough. Shall we go and get a cup of tea from somewhere while we wait? I need to rehydrate.’

  ‘Were you out again last night?’ I asked him in vaguely disgusted tones. I think I was jealous. He told me he was. Out drinking in the West End with one of the station’s more attractive WPCs. He started telling me all about it, but I couldn’t handle that, not after a night alone in front of an excruciating edition of Celebrity Stars in their Eyes, so, on a whim, I pressed the buzzer below Jean’s. Three seconds later a none-too-youthful male voice came on the line. I told him who we were, pointing my warrant card at the camera above our heads, and asked if we could come up.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, sounding interested.

  We were greeted at the top of the stairs by a very short gentleman in his early seventies who had a very wide head that was far too big for his spindly body, giving him more than a passing resemblance to ET. He had large amounts of fine white hair, tinged with orange bits, and big black heavy-rimmed glasses. A taller lady, about ten years younger, with a tent-like flowery dress on, stood behind him. They both smiled as we approached.

  ‘Good morning,’ said the man, as we produced our warrant cards. ‘We’re the Lackers. Peter and Margaret.’ He shook our hands formally with a surprisingly firm grip.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ said Margaret Lacker with an easy smile.

  ‘Yes, thanks, that’d be nice,’ I said, wishing there were more people I dealt with like the Lackers. Polite, accommodating, and not totally pissed off to see you.

  They led us into their richly decorated apartment and motioned for us to sit down in their lounge, a place that looked more like a drawing room of old. ‘So, how can we help you?’ asked Peter Lacker, sitting down in a chair opposite. ‘I hope there’s nothing wrong.’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ I said, smiling. ‘We’re just interested in one of your neighbours, a Miss Jean Tanner. I understand she lives on this floor.’

  ‘That’s right. Next door. She’s all right, isn’t she?’

  ‘I certainly hope so. We need to speak to her in connection w
ith a matter she might have some information on.’ Suitably vague, I thought. ‘We called yesterday but she wasn’t at home and she doesn’t appear to be at home now. Do you know if she’s gone away anywhere?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She was definitely there last night. We heard her.’

  ‘Heard her?’

  He looked a bit embarrassed. ‘Jean’s a good neighbour, don’t get me wrong, please, but she does have male visitors and sometimes she can have disagreements with them. There were some loud voices last night.’

  ‘What? Like an argument?’

  He nodded.

  ‘How many people were involved?’ asked Berrin.

  ‘Just two of them. Jean and someone else. A man. I didn’t immediately recognize the voice.’

  ‘She’s not in trouble, is she?’ asked Mrs Lacker, coming in with a tray containing a china teapot, four puny-sized china cups and a selection of what looked like custard creams.

  I smiled reassuringly as she sat down in a chair next to her husband. ‘Not at all, but it is important we speak to her. You haven’t seen her this morning, then?’ They both shook their heads. ‘How violent was this argument you heard last night?’

  ‘It wasn’t violent as such,’ said Mr Lacker. ‘It was just quite loud.’

  ‘It didn’t last that long either, did it?’ added his wife, passing me a cup. ‘Jean tends to keep herself to herself. She’s not a difficult neighbour at all. Is she, Peter?’

  ‘No, not at all. She’s lived here for a long time. Three or four years, I think.’

  I asked them how often she received male visitors but they were vague on this. Now and again, said Mr Lacker, adding that he and his wife were sexually liberal and so of course didn’t disapprove of such arrangements, which as far as I was concerned was one detail too many. They were also vague on how often Jean had had violent disagreements with said visitors. Mr Lacker backtracked somewhat on his earlier statement and said not very often at all. Mrs Lacker said she couldn’t remember the last time before the previous night.