by Roberta Kray
‘You must come. Please. I must talk with you.’
‘Are you in trouble? Is this about Al?’
The anxiety in his tone alerted Jess who turned to look at him. ‘Watch out!’ he almost yelled as the car in front braked and she came perilously close to smashing into it.
‘For God’s sake,’ Jess snapped back. ‘I’m miles away! You could get a bleeding juggernaut between us.’
Harry glared at her before returning his attention to Agnes. ‘Sorry,’ he said into the phone. ‘I’m sorry about that. Where are you?’
‘The club,’ she said. Her voice had an air of urgency to it now. ‘You come soon, yes?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be there.’ He glanced at his watch, thinking of the Friday rush hour traffic. ‘But it’s probably going to take about half an hour. Agnes, can you tell me what’s—’
‘Hold on,’ she said.
He waited, hearing another noise like a door being opened. Then the muffled sound of footsteps, of voices. ‘Agnes?’
Abruptly the line went dead.
‘Shit,’ he murmured. Quickly he tried to call her back but her phone was already turned off. ‘Shit,’ he said again.
Jess kept her eyes on the road as she spoke. ‘Problem?’
‘Look, can we head for Shoreditch, for Vista? I think Agnes is in trouble.’
‘Are you sure?’
He turned to stare at her. ‘What do you mean, am I sure?’
Jess was still seething from the way he had barked at her earlier. Her driving might not be up to his exacting standards but at least she didn’t jump through hoops every time some slutty blonde hostess batted her eye-lashes. ‘Are you sure you’re not being set up? What if that barman’s waiting for you again?’
‘Yeah, right,’ Harry snarled. ‘Or what if this girl’s in serious trouble and actually needs my help?’
Jess wasn’t convinced but she still shut her mouth. If Harry Lind wanted to play the knight in shining armour then who was she to interfere?
It was another twenty-five minutes before they pulled in to the forecourt of Vista. The day had slipped into darkness and a cold sleety rain was falling. Jess parked close to the entrance where there was extra light coming from the street.
‘You’re getting to be a regular,’ she said. ‘Perhaps they’ll give you a discount.’
Harry paused as if preparing to deliver a few well-chosen words, but then clearly decided that it wasn’t worth the effort. Instead, still clutching his phone, he got out and leaned over to slam the door. ‘I shouldn’t be too long.’
But Jess had no intention of staying there unaccompanied. She knew what had happened to Harry when he’d been loitering alone in the car park. Even with the doors locked, she wouldn’t feel safe. Not that she had any intention of telling him that. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been inside before. It could be an education.’
‘Not much of one. They’re not even open yet.’
‘That’s okay. I’ve got a vivid imagination.’
For a moment he looked as if he was going to object but she was already out of the car and shrugging into her coat. If they started debating the issue now it would only waste more time. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I won’t interfere.’
No,’ he said firmly. ‘You won’t.’
They walked together towards the entrance with its blue neon sign. Jess wrapped her scarf tighter round her neck, buried her hands in her pockets and smiled. It had just occurred to her that she was possibly about to become the most overdressed female to ever step across the threshold. She sniffed as the cold wet air made her face turn pink. Now her nose had started to run too. Great! Was there no end to her glamour? She stopped to get a tissue from her bag, blew her nose and then as she looked around for a bin her attention was caught by a flash of white on the far side of the car park. What was it? Just a carrier bag, perhaps, that had drifted in from the street. Except there seemed to be some kind of shadow attached to it.
Harry, who had strolled on and was almost at the door, turned and said impatiently, ‘Come on. What are you doing?’
‘Hang on a sec,’ she said.
She heard a sigh escape from Harry’s lips but, never able to deny her innate curiosity, began to head towards the mystery object. As she peered through the darkness, it gradually took on a more recognizable shape. An uneasy feeling was starting to blossom in the pit of her stomach. It looked like … Her mind, however, refused to believe it and she continued to advance until she was only yards away. From this distance she was no longer able to delude herself. This was no figment of her imagination. Her eyes widened with fear and her legs began to shake. There was blood everywhere. She could see it. She could smell it. Oh God! She was staring at a corpse.
‘Harry,’ she croaked, the air rushing from her lungs.
But she must have spoken too softly for him to hear. Or perhaps she hadn’t spoken at all. Maybe she had opened her mouth and only fear had tumbled out. Her pulse was racing, her heart pounding against her ribs.
Jess swallowed hard and tried again. ‘Harry!’
This time she must have yelled because she heard his footsteps clatter noisily across the forecourt. Seconds later he was standing next to her. She listened to his shock, to the sudden intake of breath and then the long exhalation.
‘Fuck!’
Harry quickly took her arm and pulled her back. Gazing down he absorbed the beaten face of a man, the pulpy mash of the nose and mouth, the broken jaw. From the twisted way the body was lying, it looked as if both of his legs had been broken too. There were numerous stab marks on his arms and chest but the final denouement had probably come with a wound to the heart. The whole of his white shirt, apart from a section at the right shoulder, was drenched in blood.
‘Stay here,’ he said to Jess.
Harry knelt down beside the body but didn’t touch; he knew better than to interfere with a crime scene. He let his eyes roam over the shattered flesh and bones, the image gradually imprinting itself on to his mind. What was he looking for? He wasn’t sure. Just some tiny clue perhaps, something that could make a difference.
‘Do you know him?’ Jess whispered. Her mouth was dry and she could barely speak.
‘It’s him.’
She shook her head, not understanding.
‘The barman,’ he said softly, getting up to stand with her again. ‘The guy who attacked me. It’s Troy.’
‘God.’ Jess wanted to stop staring at the corpse but couldn’t. It was as if she couldn’t drag her gaze away; the harder she tried, the more impossible it became. Her stomach was churning. She had never seen a dead body before – not even one that had died peacefully – and this one had been despatched to whatever higher authority it had gone to with the maximum of violence.
Harry put his arm around her shoulder and forcibly turned her around. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’
Jess’s stomach, however, had other ideas. Shaking free of his hold, she staggered a few feet and dramatically threw up against the wall. The smell rose up to assail her and for the next ten seconds she continued to heave, a disgusting empty retching that made her whole body shake. Leaning her forehead against the chipped red brick, she felt hot tears running down her cheeks.
Harry looked on with sympathy but knew better than to go to her. Death, even for the witnesses, was a lonely affair. There was nothing he could say or do. He’d seen more bodies than he cared to remember but had never grown immune to the horror. Although nausea was tugging at his own guts too, he clenched his fists and fought against it. Instead, he got out his phone and raised it to his ear. He had to make the call.
Harry provided the facts as quickly and succinctly as he could. His name was Harry Lind. He was in the car park of the Vista nightclub. There had been a murder. They had to get here as soon as they could.
As he put the phone back in his pocket, Jess stumbled from the wall. He grabbed her arms and propelled her away. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The poli
ce will be here soon.’
She didn’t say anything. Her face was pale and drawn.
‘It’s okay,’ he murmured. ‘You’ll be okay.’
While they were waiting in the car, Harry suddenly remembered Agnes. What had happened to her? He felt an urge to run inside the club and search but knew that he couldn’t. He couldn’t leave Jess and he couldn’t leave the body either.
Jess slumped over the wheel and her pale brown hair fell around her face. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘What are you sorry for?’
She glanced at him. ‘At least I didn’t throw up over your shoes.’
‘For which I’m truly grateful.’
As the squad cars arrived, with their blue lights flashing, Harry sighed. The full implications of what this would mean were just beginning to sink in. Vista fell under the authority of his old station – the station Val still worked at – and if she was on duty then she’d probably be first on the scene and … Harry saw the bright red Citroën pull in through the gates and dropped his head into his hands.
‘Not to worry,’ Jess said, forcing a smile as she opened the door. ‘At least we’ve both got alibis.’
But that, as Harry was anticipating, could prove to be a double-edged sword.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was fifteen minutes since the police had arrived and Valerie was still wearing that How could you do this to me? expression. They were sitting in the foyer of the club while the SOCO team sniffed around the body in the car park. He could tell that she hadn’t quite worked out what she was most annoyed about yet – his connection to a corpse, his embarrassing presence at a seedy nightclub or that his companion was a young curvy journalist from the Hackney Herald. True, she had looked suitably concerned on first seeing the state of his face but whatever sympathy those injuries had evoked had long since dissolved. ‘So you’re telling me you had a fight with the victim last night?’
‘About six o’clock,’ he said. ‘And it wasn’t so much a fight as … well, more of an unprovoked attack. He came at me with a baseball bat.’
‘And why should he do that?’
Harry shrugged. ‘I was working on a case, asking questions about Al Webster. I told you about him – Stagg’s brother-in-law. Troy seemed to take exception.’
‘And you decided not to report this because …?’
‘I couldn’t see the point.’
Valerie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You couldn’t see the point?’ she repeated archly. ‘He attacks you with a baseball bat, almost breaks your leg, and you’re happy to just let it go?’
‘Not happy, exactly,’ Harry said, ‘but I couldn’t see what it would achieve – apart from a few wasted hours down the nick.’
‘You didn’t consider that the next person to be assaulted might not be quite as lucky as you?’
As it happened, he wasn’t feeling especially lucky. Finding a corpse wasn’t one of his favourite pastimes and being grilled by Valerie didn’t rate too highly either. ‘Well, we don’t need to worry on that score.’
She scowled at him. ‘For God’s sake, Harry, this is hardly the time to be—’
But at that moment the double doors leading to the main part of the club swung open and DI Holt strutted through. Harry glanced up. ‘Any news on Agnes?’
The Inspector gave him a long hard look, almost as antagonistic as Val’s, before finally deciding to answer the question. ‘She’s not here. No one’s seen her for an hour or so.’
‘She’s in trouble,’ Harry said. ‘You’ve got to find her.’
Holt didn’t appear overly impressed by the demand but then the disappearance of a foreign nightclub hostess probably came pretty low on his list of priorities. Ignoring Harry’s plea he turned his attention to Valerie and, with an abrupt tilt of his head, gestured towards the front door. ‘Can I have a word?’
While they talked out of earshot, Harry pondered on the fate of Troy. The kid had picked the wrong person to have a fight with this time. And Agnes must have realized it. Why else would she have called? His brow creased into a frown. Unless … but the idea that Jess might have been right, that someone had been trying to set him up, wasn’t an option that he wanted to dwell on. However, it was an uncomfortable fact that if she hadn’t noticed the body, he’d have gone on inside, been seen by the staff and – being in the right place at the wrong time – possibly ended up in the frame for murder. Not that it would have stuck, not with Jess as his alibi … but then Agnes couldn’t have known that he’d arrive with a companion.
Valerie came back but didn’t sit down again.
Harry smiled up at her. ‘So has Holt got me down as his number one suspect?
‘Very funny,’ she said. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to the station. You’ll need to get a statement sorted before you go home.’
He stood up. ‘What’s happening with Jess?’
‘She won’t be far behind.’
‘And the car?’
‘I’ll get someone to bring it over. Have you got the keys?’
‘Ah,’ Harry said as he reached into his pockets. ‘No, er … actually I think Jess must have them.’ He watched Val’s eyes narrow as if giving your car keys to another woman was tantamount to adultery. ‘I was having problems driving,’ he muttered. ‘My leg …’
‘Right,’ she said, in that thoroughly disbelieving tone of hers. Then, as if the effort of having to relay this piece of information to one of her officers was an unnecessary strain on her already overstretched patience, she sighed and said, ‘You’d better wait here.’
It was a few minutes before she returned, during which uneasy period Harry was able to ponder on how things were bound to get worse. On a personal front at least. At some point soon it was going to come out that he’d spent the entire day with Jessica Vaughan.
Harry could gauge the level of Val’s temper from the force she used to slam the car door shut. Alone at last, she no longer needed to maintain any semblance of professionalism. She used the weapon of silence for the time it took to join the evening traffic and then turned her face to glare at him. ‘How the hell did you get involved in all this?’
‘You know how,’ he said. ‘I’ve already told you. I’ve been doing some digging, trying to get a lead on Al Webster. I got a call to come here and—’
‘But why should this … this Agnes girl, call you? If she was in trouble or if she saw that Troy was in trouble, why not dial 999?’
‘How should I know?’ Harry said. ‘I left her a card – I left cards with lots of the staff. Maybe she doesn’t trust the police. Maybe they make her nervous. Maybe she’s not even here legally.’ He lifted his shoulders and shrugged, feeling a dull ache run the length of his spine. ‘I wish I knew but I don’t. I really don’t.’
Val gripped the wheel a little too tightly as they pulled up at the lights. ‘And so what about your little friend?’ she said. ‘What’s her connection to all this?’
Harry had been wondering how long it would take to get around to Jess. And he suddenly understood why so many people lied when they were put under pressure. He was sorely tempted to do the same himself. Guilt was one of those curious things that could be conjured out of nowhere, pulled out of the ether to be dangled in your face like some vital piece of evidence. ‘What do you mean – connection?’
‘I was just wondering why your little friend was there with you tonight.’
Harry shook his head. ‘Do you have to keep calling her that?’
‘What?’ she said.
‘My little friend,’ he said. ‘You make her sound like a pony.’
Valerie drew in her breath and frowned. ‘So what would you like me to call her?’
‘By her name, perhaps.’ Harry was aware that he was digging one almighty hole for himself but was growing too tired and frustrated to care. ‘She’s called Jess Vaughan and she’s a reporter on the Hackney Herald. But you know that already. And unless Frankie Holt has lost his legendary skill in witness interrogation you should know wh
y she was with me too.’
But instead of giving the expected nod Val hesitated, pausing long enough to make him suspect that Jess might not have been especially forthcoming. Shifting the car forward as the lights turned to green, she kept her eyes firmly on the road. ‘Go on.’
Harry could have shut his mouth but was smart enough to realize that the more he tried to hide, the worse it would look when the truth finally came out. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘She was a friend of Len Curzon’s, okay? The guy who was stabbed in Camden. She’s been having a rough time recently and …’
‘And you thought you’d comfort her?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Harry snapped. ‘It’s nothing like that.’
‘So what is it like?’ she said.
Now that was harder to explain. Harry fiddled with his seatbelt while he tried to come up with an answer that wouldn’t condemn him to a lifetime of sleeping in the spare room. ‘She’s been working on a story – something Curzon left unfinished – and asked for my advice. That’s why I went to Maidstone with her, so we’d have the chance to talk on the way.’
Her head snapped round again, her eyes widening. ‘You went to Maidstone with her?’
Harry winced as he heard her accusing tone step up a pitch and instantly regretted the admission. She made him feel as though he’d just confessed to a dirty weekend in Paris. ‘Maidstone jail,’ he added quickly, hoping that the unromantic nature of the location might go some way towards appeasing her. ‘She had to see an inmate there. I couldn’t drive the car myself and it was only going to be stuck outside the flat and so I thought she may as well …’ His explanation petered out into a shrug.
‘My,’ she said, ‘that was very generous of you.’
Harry sighed in despair. ‘There’s nothing going on,’ he said. And then immediately wished that he hadn’t. The more he denied it, the guiltier he sounded. Valerie wasn’t usually the jealous or possessive sort, confidence was her middle name, but with the way he’d been acting recently it was perhaps no great surprise that her suspicions had been raised. No one likes to be made a fool of.
