Murder in Hyde Park

by Phillip Strang

  ‘That’s Boris. He doesn’t do much these days. Certainly no use as a guard dog, not that we get any trouble around here,’ Amanda said. It was a good area, Larry knew that, and there was some advantage in having the worst house in the street. Those on either side were bright and renovated, and worth more than Amanda’s.

  ‘John, that’s my husband, he intends to fix the place up, but you know how it is.’

  Indeed, Larry did. His wife was a stickler for a pristine house, the constant need to update, upgrade, repaint. She would not have appreciated the house where he now sat, although she would have loved the area.

  ‘Tell me about the house you shared,’ Larry said. ‘About Matilda.’

  ‘Did you meet Barry?’

  ‘Beautiful?’ Pre-empting the woman’s reply.

  ‘We all thought that. Although Matilda was beautiful too, in a different way.’

  ‘What do you mean? I’ll be honest and tell you that I don’t expect to gain too much from our conversation. Mainly because we know of their history, their childhood, their personalities, the issues that Matilda had, the effect that Barry had on women.’

  ‘Matilda was a lovely person. Always tidy in the house, never failed to do her chores. We rotated on the vacuuming and washing up the dishes.’

  ‘When it was your turn...?’

  ‘Failed miserably. Matilda used to cover for me, not that the others were any better. We were young, into partying, getting laid. I hope you don’t mind my bluntness.’

  ‘Bluntness is fine. Honesty is better. What do you think drove Matilda to commit suicide?’

  ‘Her brother, no one else. None of us could break that impenetrable barrier that she surrounded herself with.’

  ‘We’re well aware of their troubled childhood: a hard man for a father, a weak woman for a mother.’

  ‘He was at the house. I remember it well.’

  ‘Your version?’

  ‘An argument, harsh words spoken by the father, Barry coming to the defence of his sister, of us.’

  ‘The man called you whores, and his daughter no better?’

  ‘We made ourselves scarce, although we heard the raised voices. “Whore” came through loud and clear, but Matilda hadn’t slept around.’

  ‘Barry had.’

  ‘Yes, with me. Not that I had an issue with that, nor did Matilda. But Matilda never had a man over. We used to tease her about her being the cherry ripe for picking.’

  ‘Her reaction?’

  ‘She would just laugh, and say that in time she would find a good man and settle down. But we didn’t believe her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She just didn’t seem the sort to fall in love. Emotionally scarred, I’d say now, but back then I would have said she was frigid. Strange how you look at life when you’re young.’

  ‘It’s not that many years ago.’

  ‘A lifetime for me, and now I’m married, pregnant, and about to give birth.’

  ‘A beautiful man?’

  ‘My husband!’ Amanda laughed. ‘Short and fat, but he’s kind, and he’ll not let our child or me down, ever.’

  ‘Barry Montgomery?’

  ‘He wasn’t a keeper. He was the good night out, not the stay at home type. Not the person to spend a lifetime with.’

  ‘The other two in the house?’

  ‘One of them, the most promiscuous, found religion. She’s doing missionary work somewhere overseas.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘The internet, Facebook. Everyone’s there somewhere.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘Hannah, you’ll see her on the television every night reading the news. She was the most academic of the four. She may know more than me, but I doubt it.’

  ‘Any reason for any of you to have wanted Barry dead?’

  ‘I never saw him again after the big argument with his father. I was mighty angry at the time, but no, and I don’t think we cared either way after a few weeks. And why should we? All we worried about was passing our exams and having a good time. If Matilda wanted to be a wallflower, not that she didn’t get plenty of offers, then that was up to her. And believe me, we didn’t need the competition. Matilda was the beauty; we weren’t. Not unattractive, not stunners either. Still, I’m not complaining. Life’s turned out well for me.’

  Larry left Amanda and her house, knowing that happiness was to be cherished at all costs. There were times when he imagined a life without his wife and his children, the opportunity to make his own choices without considering others, to get drunk, to smoke more than he should. But he knew he would not change his life for anybody. He, like Amanda Jenkins, was a happy person.

  ***

  ‘And what do you have in mind? Muscular, gymnastic, overnight, or by the hour? Our men are flexible as to your requirements. If you want them to accompany you to a work’s function, office party, they are the soul of discretion.’

  Bridget had not immediately let on to the gentlemen for hire companies that she had phoned that day that it was a police matter. Suspicious, she thought, the change in tone when she had finally told them who she was and why she was phoning.

  Bridget had looked at and not been offended by the companies’ websites, where there were hundreds of men to choose from. The pictures showed some bare-chested, others in dinner jackets, wearing bow ties, the ages varying from the twenties up to the more distinguished in their fifties, greying hair, creases in the face. No mention was made on the websites of the extras, just that the arrangement between the client and whoever they sent was strictly for social purposes. On the phone, before Bridget had identified herself, the extras had been outlined, sometimes in more detail than she required.

  ‘Send us a photo,’ the last company said. ‘If he’s not on the website, then he may have been a past employee.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Bridget said. ‘We’re interested in his movements, not your company.’

  ‘I was a police officer once,’ the man said. ‘Wales. I made it up to sergeant, so I know our legal position. It’s always a grey area, but we’re above board.’

  ‘You’ve got the picture on an email now,’ Bridget said.

  A pause while the former police officer opened the email. ‘Yes, I know him. A few years back, attractive, hit with the ladies. I’ll need to check the records, but I don’t think he was here for long.’

  ‘I’ll send some officers out to your premises. Is that acceptable?’

  ‘The website is our shopfront, not where we’re situated. Just a small office in Brixton, up two flights of stairs. Ninety minutes?’

  ‘DCI Isaac Cook and Sergeant Wendy Gladstone will be there.’

  ‘Black guy, tall?’

  ‘Don’t tell me…’

  ‘We were on a course in the past. He could have made good money back then.’

  ‘He still could,’ Bridget said. ‘He’s an attractive man. It’s more than my life’s worth if you tell him what I just said.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Discretion’s my middle name.’

  ‘Apart from that, what other names do you have?’

  ‘Nick Domett, previously of the Cardiff police, currently the proprietor of Gents for Hire.’

  ‘Which do you prefer?’

  ‘My mother was proud of me when I was a police officer, although the money was lousy.’

  ‘It still is,’ Bridget said.

  ‘That’s why I’m here in this office, raking it in. My mother has never forgiven me, not that I can blame her. We’re not breaking any laws, not serious ones, but people still have a perception that what we’re doing is somehow wrong.’

  ‘I’m not criticising.’

  ‘A special discount, Bridget,’ Domett said, his tone of voice clearly joking.

  ‘You never know,’ Bridget said.

  ‘Spoken like a true libertarian. A believer in not passing judgement as long as no one’s hurt or offended.’

  ‘I’m not serious. Ninety minutes, two visitors.’


  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Domett said.

  Bridget knew that she and Wendy would have a good laugh about the risqué repartee she had had with the owner of the escort company.

  ***

  There was one thing obvious when Isaac and Wendy met Nick Domett at his office in Brixton: he wasn’t one of those whose pictures and physiques figured on the Gents for Hire website.

  The man wasn’t a beefcake, not even a meat pie, Wendy thought, smiling to herself, having to hide her mouth with her hand.

  ‘Good to see you, Isaac,’ Nick Domett said as he got up from his chair. The office stank, as did the man. Stubble on his face, a bandage around one hand, his hair, what was left of it, combed over.

  ‘Nick, good to see you,’ Isaac said, not letting on that he had no clue who the man was.

  ‘You’ve not changed, not one bit. A one for the ladies back then; still are, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve got a good woman. No need for others.’

  ‘Shame. I could have found you employment. For me, four times down the aisle, four times in the divorce court. Fun, though.’

  Isaac could not remember the man, and instinctively, he did not like Domett, but personal prejudices were not relevant. What the man knew was.

  ‘Colin Young,’ Isaac said. ‘You recognised him, according to Sergeant Gladstone.’

  ‘Five years back, and he was only on our books for seven months. Not that we ever met, you understand.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Not everyone on our books wants to come over to Brixton, not that I can blame them. Some prefer to maintain a distance, adds to the allure, hides the fact that the picture doesn’t match the person.’

  ‘That must happen all the time,’ Wendy said, remembering the pictures of the girls outside a strip club that had prospered in Paddington ten years previously. The pictures proudly displayed, Playboy models every one. Inside, Wendy knew, as she had been in a few times to deal with underage girls and women from Europe without visas. All of them, bar the newest and youngest, were haggard, old before their time, turning tricks in a room behind the stage.

  ‘Nick, this is serious,’ Isaac said. ‘You were a policeman, so you’ll understand. Colin Young’s been murdered. The man’s been playing the field, a younger woman, an older one, old enough to be one of your clients.’

  ‘She might be a regular.’

  ‘I’m talking hypothetically here. She’s not on your books, we know that. She seems to be able to find enough men without your assistance.’

  ‘Isaac, I left the police behind. I wasn’t cut out for it, more interested in pushing the law at the edges than upholding it. That’s an honest answer. I know I’m a reprobate, but it suits me. Each day with the police: the meetings, the reports, the standing to attention. Here, I do what I want, make money, sometimes get hired out.’

  ‘You must be joking,’ Wendy said.

  ‘You’d be surprised. Not every female wants a Colin Young or one of the other studs for hire.’

  ‘Smelly, unkempt and dirty, an attribute?’

  ‘It’s an acquired taste, the same as I am. Now, what can I tell you about Young?’

  ‘His clients, address, that sort of thing,’ Isaac said as he took a seat, wiping his handkerchief over it first.

  ‘I don’t run police checks on them.’

  ‘So, they could be lying.’

  ‘Colin Young, no address, other than a post office box.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Bayswater. Not sure that does much for you.’

  ‘It doesn’t. How did you pay him?’

  ‘A bank account. You’ve got the details on that sheet of paper I just gave you.’

  ‘We know the account,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s the same bank where his credit card came from. Nothing to be gained from this.’

  ‘I’ve checked your website. You set the meetings up online, deal with the payments,’ Isaac said.

  ‘It saves any of the men getting smart.’

  ‘Does it stop it?’

  ‘Not totally. Some reckon they’re smart and renegotiate another meeting with the client, cutting out the middleman.’

  ‘And if you find out?’

  ‘They’ll never work for me again or any other agency.’

  ‘What does that mean? Their pretty looks, their chiselled features gone forever?’

  ‘An unwritten rule amongst the agencies,’ Domett said, looking nervously at the clock on the wall.

  ‘Somewhere to go?’ Wendy asked. She was still standing, even though her ankles were aching. On the phone, hidden from sight from Bridget, Nick Domett had been charming and humorous. In person, he was a revolting, egotistical specimen of manhood.

  ‘I need to make sure all is in order for tonight. And besides, I’ve given you a list of who he met, where, and a phone number.’

  ‘The women would have paid with a card,’ Isaac said.

  ‘You’ve got the details. Not all of them are women. As I said, he wasn’t here long, and I don’t remember our working relationship to be any other than professional. But as I said, I never met the man.’

  Chapter 18

  Nobody liked being confronted by a police officer with a warrant card, least of all Terry Hislop, the former husband of Gwen, the one-time lover of Christine. Although Wendy, who had been given the task of travelling north up to Liverpool, wasn’t sure that the latter accolade was a badge of merit, given what Christine Mason, sensing in Wendy a confidante, had unburdened about her past and present life.

  ‘And the next-door neighbour, when Tony was drunk and out of it,’ Christine had said. ‘And the man in the library, and then another guest, not beautiful like Colin, but you know.’

  Wendy had to confess that she didn’t know and that Christine Mason had an unhealthy obsession with sleeping around with stray men, yet her love for the man that Homicide knew as Barry Montgomery remained unabated. ‘My one true love, the man I had searched for all my life,’ the woman had said.

  Terry Hislop may have been a born and bred Liverpudlian, with a scouse accent and his mop-top hair, but he was no Beatle. Unless he was the fat Beatle. There was a fifth Beatle, Wendy remembered, but he had been tossed out in favour of Ringo Starr because he had not wanted to change hairstyle, and he was hopeless on the drums. Yet the man popped up from time to time: documentaries on the Fab Four, the life and times of Britain’s most successful musical export. She had missed the mania in the sixties, and there hadn’t been much time on the farm, what with collecting the eggs, ensuring that the pigs were fed, mucked out sometimes, and the two-mile walk to school, a two-mile walk back.

  The thought of her childhood filled her with nostalgia, and sadness that her parents were no longer alive. Life hadn’t been bad for them. Her mother had busied herself around the house, ensuring her man was fed and Wendy was looked after. Neither of her parents had ever travelled, apart from the occasional bus trip into Sheffield, a one-week honeymoon in Scarborough on the North Yorkshire coast, the photos on the sideboard in the farmhouse. And then her mother, still relatively young, a cheery red-faced woman in her early fifties, had keeled over in the kitchen and died. Her father had laboured on at the farm, and then he was gone, and Wendy was perilously edging towards the age when they had died.

  ‘You’re here about Christine,’ Hislop, a man who clearly enjoyed beer and calorie-rich, oily food, his paunch testament to one, his greasy complexion the other, said.

  ‘I understand that you and she were friendly some years ago.’

  The two were sitting in Hislop’s office. Down below, the sound of panel beaters at work. To Wendy, the late-model Toyota they were labouring on looked like a write-off.

  ‘Business good?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘It’s a living. Not as good as it used to be, not so many accidents. I’d do something else, but I’ve been fixing cars for most of my life.’

  ‘They’re better built, not so prone to damage.’

  ‘Nowadays, a lot of plastic, swapping bo
dy panels, not a lot of working the metal with the tools. We get the occasional classic in here, and they take our time. But that’s not why you’re here. You’ve got a few questions.’

  ‘Christine Mason, what can you tell me about her?’

  ‘Beautiful woman in her day, not that I was looking that closely.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was seventeen, hormones going crazy, attempting to grab every stray female I could. I assume you don’t want the version that comes with maturity and getting older.’

  ‘You’re telling it fine. You’re a rampant testosterone-fuelled young man who’s trying to get it off with every female.’

  ‘Christine was a looker, probably still is.’

  ‘You’ve not seen her for some time?’

  ‘Not since I split with her sister.’

  ‘Over twenty years, then.’

  ‘If you say so. I’ve not been counting, too busy for that.’

  ‘Busy with what?’

  ‘Life. I worked with the tools, and then I bought this business; a couple of wives, a few live-ins.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Never been blessed,’ Hislop said matter-of-factly.

  Wendy wasn’t sure whether the words were glib or whether the recollection of what Christine had done still hurt.

  ‘Let’s go back to when you were with Christine. What do you know of our interest in her?’

  ‘Only what you told me on the phone, that she had known the man found in the lake.’

  ‘Christine was conducting a clandestine affair with this man.’

  ‘That’d be Christine.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I was seventeen, but still, I had a sense of the future. Sure, I wanted to have a few too many drinks, brag to my mates about which woman I’d slept with, which one was begging for it. We all did then. Silly and childish, but when you’re young…’

  ‘At least you remember the reality, not that it helped the women, just teenagers struggling to come to terms with growing up, their bodies changing, the confusion that they wanted to be with a man, the knowledge that they’d be called a slag afterwards, the banter of drunken humour.’