Soho Angel

by Greg Keen

  Of course the answer was yes. Our motives may have been different but when it came down to it there wasn’t much difference between Chop and me. We’d both been prepared to kill to get what we wanted. He’d just been more successful at it.

  ‘Cas is so very grateful that he’ll do my bidding no matter how repugnant he may find it, which is why he agreed to torture Saskia,’ Chop continued. ‘Poor chap was so distraught he threatened to kill himself afterwards. You see, Kenny, Cas may have a genius for composition, but he’s terribly weak, I’m afraid.’

  Chop’s facade had first slipped in Encore Studios when he’d bawled Yvonne out. Should I have connected the dots then, and did any of it really matter now? I’d come to the conclusion that it probably didn’t when the front door opened.

  Castor’s scalp showed through a buzz cut and his complexion was ruddy from working outdoors. He was wearing a pair of stained jeans and a faded lumberjack shirt. On his hands were a pair of uPVC gloves; the twin of Chop’s radio protruded from his pocket. The snake-hipped frontman had been subsumed by middle age, and yet his blue eyes retained the intensity that had stared out of posters back in the day and out of the Trump mask back in the abattoir.

  ‘Hello, Cas,’ Chop said. ‘I’d introduce you to Kenny Gabriel, but of course you’ve met before. He became a little shouty, which is why I gagged him. I think it’s best we get this over with as soon as possible, don’t you?’

  Chop’s apprehension was understandable. If the cloth slipped out of my mouth then I could reveal the secret he’d kept from Castor for over twenty years. But even if that happened, Cas would just assume it to be the fabrication of a desperate man.

  Basically, I was doomed any which way you sliced it.

  Castor stared at me and breathed heavily through his nostrils. He slipped his gloves off and removed the radio from his pocket. When he laid it on the table it emitted a shriek like a snared animal. He frowned and quickly switched it off.

  ‘Why don’t you do it, Chop?’ he said. It was the voice that I’d first heard ordering me around in the abattoir.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Chop muttered. ‘You’re far better at this sort of thing than I am, Cas. I’ll happily watch, though. Then we can either bury the body in the woods or take him out to Spashett Lake and dump him there.’

  Castor nodded. Either method, it seemed, was acceptable.

  Chop cut through the wrist tie and released my hands. I thought about grabbing a knife from the block by the cooker, but with Castor training the shotgun on me there was only one way it would have ended. My wrists were bound once more, and Chop led me through the hallway to the rear of the bungalow.

  A fine mist had descended and deepened the silence. A couple of muntjac deer looked on from the edge of the copse as we proceeded along the path to the trees. Soon the world would draw to a close in a deadly spray of lead pellets, and my corpse would be consigned to the loamy earth or the chilly depths.

  The deer ran when we were within twenty yards. I was first into the woods, followed by Chop and then Castor holding the gun. The ground was covered in a mulch of dead leaves and rotting acorns. Branches exuded renewal in the form of tiny bumps from which pale shoots would emerge in the next few weeks. A huge tree had been felled by lightning, sickness or age; its roots protruded in a redundant tangle.

  ‘Over there,’ Castor said, gesturing with the gun. As instructed, I stood with my back to the gnarled and mossy bark of the horizontal trunk. The three of us formed an equilateral triangle, with Castor to my right and Chop to my left.

  ‘Get on with it, Cas,’ Chop instructed. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  Castor swivelled and pointed the gun at him.

  ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  Chop’s mouth opened and closed like a gaffed trout’s. Castor took a few steps closer.

  ‘You let me think I killed her, you piece of shit,’ he said. ‘Have you any idea what it was like to spend the night alone with her body thinking I was responsible? I said, HAVE YOU GOT ANY FUCKING IDEA WHAT IT WAS LIKE?’

  Castor’s shouting caused the rooks to take to the air cawing. It also jolted Chop out of his bewilderment. ‘What are you talking about, Cas?’

  ‘You left the radio on, Chop. I heard every word you said to Kenny about what happened that night in the Emporium.’

  Which was why the handsets had reacted when placed next to each other and presumably why Castor had been so quick to switch them off. I could almost see the calculations flashing behind Chop’s eyes as to how to get out of this nightmare.

  ‘Emily would have died anyway, Cas,’ he said. ‘As it is, you’ve had twenty years of freedom and we’ve written some amazing songs together.’

  ‘We’ve written them?’

  ‘I meant you did, Cas. They’re your songs. You wrote them.’

  Taking credit for the only thing that had ever mattered in Castor’s life apart from Emily Ridley was Chop’s second big mistake of the morning.

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t put it all at risk, Castor,’ he said. ‘All you have to do is finish this idiot off and we can carry on as normal.’

  ‘You call this normal?’

  ‘Cas, I’m ordering you to shoot him. Do it right now.’

  The gun was lowered and Chop exhaled heavily with relief. Presumably Cas had needed to build up his nerve, which was why he hadn’t shot him in the bungalow. Now it looked as though he was about to lose it again. The gun would be redirected at me and Castor would pull the trigger. That was the way it looked.

  Right up to the point he blew Chop’s head off.

  If I could make open ground then Castor would only have one shot to bring me down. That said, he was fifteen years younger and ten times fitter. He also didn’t have his hands tied behind his back and wasn’t wearing a pair of disintegrating shoes.

  Escaping was a tall order, but having seen Chop’s skull explode in a miasma of blood and brains, I wasn’t hanging around to let it happen to me.

  Castor’s feet were thumping behind me and he was shouting for me to stop. I tripped on a root and went sprawling. At least the impact with the ground dislodged the cloth from my mouth and allowed more oxygen into my starved system.

  I scrambled to my feet and began running again.

  My efforts were encouraged by the sound of sirens. Not just one vehicle but a couple at least. I was within a few yards of daylight when the earth gave way and my right ankle snapped. The pain was phenomenal. I rolled on to my back to see Castor standing above me with the gun pointing down at forty-five degrees.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kenny,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry for what?’ I asked. Keeping Cas talking until the police arrived on the scene looked like being my only hope. Was my only hope.

  ‘Everything that’s happened,’ he said.

  ‘Was it you who made the call warning me to give up the case?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Was that Chop’s idea?’

  ‘No. He didn’t know anything about it. I just wanted you to stop . . . wanted all this to stop. Why didn’t you fucking listen to me?’

  Cas’s last sentence was delivered almost as a wail. His head appeared to shimmer as though printed on a silk sheet rippling in the breeze.

  ‘I had to know the truth,’ I said through a wall of pain.

  ‘Why? Why did it matter so much?’

  First one siren died, and then the other. Doors opened and slammed shut. Hopefully the officers attending were armed to the teeth.

  ‘Doesn’t it matter to you, Cas? At least you know what happened to Emily now, and that you didn’t kill her.’

  ‘What good does that do me? Em’s still dead. All I ever wanted to do was carry on writing. Now they’ll lock me up for life.’

  Our conversation sounded muffled, as though it were taking place underwater. Also I was blinking every couple of seconds and unable to stop.

  ‘Then what’s the point in shooting me?’ I managed to say.

  ‘Because you’re the
only one who knows about Saskia. If you’re dead then I can say Chop killed the pair of you and that I shot him in self-defence.’ Castor’s hands stiffened around the gun. ‘I’m really sorry, Kenny. But if you’d done what you were told then none of this would have happened.’

  The inside of my mouth tasted wooden and salty, as though I’d been eating smoked almonds. A bright light flashed, leaving Castor’s image imprinted on my retinas. He mouthed something that I couldn’t understand. Not that it really mattered.

  A blanket of darkness had rolled over the world.

  FORTY-ONE

  Nurse Bevan ushered DCI Shaheen into my room. She explained that he had twenty minutes, after which time she’d be back. The speech was as much for my benefit as it was for the DCI’s. Since regaining consciousness, I’d been trying to convince her that reading the papers and watching daytime TV weren’t likely to return me to the induced coma I’d been in for the last nine days. Eventually she had succumbed.

  The Mickleton Lodge incident was still in the news. Some of the story had been pieced together correctly; most of it hadn’t. The assumption was that Castor Greaves had killed Emily Ridley and concealed her body in the heating duct. He had then gone to Chop Montague for help and been sheltered for over twenty years.

  No one was aware that Chop had murdered Emily, that Castor had written virtually all of Chop’s songs and that he had also killed Saskia Reeves-Montgomery. I was the only person who knew that, just as I was the only person who knew what had taken place in Mickleton Woods. An account Shaheen was eager to hear.

  ‘Christ,’ he said after I’d finished. ‘So all those hits were really Castor Greaves’s and not Chop Montague’s?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And Castor was okay with that?’

  ‘What was important to him was being able to write. Also he felt indebted to Chop for keeping it that way, and guilty for what he’d done to Emily.’

  ‘And if it weren’t for the business with the radio then all this would still be going on,’ Shaheen said, looking down at his notes.

  Which of course was true. Chop had spent God alone knew how much time and money protecting Castor. The only thing that had got in the way was a random electrical fire, a moment’s carelessness with a walkie-talkie and an overwhelming need to confess a story that he’d kept secret for years.

  Not for the first time since he’d entered the room, the DCI took a look at the dressing on my head. ‘Did the operation go well?’ he asked.

  ‘They haven’t removed the tumour,’ I said. ‘They just eased some of the pressure that built up after the stroke. I’ve got your officers to thank for getting me to hospital in time. How did they know where I was?’

  ‘A hiker saw you acting suspiciously outside Mickleton Lodge. When you jumped the wall, he called three nines and reported a burglary in progress. Otherwise you’d have died in the woods and we’d be none the wiser.’

  ‘Particularly as you had Kris Barberis as your prime suspect.’

  The DCI reddened. ‘Forensics isn’t an exact science.’

  A meditative silence followed.

  ‘Why d’you think Castor didn’t finish you off?’ he asked. It was a question I’d pondered myself, usually in the watches of the night when sleep wouldn’t come.

  ‘Maybe he thought he’d killed enough people for one lifetime. Or perhaps he was just in too much of a hurry to get away. Have you caught him yet?’

  Shaheen shifted on his chair. ‘Matter of time,’ he said. ‘How far can you get with the entire country on the lookout for you?’

  Nurse Bevan looked in and told Shaheen his time was up. He screwed the lid on to his pen and placed the notebook in his briefcase.

  ‘When d’you get out of here?’ he asked.

  ‘End of the week, hopefully.’

  ‘What’ll you do?’

  ‘Lead a quiet life.’

  The DCI chortled. ‘Are you serious? You’re almost as famous as Castor Greaves. Every newspaper in the country wants to interview you, and they only know half the story. You’ll be able to charge what you like for PI work.’

  ‘There won’t be any more PI work.’

  ‘Why not?’ Shaheen asked.

  ‘I’m retired,’ I said.

  My mobile had been lost in Mickleton Woods. The only way that anyone could contact me was by calling the hospital and being transferred to the ward. As DCI Shaheen had predicted, most of the calls were from media agencies requesting interviews, although Odeerie had rung half a dozen times and left messages.

  I’d postponed returning the fat man’s call, as I wasn’t looking forward to telling him I was quitting.

  ‘You feel like that now, Kenny,’ he said when eventually I bit the bullet. ‘But when you’re on your feet again, things’ll be different.’

  ‘No, they won’t, Odeerie. I’m done.’

  ‘You’ve said that before.’

  ‘This time I mean it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When Castor Greaves had the gun at my head, I swore that if I got out alive then I’d do something useful with my life.’

  ‘Aren’t you already doing good work, Kenny?’

  ‘Photographing dodgy window cleaners?’

  ‘Wielding the sword of righteousness. And you won’t have to do bread-and-butter stuff any more. It’ll all be missing tiaras and corporate retainers.’

  ‘You’re breaking up, Odeerie,’ I said, and cut the call.

  I stayed with Malcolm for a week. His townhouse was large and sufficiently protected to keep the media at bay. Castor hadn’t been found and theories were already springing up. Favourites were that he had committed suicide in a remote spot or made it out of the country in a private boat. The People’s Inquisitor even had definitive photographic proof that he had visited a Warsaw karaoke bar.

  On the third day of my stay, Malcolm introduced me to his company lawyer. Bettina’s opinion was that my contract with Angus Glazier at Billingsgate Publishing was invalid, as I’d made it when the tumour was affecting the balance of my mind. Despite this being completely untrue, I signed a document giving her full authority to negotiate on my behalf and she promised to get back to me with revised offers.

  I visited St Mick’s to see Ali, who seemed happy enough with my progress and said that the operation should go ahead as soon as possible. After the stroke I had difficulty gripping with my right hand and had lost peripheral vision on the left side. Bearing in mind how bad it could have been, I’d got off incredibly lightly. Now it was time to cross my fingers and roll the dice a second time.

  In the waiting room, I flicked through a copy of Chat. A double-page spread featured a photograph of Jake Villiers holidaying in Barbados. Following a freak gardening accident – a bandaged thigh being proof of this – Jake had decided to take some time off from his busy schedule to recuperate. A few times I’d picked the phone up to call Stephie, but on each occasion had decided against it.

  When I entered the flat for the first time in over a month it was early May. Malcolm had arranged for the place to be redecorated. A vase of flowers stood in the sitting room where the Monarch usually waited, and the fridge was full of fresh vegetables. Among the accumulated mail was a letter from Pam Ridley thanking me for finding her daughter’s killer. A photo from the album showing Emily celebrating her birthday had been tucked into the envelope.

  Recently signed as a model, her entire future had lain before her. And then she had met Dean Allison and Castor Greaves. Had she been slightly less exquisite, Emily’s life may have run like those of the majority of others: work, marriage, children, retirement, varicose veins, dementia, death. I wedged the photo into the corner of the sitting room mirror to serve as a reminder, although I wasn’t entirely sure of what.

  I roamed the parish by night when fewer people were around. The flowers outside the Emporium club stretched almost thirty yards along the pavement. In addition to the wilting daffodils were tiny teddy bears, satin hearts, electric candles, miniature bottles o
f Jack Daniel’s; the usual detritus of remembrance.

  Pictures of Cas and Em in plastic sheaths had been taped to the walls of the club and nestled amongst the bouquets. That Castor had indirectly murdered his girlfriend and tortured and killed Saskia Reeves-Montgomery didn’t seem to bother everyone, if indeed it bothered anyone. I collected an armful and dumped them in a nearby bin.

  It was three thirty when I got back to the flat. I was turning the key in the newly installed lock when the window of a car on the opposite side of the street slid down.

  ‘Oi, shithead,’ a horribly familiar voice said. ‘Get your arse over here.’

  Farrelly’s ten-year-old Toyota was immaculate. Hanging from the rear-view mirror was a pair of tiny boxing gloves. There were no other clues as to the owner’s identity, like a corpse stretched out on the back seat or a knuckleduster peeping out of the glove compartment. Farrelly didn’t appear to be in a good mood, but then Farrelly never did. Perhaps the imp of death was smiling on the inside.

  ‘What the fuck did I tell you in your flat?’ he said when I’d settled into the passenger seat. ‘If you pull a gun, you’ve got to do the business.’

  ‘I did the business.’

  ‘You put one in his fucking leg. And what did you do with the bleedin’ shooter afterwards? Have it framed and stuck up in your front room?’

  The vein in Farrelly’s temple had engorged, as it so often did during our conversations. If he didn’t watch it then he’d be stroking out himself before too long.

  ‘I broke it up and dropped it in the river,’ I said.

  ‘Anyone see you?’ Farrelly asked.

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘Did they or fucking didn’t they?’

  ‘No, they didn’t. It would have come out by now. And I think Jake was treated by someone off the books. There haven’t been any reports about it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Farrelly said. ‘He used Lonnie Murphy.’