Friends to Die For

by Hilary Bonner

  Greg ended the call and checked his watch. There was something he had to do later on. Someone he needed to see. But that person didn’t keep office hours. There was no need to start fretting at four in the afternoon. The boys were sure to have returned long before he needed to make a move, and even they would probably agree there was no point waiting in the park much longer. In any case, the gates would be locked once it got dark.

  Greg sat on a park bench by the tennis courts, lit yet another cigarette and drew deeply. It was when he was under stress that he most felt not just the desire but the need to smoke. And this was a moment of stress all right.

  He leaned back on the cold hard seat. Things were happening that he did not entirely understand. Nothing seemed right somehow. Events were taking a sinister turn. His life was going pear-shaped. He needed to figure out a way to get everything back on track again, and soon.

  Tiny had collected Marlena from hospital at about the same time Billy had arrived at the park. He didn’t tell her about Daisy, not at first. Marlena dog-sat for them whenever they needed a minder for Daisy, and took the little dog in when the boys went on holiday, to spare her having to go into kennels. She would be devastated to hear what had happened. And Tiny could see she was in enough distress already. He might fit the stereotype of the big brash bouncer, but Tiny had a very gentle side to him. He understood instinctively what it was like for a woman of Marlena’s age to have been injured like that. Although she was putting on a brave face, as ever, Marlena had to be eaten up with anxiety about the extent of her injury, her chances of making a full recovery, whether she’d ever be able to walk about on her own again. Losing her independence would be Marlena’s worst nightmare. And top of everything else, she was in pain. Tiny could see that too.

  An orderly wheeled Marlena out of the hospital, Tiny alongside the chair, fussing. Once outside, the orderly helped load Marlena into the taxi Tiny hailed.

  In the back of the cab Marlena clutched Tiny’s arm with a bony hand.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without my friends, particularly you and Alfonso.’

  ‘You’re most welcome, Marlena,’ said Tiny. ‘Though I gather from the Fonz that you initially said you didn’t want or need help from anyone.’

  Marlena smiled weakly. ‘I think I may not have quite thought things through,’ she said.

  Tiny saw then that the hand clutching his arm was shaking. As if aware that he had noticed, Marlena suddenly withdrew her hand and held it, fingers clenched, by her side.

  Tiny put a big arm around her. ‘Don’t you worry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I’ll look after you.’

  Marlena said nothing, but he could see the gratitude in her eyes and it unnerved him. For an old lady, she’d always seemed a remarkably tough cookie. Now that toughness appeared to have left her.

  Marlena lived on the fourth floor of her converted warehouse apartment block, but fortunately, and relatively unusually in Covent Garden, Sampford House had a lift. Thank God, thought Tiny. It was obvious that Marlena was far too frail to use the crutches the hospital had supplied her with. For the moment anyway. And not even for short distances on the level. But Tiny had already planned how he would get her from the taxi, in and out of the lift and into her apartment, and it was therefore a relief that she seemed more compliant than usual.

  When the taxi pulled to a halt he snatched Marlena’s crutches from her, jumped out and propped them in the hallway of Sampford House, ignoring her protests.

  ‘Right, there have to be some advantages to being the size of a house,’ he said, as he returned to the cab, and with that he lifted Marlena out, settling her easily into his big arms.

  ‘What on earth do you think you are doing?’ protested Marlena. ‘Put me down at once!’

  Tiny ignored her. He didn’t think she meant it anyway. Indeed, he suspected she was relieved, though of course she would never admit it.

  ‘I’m giving you a lift, Marlena baby,’ he said. ‘And if I was you, I’d shut the fuck up and enjoy the ride.’

  Marlena laughed as he carried her through the apartment-block foyer and into the elevator. It was almost her normal laugh. Tiny was surprised by just how much he appreciated hearing it, even though he could not get Daisy out of his head.

  On the fourth floor Marlena produced her door key and managed to unlock her front door whilst still in Tiny’s arms. Rejecting his suggestion that he carry her through to her bedroom so she could have a lie-down, she insisted on being placed in her favourite armchair, by the window in the sitting room.

  ‘What do you think I am, a crippled old woman or something?’ she enquired, twinkling at Tiny as he arranged a footstool for her in exactly the right position.

  ‘I’ll fetch your crutches, you ungrateful old bag,’ said Tiny.

  Marlena beamed her thanks at him. At least coming home seemed to have cheered her somewhat, and maybe he had played a part in that too, thought Tiny, in spite of his inner preoccupation with his missing pet.

  At that moment his mobile rang. It was Billy. Tiny took the call at once, praying for good news. There was none. Instead Billy told him about meeting up with George and how Chump was also missing.

  Tiny felt his heartbeat quicken. He turned his back on Marlena and moved away from her towards the door.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he said.

  He could feel Marlena’s eyes on him. He opened the door, walked out into the passageway and closed it behind him, still speaking into his phone.

  ‘Two dogs,’ he muttered, ‘on the same day, and both belonging to members of our little group.’

  ‘I know,’ said Billy, and Tiny could feel his distress.

  ‘What do you make of it, Billy?’ he asked. ‘And what does George think?’

  ‘We don’t know what to think,’ said Billy. ‘Neither does Greg – he’s been helping us.’

  ‘We have to do something. We should go to the police.’

  ‘George and I are on our way to the police station now. Greg said he’d wait in the park, just in case.’

  After ending the call Tiny carried on downstairs, on autopilot, to collect Marlena’s crutches. His heart was still racing inside his chest when he re-entered her flat.

  ‘What is it, Tiny, whatever has happened?’ Marlena asked.

  Tiny didn’t want to burden her with it. Aside from being fond of dogs, and Daisy in particular, right now she was a frightened old lady with a crushed foot, and all the glitter and the bluster in the world couldn’t hide that. The last thing Tiny wanted was to add to her distress. But Marlena gave him no choice.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what’s wrong or am I going to have to beat it out of you with one of these damn crutches?’ she persisted.

  Tiny told her.

  Marlena turned even more pale than she was already.

  ‘What’s going on, Tiny?’ she asked, her voice frail and bewildered. ‘What in the world is going on?’

  seven

  George and Billy’s luck did not immediately improve upon arrival at Charing Cross police station. They were mildly surprised to find one of the big wooden doors standing open, and might have been encouraged by this as they stepped into the lobby of the Agar Street main entrance.

  Unfortunately, however, they were dealt with by a civilian public access officer whose never particularly good temper had that day been further frayed by learning that his services would soon no longer be required. He shouldn’t have been too surprised, as the Met were in the process of phasing out civilian front-office staff in favour of a rota of serving police officers, but that didn’t stop him feeling affronted. Michael Carter was a former uniformed sergeant of the old school, and even though he’d been retired from the force for several years he continued to fail to see quite how the Met could survive without him. In addition, Carter was a cat man who had no interest whatsoever in dogs. Indeed, he actively disliked them. He considered dogs to be dirty, disobedient creatures who fouled pavements and every so
often lost the plot and bit somebody. Usually a child.

  Nonetheless, he dutifully went through the motions of recording all the details of the two missing animals, asked George and Billy if their dogs were chipped, which they were, and said he would file a report.

  ‘But what will happen? I mean, what can you do? Will you look for our dogs?’ asked George plaintively.

  Even Billy, in his state of deep distress, knew better than to believe that the Metropolitan Police Force was likely to conduct a formal investigation into the disappearance of a couple of dogs. But he too stared at Mike Carter with a hope born of desperation.

  Carter looked George up and down in a pitying sort of way. However, no sympathy at all for the loss of George’s dog was implied.

  ‘We will put out a notice to all officers, dog sanctuaries and so on, according to procedure,’ he said, as if reciting from a manual. ‘And should the dogs be found or we discover anything at all pertaining to their whereabouts, you will be notified at once.’

  George merely nodded. Billy found some spirit.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘There’s more to this than just two missing dogs.’

  ‘Really, sir,’ said Carter, sounding totally uninterested.

  Billy persisted. He began to relate the series of incidents which had befallen the friends.

  The Mr Tickle story caused the corners of Mike Carter’s more or less permanently downturned mouth to twitch. Just a bit. Fleetingly, he glanced at George with a little more interest. By the time Billy had related how Bob’s plants were taken in the night, however, Carter was looking thoroughly bored again. He raised an eyebrow at the slashing of the tyres on Greg’s van, but merely muttered something about wanton vandalism, much as Greg had done in Johnny’s Place.

  Then Billy told him about Marlena.

  ‘It seems almost certain she was hit deliberately by the cyclist,’ he said.

  ‘Was the accident reported to the police?’ asked Carter.

  ‘I think so. I’m not sure,’ said Billy. ‘Only we don’t believe it was an accident, do we, George?’

  George shook his head.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ said Carter.

  He retreated to a computer at the rear of the front office and began tapping away.

  ‘I don’t see how this is helping us find the dogs,’ muttered George. ‘That man doesn’t give a toss, does he? He’s made himself perfectly clear. We’d be better off out on the streets looking for them than hanging round here.’

  ‘Let’s at least wait until he comes back,’ said Billy. ‘If he begins to believe what we all do, we might yet get some help.’

  As he finished speaking, Mike Carter returned.

  ‘We apparently had two officers at the scene of the incident involving your friend Marlena,’ he began. ‘They have since interviewed her and various witnesses. I have just read their report and there is nothing in it about the possibility of deliberate intent. It is true that the cyclist didn’t stop, but unfortunately that sort of reckless behaviour is not unknown on the streets of this city. And the victim said nothing about having been deliberately targeted.’

  ‘Didn’t she?’ asked George. He shot Billy a surprised look.

  ‘She must still be in shock and in a lot of pain,’ persisted Billy. ‘And she’s an old lady. I shouldn’t think she’s capable of thinking straight right now.’

  ‘No, of course she isn’t. But Alfonso, our friend Alfonso who more or less saw it happen, he didn’t think it was an accident,’ said George.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Carter glanced down at the computer printout he was holding. ‘Mr Bertorelli. Our officers did comment on the coincidence of his presence at the scene.’

  ‘What the heck do you mean by that?’ countered Billy. He was a corporate lawyer, quite unused to visiting police stations and dealing with situations such as this, but his legal brain had switched on automatically. ‘One minute you’re telling us Marlena was merely the victim of an accident, and the next you appear to be making insinuations about Alfonso?’

  Carter’s face was set in stone.

  ‘I can only tell you what is in our officers’ report, sir,’ he said. ‘And indeed I cannot go into any more detail. I will file a report on your missing dogs, as I have already told you, and make a note of your other comments, which will then be on record. But under the circumstances, there is nothing further I can do for you at this stage.’

  ‘I do hope your report is a full one and that it will be swiftly brought to the attention of those who may feel able to take action,’ said Billy, forcing himself to remain calm. At least on the surface.

  George made no attempt to control his rising anger. ‘For God’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘We’re a group of ten friends and now something weird, or unpleasant, or downright frightening, or even violent, has happened to six of us in less than a fortnight. Never mind the coincidence of one of us witnessing Marlena getting injured, don’t you think there may have been one or two other coincidences too many in all of this?’

  ‘I understand that you are upset, sir,’ said Carter. ‘But you need to calm down. Of course, if any further incidents occur, you should let us know.’

  ‘Oh, what’s the fucking point?’ said George, and flounced off through the open door onto Agar Street with Billy following.

  ‘Drama queens,’ muttered Carter under his breath, making quite the wrong assumption about George, who did a rather impressive flounce when he put his mind to it, as well as wearing tight trousers and smelling strongly of cologne. Bizarrely, Carter made the same, and in that instance correct, assumption about Billy, who was dressed in a business suit and had maintained his professional demeanour throughout, only because of his association with George. Once upon a time Carter would have had a lot more to say, and rather more loudly, but police officers and those affiliated to the force could no longer express their prejudices in public without landing in trouble. It didn’t alter the fact that, so far as Carter was concerned, George and Billy were still a pair of poofs, and if he’d been dealing with two straight men he may well have been more helpful. Or at least listened more carefully.

  He would have denied that, though, and believed his own denial. So he remained a diligent officer, duly filing a report on the missing dogs and including the suggestion that this might be linked to other incidents.

  George, Billy and Tiny continued to look for their dogs the rest of that day and into the night. Bob, having popped round to see how Marlena was and been told by her that Daisy and Chump were missing, joined in.

  The four men combed the streets, enquired in pubs and shops, and appealed to passers-by, all to no avail.

  Meanwhile, after returning home to be with Karen and help her put the kids to bed in a bid to maintain some sort of normality, Greg was finally able to make his way to Soho in an attempt to see the man he’d been thinking about all day, in between trying to help his friends.

  It was nearly ten p.m. before he arrived at his destination, a gambling club called the Zodiac, in the heart of Chinatown. The entrance, flanked by a pair of Oriental heavies wearing black suits and dicky bows, who were both about half the size of Tiny and twice as menacing, was at the Wardour Street end of Lisle Street. Greg walked towards it resolutely, albeit on the other side of the road. And it was only when he was directly opposite that he paused. Then he walked on past and stopped again to step into the doorway of a closed Chinese supermarket.

  His heart seemed to be beating much faster than usual. He could feel sweat forming on his forehead. He needed to calm down and work out exactly what he was going to say before entering that club. He took the last of his secret cigarettes from the packet in his pocket and lit up, checking before he did so that he still had the extra-strong mints he would need in order to conceal his misdemeanour from Karen later.

  Lost in his own not entirely pleasant world, he bent forward slightly to light up, cupping his hand around cigarette and lighter. As the flame illuminated his face, he heard a familiar male voice.

/>   ‘Greg? What you doing here, mate?’

  It was Tiny.

  Greg breathed out a lungful of smoke.

  ‘Just popped out for a sneaky ciggy,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell the missus, will you?’

  Tiny looked puzzled. Greg guessed the big man was wondering why he needed to ‘pop’ this far from Bishops Court in order to smoke an illicit cigarette. But Tiny passed no comment. Of course, he had his own preoccupations.

  Greg took another welcome drag. God, why was smoking so damned good, he wondered.

  Tiny still hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Any news of the dogs, mate?’ Greg asked him, though he could tell from the way Tiny looked that there hadn’t been. Or if there had, it wasn’t good news.

  Tiny shook his head.

  ‘They’ve disappeared without a trace, Greg,’ he said. ‘Billy and I have been everywhere twice, and Bob’s pitched in too.’

  ‘Anything more I can do to help?’ asked Greg, hoping that Tiny would answer in the negative.

  Tiny shook his head again. ‘Billy’s having one last look back at the park, even though it’s closed this time of night. Ari’s printing up some posters and said he’ll fly-post them all over the West End in the morning. Meanwhile, I’m on my way home to get the drinks poured ready for when Billy gets in. We thought we might get blind drunk.’

  ‘Trouble is, that makes things even worse when you come round in the morning with a hangover as well as the shit that’s going on,’ said Greg, who was considering doing exactly the same thing.

  He hugged the big man.

  ‘Just remember, a dog’s job is to break your bloody heart and worry you to death. They’ll probably turn up, the pair of ’em, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as if nothing’s happened. With or without one of those silly notes.’

  ‘Thanks, Greg,’ said Tiny, managing a small smile, even though he didn’t believe a word of it.

  ‘Now take care, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. You too, mate. Take care. And of the missus.’

  Greg watched his friend carry on down the street, head bowed under the weight of his worries.