Friends to Die For

by Hilary Bonner

  If only you knew, pal, he thought, if only you knew. He finished his cigarette, threw the butt down and stamped it into the ground. Then he stood for a moment, looking up the street at the Zodiac gambling club: its dimly lit entrance standing out by default among the bright lights of Soho, its name discreetly engraved on a brass plaque to one side of the doorway. This was a club of long standing and considerable reputation. It did not need to advertise. Greg watched a group of punters arrive. They looked like regulars, hurrying through the door, eager to begin their play. A tall man wearing a dark overcoat with its collar turned up left shortly afterwards. His head was down. Greg wondered how much the man had lost. The stakes were high at the Zodiac.

  Greg shuffled his feet. He was nervous. And that chance meeting with Tiny had somehow further dampened an already ebbing resolution. He no longer had the stomach for a tricky and delicate confrontation, even though he’d been planning it all day.

  He told himself that not only might it not be necessary, that his suspicions may have been ill founded, but also there was a risk that by going there he would only increase the danger he and his family were in.

  No, he decided, he would put it off until the following day. Who knew what might have developed by then?

  He shivered in the cold night air, thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his bomber jacket, and strode off down Lisle Street, heading for home.

  All he wanted was to kiss his sleeping children goodnight, climb into his warm double bed and hold his wife close and tight.

  Michelle arrived unannounced at Marlena’s flat. She was carrying a small suitcase, the sort that fits under the seats of aircraft, and looked as if she had been hurrying.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming round so late,’ she said. ‘My plane just got in and I rushed straight here.’ She gestured at her bag. ‘I wanted to see for myself how you were.’

  Marlena tried to smile. Her lips stretched into a thin hard line.

  ‘Ask me a load of questions, more like,’ she said grumpily.

  Michelle did a double take. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll go, if you like. You’re right, of course. I did also wonder if I could help, though.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t go,’ said Marlena, pushing aside her moment of pique as quickly as she’d allowed herself to display it. ‘I’m sorry too. My damn foot is hurting so much its wreaking havoc with my temper.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Michelle. ‘What about painkillers? You must have been given some. Are they not working?’

  ‘Not nearly enough. I’ve already taken more than my quota for today. But to hell with that, I shall definitely be seeking oblivion at bedtime.’

  Michelle smiled. ‘Don’t blame you,’ she said. ‘You will be careful though, won’t you?’

  Marlena smiled back. ‘I am always careful, dear child,’ she said. ‘Even if it doesn’t look that way right now.’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ said Michelle. ‘I presume you’ve had a police visit or two about this, haven’t you?’

  Yes. Pair of charming young men with a penchant for the obvious.’

  Michelle laughed. ‘Sounds like a definition of all too many coppers I know,’ she said. ‘Not sure about the “charming” bit though.’ She paused. ‘Anyway, I’m back on duty tomorrow, and one of the reasons I’ve dropped in on you like this is because I thought I might gee things up a bit. It’s not my beat, and even if it was I’d be regarded as personally involved so I couldn’t take part in any inquiries, but there really should be a proper police investigation. Too much has happened for this all to be coincidence. You’ve heard about the boys’ dogs, I expect?’

  Marlena confirmed that she had.

  ‘Both dogs, same place, same day, and within a couple of hours of each other. Another so-called coincidence? I don’t think so.’

  She asked Marlena if she’d go through the details of her collision with the hooded cyclist again.

  Marlena protested mildly. ‘The two constables who were at the scene and then came to the hospital made me do that, even though, charming or not, they didn’t seem very interested,’ she said.

  ‘They didn’t know the whole picture, did they? Anyway, there’s a CID man I know who won’t be able to resist this case. It will intrigue him, I’m sure. Come on, Marlena. We really can’t let this go on, it’s getting frightening. One more time, please. Tell me exactly what happened.’

  Marlena did so, giving as thorough an account as she could, albeit a little wearily.

  ‘And the cyclist, the hooded man, if it was a man, just rode off?’ prompted Michelle, after Marlena had come to the end. ‘He didn’t stop?’

  ‘No, he didn’t stop. Come on, would you expect him to?’ Marlena sighed. ‘I’m still not convinced it was deliberate, though,’ she added. ‘I think that’s too far-fetched.’

  Michelle studied the older woman. There was an element of doubt in her voice, as if pleading for reassurance rather than proclaiming what she believed to be true.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Michelle said, unable to offer the reassurance her friend craved. ‘But I do know one thing: it’s damned well time somebody found out.’

  The following morning Michelle reported for duty at Charing Cross at 7 a.m. On the way to the station she’d encountered Ari, who, good as his word, was already fly-posting the neighbourhood. He showed Michelle one of his posters, which bore photographs of both dogs, emailed to him by their owners, and the slogan: Missing. Daisy the chihuahua, light brown, long-haired bitch, and Chump, male Maltese terrier, white. Generous reward for anyone with information leading to their recovery. The poster also gave the details of when and where the dogs were last seen.

  ‘Well done, Ari,’ said Michelle. ‘Let’s hope something comes of it.’

  ‘Yep, let’s hope.’

  ‘You’re out and about early,’ she told him then added, grinning: ‘I doubt you’ve ever been out this early before, unless you were coming home from somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, ha bloody ha,’ said Ari. ‘I wanted to catch people going to work, and people walking their dogs before they go to work. They’re probably the most likely to have seen or heard something.’ He paused, his face falling. ‘If anyone has.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Michelle, giving him a quick hug.

  At the station she checked what reports had been formally filed and what action had so far been taken: little or none. Then she set about contacting the CID man she’d mentioned to Marlena the previous evening.

  In the dark days immediately after her transfer to the Met, still aching from the pain of her marriage break-up, Michelle had made a clumsy pass at Detective Sergeant David Vogel outside the Dunster Arms following a farewell party for some veteran uniform she didn’t even know. She had been very drunk at the time, desperate to blot out her anguish at the betrayal and humiliation she’d suffered when her husband left her. With his wispy fair hair, wispy fair beard and penchant for elderly corduroy, Vogel didn’t look much like a police officer; and unlike most of his colleagues that evening, he had been totally sober. As far as Michelle knew, he didn’t drink. And he was rumoured to be a vegetarian. He was a man who seemed to allow himself few personal indulgences. And playing away from home was apparently not one of them. His response to her unsolicited display of affection had been to blink rapidly behind his hornrimmed spectacles and decline, quite kindly, on the grounds that he was married with a young daughter.

  Unaccustomed to the company of honourable men, Michelle had felt a total fool. But she’d been impressed too. From that night, Vogel had seemed all the more attractive to her, though she made sure to hide the fact for fear of embarrassing them both. In any case, unless she was really stupid and repeated the performance of throwing herself at him, Vogel could be relied upon not to notice. He wasn’t the sort of man most women found attractive. Which, of course, with the sorry history of her wrecked marriage still ruling her every emotion, was probably why Michelle was so taken with him.

  She sensed
that Vogel was an unusual copper as well as an unusual man. They called him the Geek at Charing Cross, but not without grudging respect. The name was a twisted tribute to his intelligence and his ability to sift through endless layers of facts and figures and come up with connotations and conclusions that no one else could.

  It turned out that Vogel wasn’t on duty until noon that day, so Michelle dropped him an email outlining her concerns about the various events that had befallen her friends. She concluded by asking if he would do her the favour of having a quick look at the Marlena incident and maybe keep an eye on the missing-dogs scenario.

  She then took off for another edifying day in the division she so disliked. There was a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, and she was on point duty for the rest of her shift. That meant aching feet and zero job satisfaction: just another day in Traffic.

  David Vogel picked up her email shortly after coming on duty. He read it through carefully, but at speed. His lips twitched, just as Mike Carter’s had done, at the Mr Tickle story. Vogel was not without a sense of humour, though this was not generally recognized within the Met because it was so much gentler than that of his colleagues. He pondered for a moment or two. A pair of mystery pranks, an act of apparent wanton vandalism, two dogs going missing on the same day at the same place, a possibly deliberate attack on an elderly woman . . . Vogel was intrigued, just as Michelle had predicted. However, a mountain of paperwork sat on his desk. Twice as much data again awaited his attention on screen. The minutiae of a complex fraud case that nobody had yet been able to untangle. To most police officers, indeed most people, sifting through this lot would be a horrible chore. To David Vogel it was a delight. He loved paperwork. He relished the opportunity to seek out details others had overlooked. Loved discovering what lay behind an apparently meaningless jumble of bald facts and figures. Shortly before switching off his computer and heading home the previous evening, almost three hours after his shift had officially ended, he’d thought he might be close to a breakthrough. He couldn’t wait to get stuck in again.

  Mr Tickle would just have to wait, he told himself, with the smallest stab of regret. Besides, there might be nothing to it. The dogs would probably turn up unharmed and without explanation, as dogs did, and there might be no link whatsoever between the other events. He simply didn’t have the time to do anything about it at present. He did, however, send an email to Dispatch saying that these matters had come to his notice, and asking could he please be kept informed of any developments.

  At three in the afternoon, Jessica Harding, a bright young PC working in Dispatch, called his extension.

  ‘Looks like there’s been a development in that case you’re interested in, Sarge,’ she told him. ‘Some Big Issue seller just found the remains of two dogs in a rubbish bin on Long Acre. He told a passer-by who called us. Apparently they’ve been badly mutilated.’

  ‘Are we sure they’re the same two dogs?’ asked Vogel.

  ‘Well, they need their microchips checking, assuming they have them, but the descriptions match,’ PC Harding replied.

  Vogel had already begun calling up the relevant report: ‘A chihuahua and a Maltese terrier,’ he read from his screen. ‘The breeds are right then?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Jessica Harding. ‘In as much as anyone could tell. Sounds like they’re in a terrible state. Their sexual organs have been removed, their eyes gouged out, tails cut off – that sort of thing. The Big Issue seller went into shock and had to be taken to hospital, and, according to the response team, the man who called us wasn’t in much better shape either. The chihuahua’s head’s been more or less hacked off and—’

  Vogel interrupted. Unlike former sergeant Mike Carter, David Vogel liked dogs. He had a border collie called Timmy at home, and if anything like that ever happened to Timmy, Vogel feared what he might be capable of doing to the perpetrators.

  ‘All right, Harding, I get the picture,’ he said. He was about to end the call when a thought occurred to him. ‘Has anyone notified the owners yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ responded Harding.

  ‘Good,’ said Vogel. ‘I think we should ask PC Michelle Monahan to do it. She knows them, apparently. And she knows the background to all this. They’re going to be shocked rigid, whoever tells them, but she may be able to get more out of them.’

  ‘Isn’t she Traffic?’

  Vogel sighed. ‘She’s still a police officer, Jessica,’ he said. ‘And she was previously in CID.’

  ‘Right. OK. I’ll tell my boss you’re handling that side of it then, shall I?’ asked Harding.

  ‘Yes.’ Vogel was no longer really listening.

  He ended the call and, trying to ignore the queasiness in the pit of his stomach, sat and thought for a moment or two before contacting Michelle’s team leader to ask if he could borrow her for a special task. Like Michelle, David Vogel didn’t believe in coincidences. And he was beginning to get a bad feeling about the increasingly sinister and unpleasant sequence of events which he now felt impelled to investigate.

  eight

  And so it was Michelle who broke the news to the boys. She called round to see them after she’d finished traffic duty at the palace. First George, then Tiny and Billy. By then it was early evening, and she found all three men at their homes, as she had hoped.

  George burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying.

  ‘This shouldn’t have happened,’ he said. ‘Not to those dear little dogs. Whatever else is going on, this shouldn’t have happened.’

  Michelle made soothing noises, which was about all she could do.

  ‘They must have suffered, they must have suffered so,’ muttered George through his tears.

  Michelle could find no words to argue with that. She was aware of the condition both dogs had been in when they were found, and although she tried to spare George that knowledge, her friend insisted on being told. No wonder he was so upset, thought Michelle. And she too dreaded to think what the two little dogs must have gone through before death had eventually brought them release.

  Realizing that George was on the brink of hysteria, Michelle made sweet tea and forced him to drink it. The tea didn’t appear to do a lot of good. She reckoned he needed something stronger. She found a bottle of supermarket brandy in a kitchen cupboard and poured him a large glass which he swallowed quite obediently. Then she sat with him.

  It took more than an hour before she felt able to leave George. Even then she only did so because she feared that if she didn’t go to Tiny and Billy soon, they might find out from some other source. Reluctant to leave George on his own, she popped next door to ask his neighbour, Marnie, the elderly woman George had once told her looked upon him as a surrogate son, if she’d call round and keep an eye on him.

  Marnie, it turned out, was in a wheelchair – to Michelle’s embarrassment, as she’d never met the woman before and yet here she was asking her a favour, albeit on George’s behalf.

  But Marnie, whose eyes welled up when Michelle told her as gently as she could that Chump had been killed, was eager to help.

  ‘Oh, that poor little dog,’ said Marnie. ‘Don’t you fret, dear. I can get next door all right in my chair. ’Bout as far as I can go nowadays without help. But don’t worry, I’ll look after my Georgie. He does enough for me, that boy, I can tell you.’

  Billy and Tiny took the news equally badly, albeit rather more quietly. The big man shed silent tears which ran freely down his broad cheeks. He made no attempt to wipe them away. It was almost as if he was unaware that he was weeping.

  ‘But have the chips been checked yet?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Well, no, not as far as I know,’ responded Michelle. ‘The dogs are the right breeds, though. I mean, it really would be one heck of a coincidence if it weren’t Daisy and Chump, I’m afraid.’

  ‘’Course it would,’ said Billy. His face was ashen. There was not even any colour in his lips. ‘Stop clutching at straws, Tiny. It’s our little girl.’

  ‘All
right, but I want to see her. I want to see her. Before . . .’

  Tiny couldn’t seem to get any more words out.

  Michelle hesitated. She had told all three boys that the dogs had been mutilated, but so far Tiny and Billy hadn’t asked her for the details.

  ‘Look, Tiny, don’t you think you’d rather remember Daisy how she was?’ she suggested.

  ‘No, I want to see her. I want to see my Daisy,’ Tiny persisted.

  Michelle glanced towards Billy and imperceptibly shook her head. Unfortunately Tiny caught her at it.

  ‘You haven’t told us exactly how Daisy died, have you, Michelle?’ the big man asked. ‘Was it really that bad? Come on, tell us what happened to her. Everything. I, for one, need to know.’

  ‘Well, we can’t be absolutely sure,’ said Michelle. She realized she was prevaricating, but couldn’t help herself. ‘I’m afraid Daisy did suffer appalling injuries, but they could have happened after her death.’

  ‘Are you clutching at straws now, Michelle?’

  ‘No. The truth is, we don’t know. Perhaps there will be a pet autopsy – I’m not sure what the form is. The dogs were stolen, and that, coupled with the fact that they may have been subjected to undue suffering, means that criminal offences have almost certainly been committed. So I should think CID will push for a full post-mortem veterinary examination.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Michelle, just tell us what you know, tell us what happened to our dog.’ Tiny, usually so softly spoken, may have taken the initial news quietly and apparently quite calmly, perhaps because it was no more than he had expected, but now he was shouting.

  ‘Right.’ Nothing else for it, thought Michelle. Tiny, like George, was evidently not to be deterred.

  She told them, in the most clinical and unemotional way that she could manage, that Daisy’s tail had been cut off, that her sexual organs had been removed, that her throat had been cut and her head almost severed.

  Th-that’s why I think it better that you don’t see her,’ Michelle stumbled.