As she stared at him, transfixed, Michelle knew with absolute clarity that her suspicions had been right. This was the man who had killed Marlena, who would kill her if she did not get out of here this minute. So she turned, heading for the front door as fast as she could. He hurled himself sideways, making a grab for her, but he managed only to grasp her new shoulder bag. He tore it from her, breaking the strap. Then he seemed to step back, almost as if allowing her to escape. She half threw herself down the stairs, sprinted through the main door out onto the street and took off at a run, as fast as she could, her baseball hat falling unnoticed onto the pavement beneath her feet. She put a couple of blocks between herself and the apartment building before pausing to look back. She couldn’t phone anyone. Not easily anyway. Her new phone had been in her bag. She thought about approaching a passer-by for help, but decided her best option would be to head for Charing Cross police station, a couple of streets away. There couldn’t be a much safer place than that.
Nobody seemed to be following her. But then, he had been naked. He wouldn’t come after her without first pulling on some clothes, would he?
She leaned, panting, against a wall on the corner of St Martin’s Lane and Brydges Place, struggling to catch her breath. Her damaged nose made it difficult for her to breathe while running.
Brydges Place is a narrow pedestrian alleyway, overshadowed on either side by tall buildings, and surprisingly little used at the St Martin’s Lane end. It offered an effective shortcut to the police station. While Michelle was wondering if this was a shortcut she dared use, or if she should take the safer albeit longer option of the main drag, she felt a blow in the small of her back. A gloved hand was clamped over her mouth. Unable to make a sound, she found herself being pulled into Brydges Place. She could see people just a few feet away, but he’d been so quick and strong and assertive that nobody seemed to have noticed what was happening.
She began to struggle, but her strength was no match for his. The hand over her mouth was half smothering her. Why didn’t someone come into the alleyway? If someone didn’t come right this minute it would be too late for her; unless she could remove the hand that was blocking her airway, she’d soon lose consciousness. Her mind was extraordinarily lucid – just as Marlena’s had been, though she didn’t know that. So this is it, she thought. I’m going to die at his hands.
Strangely, the worst part was knowing that she would die without learning the answer to the question that had plagued her all night.
Why? Why had any of this happened? She knew now what he was, and had seen in his eyes how he must see himself. But why had he suddenly turned on his friends, inflicting such sadistic cruelty on people who had trusted and cared about him? Why?
It was her last thought. She felt an almighty blow to the back of her head. A searing pain cut through her body. Strong hands gripped her neck, squeezing the life from her. Then she was gone. Dead in his arms.
At last, too late, a pair of chattering office girls turned into the alleyway, heading for their place of work.
He shifted her weight, twisting her round so that she faced him, her dead body pressed close to his deadly one. Then he buried her face in his shoulder and lowered his hooded head, careful that his flesh did not touch hers, so that her features were concealed.
The two girls passed by without giving him, or poor dead Michelle, a second glance. She and her murderer looked every bit like a pair of lovers locked in a clinch.
He watched the girls retreat, their backs silhouetted against the brightness beyond the alley. There was a kind of alcove to his right, formed by the entrance to an old fire escape. He let Michelle’s body fall softly into a heap against its graffiti-covered yellow doors.
Then, he walked calmly away, his footsteps quiet and unhurried, until he was lost in the anonymous hubbub of the city.
seventeen
The sight of a fellow human being slumped against a doorway in central London is sadly an everyday occurrence. The homeless, the drunk and the drugged, refugees and runaways, the mentally unstable, the physically infirm, the temporarily embarrassed and the permanently hopeless, are eternally attracted to the capital’s heaving melting pot. They seek refuge in the archways that surround our major railway stations, beneath bridges and viaducts, in the doorways of office and apartment blocks; they lie on the pavement by heating outlets, and are to be found sheltering in alleyways and dark corners throughout the metropolis. Their presence, frequently comatose, attracts little or no attention. And so it was that upwards of forty or fifty pedestrians, some using Brydges Place as a shortcut and some heading for the Two Brydges members’ club and the old pub next to it at the Bedfordbury and Chandos Place end of the alley, made their way past Michelle’s body without giving her a second glance, let alone stopping to investigate.
It was a pair of young mothers from the suburbs, in London on an away-day, their children in the care of their own mothers, who stopped to check on her, almost two full hours after Michelle had been killed. They took in the swollen face and the staring eyes and reached out to touch skin that was already cold. With trembling fingers one of them then dialled 999.
Vogel was taking an early lunch at a vegan cafe just off the Strand when the news reached him. He was told that the first officers on the scene, being from Charing Cross police station, had recognized Michelle and put a call in to Dispatch to report that one of their own was down. Vogel at once abandoned his stuffed organic tomatoes with brown rice and headed to the crime scene. He could not, in any case, have eaten any more of his food. He felt sick.
It took him less than five minutes, half walking and half running, to get there. He passed the police station on the way. The fire exit gateway where Michelle’s body had been discovered was a few yards from the end of Brydges Place, almost within sight of the back door of the station. Somehow, that made the discovery of her body all the more shocking. The SOCOs were already at work. The scene was cordoned off and several uniformed officers were ensuring its authenticity and keeping the public at bay. Vogel, though he hated it, duly kitted himself out in a Tyvek suit before approaching Michelle’s body.
He reckoned he wasn’t going to need the expert guidance of the pathologist, whom he was assured was on her way, to ascertain how Michelle had died. The signs of strangulation were obvious. You could see the marks of the gloved fingers that had been wrapped around her neck and pressed into her flesh. These were surrounded by puffy discoloured skin. But then Vogel noticed that the hair on top of Michelle’s head was matted with blood. He leaned forward for a closer look, careful not to touch anything. Already the indefinable odour of death was emanating from the corpse. He thought there might be an indent in Michelle’s skull, but he wasn’t sure. The distorted face seemed to grow bigger, its death-induced deformity more clearly defined, as he examined it. He felt his head begin to swim, that familiar sinking feeling. He wasn’t sure if his body was swaying, but he certainly felt as if it was. As soon as he’d seen enough he closed his eyes to shut out the sight before him, turning away so as not to attract the attention of the SOCOs, and straightened up.
The sight of a corpse almost always affected him deeply. But this was a fellow officer, a young woman Vogel had grown fond of. A young woman he now believed he had let down. And fatally so. He felt weak as a kitten.
He made himself stand very still, with his legs slightly apart and feet firmly planted, waiting until he was sure that he would not fall over before opening his eyes again. The world around him was no longer spinning, which was a good sign. Making a conscious effort to breathe deeply and evenly, he moved away from the cordoned-off area of the crime scene.
His lips were parched and his head had started to ache. He knew it made no sense, but he couldn’t help feeling responsible for Michelle’s death. He thought of the courage it must have taken for her to approach him when these troubling incidents first began. Despite being eaten up with embarrassment over that silly pass she’d made at him, she’d come to ask for his hel
p. She might still be alive if only he hadn’t made it quite so clear that he considered her a suspect.
Only that morning, he’d listened to Ben Parker suggesting that she might be capable of a brutal murder, and instead of leaping to her defence he’d sat there methodically calculating whether it were possible.
And now Michelle had been murdered. Proving her innocence in the most terrible way possible. If only he’d gone to see her, warned that she could still be in danger and to take extra care.
He blamed himself totally, but he knew he must dismiss such thoughts from his mind. Nothing he could do now would bring Michelle back, but at least he could make amends by bringing her killer to justice.
The killer may have used his hands and not a knife on this occasion, but Vogel was convinced that Marlena McTavish and Michelle Monahan had been murdered by the same man. Sunday Club was at the root of it all, it had to be, yet despite the hours he’d spent questioning the various members he still had absolutely no idea what the motive might be.
Unlike Marlena’s killing, which had been carefully planned, Vogel thought Michelle’s murder had been committed on the spur of the moment, provoked by he knew not what. Fear maybe? Had Michelle, knowingly or unknowingly, been in a position to expose the killer’s identity?
She might still be alive if he hadn’t bowed to pressure from his superior officers. He’d been swept along in the general wave of euphoria at the arrest of Alfonso Bertorelli, even though he had never, in his heart, believed Bertorelli to be guilty. He wondered if his head had been turned by his secondment into MIT and the attentions of DCI Clarke. Vogel hoped not.
He glanced back at the small ribboned-off piece of London. He watched the SOCOs step aside to allow Pat Fitzwarren through. The pathologist was intent on getting quickly to the corpse. It was always different when a police officer had died. Vogel was too preoccupied to greet her properly, merely nodding acknowledgement of her ‘good morning’ with a distracted nod of his head.
He knew some of his colleagues might cling to the belief that they had Marlena’s killer in custody, that Michelle’s death was in no way connected to the events surrounding Sunday Club. But that was a coincidence too far. No, this was all the work of one man. And clearly that man was not Alfonso Bertorelli. If there was one good thing and only one good thing about being locked in a police cell, reflected Vogel drily, it proved a cast-iron alibi.
There was no point hanging around the crime scene any longer. He had work to do. And, he felt, people to protect. The friends were falling like flies. He could not fail another.
Vogel’s mobile rang as he was hurrying back to Charing Cross. The caller was DC Wagstaff.
‘The boss wants a full report from you soonest, guv,’ he said. ‘We’re all gutted here. Just can’t believe—’
‘I know.’ Vogel cut him short. He didn’t need to be told what the atmosphere would be like in the station.
‘Tell Clarke I’m on my way,’ he said.
‘Another thing, guv,’ continued Wagstaff. ‘Some bloke’s turned up in the front office, says he’s got information about Bertorelli. Something about an alibi. He’s not very clear. And he stinks of booze, but—’
‘Put him in an interview room,’ interrupted Vogel, who reckoned any possibility of clarifying the Bertorelli situation was worth investigating.
The man awaiting him, who said his name was Charles Timpson, had bad teeth, a drinker’s bulbous nose, and smelled not only of alcohol but also stale sweat. He actually seemed sober, but, as indicated by Wagstaff, was not particularly coherent.
It took Vogel some time to gather the gist of what Timpson was trying to tell him.
‘So you recognized Alfonso Bertorelli from a picture in a newspaper, and you think you were drinking with him in the Dunster Arms on the day that Marleen McTavish was murdered, is that it?’ Vogel asked.
‘I’m bloody sure I was,’ muttered the man. ‘My wedding anniversary, see – not that I have a wife any more. She kicked me out years ago.’
‘Right, so can you remember what time Mr Bertorelli arrived at the pub?’
‘Not exactly, but I was watching the cricket on TV. The IPL. I’ve got nothing better to do, so I go to the pub most days and watch whatever sport they’ve got on. It hadn’t been on long – the early games start at eleven thirty. I’m not mad about blokes playing cricket in their pyjamas, but there you go . . .’
Vogel let Timpson ramble on about cricket while he processed the relevant information. It appeared Bertorelli had gone straight from the station to a nearby pub, exactly as he’d claimed.
‘Can you remember how long you were drinking with Mr Bertorelli?’ Vogel asked.
‘Oh, most of the day.’
‘Any idea what time he left the pub?’
‘No. But I didn’t go till around seven. I know that because the second game had just ended.’
‘And Mr Bertorelli was still there?’
‘Yep. He’d fallen asleep. ’Course the regular landlord wouldn’t have stood for that. Nor Jim Marshal. But it was only Micky behind the bar that day.’
‘How on earth can you remember so much if you’d been in the pub all day?’ Vogel demanded. ‘You must have been well plastered.’
‘I can always remember cricket,’ Timpson said, taking umbrage. ‘And that Bertorelli, well, he just looked out of place. I could tell he wasn’t a drinker. I was sort of keeping an eye on him.’
‘I see. Why has it taken you so long to come forward with this information, Mr Timpson?’
The man looked sheepish. ‘Well, I’ve been on a bit of a bender,’ he said. ‘Haven’t been sober for a week or so. I have a newspaper delivered at home every day, ’cos I do the horses, you see. But I’d been too pissed to look at ’em. It was only this morning that I saw the report about the murder and the picture of the man who’d been arrested. I knew I had to come and give a statement.’
‘Thank you, Mr Timpson,’ said Vogel. ‘Thank you very much indeed.’
And that clinches it, he thought to himself, as he made his way to Nobby Clarke’s office to give her his now delayed report. He hoped she would agree that the delay had been worth it.
Vogel was about to knock on the door of the office temporarily assigned to Clarke, when he was intercepted by DI Forest, bristling with indignation.
‘What the hell is going on, Vogel?’ Forest demanded.
In no mood for the DI’s posturing, Vogel replied, ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind stepping out of the way. I need to report to my SIO.’
Forest had positioned himself so that he was blocking the door to Nobby Clarke’s office. Instead of moving aside, he barked, ‘Tell that flash bitch Clarke she needs to get this sort—’
At that moment the door behind Forest opened to reveal a sardonically smiling DCI Clarke.
‘Thank you for your input, DI Forest,’ she said quietly.
Forest glanced anxiously over one shoulder. His ruddy complexion had turned even redder. DCI Clarke was a good six feet tall, Vogel reckoned. And, in the heeled boots which accompanied the tailored trouser suits she invariably wore to work, she towered over Tom Forest.
Vogel’s wife was tall. She’d told him that a lot of short men were intimidated by tall women, even if they wouldn’t admit it, particularly if the women were in a position of authority over them.
Forest certainly looked intimidated. And serve him damn well right, thought Vogel.
‘Yes, oh, yes, well, as long as we all pull together, I’m sure we will get the right result,’ Forest blustered.
‘Perhaps if you’d let my assistant SIO pass,’ said Clarke, her face expressionless, ‘we could get on with achieving the right result that much quicker.’
‘Yes, right, yes.’
As a flustered Forest departed, Clarke shook her head sorrowfully.
‘We were at Hendon together, you know,’ she told Vogel as she ushered him into her office. ‘We used to call him Einstein. And now he’s a DI. Not changed a bit, though.’
>
She sat down behind her desk, and gestured for Vogel to take a seat. ‘There’s nothing worse than losing a fellow copper,’ she sighed.
‘No, boss, there isn’t,’ agreed Vogel.
‘What do you make of it?’ she asked.
‘Clearly Mr Bertorelli couldn’t have killed Michelle Monahan. And it now looks as though he’s got an alibi for the day Marlena was killed . . .’
Vogel told her about Charles Timpson and the statement he had given. The DCI made a disparaging remark about the quality of Wagstaff and Carlisle’s pub check, and told Vogel to send them back to the Dunster Arms to verify Timpson’s story.
‘We probably need to drop all charges against him,’ said Vogel. ‘I shouldn’t think the CPS will want to know after this.’
‘All charges?’ she queried. ‘I agree it’s impossible for us to proceed with the murder charge, but what about the earlier mugging of PC Monahan? A considerable amount of incriminating evidence was found at Bertorelli’s place of residence, was it not? The hoody, the bike, and even Michelle Monahan’s handbag.’
‘Yes, just as we found a pair of his old trainers covered in Marlena’s blood when we went to arrest him for her murder, a murder he now has an alibi for,’ Vogel pointed out. ‘Bertorelli has always maintained that those items were planted at his gran’s. Forensics could find no trace of his fingerprints on the bike or the bag, which was why the CPS didn’t want to charge him after PC Monahan was mugged.’
‘So now we have to accept that he was telling the truth about being set up?’
Friends to Die For Page 25
