Fountain Of Sorrow (The Christy Kennedy Mysteries Book 3)

by Paul Charles

  “Well, let’s get the second point out of the way first, shall we? He definitely wasn’t gay but at the same time he didn’t seem that interested in women. Sure we’d go out sometimes and pull and he’d definitely do the wild thing, or at least say he did.

  Boatend hesitated, before continuing, “there was apparently something weird which went down with his sister-in-law. Some big hoo-ha which went on at his mother’s funeral. He’d talk about it a bit when he’d had a few, but he’d never entirely spill the beans. It must have been pretty serious though because the entire family, well, all that was left of it, his dad died in a car crash when he was very young and his mum, that was her funeral I was just talking about, that happened about two years ago - but his two brothers and sisters anyway, well, they haven’t talked to John Boy since the funeral.”

  “What about Christmas and things?”

  “He’s not really into them, neither am I for that matter, last year we just partied at his flat from Christmas Eve through to New Year’s Day.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “He’s got a flat in this block overlooking Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park, quite close to the zoo actually. I suppose you’re going to want to take a look. Yeah well actually I can help you there, I’ve got a spare set of keys.”

  “Great. Excellent,” Kennedy said. This chap was turning out to be useful, very useful indeed.

  “He must have been doing okay to own one of those flats. They’d set you back a few bob, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Well, if we can’t get a good deal on a property, who can? Answer me that one then?” Boatend boasted.

  “Which brings me neatly to my next question. Were you aware of any of the deals John Stone was doing with National Properties?”

  “Ah. I see your connection. No, not really. I mean I knew they were clients of John Boy’s and he was always telling me they were keeping him sweet but I wouldn’t know any of the details. Old tight ass - oh, sorry, wash out my mouth with soapy water, I mean our leader Mr Arnold Cooper - would have all the figures on the official side of things but there would have been only two people who knew the exact deals, and one of them is dead. I’m not sure that you’re going to find that the sole survivor is going to be, shall we say, forthcoming.”

  “Anybody else you know who might have wanted to do John Stone some harm?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that since I heard the news downstairs and you know what, Guv, I can’t think of a single person. I mean I’m being dead honest with you and I’m probably thinking along the same lines you are. You know; one of his deals screwed up big time, lost someone a load of money and people who have got loads of money, although they can usually afford to lose loads, they do not take kindly to anyone they feel is depriving them of their lifeblood. It’s like that Bob Dylan line, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears,” and so when John Boy couldn’t make good the funds they topped him. But I’m sure even if he was under that kind of pressure and he hadn’t told me about it I would have noticed him being a bit on edge. And I can honestly say that recently he was his usual carefree self.”

  Boatend stopped and thought for some time, then leaned over the desk which separated him from the detective and said, “And that other thing, the family feud over his sister-in-law which happened at the funeral, was that serious enough to warrant…” He left the sentence unfinished and continued, “I don’t know about the ins and outs of that either, but I’d definitely look into that can of worms if I were you.”

  Kennedy returned to North Bridge House with a few addresses, a set of keys (for Stone’s flat) and a little (not a lot) of background information on the deceased. He was eager to see what the others had discovered in his absence.

  He wondered whether it was an advantage to have two suspects this early in the case. As he walked back to the police station he also noted how much illegal parking there was on the streets of Camden Town and wondered, with amusement, whether it had anything to do with the traffic wardens who had recently been arrested in a drugs swoop.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On reaching the top of Parkway, Kennedy, acting on impulse, continued past North Bridge House, took the first right along Prince Albert Road and headed across Primrose Hill to Ormonde Terrace, home of the recently deceased Mr John B. Stone.

  Kennedy had felt an overwhelming urge to view the place this strange man had called home. Kennedy wondered if he thought Stone was ‘strange’ because he didn’t appear to have many, if any, friends. He didn’t have any family connections and didn’t seem to have any desire to start his own family. And then, for one who seemed to have led such a scattered social life, he had been picked out to be murdered.

  This was a subject Kennedy pondered a lot on. How, and why, do you decide you are going to murder someone? Yes, in a fit of rage most of us will say, “I’ll kill him/her”, but 999 times out of a thousand it is a cry of anger and not a threat. But that one time in a thousand, when the cry is uttered under a seething breath, what triggers that? Is it physical? Is it mental? Is it a combination of both? Is it merely a God-complex: “Death to this scum!”?

  Yes, Kennedy was aware that from time to time there were murders of passion where a jealous lover goes out of control and regrets it for the rest of their life. Or a row spills over into a fight and the victim gets knocked down, hits their head on a stone, sharp object or whatever and ends up dying, the sort of thing that usually qualified as manslaughter. Kennedy put a few of these down to the apparently current lack of respect for life. Was this due to TV? Or was it due to the removal of the death penalty?

  He could remember when he was growing up how a murder, even as far away as London, would still cause ripples in Portrush, whereas one down in Belfast could send a tidal wave across the entire province. Nowadays murder victims seldom made the news unless there was a ‘sexy’ angle.

  He was intrigued by the way that ‘sexy’ in media circles now meant ‘instantly sellable’. So was this loss of respect for life due to the passing of time, the lack of deterrents, or the fault of media eager to fill their slots with anything ‘sexy’?

  Are murderers capable of only killing certain people, or can the wrong person simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Kennedy had yet to meet a murderer who wasn’t an ordinary person, at least on the surface. That was why they were so hard to catch. They were, mostly, ordinary people living and working amongst fellow ordinary people; the perfect hiding place. That is why Kennedy was intrigued to see what he could feel and pick up from a visit to the home of Stone.

  On the game of just-supposing you could just suppose that “John Boy” had met this geezer in the Spread Eagle. He had left to do some business with him. What business exactly? Perhaps they’d gotten into a fight because they couldn’t conclude the deal; the beating had gone just a bit too far and John Stone had died as a result. Such thoughts filled Kennedy’s head as he took the lift to the seventh floor and arrived at flat 7D with its brightly painted green door. Kennedy let himself in with two keys (Yale and Chubb) and closed the door quietly behind him, careful not to disturb the silence and solace within.

  He did a quick recce before a more detailed room-by-room search. The first thing which hit him was the smell. The place smelt like a hotel room: there were no distinct personal odours, just disinfectant from the bathroom and television dust.

  To the left of the front door was another door (pine) which led to a three-foot-square boxroom obviously used as a dump. Every home has one, but it was unusual to find it so close to the front door. It contained shoes, several pairs obviously no longer in favour with their owner. And there were jackets, lots of them, some hung properly on a hook rack to the left of the door and some just dumped over cardboard boxes.

  The boxes had once contained a TV, a video player, a stereo midi system and a Dualit toaster. There was also a stack of newspapers, mostly Evening Standards, Time Outs and Camden News Journals. In the corner there was a left-over (blue) carpet rolled up and looking
like a psychedelic Swiss roll, and there was obviously more junk concealed under all this.

  The next room to the left was a small bedroom, obviously spare since the bed was striped while the walls were adorned only by a nine-gear racing bicycle leaning against the long wall, a large yellow-and-black scarf draped carelessly over the handlebars. Beside the bed was a reading light on top of a white cube which also served as a magazine rack. The rack was empty so required no further examination. The next door, the last on this wall, led into a large master bedroom. The entire flat was floored with bare, sprung pine, which with the combined effect of white walls everywhere made the space look a lot bigger than it actually was.

  Kennedy felt quite weird wandering about the dead man’s home by himself. This was the home to which he had failed to return last night. Kennedy wondered if Stone imagined yesterday morning when he was leaving for work that the next person through the door would be a policeman. Kennedy kept having this strange feeling that he was going to find someone in the flat. He kept hearing noises, floor boards breathing, the wind against the windows, the water pipes creaking into action as someone somewhere else in the building activated their taps, dogs barking on the distant Primrose Hill. There were always dogs on Primrose Hill. But most of the sounds were from within these walls; perhaps they were just groans from the flat, upset at a trespasser intruding on its luxurious, human-free time.

  About five paces from the master bedroom door was a very large bed. It was low to the floor and covered in light blue bedclothes, and had white bedside tables on either side, each with identical reading lights. Beyond the bed was a window which spanned the entire length of the room. The curtains, light blue to match the bedclothes, were closed, and should Kennedy have pulled them open, which he didn’t, he would have had a magical view of the zoo in the foreground with Regent’s Park behind.

  Opposite the main window and adjacent to the bedroom door was another similar door leading to the en suite bathroom. Very simple: everything tiled white, floor, walls and ceiling. The toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, shampoo, facecloth, towels (white) all awaited (in vain) their owner’s return. A large mirror covered the wall behind the sink and a small magnifying shaving mirror had been set into it at head height, lower than Kennedy’s, the curve of its lens giving him a distorted view of himself. The bathroom, like the two bedrooms thus far visited, was reasonably neat and looked more like the hotel suite that Kennedy initially sensed than part of a permanent residence.

  Back out into the rectangular hallway and the next door directly opposite the front door led to another bathroom, similar but smaller than the en suite one. Then directly opposite the master bedroom door was that which led to the main lounge-cum-living area, a large, grand room which had a kitchen off to the right (as you entered) and a doorway leading to a reasonably sized balcony directly in front of you.

  This was definitely the funkier room. Three large brown sofas made an ‘n’ shape in front of the fireplace, which was to the left and directly opposite the dining area. On either side of the fireplace were Ikea shelving units arranged symmetrically to accomodate CDs, books (mainly paperbacks), the midi system, the TV, the video recorder and two units fronted by doors.

  Above the marble mantelpiece was a large, twenty-by-sixteen photograph and it looked as if it could possibly be John Stone and his sister and two brothers from the distinct family resemblance. The boys had done okay on the deal, but to have those looks as a girl was somewhat less desirable. They were all smiling and joking. Someone, probably an amateur judging by the way the shot was composed, had obviously managed to catch a magic moment so Kennedy guessed the photo to be more than two years old. But he felt a distinct spookiness at John B. Stone smiling down at him from above the mantelpiece. A chill ran up his spine and he had a growing urge to get out of the building immediately.

  Kennedy was not particularly superstitious, nor did he believe in ghosts, but there were thoughts filling his head which he couldn’t expel and he could see himself trying to explain them to ann rea later, with both of them having trouble believing his words. But at that moment he was there facing the picture of a smiling man who had just died an ugly death, and the spirit of this man seemed to still be in the home and willing Kennedy to find his assassin.

  Kennedy froze, and as the hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention he could feel himself breaking into a gentle sweat. He wanted to break away from the smiling faces in the photo, leave the room and get out of both flat and the building as soon as he could. But that wasn’t logical, was it? He could feel the fingers of his right had flexing furiously and he started to concentrate on that, and by doing so broke away from the picture and, against his better judgement, continued his search.

  Although the lounge was the main living area and clearly the most used it still looked like a hotel room after a weekend’s occupancy. He turned to the kitchen: again clean, functional and mostly white, it had the general vibe of a man unable or unwilling to put any of himself into his home.

  However, this lack of clutter - apart from the dump room, threw up one major advantage for Kennedy. He did not have a difficult search, everything was on view and the two Ikea units with doors beneath the TV and the midi system produced all of John B. Stone’s correspondence, files and note books, not to mention a couple of naughty videos.

  Kennedy retrieved the midi system’s box from the dump room, placed all the files and paperwork therein and set it on top of the large marble-topped coffee table situated in the centre of the fort created by sofas and fireplace.

  He quickly glanced through the books and CDs. Stone had been the proud owner of each and every one of Dick Francis” forty-odd books. He’d also quite a few of the Penguin Classics. But the books were by and large airport paperbacks. On the music side Stone shared his taste with Essex Man: Tina Turner, Dire Straits, Simply Red, Phil Collins and even Michael Bolton! On the positive side he had a copy of Nick Lowe’s classic Fourteen All Time Lowes, an album which contained one of Kennedy’s favourite singles, “I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass”.

  He quietly let himself out of the flat, easily bearing the weight of his spoils. He added an inch to his step as he quietly hummed Lowe’s perfect pop single. All things considered, this case was developing quite well.

  And pigs might fly!

  Kennedy should have known that the only time pigs fly is when rashers are thrown into the frying pan.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Our friend Stone has been flexing the plastic a lot recently. And guess what he been buying?” WPC Coles inquired of Kennedy and Irvine in Kennedy’s office mid-Tuesday afternoon. Irvine and Coles liked being in Kennedy’s very personalised office. The DI had spent a great deal of time, and a little money, making his office very comfortable and more conducive to thinking. He still couldn’t work out how some of his real-life colleagues and the majority of TV cops could do any work at all considering the tips they worked in. They were mostly ugly, untidy, uncomfortable and dirty, and one could rarely find a pencil in the disorder, let alone a clue to a major crime. No, not for Kennedy. He preferred a tidier, more comfortable space in which to address the puzzles before him.

  To Kennedy, that was exactly what the art of crime detection was: solving a puzzle. That was also what he loved about it: pitting your wits against the criminal. Sometimes you had the pressure of time also tapping not so gently on your shoulder. The colder the trail the less likely you were to pick up the scent. Sometimes you were also fighting the fear that the murderer may strike again and it could be all down to you to save a life by apprehending the criminal before they had a chance to strike again.

  “Yes. Now let me see,” Kennedy replied. He was about to show the fun side to the art of detection. “I would say a Panasonic remote control 21-inch colour TV set, a Sony Stereo Nicam Video Recorder and, let’s see, don’t tell me,” he went on, milking the joke somewhat, “a Sony midi stereo system and a shiny Dualit toaster. It’s not as great as it looks - the toast does
n’t pop up when it’s done.”

  “Shit! You’re absolutely correct, they’re all here,” the WPC replied. “How on earth did you know that?” “Easy,” Kennedy laughed, his green eyes twinkling. “I saw their emptyboxes up at his flat.”

  “That’s cheating. I was beginning to think you’d some weird mind-reading qualities.”

  “No, not really. Cheating that is. How you gather your information is not important, it’s only important that you gather it in the first place. Then you need to know what to do with it once you have it. So what other information did you gather from the credit card statements?”

  “He seemed to run up monthly bills on an average of £850. That was until two months ago. The last two have shot up to £1670 and, the most recent, £2150.45.”

  “Did he pay promptly?” Irvine, as a member of a nation not noted for prompt payment, inquired.

  “Yes, there are no penalty payments of interest on the last twenty-four statements,” WPC Coles answered as she consulted her notes. “Lots of off-licence bills, lots of eating out, some clothes, not a lot and never very expensive, and some W. H. Smith’s receipts, which would be either books or CDs.”

  “I’d say you’re correct. His CD collection definitely came from Smith’s, cut in Kennedy. “Anything else in there which may be of use to us?”

  “Nope. Don’t think so.” Coles replied confidently, evidently enjoying being on another case with Kennedy and Irvine.

  “Well, it’s my turn I suppose,” Irvine began. “I attended the autopsy with Dr Forysthe and, between the three of us, I don’t think I’ll be having any tea this evening. She reckons he took a series of blows around the head, anyone of which could have killed him. But she thinks that because of the state of the bleeding it was one of the later ones which finally did it. The bleeding stops when the heart stops pumping.”