The Curious Dispatch of Daniel Costello

by Chris McDonald

  ‘Which he paid just after midnight. Then, an hour or so later, Danny was dead.’

  ‘So, who is his accomplice?’

  ‘If there is an accomplice,’ Adam said. ‘For all we know, Trevor has had no part in this, aside from being the victim.’

  This was all becoming too much of a mind wrecker. Colin wished they’d never got involved.

  ‘We don’t know who the killer is or how they managed to persuade Danny to take tablets he was allergic to. We’re no closer to solving this, and unless you fancy marching up to Trevor and asking if he is our murderer, which would be utterly ridiculous, there’s no way forward.’ Colin let out a long sigh. ‘I need a drink. Where’s your hipflask?’

  Those three words hit Adam like a ton of lead.

  The hipflask.

  ‘When you searched Danny’s room, did you see a hipflask that looked identical to mine?’

  Colin wracked his brain but couldn’t remember seeing it. He shook his head.

  ‘I think I know who did it,’ Adam said, moving to the door.

  Colin followed Adam down the hallway. The low rumble of the bassline and the thump of the drums drifted through the closed doors, telling them that the band were still keeping people’s attention in the confines of the bar. Adam hoped that the person whose room they were about to visit was either on the dancefloor or sitting happily at a table, tapping his foot and not waiting for them behind the door.

  A boy Adam recognised from school – and a girl he did not – sauntered past them, hand in hand, presumably towards one of their rooms. Adam felt a pang of annoyance. He should be enjoying the party and attempting to reap the rewards of being on the wedding party by trying to crack on with one of the bridesmaids. Instead, here he was, putting himself in harm’s way to try to solve the murder of someone he didn’t even really like.

  When they reached the door they needed, Adam tried the handle, but it didn’t budge. Thankfully, the room was around a corner from the main hallway and afforded them some privacy. Colin kept lookout while Adam attempted to work his magic on the lock.

  For several minutes, he waggled a paperclip in the lock and was thankful to both YouTube and the ancient, basic locking system within the door when he felt it give. The door creaked open slowly.

  Adam’s heart raced at the thought of walking into the lion’s den, but everything that this tiring day had thrown at them had led them here. He was now so close to discovering if his hunch was correct or not, and that fuelled his steps across the threshold and into the room.

  Colin continued to keep watch while Adam searched the room. Aside from an open case on the floor and a few ripples on the bedcovers, one might assume the room was unused. Certainly, the keeper of the keys hadn’t spent much time in here aside from getting ready for the evening’s festivities.

  Adam took a quick look in the obvious places but came away empty handed. He cast an eye around the room and settled on the case. Surely, if you had something to hide, it’d be in there.

  He poked at some clothes, moving them out of the way while trying to keep everything as it was. As the seconds ticked by, his searching became more erratic. He tipped everything out and patted items down before moving them to the side.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Colin hissed.

  ‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ Adam whispered back.

  Suddenly, something caught his eye. A colour that tugged at a memory. He grabbed the trousers and thrust his hand in the pocket, pulling out a wad of cash. He had no time to count it now, but he’d bet it totalled £200.

  Sure that the hipflask was not amongst the clothes, he began scooping trousers and T-shirts up and was about to pile them back in the case when his eyes happened upon something.

  In the case, sewn into the lining, was a zip. It was the same colour as the fabric and could be easily missed.

  Adam pulled it slowly. In the silence, the noise of the material sounded like bison charging across a desert plain, such was the volume of the material parting.

  Colin’s head appeared around the doorway.

  ‘There are footsteps on the stairs,’ he whispered. ‘I think someone is coming.’

  Quickly, Adam reached into the compartment, his fingers knocking against something cold and hard.

  His heart leapt.

  He pulled the hipflask out of its hiding place and showed it to Colin. The engraved initials, D.C., twinkled in the light of the room. He reached in again and grabbed the other item – a key.

  ‘Great,’ Colin said. ‘Now, let’s go.’

  Adam stood and watched as his friend peeked around the corner of the wall. Whoever had been ascending the stairs had obviously gone into another room along the corridor as the hallway was empty.

  ‘Ready?’ Colin asked.

  Adam nodded and they both sprinted along the corridor, not stopping until they reached their room.

  ‘We’re sure it’s him?’ Colin asked when the adrenaline had once again subsided.

  Adam shrugged. He looked at the pile of money, which totalled just over £300.

  ‘The money doesn’t necessarily point the finger of guilt his way. It’s more than Danny had asked for. But I reckon it, coupled with the hipflask, do. Why else would he have it?’

  Colin agreed, though took another few minutes to cast a spotlight over the evidence they’d uncovered, just in case they’d missed anything. He couldn’t see that they had.

  ‘How do we go about confronting him though?’ Adam said.

  Colin smiled at him. To his mind, it had felt like Adam had been the leader all day. Now, he had an idea. He went to his jacket and from it pulled out the item he had taken from Danny’s room less than an hour ago.

  Adam shot him a confused look.

  ‘It’s the phone charger for Danny’s burner. I thought rather than us storming in and pointing fingers, we’d let our accused do the admitting. It’s how it’s usually done on TV dramas – you trick them into spilling the beans.’

  ‘And I assume you have a plan?’ Adam asked.

  ‘That I do,’ Colin answered.

  18

  A MEETING IN THE MOONLIGHT

  Adam typed a message on Danny’s now charged burner. He kept it short and sweet and when he was happy, pressed send. Instantly, an alert appeared on Trevor’s phone, telling him that a message had been received.

  Part one of the plan was in place.

  As he set the phone down on the table, a strange longing took him. Sure, he loved his modern smartphone with the world at his fingertips, but there was something brilliant about a phone that you could still play Snake on and only needed to be charged once a week.

  While Adam was taking care with that side of the plan, Colin dealt with the other. When he was finished, he nodded at his friend.

  ‘Twenty minutes or so,’ he said.

  Adam let out a long sigh. He was jittery, and his foot was tapping a rhythm on the carpet with such ferocity that it sounded like a death metal blast beat. Colin knew how he felt. The plan was in place, the adrenaline was flowing and all they could do was wait.

  Time ticked by slowly. After ten minutes that felt like a lifetime, Adam stood.

  ‘I can’t stand it anymore,’ he said. ‘By the time we put phase one into motion, phase two will be ready.’

  ‘Five more minutes,’ Colin answered. ‘We don’t want to rush in and be out of our depth.’

  ‘Three minutes,’ Adam countered, and Colin ceded defeat with a quick nod.

  Colin looked at the time on his watch. If this evenings’ entertainment was following last night’s timescale, the music would be stopping in about ten minutes and the bar would be emptying out. If they were to be successful, they needed to get in and out of the bar as if partaking in a military operation.

  They walked down the stairs, noticing more people in the foyer than anticipated. Perhaps the band were finishing early. Adam swore under his breath and picked up the pace, crossing the wooden floor in double time.

  To their relief,
the function room was still crowded. The band were storming through a rousing rendition of Dancing Queen and everyone on the dancefloor was showing their appreciation by singing along loudly.

  Colin spotted their target in the middle of a dance circle with his back to them. He felt Adam tap him on the arm. He looked at where his friend was pointing – at one of the tables near the back of the room. The lights from the band’s rig lit up the table at random intervals, allowing Colin to see a fashionable jacket draped over the back of a chair.

  ‘Is that his?’ he asked.

  Adam confirmed it was.

  Colin took a deep breath. If he was seen by the owner of the jacket, the plan would burst into flames. Before his courage could desert him, he took a step in the direction of the jacket, picking up the pace as he crossed the carpeted floor.

  When he reached the table, he thrust Trevor’s mobile phone into a pocket of the velvety jacket and moved away from it as quickly as he could, as if it were about to blow up.

  He retraced his steps back to the edge of the dancefloor, keeping out of the light as best he could. He cast covert glances at the owner of the jacket and was pretty sure he hadn’t been spotted. As he and Adam slipped out of the door, the band announced that they only had one song left.

  So far, things were going to plan.

  Adam checked his watch again. Twenty minutes had passed and nothing had happened. He wondered if the ambitious plan had been thwarted.

  ‘What do we do?’ he said.

  Colin shrugged.

  ‘Nothing’s changed,’ he said. ‘He’ll be here.’

  Though his words were firm, his tone was not. Adam could hear the doubt in his voice, but, having no plan B, they did all they could do – wait.

  Colin looked out of the large window of the marquee. It framed the full moon that hung in the inky, cloudless sky, illuminating the sprawling lawn outside.

  It was like something from a fairy tale and he would’ve normally savoured such a picturesque scene, were it not for the fact they were waiting for a killer to appear in their midst.

  Suddenly, a shadow appeared on the grass outside, growing longer by the second. A minute later, the fabric doors at the rear of the marquee flapped open and there he stood, bathed in the warm light of the moon.

  ‘You two?’ he said, noticing Adam and Colin at the front of the domed tent. ‘You’re the blackmailers?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Adam. ‘Sorry, Mike, but we needed to make you think that to get you to come here. You see, we’ve figured out that it was you who killed Danny.’

  ‘Very clever,’ said Mike, holding up his father’s burner phone. ‘You used dead Danny’s phone to send another blackmailing message to my father and put it in my pocket, knowing I’d see it and rise to it. Well, A+ for creativity.’

  Adam snorted. The shy, retiring Michael Campbell of a few years ago would never have used such a corny line. But it seemed it wasn’t only his appearance that had undergone a makeover.

  ‘How did you figure out it was me then?’ he asked.

  Adam wished that they weren’t so far away from each other. It made sense to stay away, of course; he was a murderer after all, but Adam’s throat was beginning to hurt from having spoken so much today. And now he was expected to communicate from such a distance. He considered ringing the burner in Mike’s hand, but thought it a bit over the top. Colin would never let him live it down.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘we don’t know everything, so we’re hoping you can help us fill in a few blanks.’

  Mike said nothing, so Adam continued.

  ‘We knew Danny was blackmailing somebody on account of him having met with someone who gave him an envelope full of cash. We just didn’t know who had given it to him. Luckily, a kindly lady at the petrol station down the road let us look at her CCTV footage. We saw your dad’s car park up not long after Danny took receipt of the money.’

  He cleared his throat, longing for a soothing mouthful of Lemsip.

  ‘We knew your dad couldn’t have killed him because we saw him drive away, though we suspect he’s involved in some way. But another car came past a while later. Your car, I assume.’

  Mike nodded.

  ‘You see, when I saw you at the party, you weren’t drunk at all. You made a scene to make it look like you were drunk. How could someone who was falling over themself drive a car? It was clever, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘I was hoping to remain unseen,’ Mike said. ‘When you bumped into me, I had to come up with something on the spot.’

  ‘It was convincing,’ admitted Adam. ‘And it definitely threw us off the scent.’

  ‘So, what put you back on it?’

  ‘Colin found the tablet package you left in Danny’s bin. Everyone knows he is allergic, so would have had no reason to have them. That’s when we knew it was definitely murder. Then, we broke into your room and found his room key that you stole from Ross’s jacket and Danny’s hipflask. We just don’t know how you actually got him to take the tablets.’

  ‘Very clever,’ Mike said, taking a seat in the back row. ‘Shall I tell you my side of things?’

  He took a steadying breath.

  ‘After I got back from the stag do, dad was miserable. I didn’t know why, but he was angry with everyone, even Emily. That’s when I knew things were bad. Then, one day, I saw him with this old Nokia. He left it lying about and I saw the messages, I knew what Danny was up to.’

  ‘Does your dad know that you know?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘He has no idea. He would’ve kept paying to keep Sam’s disgusting secret from his darling daughter Emily forevermore.’

  ‘So, you took matters into your own hands?’

  ‘I was hoping to remain unseen last night. When you saw me, I was looking for Danny to have a chat to try to persuade him to ease off. I saw Sam and him have a fight and watched him storm off. I was going to follow him then, but I needed him in a more receptive mood, so I waited. Later, I saw Sam come back from Danny’s room and give Ross a key. I assumed it was for his room so I stole it when Ross was dancing.’

  ‘And you paid Danny a visit?’

  ‘I did. I went to his room. He was on his way out and, when he saw me, started to brag about controlling dad like a puppet. He wouldn’t listen to what I had to say, so I walked around the corner and waited for him to leave. When I knew he was gone, I went back and popped some dissolving tablets into the hipflask. And then I waited for him to come back. As soon as he came in, I punched him, got him on the bed and held his mouth open while I poured a cocktail of whiskey and paracetamol down his throat. He tried to resist, but it didn’t take long for his airways to close up and he died pretty quickly.’

  Colin was astonished at how casual Mike had told his story – like he was telling them about a nice bike ride he’d been on.

  ‘How did you know he was allergic?’ he asked.

  Mike snorted.

  ‘Because he wouldn’t stop going on about it on the stag do. He made it seem as if suffering through a hangover without painkillers was the same as being crucified. So, I pocketed that information to be used at a later date.’

  ‘But why?’ Colin asked, rage seeping into his words.

  ‘Why?’ Mike asked as he pushed himself to standing. ‘Because him and Sam were the reason school was hell for me. They were the reason everyone else thought it was OK to pick on me or throw my lunch on the roof or…’

  He trails off for a minute, before composing himself.

  ‘And then, to find out Sam McMullan is marrying into my family was the last straw. Everyone knew Danny was a dick, but no one knew how awful Sam could be. I knew I had to find a way to get the wedding cancelled.’

  ‘Why not just tell your sister about Sam kissing the girl on his stag?’

  ‘Because I didn’t want to hurt her, directly. Yes, I know she’s dad’s favourite and all, but we’re close. She didn’t deserve such blunt honesty.’

  ‘So, you killed a man instead, in the
hope that that would force the wedding to be called off?’

  ‘Honestly,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I thought maybe he’d have a massive reaction, and we’d call the ambulance, and he’d be fine but Sam wouldn’t have been able to go through with the wedding or something. But, hearing him brag about taking money from my family and watching him swan around like he owned the place, well… it changed my mind. The world is a better place without Daniel Costello.’

  With his spiel finished, silence filled the marquee.

  ‘So, what next?’ Mike asked.

  ‘What’s next is that you are under arrest for the murder of Daniel Costello,’ said a gruff voice from the door.

  Adam and Colin watched as the small team of police officers slid from their hiding places and swarmed Mike, taking him to the ground before slipping cuffs over his wrists. One of the officers read him his rights as he was dragged into a standing position by the others.

  Mike cast a pleading glance back at Adam and Colin as he was led out of the marquee towards the waiting unmarked police car at the end of the gardens.

  Adam and Colin collapsed into their seats; the fatigue of a long, punishing day washing over them. Adam took the hipflask from his pocket and unscrewed the lid before taking a huge slug. He passed it to his friend.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ Colin said, between mouthfuls. ‘The old folk at work are going to love hearing about this.’

  19

  A GROWING REPUTATION

  THREE WEEKS LATER

  Adam flicked his hair to one side, before changing his mind and sweeping it to the other. He looked in the mirror on the underside of the sun visor to make sure he’d made the correct decision before turning to Colin, who was in the back seat.

  ‘Ready for a big night out?’ he asked.

  Colin flashed him a smile. The local nightclub, Atmosphere, always promised fun. The only tragic thing was, they were being driven there by Adam’s mum, who had insisted that paying over the odds for a taxi was stupid.