Death Of A Nobody

by Derek Farrell

  Eventually, we made the summit, and I looked around for a Union Jack to plant on the landing. Finding none, we followed – trying not to gasp for air or look in any way out of shape – O’Carroll into what felt like a middle aged college professor’s apartment. The long hallway had, apart from a shoe rack filled with a mixture of brogues and trainers, a long book case filled with well-thumbed books.

  I glanced at Darryl, adjusting my prejudices. He reads? Then I glanced at the titles, and my prejudices slid slightly back: Musculoskeletal development, Everything you ever wanted to know about Pecs (but were afraid to ask), Fists of Fury; Buns of Steel, Andy McNab’s Operation Deton8 and Frat House Fury.

  I followed O’Carroll into his living room.

  The room was small, but had the highest ceilings I’d ever seen. Light streamed in from two huge windows – one of which was opened a crack to allow – I assumed – a breeze to cool the room. Instead, all it had done was allow the oppressive heat from outside to seep inside.

  The space was dominated by a huge black and white portrait of Darryl himself. Naked, oiled up, and with almost every muscle he had shadowed and contrasted for the viewers’ pleasure.

  Since – I assumed – he lived here alone, that viewer – more often than not – would be O’Carroll himself.

  Still, as Caz is always telling me. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

  “So,” Darryl dropped the gym bag on the floor, pulled the baseball cap from his head, and chucked it on to the immaculate white sofa in the corner, and, arms crossed (all the better to display his bulging biceps) tore his gaze from Caz’s cleavage, turned to face me, and said. “What’s this all about, then?”

  “We’re looking into Dave Walker’s death,” Caz said, tilting her head coquettishly. “And wondered if you could help us?”

  “Me?” He frowned again, and I had to admit that he had an air of intelligence when he did that – as though he were contemplating eternal mysteries, instead of trying to understand why we thought he could help us in our enquiries. “Sure, I’ve already told the police everything I saw that day. Why would you two be nosing around in it?”

  Caz looked at me. Over to you, Sherlock, her glance said.

  “We’re just trying to get a feeling for how Dave was that day,” I said. “He seemed a little upset – quite snappy with people.”

  O’Carroll snorted, turned his back on us, and headed to the kitchen.

  We followed.

  “That,” he said, as he pulled from the freezer a zip lock bag of gunk, and dumped it into a blender, “Was his normal attitude.”

  “So there was nothing unusual about the day? Nothing strange about his behaviour?”

  Darryl shook his head, flipped the switch on the blender, and the sound of a small aircraft taking off filled the tiny kitchen.

  “Well,” he said, once the concoction had been blended and he was pouring it into a glass, “There was the phone call. That was a bit odd.”

  “Phone call?” I prompted.

  “I was outside, having a fag. I tend not to eat when I’m coming up on a modelling job. Or drink. Well, to be honest, apart from smoking and lifting, I don’t do much before a shoot, cos it just bloats ye, you know? I mean, I only took the job at your place as a favour.”

  “I’m honoured,” I murmured with, I hoped the correct level of obvious sarcasm.

  “No, I mean: Naimee was short a hand. Some other fella dropped out and she was off on holidays so she didn’t have time to find anyone. So, eventually, I said I’d do it. I figured I’d still have time to do some lifting that night, and I’d get some smokes in any ways. Dehydrates you, you see. Plumps out the muscle tone, and the veins.”

  “Lovely,” Caz commented drily. “So,” she pulled him back on track, “You were outside having a cigarette…”

  Darryl stared at her, as though puzzled by the sudden shift away from his beauty regime, and it took a moment for him to remake the connection. Then, he nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. So I slip outside, and Dave’s standing round the corner on the main road. At first, I thought he was talking to himself. I mean, at his age...”

  I bristled. “He was mid-forties,” I said, the unspoken it’s coming to us all, mate hanging in the air between us.

  “I know,” the Himbo replied. “You’d think – by that age – people shouldn’t have to work like that. I mean, I think it affects their minds, sometimes.”

  “He was a waiter,” Caz interjected. “It’s hardly Sulphur mining up the Zambezi.”

  Darryl blinked, pulled the constipated face that told me he was deciphering Caz’s latest assault on his intelligence, and, finally, sniggered. “Go on!” he replied, pointing his finger at Caz as if to say I’ve got your number.

  I despaired. “So, he wasn’t talking to himself…”

  “No,” he reconnected faster this time; I guess because he hadn’t had to end the train of thought that was all about himself. “He was on the phone wasn’t he?”

  I don’t know,” I replied, “Was he?”

  “He was.”

  I sighed. “And what, if you can recall, was he saying?”

  “Well,” Darryl slid in to us, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “He was saying. ‘It’ll be alright, I promise,’ then he listened, then he went ‘Look, don’t cry; I’ll deal with it. I’ll make it alright. I promise.’” Darryl paused, considered what he’d just reported, and nodded. “I couldn’t be sure, but I got the feeling that the person on the other end of the line was upset.”

  “Your empathy astounds me,” Caz murmured. Darryl acknowledged what he clearly assumed was a compliment by nodding graciously and saying that it was all down to diet.

  “Well,” Darryl finished, “He went on for a bit, said some stuff like ‘She doesn’t need to know yet,’ and ‘I’ll make it right,’ and then he hung up. When he came round the corner and found me halfway through me Marlboro he jumped like a scalded cat and got all shirty about me eavesdropping. I told him straight: I don’t need to eavesdrop. I can squat with twice my own body weight and bench press a pony; but I don’t think he was paying much attention. Silly bastard just called me a Cretin. I mean: Do I even look Greek?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  And that, pretty much, was that.

  We hailed a taxi, and were on our way back to The Marq when it hit me.

  “Where’d the phone go?”

  “The phone?” Caz, windows wound down and hands hooked behind her head to enjoy the breeze, turned her head towards me.

  “Dave’s phone. The Himbos took the piss out of him for not being able to answer it. Then Darryl overheard him talking on it.”

  Caz dropped her hands into her lap, and resumed her normal ladylike demeanour. “And your point is?”

  “Well, he didn’t have a mobile on him when he was found, Caz. So where did that go?”

  “Are you sure the police didn’t find it?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t see them leave with anything more than a body.”

  “Perhaps Nick would know,” she murmured suggestively.

  “Forget it, Caz; I’m not talking to him.”

  “Well, I could call and…”

  “Caz: He’s married. With wife. And – for all I know – with child.”

  Caz – rooting now in her capacious handbag – looked up at me and smiled the sort of pitying smile she usually reserved for those tragic enough to try to pair McQueen with Monsoon. “Oh sweetheart, this whole married to a woman thing: it just doesn’t add up.” She jerked her head in the general direction of Olympia. “Your Gaydar may be perpetually out of whack, but d’you really think I wouldn’t have noticed if there was a real life heterosexual within sniffing distance? I mean, I’m basically the child catcher, only for straight men of marriageable age.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He lied.”

  She’d resumed her exertions within the depth of her Gladstone. This time, she didn’t even look up, merely instructed me in a detached tone. “Speak to
him,” she repeated. “For me,” looking up at last, as she handed me an expertly mixed gin & tonic, the cucumber slice carved expertly into a heart shape.

  “I can’t,” I admitted. “Not yet.”

  “Well if you won’t,” she announced, “I’m going to call and ask if they found the phone.”

  I sighed. I really didn’t want Caz talking to Nick. Christ alone knew what they’d cook up between them. “Ok,” I said, “I’ll call him later.”

  “Now,” she pressed, slugging from her gin.

  “Not now, Caz. He’ll be on duty. I’ll call later.”

  “Promise?”

  “Cross my cold dark heart,” I said, crunching an ice cube between my teeth and wondering how the fuck she’d kept ice cold in a handbag during this heatwave.

  “Addaboy,” Caz grinned the gently victorious smile she always smiled when she’d completely levelled my resistance. “Chin chin!”

  “What are we doing tonight?”

  “Ah,” she examined her manicure. “I’m off out tonight.”

  “Out?”

  “Yes,” she bristled, “And you don’t have to say it like you’re Anne Franks’ mother. I’m going to see Lucy. My friend Lucy Fawcett-Jones. She’s in hospital.”

  I immediately felt guilty, and apologised.

  “Oh it’s nothing serious. She’s just having her lips redone. They went wrong last time and she ended up looking like some sort of deranged clown, so the surgeons are redoing them gratis. But I should at least pop in and say hello.”

  She was up to something, I knew. There was way too much detail for that story to have been true. But I didn’t care: If Caz went out, I’d have some time this evening to call Nick. Much as I dreaded the conversation – and much as I hated admitting that Caz was right – I needed to know what was going on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Whatever you’re looking for is not going to be in there.”

  Elaine Falzone leapt a good half inch in the air and shot me a look of pure venom. “I was just tidying up,” she said, though it would have been slightly more believable if this angelic looking monster had said she was just looking for the resting place of the Holy Grail.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for the tidying, but I need to make a call.” I waved my mobile in her general direction.

  “Well don’t let me stop you,” she said, cracking open another cupboard door and attempting to peek surreptitiously inside it, “I’ll keep quiet and just get on with this.”

  “Elaine, I’ve no idea what this is, but I want some privacy. So hop it.”

  She rolled her eyes. “God, you are so fucking Gay,” she whined, as she stropped out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  “And don’t you forget it,” I hollered after her, whilst still wondering what on earth she had – clearly – been looking for.

  I sat at the table, laid my phone flat before me, and stared at it.

  Nick and I had seemed so happy. Yes, I knew that that was the usual mantra of the romantically abandoned. Lord knows I knew it: I’d already sung that song a little over a year previously, when I’d arrived home to find my partner of many years playing hide the squeegee with the window cleaner. The sense of betrayal had fought with the horror that I’d been paying full price for the windows for ages, when Robert should, by rights, have been able to negotiate me a discount, at the very least.

  And I’d sworn that I wouldn’t ever get that close to anyone. That I’d keep Nick at arm’s length, not ever give him the ability to hurt me.

  Yet here I was. Not heartbroken; I’d been heart broken, and I knew how it felt: I knew the feeling of having all the oxygen in the world sucked out so you couldn’t breathe, and weren’t even sure if you wanted to. Of feeling – literally – a lump in your chest, as though the very heart had split into two pieces, and each were shifting independently around the cavity.

  What I felt now was heart sick.

  Because, despite what I’d told myself, I had trusted Nick. I had let myself imagine a future with him. I’d dreamed I knew him, and could do these things safe in the knowledge that he and I understood each other.

  I didn’t want to call him.

  I didn’t want to open the door and be hurt again. I didn’t want him to persuade me there was a rational explanation to all of this, that I was being silly, that we could carry on as before, and yet – at the same time – that was exactly what I wanted him to do.

  But I’d promised Caz I’d call him, and I wanted to know what was happening with the Dave Walker case.

  So I picked up the phone, and hit dial.

  The ring tone sounded once, twice, and then he answered.

  “Danny.” No ‘Hi,’ or ‘’Hey Danny.’ No cheery bright tone, just a rather flat stressed sounding voice on the end of the line.

  My heart sank. “Hey Nick,” I said, injecting – without meaning to – a bright and breezy tone.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to hear… what you heard the other day. I wanted to tell you myself.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No.” There was a pause, as though he were searching for the right words, and then I heard it: a woman’s voice. Clearly, distinctly, his wife’s voice.

  “Nicholas!” It called, seeming, almost, to be in the same room as he.

  “Just a minute,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he was saying it to me or to her. Then I heard the sound of his hand covering the mouthpiece on the phone, and the muffled sound of his voice – too compressed for me to make out the words, but clearly talking to her.

  There was another silence, and then a higher pitched voice spoke.

  “Listen,” he said as soon as his hand was removed from the mouthpiece, “None of this is what you think. But I can’t explain it right now.”

  “Explain it?” I wanted to reach through the phone and slap him solidly. “It doesn’t need explaining, Nicholas. I’m not so stupid that I need this explained to me. I understand.”

  “No,” he butted in, “You don’t. You couldn’t. It’s complicated,” he said, reverting to the relationship status of the very simple. Things, in my experience, are really rarely complicated. Unless they start to get duplicitous. Then, the act of remembering which lie you told last tends to complicate things.

  “Listen,” I said, “I don’t want to argue. And I don’t want your explanations.”

  He was silent. Waiting. “Then what,” he finally said, “Do you want?”

  “I want an update. On the Dave Walker investigation.”

  “You want… what?” He asked, sounding both confused and upset.

  “I want to know if you have any leads, any suggested approaches. I want to know, first off, if you found a mobile phone on the victim?”

  “A phone? You..? Listen, Danny, I need to explain this to you. But I need to do it to your face. This isn’t the way to do it.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” I moaned. “Listen, Nick, I get it: It’s complicated. You’re married, but you’re still fond of me.”

  “No!” he called, “That’s not it. Well, I mean, it is it, but there’s more to it.”

  “There always is.” I took a deep breath, resisted the urge to beg him to explain it to me, and said, instead: “So, did you find a phone?”

  “No,” he was still exasperated, but I no longer cared. I was heartsick, and the last thing I needed was to give him the chance to twist the knife even further.

  “Listen, Danny: Why are you asking me questions about this investigation? We’re all over it.”

  “Got any suspects?” I asked.

  “Nothing yet, but I really don’t want you getting involved. Whoever did this is a sick puppy, and I don’t want you in danger.”

  “So nothing, then?” I said.

  “Danny, whoever killed Walker is clearly dangerous. Please don’t poke around in this. Even if you don’t care about us any more, I still care deeply about you, and I don’t want you hurt.”

  But h
e had hurt me. And he hadn’t said Love. He’d said Care Deeply, but what did that mean? That was the sort of language that bet-hedging politicians use.

  “I’m not Poking around,” I said, “I’m just taking a look. I’m good at that, remember. Though clearly not that good, I mean: I failed to spot you were married.”

  I hadn’t meant to say it; it had slipped out. But there it was.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, again. “I promise it’s not like it looks. When can I see you? I have to explain this to you properly.”

  I sighed. I wanted this explained. I wanted this to be all the way it had been – even if how it had been was little more than the slow waltz of two people who seemed unwilling or (it now seemed) unable to commit to anything more than a tentative arrangement.

  And then, in the instant it took me to make my mind up, the spell was broken by a laugh. Her laugh. Ringing in the room, as though she’d never left, and was finding the scene too funny for words.

  And my mind was made up.

  “Thanks for the update, Nick,” I said, and ended the call.

  In seconds, he was calling me back. I let the call go to voice mail, then deleted – unheard – the message he’d left.

  Then I called Mike Green. “Hey Mike,” I said, forcing brightness back into my voice, “Did you still want to go for that drink you mentioned?”

  I paused, listened to his voice brighten, and – my depression already lifting – smiled. “Want to meet me here about seven?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “This would have been empty, when I was a kid,” I said, gesturing over my pint at the mass of drinkers thronging the riverbank.

  The Founders Arms was a round, sixties construct dumped – like a badly designed spaceship – on the south bank between a squat block of flats and the Thames. When I was younger, the area – slowly rising from decades of seemingly terminal decline – was still a far from desirable hangout, and yet, tonight, it was heaving with city workers, builders, tourists, locals, all milling around, all smiling, a mass of people enjoying the summer evening, shimmering, golden in the setting sun.