“It’s not like you were married or anything. If you were married, she’d be allowed to come into the UK with you.”
He sighed heavily. “I should have told you,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “If you – a serving police officer – had married someone for the purposes of transporting them across borders and into the European Union, doing something that was illegal, and could cost you your career, I would expect you to advise me, on a job phone that could be listened to at any moment.
“Because, of course, to do otherwise: to evade avoid or attempt to not discuss the issue on a work phone, would be wrong.”
“I tried to talk to you,” he said.
“And I kept avoiding you,” I answered.
“But I had four months, only I didn’t say so at first.”
“And the more you didn’t say anything,” I said, “The more it..”
“Spiralled,” he said, “Out of my control.”
“How come doing the right thing,” I sighed, tilting the beer bottle to the ceiling, draining, it, wanting another, and another, but knowing I had work to do, “Gives us so many chances to fuck things up?”
“And I did,” he said, “Fuck things up. And I shouldn’t have. ‘Cos I love you, and you should never have been put here.”
“But here is where we are. So: the question is, what next? And, for the purposes of the tape,” I announced in my best stage FBI voice, “And of anyone who might listen to this in the future, I love you too, mate, even though you’re a happily married police officer with a wife who’s going through UK immigration procedures. But I’m also someone with some theoretical questions to ask you about some recent murders.”
“I thought,” he said. “We’d agreed you wouldn’t get involved in any more murders.”
“Theoretical,” I reminded him, and heard his snort of derision.
“Go on,” he said.
“Jane Barton.”
He went quiet, and I could hear his fingers tapping on a keyboard.
At length: “Suicide,” he responded.
“They say. I want the reports.”
“She was hung.”
“Hanged,” I corrected, conscious that he’d chosen the unspecific in his description: Not She hanged herself, but something that told me that Nick was thinking the same way I was.
“Pictures are hung, Nick, and sometimes men, but you’d know all about that. People are hanged.”
“Anything in particular?” He said, ignoring my double entendre.
I paused. “Toxicology. Take a look at the bloods. She didn’t kill herself. And while you’re at it,” I said, abandoning any attempt to sustain the theoretical bullshit, “Get someone to take a look at Desmond Everett’s place.”
“We looking for anything in particular?”
I told him.
“That’s not going to be easy to find.”
“It’s in a suitcase under the bed,” I said, more certain than I wanted to be.
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with a dead waiter, would it?”
“Everything. Can you get me the reports?”
“Will you talk to me if I do?”
“I’m talking to you now, aren’t I?”
“And will you forgive me?”
“For being honourable and – as your wife says – for being English? I think we can work on that.”
“I’ll call you back,” Nick said, and hung up.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
He didn’t take long.
I’d enough time to walk to the bin, drop the empty bottle into it, pass by the fridge and pick up another, switch on the radio, open the beer, turn on my laptop, and listen to a verse a chorus and three lines of the second verse of something on a station that still played three minute pop songs before he rang back, and I picked up.
“Hanged,” he said, as I heard the crash of an espresso machine behind him. “But unlikely to have hanged herself. Post mortem shows a massive dose of a Benzodiazepine drug in her system. Coroner reckons there was enough to create a dissociative state. She’d have been awake, but unable to move or speak.”
“Or stand on a stool and put a rope over a beam.”
“Exactly.”
I was silent.
“I’m so sorry Danny. Arianna was a situation that I should have dealt with better.”
“Arianna,” I said, “Is a woman not a situation. And if what I’ve heard tonight is accurate, your only fault was in trying to keep everyone happy. And in lying to me, of course.” I tapped at the keyboard, “But there’ll be time to deal with that later. Anything about the other thing?”
“The Everett place? I’ve asked a car to go round, but it’ll be an hour or so.”
I was silent.
“What does all this mean, Danny?”
“It means,” I said, “I think I know who murdered Dave Walker, Jane Barton and Desmond Everett. Call me back when they check under the bed.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
“He looks familiar,” James Kane said as an even more muscle bound than usual Darryl O’Carroll dispensed a quinoa and kale cup and faded into the distance.
Monica Vale’s vision of Working Class Life presented as High Art – but not in a patronising way – was coming to life, tonight, in a stucco ceilinged ballroom in St James’. The walls were corniced, plastered, and hung, alternatively, with nineteenth century light fittings, and with Ms Vale’s actually quite good paintings of pub brawls in Wetherspoons, done in the style of The Battle of The Golden Spurs by De Keyser, A queue outside JD Sports represented a la Lowry, and a startling mammoth still life of a KFC Family Bucket that might have been painted by Van Gough if he’d taken a break from them sunflowers.
Kane crunched his mouthful of leaves and rambled off as Caz sidled up to me.
“Aren’t you offended,” she asked, “by all this?”
“All this?” I grabbed a canape made to look like a miniature doner kebab with an eye-drops worth of chilli sauce on it, and shoved the thing, whole, into my mouth, wishing, as the waiter vanished into the distance, that I’d grabbed two.
“Y’know: The co-opting of your culture for the entertainment of a wealthy upper class that spends most of its time mocking, if not openly abusing the poor and working class.”
“Caz, I’ve read the catalogue too. And,” I shrugged, “the pictures are nice, the audience are, well, people, which means some of them will get what Monica Vale is trying (I think) to get across, and others will just go Ooh, look at the funny proles, so my offence, or acceptance, is somewhat pointless, really, isn’t it.”
“You’re nervous,” she said, snagging two glasses of champagne from a tray, realising, from my outstretched hand that I assumed one of them was for me, handing me a glass, calling the waiter back, and grabbing another one for herself. “You always get pedantic when you’re nervous.” She necked half of the first glass and pulled the sort of face you normally get on someone who’s swigged vinegar instead of vin de France. “Prosecco,” she spat.
“When did Prosecco even become a thing? Cheap nasty stuff, and people are falling over themselves for it. I blame the working class palate. And Jamie Bloody Oliver.”
“Sweetheart, you blamed Jamie Oliver for the rise of Isis.”
“Well all the money we spend on Pomegranates must be going somewhere,” she mused, sipping her Prosecco and, seemingly, deciding it was safe to drink if done slowly. “So: what time is show time?”
“About,” I necked my perfectly acceptable prosecco, as the last of the gallery curators completed their speeches “Now,” I said, and moved towards the dais in the corner.
“Excuse me,” I said, as a couple of security guards moved to block me mounting the dais, “I just have something to say,” and before they could stop me, a certain Detective constable of my acquaintance stepped forward, flashed his badge, and muttered something to the men.
At the same time, the bulky figure of DI Reid waddled up behind me, displaying his total lack of u
nderstanding of the concept of personal space, and he growled right into my ear “You’re only getting this chance ‘cos you did so well with the Day case, Bird. But if you fuck this up for me, you’ll be sorry.”
Fuck this up for you? Jesus, I was the one who was about to stand up there and dish out the most convoluted explanation for a murder ever.
I stepped onto the dais, and tapped the microphone.
Nothing.
I waved at the security guards and the sound engineer at the opposite end of the room, who had already started packing up, and tapped the mike again.
Again, nothing, but I’d gained the attention of half the room, who were gawping at me as though I were some part of the artwork. Perhaps they though Chav Barman Waving His Arms about. Mixed media: Skin, Bones and Topman Blazer was a performance piece. Whatever, they were quietening, their attention directed my way.
Which, of course, caused the attention of the rest of the room to be directed my way, and a series of Shussshes, Quiets, and – above it all – the sound of Caz demanding Haven’t you got anything a bit more French by way of Fizz – echoed around the room.
Monica Vale looked up from a conversation with a man possessing the most outrageous handlebar moustache I’d ever seen, and frowned.
Not far from her, James Kane nodded at Freddie Rosetti, and the two men stopped talking.
Anthony Taylor, Olivia Wright, and Kent Benson paused in their discussion, and all stared at the stage, clearly puzzled to see me trying to attract the attention of a roomful of people who’d been stuffed full of prosecco and party food, and were now debating how quickly they could skip this joint and get a taxi into Soho.
I watched as Monica Vale slowly made her way through the throng, her fixed smile clearly showing a degree of concern that this – now she thought about it – uninvited prole was about to ruin her big opening.
She passed Lionel Hook – who, doubtless, in his alter ego as Mangelina Jolly would have made great comedic use of the phrase ruin her big opening - and who was now in deep conversation with Naimee Campbell, as she and her trio of Himbos, all in the process of doling out mini kebabs, pork pies made with meat from acorn fed wild boars and fish n chip flavoured foam in miniature beer glasses, all paused and looked my way.
Fucking Poirot never has this trouble, I thought, as Vale reached me, and held my arm in a surprisingly vice like grip.
She’s stronger than she looks, I thought, as she dragged me to one side.
“What the hell are you doing here?” She demanded tersely.
“Trying to help you out,” I answered. “You’re on bail while the police try to figure out how your locket ended up in Desmond Everett’s cold dead hand.”
Her grip loosened. “What do you know about that? I was told they’d be discrete until after all this.”
“Wait: You got hauled in for murder, and they agreed to keep it quiet? Jesus, every time I get dragged in, there’s a local gangster waiting for me when they let me out.” One rule for the rest of us, I inwardly sighed, wondering if I’d ever thought, as a happy-go-lucky teenager, that the adult me would be more surprised by social inequality than the fact that I’d just uttered the phrase every time I get dragged in for murder.
I mean, the idea of getting hauled in once would scare most people; but here I was just acknowledging it as an occupational hazard in running The Marq.
I needed, I decided at that point, to consider new career options.
“I won’t have my night ruined by the likes of you,” Vale said, confirming Caz’s opinion that the likes of me were being co-opted to make the career of this middle class poseur.
“I found the body,” I snapped back. “I saw the locket. I know you’re innocent. And, if you’ll let go of me, and get the fucking sound back on, I can tell you who the real killer is.”
“Tell the police,” she snarled. “This is their job.”
“But you’re an artist,” I smiled back. “And this – the unmasking of a dangerous killer at the opening night of your exhibition – would be great publicity.”
She instantly released me, the truth of my statement reflecting in her eyes, and waved at the sound guy to reconnect the mike.
“Besides,” I muttered to myself, “The police like the story, but they prefer, y’know, evidence. And I aint got too much of that…”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“Hello everybody,” I called, and winced as a shriek of feedback echoed around the room.
Caz, at the far end of the gallery, strolled over to the A/V guy, slipped a laptop out of her capacious handbag, handed it to him, and ordered him to connect it. As he did so, her eyes dipped back into the bag, and a look of pleasant surprise crossed her face. She dipped back into the Gladstone and withdrew a mini bottle of what – even at this distance I could see - held Veuve Cliquot champagne, and she carefully opened the bottle, snagged a straw from a discarded glass, popped it in, and settled back, looking, for all the world, like a modern Madame Desfarges in Stella McCartney.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your evening,” I said, “But I have a short presentation to make to you all, and I hope it will help make sense of some recent events.
“Not long ago,” I said, as a close up black and white picture of Dave Walker – a much younger, Dave Walker, wearing what appeared to be an Elizabethan ruff collar – appeared behind me, “a man named Dave Walker was murdered.”
The screen behind me – if the presentation was working correctly – would now be showing a photo of the inside of the loo at The Marq, after Dave’s body had been removed, but before the blood had been cleared up. I glanced behind me. The picture was there.
I glanced back to a now silent room. All eyes were, suddenly on me, as though the import of what was going on had finally sunk in.
“He was a waiter, but he was also a friend, a lover, a fan of order and correct behaviour, and – in his younger days – an actor.”
The picture shifted, this time showing the full shot that the close up of Walker had been cropped from. This was a troupe of drama students in full Elizabethan drag for a play. And right in the middle, standing before a cauldron, was Dave Walker. A trio of women – a tall, statuesque brunette, a shorter, plainer blonde, and a tiny slip of a girl with a gap toothed smile and an ill-fitting wig – stood around him, the taller one with her arm around Dave’s shoulders.
Lionel Hook – who had provided the picture from his personal collection, stood at the other end of the line-up, looking uncomfortable in hose and a starched ruff. His eyes, looking, now, on this artefact of a past life, teared up, and he wiped his eyes, and blew his nose into a puce coloured handkerchief.
“But a motive for his murder seemed, shall we say lacking. He’d been followed from behind and beaten, his head smashed in by his attacker, in a frenzied assault. He was followed from behind,” I repeated, “So did his killer, perhaps, think he was someone else?
“The day in question was as hot as hell, and the event at which he was murdered was a funeral luncheon, so all of the men – the guests, as well as the waiting staff – were wearing black trousers, white shirts and black ties.
“Perhaps someone thought they were murdering a more likely suspect.”
I noticed that Nick and Reid, along with Caz Dash and Ray, had discretely gathered together the principal suspects, that Naimee and Lionel, Filip Troy and the even more bulked up figure of Darryl O’Carroll had been added to the group, and that all had been surreptitiously shepherded through the crowd so that they were now gathered at the base of the dais.
“But who could the intended victim have been?” I clicked the clicker I’d discovered at the base of the lectern, and was gratified that, instead of plunging the room into darkness, I managed to change the picture on the screen.
Ray had done a great job with the presentation. This slide had a collage of pictures of Anthony Taylor, Kent Benson James Kane and Desmond Everett.
“There were other men present that day, but there were three who we
re the subject of animosity prior to the killing, and one who would afterwards be murdered. Anthony: You – by your own admission – have ruined lives.” Taylor looked sheepish, but nodded his agreement to the statement. “You’ve been, as they say, a bad ‘un. I’m told you’re rehabilitated, trying to make amends for your past sins, but perhaps someone decided that revenge – rather than forgiveness – was due.
“In the room that day, were Monica Vane, whose sister you accidentally killed, Desmond Everett, whose brother committed suicide when a business venture you were managing failed, and James Kane. Neither you nor James had any great love for each other.”
Anthony nodded in agreement, while James opened his mouth, as though to protest.
To shut him up, I moved on to other possible victims.
“Kent: Your business ventures have resulted in law suits and accusations that your fortune – your first fortune – was made when your wife at the time stole another woman’s invention. The same wife who, ultimately, went missing. You were accused of murdering her. Many of her friends never forgave you, even though the police, eventually, had to drop the case and admit there was no evidence she’d ever been murdered. Again, did a misplaced attempt at revenge play a part in the killing?
“James: You’re holding the purse strings over Olivia Wright’s fortune. With you out of the way, Olivia, Kent, and maybe even Anthony, might have hoped they’d gain access to the fortune that you were keeping from them.”
“Preposterous!” Kane barked. “It’s a legal structure. If I died, someone else in my firm would become executor.”
“Besides,” Kent announced, “Both Olivia and I were with you when this waiter was killed.”
“Indeed you were,” I admitted, clicking the switch, and changing the picture to a shot of one of the poison pen letters.
“You were discussing a spate of poison pen letters you’d been receiving. Somewhat oddly, as Olivia said that you’d been strongly resisting saying anything to anyone about them, wanting to avoid bringing the police in, and yet, suddenly, out of the blue, you wanted to discuss them with me.”
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