by Ed James
The buzzer sounded and a northern drawl lashed out. ‘What?’
‘Police, sir. Need to speak to—’ But he’d gone, the voice replaced by static. Reed thumbed the buzzer again, shaking her head.
The flat door cracked open and a face peered out. ‘Buzzer’s broken. Just leave it on the step.’
But Reed was too good for this. She wedged her foot in the crack between the step and the door, then pushed the door wide. ‘Need a word with you, sir.’
Fenchurch saw someone he didn’t expect to see.
Liam Sharpe looked dog tired. Big rings around his eyes. At least he’d shed his beard, though the Lemmy-style moustache was a mistake, black hair lining his jawline, but missing out his actual jaw to snake up to cover his top lip. He was frowning too. ‘Simon?’
‘Morning, Liam. Long time no see. You okay?’
‘Doing away.’ Liam yawned into his fist. ‘Sorry. You woke me up. I was covering the election for the paper. Up until the grim death, which to be fair was the exit poll, and then the first few results. Brutal night.’
Fenchurch remembered that Liam had dabbled with pretty far left politics, though more on the woke social side, worried about trans rights and environmentalist, than the shower that wanted to overthrow the government and inflict a communist state on the country. But now he was pushing much more to the middle. Either way, him living here complicated things more than a touch. ‘We’re looking for a Damon Lombardi. You know him?’
‘My flatmate. I take it he’s done something or someone’s done something to him?’
‘His body was found this morning.’
Liam blinked hard a few times. ‘It’s definitely him?’
Fenchurch nodded. ‘Any idea why he would be at the Old School Brewery?’
Liam’s eyes shot around the street. ‘You’d better come in.’
This place was bigger than Liam’s last pad, a small box just off the main drag through Hackney. It was that bit further away from the weekend mayhem, and that bit bigger. Especially this kitchen, a bright space that soaked up the sun, even on days like this, with its subway tiles and American-sized appliances. ‘When did you move here?’
Behind Liam, the filter coffee machine spat and gargled. Something in the way Liam was moving, though, it was like he was acting for their benefit. Not the first time he’d been directly involved in a murder case. Not that there was any real suspicion on him when his girlfriend was killed a few years back, but this kind of coincidence was the sort of hassle Fenchurch hated, not least because it required transparent honesty and a lot of bloody paperwork. ‘Been here over a year.’
That shocked Fenchurch. They’d been close friends for a while, and helped each other out more than once, but Liam had been quiet for over a year. ‘What happened with you and… Cally, was it?’
‘Turned out neither of us wanted a relationship. We still see each other, though.’
‘Say no more.’ Fenchurch folded his arms, but the thudding and thumping coming from Bridge’s team in the bedroom was unsettling him a touch. The last thing he needed was Liam going all cagey.
He walked over to the doorway and looked out into the hall, clenching his fists. ‘I said you can have a look in his room, but you can’t go into mine.’
Bridge was outside a door, rolling her eyes at him. ‘Hiding a body in there?’
‘Worse.’ Liam frowned. ‘Evidence. Sources. Everything. Can’t have you poking around in that. I mean, you can come in to check I’m not hiding anything illegal, but that’s it.’
‘Appreciate it, Liam.’
‘Here, I’ll show you.’ He followed her into the hall.
They had to run a tightrope of not giving too much away, but getting info from Liam, that was going to be hard enough as it was.
Fenchurch walked over to the coffee machine and poured out two mugs, leaving the third empty, but it didn’t look like there was enough to go around. He tipped some milk in one, then even more in Reed’s and handed her the mug.
‘How’s the coffee coming along?’ Liam reappeared in the kitchen. ‘Oh, you helped yourself.’
‘You were otherwise engaged.’ Fenchurch poured the last mug out, stamped with “Bruce Wayne is innocent”. ‘Here.’
Liam took it. ‘Ah, these—’
‘Sir?’ Bridge was standing in the doorway, her long blonde hair tucked away in a ponytail. ‘Just going to the station to process Mr Lombardi’s laptop, sir. Hopefully we’ll get some messages or emails.’
‘Thanks. Anything else?’
Bridge jerked her head backwards, indicating the bedroom. ‘My two children are combing the place, top to bottom. Nothing particularly obvious, other than this. And no mobile.’
‘I’ll let you get on, then.’ Fenchurch stepped into the kitchen and retrieved his coffee, still steaming hot. He sucked in the deep, dark aroma. Say what you like about the guy, he knew his coffee and he knew how to make it. Fenchurch perched against the window overlooking the street, just in time to see Bridge drive off towards the station. He nodded for Reed to lead the questioning.
She was sitting at the kitchen table, a varnished wooden thing half-covered in an open pizza box, empty, but also a plate with a couple of crusts left on it. Maybe Liam was growing up. ‘How do you know Mr Lombardi?’
Liam stared into his own mug. ‘Damo owns this place. I rent out his old spare room. Not too expensive, but not exactly cheap. And it’s lovely.’
‘It is.’ Reed took a sip of coffee and nodded. ‘I’m well jealous. So was Damon a friend or just a landlord?’
‘Both, really. Friend of a friend of a friend, got twatted on a night out once, kept in touch. His room was coming free as things went a bit south with Cally.’ Liam smiled at Reed but, as ever with him, it was like he was holding so much back. Way too much. Every truth buried in a wide smile. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Any help you can give us with a boyfriend, girlfriend, or his parents, work colleagues, any of that. We’d greatly appreciate it.’
‘Well, he’s been single as long as I’ve known him. He’s more asexual than anything. Maybe his parents will know more than me. I think they live out in Kent.’
‘How far out?’
‘Ramsgate or Margate. Can’t remember which.’
Reed’s sigh betrayed her dismay at having to travel out to that neck of the woods. It’d be a waste of time even if it was around the corner, but a three-hour round trip, minimum, plus coaxing grieving parents into revealing what little they knew? Monumentally time-wasting.
‘Do you have it?’
‘Somewhere. I’ll look it out for you, Kay.’
‘Thanks. So, like you were asked outside, why would Mr Lombardi be at the brewery?’
‘Well, he’s a co-owner, so…’ Liam finished his cup and refilled it from the replenished jug. The machine was still spitting out fresh coffee. ‘He loves his beer, even more than I do. And Maynard and Neil, they’re both full-time on it, taking a salary each, but Damo is just in it for the free beer and the money.’
Fenchurch spotted a few bottles of Old School’s Lilt IPA on the shelf in a glass-fronted cupboard. He remembered his father loving that stuff. ‘You have any idea why he’d be there last night?’
‘Last night? That’s when he was killed?’ Liam reached down to pick up his cat. Pumpkin, Fenchurch seemed to recall. A tortoiseshell, mostly brown, with the random paint splatters of white and cream. She’d lost a lot of weight, and in a good way too. The hallway looked out across a back garden, so maybe she’d been out doing her cat things instead of sitting in a box all day, like Garfield. Liam tugged at the hair on Pumpkin’s neck, and the cat’s purring deepened. ‘This is where I fess up to being involved with the brewery too, right?’
‘Are you?’
‘Well, yeah.’ Liam rested Pumpkin on the counter and took a slug of coffee. ‘Equal stakes. Like I say, Damo’s the business guy, and Neil and Maynard make the stuff. I do all the marketing. Doing a lot of guerrilla marketing, in
fact, and it works amazingly well. As much as having cash and a good product, marketing is the hard part. And sod getting the stuff into supermarkets, our website is going great guns.’
‘Do you have any idea why Mr Lombardi would’ve been there last night?’
‘Well, yeah. We had a board meeting. This distillery business. I’m a hundred percent behind it. Neil too. Maynard, less so.’
‘And Damon?’
Liam screwed up his face. ‘He thinks we’re stretching ourselves too thin. A brewery, a bar, an online shop, and now a distillery? It’s a long game, spirits. Beer, you brew it and ship it in a few days. But whisky is decades before you get the money back. Still, the sooner you start, the sooner you finish. It’s just whether we start.’
‘You come to any agreement?’
‘Nope.’
‘You see him leave?’
‘Nope again. He was drinking some beer in the bar area on his own. Maynard and Neil had left. Their kid was with Neil’s sister, so they had to collect her.’
‘Liam, it sounds like you’re the last person to see him alive.’
‘That you know of.’
Reed’s shrug gave him that point. ‘True.’
‘Look, whatever you two are thinking, last night was totally amicable. We discussed it over a few beers and we took a vote to give the go-ahead to start assembling the copper still and make our first batch of vodka.’
‘And you left Damon alone?’
‘Right. He’s really into our grapefruit stout.’
‘And you went home?’
‘Not here, no. To the paper. Had to manage the liveblog of the exit poll. I walked to the DLR stop at Limehouse, then into Bank, but I’m not an idiot, so rather than getting lost in the catacombs there for weeks, I walked the rest of the way.’
Reed gave him a smile, but her eyes weren’t laughing at his joke. ‘You walked to Fleet Street?’
‘Nice evening until it started raining. If you must know, I went down Queen Vic Street then along Cannon Street.’
‘Do you know why he stayed?’
‘Other than getting stuck into the grapefruit stout? Nope. I mean, it could be he was meeting someone?’
Could be, and voicing it as a question… That was Liam’s way of saying he definitely was.
‘Any idea who?’
‘Nope.’ Liam huffed out a long sigh. ‘No, but Damon has been discussing selling his stake.’ He looked out of the window with a snort. ‘It’s going to put us right up the spout, but you can tell his heart’s not been in it for a while.’
‘You know who he was speaking to?’
‘Just because I live here doesn’t mean we talk. All we know is that he’s been chatting to some friends about maybe selling up.’
‘And you’ve no idea who these friends might be?’
‘Right. Neil might, though.’
‘Neil?’
‘Neil Harrison. He was super close with Damon.’
5
Instead of sitting at his desk with his health-and-safety assessed height desktop monitor, Fenchurch sat in the Observation Suite, hunched over his service laptop, open to the budget report. Staring at a spreadsheet, when he wanted to be in that room, navigating his way through the questioning.
Reed was interviewing, next to Wayne Baxter, one of the many faceless DCs Fenchurch had on his spreadsheet.
Good news for Baxter was he was sticking around through 2020 and 2021.
Bad news for Baxter was he was sticking around through 2020 and 2021.
Neil Harrison was almost diagonal in his chair, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his skinny jeans. And barely talking. He didn’t have his boyfriend’s exuberance about brewing and distilling, just giving monosyllabic responses, when he even gave one.
Taking a back seat was a skill Fenchurch was supposed to have developed a long time ago. As a DI, co-ordinating his sergeants and their constables into some semblance of order was his bread and butter.
In truth, though, he’d been a bull in a china shop, battering everyone out of the way, his wild hooves kicking anyone that came into the interview room with him. Suspects, lawyers, even colleagues and subordinates. Especially superiors.
And Loftus had been on his case about this one issue since day one, constantly driving home his needs and expectations.
Fenchurch couldn’t go in there. Not now.
But this was one of those cases where not jumping in was proving to be impossible. Like he told everyone, murder cases were sprints that sometimes took marathon distances. They had to be out of the blocks at a fast pace and had to keep it up for a very long time.
Neil was just sitting there now, not even grunting.
Fenchurch could do it, he could get in there and get Harrison to talk. But that would undermine Reed. Wouldn’t it?
Why was being at this level of seniority so difficult? He should never have accepted Loftus’s offer. The veiled threat had worked so well. Too bloody well. But this case…
Fenchurch focused on his spreadsheet. How had he got to the position of managing over sixty officers? And it wasn’t enough to do what he thought he needed to do. Some clowns, say Bell for instance, lived for this. In a year’s time, it’d be all bollocks and nothing like they’d forecast in their spreadsheet, but he just didn’t care.
But how would Docherty have done it?
Reed glanced at the camera. Another tell, like she needed help.
Fenchurch could keep telling himself that this was DI Ashkani’s role, to get in there, but then she was stuck back at the crime scene, making sure nobody slipped out.
No.
Fenchurch knew that Reed knew that Neil was hiding something.
His phone rang. Ashkani calling…
Saved by the bell. He answered it, grateful to be away from his spreadsheet. ‘Uzma, what’s up?’
‘Are you sure you want me to head to Lombardi’s parents in Ramsgate?’
‘Do you think I should do it?’
‘No, it’s a DI’s job, it’s just…’
‘What, you think DI Winter isn’t up to managing a crime scene?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But you thought it, right?’
‘It’s frustrating, sir. I was getting somewhere, or it felt like it, and now I’m sent out to the bloody Kent coast to speak to grieving parents.’
‘Well, for one, you’re actually really good at that, Uzma. And it’s important stuff. You could get the lead that solves this case.’
‘Don’t patronise me.’
Fenchurch was blushing. ‘Uzma, just do that for me, and we’ll have a chat, okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘Have you got an update from the crime scene?’
‘Door-to-door yielded nothing. The building isn’t overlooked by anyone and it was dark last night. I’ve told Rod to plough on with it, but I wouldn’t expect anything.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ Fenchurch ended the call and sat back.
Christ. There he was, doing a spreadsheet and trying to coach someone into doing their job. What was the world coming to?
And the case was getting nowhere. Neil was still clammed up, and Reed was still glancing over at the camera.
Before he knew it, Fenchurch was on his feet and out in the corridor, nudging the interview room door open.
Neil didn’t even look round, but Reed did.
Fenchurch slipped inside and leaned against the wall between his two officers. ‘Mr Harrison, I know this is tough for you, okay? Believe me. But someone murdered Damon. They cut his throat and left him to bleed out. Carotid artery, jugular vein, so it was messy. I can’t even imagine how painful it must’ve been. But you’ve seen that, haven’t you? You opened the door, you saw the mess.’
Neil closed his eyes now. He was like a snail, shutting off from the world.
‘You and Maynard. He’s your partner, right?’
That got a response, finally. Neil looked over and nodded.
‘Must be tough, both of
you finding that body together?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe. I just want to hold him. Want him to hold me.’
‘Trust me, I believe it.’ Fenchurch stood there, waiting for Neil to look up. Bingo. ‘A few years ago, my wife and I were on Upper Street. I was going to get some food. She was in the shop next door, and… This woman, she came up from Angel Tube station and this kid on a bike, he stabbed her.’ He touched his neck. ‘Right there. She didn’t stand a chance.’
Neil let a slow breath out through his nostrils. ‘That was Liam’s girlfriend, right?’
Fenchurch nodded. ‘So I know what it feels like. It took a long time for my wife to get over it. It’s not been easy. Still affects her three and a half years later.’
Neil was nodding now, opening himself up to this difficult chat.
‘What’s been going on with Damon?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, you were meeting him last night, weren’t you?’
‘Board meeting.’
‘About your distilling?’
‘Yeah. We bought this copper still. An absolute bargain, kind of rude not to, you know? But it needs a lot of time and effort, so Maynard and I spoke to the others to make sure they were cool.’
‘Liam and Damon?’
‘Right. And they were on board with it. Liam, especially.’
‘But not Damon?’
‘Took a bit of persuading.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he wants out.’
‘Of the business?’
‘I mean, we’re growing like crazy and selling a ton of beer, but it’s all so precarious. Damo knows that more than anyone.’ Neil looked down at the floor. ‘Knew that more than anyone. We’re always like a month from going out of business. But the distillery was his bloody suggestion in the first place. Whisky, in particular. I don’t get the details, but he said we can use that to build up some big financial stuff that’ll help our cashflow, or help us get credit. And selling vodka and gin will help us branch out, establish the process and…’
‘But then he got cold feet?’
‘Ice cold. He kept banging on about when the downturn’s going to hit. If they can’t afford to pay their bills, people won’t want to pay three quid for a can of beer, no matter how good it is. Spirits, yeah, there’s value in that.’