by L. J. Hutton
“Sanay Costa,” Ray told him.
“Hmm. Interesting that it should be him. We’d rather lost sight of him,” the Walsall detective said.
“How’s he related to Vijay?” Ray asked.
There was a disgusted huff on the other end of the line. “Vijay’s mother is one of five sisters. Their mother – Vijay’s grandmother – was white English, but seemed to have been trying to work her way around the Indian subcontinent, because all five sisters are by different men from totally different regions. What all five are is mouthy and aggressive, and they’ve all bred like rabbits. Where Sanay Costa’s mum is the odd one out is in her marrying his dad and sticking with him.”
There was another grunt of disgust. “Not that the poor sod’s been around in a long time. If you believe the crap they tell you, he went back to Italy – though why the hell he’d go there when it was his grandparents who came from the Naples area, not even his parents, seems a bit odd. The problem when he went missing was that Peter Costa was a long distance trucker, who really did go over to Europe on a regular basis, and since it was only his employers reporting him missing after a couple of weeks that alerted us, it was pretty hard to do much about – especially as the family kept insisting that they’d had phone-calls from him from over there.”
“And had they?” Bill asked curiously.
Another disgusted grunt. “Hmph! Well when we got the phone records somebody called them from over there, but at that point two of the brothers were also apparently over there to see him, so you can work that one out. We all reckon they were just building the story up, covering their tracks, but without a body or any evidence of foul play, there wasn’t a lot we could do. Mind you, several of the lads would like to run some ground-penetrating radar over that garden of theirs. There’s an awful lot of concrete in there, and every so often there seems to be a new bit added on, or some new garden feature that needs a ridiculously hefty concrete plinth.”
“Well we might need Mrs Costa to come and identify the body,” Bill told him, only to get the response of,
“Good luck with that! Oh she’ll come, but be prepared to get an ear-bashing when she does. None of her rabble ever put a foot wrong to hear her talk. He’ll be the innocent victim all the way, I can tell you that now. The last time we had to speak to her, it was only Ed being a bit light on his feet that saved him from a knee in the balls off her. And although she was cautioned, that won’t have stuck for more than five seconds.”
Bill exchanged weary glances with Ray as he replied, “Oh what a charmer. Thanks for the warning. Do you have an address for her?”
Having got that information, they left off making the call for today until they could compare the victim’s DNA with those family members on file, but in his own mind Bill was sure they’d found the right person. But what he wasn’t expecting was to get a phone-call from Carol at around nine that night.
“Hi Carol, is this a social call or are you working late?”
“Don’t be facetious, Bill! You go and drop another mystery in my lap and then think I’d wait until the morning to get the details?”
“Oops! Am I in Sylvia’s bad books?”
“Not really. She knows that case of mine has continued to bug me, so she gets why I would jump in the car and drive over to look at this new body. The thing is, Bill, it’s exactly the same. And I mean exactly! The two men died in precisely the same way, though what else connects them is beyond me to tell you. But...” and she gave a theatrically long pause, “there is something they have in common.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
“I would say that they had been very sexually aroused at some point very close to the time of death. Not intercourse, though. Neither had any sign of another person being in close contact with them. And I’m only telling you this as a friend, because it’s so tenuous I wouldn’t want someone to bring it up in court without a whole lot of additional evidence. But both of them had traces of their own semen in their underclothing, as though they had been very aroused, though without actually having had sex.”
Bill found himself sitting up that bit straighter as his mind began processing that. “Do you think that maybe someone was taunting them? Were they watching someone doing... well, whatever?”
Yet Carol sighed. “And that’s where we run into the brick wall again. Jeff’s absolutely certain that there was nobody close to our body until we arrived, and the same goes for yours. So if you’re thinking of some woman doing a pole dance around an apple tree – though God knows why anyone would – then forget it.”
“Hmmm ...I got your old file emailed across as soon as I realised the similarities. It could be that there’s something very mucky on their phones, I suppose. But then watching porn was never going to have that dramatic an effect on someone, no matter how exotic or arousing.”
“Phfff!” Carol snorted. “It’s possible, but to be blunt, Bill, no man has ever masturbated himself to death!”
Bill hooted with laughter at that, adding, “No, the world would be littered with the corpses of teenage lads if that was possible. And I take your point that we can hardly use that in any constructive way. It’s not even as if either was found with some woman’s exotic underwear clasped to them and their old man in their fist, is it? And we can hardly cite sticky undies as a cause of death.”
“No,” Carol sighed. “But again, just between the two of us, I don’t like this having two men cropping up just a month apart and dying in the same way to such a close degree. There’s something or someone at work here, Bill, though I’m damned if I can tell you what.”
Chapter 3
IT TOOK A FEW DAYS for the DNA confirmation to come through, but then Bill found himself driving over to Walsall with Ray to speak to Marissa Costa. As Ray expertly navigated his way through the heavy traffic, even Bill was aghast when they pulled up outside a substantial detached house on the main Birmingham Road.
“They live here?” he asked Ray, not quite able to believe his eyes.
Ray gave a bitter laugh. “Oh yes, that’s why I’ve pulled up a bit short of the drive.”
“But these houses must date to the era when they were built by prosperous Victorian businessmen. What are a bunch of rogues doing living here? What’s the value of a house like this?”
“Ah, well that’s a good question,” Ray said with a look of disgust. “Being in Walsall, these kinds of properties don’t command the sort of prices they would in Worcester, for instance. But you’re still looking at the best part of three hundred and fifty thousand – which is amazing for a family that has no discernible income. ...Get out and come and have a look at it a bit closer before we turn into the drive, gov’, because the moment we pull up, Mrs Costa will be out and demanding to know what we’re here for.”
For a moment Bill didn’t quite know how to take that, but after he’d got out and wandered along the opposite side of the road with Ray until they could see most of the drive, although not yet being in view from the windows thanks to a neighbour’s very large bush, he began to see why. The house was a masterpiece in dreadful taste, making him wonder what on earth their unlucky neighbours thought of them – certainly moving would be difficult with such a monstrosity next door, even by a couple of houses’ distance. A false portico had been added to the front door, but was painted in a lurid shade of pink, the drapery at the windows was so brightly coloured it looked awful even from the road, and Bill thought he’d never seen such a collection of dreadful garden gnomes and tasteless statues in all of his life. There were mooning gnomes, gnomes making rude gestures, a couple of gnomes ‘artistically’ placed as if copulating, and several other oddities which Bill was rather glad he couldn’t see in detail.
“Bloody hell!” was all he could say in a stunned voice.
“Exactly,” Ray agreed. “Once you’ve seen that lot, you’ve got a fair idea of what you’re in for. If you don’t mind, I’ll let you lead with the questions. Mrs Costa is nothing if not a rabid racist – which is pretty rich coming from som
eone with such a mixed pedigree as her – and she has no hesitation is speaking her mind, running sewer that that is.”
“Wonderful!” Bill breathed. “Okay, let’s go and get this over with.”
As Ray had predicted, they hadn’t even got the car doors closed before Mrs Costa was coming out of the front door, bawling at them,
“If you ain’t got a warrant, you aint’ comin’ in!”
“Mrs Costa,” Bill began, struggling to put his calmest voice on, “we really do need to speak to you, and I can assure you that we have no intention of trying to search your property.”
“Well you still ain’t comin’ in!” Marissa Costa snapped, hoisting her ample bosom in the heavily frilled tangerine-coloured housecoat, which was rapidly losing the fight to keep her covered respectably.
Bill sighed. “Very well, then I’m afraid we have to break the bad news to you here.”
“What bad news? You can’t trick me! What you goin’ to suggest now? That our Caesar’s been sellin’ stuff again? Go on, on your bike!”
Ray’s respect for Bill rose to new levels as his boss stepped a little closer – certainly close enough to be gasping on the multi-layers of various perfumes which Mrs Costa had been dousing herself with – and said quietly,
“No, I’m afraid it’s bad news about Sanay.”
“Oh yeah?” Marissa Costa’s head came back as she did her best to look down her heavily made-up nose at Bill, something that was never going to work when he stood nearly a foot taller than her. “What you tryin’ to say he’s done?”
Bill grunted. “Mrs Costa, will you please listen to what I’m saying. It’s not what Sanay has done. It’s about what’s happened to him.”
“To him?” she demanded belligerently. “Who’s hurt him? Who’s hurt my boy?”
Bill sighed. “I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to that Mrs Costa, but I’m very sorry to have to tell you that Sanay is dead.”
Whatever reaction he was anticipating, Mrs Costa’s high-pitched scream and her vanishing from view into the house, still screaming at the top of her voice, wasn’t it. From behind him he heard Ray saying something in whichever Indian subcontinental language was native to his family, but Bill didn’t have to understand the words to guess that it was an echo of his own, “God help us!” And she was still screaming somewhere deep in the back of the house, leaving them standing on the doorstep until a young man came storming out to them.
“What you said to upset our Mum like dat?” he demanded furiously. “Who are you, filff?”
Feeling able to be considerably sterner with this incarnation of the family, Bill said firmly, “I’ll thank you to remain, polite, please. I’m DI Scathlock and this is my colleague, acting DI Villavarayan, and we’ve come to tell you that we’ve found a body which we have very good reason to believe is that of Sanay Costa.”
He saw all the bounce briefly fall from the young man as he said, horrified, “A body? Sanay’s dead?” Then the cockiness was back. “Nah! You’re pullin’ my pisser. Our Sanay ain’t dead.”
With his patience running out, Bill produced a photograph of the head and shoulders of the body. “So you’re saying that this is not Sanay Costa?”
This time the deflation was permanent, and the younger Costa was backing away from them in horror when an older version of him appeared behind him.
“Romeo? What’s goin’ on here? Why’s our mum screamin’ her head off like that?”
Ray immediately said, “Caesar Costa, you know me, and this is DI Scathlock.”
“He’s dead,” the one they now knew was called Romeo said to his brother in a choked voice, “our Sanay’s dead.”
Caesar was clearly made of tougher stuff, because he hardly flinched before saying, “It was her wasn’t it? That fuckin’ bitch he’s been seein’? I knew she was no good for him. I told him, I did. I said to him, leave her be, man, she ain’t what she seems,’ but he was all loved up.”
“Could we please come inside to talk about this?” Bill asked, wanting to get off the doorstep, because several people were coming out of their doors and staring in undisguised curiosity, probably wanting to know what on earth it could be that would rattle a gang of ruffians like the Costas so much.
For a moment Caesar stood blocking the way, but then he must have caught sight of the two houses across the road, where there were people in their doorways trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on around the traffic. Without a word, Caesar turned on his heels and led them into the house, although only as far as the front room. Either Marissa Costa was considerably more scrupulous about her house than herself, or this room was kept for best and hardly used, because at least it was spotlessly clean. That was about all you could say for it, though. It was a big room, but the whole of it looked for all the world as though a candyfloss factory had exploded in it. If it could have frills on, it did, there was lace and satin everywhere, and it came in every range of vivid pink, yellow and peach fabric that manufacturers could produce.
Just in time, Bill managed to close his mouth from where his jaw had dropped at the sight before Caesar turned around. With an arrogant wave of his hand, Caesar gestured them to the tangerine sofa against the back wall, but Bill was too fast for him, striding to the opposite cerise seating-unit which dominated the large bay window. He wasn’t having some petty hoodlum pulling that one on him, because if he’d sat where Caesar had wanted, Caesar would have seen them clearly, but his face would have been in shadow. Now it was Caesar who had to sit where Bill and Ray could see his every twitch and facial tick.
“Now then,” Bill said, sitting as far back as the multitude of scatter cushions would allow. “What’s this about a woman? Who is she?”
“Is it his ex-wife?” Ray added.
Caesar snorted derisively. “Chantal? Don’t make me laugh! That thick cow could never get anything on our Sanay.”
However Ray said pointedly, but in part for Bill’s benefit, “That thick cow, as you call her, got a restraining order against him, though, didn’t she? Not that daft. So in light of that, would you answer the question: were you referring to Chantal Costa?”
“No, I fuckin’ wasn’t. And she ain’t Chantal Costa anymore, either. She done married Winston Jackson last month – best o’ luck to him with that. That woman don’t know when to shut up, not ever!”
“Right,” Bill said, smothering a sigh of despair, “so we’re not talking about the new Mrs Jackson. But you definitely had somebody in mind out in the hall, so who is she? What’s her name?”
“Dunno,” Caesar said sulkily. “He never told us.”
Bill saw Ray lean forwards in surprise from out of the corner of his eye as he responded, “He never told you? This woman he was all ‘loved up’ with, and yet he never even told his brothers what her name was? I find that hard to believe.”
“Not as bleedin’ hard as we did,” Caesar snapped back. “He met her after the last...” He just about stopped himself in time, but Bill was sure he’d nearly said, ‘the last job’ or something equally incriminating. Instead Caesar recovered with, “...he split up with his last girlfriend.”
Ray’s soft, “Hmmm,” told Bill that it was more likely that the previous girl had left when she’d realised how free Sanay was with his fists – something which Ray had already briefed Bill about on the way over.
Keeping his tone mild, Bill pressed, “But surely you must have known something about her? What did she look like, for instance?”
Caesar shrugged. “All I know is that she’s got long dark hair. ‘Hair like midnight and eyes like stars,’ was how Sanay put it. Thought he’d been at the weed, we did, when he said that. But he got right het up when we took the piss out of him for it. That’s how we knew it was serious. He ain’t never been like that over a woman before. And I tell you sommat else, she wasn’t his normal type. Sanay likes ’em blond with a decent rack on ’em,” this accompanied by him cupping his hands around invisible breasts, “but this one sounded like she was sk
inny – not that he said much about her looks, but that was the impression we got.”
“And how long had he known her?” Bill prompted.
“Best as we could tell, about three months. And it seemed to get serious straight away. After he met her he was always drivin’ off to go and see her. He d’ain’t show any interest in any other girls after that.”
“So she doesn’t live locally, then?”
Caesar shrugged and this time Bill got the impression it was more in frustration than anything else. “I dunno. No idea where she lives. And that was weird too! He seemed to be going’ out into the countryside to meet her. I sez to him, ‘Where d’you go clubbin’, then?’ and he just laughed, like it was the funniest thing ever. So then I sez, ‘She ain’t some pikey, is she?’ and he carries on laughin’ and sez, no. ‘Is she some farmer, then?’ I asks, and he says no to that too. But I never did get it out of him where or what she was.
“And the other thing was, she could only see him at certain times, and I don’t just mean like in the week, as if she had an old man and our Sanay was pokin’ her behind his back while he was workin’ away, but him back at the weekend. Sometimes he’d see her in the week, sometimes at weekends. But if it was a Saturday and he was around, and I sez to him, ‘Aren’t you goin’ to meet her?’ he’d say, ‘The time ain’t right.’ What does that mean, eh? And it was always the same words. Not, ‘she’s out with her mates,’ or ‘she’s on the blob so there ain’t no point,’ just that.”
Even as he was mentally wincing at Caesar’s crude assessment of whether it was worth seeing a woman, Bill had to admit that this wasn’t sounding like the normal kind of woman who would give a thug like Sanay the time of day. If anything, she sounded considerably classier.
“Do you know where they met?”
However that was the point when Caesar got a lot more coy. That probably meant that they were out and up to no good at the time, and the oldest of the Costa lads wasn’t about to drop himself and his brothers in the shit with the police, not even if it was to help catch whoever had killed his brother. It was only after they’d danced around the subject for a few minutes that Caesar finally got around to asking,