The Real World- the Point of Death

by Laurence Todd

  “Christ, that’s it!” I exclaimed, slapping my hand against the kitchen counter. “That’s how he did it. That’s how he knew.”

  Taylor looked amazed by my outburst. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve just realised how Michael Mendoccini knew so much about me.”

  *

  When we’d been eight and nine, Michael and I had been part of a circle of friends who’d all hung out together, playing football, riding our bicycles everywhere and causing mayhem in the way pre-teenage boys tended to do. Nothing malicious, just the usual rounds of mischief and disobedience. Gradually, as we’d moved into our mid-teens, the circle had diminished as people lost interest, found other friends, moved away, got girlfriends or discovered the new fad of video games like Sonic the Hedgehog, Space Invaders and Pac-Man, which were becoming all the rage around this time, but Michael Mendoccini and I had remained friends, along with a few others.

  One person who’d somehow ended up in our group was an individual named Ray Fiddley. He was an obsequious little runt, maybe five foot five, with very bad impetigo and an enormous chip on his shoulder about his height (or the lack thereof). He was forever getting into trouble, both in school and outside. On more than one occasion I’d wanted to smack him but, to my eternal regret, I had never done so.

  He was the first person I ever knew to have been taken into police custody, as he’d been suspected of being the driver of a stolen car that had crashed into a lamppost late one evening after taking a corner too wide. He was sixteen, didn’t have a licence and was the obvious suspect because a passer-by had seen three boys running away from the crash, and she’d said one was much shorter than the other two. Despite his being asked to help the police with their inquiries, somehow he’d got away without being charged. He’d later boasted to anyone who’d listen it had been him driving the car. What made it worse was that the car Fiddley had taken belonged to a McGraw family friend, who’d been seriously inconvenienced without access to her car. This’d been one of the times I’d wanted to chin him but didn’t.

  I’d always tried not to have too much to do with Fiddley, but, for reasons I’d never fully grasped, he and Michael Mendoccini had become sort-of friends and occasionally did things together, and I’d always tried not to be anywhere around when they did.

  If my luck was out, I’d occasionally bump into Fiddley when I returned to my hometown at the end of term, and even now I couldn’t always escape him when I visited to see my parents. One particular occasion stood out. A couple of years back, one Thursday lunchtime when I’d been having a pub lunch with my parents to celebrate my father’s birthday, I’d seen Fiddley and a woman enter the pub and go up to the bar. After they’d bought drinks and had sat down, he saw me and lifted his glass to toast me. He’d looked like he was gesturing to me, so, against my better judgement, I’d excused myself to go chat to him. He asked how I was doing.

  “Yeah, I’m good. What’re you up to these days, Ray?” I tried to sound interested.

  I was pretty sure I knew. People like Fiddley never change. I knew him to be somewhere on the very shady side of legality. Amongst other things, he worked a stall at the local market and one of his under-the-counter, ask me no questions I’ll tell you no lies specialities was selling items which had somehow fallen off the back of a lorry. Half his stock seemed to come from burglaries, car thefts or warehouse break-ins, frustrated export orders as he described them. He’d done a few months in prison as a result, one of two short prison sentences he’d served. He was well connected with the local villainry, so much so it was a standing in-joke locally that, if you’d been burgled or had your car radio stolen, before reporting anything to the police or making inquiries about an insurance claim, you should go to Ray Fiddley’s market stall and see if he still has your stuff. He kept a faded sign on his stall which read, All products as advertised on Crimewatch.

  “Oh, keeping my nose clean and all that. You know me, Robert, as honest as the day is long.” He grinned as he took a swig from his beer.

  I resisted the temptation to say, You, honest? You’re a thieving little bastard. Instead I said, “You? You’re about as straight as a fucking roundabout, Ray.”

  He laughed, thinking I was joking with him. I hadn’t been.

  He was telling me about one or two local characters we both knew from school, whom I didn’t miss or particularly care about, when he suddenly astounded me by saying, “You remember Mike Mendoccini, don’t you? I saw him recently.”

  “Oh yeah? When was this?” I tried to hide my disappointment he’d not got in touch with me on his return. At this time, I’d not seen Michael Mendoccini for over a decade.

  “About a month or so back. He’s fine, working for his dad in Italy. He comes back over here once in a while to keep an eye on their shop and other stuff, and to catch up with his family. Actually, this is Marie, Mike’s cousin.” He’d gestured to the woman sitting next to him. “You remember her, don’t you?”

  I did remember. Michael and Marie’s mothers were sisters. But, to my horror, her once gorgeously long, sandy blonde streaked hair had been cropped short and was now coal black. No wonder I’d not recognised her.

  “I thought you were ignoring me.” She’d smiled at me.

  “I’d not recognised you. How you doing, Marie?” I gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  I’d once fancied her when I was seventeen, really fancied her a lot, and I’d been told by Michael she was very keen on me and, were I to ask, she’d go out with me in a heartbeat, but I’d never acted on it. She was one of Michael’s family and going out with her somehow wouldn’t have felt right.

  “I’m fine. Ray and I got married recently.” She showed me the ring on her left hand.

  “Oh, congratulations, I didn’t know.”

  I hadn’t meant this sincerely. She could have done so much better than him. I wondered what the hell she could have seen in Fiddley to attach herself to him. Much to his chagrin I asked her this very question, but she just grinned enigmatically at me.

  “I’m still in touch with Mike; we meet up when he comes back over.” Fiddley recovered his poise. “You still in touch with him?”

  “No, not very often.” If I were being honest I’d have said I see him every eleven or so years without fail.

  “He’s doing alright, a successful businessman these days. Always seems to have a fucking shitpile of cash with him, never short of money when we go for a beer.”

  Memories of evenings spent getting drunk with Mendoccini and then attempting to pull women we’d not the smallest chance with had come flooding back, but I didn’t dwell on them. I inwardly sighed.

  Fiddley leaned forward and looked directly at me, almost conspiratorially. “I think he’s into something else as well, something a little dodgy, know what I mean?”

  “What, you mean dodgy like you?”

  He’d looked almost serious. “Dunno, hard to say, but I think he might be into something crooked. There’s something about him now, but I can’t put my finger on it. He’s the same, but he’s different somehow, seems a bit shifty, you know what I saying?”

  “Different how?” I was curious to know what might have changed about him.

  “He said he’d have been over earlier but he’d been the subject of a police investigation and had been held in custody for a while. I asked him what it was about, and he said something like, oh, it was nothing, just police talking to everyone about a bombing somewhere and they’d roped him in. He said they’d thought he was involved.”

  I’d asked if Michael had said anything specific about this, but I was told he hadn’t. I then asked whether this was his basis for saying Mendoccini was into something crooked.

  “It’s hard to explain, but there was just something about the way he talked about it, like he was almost proud the police’d thought he was involved. I mean, Mike’s a businessman; why would police even want to talk to him about a bombing? And he talked a lot about some group of people he knew, Heaven Red, or so
mething like that.”

  I knew of Red Heaven, but I’d dismissed this at the time. Michael Mendoccini involved in terrorism? The thought would have been absurd.

  “Well, you see him again, give him my best. Tell him I said hi and tell the bastard to give me a call next time he comes over.”

  “Will do. Take care, Robert.”

  I smiled at Marie and returned to my parents’ table with a mildly sour taste in my mouth, and not just from talking to Fiddley. Learning Mendoccini had been back in our hometown but hadn’t bothered looking me up had saddened me.

  *

  “Don’t you see? This’d be how he’d know so much about me, through Fiddley. Mendoccini’s been in touch with Fiddley.” I was pleased at this revelation but, at the same time, astounded that something this obvious hadn’t dawned on me after Mendoccini had phoned last Friday evening. “My mum and Fiddley’s mum are friends; his mum’s known me since I was about eight years old.” I was warming to my theme. “My bet is my mother met his in the supermarket or at bingo and they got talking, and my mother told her about us getting married, and what we’re doing now, and Fiddley’s mother told her idiot son. I’ll bet that’s how Mendoccini found out so much about me.”

  “Yeah, sounds plausible,” Taylor agreed after a moment.

  I looked at my watch. “I have to go out soon.”

  *

  My hometown is only forty-five minutes south-east of London, in the Kent countryside: a small place just southwest of Maidstone, on the A28 heading towards Tunbridge Wells. I left Battersea just before eight; the traffic heading eastwards along the M20 was moving easily, and I made good time, pulling up outside the residence where Fiddley’s mother now lived at eight forty-five. The warden escorted me to her small ground-floor flat and, after apologising for calling so late, I asked for her son’s new address. Before leaving I’d looked up Fiddley’s file and seen he was currently listed as being NFA, no fixed abode.

  Mrs Fiddley was delighted to see me again, told me I needed a haircut and congratulated me warmly on my recent marriage; apparently my mother had told her all about it and shown her the pictures she’d taken when they’d met up in the café at Morrisons. I was right so far.

  After a five-minute chat, and learning her hip replacement operation had been successful and she could now walk the dog without her hips hurting, plus how her £500 jackpot win at bingo two months ago had been put towards a holiday, she readily passed her son’s address to me, saying he’d not been living there very long as he’d had to vacate his previous flat for non-payment of rent.

  No, I assured her as she looked concerned, he wasn’t in any trouble; I just needed to ask him about something concerning a mutual friend who had information I needed. It was more or less true. She looked relieved to hear this.

  “He’s still with Marie Beauchelli.” She didn’t appear to be too happy about this. “Did you know they only got married because she was pregnant? Well, she had to; you know what her family’s like, don’t you?”

  I did. Very strict, very devout practising Italian Roman Catholics who’d have insisted on marriage and vetoed any idea of a termination of the foetus. Her two brothers, Franco and Fillippe, would probably’ve hanged Fiddley from a lamppost had he not done right by her.

  “And you know what’s funny?” She smiled ironically. “The week after they married, she had a miscarriage. The reason why they got married disappeared.” She shook her head.

  Trapped in a loveless marriage with Ray Fiddley. The dictionary definition of a living hell.

  “Anyway, it’s nice to see you again, Robert; you’ve done so well for yourself,” she said, her smile becoming warmer. “Oh, by the way, did you know Michael was here recently?”

  “No, I didn’t.” I felt a twinge and tried not to show my disappointment. “When was this?”

  “He’s such a nice boy, that Michael,” she sighed. “Always so polite and well mannered, and always smartly dressed, and he’s doing so well with the family business. I wish my Raymond dressed as smartly as he does, and was as ambitious as him, or you for that matter. Anyway, Michael said he was going to contact you in London; hasn’t he done it yet? I think it was the middle of the week before last he was here.”

  I thanked her again. She hugged me warmly and I left.

  *

  Fiddley’s flat was located above a newsagent’s on the main road. The entrance was the side door next to the small car park by the shop. I parked and rang the doorbell.

  Marie answered the door and, eyes open wide, beamed broadly. “Robert, oh my God, what a nice surprise. Come in.”

  I entered and gave her a quick hug. She led me up the stairs, along a short corridor and into the main room, which was about twenty-five feet square with grubby walls, barely furnished and with a view of the main road. Marie deserved so much better than having to live like this.

  Fiddley was in front of the television, watching what looked like a recording of The Jeremy Kyle Show. I’m never sure whom I feel most sorry for: those who appear on Jeremy Kyle or those who get enjoyment from watching it.

  When I entered his lounge, Fiddley’s eyes opened wide in amazement, like I was a debt collector he thought he’d shaken off. Nothing about him had changed. He still looked as vacuous as ever, so dumb he probably still thought erudite was a brand of glue.

  Looking around the room, on the mantel I saw a wedding picture, taken outside Maidstone registry office if I wasn’t mistaken. I looked closer. No one in the picture, including the bride and groom, was wearing wedding clothes, and nobody looked as though they were enjoying the experience. When I thought of how radiant and happy Taylor had looked, it was a sad contrast. Marie saw me looking at it and looked away, sighing to herself.

  I stared at Fiddley. He shuffled uncomfortably in his armchair and made to get up.

  “Sit down, Ray; I won’t be here long. I need to talk with you.”

  “Okay.” He slouched back into his seat, looking uncomfortable. He knew this wasn’t a social visit. Seeing him in his home would never be a social visit.

  I could see straight away he was nervous. I could also see his impetigo hadn’t cleared up and his face, which only an extremely myopic mother could love, resembled a roll of bubble wrap. He sighed and fidgeted in his seat.

  Marie offered tea or coffee, but I declined. I didn’t want to be here any longer than was necessary.

  “Ray’s mum told us you’d got married recently.” Marie smiled. “Congratulations. She showed us the pictures. Your wife looked so lovely, and I love what she wore.”

  “Thanks.” I then gave Fiddley a sharp glare, which immediately made him shuffle in his seat, and moved closer to him.

  “Look, if you’re here about what happened last week, I can explain.” He paused. “It wasn’t all down to me. I explained this to the other officer when he spoke to me.”

  I had no idea what he meant, but immediately I realised I’d been given an edge. “That’s not the only reason I’m here, but you tell me what I wanna know and things might go a bit easier for you where that’s concerned. You follow?”

  “Okay.” He looked relieved and breathed out.

  “So, when did you last have any contact with Michael Mendoccini?”

  For a moment, he looked surprised to hear the name. “Oh, not for ages, probably last year sometime,” he replied far too quickly, looking away from me as he spoke.

  “You’re absolutely sure about this?” I asked, smiling.

  “Yeah, yeah, I am.”

  I waited a moment. “So, if I were to tell you your mum’s just told me, not ten minutes ago, he was here last week, and she’d spoken to him, you’d say she was lying.”

  Caught out on the first question. If only all interrogations could be this easy. If brains were balls, Fiddley would be a eunuch.

  I waited for his response. It didn’t come.

  “And if I also told you Michael and Angie are in the country right now, it’d come as a big surprise to you. Is this the
case?” I didn’t tell him Angie had already left.

  “Yeah, yeah, it would.”

  I waited a few moments to put him on edge, watching him. He looked down at the carpet.

  “Ray, look at me,” I said firmly.

  He did.

  “I’m gonna ask you again, and I’m gonna ask you nicely. When was the last time you spoke to Michael Mendoccini?” I moved closer to him, close enough so he had to tilt his head back to look at my face.

  There was a silence lasting several seconds. His breathing had become more rapid and he was blinking a lot. This on its own told me he knew more than he was letting on.

  “Ray, let me explain the importance of my question.”

  His eyes met mine. They looked empty, as though the power inside his head had been switched off for the night.

  “A man was murdered last Saturday evening, and police think Mike Mendoccini might be involved in his death.”

  Both Fiddley and Marie looked aghast at hearing this.

  “He isn’t in Italy,” I continued, “and the Italian police have good reason to believe he’s somewhere here in England.”

  “Mike’s killed someone?” Fiddley’s eyes had opened wider and he was swallowing hard.

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought so, and I hope not, but police have him marked down as someone who could have valuable information which’d help us find the killer, even if it wasn’t him.” I paused. “So, if you know anything at all, Ray, you need to tell me.” I said this in such a way as to make him realise I wasn’t joking.

  Silence again for several seconds. He nodded slowly. I went on.

  “Michael phoned me last week, and he knew more about my life than I do. I’ve not spoken to him for quite some time, but he knew an awful lot about me. Which means he’s been talking to someone who knows both him and me, and who’d be likely to tell him about me if he asked.” I nodded at Fiddley. “Someone like you.”