Death is the New Black

by Dominic Piper

  ‘This guy. Did he have blond hair?’

  ‘Yeah. Something of the copper about him, I thought.’

  ‘You’re right. I think he was in the police once.’

  ‘Maybe I should be doing your job!’

  ‘Maybe you should. What’s the company on there? T.R.J.E. Ltd.’

  ‘They’ve got a contract with us. They own a string of nightclubs.’

  Nightclubs?

  ‘What does it stand for? The initials, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know. I think the E might stand for Enterprises. That’s only a guess, though. It’s just a name. I couldn’t give a fuck as long as they pay, d’you know what I mean? We deal with loads of companies that have contracts. They do it because they get reductions and shit.’

  ‘Sure. What does a company who own a string of nightclubs want with sleek high-end cars to the point where they have a contract?’

  ‘No idea. They come in, they hire a car, they bring it back, y’know? I don’t take much of an interest, to be honest. I block it all out.’ He laughs. ‘It’s hell on earth. Hey, take a look at this guy.’

  Another drawer opens and he hands me a thick art book. I can hardly believe it. It’s Basquiat. Without giving her name, I tell him about Sara’s interest and her designs inspired by his work. He seems genuinely surprised and impressed.

  ‘That’s so weird, though. Me handing you that book and you talking to someone about him just the other day.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  Now back to the story.

  ‘You don’t know any of your clients, then. Know their business or anything like that. Have a laugh and a joke with them. Meet up for a pint later.’

  He laughs. ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘Well, you never know.’

  ‘So – what – are you police? I mean are you ex-police? What’s this all about? I love those Nordic Noir police shows. I’d like to live in Denmark. Do you belong to a company or are you on your own?’

  ‘I’m on my own. And no, I’m not ex-police.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Denmark?’

  ‘Yes I have.’

  ‘What’s it like? Is it good?’

  ‘Well, I was there on business. Just for half a day. Only saw a small part of it, really. Seemed very nice, though. I remember walking past a statue of Hans Christian Andersen.’

  He nods. ‘Let me get the file up on here.’

  He taps away on a Toshiba Satellite Professional. He screws his eyes up as if he needs glasses, but doesn’t realise it yet. He looks up at me.

  ‘What’s this all about? What is it you’re looking for?’

  ‘I want a name and an address. I want to know the name of the guy that hired that vehicle and where he lives. If it’s a company contract, as you say, I want the address of the head office and hopefully the director of the company. Anything you’ve got, really.’ I laugh. I want to get him to collude with me. ‘To be honest, I’m totally fucked with this so far. I’ve got nothing.’

  ‘OK. Well, T.R.J.E. Ltd have a head office, but it’s a nightclub. I told you they have a string of nightclubs. You’d think it might be an office or something, but it’s just one of their biggest clubs. You might have heard of it. Dolly’s? No?’

  ‘No I haven’t. Where is it?’

  ‘249a Judd Street, WC1. Sort of Bloomsbury, I suppose. Near St Pancras railway. Well, not that near. That’s just the nearest big thing.’

  When I was pursuing the SUV it seemed to me that he was trying to get to Euston Road and travel either west or east. If he’d gone east, he could have been at St Pancras in about five minutes, awful lunchtime traffic allowing. Maybe that’s what he had in mind. I remember Judd Street now. It’s a long road that goes all the way down to Russell Square.

  I’m interested that he used a hire car that could be traced back to a specific address. Presumably he wasn’t expecting anyone to follow the abduction up, police or otherwise. And Sara would hardly have been in any position to chase it up if the whole thing had been successful. He was too cocky and arrogant by far.

  If it had been me, I’d have used fake ID and a fake address, so that if anyone came here asking questions they’d have hit a dead end. And if I was Blond Hair, I’d have dyed my hair and not been so obnoxious to the guy behind the counter. That way, he’d have had difficulty remembering me and wouldn’t have been so keen to help.

  ‘How come you’ve heard of it? Dolly’s, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a big swanky place. Well, not that big. Sort of medium. Medium but smart. A wealthy friend of mine had his twenty-first there a few years ago. Five years ago, now I think of it. Really expensive, but OK for a one-off visit for a special occasion, I guess. We all had to dress in suits, which I hate.’

  ‘Any name? A director or something?’

  ‘Nothing like that. No need. The company pays us by direct debit.’

  It still puzzles me. ‘Why does a chain of nightclubs need hire cars?’

  ‘No idea. Pick up people? Who knows?’

  ‘What about the sneering, arrogant fucker who took the Explorer yesterday? Anything on him? Driving licence? Anything?’

  ‘No. His name’s Mr R. Hyland. There’s an address in Harlesden. No telephone number. He’s just one of the people who can sign for a car for T.R.J.E Ltd. It’s a weird arrangement, but I’m not the one who made it. It was my brother when he was running this place. It looks like Mr R. Hyland had a driving licence and it was checked, but there’s no details on it. Presumably it was valid and clean.

  ‘The whole arrangement of this place is a big chaotic, to be honest. Each company has a slightly different arrangement with us. My brother tended to do these businessy things by intuition.’

  ‘Is there any way I can have a word with him?’

  ‘My brother? Not really. He’s dead. Died last year. August. Heart attack. He was thirty-three.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Doesn’t bother me, mate. What’s going on? What’s happened?’

  I may as well tell him. If nothing else, he may think twice about renting one of his flash cars to T.R.J.E Ltd in the future. If his brother died of a heart attack at thirty-three, it occurs to me that I should say something about his weight, just as a friendly gesture, but I don’t want to spoil the atmosphere. He probably already knows, anyway.

  ‘The Explorer was used in a kidnapping attempt.’

  ‘What? You’re fucking kidding, yeah?’

  ‘No. It was involved in a high-speed car chase in the centre of London this morning. I was the one in pursuit. He was driving up one-way roads the wrong way. It was pretty crazy.’

  ‘You’re fucking kidding me. Was the Explorer damaged?’

  I have to laugh at this. ‘No. Not as far as I could tell. Clutch probably needs looking at.’

  ‘Who did they kidnap?’

  ‘My client. A woman. It was more of an abduction than a kidnapping, I suppose. But I managed to retrieve her. I had to get her away from the scene. Now I want to find the perpetrators.’

  ‘Was it the Basquiat woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you rescued her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit. Fuck. Well fuck that. I’m not renting any cars to them anymore. Fuckers. If this business goes under because of it, then so be it. So what’re you going to do now? You going to pistol-whip them? A bit of water boarding? How did you find this place? Did you use clever detection techniques? Hey – why would someone go to Denmark just for a fucking half a day?’ He laughs. ‘Did you go over there to do a hit or something? Do you think he’ll bring the SUV back?’

  ‘The receipt fell out of the blond guy’s jacket. It was all I had to go on. Anyway, I’m not going to water board anyone. I just want a chat. I don’t know if he’ll bring it back. If I find it I’ll give you a call. Listen. Thanks for all your help. I know these things are kind of confidential.’

  I hand him my business card and four fifties.

  ‘W
hat?! This is just a like in a film! Thanks, man. I’m not going to spend this. I’m gonna put this money and your card in a frame. This is so cool. This is real cinematic stuff. A fucking payoff. Money from a private dick. I’m going down IKEA tonight and get a frame.’

  ‘Well, whatever you want to do with it, it’s yours. You’ve done me a big favour. Is there anywhere I can get a cab around here?’

  ‘You going up to Judd Street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re fucked for cabs round here, mate. You could walk to the Lambeth Hospital, which is only around the corner, but that’s just minicabs and they’ll rip you off every time. There’s a minicab company about half a mile away, but they’ll rip you off as well. You’d have to walk towards Stockwell tube to find a black cab, but listen – I’ll get Szymon to take you in one of the cars. It’s the least I can do now you’ve made me feel like a real informant. Believe me, it’ll save you a lot of time and you’ll get a chance to travel in a flash motor.’

  ‘Thanks. By the way. Those copper bracelets – they don’t work.’

  ‘No shit.’

  Szymon, who only passed his test a week before and has serious ambitions to become a Formula One racing driver, gets me to Judd Street in precisely ten minutes in a Lotus Exige S2, which, he tells me, ‘needed a good fuckin’ blow out’. I won’t cast aspersions on Szymon’s driving, but compared to this journey, this morning’s race up Harley Street on the wrong side of the road was like a restful half hour in a flotation tank.

  Just as I’m getting out of the Lotus, Doug Teng calls me on my mobile. Sara’s flat was clean and so are the offices at Maccanti. So at least there was no physical bugging or evidence of frequency interception, but it doesn’t mean that someone wasn’t listening in to the phone calls of Sara or her staff by other means. I’ll have to put that information on ice until it becomes useful.

  21

  DOLLY’S NIGHTCLUB

  Judd Street doesn’t really look like the sort of place where you’d find an expensive nightclub, but as you walk further away from the St Pancras end, it gets rather more genteel and tree-lined and gradually more and more trendy restaurants and pubs start appearing, plus a small independent cinema.

  I walk by Dolly’s on the opposite side of the road. I wouldn’t expect it to be open at this time of day, but I just want to get a quick look at its location and whether it’s feasible for me to take a look inside if there’s no one there.

  There’s a Japanese restaurant called Kanji, a pub and then Dolly’s. If I didn’t know the street number, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it, and certainly wouldn’t have identified it as a nightclub of any sort. There’s a discreet white door right next to the pub. Single Yale lock, but despite the fact they’ve tried to disguise it, it’s a steel security door, probably with an internal hinge chassis system. This would take less than ten minutes to get through, but I have no intention of attempting it, not in broad daylight and certainly not with thirteen people sitting outside the pub next door.

  It looks as if Dolly’s uses up the ground floor of the next three buildings along and possibly the basements, too. All of the ground floor windows are whited out and have dark brown wooden blinds outside.

  The upper floors look like they’re used as offices, and I can see two different company names in one of the windows on the first floor. There’s a small gym on the third floor with people on exercise bikes wearing headphones. These other concerns are probably not connected with Dolly’s and I suspect their opening hours would not coincide in any way.

  A few doors away, there’re two coffee bars and an estate agent’s. On my side of the road there are three restaurants in a row (Turkish, Thai and Greek), a small supermarket and another pub. This is a busy area. I decide to see if I can take a look around the back, where there must be a service road of some sort.

  Just as I’m crossing the road, my mobile goes off. It’s Isolda.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  She sounds concerned.

  ‘Sure. Why shouldn’t I be OK?’

  ‘Did you see the news? Oh my God, we’ve all been freaking out here. I can’t get hold of Sara.’

  ‘Hold on, hold on. What are you talking about?’

  ‘It was on the television news. Rachelle Beauchesne. Some men attacked her in Baker Street and she’s in a coma. Some building guy said he saw another woman attacked and pushed into some sort of jeep. A Range Rover or something, he thought. It must have been Sara, it must have been. She was going to have lunch with Rachelle today. The police are looking for the jeep. Is this more of the same? Is this the same people as all the other stuff? I’ve tried Sara’s mobile, but she isn’t answering.’

  There are tears in her voice. I have to assimilate this information quickly and decide what to do and say. Well, at least Rachelle’s out of the loop for the moment and won’t be talking to the police. Isolda didn’t say anything about the car chase, which may well have been on the news if the police knew anything about it. I’m assuming they didn’t. I think if I was a pedestrian and something like that passed me by, I’ll be entertained, disturbed and amazed, but I don’t think I’d call the cops. I’d leave that to someone else, like a typical don’t-give-a-fuck Londoner.

  Eventually, the police are going to get in touch with all of the staff at Maccanti, including the MTAs, and they’re going to find out about me. I could play the game and give all of my information to them, but they’d have to fight their way through too much red tape to do anything quick and effective, and I think quick and effective is the way to go now.

  I don’t know Rachelle personally, but if I find Blue Suit again, he’s going to get more than a battered face. I’m going to have to trust Isolda and tell her what’s happened. If she thinks Sara has come to any harm, she’ll be on the phone to the police. Maybe she’s been in touch already.

  ‘Isolda – when was all this on the news?’

  ‘About five minutes ago.’

  ‘Have you called the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Don’t call them. Wait for them to call you, which’ll be pretty soon, I would guess. Listen carefully. Sara is fine. She was abducted, but I managed to catch up with them and rescue her.’

  ‘Oh, thank God. Where is she?’

  ‘She’s in my flat. She’s safe. Please don’t tell anyone we’ve had this conversation.’

  ‘I won’t. Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t want you to get hurt.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘But if you did…’

  ‘If the police ask, tell them you know that she hired a private investigator, but you don’t know where I am or how to get in touch with me. There’s no reason why you or anyone else should have my phone number, so they should believe you. I’ve got to go now; I’m following up a lead. I’ll speak to you later. And remember – this conversation didn’t happen.’

  I’m sure Nick Sarna would have been delighted with that last comment.

  ‘What can I do? There must be something I can do.’ Her voice is trembling. Something in me wants to hold her. Something else wants me to tell her to pull herself together.

  ‘I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Stay in the office. And don’t worry. Just go with the flow. It’ll be OK.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I have to walk down half the length of the road before I spot the way around the back, in between a smart block of flats and a discreet new five-storey car park.

  I made a point of counting how many buildings I passed so I could find the back entrance to Dolly’s without any trouble, but there was no real need. Two hundred yards away, I can see the black SUV, parked on the right-hand side of the service road.

  This means I have to be careful. One scenario could be that Blue Suit and Blond Hair managed to get back here after their altercation with me and are now inside the nightclub, licking each other’s wounds. That may not be the case, but I’m goi
ng have to act as if it is.

  They may, of course, have just left the vehicle here temporarily and got themselves looked at. There’s a big hospital complex about half a mile from here, but I’m not sure if it has an A&E department, which is certainly what my two friends will need, particularly Blonde Hair, after his inconvenient spot of brachial artery trouble.

  I look behind me to see if anyone’s hanging around, but it’s clear like most service roads are. Keeping a careful eye on the buildings to my left, I walk past the SUV, quickly flicking the passenger door handle as I pass. It’s locked and no alarm goes off. It’s well placed in the road and hasn’t been parked in a hurry.

  Directly opposite is the back entrance to Dolly’s. The pub next door has a small garden and there are maybe eight or nine people sitting outside, talking, drinking and smoking. No one is looking in my direction, and even if they were, they’d probably think nothing of it.

  Dolly’s can be reached by walking across a small yard with four big black portable bins and a sign on the wall with the club logo and underneath T.R.J.E Ltd in small black letters. I glance at the upper floors.

  The only evidence of activity is on the second floor. There’s a girl, probably an office worker of some type, holding a sheaf of papers and arguing with a fat guy with big circles of sweat under the armpits of his shirt. He has a supercilious expression on his face and is staring at her breasts as he talks.

  Unbelievably, there’s only a single large lock on the door into Dolly’s and it takes an ordinary Yale key. I take my key chain out of my pocket. I started making Bump Keys years ago and always carry one just in case. It’s just an ordinary Yale key with regularly spaced deep cuts filed into the business side. I guess the legal version of this would be called a Master Key or a Skeleton Key. I take it off the key chain and look for something I can hit it with. There’s a rusted metal bar on the floor near one of the bins. Not perfect, but it’ll have to do.

  I push the Bump Key about two thirds of the way into the lock. It won’t go in any further; they never do. I look over my shoulder and to my left and right to see if I’m clear, grab the metal bar in my right hand, press the bow of the key to the right with my thumb and hit it three times with the metal bar until it’s in up to the hilt. It’s not too noisy, but from the inside it may sound like someone’s knocking on the door, so I wait for ten seconds and listen.