Dead Unlucky

by Andrew Derham

  Ron Brown flinched. ‘That’s right. It’s not handwritten, though, because it was printed from a computer at school.’

  ‘I wonder, do you have a copy?’

  The Browns looked at each other as their morning became more painful.

  ‘It’s in the drawer there.’ And the husband walked to the sideboard and retrieved the document and handed it to Hart. ‘But it’s only a copy. The police kept the original along with some of Nikki’s clothes and things.’

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  I am so sorry. I really did not want to do this but I just cannot help it. The bullying is so terrible, I cannot stand it any more. I love you so much. Love, Nikki.

  Composed by a reputed genius? Hart didn’t think so. But, then again, a genius under the sort of intolerable stress that would drive her to suicide? Maybe.

  ‘Do you have any more of Nicola’s letters?’

  ‘No, she’d never write. It wasn’t worth it, her only being an hour away,’ replied Mrs Brown.

  ‘How about cards from her? Christmas, birthdays, that sort of thing?’

  ‘We keep all of those, don’t we Ron.’ Mrs Brown excitedly went to the same drawer in the sideboard from which her husband had extracted the suicide note. ‘There you are, Chief Inspector. They’re all in order.’

  Hart scanned the most recent cards and they told him what he wanted to know: To the Best Dad in the World, Have a Great Father’s Day, All My Love from Nicola; To a Sexy Man on Valentine’s Day, With Love from the other Woman in Your Life, Nxxxxx; Happy Birthday Mum, Have a Wonderful Day, Love from Nicola. Yes, they told Hart what he wanted to know. And they sent him into a battle from which there could be no retreat.

  Daisy Brown and Hart spent half an hour looking back in time until they came to the pictures of mum and dad, badly drawn by a four-year-old using gaudy crayons. This picture-show had as much relevance to the investigation as screening Bambi at a conservation conference, but it would have taken a man who lacked a beating heart to deprive the mother of the pleasure of sharing her dead daughter with him. Eventually, the memories were replaced in the drawer, tucked beneath the suicide note.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Brown, I am going to ask you a question, one that may shock you, and I do need your honest answers.’ Hart paused before he stepped onto this most perilous of ground. ‘Do you believe your daughter committed suicide?’

  ‘Well, you have shocked me, Chief Inspector,’ answered Ron Brown. ‘Shocked me good and proper.’

  ‘Why is that? Why are you so certain?’

  ‘Well, the police said so, didn’t they? And the scientists. She didn’t struggle and there was nothing inside her that put her to sleep. So it all just added up. The note was written by Nikki, and there was no evidence of anything suspicious. And it was Nikki’s spit they found on the envelope.’ Ron Brown shook his head to emphasise the certainty of the evidence. Tears flooded into his eyes as the memories saturated his mind. ‘We can’t go against all that, Chief Inspector. We tried to at the beginning, but now we know they have to be right. We can’t argue with all those experts and everything.’

  ‘But I am asking the experts, Mr Brown. I am asking the two people who knew Nicola better than anybody else, who knew her moods and her thoughts and her hopes and her fears.’ Hart slowly put the question again.’ Do you think, knowing Nicola’s state of mind at the time, that she committed suicide?’

  ‘No.’

  After delivering her laconic pronouncement, Daisy Brown explained. ‘Ron and me spoke about that at the time. We understood how everything seemed to fit together, all the evidence and that, but we just couldn’t believe our Nikki would do such a thing. She always seemed so happy and it made us feel guilty that we had missed noticing something that must have been hurting her so much. Apart from not having her with us, that’s the worst part – we let her down, Chief Inspector, we weren’t there for her when she needed us. That’s eaten away at us since it happened, and I’m sure it will tear us to pieces for the rest of our days.’

  ‘But what else could have happened?’ asked Ron Brown. Thoughts were being born around the room, notions of some weird game that had gone wrong. That was almost as bad as suicide. Hart snuffed them out.

  ‘Perhaps Nicola was murdered.’

  Hart was a little surprised that they seemed unfazed by this suggestion, although the haggard fatigue that had hung about them lifted considerably as some interest shone through.

  ‘Do you think she was?’ asked Nicola’s father.

  The two parents now sat literally on the edges of their seats. Hart was the first person to mention such a possibility since they had talked it through between themselves – and that was way back, before those experts had explained to them what had actually happened to their daughter.

  Hart always prided himself on his straight answers, but even he was going to be careful here. ‘I think she may have been, but there is no way I can be certain at the moment.’

  ‘So how can we be sure, Chief Inspector?’ Daisy Brown knew the answer to her own question, but she needed to hear it from somebody else, she didn’t want the words to have to be spoken by her own lips.

  ‘I’m afraid we would have to take another look at Nicola’s body.’ Hart paused, but only for the briefest moment; he wanted to deliver the whole message before they spoke again. ‘If I am wrong, doing that may cause considerable distress for you both while giving no benefit to anybody. Indeed, tests may even confirm that Nicola really did commit suicide.’

  Mrs Brown’s left hand sought out her husband’s right and pulled it into her own lap. They searched each other’s eyes and communicated by a mysterious process that only those who are in touch with each other’s hearts can use; the silent language they were speaking was beyond comprehension to outsiders.

  When they were ready, Daisy Brown delivered their answer. ‘We’ll do this, Mr Hart. We’ll do it. We knew our Nikki wouldn’t have taken her own life. Deep down, we knew it.’

  *****

  Hart drove back to the end of the road, did a U-turn at the junction, and then returned past the Browns’ house. He turned right and then right again into a little cul-de-sac which ran along the rear of the terrace. Getting out of his car, he approached the grey metal garage door, the one with a number 47 painted on it in big ugly characters scrawled in dripping ochre paint. He didn’t need to twist the broken handle in order to heave up the overhead door and slide it underneath the roof above him.

  Hart wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but he was a big believer in having a snoop around if he got half a chance. It would have been unfair on the Browns to ask to see their daughter’s room. Any possible dividend wasn’t worth the upset to them or the premature fraying of a new relationship. Anyway, that room would have already been swarmed over by the boffs from the Met. But a garage sometimes turned up something, and it was the best he could do without causing distress. At least it said a bit about the people who owned it, even though it was unlikely to tell him much about Nicola herself.

  The only vehicle in the garage was a bike which was propped up alongside the right-hand wall. It had been used recently, there was no rust along the wheel rims where the brake pads rubbed, although spots of brown dotted the chrome everywhere else. Ron Brown probably used it to get to work, decided Hart. There was an old black smudge of oil sullying the floor, the only evidence of a car ever having been there at all.

  A toolbox sat next to the splodge of oil, one of those which opens up to expose a series of terraces. Nothing unusual in the drawers: a set of screwdrivers, a claw-hammer, a couple of chisels, nails of various lengths and thicknesses, nuts and bolts, screws and pins; the toolbox of a man competent in mending things, but not a kit belonging to a DIY enthusiast.

  Along the opposite wall stood a decrepit lawnmower, a machine that could only be propelled by the expenditure of human energy, not petrol or electricity. Stalks of straw poked out from its spiral blades. Next to it rested a trolley of golf clubs. The woods inside wore
cute little cosies on their heads, as though they needed to be kept warm out here in the bitter gloom of the garage. Hart foraged about and picked out a six-iron at random, noticing thin lines of rust embedded in the grooves. None of the clubs had dirt stuck to them; they were forgotten now, but had been looked after in times past. At their feet stood a couple of tubs of emulsion and a pot of cream paint.

  A small window looked out onto the back lawn and the kitchen window opposite. A rake and a spade stood together in the corner to its left and the smaller gardening accessories, a few trowels and flowerpots, sticks and green twine, covered a shelf underneath.

  Hart gazed out through the window onto an unhappy garden – neglected, forsaken, forlorn. The story told by the back of the house was the same tale that had been related by its occupants a few minutes before in the living room. The same sad story.

  What a world, thought Hart. What a world, when these two folks are hoping like mad that their daughter has actually been murdered, because that’s a much better state of affairs than any alternative.

  *****

  Driving home, Hart reflected on a comment made by Daisy Brown just before he left her house. We thought you’d come to ask us about Nikki’s school friend, but you didn’t mention him at all. He didn’t believe his own answer: Perhaps I’ll ask some other time. The truth was, when he walked out of their front door he had thought that the route leading to Sebastian Emmer’s murderer began by entering the squalid world of drugs, that it had nothing to do with the people he was visiting in their little terraced house. But thirteen golf clubs in their trolley told him he might have to revise that opinion; it was a number that could turn out to be unlucky for someone.

  Hart hadn’t told the Browns that he had already been to the coroner. Nicola’s body had to be examined as quickly as possible, before the effects of decomposition made the procedure a waste of time. And the coroner had been left in no doubt that she had better get the bureaucratic wheels spinning rapidly, because he would ensure that any lethargy would see her own reputation buried. Hart had been so stroppy because he was certain that the path leading to the killer of Nicola Brown could only start at Number 47, and now the cards Nicola had written to her mum and dad confirmed it. By obtaining the support of her parents in exhuming her body, Harry Hart had taken the first step along that path.

  21

  Dear Mr Hart, Please do come and join us on Christmas Day. There are just the four of us at home and you will be a most welcome guest. We do not celebrate Christmas, we simply enjoy it, so strictly no gifts. Regards, Sanjay and Nirupa Kanjaria.

  Hart had just nipped in to work on the Sunday morning to get a few small jobs done, and there was the invitation sitting on top of his in-tray. It was all more than a touch embarrassing, really. Presumably the whole station knew he would be at a loss to find a bolt hole for a feed and some company on Christmas Day, and this young woman, who’d only been here for five minutes, decides she’ll get her mum to invite the old boy along to their house. Did they all feel sorry for him? Hart winced as he thought of every copper in the factory chattering about him in the canteen over their sausage and mash. Yes, more than a touch embarrassing.

  Hart kept a few spare cards in his bottom drawer and wrote his reply on a glittery affair with a snowman on the front – a polite no thanks. He would pop it into Asha Kanjaria’s pigeonhole the next time he passed that way.

  Danny Moses was the next person to occupy his thoughts. Not very keen on answering his phone wasn’t Danny, and Hart would have to go round to his place on spec, camp outside his flat if he had to. Following his television spectacular, the Chief had given him plenty of grief about the lack of progress on the case so far. Hart had to agree with him, and he knew he would need to get a move on. However, he didn’t feel that he had been exactly wasting his time. After all, he had made a fair bit of progress on the Nicola Brown investigation, although that particular line of reasoning wouldn’t have constituted a very wise defence with his boss. Hart and Redpath would be knocking on the door of Danny Moses’ flat first thing tomorrow.

  And then, of course, there was Darren Redpath himself. Maybe Hart had gone over the top with his dig about Kanjaria, it really wasn’t any of his business at all. But he had seen coppers cooing over each other like a pair of lovebirds on heat before, and it got on the nerves of the other folks who had to work with them and it got in the way of them trying to catch a killer or two. Perhaps he had been right after all; it was better to knock that one on the head before it went anywhere. What stunts they pulled away from the factory were up to them, but he wasn’t putting up with it on his own shop floor. Of course, he might not have to worry about it anyway. Even Redpath might have a bit of bother pulling Asha Kanjaria.

  In any case, nobody’s perfect, he mused. Just look at how he was flying right in the face of his own boss by nosing around into the death of Nicola Brown, and that was a far graver sin than anything his sergeant was up to. If Redpath did something like that to him, Hart would make sure he wasn’t allowed to deposit his backside out in the car park ever again, never mind inside his office. So what was the difference between the two of them? Harry was right, that was the distinction, and he smiled as he reflected that he was conceited enough to think so. To know so.

  There were plenty more thoughts that needed turning over in his mind, but Hart reckoned he could do his pondering just as well at home, or even over a lunch time pint in The Pickled Firkin. It was only when he got there that he realised he had forgotten to stick the card in Kanjaria’s pigeonhole.

  *****

  Danny Moses’ flat was located on the fourth storey of a block of ten floors. The stairwells stank, the corridors were littered with muck, and the grungy graffiti scrawled on the walls and doors was just as filthy. Hart and Redpath risked the lift, which groaned and complained as it reluctantly winched them up to their destination; six o’clock on a Monday morning wasn’t a time when anybody should be expecting it to start work.

  Hart banged his fist on the olive-green door a couple of times and received the answer he expected – silence. He didn’t waste time trying that manoeuvre again but instead lifted the flap of the grimy brass letter box and bellowed through the opening.

  ‘Danny Moses! Don’t worry, I’m not here to collect your rent, I’m just a police officer. We know you are at home and we have a warrant to search these premises. If you do not open the door then it will be broken down and we will gain entrance to the property anyway.’

  Hart looked at his watch. He gave Danny Moses half a minute. No sound came from inside the flat; maybe he was lying low, maybe he was out. Hart found the answer by aiming the sole of his foot at the door and thumping it with an almighty whack. And again. Then an indifferent voice could be heard, and footsteps padding towards the door.

  ‘All right, all right, I’m coming.’

  Danny Moses pulled the door open to reveal a sight that both Hart and Redpath would have paid a fair amount of good money to have been spared. The flat was too tiny to feature a hall and he stood in the living-room with his tousled, curly, straw hair complementing his choice of clothing of white vest and grey and navy striped underpants. He was thickset, stubbled, and belligerent.

  ‘Where’s the warrant? I want to see the warrant.’

  ‘Whoops, it appears I’ve left it back at the station,’ replied Hart, patting his pockets vigorously. ‘Still, it’s nice to see you’re an early riser, so we may as well have a little chat anyway now that we’re all up and about.’

  ‘What if you’d broken my door?’ said Moses, leaning his face towards Hart’s.

  ‘Then I’d have done you a favour, Danny boy. It would cost you less to get a new one than buy enough Brasso to get that letter box all shiny as befits a neighbourhood as classy as this. I risked getting some nasty disease poking my nose through there. And your taste sucks. The colour’s got the appeal of a rotting rat.’ And then he asked pleasantly, ‘You don’t mind if we come in, do you?’ as he stepped into the
flat, knowing they were as welcome inside Danny Moses’ abode as a couple of piranhas swimming in his bath water.

  The interior of the flat carried a similar charm to the decor outside. It consisted of a small living room attached to a minuscule kitchen, the cooker sagging with yellow grease congealed from the fizzing fat of a thousand fry-ups. A closed door presumably led into the bedroom and an open door definitely led into the bathroom because the lavatory could be viewed in all its glory, the raised black seat staring out at them like a monstrous eye. There were a few tabloids scattered on the chairs, one still open at the breasts page, and the cloth on the ancient settee was frayed and weeping cotton. At least the place didn’t radiate the stink of the urine on the stairwell, but perhaps that was only because any acid reek had been overwhelmed by the suffocating smoke puffed out from a legion of cigarettes and joints.

  After the perfunctory introductions, Hart went straight to work; goodness knows what lived in that settee which would find a bite or two of his flesh very tasty, there was no incentive to hang about. ‘When did you last see Sebastian Emmer?’

  ‘Can’t remember really. About a week ago, I suppose.’

  ‘You need to remember, Danny boy. You’re in a lot of bother. More bother than you’ve seen in your life.’

  ‘I’m in no bother at all,’ he said smiling. ‘You can’t blame him croaking on me. You’re mad if you think I had anything to do with that.’

  ‘Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. But I’m sure we can find something going on in your sordid little life that’s not quite legal and we can bang you up for that if we can’t get you for the big one.’

  Moses gave a contemptuous snort. ‘I saw him at the club last Saturday.’

  ‘Where? The Temple?’ asked Redpath.

  ‘No. The Mosque. Where do you think?’

  ‘Where were you when he died?’ asked Hart.