Strangled in Soho

by Samantha Summers

  “At least one of the interview rooms should be empty,” DCI Williams said. “Thanks for the tips about their heights.”

  Violet and I got up and made our way into one of the interview rooms, a boring grey rectangle with a table and three chairs that were bolted to the floor. It wasn’t exactly Oxford, but it would have to do.

  I sat down across from Violet as she opened the file. She passed the photos of the scene over to me as she scanned the written reports.

  The first picture was of some skid marks, leading to a wrecked motorcycle on the side of the road. There were some other pictures of the motorcycle, which had suffered extensive damage to the right-hand side on which it lay. Finally, a photo showed Jeremy Claridge being attended to by EMTs. He had been wearing a helmet, and other protective gear. It just hadn’t been enough.

  After a couple of minutes Violet and I swapped information, and I read through the file on the accident.

  He had crashed less than a thousand feet from where we were, on the A40. The report suggested he lost control, there was no evidence any other vehicle was involved. The accident occurred just after three in the morning, and there were no witnesses. It had been a clear night, with no rain in the previous twenty-four hours, and Jeremy Claridge had no drugs or alcohol in his system when he died. One resident living nearby said she thought she heard tires squealing just after the crash, but since there was no corroboration, and even she admitted she may have still been confused as she was half asleep, nothing came of it.

  “Let me guess, you have tons of proof that this was actually done on purpose,” I said to Violet, who shook her head.

  “Sadly, no. I cannot say for certain. However, there are certain indications that it was not an accident. The woman’s account, saying she heard squealing tires after the crash, for example. And the odds of a man who was stone-cold sober completely losing control of his motorcycle on a straight, double-lane road with no traffic are fairly low. There is also a little bit of white paint on the rear of the motorcycle. However, I do not know if it was from the accident, or from a previous minor incident.”

  “I’m with you. I think we should assume he was run off the road.”

  “I do not like assumptions, but we will stick with that as being the most likely scenario for now. I will endeavour to find out whether Amir Nader is really in Egypt or not, as well.”

  We packed up the file and made our way back to DCI Williams, who was still poring over his case.

  “Thank you for this,” Violet said.

  “So, was that guy murdered too?”

  “We cannot know for certain, but it appears to be likely, especially given the disappearance of another student at Oxford, and the murder of a third.”

  “Well, as much as I’d like to help you on that, I can’t trample over a colleague and force him to treat a case as a murder. Besides, as you can see, I’m busy with my own investigation. Apparently, the higher-ups are giving me an entire task force to help solve this case.”

  “At least now you can search the databases for their heights, that sounds like a boring job for the least experienced officer on your task force.”

  “Right. Thanks for the help with that. I’ll email you the videos, if you can look at them when you get a chance.”

  “I will, although I do not guarantee that it will be before we solve this case. Also, I need you to look for someone for me.”

  “Yes?”

  “A Peter Alcott. Student at Oxford. This is his mobile number,” she said, scribbling on a piece of paper. “He has not replied to my texts, and I fear that he is either my murderer, or my murderer’s next victim. If the latter, I would prefer it if he remained alive, as he may be quite useful to me.”

  “What do you want me to do if we find him alive and well?”

  “Send him to me. We need to have a chat. And keep a car outside of his home for the night. If he is to be the next victim, I do not know how long it will take before they strike again.”

  “Will do. You’re sure this is a murder then?”

  “There is absolutely no doubt about it. And if I hadn’t accidentally poisoned Cassie and the victim had not ended up in the bed next to her at the Royal London, whoever did it would have got away with it, too,” Violet said as we got up to leave.

  “Wait… what?” a confused DCI Williams said as Violet walked off.

  “Don’t ask,” I said. “Thanks for the help.” I left a confused-looking DCI Williams at his desk as the two of us left the police station.

  Chapter 8

  Deciding there was nothing left for us to do that day, Violet decided to go home and think about the case, while I went home and took Biscuit, my cute little orange cat, for a walk on his leash. I ran through the case in my head, trying to re-organize the facts, but I couldn’t think of anything that might help.

  I figured maybe if I found out something about Amelia Waters’ life, maybe a detail that would end up being important, that could be useful, but scouring her social media turned out to be basically useless; she wasn’t much of a user of Facebook or Instagram, and what accounts she did have had their privacy settings turned onto high.

  Eventually I walked down to Gloucester Road to get a B-Rex burger and sweet potato fries from Byron, which was one of my favorite nearby places to get a quick burger fix. I took my burger home and settled in to watch some Netflix with Biscuit for the rest of the night, the whole time my mind wandering as I wondered who would have killed Amelia Waters.

  I woke up the next morning to find I’d gotten a text from Violet–at two thirty-six in the morning, of course–to come over before eight. I groaned as I looked at the clock and saw that was ten minutes away. Apparently Violet didn’t know the meaning of sleeping in.

  I rolled out of bed, Biscuit meowing at me in protest.

  “I know, I don’t want to leave the nice warm bed either,” I told him, patting him on the head. I left him out some food and grabbed a banana from the fridge–I wasn’t about to trust any food Violet was going to offer–before running a brush through my hair quickly and throwing on some jeans and a t-shirt, topping them with a cardigan. As I ran out the door I checked my watch again, it was only 8:03. I’d made pretty good time.

  The weather today was a lot worse than the day before. The grey clouds overhead threatened to open and drench London with rain, and I grabbed my small umbrella that always sat by the door as I left, hugging my cardigan closer to me as a cool breeze passed through the street.

  The stiff breeze had caused my landlady Mrs. Michaels’ newspaper to blow away from her door and down the steps, and I almost tripped over it on my way up them.

  I grabbed the paper and made my way up the couple of steps to her front door, intending to drop it off once more–and probably secure it just a little bit better–when the picture on the front page caught my eye.

  It was a picture of me!

  More specifically, it was a picture of Violet and me. I stopped in my tracks and opened the front of the paper to look at the headline.

  Despuis Ignores Police, Investigates Suicide

  It was The London Post-Tribune, I noticed, the same paper whose heir apparent Violet had just nailed for murder thanks to my eating those brownies. I didn’t know the details of the case, but I knew that much, and as I read the article my heart sank. It was a total hatchet job.

  French Private Investigator Violet Despuis has found herself in hot water with the law, as she has refused to accept the police’s finding that an Oxford student living in London had committed suicide, and has been interrogating the woman’s grieving friends and acquaintances despite explicit orders from the London Metropolitan Police to stay away from the case.

  “While it is true that in the past Miss Despuis’ work has led to the arrest of a few criminals, she is blatantly flouting a direct order and harassing grieving acquaintances of a woman who it has been determined not only by us, but also by a pathologist, committed suicide,” a source inside the Metropolitan Police force told
The London Post-Tribune last night.

  While Miss Despuis has made something of a name for herself, the police consider her latest actions to be harassment, and it is obvious that by interrogating grief-stricken acquaintances of a suicidal young woman, she has crossed a line of decency and needs to be stopped.

  I dropped the paper on the ground in disgust; if it had belonged to me I probably would have torn it into pieces. How dare they imply that Violet was wrong, that she was interrogating family members? She could be cold and calculating quite a lot of the time, but Violet was also a good actress, and tended to be warm and polite to people when they answered her questions so soon after a loved one’s death.

  My jaw still tight with anger, I half-jogged up to Violet’s house, a few houses down the street from my basement suite, and made my way up the steps, without even noticing the man coming toward me until I’d ran straight into him.

  “Sorry! Sorry,” he said, reaching out to steady me. “I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s all right,” I replied with a laugh. “I’m sorry too, I definitely wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  “Neither was I, I was looking for an address on this street, number eighteen.”

  “Oh, you’re here to see Violet,” I exclaimed, giving the man a better look. He was tall and lanky, at least six foot three, with thin brown hair plastered to his forehead and nervous-looking brown eyes that kept darting around here and there. He was dressed casually but nicely, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, carrying a messenger bag.

  “I am, you know her then?”

  “Yeah, I’m heading over there now,” I said, motioning for him to follow me up the steps to her place. I knocked on the front door and a moment later Violet answered, wearing skinny jeans under a light red oversized top. She was on the phone.

  Violet opened the door wide and the two of us entered. She motioned for the man to sit in one of the chairs in the study, which he did. I sat on the long couch next to Violet. “Nem 'afahum. Shukraan,” she said into the phone before hanging up.

  “Hey, Violet. You have a guest.”

  She looked over at the man and nodded. “Peter Alcott, I presume?”

  He nodded. “Yes.” He kept looking around, like something was going to jump out from behind the couch and bite his head off, or something.

  “Have the police been in contact with you?” she asked, and he shook his head.

  “No. Well, I went and saw them, but not since. I haven’t been home since yesterday morning, when I heard what happened to Amelia.” His voice wavered a few times, Peter Alcott was obviously nervous and on the verge of tears.

  “How did you find out what happened?”

  “I have a friend in one of Layla Chen’s classes. He told me. As soon as he told me she was dead, I knew. I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. They were coming for us.”

  “Who?” Violet asked, leaning forward on the couch. “Who is doing this to your group?”

  “I don’t know!” Peter practically wailed. “I wish I knew. Then at least I’d know who to look for. But they’re all gone! It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “It is not a coincidence. They were all murdered.”

  “I know,” he replied. “But no one believes me. When Jeremy died, I was a bit suspicious. After all, the guy knew his way around a motorcycle. He’d been riding them on his parents’ farm since he was just a wee lad. For him to crash on the road like that, it seemed unlikely, but accidents do happen, right? Then when Amir just up and left for Egypt, without saying a thing to any of us? That was even more strange. The guy was about as outgoing as you could get. He would have never left without saying goodbye. He was the type who would have asked us what souvenirs we wanted him to bring back. He’d never mentioned his mum being sick, and he spoke about his family back there all the time. No, I really didn’t like the fact that he left like that. And now Amelia. Someone’s coming for all of us, and they’re making it look like an accident.”

  “Yes,” Violet replied. “Is that why you did not answer my text messages yesterday?”

  “Exactly,” Peter nodded. “I thought you were one of them. I thought you were going to come to get me, too. So I ignored you, and I went to the police. I went and saw the man who was investigating Amelia’s death, since I didn’t know who else to go to, and he just laughed at me and told me she killed herself. As I was leaving, he muttered to himself about how Violet Despuis was meddling in his case, making other people think Amelia was killed instead of accepting the suicide. Then I knew your text was real, but I’d already thrown away my phone and couldn’t reply. So I looked you up, found out where you live, and came here.”

  “You did the right thing, Peter,” Violet said. “It is true, I believe that you are in all likelihood in mortal danger.”

  “Why, though? Why are they killing us?”

  “I suspect it is because of the project you are working on.”

  “The algorithm? The one that finds the equation used to generate multiple integers? But why would anyone want that?”

  Violet shrugged. “I do not know yet. I have Amelia’s laptop, it appears that someone deleted a large number of the files from her computer, including anything to do with the algorithm. Unfortunately, I was unable to recover it. Do you have a copy?”

  Peter reached down into his messenger bag and pulled out a MacBook. “Yes, yes, of course. I brought it here. We finished it up a couple of weeks ago, Amelia and me. You’re saying someone’s going to kill me because of an algorithm a group of us made for college?”

  “I believe that is the reason, yes.” Violet got up and motioned for Peter to put his computer on the nearby desk. He did so and sat on the chair while Violet and I stood on either side of it.

  “How does it work, your algorithm?”

  “Well, it’s pretty simple, really,” Peter answered. “You input a bunch of figures, whatever figures you have. Obviously the more that are available, the better. Then, you run the algorithm, and it will give you a whole list of equations that can result in those figures being the result.”

  “Ah, I think I understand,” Violet said as Peter opened the program. It was a simple black screen with a white flashing bar indicating where to type.

  “Just enter in a series of numbers, separated by commas,” Peter instructed, and Violet typed away for a minute: -1,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19

  When she pressed enter, two equations showed up below:

  2x-3

  x+2

  She smiled. “I like it.”

  “It’s kind of cool, isn’t it?” Peter asked, his fear momentarily forgotten as he showed off his brain-child.

  “Are you doing it for a specific class?”

  “No,” Peter replied. “Professor Knightly knew about it, of course, and so did a number of our other professors. And a good chunk of students as well. It started off as an assignment for a class, and we submitted a very rudimentary model of it as our assignment. But when the class finished, the four of us decided to continue working on it. After all, we saw the potential that kind of algorithm had, and it was a great way to challenge ourselves. You’re really saying this is the reason someone is killing the people in our group?”

  The fear in Peter’s eyes had returned, his momentary respite from the reality of the situation facing him finished.

  Violet nodded. “How are you, financially?”

  “I’m pretty well-off, luckily. My parents both work as executives in the city.”

  “I recommend that you go overseas. Today. Do not wait, do not go home. I want you to take a cab from here directly to Heathrow. You are to contact nobody–and I mean nobody–that you have previously known until I have found the murderer. When you are settled, create yourself a new email account under a pseudonym and email this address,” Violet said, handing him a card. As Peter took it, I noticed his hand trembling slightly.

  “Where should I go?” he asked.

  “Anywhere that is not England,” Violet replied.

  “I’v
e always wanted to see the Balkans,” Peter said so quietly it was almost to himself. I felt sorry for him; he had just figured out that he was the target of a murderer, and was now being told that he had to leave his entire life behind for the foreseeable future.

  “Can I have a copy of the algorithm?” Violet asked.

  “Sure, yeah,” Peter said glumly, accepting the USB key Violet handed him and plugging it into his computer. He copied the program onto the key and handed it back to Violet. “There you go. Hopefully that doesn’t mean people are going to start coming after you, too.”

  “It would not be the first time. I am better prepared to handle that sort of situation than you. And you say you cannot think of anyone who would want to kill for the software, or any reason why you would be killed for it?”

  “No. No, of course not. It’s just a stupid university project. It’s an exercise for the brain only. What kind of use could anyone ever have for it?”

  “That is the question that we need to answer,” Violet said thoughtfully. She went over to her computer and typed away for a few minutes. When she was done, she handed a piece of paper to Peter. “You are booked on British Airways, you leave Gatwick at 12:25 this afternoon for Venice. From there, rent a car and drive to the Balkans. Enjoy your holiday. I am certain that when you return, the administration at Oxford will understand your absence. Do not forget to email me, but not from your regular address.”

  “Thanks,” Peter said to Violet quietly. For such a tall man, he was extremely quiet. “I appreciate it.”

  “Thank me by going to the airport and not getting yourself killed,” Violet replied, and I had to hide a smile. That was about as sentimental as Violet got.

  “Ok. Ok, I’ll go right now,” he said. “Thanks again.”

  Peter left, and Violet sighed as she closed the door. “When you came in, I was on the phone.”

  “I might not have your powers of observation, but even I picked up on that. You were speaking in Arabic?”

  “Yes, you have the good ear,” Violet said, nodding appreciatively. “I was on the phone with some people I know in the government in Egypt. They have no record of Amir Nader entering Egypt in the previous twelve months. And before that I was on the phone with a woman I know who works at UK Border Control, and she tells me that they have no record that Amir Nader has left England except for two years ago, for two weeks.”