A Pleasure to do Death With You

by Paul Charles

  What he needed most was to find out what Mylan’s friends really thought of him, not what they were now graciously saying about him a few days after his death. “Never to speak ill of the dead.” Death, or maybe it was the fear of death, did tend to make people try not to cross this line. Cynthia Cox was the only one acting as if she’d never been imparted with these words of wisdom. Yet Kennedy wasn’t sure how much store he could set by her words. She was much too chippy, he felt, to give a true reflection.

  As he wandered around the house by himself, he felt as if he were walking around a hotel suite that was spotlessly clean and awaiting its next guest. Mrs Cox had that, at least, to take credit for.

  Not getting anything inside the house, the detective left Jean Claude at the front door, saying he had all he needed for now. He was going to have a walk around the garden and then leave. When he was in the middle of the smallish back garden, he looked to the row of terraced houses at the foot of it. Their owners, with their Victorian looking balconies, hadn’t spotted any untoward goings-on the previous Saturday. Kennedy noticed the bridge to his left of the houses. From there he could stand and look back at Mylan’s house. He passed the church en route, but the view from the bridge did not produce anything apart from the knowledge that there was a nursery school in the back of St Mark’s Church.

  He wandered across the road on the crown of the bridge and walked into Princess Road and down to the Albert pub. Would the Albert have been Mylan’s regular? It certainly was the closest to his house. Kennedy wondered if any of his team had checked with the pub to see if the owner or staff had any memories of Mylan? The pub wasn’t open, otherwise he’d have checked himself. He walked back towards the church. St Mark’s square was busy as usual, acting as a gateway to Regent’s Park, with St Mark’s Bridge (for pedestrians only) taking those keen for the sad zoo; or those in need of sports of some kind; or those needing to feed the over ninety species of ducks, swans, and geese; or those who wished to use the joyous four hundred and seventy-two acreage for nothing more than a stroll.

  Kennedy walked on to St Mark’s Bridge, stopped midway, leaned against the black iron railing and looked back towards Mylan’s house. He had felt that he was missing something, and now, as he fixed his eyes on the house for a split second, it was so obvious that he felt like kicking himself.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Kennedy rushed back to Mylan’s house, banged on the door, rushed past a startled Jean Claude Banks and took the stairs two at a time. He reached the top landing in good breath and clicked open the semi-secret door to the roof space. Somewhere beneath him, he could hear the steps as the Frenchman ascended the stairs at a more leisurely pace. Kennedy stepped into the roof space and walked into the middle of the floor, pausing to get his bearings on the house. He moved to the front bay window cut into the slope of the roof. With the majestic red brick chimney stack to his left, he turned to his right and walked to where the front slope met the gable slope. He pushed each section of the wood until, five boards in, he felt it give slightly. Because his neck had to be tilted back at a sixty-degree angle to be parallel with the slope of the roof, he awkwardly used both hands to put pressure on the wood. Eventually, a section consisting of eight pieces of the tongued and grooved wood lifted up. When this section had moved through an arc of about ninety degrees, he heard it click into something and stop. He tested it; it remained securely in place.

  Kennedy walked into the space that, as suggested with the slope of the boards, shouldn’t have been there. When his eyes acclimatised to the darkness, he noticed a luminous light switch at eye level about six feet away. He gingerly walked across in the direction of it and flicked the switch. It had no impact. He searched to the right of the switch, running his hand up and down the wall to no avail. Jean Claude Banks, standing behind him, looked bemused by Kennedy’s discovery. Kennedy sent the Frenchman off to find a torch, and in the meantime he continued to check around in the dark space. A couple of minutes later, he discovered what he’d been looking for. About two and a half feet across from the switch and about two feet below it, he found a door handle sunk into the wooden door. The door opened easily. Mylan had obviously gone to all this trouble to hide this space from the naked eye, and yet he hadn’t even bothered to lock the door.

  The detective resisted fully opening the door, waiting until Jean Claude returned with a torch. Taking the already lit torch, Kennedy instructed the Frenchman to wait for him downstairs. Kennedy shone the torch around the area and discovered nothing apart from the fact that it was all painted black.

  He went back to the door and opened it fully. The space inside the door was already fully lit, obviously from the luminous switch by the side of the door. He then stepped into the sixteen feet by twelve feet room he’d spotted from St Mark’s Bridge several minutes earlier. The room and its entrance were so well concealed Kennedy reckoned Mylan had never shared this space.

  The matte-black walled room was equipped with a bank of lifeless hi-tech monitors, which looked like three large sets of sunglasses. The original windows were now decked out in shelves and neatly packed with DVDs. There was a napping Apple computer set up. Centred in the room was a very elaborate chair, which seemed, from the number of levers, switches, buttons, etc., to cater for every solo whim a man could ever have, including, when fully extended, the best night sleep anyone ever enjoyed. In the middle of the twelve-foot wall opposite the door, there was the biggest flat screen Kennedy had ever seen, but it was the massive poster on the larger wall that stopped Kennedy in his tracks. The poster, which was maybe just a wee bit too blurred to be an official poster, contained a near life-size photo of Nealey Dean in a very advanced stage of undress. Miss Dean, in not much more than a Marilyn Monroe type wig, looked as if she’d been caught unawares, but she still retained her composure and her modesty.

  Kennedy carefully sat in the chair and swung around towards the Nealey Dean poster. Pretty soon he was going to have to have the SOCO boys and girls around here again to go through the computers and DVDs. Should he leave the poster up? If it had been of ann rea, what would he have expected Irvine to do? What would ann rea have expected him to do? He swivelled around three hundred and sixty degree in the chair and again tried to figure out what to do.

  Then he noticed another door on the same wall as the entrance door. He opened it, tugged on the string inside the door and stood staring as the light burst in on this all-white tiled, four-foot square immaculate bathroom with miniature shower, toilet, and sink.

  His first thought was of Patrick Mylan dying on the back of the door of the swimming pool bathroom, and again he wondered if Mylan’s demise was by accident or by design. Here was all the evidence that Kennedy needed that Mylan had taken much of his pleasure alone.

  But his second thought was that if Mylan had wanted to indulge in autoerotic asphyxiation, then surely he would have done it up here with all his pictures (moving and still), aides, and devices literally at his fingertips. He had gone to great trouble and expense to create this very private room. So why would he risk public humiliation in his AEA endeavours by conducting them in a location so public?

  Kennedy had had enough of this room and cubbyhole. He walked back out into the main room and stood staring at the erotic image of Nealey Dean. She caught your eye from every single position in the room. The poster wasn’t framed; it was dry mounted. It didn’t look heavy. Did he want to be guilty of removing evidence from the scene? No, he couldn’t do that. He could never do that, but what about Irvine and Dean?

  He took the poster down from the wall, turned it around and put it back so that Miss Dean’s image was facing the wall. Now, from where he stood, it just looked like a piece of very expensive art. An eight-foot by four-foot white piece, which when considered against the dense black background of the walls looked very J. Lennon circa 1972. In the bottom right hand corner of the virgin white space, Kennedy did a small pen and ink, long hair, beard, and glasses logo that Lennon always did with his signat
ure in the post-Beatle, pre-NYC years.

  Kennedy hadn’t broken the habit of a lifetime; he hadn’t removed evidence from the scene of a crime. He was able to walk back to North Bridge House with an almost clear conscience.

  Chapter Thirty

  Kennedy summoned his team for a pep talk. He’d already started to hear the mutterings of suicide, and there’s nothing that can derail an investigation more quickly than even one member of the team not having the stomach for it - or openly thinking they’re on the wrong track.

  He advised his team about what he’d discovered (minus details of the Nealey Dean poster) and told them why he felt this now proved Patrick Mylan had actually been murdered.

  Next he focused them in on the current list of people being questioned. It was not exactly a suspect list, but more of a target list.

  The list read:

  Maggie Littlewood Roger Littlewood Marcus Urry Cynthia Cox Jean Claude Banks Tony Stevenson Martin Friel Chloe Simmons Rodney Stuart Nealey Dean Tim Dickens Alice Robbins POP U

  POP U had been a DC Dot King innovation. It stood for Person Or Persons Unknown. She felt it ensured people always consider another option until a case has been successfully solved.

  “Okay,” Kennedy said, looking at the list himself, “how do we feel about the alibis we’ve documented so far?”

  “I think it’s amusing that it turns out that Jean Claude’s and Cynthia Cox’s alibis are identical,” Allaway said, starting off the proceedings. “Do we think there’s anything going on there?”

  “Oh, come on, of course they’re an item. She has him wrapped around her little finger,” King offered, amused no one had picked up on that.

  “So they rehearsed their alibi?” Allaway asked.

  “Or they were both together all day Saturday, and they were reciting exactly what they did,” King said.

  “Okay, let’s check with the staff in the Baroque and the Belco. Neither Jean Claude nor Cynthia are exactly wallflowers, so if they were there people are going to have noticed them,” Kennedy said, happy they appeared to be moving into gear. “Also, let’s check with the optician she says she dropped into at five o’clock.”

  “Good idea,” King agreed. “She seems like the kind of person who would try on every single pair of spectacles they’d have and then opt for a pair from off-the-shelf in Boots.”

  “Next?” Kennedy asked, looking back at the list.

  “Urry’s mum confirmed he was around with her on Saturday and that she left him asleep on the sofa,” Allaway said.

  “Where did his mum go, and what time did she go out?” Kennedy asked.

  Allaway checked his notes. “She left the house just before five o’clock, and she attended a bingo session, getting back to her house at nine-thirty, by which time Wolfman Marcus was gone.”

  “He’d still have had the opportunity,” Irvine said. “If Dr Taylor’s estimate is out by even half an hour, Marcus doesn’t really have an alibi for the entire window. I quite fancy him for this.”

  “I agree he’s not a nice person,” King said, “but this particular murder is much too clever for Marcus.”

  There, that sounds better, Kennedy thought. One of the team was at last referring to the investigation as a murder. “Well, I still think it would be dangerous to rule him out altogether,” Irvine persisted. “There’s something about him - his superiority complex maybe. It wouldn’t take very much to convince me that he was capable of murder.”

  Kennedy underlined Urry’s name a couple of times and put a question mark by his alibi details. Then he turned and said, “Okay, while we’re on this track, how about Tim Dickens and his PA, Alice Robbins? They shared Urry’s motive.”

  “Alice claimed they both were together, going through his royalty statements,” Irvine said, reading from the notes of the interview he and Kennedy had conducted, “but Tim Dickens seems to me to be the one who’ll benefit most from Mylan’s demise.”

  “Let’s see them separately this time, and pin them both down to actual details about exactly what they were doing and when. Did she nip out for a coffee? Did they order a takeaway? Where from? When did they take a break for anything? Then we’ll see how close their versions of the story are.”

  “Or how well rehearsed they are,” King suggested, before reading off the next name on Kennedy’s noticeboard: “Tony Stevenson, a member of Toblerone. He claims he was on a day trip to Paris with his wife and two daughters. He’s produced their boarding cards and his credit card receipts for several purchases he made while in Paris.”

  “At last,” Irvine sighed loudly, “someone whose alibi actually checks out. Let’s remove him from our list.”

  “Yep,” Kennedy agreed, complying with Irvine’s request. “However, let’s not forget him; he can still give us a lot of background on Mylan. Okay, our third Toblerone man, Martin Friel?”

  “He was at the cinema. He saw two movies back to back. I still need to check that out,” Allaway admitted.

  “Roger Littlewood was gardening by himself. His wife Maggie was shopping down the West End,” Kennedy said, continuing with his list. “We need more information on both of them.”

  “Rodney Stuart: again no real alibi. He claimed to have been by himself in the office all day Saturday,” Irvine said, “and he wasn’t backwards about putting Marcus Urry’s name well and truly in the frame. How did your interview go with Chloe Simmons?” he asked, turning to his boss.

  At that split second, Kennedy realised he hadn’t asked the stunning Chloe Simmons what she was doing on Saturday last. Was that because he was distracted from his work by Anne Coles? Then he remembered that he also hadn’t asked Miss Simmons whether or not Patrick Mylan wore sock garters.

  “Well,” Kennedy began expansively, “she seemed… I mean she wasn’t jumping up and down with joy or anything, but I got the impression she wasn’t exactly grief-stricken at Mr Mylan’s death. It was more that she seemed happy to be getting on to the next part of her life.”

  “Enough for her to have ended his?” King asked, with genuine interest.

  Kennedy just stared at her, not in a patronising manner, but she read him well.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” she began: “much too early to even think about.”

  “What we really need to know is, who Mylan’s… who his girlfriend before Miss Simmons was,” Kennedy said.

  “What? You think she might have been jealous of Chloe?” King asked.

  “Let’s just put her in the POP U section for now,” Kennedy smiled, adding “Mylan’s ex” to his list with three question marks beside it.

  “I should have asked Nealey what she was doing on Saturday,” Irvine interjected out of the blue, “if only to officially remove her name from the list. I’ll go and see her at the end of this meeting. Maybe she knows something about Mylan’s earlier girlfriend.”

  “Actually, I’d prefer if you took DS Allaway and conducted the Tim Dickens and Alice Robbins interviews,” Kennedy said, happy he’d been spared the embarrassment of someone inquiring about what Miss Simmons had been doing between the hours of four and eight on Saturday. “DC King and myself will drop in on Miss Dean on our way down to Wimbledon to re-interview Miss Simmons.”

  “Have the forensic accounting people come up with anything yet?” Kennedy asked.

  “I rang them just this morning,” King replied quickly.

  “And?”

  “They just laughed and set the phone down.”

  “Sounds like Superintendent Castle needs to make the next call for us,” Kennedy said. “What about Patrick Mylan’s mobile phone records?”

  “The company promised them for after lunchtime,” King replied.

  “It looks like either Tim Dickens or Chloe Simmons would have the best motive; she gets her life back and her property as part of the deal,” Irvine concluded, as the meeting wound down.

  “Or POP U?” King offered helpfully.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When Kennedy and King came calling,
the doorman at Nealey Dean’s mansion block said she wasn’t due back until after five o’clock. Kennedy left a message saying they’d call and see her then. He figured they’d be able to fit in their visit to Wimbledon in the meantime.

  As they arrived in Wimbledon just after lunchtime, Kennedy informed King that he hadn’t thought Wimbledon was so far south that they’d need a passport. From his years in Ulster watching reports about the Wimbledon tennis fortnight, when he’d moved to London first, he had really always expected people to be walking around Wimbledon in white tennis gear with rackets over their shoulder. He also remembered thinking that there must be a permanent circus at the corner of Oxford Street and Regent Street. He quickly realised that he needn’t have bothered, in his pre-teen years, working out how all the animals and the audiences avoided the busy traffic of the West End of London. He also now accepted that the majority of people now walking around the streets of Wimbledon preoccupied with their lives wouldn’t have a clue where the world-famous tennis tournament took place, even though it was no more than three miles away in the direction of South Fields.

  Wimbledon, to Kennedy’s eye, had lost the small village in a big city feel it had had when he first visited it on one of his many early voyages of discovery around the city. The reason he loved living in Primrose Hill so much was because it had been able to retain the village feel. He admitted to himself that it was probably because Primrose Hill was a heck of a lot smaller than Wimbledon.