A Pleasure to do Death With You

by Paul Charles

“Do you not realise, Duncan, than when you were proclaiming from the rooftops your genuine love for Timothy, you said, ‘We’re both pubic figures…?’”

  “I did not? I didn’t, did I? Oh my God,” Trower protested and broke into a hearty, earthy laugh. Then, on queue, he slipped back into his Miss Marple voice to say, “Oh my Lord, and here I am blaspheming as well.”

  Kennedy broke up the small talk with, “Just one thing that’s been troubling me, Mr Dickens. When DS Irvine recently interviewed Miss Alice Robbins and yourself individually about your alibi for Saturday afternoon, DS Irvine confirmed that your alibis overlapped identically. How did you manage that?”

  “Devious but simple,” Dickens admitted. “When I was being interviewed in the studio, I’d left the talkback microphone on. Alice was lurking by the door of the control room and could hear every single word of our conversation clearly over the talkback system.”

  “No doubt Miss Robbins was the author of that particular idea.”

  “Duncan,” Dickens chastised quietly, and that was all it took for Trower to apologise.

  Kennedy left the apartment about five minutes later. The three of them seemed to be relaxing into a nice bottle of Merlot. Nealey got up to lead Kennedy to the door, but Trower signalled a “no” to her, indicating that he would do it. Nealey rose and kissed Kennedy goodbye anyway, inviting him to come back some time when they could enjoy a drink. Dickens shook Kennedy’s hand furiously, and such was his relief and gratitude that the singer eventually broke into bear-hugging him.

  “Christy, I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstance,” Trower announced as he and the Ulster detective reached the front door, “but on the positive side, were it not for these circumstances, we probably would never have met.”

  “You’re not wrong there, sir,” Kennedy replied, admiring his honesty.

  “Nealey assures me you will be very discreet about this, but let me also say that if in the course of your investigation you’re put in a position where we need to revisit this, we’ll just have to deal with it. I think Timothy worries about my position a lot more than I do.”

  Trower shook Kennedy’s hand using both his hands. He very smoothly removed one of his hands from the grip and, in one beautiful manoeuvre, dipped into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and deliver to Kennedy’s free hand a business card.

  “My private number is on there, Christy. Use it any time you need to.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Kennedy decided to walk back to North Bridge House. Marylebone High Street was a great walking area, Regent’s Park was en route, the weather was great, and he was glad of the extra time to think.

  Quicker than he thought possible, he was leaving Marylebone Basin, crossing and travelling east along the ultra busy Marylebone Road, the feed road for the M40, which the Right Honourable Duncan Trower and former pop sensation Tim Dickens had used to escape to Trower’s weekend getaway.

  Kennedy knew he’d have to check with Trower’s staff at Minster Lovell, but it was a safe bet they’d confirm the Home Secretary’s claim. Realistically, in these troubled times for those in public office, he had too much to risk by stepping forward with a bunch of lies.

  So Timothy Dickens was out of the frame. Kennedy wondered about Marcus Urry. Could he, unknown to Dickens, have been responsible for Mylan’s death? Or perhaps Dickens knew of his employee’s intentions, maybe even directed them and got out of town over the weekend in question for that very reason. Kennedy felt those were slim pickings too. Dickens, as well as his lover, had just too much to lose. He beat himself up a bit over this assumption, realised his team would do likewise, but would be ready to readdress it if necessary. He wasn’t unhappy about losing Tim Dickens from his suspect list. Besides Dickens’ being a friend of Nealey Dean, Kennedy knew that sometimes the process of elimination was the most efficient method of honing in on the guilty person.

  Rodney Stuart was, in more ways than one, an unattractive suspect, but at the moment he seemed to be the best Kennedy had. Irvine’s approach had been 100 per cent correct: at the very least Rodney was definitely guilty of fleecing his client, and taking the accountant off the street was going to prevent him doing a runner, just in case he had murdered his client in order to hide his embezzlement.

  Kennedy thought about Chloe Simmons as he nipped up York Gate and crossed York Bridge, which took him into the park at the tranquil Queen Mary’s Gardens. Bizarre though the liaison might be, she boasted that Mylan saw her and only her during the term of their relationship. She seemed to set great store by that. Perhaps the monogamy offered Chloe the little bit of specialness everyone needs to feel. Sometimes it’s being in love; sometimes it’s being in lust; sometimes it’s friendship; sometimes it’s companionship. When none of the above is a compromise and is purely the basis of the connection, it is possible for the relationship to exist. However, take away this foundation, for instance in this case with the reappearance of the previous concubine, then the relationship collapses. So what might someone as young and as beautiful as Chloe Simmons do when the only sexual relationship she had ever known collapsed? But, if she sought vengeance, then surely the previous concubine, and not Mylan, would have been the main target.

  Maybe, like Kennedy’s team, Chloe had been unable to find her predecessor, so Mylan came back into the frame again as her target.

  The garter belts Mylan was wearing when he died flashed into Kennedy’s mind. From the first moment he’d spotted them on the victim’s corpse, Kennedy had felt they were a sign - a sign of humiliation.

  The sign said: You should not have disrespected me.

  Chloe Simmons, a fatherless daughter, had been playing around with her emerging emotions for the last few years as she’d first been groomed by Mylan and then used by him to satisfy his carnal needs, and all of this happening at a time when she should have been falling hopelessly in and out of love on a weekly if not daily basis. Who was to say what she’d be capable of when she felt she might be about to lose the only stable relationship she’d ever known?

  Sooner than he wanted to, Kennedy had emerged from the park at Albert Road, and he headed down towards the top of Parkway.

  Before he could interview Chloe Simmons again, and he certainly knew that he must, he needed to uncover more about her predecessor. Chloe still was Mylan’s “concubine,” but what of the ex? Just how desperate had she been in her endeavours to start serving Mylan again? And, more importantly, when her efforts had been thwarted, what exactly might this mysterious unknown woman be capable of? Maybe even ending Mylan’s life in a totally humiliating way?

  Kennedy added Jean Claude Banks to his list of people in need of revisiting.

  He stormed into North Bridge House.

  Sgt Flynn wasn’t at his desk. And why would he be every time Kennedy walked in? Yet Flynn’s presence centred Kennedy’s thoughts and his day. Kennedy didn’t know who Mylan’s last mistress was. (He preferred, even mentally, to refer to her as a mistress rather than a concubine, even though Simmons didn’t seem to take the same offence from the title as Kennedy did.) So he was trying to work out if he was annoyed about the mistress’s identity, Flynn’s absence, or the fact that his favourite desk sergeant’s replacement was greedily tucking into a box of doughnuts.

  It would appear that this salt of the earth, overtly friendly, covertly bulky, Caucasian woman was to be the new face of North Bridge House. “Salt of the earth my arse,” Kennedy said under his breath very uncharitably. “Give me the aging Flynn any day of the week. At least he hasn’t got all of his tricks from watching Hill Street Blues.”

  “Oh, Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy, a pleasure to make your acquaintance again,” she giggled, like a schoolgirl on her first date, “I’ve got an envelope here for you; I believe it’s the phone records of a certain Mr Patrick Mylan.”

  Chapter Forty

  Kennedy had several things he needed to do, all of which would in turn uncover several other things he needed to do. He decid
ed to do what he normally did at times like these, and that was to address the first thing that grabbed his attention. Reviewing Patrick Mylan’s mobile phone records for his last days on this earth would be a start, and it would be at the very least one thing less for him to attend to.

  As he scrolled through the list, he noted the names and telephones numbers of Mylan’s acquaintances he and his team hadn’t already interviewed. The first page, the most recent one, only threw up one name. Four pages on as he turned on to the final page, the page containing the oldest calls, he still only had slim pickings, three names in total. On the final page, he spotted a name about three quarters of the way down that stopped him in his tracks. He genuinely felt he’d been kicked in the chest by the back legs of a stallion. Had he been on his feet at that point, his legs would most surely have given way under him.

  Sharenna Chada had rung Patrick Mylan several times, and Mylan had rung her twice on that particular day.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Kennedy’s mind flashed through all of the permutations he knew everyone, including Miss Bleedin’ Saltoftheearth, would flash through. Not one of the scenarios looked good for him.

  In his heart he knew that although Sharenna must be involved in this in some way, she couldn’t possibly have murdered Patrick Mylan because she was in bed with Kennedy during Mylan’s guessed time of death and several hours either side. Or could she?

  His brain went into over-drive as he tried to work out how she could possibly be involved and how he could now get hold of her. Rather than scroll back through the phone records, Kennedy remembered the note she’d given him with her mobile number. He still had it in his pocket, tucked safely in his credit card wallet along with the Right Honourable Duncan Trower’s business card.

  Monday. I’m happy you came to see me. I hoped you would. Ring me on 07972 147738 whenever you finish work and I’ll come and see you. S.

  Kennedy started to dial the number. He set the phone back down again. Was he just overreacting? Was Miss Chada really Patrick Mylan’s last concubine? No, scrap that, Kennedy thought; was she really Mylan’s last but one concubine? He needed to think about what he’d say. Kennedy and Miss Chada didn’t have the kind of relationship where they would just ring each other for a chat.

  He set the phone back down again, this time banging it down in frustration. If he rang using his office phone, there would be a record of a connection between the two of them. He was annoyed for thinking like a criminal. He was shocked at how easily and quickly he’d switched to another mindset.

  Should he just go to Castle now and lay everything on the table for his superior? At the least, there would be an inquiry. These days there had to be. Well, on closer consideration, maybe not. Maybe he didn’t have anything he needed to admit to his superior. As of that moment, the only thing, the only single semi-incriminating thing was the fact that Miss Chada and Mr Mylan had telephone contact. What on earth was wrong with that? She was a masseuse. Mylan lived locally to Unlocked, her practice, so there was at least some percentage of a chance that Mylan could also have been one of her clients. Kennedy blew out a long sigh of relief.

  Of course Partick Mylan could have been seeing Sharenna Chada in a professional capacity. So why shouldn’t Kennedy ring her? He’d just discovered her name on his telephone list; of course he had to ring her. And he didn’t need to sneak out of North Bridge House to ring her from a coin box.

  He lifted the phone. He thought through the consequences again. He set the phone down again. What was the proper and professional way to do this? Well, he could get either DC Dot King or DS James Irvine to follow up that particular lead and dispatch them to interview Miss Chada. He could wait until he went home that evening; she’d been to see him every single night since the weekend. In fact, now that he came to think of this, she’d been with him or he’d been with her, whichever way he or Castle would want to put it, every day since Mylan had been murdered.

  “Okay,” he said out loud in his empty office, calming himself down, “what exactly is it that you think you have done wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he replied to himself, thirty seconds later. “You’d a bad back; Miss Chada successfully treated it for you. Then she seduced you. You were totally unaware of her involvement in the Mylan case at any time you were intimate. Where you would be wrong,” he lectured himself, “would be if you were now to continue seeing her knowing that she might, just might be involved in your current case.”

  Yes, that makes sense, he thought, a lot of sense. That was the key to this, wasn’t it? He wasn’t aware of her involvement. But now that he was aware of her potential involvement, should he continue to be romantically involved with her, then and only then could he find himself in a compromising situation. On reflection, he wasn’t actually romantically involved with Miss Chada. The actual fact was that he was physically involved with her. He had to tell her immediately that they could not continue with their relationship due to the new set of circumstances he was now aware of. Was he being grossly unfair to her? Did she deserve to be dumped, just because he was a cop and her name had surfaced on his current investigation? The bottom line was that she might be totally innocent and Kennedy, by his actions, was ruining any chance of their having a future relationship.

  Then the cop brain clicked back into gear. He went through the timings of his encounter with her the previous Saturday. What if she was involved? What if she seduced him so she could have an alibi for the time of Mylan’s death?

  All he succeeded in doing was winding himself up again. This time it felt more like a donkey’s kick than a stallion’s kick.

  He rose from his desk, put on his black windbreaker and departed North Bridge House. He had made his decision.

  He was going to Unlocked to see Miss Chada. He would ask her if she was seeing Mylan in a professional capacity or if she had once had a relationship, of sorts, with him. If she answered yes to the latter question and no to the former, then he would have to hand over at least her part of the questioning to Irvine or King. If at that stage, it looked as if Miss Chada might be in any way involved in this, then he would have to stand down from the investigation and declare his conflict of interest.

  He could hear Castle ask, “And what, pray, would your conflicting interest be, matey?”

  “Oh,” he’d have to answer truthfully, “I was actually having sex with her at the time Mylan was murdered.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Seven minutes later, he was walking through the front door of Unlocked. Before he had a chance to speak, Jan, the chirpy receptionist, announced, “Oh, Mr Kennedy, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. Miss Chada is not in today.”

  “Oh, ehm, any idea when she’ll be back?” he asked crestfallen.

  “She wasn’t best pleased with you, Mr Kennedy. She hates no-shows,” Jan continued, totally ignoring his question.

  “Yes, yes, I have already apologised to her. When did you say she’d be back?”

  “Well, that might be a lot longer than we both might want. She always had next week blocked off, but before she left yesterday, she had me settle up with her, saying she needed a longer break. She said she’d let me know later when she was coming back. I thought she must be going to work somewhere else, maybe Neal’s Yard, but she said no. She gave me her word that when she returned she would come back here and give us first refusal. She asked us to recommend our other practitioners to her clients, and I have someone perfect lined up for you, Mr Kennedy. Hans Van Pullman. He’s Swiss, very strong and does excellent deep tissue work.”

  “Have you any idea where Miss Chada is?”

  “No. Miss Chada keeps herself to herself. She never socialised with the rest of us. She’s never been to anyone’s crib, nor we to hers.”

  “Surely you must have an address for her, for cheques and forwarding letters and so forth?”

  “I’ve a mobile number which I’m happy to give you, but that’s it.”

  They compared numbers; it was the same one K
ennedy had.

  Miss Chada, it appeared, had agreed to take a smaller than normal percentage from Unlocked on condition she always receive cash.

  This was not looking good.

  When Kennedy returned to North Bridge House, he rushed to his office and quickly dialled Miss Chada’s number.

  “I’m out of town for quite some time. Don’t know when I’ll be back again. Please speak with Jan at Unlocked about on-going treatments,” Miss Chada said unemotionally on her message.

  Kennedy focused in on her line, “Don’t know when I’ll be back again.” Kennedy knew it was from a song, he didn’t know which one.

  He typed the line in to Google, and John Denver’s name beamed back at him. The next line to the lyric and the title to the song was: “I’m leaving on a jet plane.”

  Hardly a Freudian clue, Kennedy thought. He went straight to Superintendent Thomas Castle’s office and filled him in on the facts so far.

  “Christy, I’m happy to see you’re keeping your head. You’ve done everything by the book. I’ll put this meeting in my report. If there is really nothing else you need to tell me, I’m happy for you to continue to lead this investigation. Apart from anything else, matey, you’re going to have a much bigger incentive than anyone else to catch this Miss Chada.”

  That was it. No fuss, no need to worry. Castle was being Castle and doing what he always did, which was to support his team.

  Just as Kennedy was about to escape his office, Castle did have a wee farewell for him: “You’re a bit of a dark horse, matey.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Kennedy quickly returned to Castle’s office to address a bit of housekeeping business he’d forgotten. Permission granted, he went and sought out Sgt Tim Flynn, who was “doing a bit of much needed filing in the basement,” brought him back up to the reception. He then instructed Miss Custard Filling “to arise, take up your doughnuts and walk,” and sent her flustering, while still maintaining her political correctness, away from public view to the basement to do “a bit of much needed filing.”