by Paul Charles
Flynn, back firmly in his proper place at his North Bridge House reception desk, immediately contacted New Scotland Yard, as per Kennedy’s request, and asked them to use their channels to see if a Miss Sharenna Chada was booked on an international flight any day soon.
By the time Kennedy returned to his office, his phone was ringing. Flynn already had the news for him that a Miss Sharenna Chada had flown Upper Class that very morning at eleven-thirty to San Francisco on Virgin Atlantic Flight number VS019.
“San Francisco,” Kennedy said aloud to himself. “Why San Francisco?”
Then he remembered something Jean Claude Banks had said at their first meeting about Mylan having a property in California.
He wanted to interview Rodney Stuart but he couldn’t, because poor Rodney was already under severe interrogation from the forensic accountants.
Kennedy sought out Irvine and together they walked around to Patrick Mylan’s house. On the journey, Kennedy explained in detail what had happened between himself and Miss Chada. Irvine was non-judgemental and took on board the information just as he might any other details on this or any other case.
They arrived at Mylan’s house just as Jean Claude was about to head off on his Vespa. The Frenchman happily took Kennedy and Irvine into the house and brewed up a coffee for himself and Irvine. Kennedy settled for mineral water. When they were all settled in the conservatory, Kennedy described Sharenna Chada in great detail for the Frenchman.
“Ah yes, you mean Miss Chada?”
“Yes,” Kennedy agreed. “You know her?”
“Mais oui, she was Mr Mylan’s woman before Miss Simmons.”
Frustrated, Kennedy asked himself why he hadn’t pushed Jean Claude Banks further in that area on Monday morning. Of course it still would not have prevented what had happened between himself and the brown-skinned woman over the weekend.
“Do you know where she lived?” Irvine asked.
“Non.” “Did you know her?” Kennedy knew Banks’ years with Mylan predated Miss Chada’s.
“But of course.”
“But you never knew where she lived?”
“When she was Mr Mylan’s woman, she had an apartment in Albert Mansions overlooking the park.”
“Not too far from here then?”
“In fact, no,” Banks agreed, “but when she and Mr Mylan’s paths diverged, she sold her apartment and moved out of the area.”
“You told us Mr Mylan had a property in America in California. Did you mean San Francisco?” Kennedy asked, surprised by how detached he was. Somehow he’d managed to totally focus back in on the investigation.
“But of course, San Francisco.”
“Was Miss Chada aware of this property?”
“Mr Mylan and she visited there three times to my recollection.”
“Do you know exactly where the property is in San Francisco?” Kennedy pushed, remembering some friend of his father’s lived in San Francisco.
“I wouldn’t know that. Mr Stuart, I assume, would know that. He’d need to take care of the bills, wouldn’t he?”
***
Kennedy and Irvine had returned to North Bridge House by three-forty on Thursday afternoon. Miss Chada wouldn’t have landed yet at San Francisco airport, but equally she’d be a long time gone out of UK airspace and jurisdiction. Kennedy realised he didn’t have enough time to do the necessary paperwork to have someone pick her up at San Francisco airport. It was frustrating, but it also meant he didn’t have to use the embarrassing line, “We suspect she may have been involved in the death of Mr Patrick Mylan. However, at the time Mr Mylan was dying, Miss Chada was in bed with me.”
Mr Stuart was still being interviewed. The forensic accountant’s team claimed they were happy for the interruption, which would give them a rest while keeping the pressure on Stuart.
Stuart was an easy interviewee; maybe he was just relieved that the accountants were giving him a rest. He was low on energy, and he answered each question he was asked and even volunteered the information that Mr Mylan’s parting gift to Miss Chada had, in fact, been the property in Half Moon Bay, which was on the outskirts of the sprawling San Francisco. He hadn’t seen Miss Chada for over two years, and he had no idea of her current whereabouts.
Kennedy phoned his father and received the usual, “Is everything okay, Christopher?”
“Totally, Dad. You know that friend of yours in San Francisco?”
“Yes, Don Nolan. What about him? Are you going over for a holiday? Do you need his details? His number is…”
And on and on Kennedy’s dad went in a one-sided conversation, very near a monologue, where Kennedy had all the information he required and hardly needed to ask a question in order to get it.
Kennedy went to see Castle and told him he’d like to fly out to America first thing the next morning.
Castle laughed, but at least he didn’t call him “matey.”
“It’ll take at least a week before we can get the paper work lined up.”
Kennedy returned to his office and immediately called the Right Honourable Duncan Trower.
Trower was as good as his word about Kennedy’s ringing any time he needed anything. He took the call immediately, seemed happy with Kennedy’s news. At the very least, the recent development served to take the pressure off his lover, Tim Dickens. Trower promised he would sort out all the necessary paperwork and introductions as quickly as possible.
Trower was back on to Kennedy within the hour, and his office contacted Superintendent Thomas Castle shortly thereafter confirming all the details. Trower’s office had booked Kennedy on a Virgin Atlantic flight for the following morning, and in Upper Class. Castle was informed that Kennedy could be expected to start immediately into the investigation following an eleven-hour flight, so they didn’t consider Kennedy’s travelling in coach to be most advantageous to their joint endeavours.
***
So exactly twenty-four hours after Sharenna Chada had fled the country and hightailed it to America, Kennedy was on a flight heading in the same direction. He was 100 per cent legit, although extradition papers, if they proved necessary, were going to be a different matter altogether. Trower’s office had, however, fixed up the relevant stateside contacts for him should they be required.
Kennedy considered the work he’d left for Irvine and King. He needed them to interview Maggie Littlewood by herself again. Kennedy was now sure she was the concubine connection in all of this. She knew Chloe’s mother and probably introduced Mylan to the Simmons family and consequently Chloe herself. Kennedy felt sure there must be a connection between Maggie Littlewood and Sharenna Chada. He also suspected that his theory that Maggie and Mylan had once been lovers themselves was not as far-fetched as it had at first seemed. He suggested to Irvine that he speak with Roger Littlewood again. If there was a chance that Maggie was once Mylan’s lover and was now his procurer, was there also a chance that Roger had discovered this and sought his own revenge? King and Irvine also needed to do follow-up interviews with Chloe Simmons and with Marcus Urry. There was still a slight chance that Urry, even without his boss’s knowledge, had some involvement in Mylan’s demise. He was going to California to follow up just one lead, Kennedy reminded his team. They still had the majority of the work to do in Camden Town.
He thought about Miss Chada and his relationship with her. The question was not so much how she fit into his life but more how he fit into hers; and when and how exactly she had decided to involve him in this, whatever this was. He thought of her indisputable beauty, and he thought of their five days of passionate love-making. There had been several times during that period when she had given herself to him so unselfishly and so completely that it was nearly impossible to reconcile that person with the person whom he now suspected of being involved in the death of Patrick Mylan. It seemed unthinkable for her to have had any hidden agenda. He sincerely believed it would be totally impossible for any human to betray her soul so.
He’d worked p
retty much the whole way through the Thursday night and Friday morning and then come straight to Heathrow. Soon he was airborne, and then before he knew it he felt his eyes grow heavy. The word “concubine” and what one may or may not be capable of seemed to float in and out of his mind.
When he did start to drift off, he gave himself to the blissful unconsciousness willingly.
Part Three
Half Moon Bay
Chapter Forty-Four
Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC, Didn’t get to bed last night.
Well, Kennedy had actually flown in from Camden Town, and when the Beatles had written “Back in The USSR,” they hadn’t experienced the pleasure of the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class fold-out bed. As a result of that, and no doubt aided considerably by the little bag of goodies the in-flight staff had given him, Kennedy arrived totally refreshed.
It was Friday, still Friday, but Sharenna Chada had a clear twenty-four hours head start on him.
Kennedy walked off the plane into what had once been the new frontier. Even now, a century and a half later, the smell of the newness, of being totally alive with excitement, managed to hit him smack clean between the eyes. The unique smell came from the heat and the lack of damp. Not that it didn’t rain in America, particularly in the San Francisco area, but the moisture didn’t instil itself into the atmosphere as it did in Kennedy’s native Ulster or, to a much lesser degree, in his adopted home of Camden Town.
Kennedy, though a policeman himself, found himself acting guilty in the presence of the immigration officers. Maybe he was acting strangely while trying to appear innocent. Kennedy reckoned the more seasoned guards probably factored this into their assessment; otherwise 99 per cent of all queues would be detained for further questioning.
He needn’t have worried, because right at the back of the extremely long immigration queue was a police officer, one in a different uniform from the immigration officers, holding a card with Kennedy’s name clearly printed. Kennedy went up and introduced himself to the officer, who took Kennedy’s paperwork and passport and whisked him through a VIP channel.
So far so good. “You been stateside before?” The patrolman, who’d introduced himself as Kevin MacCormac, “but everyone calls me Mactoo,” started just after they’d cleared passport control.
“A few times; not for a good while though,” Kennedy replied.
“This coast?”
“No, just the East Coast, mostly Boston.”
“All right,” Mac replied, drawing out the two syllables to emphasise his discovery. “That’s the Chief Donald Nolan connection.”
“Yeah, he’s a good friend of my father’s brother.”
“Who’d be your uncle?” Mac asked. He’d a wonderful, deep, radio-friendly voice. Mac was tall and thin with the only visible body hair being a dark triangle just under his bottom lip. He smiled easily and frequently.
“Well, yes,” Kennedy replied, wondering if he had phrased his reply so in order to give credit to his father rather than his uncle.
“No, no, I meant, who would want to be your uncle, you know, having the chief as a friend - but I was just kidding, of course.”
By now they’d reached the pavement outside the terminal. They small-chatted their way into and through San Francisco’s dramatic skyline.
Kennedy wasn’t really tuned in to the conversation, so immersed was he in the visual distractions thrown at him on his first visit to this vibey West Coast city. They say America looks different from the UK due to the “look” of American TV shows, which apparently has something to do with the number of lines on their screens. Kennedy mentally compared West Wing to East Enders; he wished he hadn’t. But he felt it was more than just a small screen development. To Kennedy’s eyes, America, in the shape of San Francisco, looked different because it was different. It was colourful, energetic, distracting. It was people friendly, and its people were friendly. It was a consumer enticing colony. It was engaging and embracing. America didn’t know the meaning of the word shy.
“We’re nearly there,” Mactoo announced as he dodged in and out of heavy traffic, mostly taxis and buses. Eventually they turned into Sixth Avenue. “So tell me this: you’re from England; how the hell did someone like Dave Beckham ever get back into the national side? To get away with that kind of stupid you’d have to have a genius behind you. I know, I know, we paid millions for him, but we still haven’t got the hang of this soccer shit yet, so we’ve got a reasonable excuse, right? But I’d really love to know who negotiated him back into the team after his sell-by date. If I ever found out, and I could hire them, I’d have the confidence to go ahead with a divorce.”
Football wasn’t the best subject for Kennedy, but luckily enough they had reached their destination. They pulled off Sixth and into the courtyard of a modern red-brick building, the Richmond station house, which was in the Golden Gate Division. Somewhere in the building was Police Chief Don Nolan, an old friend of Kennedy’s uncle.
Kennedy was expecting the police station to be a mad house. He must have watched too many episodes of NYPD Blue, because although it did turn out to be very busy, it was also civilised and extremely modern.
Police Chief Don Nolan was tied up, so Kennedy had to kick his heels for about an hour, during which he heard officers deal with a man in his early twenties who’d been assaulted by two known acquaintances who’d “disrespected” him. From what Kennedy could gather, the three had been involved in auto theft - Auto theft sounds so much better than stealing a car, Kennedy thought - when the “disrespecting” took place. Given the circumstances, it seemed to be a weird charge for the young victim to be making, so his listlessness and vacant look were perhaps due more to self-induced chemical abuse than to physical abuse from others.
Another victim had been preparing to get out of her car on the eight hundred block of Clement Street when a stranger suddenly appeared at her door and sprayed her in the face with pepper. The stranger manhandled her out of the car before jumping into it himself and driving off. An ambulance was called to attend to the victim, who sat no more than six feet away from Kennedy, telling her case officer that the suspect was fifty to sixty years old, wearing sun glasses, had a light-coloured hat, blue jeans, and had forgotten to remove his name-tag, which also provided the details of the store where he worked. The officer seemed more interested in the woman than in her plight.
Another woman, sitting at a desk the other side of the open plan office, was telling a young and enthusiastic officer that she’d been jogging on Post Street near Scott Street listening to Tom Waits singing “In the Neighbourhood” on her iPod. A suspect walked up to her, tapped his wrist indicating that he wanted to know the time. When she was distracted, looking down at her watch, the suspect nicked her iPod and fled west on Pond Street. The suspect was male, dressed in a silver windbreaker and a light blue Van Morrison T-shirt. The victim wondered aloud if the insurance company would spring for a complete set of Tom Waits CDs, so she’d have a bigger selection to download from. The victim was informed, helpfully, that if she didn’t ask she’d never find out.
Yet another victim was advising his case officer that he’d been standing on the corner of 26th Avenue and Geary, minding his own business, when a man came along pushing his car west on Geary. The suspect waved the man over and asked for his help. A few difficult, laborious, and sweaty steps later, the suspect asked the victim if he could borrow the victim’s cell phone to call for help instead. The victim, happy for the rest, willingly obliged. Then the suspect jumped into his supposedly ailing car, a sky blue Mustang, and miraculously drove off, a cell phone the richer.
So, another day in downtown San Francisco, Kennedy thought; not all that different from Parkway in Camden Town. Which was when he heard a voice summoning him into Chief Nolan’s office.
As the Ulster-born detective walked into the chief’s office, just before six o’clock, two thoughts hit him. One, back in Camden Town it was now two o’clock the following morning; and two, his carry-on
wheelie suitcase was still in the boot of Mactoo’s patrol car, and goodness knew where Mactoo was now. Somehow this didn’t seem to bother him as much as he thought it should.
Chief Nolan’s mid-Atlantic accent did not disguise his Ulster roots.
“Christy,” he said, enthusiastically shaking Kennedy’s hand, “great to meet you. I’ve heard all about you from your uncle Harry.”
“And I’ve heard a lot about you too,” Christy replied, happy to get his hand back.
“Aye, they’re all very proud of you,” Nolan announced, inviting Kennedy to take the chair opposite his desk and facing a wall of Nolan’s forty-odd year law enforcement career in photographs, diplomas, and awards. Kennedy wondered how proud his own family would be of him once they discovered that he’d been sleeping with a murder suspect.
Chief Don Nolan was a fit, muscular, dark-haired, clean-shaven man, about five foot ten inches in height - a no-nonsense kind of guy. His uniform was immaculate and so wrinkle-free it looked as if he’d put it on and had it pressed on him.
“So,” Kennedy enquired, impatient to get on with what he’d come here for, “any progress on apprehending my suspect?”
“Or your ‘person of interest,’ as we refer to suspects here,” Nolan smiled. He then opened a file in front of him and announced, “Sharenna Chada.”
“Yes, that’s her.” Kennedy decided to come clean and jump right in and tell Nolan the whole story. “Less than a week ago…”
“Hold it right there,” Nolan ordered, as he held up his hand in a stop sign. “I, hmm… I just wanted to greet you and say hello and invite you over to our house for Sunday lunch. The wife, Maddee, would love to meet you. She’s a big fan of your Uncle Harry. In fact, and I’ll tell you this for nothing, if I hadn’t been as quick on my feet, she might have been your auntie today. Anyway, that’s by the by. But getting back to this Miss Chada of yours, she’s not actually on my patch. Word has it she’s down in Half Moon Bay, Patrolman MacCormac’s patch, and…”