New York Valentine

by Carmen Reid

  ‘What is this?’ Annie asked her son in astonishment.

  She saw the pile of jelly beans and chocolates carefully stacked at the side of his bed. This was her boy. Why on earth were police officers moving sophisticated computer equipment around his room?

  ‘I was supposed to look after it. The guys dropped it round a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Which guys?’ one of the officers asked sharply.

  Owen shrank back against his headboard.

  ‘The ones I work with on the stall.’

  ‘And you are Owen Valentine?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘Yes …’ Owen sounded very scared.

  Annie didn’t care what she’d just been told, she moved over to his bed to sit beside him and no one stopped her.

  ‘We’ve got a warrant to search your address because we’ve reason to believe that on your market stall at Elephant and Castle you’re selling pirated DVDs, CDs and X-rated DVDs which you are making here on this equipment.’

  Owen’s mouth fell open.

  ‘Owen’s just fourteen,’ Annie interrupted. ‘Doesn’t he have some protection from … from all this?’

  ‘I just help to sell it …’ Owen protested, ‘I don’t make any of it.’

  ‘There’s a stall at Elephant and Castle registered in your name,’ the officer went on.

  ‘He’s fourteen!’ Annie repeated. ‘How can he have a stall registered in his name?’

  The inspector seemed to soften a little.

  ‘Well, son … . where has all this stuff come from?’ He pointed to the equipment heaped in the middle of the room.

  ‘From the other guys on the stall. They run everything. I just help with the selling.’

  ‘Do you sell the X-rated stuff?’

  ‘Not usually …’ Owen said, turning his eyes down.

  ‘Have your market stall friends been working on their computers in your house?’ was the next question.

  Annie saw a hideously guilty look steal over Owen’s face.

  ‘Well … they were moving flats and they brought this stuff here, to keep it safe … and they may have done a bit of work up here … just a couple of afternoons … It wasn’t much.’

  Much as Annie felt flooded with fear, anger and terrible anxiety about her son, a growing ray of understanding was filtering through her mind.

  Copying porn … If someone had been in this house copying porn … if they’d used Owen and Ed’s computer … if they’d somehow got into the school system … this might explain everything.

  ‘Look, I know it’s early,’ the inspector began, ‘but we’ve got a lot of questions for you, Owen. So I think it would be best if you and one of your parents could come down to the station with us. If you’re lucky, we’ll buy you breakfast. The canteen isn’t half as bad as everyone makes out.’

  This raised a small laugh from the two other officers in the room.

  ‘You want us to come to the police station now?’ Annie asked, not sure she could quite believe what was happening.

  ‘Yes, my officers here are going to take the equipment,’ Inspector Williams explained, ‘then if Owen and you or his dad could come with us to help with inquiries, I hope that will be the quickest way of getting things sorted out. If Owen here’s been selling pirated goods, then I’m afraid he’s still in a lot of trouble.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  QC Harry in action:

  Bespoke blue shirt (Curtis and Dyer)

  Bespoke blue suit (Gieves & Hawkes)

  Gold cufflinks (Svetlana)

  Black Oxford shoes (Church’s)

  Total est. cost: £4,300

  ‘Splendid to meet you.’

  Annie travelled to the station in the back of a police car with her son, both of them wearing crazed, jumbled outfits made up of whatever they’d been able to find in a hurry.

  Ed stayed behind with the twins. Annie decided not to tell him her porn suspicions yet, because she wanted to be certain. She didn’t want to give him the false hope that it would all be solved, until she knew much more.

  ‘Owen’s market stall’s been selling pirated DVDs, he has to go to the station to tell them everything he knows about it,’ Annie had explained as she’d been led down to the bedroom to change.

  ‘Pirated? I thought everything was second-hand! And anyway, did they really need to send round four policemen in the middle of the night?’ Ed had exclaimed.

  In the back of the police car now, Annie was desperate to ask Owen all sorts of questions, but she felt the heavy presence of the officers in the car and thought it would be better if she didn’t say anything just yet.

  She tried to be a comforting presence for him, rubbing his shoulder and saying reassuring things like: ‘It’s going to be OK’ and ‘Don’t worry.’ Meanwhile, she felt very worried.

  But with a start, she remembered Svetlana’s Harry. That was who she needed to call immediately for advice. She took out her phone, checked it was OK with the officers then dared to dial Svetlana’s home phone number at 6.15 in the morning.

  It rang for a long time. By the seventh ring, Annie had almost lost her nerve. She imagined an irate Svetlana on the other end of the line berating her about lost beauty sleep.

  Instead a sleepy, heavily accented voice answered and Annie realized at once that it was Maria, Svetlana’s maid.

  ‘Hello Maria, this is Annie Valentine, Svetlana’s friend …’

  Maria didn’t say anything.

  ‘I need to speak to Harry, if it’s possible.’

  ‘Miss Valentina, is very, very early,’ Maria pointed out.

  ‘I know, but it’s an emergency, my son is in trouble … with the police.’ As Annie said this, she heard the dangerous wobble in her voice.

  ‘The police? They have your son?’ Maria had grasped the important elements.

  ‘Yes!’ Annie confirmed, ‘please, if I could speak to Harry, just on the phone. I need to get some advice. I need to know what we should do.’

  ‘I go and knock on their door. I find out if he can come to the phone,’ Maria said.

  There was a long wait. Annie gripped the phone to her ear, crossing her fingers. If she could just hear Harry’s reassuring voice on the other end of the line, she would feel much better.

  ‘Annie?’

  There he was!

  ‘Harry, I’m so, so sorry to wake you up like this but I’m in a police car. They’re taking Owen to the station …’

  ‘Don’t mention it, really. Delighted you thought of me. It’s absolutely no trouble at all,’ he assured her in his distantly-related-to-Royalty plummy voice. ‘Which police station is it?’

  As soon as she told him, he said: ‘OK, I’ll meet you both there.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked, but she was smiling at Owen now, a wave of relief washing over her.

  ‘Of course, no trouble at all. Now, just tell your boy not to say much to those chaps until I get there. On my way. Toodle pip.’

  Now when Annie turned to Owen and said ‘It’s going to be OK’, she was much more convinced of it.

  Annie hadn’t been inside a police station before. Well, not past the reception area. This station was very brightly lit with fluorescent strip lights in long rows along the ceiling. With Inspector Williams leading the way, they walked through wide corridors, passing rooms filled with desks, computer screens and untidy stacks of paperwork.

  She didn’t want to be here and she certainly didn’t want Owen to be here. Her son was involved with pirated goods! Even if he hadn’t known too much about it, the people he worked with were breaking the law.

  What if the market stall guys were here too? Gangster film plot-lines began speeding through her mind … what if they were going to try and stop Owen talking? She broke into an anxious sweat.

  But there was Harry, striding towards them, cheery greetings not just for them but also for the inspector leading them through the station. Harry was as neatly suited and booted as if he’d just strolled out of his office, rather th
an been shaken from his bed.

  ‘Hello, hello there, lovely to see you.’ He swooped down on Annie for a cheek to cheek kiss, as if they were meeting at a garden party.

  ‘Owen, splendid to meet you.’ Harry held out his hand for a bemused Owen to shake. ‘Now, Inspector Williams, before we get settled down for any sort of formal interview, I’ll need to know all about your allegations, then I’ll have to have a jolly quick chat with my man here –’ he put his hand on Owen’s shoulder. It was a firm, protective hand and it signalled to Annie that Harry would take good care of Owen.

  Once Harry had spoken in private to the inspector, a tiny interview room was found and Annie, Harry and Owen were ushered inside.

  Here, Harry made sure Annie had a cup of tea at her side before he began calmly questioning Owen.

  ‘So what was the stall selling, Owen?’

  ‘CDs and DVDs.’

  ‘And you actually took part in selling these?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You offered them for sale and you took the cash?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you know that the CDs and DVDs were illegal copies?’

  ‘Well … some were proper second-hand, we bought them used from customers. But some looked a bit dodgy,’ Owen admitted.

  ‘Owen!’ Annie hissed, but she bit her lip at a glance from Harry.

  ‘Did you have anything to do with copying CDs or DVDs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Absolutely certain about that?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you see anyone making copies?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Totally positive about that too?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But you sold some CDs and DVDs that “looked dodgy” to you.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you sell porn DVDs, Owen?’

  ‘Not many,’ Owen said, giving his mum a guilty glance.

  ‘Right …’ Harry paused to make some notes.

  ‘So how did all that equipment end up in your bedroom?’ he asked.

  ‘The guys who run the stall asked me to look after it because they were moving flats.’

  ‘Did they drop it off?’

  ‘Yeah … they did it when I was the only person at home.’ Owen at least looked slightly shamefaced about this.

  ‘I see. What are the names of the people who run your stall?’

  ‘Does he have to tell the police?’ Annie squeaked, vividly imagining gang bosses turning up at their house in the dark of night intent on silencing her son … aaaaargh!

  ‘There’s Dimitri, Sandy and Rob,’ Owen replied.

  ‘Do you know their last names?’

  Owen screwed his eyes with concentration: ‘I think Dimitri’s is Theodopolus. Don’t think I know anyone else’s.’

  ‘Do you know their addresses?’

  ‘No. We just meet at the stall every week.’

  ‘How did you get to know these guys, Owen?’

  ‘We just got talking at the market one day.’

  ‘I see,’ Harry said lightly, but Annie felt her face burn with shame.

  She’d let her 14-year-old son work on a market stall with people she’d not even met. Somehow she’d assumed maybe Ed had met them … or that Owen knew them through school friends. It had never occurred to her that these were dodgy blokes who’d got talking to her son one day and drawn him in to a life of crime! She should probably be grateful that Owen was only involved in DVD piracy. He could have been abducted and sold into sexual slavery by now. Quickly, she began to look in her handbag for tissues, convinced she was going to cry.

  ‘Do you have their mobile phone numbers?’ Harry continued.

  ‘Yes. On my phone.’ Owen reached into his anorak pocket, brought out a mobile and held it out to Harry.

  Harry took it from him and slipped it into his own jacket pocket. ‘OK, I think just for now, we’ll say you haven’t brought your phone … if it comes up.

  ‘Right, so you knew them by their first names, you didn’t do any copying, but you did sell their stuff for them. Did you apply for the market stall licence?’

  ‘No, don’t know anything about that,’ Owen shrugged.

  ‘They’ve put the stall in your name, I believe.’

  ‘How?’ Annie wondered.

  ‘Maybe they just sauntered along to the town hall with some forged documents in Owen’s name.’

  ‘But why not just use another made-up name?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  With his fountain pen, Harry wrote further notes. As Annie watched his loopy, illegible handwriting form across the page, she once again felt soothed.

  ‘OK Owen, here’s the plan,’ Harry said when he’d finished writing. ‘Be very, very nice and polite to our officers. Tell them everything you’ve told me – except the tiny bit about your phone – and if we’re extremely lucky, we might get off with a caution.’

  As Harry led Owen in for his police interview, Annie had to wait on a hard plastic chair outside and brood. Her son was in a police station being interviewed about things he had done while she was gallivanting on the other side of the world. The guilt was going to kill her. She should have been right here, looking after him. She should have meddled right into his business. The money he was making! No way should she have turned such a blind eye to it. Money didn’t appear out of nowhere! People had to work hard for it. How much more of an alarm bell had she needed than for her 14-year-old son to be sending his dad to New York for a weekend?!

  ‘Annie, they’re just going to caution Owen now,’ Harry said, suddenly at her shoulder. She’d been so lost in guilt, she hadn’t even heard him come out. ‘You can come in for this … if you’d like to.’

  Feeling dazed and mentally bruised, Annie walked out of the police station with a jaunty Owen and the ever-charming Harry, who clicked open the locks on his Bentley, held out the door for Annie and insisted that he give them a lift home.

  There were so many things Annie needed to say to Owen. She had to make sure he was OK. She needed to ensure that he’d understood exactly what had happened here today. But these things would have to wait until they were back home, because right now, there was an urgent question for Harry burning in her mind.

  ‘Harry … thank you so much for what you did here for us today.’

  ‘Don’t even mention it,’

  ‘There’s something else I really need to talk to you about.’

  ‘Go on,’ Harry said.

  ‘Those people were copying porn in our house – on Owen’s computer. Is there any way that what they were copying could have somehow got on to the computer system at Owen’s school?’

  ‘Oh God!’ Owen slapped his forehead dramatically, ‘that’s it! That’s how it happened!’

  Annie looked round at Owen in the back seat.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I know all about Dad’s suspension. I mean, I know you and Dad haven’t told me the full details but it’s all anyone can talk about at school. But that’s it! That’s how the viral stuff has ended up all over the school system and been traced back to Dad’s computer. Dimitri and the guys said they needed more back-up, so I gave them the password …’

  When Owen saw the horrified look on his mother’s face, he exclaimed: ‘I didn’t know they were copying porn. Honestly, I had no idea.’

  ‘Owen!’ she hissed, ‘you are grounded … for the rest of the year! For the rest of your bloomin’ life!’

  ‘So, what’s all this about Ed?’ Harry wanted to know.

  The more Annie told him about the situation, the more astonished Harry looked.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he spluttered. ‘I mean, yes, I can totally believe that Owen’s dodgy Daves have managed to infect the entire St Vincent’s system, but I can’t believe you let Ed stew about under a simply horrendous cloud like this without phoning me immediately! The school has suspended him, without a single shred of evidence. That is outrageous! Good Lord, Annie, by the time I�
�ve finished with them, they will rue the day. They will jolly well rue the day!’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Mr Ketteringham-Smith:

  White shirt (M&S)

  Grey suit (Austin Reed)

  Blue tie (same)

  Black shoes (Jones)

  Watch (Timex, gift from mother)

  Total est. cost: £450

  ‘I will be writing to your parents …’

  St Vincent’s was an old-fashioned, traditional, private school. It was all about Victorian Gothic cloisters, lashings of wood panelling and children with regulation neat hair wearing woollen blazers.

  So it was a little strange to see a bright yellow banner hanging over the school gates which read: ‘Bring on Mr Leon.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Harry said from behind the wheel of the Bentley as he drove them smoothly into the courtyard. Whenever Svetlana went out in the family’s car, she hired a driver for the day. But Harry wasn’t flashy, he liked to drive the Bentley himself.

  Ed, sitting in the front seat beside Harry, was blushing about the sign. Annie could tell even though she couldn’t see his face, because his ears always went red when he blushed.

  ‘Look, Dad,’ Owen spotted the banner for the first time: ‘someone’s put that up there for you! There was talk of everyone wearing badges as well. I wonder if anyone made the badges!’

  ‘You have got to be joking,’ was Ed’s astonished response.

  ‘I should bloody well think so! After all they’ve put you through,’ Annie said.

  The Bentley glided to a standstill in the courtyard and immediately one of the sixth form prefects appeared to open doors and guide the party into the school’s reception area.

  ‘Time for me to split,’ Owen announced and ducked out of the way to join the rest of his class for the morning’s assembly. ‘Cheers for the lift, Harry!’

  Not long after, the headmaster, Mr Ketteringham-Smith, appeared and shook everyone by the hand, including Ed, who looked increasingly awkward.

  ‘Ms Valentine – or do we call you Mrs Leon?’ Ketteringham-Smith asked as he took Annie’s hand and pumped it vigorously.

  ‘I’m Mrs Leon today,’ Annie told him, trying to make her smile genuine, but Kettingham-Smith and Annie had never quite seen eye to eye. There had been too many little awkward run-ins in the past. And as for the sight of the school bursar over there, Annie just about shuddered, remembering all the times in the past when she’d had to scrimp and save and pay the fees with a wing and a prayer and a totally over-extended credit card. How he’d looked down his nose at her then. She could never forgive him for that.