“Oh, Rex,” a female voice replied at the other end of the line. “This is Charlotte. I was expecting Malcolm.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he said in good humour.
“Not at all. Is he available? I wanted to thank him for the delectable chocolates.”
“He’s in the garden attacking a bramble patch. I’ll go fetch him.”
“Not if he’s busy. But if you could give him my mobile number. It’s the only way to reach me as I’m not in the book.”
“Be glad to.” Rex wrote down the digits, thinking Malcolm would be glad she had called. And it was a lucky coincidence she had. “While I have you on the phone,” he said, “I wanted to advise you of something I heard from Lottie this morning. In case nobody mentioned it to you.”
“No. What?”
“A prowler was spotted by Mrs. Jensen, who lives across the street from you. At around two this morning.”
“Doing what, exactly?” Charlotte asked sharply, and Rex wished he hadn’t had to be the one to deliver the sinister news.
“She saw a man keeping to the shadow zones between the street lamps, possibly wearing a balaclava.”
Charlotte laughed unexpectedly. “Sorry, but isn’t that just too ludicrous to be believed? I mean, really.” She giggled again. “And all because the lady loves Milk Tray?”
“Come again?”
“Remember those adverts where a man in a balaclava rappels down the side of a building and enters a window, and then presents a box of chocolates to a woman in a negligée? That’s what your description reminded me of. I suppose it’s because I have chocolates on my mind.”
“Oh, I see.” Rex smiled. “Do they still run that ad?”
“I don’t know. I don’t watch much telly.”
“Well, I just wanted to pass that information on. Better safe than sorry, if you’ll pardon the cliché. Make sure you lock up at night. In fact, all the time for now.” The four murders had been conducted in broad daylight, after all.
“I will, and I appreciate your concern, Rex. Bye now,” Charlotte breathed into the phone, and she hung up before he could respond or ask if she had a dog.
A sense of guilt niggled at him as he stood with the phone in his hand and tried to fathom why. Guilt for enjoying the caressing sound of her voice? For speaking and joking with her when Malcolm should have been having that conversation? Guilt for worrying her with some silly gossip? Irritated without quite knowing the reason, he replaced the receiver and went to tell Malcolm that Charlotte had called and left her number.
“I warned her aboot the prowler, but she didn’t seem unduly concerned,” he reported. He didn’t mention the anecdote about the Cadbury chocolates. At least he hadn’t called her Charlie, the nickname she went by—as she’d mentioned the day before.
“Do you think I should ask her out for dinner?” Malcolm looked eager, evidently pleased she had taken the initiative to call. “Strike while the iron’s hot, sort of thing? But it’s Saturday. What if she already has a date?” Frowning, he kicked the shovel loose of clods of earth.
“Then you’ll find oot one way or the other. But she did phone to thank you for the chocolates and to leave her number,” Rex encouraged his friend.
“Right,” Malcolm said, perking up. “And she must have gone to the trouble of looking mine up since I never gave it to her.”
Rex experienced a bizarre feeling of déjà vu, of being back at university trying to gauge a girl’s interest and debating whether or not to ask her out. Malcolm had always been a vacillator in that regard.
“The King’s Head or perhaps something fancier? There’s a nice Italian restaurant on the high street in Godminton.”
“Ask her,” Rex suggested.
“Oh, I say, you don’t mind me leaving you at home, do you? Why don’t you come along? It might be less awkward.”
“Not for me. I’d feel like a third wheel. And I can easily fend for myself.”
“Anyway, it may be moot, since she may have other plans.” Malcolm took the spade to the shed, relatched the door, and returned without his gardening gloves. They walked back to the house.
“‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,’” Malcolm quoted from Shakespeare’s Henry V. “What if she says no?”
Rex pushed his friend towards the hall phone where he had left Charlotte’s number and retreated to the kitchen, closing the door behind him. All but oblivious to the murmur of Malcolm’s voice down the hall, he focused on his research where he had left off half an hour previously.
_____
John Calpin’s article in the Scotsman hinted at revelations in his upcoming book, Baddest British Mobsters, due out in August of the following year from Penworth Press. The exposé had simply summarized the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars of the eighties and showed how the Cruikshank Twins had successfully implemented the model in Essex, thereby attracting the attention of a Russian gang operating out of northeast London. Rex felt he might be getting closer to solving the riddle of the Russian letters, even though the article made no mention of them. It was elsewhere that he had read about a London gang using MИP as their symbol. What if it were the same gang, he thought with excitement.
The article was merely a teaser. More was to be divulged in the journalist’s book. Rex wished he could get his hands on it now.
Malcolm burst into the kitchen. “She said yes! We’re going to the King’s Head. I’d better go up and shower. Shirt and tie, or pullover?”
“Pullover.”
“And you’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Of course not. I’m up to my eyes in research. You know how I get.” A few hours of peace from Malcolm would be a boon, Rex thought, and he was happy that Charlotte had accepted his dinner invitation. His friend definitely needed more of a social life.
Malcolm left the room in a whirl and Rex heard him run up the carpeted stairs. Minutes later, the sound of water gushing through the pipes signified his friend was in the shower. The drowned-out words of a tuneless song reached him from the bathroom as he considered the implication of the words on his screen and how they might relate to the Notting Hamlet murders.
Frank Cruikshank, he learned, was most often referred to as Frankie in references to the notorious Essex gang. Rex remembered the name Frankie coming up in a conversation with a resident and reviewed his notes. He quickly found what he was looking for. Ernest had mentioned the name to Lottie in the context of it being time for him and Frankie to move on. A slip-up, no doubt, on Ernest’s part. The name was such a coincidence that Rex all but concluded Ernest and Barry were the elusive gangland twins, and if Frankie had been Barry in his new identity, Ernest had been Kevin, or Kev, as he’d been commonly known. He had also gone by “Kevlar Kev” or just Kevlar.
Online sources alluded to Kev as the leader of the gang, a man not to be trifled with and who had managed to avoid justice at every turn, thus earning him the sobriquet. Perhaps the fact he had escaped the arson attack on his family and other mob hits had reinforced his reputation for invincibility.
Rex unearthed a second photo of the nephew who had overseen the ice cream vendors and controlled their runs. Darrell Cruikshank had also directed the family’s bookmaking, loansharking, and other nefarious activities until an investigation by MI5 and the Inland Revenue resulted in his imprisonment. Darrell had not given up his uncles, which had presumably done nothing to commute the length of his sentence, and he was only due for release in October of this year, according to the online information. “Wait a minute,” Rex said aloud. “That’s last month!” He would make enquiries first thing Monday morning at the high-security prison where Darrell had resided for twenty years at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
Malcolm popped his head round the door, his face scrubbed pink and his hair, neatly parted at the side, still damp from his shower. “Wish me luck.”
“The best.”
“How’s the research coming along?” Dressed in dark slacks and a navy blue crew-neck sweater, Malcolm ap
proached the table where Rex was working.
Rex gave his friend a brief overview of his findings, including an account of the Cruikshank family’s “financial services” in ironic quotation marks.
“So the Cruikshanks were not only drug traffickers, but loan sharks?” Malcolm whistled softly.
“Correct. Not nice people.”
“Do we really care that they’re dead?” his friend asked. “That’s if they are, in fact, our Notting Hamlet victims.”
“That’s not the point. Somebody murdered them and we undertook to discover who. The nephew was supposed to have been released from Belmarsh in October.” Rex scratched his beard. “He may well have an axe to grind with his family’s murderer and want to see them brought to justice. I wonder if he would talk to me. Anyway, get off with you. You don’t want to be late on your first date with Charlotte.”
“Heavens, no. See you later. Don’t work too hard.” Malcolm accompanied his admonishment with a smile, knowing from experience that Rex would do just that. “And don’t forget to eat.”
“Stop fussing!” Rex shooed him off in jovial spirits, and Malcolm left.
The garage door clanged open and shut and the sound of Malcolm’s car grew fainter. Through the kitchen window Rex saw it was already growing dark. Easing back into his project with full concentration, he managed to find old photographs of the Cruikshank twins and, though in grainy black-and-white, they showed they were not identical. In their new lives in Notting Hamlet, Ernest and Barry were 81 and 79 years old respectively, no doubt to disguise their true identities better.
Rex also found a photo of the daughter, Sylvia, leaving the Old Bailey in 1995 after her father was acquitted of a murder, but she bore little resemblance to the picture of Valerie Trotter from the media photo, procured Rex knew not where. One police mug shot showed Fred the Spanner as a young man, before his disfiguring scar, though he had never been an Adonis. Compared to the recent newspaper photo, there could be no doubt he was Vic Chandler: the same bullet-shaped head, pug nose, and prominent ears, though he had taken to shaving off his hair, or what remained of it.
The background material on the Cruikshank gang suggested organized crime had not been a family business before the twins saw the potential of selling drugs in the as-yet unsaturated market of Essex, a county endowed with ports and strategic proximity to London. Born to an Irish Catholic gas meter reader and his wife Eileen, Kev and Frankie Cruikshank grew up in Clacton-on-Sea, the eldest of nine children, but hadn’t recruited among their brothers and sisters. In fact, they seemed to have made it their mission to improve the lives of their siblings by footing the bills for vocational training, as well as extracurricular school activities for the youngest of them. The screen began to blur. Rex rubbed the inner corners of his eyes between thumb and forefinger. Tired from staring at the computer, he went back to his notes and read over his interviews with the residents.
Ernest Blackwell and Barry Burns had portrayed themselves as amiable old duffers, no doubt playing up their senile ailments, and had acted the part of good neighbours without, however, getting too close to the other residents. Ernest’s dread of hospitals made abundant sense now in light of his new identity. Lie low and avoid all risk of detection would have been his mantra, as with the rest of the gang.
The twins had golfed together, no one suspecting their blood relationship. Valerie, the erstwhile Sylvia, had visited Ernest for lunch that fateful day, a natural thing for a daughter to do, and had maintained ties, romantic or purely friendly, with the fictional Vic Chandler, whose photo clearly denounced him as Fred, the main intimidator and enforcer for the Cruikshank Twins.
Rex had to hand it to them. The four members of the Essex gang had pulled off quite a coup maintaining their anonymity for two decades in a small community where everybody made it a point of knowing everybody else’s business.
While continuing to scour the Internet for further information, his cell phone bleeped. A text message from Helen reported she and Julie had boarded the flagship they were cruising on from Miami to the Southern Caribbean. Accompanying photos of their ocean-view cabin boasted a picture window and two bathrooms. More luxurious and spacious than Malcolm’s guest bedroom, Rex noted. He responded, and they continued to exchange messages until the bulb in the Tiffany light above the kitchen table went out, leaving only the under-cabinet strip lighting as illumination. Not a problem for reading his phone or computer screen, but a strain on his eyes for his notes, written in his small, precise hand.
When Helen signed off, he got up to look for a replacement bulb, checking first under the sink among the various detergents and sponges, and then in the laundry room. After searching without luck, he thought about calling Malcolm, but ultimately decided not to interrupt his date for something so trivial. The next most likely place he could think of was under the stairs so he made for the hall.
The cupboard lit up with the pull of a string and revealed a narrow, cobwebby space in which he was forced to bow his head. As he was rummaging among the shelves for the spare light bulbs, a dark woollen garment fell to the floor. Picking it up, he was so shocked to see what it was that he inadvertently banged his head on the low ceiling and swore, both from pain and the disturbing surprise of what he had found. He held in his hand a black balaclava.
SIXTEEN
REX PLACED THE BALACLAVA on the kitchen table, anxious to ask Malcolm about it as soon as he returned from the pub. Unable to concentrate fully on his research, he heated up a carton of soup and cut two thick slices of bread. It seemed pointless to spend more time exploring a gang angle to the murders if Malcolm knew more than he let on. Rex could not begin to comprehend what his friend was doing skulking about the neighbourhood at night wearing a ski mask.
He clung to the hope that his friend had not worn it. And yet, it had been at the top of the pile of scarves and gloves in the stair cupboard, and Rex was almost certain he had heard a noise in the house late the previous night, something falling, perhaps, or a door slamming shut. The exterior kitchen door stuck a bit and required a shove to open and close properly. And the kitchen was directly beneath his guest bedroom. “Oh, Malcolm, what is going on?” he asked himself.
He had not mentioned the balaclava to his friend, since Mrs. Jensen had not been absolutely certain about the person’s clothes. If he had divulged this detail, would Malcolm have hidden the bonnet? That would have been a sure indication of guilt. How would he react when he saw it on the table? Rex recalled too that his friend hadn’t wanted to tell Charlotte about the prowler at first. Some of Malcolm’s behaviour had been dodgy, not least his wiping away of potentially crucial evidence. How involved was Malcolm, in reality, in the Notting Hamlet murders? Rex grew increasingly uneasy.
He poured himself a glass of wine, resolved to reserve judgement until his friend got home. Hopefully, Malcolm could supply a believable explanation for his nocturnal escapade, or else be able to convince him he had not worn the headgear at all.
Mercifully, he did not have long to wait. As he was clearing away the dishes from his light supper, he heard a car engine in the driveway and the garage door open with a jarring clang. He prepared himself. When Malcolm walked in from the laundry room leading from the garage, Rex was drying his wine glass and summoning all his composure.
“All right?” Malcolm asked, smiling. Rex noticed he was wearing a dark jacket and grasping a rolled-up newspaper, which he held up, failing to notice the balaclava on the kitchen table. “You’ll never guess what.”
“I didn’t expect you back so soon,” Rex said. “How did it go with Charlotte?”
“Quite well, I think. We have quite a lot in common, actually. She likes sci-fi and Thai food. Didn’t ask me in for a nightcap, though. I think I’ll have a glass of that Beaujolais.” Malcolm deposited the newspaper on the counter while he opened an upper cabinet and reached for a wine glass.
“What’s in the paper?” Rex enquired, still troubled by the balaclava, but curious as to why Malcolm w
ould have the Sun newspaper on him. He knew about his friend’s aversion to the tabloids, so for him to pick one up and bring it home meant it must contain something momentous.
“It was left on our table at the pub. I wouldn’t ordinarily have glanced at the Sun, but something caught my eye.”
“Well?” Rex asked while Malcolm silently poured them both a glass of wine, filling the one Rex had dried and left on the workspace.
“Your journalist John Calpin has been murdered, that’s what.”
Rex grabbed the newspaper. It took only a minute to read the story, which was graphic in content and sensationalistic in style. “Dear God,” he said, looking at Malcolm.
“Didn’t you watch the news?” his friend asked.
“I haven’t left the kitchen all evening. This is most disturbing.” Rex slapped the paper back down on the counter. “The vicious nature of Calpin’s murder bears the hallmark of the ones committed here.”
“Only worse,” Malcolm said. “The murders are all personal in nature, aren’t they? I’d go so far as to say revenge killings. I wonder if Calpin’s murder had anything to do with his snooping around Notting Hamlet asking after his birth mother.”
“I’d say it has everything to do with it, but I don’t think he was really trying to find his birth mother. That might have been a ruse. I think he was on to something. Something big. I think in the course of his research on the Cruikshank gang, he discovered they might be living in Bedfordshire. He was doing research for his book on British mobsters, remember, and the question of where the gang disappeared has always been something of a mystery. Presumably, not everyone bought the story of their absconding to Australia.”
Malcolm concurred with a grave nod. “Someone found out what John Calpin was up to and abducted him. According to the Sun, he was first reported missing in Glasgow three weeks ago, but a grown man going missing doesn’t usually make headline news.”
Murder Comes Calling Page 12