by Ellis, Tim
‘So, you’re just going to carry on with the Smith investigation, and totally disregard the Chief, SDI Pollock, or anyone else who tells you to do something you don’t want to do?’
‘Yes, but don’t forget, Bollock said he’d talk to Chief Colville about running two investigations. I’m simply pre-empting that decision.’
‘And what about me?’
‘You’re my partner, you agree with everything I say and do.’
‘Some consultation would have been nice, rather than assuming I’ll go along with everything you decide to do.’
‘Stop nit-picking.’
They arrived in Hastings at ten to one.
‘Are we having lunch?’ Stick asked.
‘We’ll see this Allan Williams first, and then grab a sandwich to eat on the way back.’
Number 78 Havelock Road was a town house, which stood in the shadow of Brighton University. Xena knocked, and they were just about to give up when the door opened.
‘Yes?’ An old man, carrying a walking stick with a silver duck’s head handle, was standing in the doorway. He had white hair, a white beard, and a crimson cravat tucked into an open-neck checked shirt.
Xena showed her warrant card. ‘We’re looking for Mr Allan Williams.’
‘I am he.’
‘I believe you took delivery of a grandfather clock last Tuesday?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Do you mind if we come in?’
‘Sure, but it’ll take me some time to get up the stairs.’
“Some time” was an understatement. It took Mr Williams at least twenty minutes to climb the stairs to his living room, and the longer it took the more exasperated Xena became. She wished she’d never asked to go inside.
‘There’s a supermarket along the road,’ Stick said. ‘I’ll go and get the sandwiches to save us time afterwards. What do you want?’
‘Get me a gun,’ she said.
‘You’re still there, are you?’ Mr Williams called over his shoulder.
‘Still here,’ Xena tossed back at him.
‘Sorry about this. I have a catheter up my willy, and a colostomy bag stuck on my stomach which itches all the time. If that weren’t bad enough, one of my hips needs replacing, and I have a slipped disc. Let me tell you, getting old isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and I haven’t even mentioned the tennis elbow, the gout, or the spondylosis in my back. Charlton Heston had it right in that film Soylent Green – voluntary euthanasia to feed the younger people. Instead, they keep us alive until we’re nothing but a bag of bones with no quality of life. It’d sort the economy out at the stroke of a pen if they built those voluntary euthanasia centres and turned us into meat and potato pies. I’d be the first in the queue let me tell you.’
‘If they haven’t got any Soylent Green sandwiches, I’ll have the egg mayonnaise.’
‘You know they go everywhere. I’ll get you some wet wipes as well.’
‘I don’t know how I ever survived before you came along.’
‘I don’t know either. Is that it?’
‘A bottle of orange juice… with the bits still in it if you can get one, and a double Mars bar.’
Stick wandered off. Xena sat on the bottom stair and waited for Williams to get to the top.
Eventually, they were all sitting in Mr Williams’ living room, which stank like a blocked toilet. Xena was glad Stick had put the food in the car and not brought it up with him. Mr Williams kept spraying jasmine-scented air freshener into the room, but it hardly made a dent in the smell of faeces.
‘There it is,’ he said, pointing to an antique grandfather clock in the right-hand corner of the room. ‘A two-train flame mahogany veneered Regulator Clock signed Desbois & Wheeler, Grays Inn Passage, London – circa 1810. Yours for fourteen-thousand-nine-hundred-and-fifty-pounds.’
Stick stood up, walked over to the clock and admired the craftsmanship as he stroked the wood. ‘Very nice. I hope you’ve got it insured?’
‘Too right. It’s an heirloom for my daughter. I have bugger all to spend my money on, so I’m making a number of shrewd investments to prevent the government from stealing my money when I end up in residential care.’
Xena got to the point. ‘We’re interested in the man who delivered the clock.’
‘You don’t think I’d let one person carry it up those stairs, do you? There were two of them.’
Xena hadn’t given it much thought before, but it was obvious now that Mr Williams had said it. ‘Of course.’
‘Normally, the people you buy something from arrange for delivery, and you pay a delivery charge, but I had to organise my own delivery of the clock. I bought it online, and they said they didn’t deliver. So, I found a company…’
‘ESP Logistics?’
‘Yeah, something like that… and those two guys turned up in a white van and delivered the clock – no complaints.’
‘Can you describe the two men?’
‘One had long curly blond hair like a woman. In fact, if he’d put on a dress and some makeup I might have fancied him. Except, he had this weird chin… Do you remember Jimmy Hill the footballer?’
‘Not my specialist subject,’ Xena said.
Stick nodded. ‘I do.’
‘Well, he had a chin like Jimmy Hill. The other guy was much younger, probably mid-twenties with that stupid type of Brylcreemed hair that they mess up with their fingers instead of combing into a decent parting. He had an earring in his right ear and a double strand of barbed wire tattooed around his neck – crazy person. I heard the other one call him Kev.’
Xena couldn’t wait to get out of the house and breathe fresh air again. ‘Thanks very much for your help, Mr Williams,’ she said standing up. ‘I’m sure it will come in very useful.’
Outside she said, ‘I thought I was going to suffocate in there.’
‘I put the vaporub under my nose.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’
‘I distinctly recall you saying that you could manage quite well without my help.’
***
Jerry returned home to find that the doors had been left open, and the inside of the house resembled a landfill site. At first, she thought the neighbours – or at least the riffraff further along the street – had been in and helped themselves to anything shiny or valuable, but then she realised that the police had searched the house.
With a heavy heart, she moved from room to room. In the kitchen the doors had been ripped off the units, and the contents had been emptied out. The floor was piled high with cereals, empty packets and boxes, tins, bread, spaghetti, raisins, cutlery, and smashed crockery. From what she could see very little was salvageable.
In the living room, everything had been emptied out on the floor. The DVDs were snapped in half, the 100-year old gold carriage clock they’d received as a wedding present from her parents had been smashed beyond repair, the television and DVD player were in bits, and all her family pictures had been ripped from their frames and torn in half.
The other rooms were in the same condition. By the time she reached her bedroom she was an emotional wreck, and crumpled to the floor in tears.
If it were the last thing she did, she’d destroy that bitch MacGregor. Instead of a controlled search, she’d allowed her officers to destroy all their possessions.
She had to go to the hospital and see Ray, but first she needed to have a shower, and change her clothes. They’d dragged her out of bed in her nightdress, and everyone must have had a good eyeful. She wasn’t in the first flush of youth by any stretch of the imagination, but she could hold her own in most female company.
The shampoo, conditioner, and toothpaste had been emptied down the sink, but by cutting through the plastic containers she was able to salvage enough to wash her hair and brush her teeth. She doubted they were looking for anything specific – it was merely malicious. Thankfully, they hadn’t destroyed her clothes, but they had scattered everything – including her lingeri
e – around the bedroom, and she had to sort through the mess to find something to wear.
Her hairdryer had a crack down the side, and unsurprisingly didn’t work, so she had to leave her hair wet even though she knew it would dry frizzy. She’d try and get a dryer while she was out.
Next, she had to find the keys to the car, which were in her bag that she’d left in the kitchen. She hadn’t been able to take anything with her. The bag had been ripped apart and discarded on the floor. The keys were hidden under a pile of muesli and cornflakes. She found her purse, but the £90 she’d had in there was missing.
In the shower, she’d thought through what she needed to do. She found the digital camera in the living room, and it still worked. Moving from room to room, she took photographs. What they’d done was unforgivable, and she was going to make them pay for it. Whatever happened to being innocent until proven guilty? MacGregor and her team had come into her house like judge, jury, and executioner. Well, the bitch was going to rue the day she crossed Jerry Kowalski.
She found the yellow pages in the hallway, but the phone had been ripped out of the wall. It was too difficult to try and find her mobile, so she searched through the solicitors’ section of the yellow pages until she spotted a name she liked the look of: Charlie Baxter, Attorney at Law. She ripped the page out, and stuffed it in her trouser pocket.
Ray was indisposed – it was up to her to get her family back. She clenched her teeth. And get them back she would. She found a working phone box down the road. Thankfully, they hadn’t stolen her change.
‘Charlie Baxter?’
‘Mr Baxter, my name is Jerry Kowalski. Do you want to be on television?’
‘I don’t have to take my clothes off, do I?’
‘Not unless you want to. Meet me at King George Hospital in half an hour, and I’ll tell you how you can help me.’
***
He’d had three hours sleep – it wasn’t enough. He killed people for a living, and didn’t normally toss and turn in bed at night. Admittedly, he’d been trying to sleep during the day, which might have influenced his sleeping pattern, but he didn’t think so. It was the sight of that woman, and what he was going to do about it.
His instincts told him not to get involved. Yet… he’d stumbled onto a killer of young innocent women. Well, he assumed they were innocent. He’d only been in that room a short time, but the woman didn’t look as though she’d been sexually assaulted. Why did the killer dress himself up as a woman? Was he a transvestite? Was there something sexual about the whole thing? And what had the man been doing in the room all that time?
He’d convinced himself it was nothing to do with him, and yet he was still thinking about it. His only concern was Parish. But the woman had been the Parish’s nanny, which meant that Parish was involved, and as a consequence – Chapman Ryder was involved.
The room was windowless and dark. He sat up and switched on the light. His mobile was flashing silently. Ruth Völker had left him a message. He listened: “Ring me” – short and sweet.
Not yet, first he had to get a coffee, and then a shower. And when he did ring her, as far as he was concerned, there was nothing to report. Oh yes, some crazy person had murdered Parish’s nanny, but that had no bearing on why he was there.
Sitting in his briefs in the one easy chair he wondered what would happen if he did get involved. There were two options open to him. First, he could kill the man, and that would be an end to it. Second, he could send an anonymous message to Parish informing him where the killer of his nanny was holed up. Or, as he’d already decided, he could leave well alone. There was no point in being an undercover operative if he kept sticking his head above the parapet to take a look around.
There was a knock at the door.
Probably the maid, he thought. He should have hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob.
He threw on his dressing gown and opened the door.
A man stood there. He was vaguely familiar, but the long brown hair and moustache threw him momentarily, which was long enough for the seven-inch blade to slip through the intercostal space between the fourth and fifth ribs and enter the left ventricle of his heart.
Chapman Ryder’s last thought, as he crumpled to the floor in a heap, was disbelief that someone could kill him when he was meant to be a top undercover operative.
***
He told them most of what Carrie and the Chief Constable’s PA had said to him. He left out the bit about Carrie thinking he was a super DI. There didn’t seem any point in muddying the waters.
‘There’s something not right about all of that,’ Angie said.
‘And the Chief is okay?’ Richards pressed.
‘They’re keeping him in hospital under observation.’
‘What I want to know,’ Angie persisted, ‘is why the Chief Constable isn’t doing something about it.’
‘You heard,’ Parish said. ‘He wouldn’t talk to me.’
Angie shoved him out of the way. ‘I’ll phone Jerry, she’ll be able to give me some straight answers.’ She tried the home number, which sounded as though it had been disconnected. Then, she tried Jerry’s mobile, but it went to voicemail. ‘How strange?’
‘We should go home and help them,’ Richards said.
Parish shook his head. ‘I wish we could, but we have to stay here until the FBI release Alicia Mae’s body, then we have to arrange for it to be flown home. We also need to contact her next of kin and break the news about her death.’ He pulled Alicia Mae’s passport out of his back pocket and opened it to the back page where her parents – Richard and Matilda Carter – were written in the space provided together with their address and telephone number. He passed the passport to Richards. ‘You phone.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘But… I hardly knew her, and…’
‘Don’t talk rubbish. You knew her just as well as your mother and me. Think of it as training.’
She sighed, sat down by the telephone, and rang the number on the passport. ‘No such number.’
‘Are you sure…?’ Angie began.
‘Yes, I rang the right number.’ She tried again, reading the numbers out loud. ‘Listen.’ She held the phone to Parish’s ear.
‘The number you have dialled has not been recognised,’ the automated woman said. ‘Please check and try again.’
‘Alicia Mae must have written it down wrong,’ Angie said. ‘Here, let me,’ she said moving Richards out of the way. After finding a number in her mobile phonebook, she punched it in and waited.
‘Hello, Marveen.’ She recounted the details of their trip so far. ‘The reason I rang you is to find out the contact details for her parents. We have a number, but it’s unobtainable.’
Angie picked up Alicia Mae’s passport and held it open at the last page while she listened. ‘Yes, that’s the number we’ve got. No, we don’t know either. You will? That would be great. I’ll ring you again in three hours.’ She put the phone down. ‘Marveen is looking into it.’
‘I’ll speak to Harry when I see him, ask him if we can get access to Alicia Mae’s personal effects. She might have something on her mobile, an address book, or a diary.’
‘What about the Chief?’ Richards said.
‘No, I don’t think he’ll know her parents’ number.’
Richards ignored his quip. ‘We can’t just abandon him.’
‘Kowalski will be all right. We know the story isn’t true, so they can’t have any evidence that he’s the devil incarnate, and… you seem to have forgotten that I have a presentation to give on Friday.’
‘No one will miss that.’
‘Exactly, that’s why it’s important for you to wear your itzy-bitzy bikini. I need help to make it memorable.’
‘You know I’m not going to wear it, so stop going on.’
‘Tell her, Angie.’
‘I will not.’
‘That’s right, take your daughter’s side again. I hate the
way you two gang up on me.’
***
‘Aren’t we meant to be at a post mortem now?’ Stick asked. He had snatched the keys off Xena when she suggested driving back, and they were now on the A21 at Royal Tunbridge Wells heading towards the M25 and the Dartford Tunnel.
‘Did you hear Bollock tell us to attend the post mortem?’
‘Well no, but you said…’
‘I’m not the SDI leading us into the valley of death. If he’d wanted us to attend the PM he should have given us clear instructions to do so. I even gave him a leg up when we were talking about the charge, but he didn’t take the hint about vague orders. Instead, he led me to believe that he was going to the PM, and we should carry on looking for scratch numbers. Am I right, or am I right?’
‘The truth is, you’re not bothered if these Mothers Against Paedophiles kill more paedophiles or not, are you?’
‘The truth is a multifaceted monster, Stick. Paedophiles certainly deserve everything they get, but I’m more interested in SDI Bollock and myself getting our just desserts. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the man is a complete idiot.’
‘A similar thought had crossed my mind.’
‘I thought you didn’t have thoughts? You said your head was completely empty.’
‘Sometimes, a random thought rattles around in there, but mostly it’s empty.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘I presume SDI Pollock’s just dessert is to be shown up as the idiot he surely is, but what’s yours?’
‘Promotion to DI.’
‘A noble cause.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘It means, I don’t mind helping you if you get promoted at the end of it.’
‘Sometimes, I don’t know what to make of you, Stick.’
‘Thanks, Sarge.’
Xena decided that seeing as they were vaguely in the area, they may as well pop into ESP Logistics at Hainault, and ask a couple of questions. It was nearly on their way back, and could be considered a wasted opportunity if they didn’t show their faces.