“The gig was a start. We figured, get her on a stage. Remind her how good she was. And after that, it would be easier.”
“Easier to get her back on tour and easier to leave her.”
He smiled sadly and shook his head. “I’d never have left Lyra. She’d have left me. Once she was Lyra again, it was only a matter of time before someone else would come along.”
I recalled her clumsy pass at Mouret, even in her stage-frightened condition and knew that Foster was probably right: once her confidence returned Lyra would have found some young dashing arm candy and Morgan and Liz would have been able to fade into the background together and guilt free.
“So,” I noted, “if Lyra left you, you’d be entitled to a sizeable pay-out.”
Foster glowered at me.
“But then, Jenny: you enjoyed spending cash. This wedding was costing a sizeable chunk and my guess is you weren’t entirely oblivious to daddy’s predicament. If Lyra started closing the purse strings you’d be in a rather unpleasant place wouldn’t you?”
“You think I strangled her for wedding cake?” Jenny asked.
“No,” I admitted, “but I think you could have developed a deep dislike of her. And then, of course, within an hour of arriving at the Marq, she’s pissed off half the staff at the pub and most of her entourage, threatened to close the Bank of Lyra to you and started demanding drugs.”
“Maybe you snapped at her willingness to blow cash on – well, blow – while refusing to pay for the proposed happiest day of your life. Or maybe,” I turned back to Morgan and Liz, “one of you got tired of waiting.”
“Now listen here!” Foster went to rise from his seat, but Liz Britton restrained him gently and he resumed his place. “We never expected it to be easy. The Marq was the start; she’d be unlikely to leave me after a PA there.”
“She’d been so clean,” Liz said. “I still can’t understand why she’d been demanding coke.”
“I think she was demanding it for someone else,” I answered, “someone she wanted to impress. But her demands were heard by someone who was making a little money on the side by dealing in exactly what she needed.”
I turned to Chopper, “There are people who reckon, Mr Falzone, that you run a – what was it DI Reid? – criminal network of drugs, prostitution, gambling and murder. Alongside having an illegal and well-hidden interest in the Marq.”
Chopper glared at the florid figure standing to the left of the double doors. “DI Reid can think what he likes. But until he can prove otherwise, I’m a businessman, with a half dozen discount general stores, a couple of hairdressers and half share in a gym. I don’t deal drugs.”
“But not all your employees are as anti-drugs as you, Mr Falzone. Mr Christie, for example, was present in the bar when Lyra made her demands, saw my point blank refusal to provide her with drugs and spotted an opportunity to make a few quid.”
“Bollocks!” Christie growled.
Chopper lifted a finger. “Go on,” he murmured.
“Christie’d been around the Marq many times before – he used to hassle the previous owners,” I glanced at Ali.
“He knew the layout of the pub, so he let himself out, went around to the side alleyway and entered the pub via the back door before introducing himself to his new customer.”
“Boss, this is bullshit!” Christie protested.
Falzone didn’t even glance at him. “You heard, Mr Christie,” he said, his gaze never shifting from me. “You know my feelings around drug dealing. You got any proof to support this.”
I glanced down. Still nothing on the phone. I reached into my pocket. “Whoever Lyra purchased her drugs from was aware of the power of branding. They stamped each little packet of the powder with a little picture. Very, very distinctive.”
From my pocket, I withdrew a small plastic bag which contained the wraps that Ali had confiscated from the ASBO twins a couple of days ago. I flicked the bag into the middle of the table where it was visible to all.
Chopper glanced at the contents of the bag and a frown flickered across his face.
“So you got the wraps Lyra had,” Christie growled, a thin film of perspiration on his top lip. “So what?”
“Two so what’s, Jimmy: how do you know what Lyra had? And these aren’t from Lyra’s dressing table. The police still have those items. These are the wraps that you personally sold to some friends of mine this week. Wraps that I reckon still have your dabs on them.”
Christie jumped to his feet. “This is a fit up! I never touched that old bitch.”
“Never said you did, Jimmy. But you did sell her the gear that was sprinkled all over her body when I found it.”
Chopper slowly fixed his eyes on Christie. “Sit down,” he said.
“Boss,” Christie pleaded, “this is crazy.”
He got no further. Chopper slammed his fist into the table top, making the whole room jump.
Christie dropped back in his chair.
“Go on.” Chopper addressed me.
“Christie’s right: he didn’t kill Lyra. He was interested in money not murder. Which is why, later that night, while I was being interrogated by DI Reid over there, he arranged to have the Marq robbed.”
“You lying fucker!” Christie roared, lunging across the table at me and getting not much more than a few inches before Grant, who had been sitting as impassively as a granite carving, reached out, wrapped one arm around Christie’s neck, used his other arm to grab his wrist, stuck one of his size eleven’s between Christie’s feet and flicked it backwards, sprawling Christie face down on the table.
“I think Mr Falzone would prefer if you stayed seated,” Grant said quietly but firmly, before dragging the thug back into his seat. “My apologies,” he said to me, before resuming his own seat.
“Chopper,” Christie pleaded in a strangled voice, “this is bollocks. I was working for you that night. You know I was. I was sitting outside the cop shop waiting for this fucking pansy to come out. Croft was with me all night, for Christ’s sake.”
“He’s right,” I admitted, withdrawing the contents of the envelope that Ali had just delivered and sorting through them. “But remember what I said: Christie needed money. And he needed it because he had a rather expensive and demanding new hobby.”
Christie opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again.
“Opening night at the Marq that night. You know how it is: everyone has a camera these days. But we had some professionals there too. You know the sort of thing: who’s been seen doing what at the opening of the Marq. Never hurts to get some publicity in the press. Oh they wouldn’t have bothered with Jimmy here: he’s not exactly the photogenic type, is he? But his date was photogenic, even with him in the shot. I think you’ll recognise her, Mr Falzone.”
I slid the 8x4 across to Chopper, who glanced down, frowned, reached a shaking hand out to the black and white image and touched the face of the over made-up jailbait that Christie had taken to the Marq.
“Elaine?” he asked, as though addressing the girl personally, his voice a mixture of incredulity and outrage.
“I guess the sweet sixteen you were arranging for her wasn’t grown-up enough.”
“My granddaughter?” Falzone lifted his eyes. “You? And my Elaine?” He looked at Christie. “You robbed my pub to – what? – pay for trinkets for her?”
“Not quite.” I answered for Christie, whose mouth was wriggling soundlessly. “The night that the contents of the safe were removed while I was in the police station – Christie was sitting outside with a witness. But your granddaughter wasn’t...”
Falzone turned his eyes to Christie. Words seemed to be failing him. “You... corrupted my angel? You?”
“Boss...” Christie finally managed to get a word out and Falzone held up a hand that silenced him immediately.
I put the next photo in the middle of the table. “I’m not sure that Christie enjoyed much of the fruits of his labour.” The picture showed Elaine F
alzone tottering down Bond Street with armloads of designer shopping bags.
Falzone’s nostrils flared. His colour morphed through several shades of outraged purple before settling down and he lifted his eyes to mine. “Thank you, Danny. Thank you for bringing these matters to my attention. This will not be forgotten.”
I didn’t like the sound of the last statement.
“So if he didn’t kill her,” Jenny broke the moment, “who did?”
All eyes turned to me.
“Danny?” Robert prompted.
And at that moment the mobile vibrated twice. I touched the screen. Two messages. Dear God, please let this be them. I opened the message screen, scanned the incoming missives and looked up at the assembled group.
“Who indeed,” I said.
Chapter Fifty-Six
“There’s a more interesting question,” I began, “and it’s this: how did Lyra die?”
“Someone strangled her,” Reid announced flatly from the back of the room.
“Right. Only they didn’t just do that, did they? The killer didn’t just put their hands around her neck, do the deed, wipe off any surfaces they’d touched and leave. They throttled her, toe open packets of drugs and hurled them all over the room. What does that suggest?”
“Fury,” said Nick.
I nodded. “Fury sounds about right. This wasn’t someone who killed Lyra just because they wanted her dead. This was someone who was so consumed with rage that killing her wasn’t enough: they wanted to tear the place to pieces.
“Only that would have attracted attention and – despite their rage – the killer wasn’t stupid. They didn’t want to be caught. Or punished. But this was not a killing for profit. This was a killing by someone who had idolised Lyra for a lifetime, who’d set her up as something perfect and who had just discovered that their idol had feet of purest clay. The disappointment must have been intense. And then, of course, it turned from disappointment to outright rage and...”
“Leon?” Liz frowned. “But Leon’s dead. If he killed Lyra, who killed him?”
“Not Leon,” I said, “though he is the obvious suspect. This was someone who’d been pushed to the edge of loathing and had then plunged off the edge. So who’d been upset by Lyra that day?”
I looked around the table.
Jenny Foster snorted. “Pretty much everyone,” she snapped, wrapping her arms around herself.
“She’d pissed you off,” I prompted.
“She made a pass at my fiancée. As if Dom would have any interest in a dried-up old hag like her.”
“And you?” I turned to Dominic Mouret. “Had Lyra annoyed you that day?”
He shook his head. “Not especially; she could be difficult at the best of times, but she was no worse than usual.”
“So the presence of Leon Baker – a man who’d sworn that he’d write the defining biography of your subject – didn’t worry you?”
Mouret waved a hand dismissively. “I’m a professional writer,” he smirked. “Leon was a fan. Anything he’d write would have been nothing of any weight.”
“I wondered about that. Your first book – Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On. That’s a Shakespearean quote, isn’t it?”
Mouret nodded, confirming I’d got the title of his book and its origin, right.
“It wasn’t a celebrity biography was it?”
“You know it wasn’t,” he answered, “it was a memoir of my childhood.”
“Of an abused childhood,” I prompted, “of a boy abandoned by his mother, into an orphanage where he’s sexually and physically tortured for years.”
“Is this going somewhere?” Jenny asked. “Everyone knows Dom’s story; and how he was finally rescued by a wealthy couple who loved and helped him. What’s that got to do with Lyra’s murder?”
“Well Dom reckons he wasn’t particularly upset by Lyra on the day in question. But the thing is I saw the pass that Lyra made at him and I saw his reaction. I can imagine – to someone who was subjected to unwanted sexual advances from an early age – that what happened would be pretty upsetting.”
“I’m at peace with my past,” Mouret said. “I have nothing to be ashamed of; no guilty secrets.” This last was said whilst staring pointedly at Morgan and Liz.
Morgan Foster sighed heavily. “Listen, much as I’m enjoying this trip down memory lane, I fail to see the point.” He stood, gesturing to Liz Britton, who began to gather her handbag and jacket.
“The point,” I said, “is that I know who killed Lyra. And more importantly, why they did so.”
He paused. “So you say. But since arriving here today, all I’ve seen is a very poor gumshoe impression. I’m not prone to vulgarity, Danny, but piss or get off the pot.”
“Lyra’s past killed her,” I announced, somewhat melodramatically. “Not the booze and drugs tabloid-hell past. Something much older than that.”
Haynes lifted the device to his throat, but I cut his protest off. “Didn’t you ever wonder why Lyra vanished as suddenly as she did, Barry? Never wonder why she cut you off so completely? The woman who died was a very different one to the one you knew all those years ago. Everyone said so: time, life, had hardened her. But when did the hardening start?”
“I think it started when – just as she was about to become the star she always wanted to be – she realised she was pregnant with your child. And she panicked. You said she dropped off the face of the earth for about a year. What nobody realised was that she went away somewhere and had the child and put it up for adoption.
“But the child resembled its parents. Doris Chapel said as much at the funeral. Still, at least he sent his boy. I didn’t get it at first; thought she was mixing up a man called Harry with a man called Barry. But she wasn’t. She’d seen someone in the crowd she recognised.”
Barry Haynes opened and closed his mouth soundlessly.
“She’d recognised someone who looked like you, Barry, as a younger man. But what really sealed her fate was that she’d seen someone who – she realised too late – looked like her sister as a younger woman. Her last word–”
“Munchkin,” Nick offered from where he sat.
“Not munchkin,” I corrected him. “Doris and Eliza had one of those relationships that was built on casual insults. Harelip Harry, cos he had a harelip. Dumpy Doris and The Oxo Kid were the nicknames for some of the kids they grew up with. And Eliza’s nickname was Bum Chin.”
“What the fuck is a Bum Chin?” Chopper demanded.
“It’s a genetic development. A cleft chin. I’ve been reading about genetics the past few days: if neither of your parents had a dimpled chin, then you couldn’t possibly have one. But if one of your parents had one, there’s a strong probability you would too. And Lyra did. She was tormented by it to the point where – as soon as she could afford to – she had it surgically altered. Did you ever consider having yours altered, Dominic?” I asked.
All eyes turned to look at Mouret and Haynes let out a choked gasp.
“No. No. No. No!” Jenny spoke. “Dominic couldn’t have killed Lyra. He was with me all night. We told you this already. We told the police.” She looked desperately from her fiancé to the two policemen sitting at the opposite end of the room.
“Yes,” I nodded, “you did. Dominic kindly provided you with an alibi. Lots of people were sniffing around you as a possible suspect and suddenly you have no opportunity to have killed Lyra because you were with him all night.”
“Except, of course, that didn’t just provide you with an alibi; it provided Dominic with one too. And one he desperately needed. Because he wasn’t with you all night, was he?”
“Dom?” Jenny frowned, looking from me to Reid and Nick and on to her silent fiancé.
Mouret sighed. “So – assuming this makes any sense – why on earth would I off Leon?”
“For the same reason you killed Doris: self-preservation. I think you’d spent your whole horrible childhood convincing yourself that your mother had really wa
nted to keep you; that your being placed into the hell you endured was not her fault; that if only you could find her, you could make better all the horrible things in your life. In your book you described your mother as a woman who’d been forced to give you away and who had died before you could find her. The classic saintly mother, now dead. But that bit was fiction, because you didn’t find out who your mother actually was until you had published and at that point, you had the money to mount a mummy-hunt.”
“So when you did finally find her and realised who she was, you were thrown. This wasn’t a weak little woman who might have been bullied into giving up her child. You needed to understand more and I think you were still desperately hoping that you’d be able to prove that Lyra was the mother you always dreamed of.”
“This is pointless,” Mouret murmured calmly. “I’m not hearing any proof other than the fact that I have a cleft chin. Not exactly fingerprints is it?”
I tapped the phone. “Leon heard rumours that Lyra gave birth to a child out of wedlock; he knew the child had been adopted and, I guess he slowly put the pieces together. His neighbour thought he’d gone to Somerset, which made me think that Liz – the West Country accent and all – had something to do with his death. But of course, what he’d actually said to his neighbour was that he was going to Somerset House. He thought that’s where the Central Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths is kept. Course,” I added, somewhat unnecessarily, “it moved to Middleton Street in the late 90s. But once he’d figured it out, I guess, after years of abuse and mockery at the hands of Lyra and her coterie, he finally had the upper-hand over someone in the inner circle. Problem is, Dominic, my friend just texted me. She’s on her way here in a cab. From Middleton Street. With a copy of your birth certificate.”
Mouret frowned. “Means nothing,” he responded simply.
“On its own, I’d agree with you,” I admitted, tapping the phone again, “but if it leads the police to search your home, it might bring to light, say, the items you stole from Leon’s home – you really should have destroyed them immediately, you know.”
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