Words Can Kill (Ghostwriter Mystery 5)

by C. A. Larmer

  Wishful thinking was all she had left.

  As the elevator doors cranked open, another swirl of activity could be seen down the corridor. A forensic officer was talking loudly in German to someone in a cheap grey suit, and a man with a camera was focusing it on the handle of an open door. There was no number on the door, but it had to be Max’s apartment. The only other door Roxy could see was farther down, and it was firmly shut. She spotted the same fingerprint guy brushing several spots along one wall, or was it a different guy? She could not tell.

  “Just one moment, please,” Gruen said firmly, stalling her just beyond the elevator, and Roxy nodded, watching as she disappeared inside the open apartment.

  A minute later she was back. “Follow me.”

  Roxy followed, heart pounding, nausea kicking in again, but they walked past the unit and around the corner where a man wearing green plastic was standing beside a wheeled stretcher, zipping something up. Roxy flung a hand to her mouth. She had seen enough CSI to know it was a body bag, a lightweight, white bag with a full-length zipper down the middle.

  Detective Gruen spoke softly in German to the man and he looked at Roxy, said something to Gruen, and then began to unzip the bag.

  “You must not touch anything, not a thing. Okay?” Roxy must have nodded because she said, “Thank you, it is necessary we do not contaminate.”

  Gruen stepped back and Roxy somehow stepped forward, towards the body bag that was now being slowly reopened by Mr Forensics. A putrid, rotting egg-like odour slapped her in the face first, followed by a gush of relief.

  “It’s not him,” she said with a rush, staring at the waxy grey features, the open jaw, the puffy, closed eyelids. “It’s not Max.”

  Oh, thank God. It’s not Max.

  Detective Gruen sighed. She sounded disappointed; perhaps it would have been easier for her if it had been Max. The man that now lay exposed on the gurney was unfamiliar to Roxy. He was bare-chested, his black jeans gaping open slightly to reveal a tuft of curly hair at his painfully thin navel. A tattoo was spiralling up from beneath the jeans and there was another large, smudged tattoo across his right shoulder. It looked a little like a serpent. It was the man’s head, though, that would haunt Roxy’s dreams for years to come. It had been split open on the right side of his temple, parts of yellowy white matter protruding through the skull, his black hair matted where the blood had congealed around it.

  “Do you know this man?” Gruen asked, perhaps for the second time and Roxy dropped the hand she had wedged hard against her nose and lips and took a few necessary breaths.

  “No,” she said eventually before it occurred to her and she felt nausea strike again. “Oh, God, maybe. Max lived with a flatmate. Jake someone or other. It could be him, but I don’t know for sure.” She felt deep sadness now, followed swiftly by disappointment but she couldn’t yet articulate why.

  “Yes, Jake Conway,” Gruen was saying. She spoke again in German and Mr Forensics stepped forward and began zipping the bag back up.

  “What happened to him?” Roxy asked as Gruen led her away and back down the corridor towards Max’s apartment.

  “Blunt trauma. We will know more in a day or so. Do you want to sit down?”

  “I’m okay. When did this happen?”

  “Very late Friday night or early Saturday morning is our best guestimate as this stage.”

  “But why? Why would anyone ...?”

  She didn’t answer. “Can you wait one more minute?”

  As the detective spoke to an officer who had been hovering close by, Roxy glanced into the open apartment, into Max’s Berlin life. The unit was large, larger than she was expecting, and decorated with a creamy collection of very modern, very chic furniture. Roxy wondered if it had come pre-furnished or if Max had selected each piece on his own, padding out his new life in Germany. The walls were covered with half a dozen framed, black and white photographs, mostly of historic monuments, but there was one on the back wall, behind a plush cream lounge that stood out. She stared at it and choked back a sob.

  It was a large, A4-sized photograph of Roxy, bright eyed and smiling provocatively into the lens. She was wearing a dark T-shirt and her hair was shorter, cut into her trademark bob, but several strands were blowing about in an unseen wind. Roxy couldn’t even remember when Max had taken that shot, but she looked happy, she looked in love. Now it just left her feeling cold.

  The officer with the camera brushed past her and into the unit, then straight to the lounge where he started snapping away again. At first Roxy couldn’t see what he was photographing but then he nudged the sofa out of the way and she spotted it and recoiled. There was a guitar lying upside down just beyond the sofa, on a fluffy, cream rug. Next to it was a large deep brown stain that looked a lot like blood.

  “Are you okay, Miss Parker?” Gruen said beside her and Roxy nearly jumped a foot.

  She patted her heart and turned to face her. “Yes. I think so. Can you tell me, do you have any idea where Max is?”

  Gruen looked at her surprised. “We were hoping you could tell us this.”

  Roxy shook her head. “We’ve just arrived from Australia. We’ve been trying to find him.”

  “Is he lost?”

  “We’re not sure. We left a stack of messages but he never got back to us.”

  “You left messages?”

  Roxy nodded. “Stacks of them, on his answering machine.” She nodded her head inside the apartment. “Just check, you’ll see.”

  Gruen looked at her strangely. “We have checked the answering machine. There are no messages. Not one.”

  Roxy felt a chill run through her. How could that be? She took a deep breath then proceeded to fill the detective in on the family’s concerns. She explained how Max had gone on holidays to Mt Pilatus but had checked out early and disappeared. How the family had left dozens of messages on the Internet and at home.

  “When did you last speak with Mr Farrell?”

  She tried to think. “Um ... late Friday night. No, well, we didn’t actually speak. I got a text from his mobile. It said ...” She hesitated, wondering how to play it. “It just had the letters PMP, but we wondered whether he meant, SOS.”

  She paused, expecting the detective to call her on it but when she didn’t say a word, Roxy continued. “In any case, Max did speak to his mother before that. She lives back in Australia, in Northern NSW.”

  “When was this?”

  “Um, very early last Wednesday morning, I think it was, which would have been late Tuesday your time, I suppose. Max said he was ...” she hesitated again, knowing how strange it all sounded. “He said he was heading to Rio de Janeiro.” She wanted this to be true now more than ever before.

  Detective Gruen pulled out a notebook and began writing something down when Roxy had a thought.

  “When did you say Jake died?”

  Gruen looked up from her pad. “We are not sure, probably late on Friday night. Why?”

  “But that’s when he left us a message.”

  “Who? Mr Conway?”

  “Yes.”

  Gruen looked more interested now. “What exactly did it say?”

  Roxy tried to think. “You’ll have to double-check with Caroline, it came through on her mobile phone.”

  Roxy explained about the voice mail message Jake must have left some time in the past twenty-eight hours while they were en route to Berlin, and Gruen looked suddenly invigorated and began madly scribbling away again.

  Eventually, she looked around and caught the eye of the officer who had been lurking nearby. She waved him over and spoke for several minutes in German to him before turning back to Roxy. “This is Officer Hann. He will take you down to the station now.”

  “Station?”

  “Yes, we need to ask you some more questions. I would also like to get a recording of that last message from the deceased to Miss Farrell.” She must have repeated that request in German to the officer because he nodded. She turned back to Ro
xy. “That message should give us a better indication of the time of death.”

  Roxy felt a little startled—had Jake left that message just before he was murdered? Had the murderer been in the room when he left it?—but she was also weary to the core. “Do we have to go right now?” she asked. “It’s been a stressful twenty-four hours.” Or at least it had been for her. She wasn’t sure what frame of mind Caroline was in.

  The detective gave her an apologetic smile. “It will not take long, but it is imperative. Most importantly, we need your help to find Mr Farrell. We need to talk to him about this. It is most urgent.”

  The way she spoke set off alarm bells in Roxy’s head. She wondered now if they suspected Max had something to do with Jake’s murder. It sent a trickle of anxiety racing through her again.

  Chapter 6

  When Roxy returned to the ground floor with Officer Hann, she noticed that Caroline was no longer on the sofa, and she looked around, finally spotting her just outside the front doors, dragging on a cigarette, the only indication that she was at all nervous or concerned. Roxy turned back to the officer.

  “Can you give me a few minutes, please? I need to talk to my friend and prepare her.”

  He looked sceptical but nodded anyway and she stepped outside and towards Caroline who was leaning against the metal banister at the top of the stairs. Beside her, on a lower step, was the petite, black-haired woman Roxy had seen earlier, talking to an officer. She was dressed completely in black and had several nose rings, multiple earrings and a small stud through one eyebrow.

  “Oh, Roxy darling, this is Holly, Max’s next-door neighbour.”

  Holly was dragging on a matching cigarette and waved it at Roxy. “Hey.”

  Roxy nodded at her and then turned to Caroline. “So, it wasn’t Max, in case you were wondering.”

  Caroline half laughed. “Of course not, darling, I knew it wouldn’t be.”

  “How? How did you know?! Weren’t you at all worried?”

  Caroline took another deep drag. “Oh calm down, Rox. There was no point in both of us stressing out, was there? Besides, Holly’s already filled me in. She’s the one who found the body. Says it’s the flatmate, Jake.”

  Roxy glanced at Holly and back to Caroline. “So if they knew it wasn’t Max, why’d they just put me through that?! It was horrendous!”

  Holly gave a kind of Elvis Presley sneer. “Cops never take my word for anything. It’s probably all the piercings.” She sighed. “Yep, that’s Jake all right. Poor git.” Her accent was pure cockney, straight from the working class suburbs of London. “I mean, he could be a right tosser when he wanted to be, but he didn’t deserve that, did he?”

  “How did you find him?” Roxy asked.

  “Oh, I was feeding Max’s cat.”

  “Max has a cat?” both women said at the same time and she nodded.

  “Pinky. It’s just a stray that took to sleeping under Max’s bed. He asked me to check his food every couple of days while he was away, since he couldn’t trust Jake to keep it topped up, could he? He’d given me his key so I let meself in this morning and ...” She shivered and wrapped her arms around her torso. “No wonder he didn’t show up at his gig last night.”

  “You mean Jake?” Roxy asked and Holly nodded, dragging deeply on her cigarette again. “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “Copper says he was smacked over the head with his own guitar. Poor bugger.” Holly squinted a little at Roxy. “I’ve seen your face before. Are you another sister of Max’s?”

  “No, I’m just a friend.” Caroline snorted beside her but Roxy let that go and said, “So how long have you known Jake and Max?”

  “Errr, let me think ... I’ve been in 3A, that’s just across the corridor, for, I don’t know, about three months? The guys are always so sweet, they helped me move in and all. Well, Max did. Jake just stood around smoking pot most of the time.” She pulled some invisible tobacco from her tongue. “You do know Max is away at the moment, right? In Austria, I think he said.”

  “Wasn’t it Switzerland?”

  She shrugged. “Something like that. Cold, high up, not my cup of tea. You Aussies are funny. The only place I’d go on holidays is a warm beach somewhere. Preferably Spain.”

  “He could be in Brazil,” Caroline offered and Holly’s pierced eyebrow shot up.

  “So Max never mentioned Brazil to you?” Roxy asked and she shook her black locks, no. “Did he tell you when he was coming back?”

  Holly took a final drag on her cigarette and then dropped it to the ground, quickly stepping on it, squishing it into the cement like that was going to get rid of it. “Not really, but I assumed he’d be back yesterd’y ’cause Jake was supposed to be playing Brewsters last night, wasn’t he, and Max said he’d catch the gig so ...”

  “Brewsters?”

  “Yeah, divey bar a few streets back. We go most Sat’dy nights. Jake has a regular gig there with his band, the Angry Euros.” Her top lip curled again. “Crap name, hey? Anyways, we go and support him when we can. As you do. He gets paid about sixty quid a pop so I wonder why he bothers, but he says it’s better than nothing, idn’t it? A paid rehearsal, so he says, and it’s not that bad.” She gulped. “At least he used to say that ... He’s gone now, ’idn’t he?”

  Caroline placed a hand on her arm. “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Can’t get me head around it. Anyway, it’s a good thing Max didn’t zoom back for the gig because, as I say, Jake never showed. I stood around for an hour before I got sick of batting off sleazy Germans and left.”

  Officer Hann appeared then and looked at Roxy expectantly but she shook her head. “Please, just let Caroline finish her cigarette?”

  He frowned then walked down the stairs to the street and pulled out a packet of his own and lit up. Roxy turned back to Holly. She had so many questions, so little time.

  “So Max was definitely expected back last night? And he never showed.”

  “That’s what he said. God, he’s going to be so cut up when he finds out about Jake. I mean, they had their moments, but still.”

  “Moments?”

  “You know, the odd barney.”

  Roxy felt her skin prickle. She hoped that Holly hadn’t mentioned these “barnies” to the police. “What did they fight about?”

  “Oh, nothing, honestly, don’t worry yourself about it.”

  “Did you hear them fight recently?”

  “They just had a few words the last time I saw them at Brewsters, that’s all. Jake was late with the rent again, Max was livid. Threatened to kick him out, but Jake just laughed. Said Max always said that. They weren’t really fighting, were they? It was just boring, everyday flatmate stuff, you know the type.” Not really, thought Roxy. It was one of the perks of living alone. “By the end of the night they were best buds again. I told the cops all this, honestly, I wouldn’t worry.”

  Roxy felt her anger rising. “They don’t really think Max had anything to do with that ...?” She glanced back into the building, towards the scene of the crime.

  Holly shrugged, non-committal.

  “Of course they don’t!” Caroline spat. “That’s ridiculous.” She gave Roxy another indignant glare as she finished off her cigarette.

  “When did you last see Jake?” Roxy asked Holly.

  “Same time as Max, at Brewsters, ’bout a week ago. Oh, but I heard him, very late Frid’y night.”

  “What, the night they think he was murdered?”

  “Yep, it was definitely late Frid’y night, which is why I was surprised when he didn’t show for the gig on Sund’y. Band were expecting him so they were pissed off, too, I can tell you that. Not happy campers. Bass player had to step up and sing.” She thought about this. “He wasn’t that bad actually. Anyway, I told the coppers this already.”

  “Hang on, what do you mean, ‘heard’?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You said you heard Jake on Friday night.”

  “Oh yeah, right, w
ell, I didn’t see him as such. But I heard him, speaking Italian like. I didn’t even know he could. He’s from LA, you know.” She caught herself again. “Was ...”

  “Italian?” This mollified Roxy a little. Max didn’t speak any languages. She hoped the cops knew that, too.

  “Yep, heard him say the word ‘benvenuto’ which I know is Italian for ‘welcome’ ’cause I went out with an Italian once. He was a tosser.”

  “Did you see who he was speaking to? Jake?”

  “No such luck, but he must’ve been speaking as he came in along the corridor ’cause you can’t hear much when the apartment doors are shut. Nice thick walls these ones. Old building, that’s why. Wasn’t bombed during the war, apparently. That’s also why it ain’t got any cameras, that kinda stuff that would’ve helped the coppers. All the new buildings have that kinda shite. Me? I’m happy without the invasion of my privacy, thanks very much.”

  “Come please,” Officer Hann called out from the road. “We must go now.”

  Roxy sighed and turned back to Holly. “Listen, I don’t have a local SIM card yet, but can I get your number, call you later maybe? See if you’ve heard from Max or remembered anything?”

  “Sure,” she said, and then held her cigarette packet out to Caroline. “You better have these. From the way those cops are talking, I think you’re gonna need them.”

  Chapter 7

  The bushy-faced German detective was asking a lot of questions they simply could not answer, although Roxy wished to God she could.

  “Where is Max?”