by David Barry
‘Oh, Freddie, I’m sorry. I’m finding the news hard to take in. I keep thinking about Rick and the way he was killed. It was senseless. And for what? Some evil bastard slit his throat for the pathetic amount he had in his wallet. Poor Rick. The bastards. The evil bastards. I hope they catch whoever did it and he rots in jail for the rest of his life.’
I caught Bill’s eye and guessed he was thinking about my aborted meeting with Rick and the way I’d left the crime scene.
‘Did you know Rick had a four-year-old son?’
‘Yeah, he mentioned it when I went round on Monday.’
‘His poor wife. It must be terrible for her.’
‘Did you know her?’
‘We never met. I didn’t know Rick socially, only from a work situation. Once the dust settles - if it ever does - I’ll go and buy a card and send it from all of us.’
‘I think the firm could afford a ginormous bunch of flowers.’
She shook her head. ‘They’ll be inundated with flowers. A card signed by us would be more personal.’
‘Card it is then.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll sort it.’
The tragedy compartmentalised, I could see it was now down to the business in hand. Nicky turned with a display of efficiency, went back around her desk and fetched a giant notebook and an A4 brown envelope.
‘I don’t know if Bill told you, but we’ve made some progress with this Peter Chapmays character. Shall we go into your office and catch up?’
We went inside and I made myself comfortable behind the desk while Bill and Nicky sat in front.
‘Alice’ll be here in less than half an hour,’ Bill said, glancing at his watch. ‘We need to zap through this as quickly as we can.’
‘Before we start,’ I said, ‘Can I ask you something? Does Alice know I’ve spent the morning on personal stuff? I mean, we agreed to work exclusively on her case. I wouldn’t want her to think I was moonlighting.’
Bill tugged his chin thoughtfully. ‘I think you should be open about it. I’m sure she’ll understand.’
‘You’re right. Especially - touch wood - if Shapiro has managed to kick this Polish or Russian bloke into touch.’
Nicky raised her eyebrows enquiringly as she looked at me.
‘When I met this American on the Isle of Sheppey this morning,’ I explained, ‘he said the troll was based in Krakow - even gave me his first name - and thinks it’s the last my daughter will hear from him.’
‘That’s great news. But I thought you were seeing this American last night.’
‘Something came up the last minute.’
‘To do with your bouncers business?’
I avoided eye contact with Bill as I lied. ‘That’s right.’
She nodded and flipped over the cover of her notepad. ‘Now about this suspected hitman, Peter Chapmays. I thought I’d try the records office, to see if this man exists. The only vague description we have is from the phone call to the Carlisle hotel. The receptionist thought he was about 40, which means he could have been born anywhere between 1970 and 1976. If it’s a false ID, and an unusual name at that, I thought I would make a start on Births, Deaths and Marriages around 1972, assuming he might be about forty. And this is where I got really lucky. There was one Peter Chapmays born on December 12 1972 and he died three months after his second birthday in February 1975.’
‘So he’s stolen a dead child’s ID.’
‘Which isn’t uncommon in that shifty world of spooks and undercover officers,’ Bill said. ‘But there’s more. Much more. Sorry. Carry on, Nicky.’
Nicky turned over a page in her notebook. ‘Trawling through court records we discovered a Peter Chapmays was a member of Free the People Now, a bunch of anarchists, and in 1999 he was arrested along with others in the group for planning an anti-capitalist demonstration in Canary Wharf.’
I flashed Nicky a great big smile. ‘This is great stuff, Nicky. Thanks for your brilliant work. Go to the top of the class.’
‘Thank you, kind sir. But there’s more. And I think Bill deserves some credit too.’
Bill waved it away with a flippant hand gesture, leaving Nicky to continue.
‘Because the planning of this demonstration, which was to be a peaceful one, was concocted at a large-scale party which was raided by the police, the judge exonerated them, saying there were no charges to answer to. As the demonstrators appear to have won on this occasion, they didn’t mind being photographed, posing on the courtroom steps. The quality’s not that good, but you might find it interesting.’
She took the picture out of the envelope, stretched across and handed it to me. It was a grainy colour press photograph of six of the demonstrators on the courtroom steps, posing and giving thumbs up and victory signs. They were all casually dressed, jeans, T-shirts, colourful hair for two of the women, and the four men all had long hair.
‘Notice something about one of the men?’ Bill asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘He seems reluctant to show his face. He’s got an arm around one of the women and is turned towards her, almost burying his face in her neck.’ I looked at Bill questioningly. ‘Is that our man d’you think?’
‘Well, the odds are good. One in four.’
‘He seems at ease with this woman. A girlfriend you think?’
‘We think so,’ Nicky said. ‘But we have all their names, so I guess the electoral roll’s the next step.’
Just then the entrance door buzzed in the outer office. Alice was ten minutes early. Nicky got up and went to let her in. While we waited for her to enter, Bill stared at me with a fixed expression, his eyes keen and penetrating, a look I knew so well from our distant past when we were mercenaries.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘Thinking about Rick’s murder, that’s all.’
‘You think I should have called the police, don’t you?’
He shrugged just as Alice entered. She was wearing tight-fitting black denims, black trainers and a dark blue V-neck sweatshirt over a white T-shirt, with a brown leather handbag at her side, strapped diagonally across her body.
‘Don’t get up,’ she said as Bill and I half rose.
She and Nicky sat down, and without any preamble Alice asked us what had been happening. Bill told her about how we knew Peter Chapmays was a child who died aged two back in 1975, and how we thought his identity had been stolen by the hitman. I then handed her the photograph and Bill explained about the plans for an anti-capitalist demonstration by the anarchists, and their subsequent courtroom appearance, and how one of the accused was Peter Chapmays.
Frowning and squinting at the photograph, Alice asked Bill, ’Which one do you think is him?’
‘It’s probably the one who’s slightly in profile.’
‘Deliberately trying to hide his face?’
‘It looks like it.’
‘I don’t understand. This man belongs to an anarchist group, demonstrating against capitalism, yet he might be a cold-blooded hitman. It doesn’t make sense.’
Bill smiled thinly. ‘It does if you think of him as an impostor. The party where they planned the demonstration was raided by the cops. So this Chapmays might have been working undercover.’
‘Undercover? Who the hell would he have worked undercover for?’
‘He might have worked for the Special Demonstration Squad, a part of the Met’s Special Branch. I think, though, the SDS was disbanded about five or six years ago, and was reformed as the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.’
Alice looked horrified. ‘Are you telling me the man who murdered my family was a policeman?’
‘“Was” might be the key word here. He may have turned; become what they call a rogue cop who was then recruited by someone else.’
She held the phot
ograph up. ‘But we’re not absolutely sure this is the man.’
‘We’re pretty sure it’s one of them,’ I said. ‘And it’s doubtful the others have got false IDs, so we may be able to track down the whereabouts of the Chapmays through one of them.’
Alice was silent as she looked at each of us in turn. ‘To think the police came up with zero in eleven years, but you’ve uncovered this man’s identity...’
‘False identity,’ I reminded her.
‘Whatever. You’ve at least got something to go on and it’s only taken you less than three days. So what happens now?’
‘Next step will be to find some of these activists.’ I looked at Bill. ‘We ought to start with the two women, in case one of them was his girlfriend.’ Bill nodded in agreement. ‘They shouldn’t be too difficult to trace.’
‘Well done! You obviously had a busy morning uncovering this information.’ She flashed me provocative look. ‘So what was your role in all this, Freddie?’
‘Sorry?’
‘When I called in mid morning and asked to speak to you, they said you weren’t here.’
She had injected half a million into our firm, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting her money’s worth. He who pays the piper, and all that. I decided it was time to come clean.
‘I had to visit the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.’
‘I don’t know it.’
I laughed. ‘No, and you don’t want to.’
‘Get to the point, Freddie.’
That was when I told her all about Olivia and the internet threats. When I ended our tale of horror, she gave me an understanding smile, serious and sympathetic..
‘Well, of course, Freddie, family always come first. And you think this American guy has resolved the problem?’
I shrugged. ‘I hope so. I’ll soon find out.’
‘I hope for your daughter’s sake he’s managed it. If this man is based in Poland I suppose there’s not much the police can do.’
‘I’ve got his real first name, and the name and address of the internet café he uses in Krakow. If he threatens my daughter one more time I’ll go over there and make sure he’ll never interfere with a child again. Eclipse! It’ll be a total eclipse!
Permanent!’
Alice’s face hardened as she stared at me, her eyes frosty. The room became still, and Bill and Nicky froze, suddenly aware of the change in temperature.
‘Look, don’t worry about our investigation into your family’s killer,’ I started to explain, but Alice raised a hand and interrupted me.
‘Why did you use that word?’
‘What word? I’m not with you.’
‘Eclipse.’
‘Because that’s the email name the bastard’s using. Why?’
The blood seemed to have drained from Alice’s face as she almost whispered, ‘Because it’s just come back to me... the name... the one I heard my father use... when I was eight. Several times he referred to someone as Eclipse. I’d forgotten until you mentioned it just now.’
They say when you’re close to death your whole life flashes before you. It was like that now, only this was a flashback of more recent events racing through my brain. To steady myself, I leant forward on my elbows, staring at the desktop, then ran the fingers of both hands through my hair. When I came to and looked up, the three of them were staring at me expectantly, waiting for my response.
‘First of all,’ I asked Alice, ‘can you remember how long ago you decided to use our agency?’
‘It was nearly three weeks ago. Before your business got started. Why?’
‘Because that’s around the time my daughter’s intrusive internet problems started happening.’
‘Are you saying the two are connected?’
‘It’s starting to look that way. And there’s something I need to tell all of you. Well, Bill already knows - I told him half an hour ago.’ I looked towards Nicky, afraid of how she might react to my confession. ‘Last night, on my way to Sheppey, I’d only got as far as Southwark when I got a text from Rick saying he had urgent information about the internet troll, and asking me to meet him at his local pub. He never showed up. He was murdered. Possibly because of investigating this Eclipse on the internet.’
‘But... but on the news,’ Nicky began falteringly. ‘It said he... he... the police think he was robbed.’
‘That’s what his killer wants them to believe.’
‘So when did you first hear about his murder?’
‘I heard about it on the news. But I already guessed he was dead.’ I saw Nicky about to say something and I continued before she got the chance. ‘When he didn’t show up at the pub, I tried to ring him but there was no response. So I decided to walk to his place across the park. When I got there, the police were at the scene, and I heard a bystander say a man had been knifed.’
Not an outright lie, just economical with the truth. And I knew what Nicky’s next question would be.
‘Shouldn’t you have said something to the police?’
‘I suppose I panicked. Acted impulsively. I thought if Rick had been killed by someone acting on behalf of this Eclipse, it involved something much bigger than an internet troll hounding my daughter.’
‘All the more reason to involve the police, I would have thought.’
‘Maybe. But, I’m sorry, my first priority is my daughter’s safety. And knowing how useless the police have been investigating Alice’s family’s murder - ’
Nicky stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Freddie. This isn’t right. I don’t think I want to get involved. Someone I know has been murdered and we’re talking about concealing evidence from the police. Jesus Christ! This is serious. We could all end up in jail.’
‘Hang on, Nicky,’ I protested. ‘Let’s just think this through for a minute - ’
‘No, you hang on. Think of the affect this murder has had on his wife. She thinks he was killed for a paltry sum of money. If he was killed because he’d unwittingly got information about - I don’t know - organised crime of some sort, then his wife should know about it.’
‘It won’t bring him back to life,’ Bill said quietly and matter-of-factly.
‘That’s not the point, Bill, and you know it.’
Alice looked up at Nicky, her eyes moist and pleading. ‘Please, Nicky, sit down and let’s talk this through. If when we’ve thrashed it out we decide to bring the police into it, we can. But first let’s talk about it. Please, Nicky. I’ve lived with this nightmare for eleven years, ever since that school trip when they told me my family had been wiped out. And now it looks as if my father was involved in something really nasty. He must have known this Eclipse, the man who targets young children. I can’t believe my father... who... who loved us very much... He liked children, for God’s sake. I know I said he spent a great deal of time on the computer, but he also spent a lot of time with us. He was a wonderful father. I can’t believe he...’ Her lips quivered and her face crumpled as she bent over, her hands covering her eyes as she sobbed.
Nicky leant over and cradled her, smoothing her hair, while her muffled sobs sounded like animal growls of pain.
‘It’s OK, Alice. I’m sure your father wasn’t involved in hurting children. There’s probably a reason he contacted this Eclipse; something to do with his computer games, maybe.’
Alice must have known how feeble that sounded, because she wriggled free of Nicky’s embrace, wiped her eyes and said to Bill and me, ‘I’m your client. If you’re still up for it, I’d like you to find the man who killed my family, and the man who was murdered last night, and bring him to justice. And I want to learn the truth about my father. Whatever he was involved in, I want to know what it was. Only then can I...’
She broke off, and I thought she was going to cave in again. Instead, she shivered, and I saw the terrif
ic effort it took her to cope with the news that her father may have been involved in something shockingly corrupt. Maybe it was because she had become hardened over the years by the tragic murder in Scotland, but she recovered rapidly and I could see she wanted to get on with a discussion about the investigation.
‘We need to talk this through,’ she said, looking at Nicky. ‘Before we decide on calling the police.’
I suppressed a smile, guessing she had no intention of involving them. It was said to placate Nicky, who stood next to her, looking awkward and uncomfortable. I got the impression Nicky was upset because the solace she offered the tearful young woman had been rebuffed.
‘Please, Nicky,’ Alice pleaded, ‘sit down so we can talk this through.’
‘Sure.’ Nicky slid quietly into her seat.
‘There’s something I’d like to know,’ I said to Alice. ‘What made you pick our agency in the first instance? There are plenty of far more successful and well-established enquiry agencies in London.’
‘Well, I’ll be honest with you. There was one other I decided to go with before I found your agency on the internet. This would have been about a month ago. I knew I had to pick my investigator carefully. And I thought I’d found him. He was very much a one-man band. He seemed tough and bright, and told me he was ex military, and later joined the police force and fast-tracked to detective in the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard.’
‘Did he tell you why he left the police?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t think to ask.’
‘So why didn’t it work out with this investigator? I mean, why did you drop him?’
‘I didn’t. He dropped me.’
I exchanged a look with Bill, who was frowning hard, and I knew he had smelt the proverbial. ‘Didn’t that strike you as odd?’ he asked.
‘He told me it was personal. He was closing his business and going home to Peterborough.’
Nicky, presumably having resigned herself to continuing with our investigation, grabbed a notepad and pen and began scribbling furiously. ‘What was this investigator’s name?’