by Geoff Small
“Go on.”
“To my shock it seemed they were already acquainted, because he followed Matilda upstairs to young Monika’s room and shut the door behind him. I was trying to hear what was going on, when Monika herself came out from the bathroom, so I went in after her, as if that’s what I’d been waiting for.”
“So how long would you say you spent in the bathroom?”
Alistair twitched. “Sorry?” Then he turned his head slightly to one side, as if by putting his ear directly in the line of Curzon’s words he would hear them better.
“How long, roughly, were you in the bathroom for?”
“Erm…it’s difficult to say isn’t it, I mean how long does anybody stay in a bathroom?”
“Long enough to roll and smoke your gift of cannabis perhaps? Or snort some of that cocaine the lad had dropped on the floor?” Curzon smiled, attempting to disarm Meaks, but our florist started to panic all the more.
“No, no, I didn’t do either…I chucked the cannabis straight in the trash can, left the other stuff on the floor where it was…I mean I don’t do drugs…never have.”
“Ok, ok.” Curzon couldn’t help himself from laughing out loud, so hysterical was Meaks’ flap. “So when you left the bathroom, what then? Did you witness anything of note?”
Meaks shook his head. “No, the guy had gone by the time I’d come out and I found Matilda in her study crying.”
“About what?”
“She just said it was mother and daughter stuff.”
“So what did you do then, go back out to your barbeque or …?”
“I sat with her for half an hour or more first. By the time I got back out Tommy was packing everything up.”
Curzon nodded, eyes squinting in thought. “Ok Mr Meaks, thank you very much for your assistance…sorry to have inconvenienced you.”
“It’s no problem, I’m always happy to help.”
Of course, Meaks said this in an über obsequious way.
Before Curzon reached the door he turned round again and did his little imitation of American TV detective, Columbo, as much for his own amusement as its invaluable psychological impact on the suspect.
“Just one more thing Mr Meaks.”
From his inside, suit jacket pocket, Curzon produced a photograph taken of the barbeque area during the party, featuring Meaks cutting hotdog buns with a hitherto missing breadknife.
“You wouldn’t happen to know the origins or present whereabouts of this particular breadknife would you?”
Meaks jerked backwards, furrowing his brow in an ostentatious display of puzzlement, before taking the photo from the detective’s hand.
“The knife’s from Matilda’s kitchen,” he said, cautiously.
“Well it’s not there now,” insisted Curzon.
Meaks immediately understood the implication.
“Maybe Tommy inadvertently took it with the rest of his stuff.”
“The barbeque equipment was Tommy’s?”
“Yes, a lot of it,” Meaks said emphatically, leaving no doubt that neither the origin of the knife nor its destiny had anything to do with him, though Curzon could see that his mind was now working overtime, which was how he liked to leave his victims…I mean suspects.
“And what about this blue tarpaulin here?” Curzon pointed to the bottom right hand corner of the picture, which was still in Meaks’ hand. On the floor, where the front of the brick barbeque met the next-door neighbour’s stone boundary wall at a right angle, there was a rucked up piece of old tarpaulin, which had probably been used to protect the DIY construction from the elements, when not in use. “Do we have any idea where that went? Only it’s not there now either.”
Meaks put his free hand to his mouth and dragged his open thumb and forefinger down his chin.
“I never even noticed it at the time.”
Curzon retrieved the photograph. “Thank you again Mr Meaks.”
Meaks lunged nervously towards the door, his shaking fingers fumbling the catch, the sunflowers in his left hand writhing like some botanical Houdini trying to escape the straight jacket of his quaking grasp.
Chapter 11
During the fifteen minute train journey to Tommy Franklin’s house in Bearsden, Curzon reflected on his conversation with the weasel. Not only had he been photographed with what was quite probably the murder weapon in his hand, right next to where the deceased’s blood had been discovered, but he’d also admitted to being alone with the victim, providing ample time to carry out the crime. And even if he’d not done it during that particular window of opportunity, Curzon thought, then what about the period he claimed to have spent in the bathroom, or the rough estimate of half an hour consoling Frau Fuchs? Within either of these unverifiable time periods he could quite easily have committed murder. Most crucially, though, for Curzon, was the fact that Meaks had a plausible motive: jealousy. Not to mention that he could have slain Bobby McQueen out of some chivalric act of duty towards Frau Fuchs, willing to punish anyone who caused her sadness or injury, like a brother or father might for a dishonoured sister or daughter. On top of that, he’d been extremely edgy during their time together and most of his reactions and responses had seemed inauthentic to say the least. That said, Curzon had to admit that Meaks was probably insincere on a full time basis, owing not only to an innate cowardice, but also because a certain amount of phoniness was a functional prerequisite when running a shop. Furthermore, when confronted with the suggestion that the breadknife he’d been using at the barbeque could possibly be the murder weapon, he’d seemed genuinely shocked and did his utmost to deflect suspicion away from himself, while alerting Curzon to the existence of another suspect too. Either way, he’d brought Tommy Franklin well and truly into the frame, much to the detective’s delight.
Surrounded by mature Sycamore trees, Franklin’s house was a six bedroom, sandstone villa, set back behind baroque security gates and a seven-foot privet hedge. On the gravel drive, three recently hosed vehicles gleamed in the summer sunshine: a sapphire blue Porsche, a black Range Rover and a nineteen-fifty-seven, vintage silver Bentley, all sporting personalised number plates. It came as no surprise to Curzon to be refused admission over the intercom and he knew that he shouldn’t interpret any guilt from that, because all professional footballers had been drilled to contact their club’s under such circumstances, who in turn rang their lawyers before anybody made any statements to anyone. So Curzon threatened Franklin with a warrant, saying that he could get one within the hour, then went round to the rear of the property, scaled the seven-foot stone wall and dropped down into the wooded margins of the star’s garden. Here, among flowering elder trees and rhododendron bushes, he crunched his way through the undergrowth, snagging himself repeatedly on raspberry bushes as he progressed, cursing all the way.
There was no practical purpose to this unorthodox course of action, other than Curzon’s stubborn refusal to be repelled from anywhere he wanted to enter. Under no circumstances was he going to be told what to do or where to go by anybody. One way or another, he was adamant that he was going to get into that house, if only to spook the owner, whose rudeness and inhospitality needed redressing.
As Curzon reached the edge of the long, manicured lawn, he spied a French window open on the terrace, about thirty yards up ahead. He was just about to sprint towards it when Franklin burst out carrying what looked like two encyclopaedias under his right arm and a spade in his left hand. The detective stepped sideways into a large rhododendron bush, from where he watched the six-foot-three, blonde haired footballer march down the lawn towards him, so pin pointedly in fact that he assumed he’d been rumbled. It was only as the square jawed athlete got closer, the sheer hulk-like heft of his muscular body threatening to tear the black T-shirt and blue jeans he was wearing, that Curzon suddenly started to worry about being murdered as an intruder. After all, if Franklin was already a vicious knife killer, what was to stop him using a spade to bludgeon a prowler on his own property?
With Franklin so close you could see the steely blue of his eyes, Curzon wanted to blow his cover and run. But he found himself frozen to the spot, holding his breath, tensing his body, heart thumping so fast and loud he was sure that the suspect could hear it too. Mercifully, the footballer brushed straight past the bush and out of view, leaving Curzon to rely on sound, as attempting to turn and watch would have caused too much noise from the cracking of sticks beneath his feet. He then heard several stabs of a spade, interspersed with the shovelling of earth, before Franklin brushed past the bush again on his way back to the house, minus the encyclopaedias, gardening implement in hand.
As soon as Franklin was safely back in his house, the French door locked behind him, Curzon climbed out of the bush and located a square of disturbed earth in the lea of the wall, which he excavated by toe poking it with his brown suede shoe. He’d been expecting to find accounts, evidence perhaps of tax fraud or embezzlement from the football club Franklin was now managing. But it turned out that the buried objects were not books at all but black, leather-bound photograph albums, stacked one on top of the other. Crouching on his haunches, Curzon picked one up and rested it upon his knees to open. It was certainly not what he’d been expecting. The first page contained a large photograph of a buff Franklin on an East Asian beach, wearing a vest, speedo pants and flip-flops, his arm around a local teenage boy in swimming trunks. Except for the occasional picture of the ex-footballer reclining with a beer, the subsequent photos were pretty much the same, only the teenage boys were different on each. On some he had two boys, one on either side, and in another particularly creepy snap he was lying on a bed in what looked like some kind of beach hut, wearing only trunks, with an arm around another semi-naked young man. Even to someone as cynical as Curzon, viewing these images felt like swallowing condemned meat and, after closing the album, he remained on his haunches for a good minute, cogitating on what implications this might have on his case, before putting both books under his right arm and snapping and cracking his way back through the vegetation and climbing out of the garden.
As Curzon boarded the train back to town he got a call from an anxious sounding Deegan.
“Boss, we’ve got some bad news.”
“Go on?”
“The blood on the paper napkin? It might not have been spilled round at Ms Fuchs’.
“How so?”
“We’ve just had a taxi driver walk into the station, recognises Bobby McQueen as a fare he picked up on Saturday night outside The Goose on Union Street at around ten. Apparently he had a small nose bleed and was holding a napkin against it. McKay’s been down to view their CCTV from the weekend, and sure enough, he’s on there having a tussle with a group of guys, one of their number being, guess who?”
“Craig Hunter?
“Got it in one. Not only that, but we’ve also got CCTV footage of the crew in the BMW convertible that Ms Fuchs told us about, from a filling station forecourt in Rutherglen. Again, it’s Craig Hunter and…”
“And who?”
“Our old friend Stevie Black.”
Now aged fifty, Steve Black was an infamous East End drug dealer who never handled his merchandise and always got the street dealers he employed – called his ‘dustmen’ – to personally inflict retribution on any bad debtors they’d supplied to, otherwise they’d have to foot the bill themselves, one way or another. On the surface, it was beginning to look like Bobby McQueen had maybe run up debts to his mate Craig Hunter, who had been coerced to enact punishment by his boss, Black, who was, above all else, a misanthropic sadist who would derive great pleasure from seeing a man kill his own son. Indeed, any atom of humanity that Black may once have possessed had been reserved for Comet, his prize winning racing pigeon, which was now stuffed and mounted and occupying pride of place on DCI Curzon’s mantelpiece.
“That lying wee bastard!” Curzon shouted angrily, unnerving his fellow train passengers in the process.
“Indeed. And what’s more, from the little the good folk of Castlemilk are telling us, it seems the cuckolding girlfriend is a fiction of Hunter’s imagination too. Not one person has ever seen him with a partner.”
“Sneaky wee shit,” Curzon snarled.
“What are the odds that after the fight was split up by the bouncers, Craig Hunter and co followed Bobby McQueen to Ms Fuchs’, then waited for him outside and finished him off on his way home? I wouldn’t be surprised if Bobby had taken one of the knives from the barbeque himself, for self-defence, only to have it turned against him during the melee.”
“These cases usually end up being pretty obvious, but you’ve got to keep an open mind and, more importantly, what I’ve always taught you: try and keep the investigation open as long as possible. Remember, it’s an opportunity to dig precious dirt we would never get otherwise.”
Curzon was ambivalent about this piece of news because, if it turned out that Craig Hunter was the killer, then it meant that his more ingenious theories couldn’t be realized. Yes, most murders were quite boring, open and shut cases, an obvious culprit closely associated with the victim. But this one had started to look more interesting, like something out of one of the Chandler novels he’d read as a kid. Now, though, it seemed that the blood stained napkin round at Frau Fuchs’ back garden had probably fallen from Bobby’s pocket while he’d been rummaging for the cannabis he’d given to Alistair Meaks. Also, the need to rinse the blood from his face after having had his nose busted would account for the bird bath swill, as described by the florist.
On the journey back into town, Curzon reviewed the investigation in his head. Not only did Craig Hunter have a motive, but he also freely admitted that he’d been hunting McQueen down and telling folk that he was going to kill him. As for the other, now discredited prong of the inquiry, revolving around Frau Fuchs’ barbeque, Curzon recapped on the actual evidence all the same. For starters, Frau Fuchs had become involved in a love triangle which involved her own daughter, thus providing the quintessential murder motive. A feeling of scorn, betrayal and jealousy could well have induced a fit of rage, resulting in her snatching a bread knife from the barbeque and finishing the philanderer off. Her loyal lapdog, Alistair ‘the weasel’ Meaks, may well have assisted in disposing of the body. But it was unlikely, because Frau Fuchs’ response on being told of Bobby’s death was one of absolute, genuine shock. On the other hand, the weasel may have committed the murder himself, motivated by either envy or a sense of loyalty towards Frau Fuchs. And, of course, there’d always been a strong chance that Monika, the daughter, had committed the deadly deed for much the same reasons as her mother, hence Frau Fuchs’ determination to protect her. As for Franklin, well, he’d been a real dark horse who’d aroused Curzon’s detectives’ instincts, but it looked like they’d come to nothing now that all fingers were pointing at Craig Hunter. The only thing that still bugged Curzon about the footballer, apart from him probably being a paedophile, was the fact that in some of the East Asian photographs he was smoking a cigarette, which belied the clean living, fitness freak image portrayed by his sponsors. Not only that, but as a youth-player such a vice would have made him unattractive to clubs and almost definitely scuppered his career, meaning that he’d probably learned to indulge his penchant for nicotine in secret. This might explain why the only other place Curzon had ever seen one of the particularly distinctive, shiny gold papered cigarette butts from the photos, was in the area beneath Frau Fuchs’ front door steps.
Chapter 12
By the time Curzon got back to the station, Tommy Franklin’s lawyer, Fergus Baxter, had already phoned one of the assistant chief constables. He’d demanded that the inspector be withdrawn from the case because he was harassing his client – against whom there was no evidence – simply on the grounds that the “poor man” was being represented by him. He claimed that Curzon was being childishly unprofessional and that he held a vendetta over the Maker case, and even went so far as to recommend psychological counselling, before threatening to write
a letter to the Police Complaints Commissioner.
When people as esteemed and dangerous as Fergus Baxter made complaints on behalf of rich, national icons, adored by the public and feted by the establishment, senior policemen had to take notice and make sure everything was done by the book. Ideally, they preferred things to be conducted as informally as possible, which was why the assistant chief constable had arranged an appointment for Curzon at Baxter’s West George Street chambers in the city centre, later that afternoon. He’d told Curzon’s superintendent to stress to his inspector that, once he’d spoken with Franklin and Baxter, if there was still no overwhelming evidence, he should discontinue this particular ‘fruitless and unnecessarily invidious line of inquiry”. As far as the chief was concerned, properly investigating the murder of one petty criminal from a scheme really wasn’t worth a running battle with the various powerful interest groups, which would distract him from the general fight against crime and eventually ensure his premature departure from the post.