“OK.” He lifted his head briefly towards his mate, who pulled a pad and pencil out of a pocket. “I’d like you to tell me what happened here. Take your time, nice and slowly, so we can get as clear a picture as you can give us.”
Alex took a breath, sat up straight, then proceeded to tell them the same story she’d told me. Only, now she had recovered some of her poise, she used more words and even risked a quick glance at the corpse as she spoke. Mind you, from the way she flinched, it was clear she regretted that glance. The only bit of the story she didn’t seem too sure about was how many times she had clobbered the bloke. She thought at first it was once but when the copper asked her to confirm that she seemed to get confused and said it could have been twice, but she wasn’t sure, it all just happened and he was on the floor bleeding before she really knew what she’d done.
When he was finished with Alex, Durham turned back to me and extracted the usual by-the-book statement, confirming the call Alex made and what I found when I reached her room. I even told him about the glass of water from the bathroom, just so I couldn’t be accused later of leaving stuff out.
“There anything worth stealing in here? Cash, jewellery, that sort of thing?” he asked, when I was done.
“Nothing I know about.” I answered, realising I didn’t know for sure.
Durham looked at Alex. She shook her head.
I remembered the hotel thief, but the bloke dead on the floor just didn’t cut it as a plain vanilla thief. They don’t hang around waiting to be caught, let alone get whacked over the head, especially with something sharp and heavy. Anyway, Angela was adamant whoever was nicking stuff was one of her employees and Angela hadn’t identified him when she’s taken a look. I decided not to muddy the waters by saying anything about the mystery thief; at least not for the time being.
The Inspector looked around the room again. It was a half-hearted attempt of the sort you make when you’re wondering what the hell has been going on. He turned to his mate, “Take a look in the bedroom and the bathroom, Wills.”
Wills trundled off to do as he was told.
Durham’s eyes settled on Alex for a moment, but he must have decided better of it, so turned back to me, “He was waiting, eh?”
“That’s what Alex told me.”
I guessed the same thought had occurred to him as it had me, so I put it out there to see how he’d respond. “If he was waiting for her, like Alex says, that tells me whatever he was up to was planned. Him being here when she got back wasn’t coincidence or plain bad luck.”
Durham crossed his arms and pursed his lips.
“Mm. It was definitely ‘waiting’ she said?”
I wondered why he didn’t just ask Alex, after all she was right there in front of him.
“Clear as could be and I got her to confirm that’s what she meant.”
“Why might he have done that then? Any bright ideas?”
“I haven’t got a clue. Well...” I scratched the back of my head and wrinkled my hooter, wondering if I wanted to risk looking like a paranoid idiot, but my hesitation was enough to peek Durham’s interest.
“Well, what?” There was the sound of expectation in his voice.
I shook my head. “It was probably nothing. Just me imagining things.”
“Think I’ll judge that for myself. Now cough up.” Expectation had been replaced pretty sharpish with the sort of demand you couldn’t politely decline.
“We were out doing some of the sights day before yesterday. I took Alex over to the pier, then up to some of the shops. I don’t know what it was, but I got this really strong feeling we were being followed. Never anyone I could put a finger on when I looked, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. Then, when we got back here, I was sure the room had been searched. Things didn’t look right. That was it. Nothing for certain, but I’d stake my reputation on it.”
“Your reputation worth much, is it?” He didn’t wait for an answer, turning instead to Alex. “And did you see anyone following you, Miss?”
“No.”
“What about the room, did it look to you like it had been searched?”
Alex shook her head. She had a look on her face that said she was sorry, but what was she to do?
Wills reappeared, coming out of the bathroom. “Nothing suspicious, guv. Not in either room.”
“OK. You’d best get the crime scene mob in here.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Alex had stood up. I turned to ask her how she was doing, but she got in first.
“Inspector Durham.”
He turned round to face her. “Yes. Something else you’ve remembered?”
“You could say that,” she answered, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry, David,” she went on, glancing across at me. “But the story you’ve been told isn’t altogether true.”
I felt my gut lurch. “When you say, altogether, I don’t suppose you mean it was all a pack of lies, do you?”
If her face hadn’t already been blotched from the crying, I’d have said she blushed as she looked down at the carpet.
“Most of it, yes. I’m sorry.”
I blew my cheeks out. “I never learn. And just when it looked like we were having such a bloody good time. So, what story you going to tell us this time? Walt Disney write the lines for you, did he?”
“That’ll do.” Durham’s voice was firm, so I shut up. But though he was speaking to me, he was glaring at Alex. It was her he spoke to next. “And just what is the truth, Miss Rudd? The proper truth, if you don’t mind.”
Alex got herself back together and, directing her words at Durham, told us the real reason she was in Brighton with a minder.
“The part about having trouble with a former lover is true enough, only it’s not someone trying to blackmail me. It’s far worse than that.” She stopped and looked down at the dead man. It wasn’t a horrified glance this time, but a proper look, one that didn’t seem to move her much.
“Go on,” prompted Durham.
“For the past three and a bit years, I’ve been the girlfriend of a man called Tony Groves. Most people think he’s a hard-working, successful property developer, who made his money building office blocks and up-market flats in the West End of London. But that’s not true at all. He’s really a crook whose made most of his money running a protection racket and dozens of prostitutes, then bribing councillors to give him planning permission for new property developments that probably should have gone to other developers. I know I was naive, but when he started dating me I didn’t know any of this. I believed the stories he put out there for public consumption.”
I could see Wills scribbling all this down in his pad and Durham’s face had gone long and drawn. He wasn’t liking what he was hearing and I couldn’t say I blamed him; London gangsters and a dead body on his patch; it wasn’t looking like the sort of thing that would get cleaned up easily. Then I started to ask myself what all this new information was going to mean for me, especially my chances of living a long and pain free life.
“And when you found out the truth?” asked Durham.
Alex pressed the palm of one hand against her forehead and closed her eyes before answering.
“I ignored it,” she said, the guilt clear to hear. “I’d got so used to the life I was living by then. The flat Tony paid for and the BMW, the jewellery and everything else he gave me. I knew it was other people’s money paying for all these things and I suppose I knew as well, even then, that some people got hurt, but I turned a blind eye to all that.”
She went quiet and started to rub the side of her face, her eyes fixed again on the floor. I didn’t really need to be told the next part of her tale, because it was so bloody obvious, but, since I was already there and couldn’t think of anything else better to do, I decided I might as well stay and hear her out.
“When did you change your mind?” asked Durham, his arms folded across his chest again.
“I’d heard things, from time to time, about the violence, but
never anything specific or certain. Then, one day, I was coming out of a clothes shop in Chingford when a woman marched up to me, slapped me across the face, then started screaming at me, telling me her son’s death was paying for my clothes and she hoped I’d rot in hell. I didn’t really take it all in, I was too shocked, but I heard enough before the staff from the shop came out and pulled her off me. She was in a terrible state, the poor woman.”
“Guilt then,” prompted Durham, his face even longer now and his mood starting to look foul.
“Yes,” whispered Alex. “I found out the woman’s name, then looked through the local papers at the library until I found a story about her son. He’d been beaten up so badly by three men armed with steel bars that he died in hospital the next day. There wasn’t anything there to say it was Tony, but I asked a friend of mine that I’d known since school. She didn’t want to tell me at first, but I wouldn’t let her leave my flat until she did. She told me everyone knew who had ordered the beating. It was Tony. I was still taking it in when my friend asked me how I could live with myself, knowing that was how Tony made the money that paid for my flat and everything else. She was disgusted with me.”
We were all given a start when the phone rang. If it had been ten times as loud I don’t imagine it would have done any more to break the spell. Durham picked the phone up and listened. He grunted something then put the receiver back on the hook.
“Go on, Miss Rudd. I think we’d like to hear how you finished up here in Brighton.”
“I couldn’t sleep at all that night and the next day I spent walking in Epping Forest, feeling sick in my stomach. After what I’d heard, I couldn’t pretend any more. Couldn’t close my eyes to what was going on. By the time I got back to the flat I’d made my mind up to leave Tony. When he came round that evening, I told him I was leaving him and why, but he went mad, throwing things around, telling me it wasn’t my choice whether or not I left. Then he grabbed me by the throat, so tightly I could hardly breathe, and told me if I left he’d have my face sliced open so badly I’d be too afraid to go out in public again and then he… well, I suppose you can imagine what he did next.”
Yep, this little story was taking exactly the turn I had expected, as soon as she’d told us her former boyfriend was a big old crook. Why else would she have run away from London and holed up somewhere she hoped was out of the way enough for him not to be able to find her. But there was more, I just knew it. Things didn’t end here in Brighton. There had to be another chapter to this story.
“And then, Miss Rudd.” Durham had already guessed the rest, I was sure of that, but he had to hear it from her. That was the way these things were done.
“I didn’t know what to do after that. I was too scared to think properly. I’m sure I’ve never been so terrified in all my life. I didn’t know who to speak to or even if I should speak to anyone. I wanted help desperately. I couldn’t stay there, I knew that. But I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger.”
Alex sneezed. Once. Twice. Little girlie sneezes that hardly seemed worth the bother. Durham’s eyes didn’t leave her face, not for a second. He was keen, really keen, to know the rest. I suppose I was keen too, but I was already feeling used and abused, having been sold a pup, like a right mug.
After she’d twitched her nose a couple of times to make sure there weren’t any more sneezes waiting to escape, Alex picked up the story where she’d left off.
“In the end, I could only think I would have to go to the police if I wanted to escape from Tony and it seemed obvious they wouldn’t want to let such a wonderful opportunity slip through their fingers, so I decided if they would give me a new identity, like you see on the television, then I’d tell them everything I know about Tony.”
“Do you know much about him, the real him?” asked Durham.
“I didn’t think so, not at first, but it’s surprising what you can piece together when you put your mind to it. I finished up with a list of names and places, dates and visits that looked quite impressive once I’d written them all down. I wasn’t sure I could trust all the police officers in our part of London. No insult intended, Inspector, but Tony is the kind of man who knows how to spot a person’s weaknesses and then exploit them.”
“Sensible precaution,” came Durham’s reply.
“I stayed with a friend in Richmond for the weekend a few weeks later. Tony knew where I was and I assumed he would have someone keeping an eye on me, but what he didn’t know is that my friend’s husband is a police officer. After I’d told him pretty much the same story I’ve just told you, he made a phone call to his boss and a few hours later I was interviewed over the phone by a detective who specialises in investigating people like Tony.”
Durham gave himself a moment to take it all in, then asked the question I wanted to ask. In fact, if he hadn’t asked it first, I would have butted in and asked it myself.
“So, how comes you’re here in Brighton, hiding out in a hotel? Didn’t the police in London believe you?”
“Oh, they believed me alright. But they wanted me to stay with Tony and collect more information for them. They said I didn’t have enough to offer them if I wanted to see him sent down for a long stretch. I was horrified. There was absolutely no question of me spending another minute with Tony, especially when it meant I also had to let him get into bed with me. So I refused.”
Loud voices, all of them women, passed along the hallway outside the room. It brought a halt to proceedings for as long as it took for their voices to fade away.
“They called again on the Sunday,” Alex went on. “But they were still saying they needed me to get more information before they could arrest Tony and I refused again.”
Alex stopped talking and ran her hands over her face. She looked worn out. Stress, I supposed.
“What then?” Durham asked. I got the impression he wasn’t going to leave off until he felt confident he’d extracted every last little bit of information.
“I asked the detective for protection and somewhere safe to stay, but he said the police don’t do that sort of thing unless there’s a strong justification for it, which didn’t apply in my case. I could always run away, he said. Find somewhere quiet where Tony wouldn’t find me. That wasn’t what I was expecting. I simply couldn’t bear the thought of staying with Tony and decided if the police weren’t going to help me then I’d better help myself, so I booked into this hotel and arranged for David to look after me.”
I couldn’t help myself. “What made you think I’d be able to hold off Parson’s heavies if they found you? Look at me, I’m a bloody private investigator, not a sodding bodyguard.”
She made an upside down smile and an apology, of sorts. “Sorry. I don’t know how you go about finding a bodyguard, not a proper one. I needed someone and a private investigator seemed like a good idea at the time. Your name really did get picked at random. All that mattered was you had nothing to do with Tony.”
I was sure there was the hint of a smirk on Durham’s face. It was the first sign of emotion I’d seen from the bloke.
“Do the police in Richmond know you’re here?”
“Yes. I’ve spoken to them twice since I arrived.” She glanced at me, looking suitably guilty. “I’d still much rather Tony gets locked up, for a long time, but I won’t put my neck on the block unless I get some proper protection.”
“Any sign of that being offered now you’ve legged it?”
“Inspector Alden told me that he’d let me know before the end of today. I got the impression they were going to change their minds and give me what I want.”
“Alden, you say.” Durham looked at Wills. “We’ll need a number for him as soon as we get back to the station.” Wills nodded and scribbled another note.
“Well, I’d hazard a guess your boyfriend has cottoned on to your game and sent this bloke down here to drag you back to the Smoke,” I chirped, still smarting at being played for an idiot. “Wonder what Parson’s is going to think when he fi
nds out you bashed this bloke’s bonce in?”
Everyone starred at the corpse again, then Durham looked back at Alex. It was hard to keep up with all this looking around the place and I was worried if I didn’t I might miss something important.
“And you don’t know this man, you say? You’re sure about that.”
Alex shook her head. “I’ve never seen him before, I’m certain.”
Durham rolled his bottom lip over the top one and stepped a little closer to the corpse, peering down at the man’s face.
“We’ll still be able to get some decent photos, seeing how there’s not too much damage to his face. We’ll see if anyone local or in London recognises him. It might be true this Parson’s character sent him down here, but it might be coincidence and have sod all to do with Groves. Best not go making any assumptions.”
“Makes you wonder if he didn’t have a mate,” I suggested, thinking Durham might have missed the possibility. “I know he was a hefty bloke and Alex is hardly a big bird, but you’d have thought Groves would send a pair of them, to make sure there weren’t any problems getting her out of here.”
“That’s a fair point,” replied Durham, wandering over to the window and peering out at the street. “If it had been me dishing out the orders I would have sent two of ’em. Could be any one of those cars parked down the road or maybe in one of the side streets. Be a little bit less conspicuous, would that. Wills, best get a couple of uniforms to take a look and tell them to be careful.”
“Sir.”
Wills ambled away towards the bedroom and started talking into his police radio.
Durham walked back across the room and stuck his face up close to mine. “A word outside.”
We went out into the hallway, Durham pulling the door to, so there was no more than a sliver of light coming through from the room, then walked us a few yards further on.
“What do you reckon to that woman? Can we trust her?”
It was a question I wasn’t expecting. I’d thought he was about to tell me to leave things in the hands of the professionals, etc etc. I shrugged my shoulders and made a face.
As Good as Dead Page 9