by Hannah Howe
The growling Rottweilers alerted Naz to my presence. He waved the dogs to silence, then ushered Cassandra from the cubicle. She walked past me, head bowed, her attention still focused on her fingernails.
“Here to buy some equipment?” Naz asked. He waved his right wrist at me. A large watch encased his wrist, held secure by a thick white strap. “Can I interest you in a watch? It tells the time, monitors your blood pressure, heart rate...” He glanced up and grinned at me. “I bet your heart is going right now, ain’t it? I bet you shit buckets, thinking of meeting up with me.”
“For a fascist,” I said, “you do have a lyrical turn of phrase.”
“I’m no fascist,” Naz insisted. “I’m a realist. It’s dog eat dog in this world, ain’t it. You exploit who you can, or you get rid of them.”
“All you need is love, so John Lennon said.”
Naz laughed, “And a lot of good it did him, didn’t it?” He removed the watch and returned it to its packaging. A large crate, positioned beside the desk, revealed that he shipped the item in bulk. “Love doesn’t exist, darlin’,” Naz continued. “Hate makes the world go round. If you want to succeed, you’ve got to hate.”
I ignored his comment and said, “I found Frankie.”
“So I heard. In a pool of blood.”
“Someone shot him,” I said.
Naz shrugged. He leaned back, placed his heavy boots upon his desk. “I heard that too.”
“Several times,” I said.
“Good for them,” Naz grinned. He curled his fingers into the shape of a gun then took a series of mock shots at me. “I mean, it don’t hurt to be sure, does it?”
“You know how to use a gun?” I asked.
“I collect them,” he admitted.
“German guns?”
“Yeah. Lugers, mainly.”
“Shotguns?”
“I own a few,” he shrugged.
“Machine guns?”
Naz dropped his feet on to the floor. He stood and, with a snarl on his ugly face, walked towards me. “So I own an arsenal of guns, right, all legit, all licensed.”
“Have you fired a gun recently?”
“Spit it out,” he said, canting his head to the right, narrowing his eyes into thin slits. “What you’re trying to say is, did I kill Frankie?”
“Did you?” I asked.
“Why would I waste my bullets on a has-been like him?”
“It was more than murder,” I said; “it was an act of gross violence.”
“And you reckon I’m violent?” Naz asked, curling his right hand into a fist.
“Aren’t you?” I smiled.
“I got it under control, me.”
Naz placed his rock-hard fist under my chin and tilted my head back. Mentally, I rehearsed my response, flexed my right knee, prepared to drive it into his groin.
“You cross me,” he said, “and I’ll hurt you; I’ll break your neck. But I’ll do it slowly, with control. Tie you to a beam, watch you spin a while.”
Naz’s aggression excited his dogs and they began to bark. He turned to calm them, placed his hands palms down. Meanwhile, a coward to the core, I took a step towards the door. As my mum used to say, ‘when in doubt, chicken out’, one of her few pearls of wisdom.
“You’re looking to sweep the old guard aside,” I said, “that’s what you told me.”
“Vanzetti, Valentine,” Naz scoffed, “has-beens.”
“And Frankie Quinn?”
“A has-been. Worse than that, a nobody.” Naz paused to receive a message from Nudger Nicholls. The message was garbled, akin to Cockney rhyming slang, a criminal code, no doubt connected to stolen sports equipment and Naz’s fencing operation. As was his wont, Nudger spoke out of the corner of his mouth, offered me a lecherous gaze, then returned to the warehouse. Meanwhile, Naz said to me, “You’re pissing on the wrong tree, Sammy; I didn’t do for Frankie.”
“Who did?” I asked.
Naz shrugged a muscular shoulder. “As if I’d know; as if I’d care.”
“I reckon you do know,” I said.
“And if I come across for you,” he leered, “you’ll come across for me?”
Nudger and Naz offering me the eye in the space of sixty seconds; maybe I’d do better to ditch the Chanel and cover myself in cow dung.
To Naz, I said, “Some people reckon that overtly violent acts stem from a feeling of sexual inadequacy.”
“You can’t wind me up like that,” Naz insisted, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I’ve got a will of iron, me.”
“Who murdered Frankie?” I asked.
Naz stepped into the warehouse. He approached a punchbag, suspended from the metal rafters. His upper lip twitched into an angry snarl as he hammered the living daylights out of the punchbag, as he released some of his pent-up aggression. Cassandra, Nudger, Harry et al looked on, their expressions ranging from admiration, to apathy, to apprehension.
After he’d mopped the sweat from his brow, Naz turned to me and said, “I’ll give you a hot tip.”
“I’m listening.”
“You heard of the Bishop brothers?”
“Only in passing.”
“I heard Frankie was going to shop them. Cut a deal with the filth.” Naz winked, an action as coarse as the rest of his behaviour. “I’d talk with the Bishop brothers, if I were you; I’d have a word or two with them.”
Chapter Eighteen
That evening, I drove to Porthcawl, called on my father. He opened his front door then led me into a back room, originally a dining room now converted into a play area with a three-quarter sized snooker table.
“Mind if I pot a few balls?” he asked. “It helps me to relax. I don’t know why it is, maybe it has something to do with the colour of the balls and the patterns they make on the table, or the smooth way the balls run over the cloth; all I know is, whenever I feel uptight I like to wander in here and knock a few balls around; first thing I did when I moved into this house was install my snooker table.”
Gawain crouched over the snooker table. He proceeded to scatter the red balls with a break-off shot. Then he straightened and offered me a second cue. Mimicking his stance, I took aim at a red ball; I managed to hit the ball with the cue ball, but the red missed its target, the bottom right-hand corner pocket.
After straightening, I said, “I phoned earlier, but you didn’t answer.”
Gawain sighed, “I was helping the police with their enquiries.”
“They figure you for Frankie’s murder?”
My father nodded, “Frankie spilled the beans, but didn’t offer any evidence. They reckon I silenced him then got rid of the evidence.” Gawain took his stance, aimed for a red, but missed the pot by a considerable margin. With a grimace, he said, “They dragged your name into it. You’re in trouble because you lied for me. I shouldn’t have hauled you into all this. You see why I kept my distance all those years.”
“Do you have any further thoughts on the murderer?” I asked. “Maybe someone Frankie annoyed, from his past.”
Gawain pursed his lips. He chalked his cue in thoughtful fashion, eased a blue cube over the velvety tip. “Frankie wound up quite a few people in his time, but no one who’d do anything like that.”
I took my turn at the table. Incredibly, I managed to pot a red, a long-distance shot that whistled into the bottom left-hand corner pocket.
“You’re a natural,” Gawain grinned.
“Beginners luck,” I said, though I did increase my break by potting the black. “What do you know about the Bishop brothers?” I asked as Gawain re-spotted the black.
“Brydon and Brandon,” he frowned, “the twins?”
“Identical twins?”
Gawain nodded, “Close enough.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Head cases, the pair of them. That said, they’ve been calmer lately. I think they roped in a shrink, a psychiatrist, a Dr Tebbitt. He gave them meds and the meds calmed them down. Maybe they’ve di
tched the meds. Maybe the drugs are no longer working.”
“They’re violent men?” I asked.
“Nutters,” Gawain said. “They’d kick the living daylights out of you just for a laugh. First, you have Brydon, the eldest by a few minutes. He’s the boss, so they call him the Pope. He’s the brains, that’s if you can call someone with a minus IQ ‘intelligent’. Then you have Brandon, the Cardinal.”
“Why the Cardinal?” I asked.
“Because he loves torture. He’s a sadist, they both are. Brandon’s the Cardinal because of the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Was Frankie connected to them?”
“Not that I know of,” Gawain said. “When I was active, we stayed well clear of them; didn’t want any of that trouble. That said, me and Frankie went our separate ways. He might have teamed up with the Bishops, yeah.”
As I took my stance at the snooker table, Gawain offered me a quizzical look. With deep furrows lining his forehead, he asked, “You thinking of leaning on the Bishops?”
“It crossed my mind,” I said. I mishit my shot, made a foul, scattered blue chalk dust over the green baize of the table.
“Don’t,” Gawain insisted, his voice harsh, adamant, hard-edged. “I’m ordering you, as your father.”
“Dad,” I said, my right hand brushing the chalk dust from the table, “aren’t I a bit old for that?”
“I’m warning you, Samantha,” Gawain said, his tone and words echoing my mother, “the Bishops are nasty men. You mustn’t go near either of them.”
With a smile, I encouraged my father to take his turn at the table. He proceeded to pot a red, the blue, another red, then the yellow. He missed a difficult cut on a third red, but his potting ability demonstrated that he had an aptitude for the game.
“Who chose my name?” I asked, sensing that it was prudent to change the subject.
“Sharon, your mum. She sort of named you after her late husband, Samuel, as a token of respect.”
“And you were happy with that?”
“Yeah,” Gawain shrugged. Then he smiled, a huge ear-to-ear grin. “Samantha’s a beautiful name and you were a beautiful baby. I think Sharon chose well.”
As the game progressed and Gawain relaxed, I mulled over Frankie’s relationship with the Bishops. Maybe he’d worked for them. However, if so, why would they kill him? Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t; maybe he was going to grass on them; maybe the solution was that simple. Maybe a chat with the Bishops would supply the answers.
At the conclusion of our game, Gawain asked, “You won’t go near Brydon or Brandon will you?”
For the record, I emerged as the victor, champion of our snooker challenge. However, like the good parent he longed to be, I’m sure my father gifted me the win.
Mischievous to the end, I refused to answer his question. Instead, I gathered up my shoulder bag, walked to the front door and kissed him on the cheek. With a smile, I said, “I’ll be in touch.”
Chapter Nineteen
I spent the following day thinking about Frankie and the Bishop brothers. According to my father, Brydon and Brandon Bishop had a fearsome reputation; they were not men to tangle with. Although I was itching to question them, I recognized the potential dangers; to help counter those dangers, I required a plan.
Phase one of my plan entailed a search through my newspaper archive. From day one of my agency, I’d cultivated the habit of scouring the local newspapers for items of potential interest – details of missing persons, local crimes, known criminals and their social activities. In those early days, clients were scarce, so the archive occupied my mind and helped pass the time. These days, thanks to Faye’s influence, I also used the Internet. So, through a combination of my archive and the Internet, I managed to draw the Bishops into the light.
According to the media, Brydon and Brandon Bishop were pillars of the community. They were generous with their money and donated considerable sums to charity; they took an interest in the local sports clubs and were patrons of many; they mixed with celebrities and minor royalty on a regular basis; they were fixtures at high society parties. Furthermore, numerous photographs of the Bishops’ granite-hard faces revealed that they were indeed dangerous men.
That evening, while concocting a plan to confront Brydon and Brandon, I called on Alis, partly to say ‘hello’, partly to connect with Alan. I found Alis in the living room, sprawled full-length on the carpet, propped up on her elbows, eyeing her computer.
Hurriedly, she hit the keyboard, slinked gracefully to her feet then smiled at me. “I forgot you had a key,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said, “am I interrupting something?”
“No,” Alis insisted, though her words were rushed, unnatural, hinting at conspiracy. She adjusted her blouse, a lacy, off-the-shoulder number, then smiled at me again. “Faye told me that your wedding dress is a champagne colour,” Alis said, apparently eager to change the subject.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Come on; let me show you my dress.”
Without a second thought, I followed Alis into her bedroom where she revealed a light pink maxi dress, sleeveless with a halter-neck. The dress was simple, yet elegant. On Alis, with her youthful good looks, it would look stunning.
“What do you think?” she beamed.
“Are you supposed to outshine the bride?” I asked, fearing that she would eclipse me, send me into the shade.
“I won’t outshine you,” Alis laughed. “Not even Faye could outshine you,” she added generously. “Looks good though, eh?”
“Gorgeous,” I said. And with harmony restored, we returned to the living room.
In the living room, while sitting in armchairs, opposite each other, I asked, “Are you comfortable about me marrying your father?”
“Of course,” Alis said while leaning to her left, while sweeping her long, wavy hair over her shoulder. “You’ll be my new mum.”
I scoffed, “I’m hardly mum material.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, frowning with sincerity, “I think you’d make a lovely mother.”
“The mother from hell,” I said.
“No,” Alis insisted, “you’d be good. You’d put right all the mistakes your mum made with you.”
From the hearth rug, Alis’ computer groaned. Then it moaned in highly suggestive fashion. We glanced at each other, offered a double-take, then Alis bit her bottom lip.
“Shit,” she said, “I thought I’d turned it off.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Just surfing the web,” she replied defensively.
Mother-hen Sam felt compelled to look. So I climbed to my feet and wandered over to Alis’ computer. As my mother used to say, the sights you see when you haven’t got a gun. “That’s porn, Alis,” I said. “Hardcore porn. Very explicit.”
“It’s risqué,” she conceded with a blush.
“It’s porn,” I said
“Granted,” she admitted, “it is a bit extreme.”
“How did you find that site?” I asked, smoothing the back of my skirt, returning to my seat.
Alis switched her computer off with a firm press of her right thumb. Then she returned to her seat, her cheeks as red as her brightly painted fingernails. “A friend at art class gave me a password,” she explained.
“Password?” I frowned.
“Yes. It’s a secret site. What you see on the Internet is only the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of sites the public don’t see. Secret sites, password protected, invitation only.”
I nodded, then asked, “Does your father know that you look at things like that?”
“Of course not,” she scoffed, averting her gaze, glancing at Alan’s portrait, an Alis Storey original in oils. “I don’t make a habit of it. But Melissa gave me the password so I thought, why not have a look...” Then Alis’ mobile phone buzzed into life and she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Shit...here he is...better make sure it’s switched off this time.
..”
“Switch what off?” Alan frowned, his image appearing on Alis’ mobile phone.
“The TV,” Alis said.
“The radio,” I said.
Then we offered each other a secret smile.
“You two been drinking?” Alan laughed.
“Only a crate or two of wine.” I sat behind Alis, on the edge of the armchair, so that we could both talk with Alan. “How are you?” I asked.
“Tired,” Alan conceded. “Looking forward to winding down. A few more days, then home. How are you; what have you been up to?”
Over the next few minutes, I brought Alan and Alis up to date with my search for Frankie Quinn, and with his brutal murder. Also, I explained that my father was a prime suspect in Sweets’ book.
“Who did it?” Alan asked, his tone and expression heavy with concern.
“My contacts have placed a few names in the frame, but I’ve no evidence, yet, no reason to favour one over another. Frankie was looking to shop someone and cut a deal with the police, so that seems the prime motive. But given Frankie’s background, it could boil down to a host of other things.”
“It’s a murder enquiry,” Alan noted, “maybe you should leave it with the police.”
Before I could reply, the screen froze and we lost the connection. Despite the recent thunderstorm, the air remained heavy, humid, and maybe that played havoc with the video link. Or maybe mice were gnawing away at the cables; who knows the truth of these things?
Alis’ phone sparked into life again and, with the connection restored, I said, “Gawain’s involved and Sweets figures him for the murder. I can’t sit back and allow my father to take the hit.”
“You’re convinced that he’s innocent?” Alan asked.
“You’ve met my dad. You’ve talked with him. Would you say that he’s capable of committing an act of gross violence?”