Death In The Closet (Edward Crisp Mysteries Book 3)

by Peter Boon

  34

  I knew the person I needed to speak to next would be at the hospital, waiting for the man they loved to wake up.

  I found who I was looking for sitting in a private family waiting room, the kind that were only available on request and usually impossible to get.

  ‘Hello, Troy.’

  To say he looked shocked to see me was an understatement. ‘What are you doing here? How the hell did you know I was here?’

  ‘I’m meeting DI Appleby here to help him with something. Because of Danny’s suicide attempt.’

  I could see his panic as he thought about what to say. ‘Oh, I see. I’m here with Chloe, of course, she’s just popped out.’

  ‘She hasn’t, though, has she? She doesn’t know you’re here.’

  ‘What, what do you mean?’ His voice was high pitched and strained. It was time to put him out of his misery.

  ‘I mean you need to tell the truth. The next person coming to speak to you will be DI Appleby, so why don’t you get your story straight with me first?’ I gulped. The ‘bad cop’ act didn’t suit me. ‘If you tell me the truth, I can help you.’

  ‘The truth?’ he said hesitantly, with tears in his eyes.

  ‘That you’re in love with Danny. And it’s him you’ve been in a secret relationship with, not Kieron Juniper.’

  As soon as I finished speaking, he collapsed into tears. It took ten minutes before he could speak.

  And when he did, he finally told me the truth. All of it, his role in everything.

  He’d just about got to the end of his story when a nurse knocked on the door of the room.

  ‘Sorry, Troy, you asked me to let you know when there was any news on your friend.’

  ‘Yes?’ he said expectantly, jumping up from his seat.

  ‘He’s awake, just about, and he’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said as we thanked the nurse and went to follow her out of the room.

  I stopped and turned to Troy. ‘You know the police will need to speak to you, don’t you?’

  He nodded, but went to carry on walking. All he seemed to care about now was that Danny was okay.

  I cared about that too, but I had another reason for being glad he was alright.

  It was time to finally talk to Kieron Juniper’s killer.

  We knocked on the door and waited to be let in. The response was surprise that the two of us were there, as I expected.

  ‘What are you two doing here?’

  I took a deep breath. Perhaps this wasn’t very sensitive when Danny had only just woke up, but we had to do it.

  ‘I need to talk to you about Kieron’s death. I know that you’re the one who cut his brakes.’

  ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  ‘Because we’ve worked out everything, Chloe.’

  35

  I’d left Troy to go see Danny and went back to Appleby to confirm that Troy had told us what I expected him to. I’d persuaded Appleby to let them have some time together first, but then DC Wood was on hand to arrest him.

  We weren’t sure how to proceed next, until Appleby’s colleague radioed to say that Chloe was leaving the hospital. As soon as I heard that part of the conversation, I slipped off before he had a chance to stop me.

  I knew he wouldn’t allow me to go with him, so I left the hospital before him and jumped in a taxi. I knew he’d come himself in his unmarked car; he wouldn’t want Chloe being alarmed by a police vehicle.

  I was probably acting foolishly. I just wanted to be the one to see this through: for Kieron, for Danny, even for Beaumont. However, the one part of my plan that had gone wrong was Noah jumping into the taxi back seat right behind me. It was one thing to put myself in danger, but not Noah.

  I’d tried everything to make him go back in the taxi, but he was having none of it. ‘We’re a detective duo.’

  ‘What do you mean, you’ve worked out everything?’ she said, as she allowed us to follow her in. ‘They’ve arrested Ricky Roberts. They’re bound to charge him, they’ve got overwhelming evidence.’

  ‘And how would you know that, exactly?’ I challenged.

  ‘I don’t have to put up with this,’ she spat. ‘My fiancé’s in critical condition in hospital.’

  ‘Oh we know, we followed you from there,’ Noah said.

  I saw her rage building, so I spoke again before she could direct it at Noah. ‘Yes, ever the loving fiancée. You stayed just long enough to see he wasn’t dead, then left him to see the person who really loves him. Your best friend, Troy Nicholson.’

  Her face was a picture of absolute shock. ‘You can’t know this, you can’t, it’s not possible.’

  ‘Is that an admission of guilt?’ Noah asked cheerfully. I took a couple of steps in front of him. If anything was to happen, I wanted her to attack me, not him. I’d assessed the danger as fairly minimal; cutting brakes was the most cowardly, non-direct murder method possible. But she was still a murderer.

  She fumed at Noah’s comment as I continued. ‘We do know, though. Troy is probably giving his statement to the police as we speak. And Danny will do shortly as soon as he’s well enough.’

  She paced back and forward a couple of steps, wringing her hands together. ‘No, you’re bluffing. You know nothing. It’s all a load of rubbish, anyway. Kieron was the gay one, not Danny. But that wasn’t the reason for his death. Ricky Roberts killed him to cover up his gambling problems.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what we were supposed to think,’ I said. ‘And I will give it to you. That was the last part of the case I couldn’t work out. I didn’t understand how Ricky Roberts’ DNA came to be on the murder weapon. The murder weapon that was, of course, only found the next day, having been dumped in the football club’s rubbish for the police to find. How convenient.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ she replied, in an attempt to be dismissive.

  I continued apace, in hindsight perhaps getting a little too carried away with the melodrama. It later confused me how my nerves even allowed me to confront her like that; I think I was just running on adrenaline.

  ‘And how convenient that you was in a position to blackmail Ricky Roberts’ hairdresser. The man who was in a secret relationship with your fiancé, and who cut Ricky’s hair the morning after the murder. It must have been easy for Troy to hand you his hairbrush or scissors with Ricky’s DNA all over it.’

  ‘How the hell did you…’ she stopped herself. ‘That’s rubbish. Troy doesn’t even cut Ricky’s hair.’

  ‘He does. I heard he cut most of the team’s hair. And Ricky definitely got his hair cut the next morning, he said so on the microphone and I could tell when I saw him.’

  ‘That’s all circumstantial, it means nothing,’ she sneered.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, but what’s not circumstantial is Troy’s full confession. You can’t blackmail him any more, Chloe. He’s willing to be honest about how you forced him to help frame Roberts, and his relationship with Danny, not the fake one with Kieron you made him tell the press. And you can’t threaten to ruin him anymore; on reflection, your misdeeds are far worse than his anyway.’

  ‘That little snake betrayed me with my fiancé!’ she shouted, showing genuine anger for the first time. ‘He deserves everything he gets. But he won’t be getting my fiancé. He’s mine.’

  I had her. ‘And there we go, that’s the truth of it. The reason Kieron had to die.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, you stupid little weasel?’

  I looked around the massive open plan house that we stood in. It was tasteless–bright pink everywhere–but it was ridiculously expensive.

  ‘You had no intention of giving up all of this. This house, this lifestyle, all the couple magazine deals. At least not until you had a wedding ring on your finger. I dread to think how much money you’d make on the exclusives for that. Plus half of everything Danny’s worth when you filed for divorce afterwards.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ s
he snarled, but she looked panicked.

  ‘That’s why you turned a blind eye to Danny’s sexuality. Fiona told me the rumours that you both discreetly cheat on each other and carry on, only we thought Danny’s flings were with women. What was it Fiona said? Not quite a relationship of convenience but not far off.’

  ‘’You’re going to listen to that head-case? Look at the state of her, she doesn’t even know the right decade to dress in.’

  I felt my temper rise at this, but I continued calmly. ‘But what you weren’t counting on was Danny cracking. He had mental health issues anyway, and living a lie was getting too much for him. So he confided in his best friend and Captain, Kieron.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ she repeated with quiet fury. I was close to the final truth, and she knew it.

  ‘Kieron advised Danny to tell the truth: to break up with you and come out. He even helped Danny write a coming out statement, which you blackmailed Danny into passing off as Kieron’s.

  ‘My theory is, the day of the reception, or perhaps a day or two before, Danny told you everything. About Troy, about Kieron helping him to come out. You couldn’t let that happen. Even after the murder, you thought of everything. You visited Ellie and manipulated her into suspecting Ricky Roberts. You even tried to do it to us, too.’

  She laughed out loud this time. ‘Go on. What happened next? This would make a fantastic story. You should get in touch with ITV and offer to help them reboot Footballers’ Wives. But this doesn’t happen in real life, hun.’

  ‘It’s very over-dramatic, I admit. But that’s why you nearly got away with it. And it’s funny you mention that TV show, because you’d have done anything to become a footballer’s wife. Including lying to Ellie that it was Kieron who was gay, coaxing her into making a public scene, then cutting the brakes of Kieron’s car before he got the chance to tell her the truth.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. Kieron had a chance to tell Ellie the truth. You claim to know everything, so you must know that she spoke to him, before she went on the microphone. Why didn’t he tell her then? In fact, why wouldn’t he walk into that room and tell everyone he wasn’t the gay one?’

  ‘Ooh, I know the answer to this one!’ Noah said, waving his hand in the air. ‘To protect Danny.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I agreed. ‘To protect Danny’s mental health. He would have known what a delicate way his friend was in, and if he’d outed Danny–the only way to explain the truth to Ellie–he could have sent him into a terrible state, like the one he’s only just survived today. Kieron even said to me it was the biggest dilemma of his life. But he would have told the truth soon, which you couldn’t risk. The last thing he said to me was he had to tell the truth, even if it damages someone else. He would have persuaded Danny to come out, your time was nearly up.’

  ‘Have you quite finished? Because I’m bored with this now. Time for you two weirdos to go.’

  I stood my ground. ‘No. You need to admit the truth.’

  She cackled hideously. ‘Even if I do, who’s going to believe you two? And you think I can’t get Troy to withdraw his statement? He’ll do anything I tell him to.’

  ‘You’re sure about that, are you?’ I said. I felt my heart racing, sensing danger for the first time. I’d estimated that Appleby would have been here by now.

  ‘Be careful, boys. I sent Kieron to his death without him even knowing. Who knows what I could do to you two, when you’re least expecting it.’

  ‘Then you’re admitting it?’ Noah said, but I couldn’t tell if he meant it as a question or a statement.

  ‘So what if I am? Like I said, I’ve got Troy in my pocket and I’m not worried about you two. Otherwise, there’s no proof.’

  ‘Except this,’ Noah said, taking his phone out of his pocket and cheerfully showing us it was on voice recording mode. ‘Sorry, I forgot to tell you this time.’

  ‘You little freak!’ she screamed. ‘Give that to me.’ She flung herself towards him and knocked him to the floor, grabbing for the phone as she writhed above him.

  I froze in terror for a second before I realised I had to save him. I reached to grab her when the door opened. It must have been Appleby, finally.

  It wasn’t.

  ‘Get off my friend, you evil bitch!’ Fiona yelled as she rugby tackled Chloe off Noah, sending her flying to the ground and landing on top of her. Chloe struggled below her, but Fiona wasn’t having it. She was much stronger than I thought, even holding her down with one hand while getting her phone out. ‘Smile for the camera, Chloe!’

  ‘Don’t even think about printing that,’ Chloe spat venomously.

  ‘Oh I won’t,’ Fiona said with a grin. ‘This is just for my personal enjoyment. To remember you by.’

  Finally, DI Appleby and DC Wood ran in with a uniformed officer, who ran straight to Chloe with handcuffs.

  ‘Can I say it?’ I heard Wood ask Appleby. ‘It’s my first murder arrest.’

  ‘Fine,’ nodded Appleby, looking bemused.

  ‘Chloe Stone, you are under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Kieron Juniper. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  ‘Get off me, get off me, don’t you know who I am?’ Chloe shrieked as the PC took her away. ‘I’ll have your careers for this!’

  ‘Edward, you’re a bloody idiot for going off by yourself, you could have got killed!’ Appleby said furiously as we checked on Noah.

  ‘Lucky I was there to save them,’ Fiona quipped, winking at me.

  ‘How did you even know we were here?’ I asked.

  ‘Remember, I told Noah not to go off investigating without me,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a tracking device, but I managed to enable ‘find my phone’ on his mobile when he wasn’t looking.’

  ‘Nice one!’ Noah said, either not realising or not caring that she’d invaded his privacy. ‘Another case solved and a great story to write. I think the three of us make a great team.’

  ‘I do too,’ Fiona said, winking at me.

  36

  ‘Are you sure this is the right thing to do?’ Beaumont asked as we stood outside the closed door.

  ‘Definitely,’ I replied. It was the next day, and I’d come back to the hospital. There was something I needed to do, and it involved Beaumont. I knocked gently on the door to the private room before entering.

  ‘Edward,’ Danny said as soon as he saw me, trying to sit himself up in panic. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know she was the murderer. She convinced me it was Roberts.’

  ‘Relax, Danny, it’s fine,’ I tried to tell him. ‘She manipulated everyone.’

  ‘It’s not fine,’ he said. ‘I played my part in Kieron’s death, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Which I hope is a very long time,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a lot to live for, Danny.’

  He smiled, but then looked confused as Beaumont stepped into the room. ‘Beaumont? Hello mate, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Hi there. How are you feeling?’ Beaumont asked with a shy smile.

  ‘I’ve brought Beaumont along because you two have a lot in common. I think it will do you good to have a chat.’

  Danny still looked confused as Beaumont took a seat next to the bed.

  ‘Beaumont has something to tell you,’ I said as I moved back towards the door.

  Beaumont looked at me and nodded before turning back to Danny. ‘I’m gay. And I believe I’m not the only one.’

  I watched as Danny’s shock turned into relief and then happiness. He burst out laughing, and Beaumont soon joined him.

  ‘No gay Premier League players ever and now there’s two in one team, what are the chances?’ Beaumont said.

  ‘Roberts will definitely quit now,’ Danny said before they laughed again.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said, as I made my way out of the room.

&nb
sp; ‘Edward?’ I stopped at the sound of Danny’s voice. ‘Thank you. Thank you for everything. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ll spend every day making this up to Kieron. Being the man he knew I could be.’

  ‘And I’ll help you. We can take this journey together,’ Beaumont said, putting his fist out to bump Danny’s.

  I stepped out of the room to see Fiona waiting on the other side of the door.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ we both said at the same time.

  She spoke first. ‘You caught me. I was going to see if Danny was ready to talk. There’s a lot of bad press out there on him already with his part in Kieron’s death. I thought I could get his side, you know, maybe finally get my story. Now Chloe’s stopped leaking all the stories she wanted out.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s ready for it,’ I said. ‘He’s got a lot to think about before he speaks to anyone.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have come, really. All of this has made me realise that people’s lives are more important than what’s in the press.’

  ‘Oh no, don’t give up,’ I said. ‘Danny might not be ready to talk to you, but I know someone else who is. How would you like a world exclusive, history making interview?’

  ‘I’d love that. Who is it?’ she replied with excitement.

  ‘I’ll tell you in a minute, there’s one condition first.’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, looking confused.

  I breathed in and out slowly. This was it. I took her hand. ‘The condition is, will you go for a drink with me?’

  I watched comprehension arrive on her face. ‘Like a date?’

  I nodded. ‘Like a date.’

  ‘Edward, I’d love to.’

  37

  BEAUMONT ALBRIGHT WORLD EXCLUSIVE: “I’M A GAY FOOTBALLER”

  By Fiona Turtle

  Beachy Head United’s newest signing has made history by being the first Premier League footballer ever to publicly confirm that he is gay.

  Beaumont, 18, has been openly gay to his family and close friends since he was 16, and describes it as ‘no big deal.’