Caught in the Web

by Emmy Ellis

  Burgess glanced up at the flat above Letty’s, with its clean windows, cloud reflections scudding across them. His stomach churned some more, but adrenaline was the prevailing force governing him. The need to do the right thing and apprehend a man he believed was evil.

  Once out of the car, Burgess stood in front of a white-painted door that was next to the glass one for Letty’s. He stared at the one for the flat for a few seconds, knowing the suspect had stood in this exact same spot thousands of times. Varley had maybe watched the comings and goings of the police—had maybe even seen Burgess himself when he’d arrived on the scene yesterday morning. Spied out while Burgess had sat in his car getting over the sight of that thing. Witnessed Anita being taken away. What the hell had the man thought?

  Burgess had been told once to put himself in a killer’s place, to think like him, but he was fucked if he could. What person with no urge to kill could ever imagine what went through a warped mind?

  He knocked on the door. Waited. Knocked again. Reckoned Varley wouldn’t answer if he knew what was good for him. Burgess glanced up at the windows for the second time, hoping to see a shadow of the man who lived there.

  Nothing.

  Unsurprised, he rapped with his knuckles once more.

  “Possibly sleeping,” Shaw said.

  “Hmm. Stay here. Keep trying.”

  Burgess pushed the door to Letty’s open. Myriad detergent scents enveloped him, plus another he so loved—the chemical smell of dry cleaning. A blonde forty-something woman in a ratty beige cardigan and black leggings sat reading a magazine in front of a washer that swished clothing around in thick white suds behind a glass door. The greyish water turned his stomach, as did her filthy hair. A bottle of Daz wobbled about on a dryer that sounded as though it contained training shoes that thunked and smacked against the drum with each rotation.

  Behind the counter, a man, good old Mr Ustav, was hanging plastic-covered garments on a rail. His hair was more pepper and salt than black these days, and his thick-as-a-caterpillar eyebrows stood out a good half inch from his forehead. Weathered skin around his eyes added to the proof that the passage of time had swept over the old bloke with a vengeance lately. Burgess hadn’t noticed the drastic changes until now.

  Too busy to care?

  Mr Ustav turned and flashed a pleased, creamy grin Burgess’ way, his dentures so uniform they clearly weren’t a replica of his original teeth. “Hello, Burgess. You have something for me to clean today?”

  Burgess smiled back. “Not on me, no, but I do need to bring in a suit and some shirts. Next time.”

  “You collecting then? I don’t remember you leaving anything behind.” Mr Ustav frowned, searching through the garments with frantic movements, his fingers knotted with arthritis.

  “No, no.” Burgess rounded the counter. Stood close to Mr Ustav so his words wouldn’t be heard by the woman. He doubted they would anyway, what with the dryer making such a racket. “I need to speak to you in private.” He nodded in the woman’s direction.

  “Ah, some police work, yes?” Mr Ustav asked, rheumy eyes wide.

  “Yes.”

  “About the poor woman found in the alley?” Mr Ustav whispered and clutched a plastic garment cover until it scrunched.

  “About the poor woman, yes. Somewhere we can go?” Burgess raised his eyebrows.

  “Out the back. We will be all right there.” He let the plastic cover go. “Gordon isn’t working this week. I told your officers that. I have lots of work to do without him here. He is good with the dry cleaning. Very diligent worker. The best I’ve had.”

  He’s good with the killing, too.

  Burgess followed Mr Ustav, the faint knocking that must be Shaw hammering on the flat door filtering through. A dry-cleaning machine took up most of the space on the right, but a kitchenette stood along the left wall, a coffee machine with an orange light on the worktop and a full carafe giving Burgess all kinds of need to drink a cup. Mr Ustav poured two then gestured to the Coffee-Mate canister and a click container of sweeteners. Burgess helped himself while Mr Ustav leant against the worktop.

  “So,” Burgess said. “Tell me all about Gordon.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “He is a good boy. Like I say, very diligent.” Mr Ustav smiled indulgently. “Like my own son, except my son wants to be diligent as a doctor, not in this cleaning business. I am sad about this, but I cannot force my boy to follow in my footsteps. I did not follow in my father’s. I did not want to farm pigs. So I understand, but there is still a part of me that wishes my son will change his mind. Perhaps Gordon will want to be a manager one day and I can leave him to run this shop when I open another.”

  It was a story Burgess had listened to many times—minus the part about Gordon—but today he didn’t want to hear it again, no matter how much he enjoyed Mr Ustav’s tales from the past. Mind, there were other tales from the past he wanted to know about now and he could only hope Mr Ustav’s memory served him as well on those as it did with regards to his life, son, and wife. The man had decent recall and had told Burgess a lot about the area he hadn’t known.

  “Do you know if Gordon is home at the moment?” Burgess asked. He’d gone for the casual approach. No need to alarm the old man.

  “I have not seen him walk past the shop window today, but I also have not heard him pacing. Gordon has been doing that a lot recently. Even in here”—he held a hand out to the cleaning machine—“I catch him pacing while he waits for this to finish. Always walking up and down, like he is troubled, but when I asked him, he said everything would be all right once he came back to work. He said he would make everything all right again and he would be happy.”

  “I see. How long has he been working here?”

  “Three years and four months. The flat comes with the job. As you know, I used to live up there with my family but not anymore.” He slapped himself on the forehead. Thank God it had been a gentle slap, otherwise he’d done himself a bit of damage. “Not anymore because Gordon is there. I say some irrelevant things.”

  “Does he mention anything about his life?” Burgess asked.

  “Not much, but once he said he would like to have a family of his own. A wife, children, and a pet. He was very insistent about that. And that he wanted to be happy.”

  Don’t we all?

  “Does he have visitors? Friends and the like?”

  I need to build a picture of this fucker. I want to know who I’m dealing with.

  “Not that I have seen.” Mr Ustav stroked his barely there chin. “He is what Mrs Ustav, my Letty, said is a loner. She asked him to come for dinner once, but he refused. He was polite about it, and Letty did not take offence, which pleased me as I do not wish her to be upset. Gordon said he prefers to be by himself until he finds a nice wife.”

  So he has dreams, a goal. Why kill and put that in jeopardy?

  Burgess needed to press on. Find something that would help the case. “Do you know if he goes out much—places where he would find this nice wife he seems to want so much?”

  “He does not drink. He says he does not enjoy alcohol because it turns people into her. I do not know who her is, but he does not refer to the woman with a smile on his face. He does this.” Mr Ustav brought his forehead beetles together until they kissed each other. His mouth formed a tight, downturned pout, and his eyes narrowed to the point of almost closing. “And his cheeks, they go so red. He is angry about her, I know this much.”

  A former lover?

  “Moving to something different now,” Burgess said. “Do you remember the murder of a woman sixteen years ago who was also found in the alley?”

  Mr Ustav had lived here for many years with Letty, who had once been the person to operate the dry-cleaning machine. Now, with several shops to their name, she worked in the one down High Street. Another couple of shops were run by managers. Burgess had been surprised the Ustavs didn’t live in a big house, considering their cleaning empire, but Mr Ustav had said th
ey’d come from humble beginnings and saw no reason to elevate themselves up the social ladder. They liked living in flats—it reminded them of where they’d begun.

  “Oh, yes, of course I remember that.” Mr Ustav shook his head and stared at the floor, possibly seeing images in his head that replicated the more recent ones of the police crawling up and down the alley in search of evidence. “I thought it a terrible business. I remember how awful it was for Letty back then. She used to work late here and would not leave the shop to go to the flat upstairs until I had come from the branch in High Street. That is when we moved to the flat there. Letty did not like living here—or working here—after the woman was found. She is beside herself that it has happened again. She wants me to close this shop, but it was my first so…” He shrugged. “I am attached to it in here.” He thumped his chest. “This is why I still work in this one. Why I have stopped myself from asking Gordon to manage it.”

  “I understand. Now this next question might be pushing it, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t remember. Do you recall the murder of a man thirty years ago—it’s a long shot, I know, but you’ve been here for so long you might remember. He was called William Varley, same surname as me.”

  “Ah, yes, and that is strange, because that is an uncommon surname so it stuck in my head—also because of other things I saw regarding that man—and I asked Gordon when he first started if William was a relation. He said he did not know him. I have also wondered if you are a relation to William and Gordon.” He shrugged again. “But I did not like to pry. And why would you or Gordon know William just because you have the same name? Not all Browns know other Browns.” He laughed a little. “I should not be finding humour. Pardon me for that.”

  “It’s fine, Mr Ustav. Anything else you remember about that murder? The man’s, I mean.” And the other things you saw? What did you mean by that?

  “It is funny you should say that. Not funny but… I am irrelevant again. No, not irrelevant.” He waved one hand. “I cannot think of the word. But I knew of the man, William Varley, which is why I asked Gordon about him. I say I knew him, but he only came in here a few times. First he was like you, bringing in suits and shirts, which is how I knew his name for when he had to collect them. Then one evening he brought in a bedspread and two pillows. He said his son had been sick and his machine wasn’t big enough to wash the bedding. I remember this because my own son had also been sick and we had discussed the virus going around. But what I remember the most is that he sat beside a girl. She must have been about fourteen, someone I would not have thought he would touch like that.”

  Gordon’s mother? Touch like that?

  Burgess’ stomach rolled over at the idea that his father had sex with a minor. He’d been putting off thinking about it for hours. Had his father dumped her after using her? Left her with a child to raise by herself? For all that Burgess’ mother had insisted William Varley had been a good man, he most certainly hadn’t been.

  Mr Ustav went on, “When Mr Varley sat with her, she was just a young girl, which is why I was troubled the moment he touched her thigh and rubbed it like she was not a child.”

  Burgess’ knees threatened to buckle.

  “This is why he stayed in my mind all this time, because he was inappropriate,” Mr Ustav said. “And then his murder was in the newspaper with his picture a few years later. I said to Letty that the girl’s father must have found out what a dirty man Mr Varley was and had killed him. I rang the police and told them this, but they did nothing. I tried to do the right thing.”

  Burgess stifled a heave. Bile stacked up in his throat, pushing to come out. Nothing about Mr Ustav’s call had been logged in William’s file. And ‘inappropriate’ didn’t cover what he thought of his father. If he were alive today and Burgess knew what he knew now, he’d have no trouble shopping him, seeing him put behind bars. This news was going to hurt his mother so much.

  I wouldn’t choose to tell her, but when the press get hold of this… Shit.

  “Yes.” Burgess cleared his throat. “You tried to do the right thing.”

  “Once Mr Varley’s washing had finished, I told him not to come back, that he was not welcome here. I pointed at the girl then at him. He got red cheeks. He knew what I was referring to. So if he had the red cheeks, why had he touched her in the first place, if he knew it was wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” I’ll never know now. “What was the young girl’s reaction to this touch?”

  “This is the most disturbing thing,” Mr Ustav said. “She was laughing and she leant her head on his shoulder, then…then she kissed him. On the mouth. I remember telling myself she just looked like a young girl, that she was older than she seemed, but I knew deep down. Otherwise, why would I have told him not to return?”

  “So would you say that they had arranged to meet here? That they had met before? They knew one another already?”

  “Yes. I think now that I look back on it that the bedspread and pillows were convenient to be dirty, if you understand what I am saying.”

  “I understand.” Jesus Christ… “And were you aware that the woman who was found in the alley sixteen years ago was that young girl, the one in here with Mr Varley?”

  Mr Ustav’s face paled, and he made a choking sound. He reached for his coffee then took a long swallow. “My goodness, that is most horrible. I did not know that.”

  “Back to Gordon.” Burgess feared the old man might be sick, so another direction was in order. “Do you know his usual pattern? You know, day to day when he’s finished work? I understand you stay here quite late.”

  “He goes up the stairs after work. I hear his TV or radio. I do not see him go past the window in the evenings before I leave about eight, although he could go in the other direction up the street. But I do not hear his front door close, and I would because it sticks and needs to be slammed. I must get that fixed. It needs to be planed.”

  “So he really does keep to himself—or he goes out much later, after you’ve gone home?”

  “Perhaps. Why are you asking these things about Gordon?”

  “Oh, he’s one of the only residents or shop owners and their employees down here that we haven’t had a chance to speak to about the recent murder. We have to ask everyone if they’ve seen anything. He hasn’t been in when officers have called round, so I’m here today to see if he’s there. It appears he isn’t.”

  “He will be back at work on Monday. You can speak to him then.” Mr Ustav nodded. “Will I tell him you have been looking for him?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Ah.” Mr Ustav widened his eyes. “Do I need to worry?”

  What the fuck do I say to that?

  “Um, I wouldn’t say so.”

  Please let me be right on that. I don’t want Gordon hurting Ustav.

  “Will you be needing to go up the stairs if he does not answer?” Mr Ustav pointed to a wooden key box mounted on the wall. “If I have not heard him or seen him since his last shift, and he is not answering his door, then perhaps he is hurt up there? He might need assistance. I am so worried…”

  The man didn’t wink, but he might as well have done.

  “Are you worried?” Burgess asked.

  “Yes, of course. I wish to know that he is all right.” He went over to the box and produced a set of keys. Placed them in Burgess’ hand. “I would like you to go up the stairs now.”

  “I can do that for you, Mr Ustav.”

  Burgess left the back area then walked through the front of the shop. The woman was still there immersed in her magazine, the dryer still clonking, the washing now on the spin cycle.

  An image of his father sitting there beside Emily Hornton streaked through his mind, along with mocking laughter that set his nerves on edge. To find out his father had been a pervert wasn’t the best of things to discover. And once they had Varley down at the station and had taken a DNA swab, finding out whether his father had followed through on his proclivities and had made Emily H
ornton pregnant would be more than the usual slap in the face.

  His mother had kept William’s brush and comb set all these years, stored in a keepsake box. Hopefully there would be hairs in there that would produce the results that were needed to prove who Gordon’s father had been. Failing that, Burgess could give a blood sample.

  The results that will prove I had a deviant father and that my poor mother stuck by him, clueless as to Emily’s age when he’d first been with her. That fucker didn’t deserve Mum’s loyalty and love.

  Out of the launderette, he gulped in the fresh air and went straight to Shaw, where he leant in and whispered what he’d discovered.

  Shaw’s features tightened. “I’m so bloody sorry.”

  “You and me both, but I’m so bloody angry—and that’s what I need to get me through this. Anger. So we’re going into that flat and finding something—anything that will give us what we need to arrest this man instead of just asking him in for routine questioning. Anything, got that?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Gordon frowned.

  That was strange. William’s Ford, the one he’d seen outside Beautiful Lady’s house, was parked next to the kerb outside the launderette, behind Gordon’s red Golf. He had no idea why his father would be there, unless it was to ask Gordon why he’d been over the road from Beautiful Lady’s earlier. Gordon didn’t mind answering that question. It would be easy to say why. He’d wanted to see the woman from his past who he’d longed to live with. But he would be asking a question of his own.

  How come William was alive?

  That was such a conundrum, wasn’t it?