by Sibel Hodge
‘Muriel,’ Hacker said a few minutes later.
I relayed it to Brad who punched in the sequence of letters.
Nothing happened.
‘Damn,’ I said. ‘What else?’
‘His dad’s name was Sam,’ Hacker said in my ear.
‘Try Sam,’ I said to Brad.
He went through the motions again. Nothing.
‘What about Lee?’ Hacker suggested.
‘Good idea.’ I told Brad who punched in the letters.
Nothing.
‘Shit.’ I stamped my foot, thinking. ‘I know, try Coco.’ I waved my arm excitedly at Brad.
Nothing. Not even a mini click.
‘I’m still thinking,’ Hacker said in one ear.
I bit by thumbnail, staring around the room for a flash of inspiration. ‘Casper!’
Brad punched it in and the safe door clicked open.
‘Thanks, Hacker.’ I hung up.
Yay! Go me!
Brad pulled out a bundle of A4 sized buff envelopes and put them on the desk. Flicking through them, he saw one with Levi’s name on. He glanced up at me briefly before emptying the contents onto the desk.
I sucked in a breath when I saw what was inside.
Chapter 14
Photos. That’s all they were.
Simple, non-threatening glossy pieces of paper. Unless you counted what was in the photos. Then it would be pretty scary and threatening to Levi.
I was right in my theory that Levi had been involved in a car accident, but I was so wrong about it being with Edward’s car.
The first photo showed a stationary Range Rover in the middle of a road left in a wonky position. It was a dark night and the road looked like a quiet country street. Levi was slumped in the driver’s seat of the car, his chest resting on the steering wheel. His eyes were closed. But that wasn’t the scary part.
Lying in the road, in front of the car and lit up by the headlights, was the lifeless, bloody body of a woman. Her eyes were wide open in a haunted death glaze, and her bare arms and legs stuck out at funny angles. The bonnet of the car was dented and had obvious traces of blood on it. There were several other close-up shots of the car, Levi, and the girl, taken from different angles. The woman looked to be in her forties, wearing a red cocktail dress. Her shoes had fallen off in the collision and they were lying on the ground near her body.
****
‘Shit,’ I said as I stared at them again later on in the safety of Brad’s kitchen. ‘These are pretty powerful photos.’
‘Do you think these were taken the night Vinnie threw the party for Levi?’ Brad tapped one of the photos spread out on the breakfast bar.
‘That would still make sense.’ I stared at the photos with a sense of dread. ‘It looks like Levi didn’t have anything to do with Edward’s accident, then.’ But I didn’t know which was a worse thing for him to have done. Killed this woman or caused a horrendous spine injury to Edward. They were both disgustingly awful. ‘Maybe Edward was at the party that night and drove himself home drunk and ended up down the embankment all by himself.’ I thought back to Janice Skipper’s flawed traffic accident report and her investigation into Vinnie Dawson. Maybe I’d been jumping to conclusions about something sinister going on. Maybe she hadn’t been a dirty cop, just a useless one.
Brad tapped the photo of Levi. ‘So Levi decides to drive home drunk in his brand new Range Rover, hits this woman and kills her. But who took the photos? Someone else was there, too.’
‘Vinnie. It has to be him. I bet he seized the opportunity to have something on Levi. Think about it…Levi had just won his first title fight. Vinnie knew he was going to be a big cash cow for him and wanted to make sure he could keep him in line. The perfect way to make sure Vinnie would always be his manager and promoter was to blackmail him with these.’
Brad nodded. ‘Vinnie could kill two birds with one stone. He could make sure Levi was tied to him for as long as his career lasted, and he could also make sure the contract was stacked in his own favour financially.’
‘You’re also forgetting that Vinnie could blackmail Levi to throw his fight with this information, too, so Vinnie ended up with even more money from the illegal betting scam.’ I exhaled a long, slow breath as I thought. ‘But why ask him to throw the fight all of a sudden? It seems like Vinnie’s never asked him to do it before, and since Levi’s only twenty-four, he’s got a few years of his career left yet.’
‘Maybe Vinnie suspected Levi was going to come clean about this accident and he wouldn’t have any leverage over him anymore. Also, EJ told me all of Levi’s world champion fights before have had a clause in the match contract that state if Levi loses, he gets a rematch within six months. Because the odds were around thirty-to-one on Levi winning, obviously Vinnie and his cronies would’ve made a substantial amount when Levi took a fall if they bet on Ricky. And then within six months Levi would get his title back on the rematch. Vinnie wins both ways then.’
I picked the photo up, studying it closely. ‘OK, so let’s assume that a copy of this was in Vinnie’s safety box. This must’ve been what Carl was shouting about to Levi at the boxing match. I know what you did to that girl. That’s why Levi got distracted by it, and that’s why both Levi and Vinnie looked so scared.’
‘That’s a pretty good motive for Vinnie to kill Carl.’ Brad sat on the stool next to me, one foot resting on the bottom rung, the other outstretched.
‘Yep. That’s true, but what if Carl wasn’t in on the illegal betting scam at the bank and he suddenly found out about it and confronted Edward? Edward would have a motive to shut him up then, too. And what about everything else that’s been going on? If Carl found copies of these photos in Vinnie’s safety box, then either he was involved in the robbery or Edward or Deborah were.’ I paused, digesting this. ‘It’s unlikely that, if Deborah was involved, she would have told Carl anything, since she was going through a nasty divorce with him and was trying to dig into the whereabouts of his assets for her settlement. So that leaves Edward and Carl. And if either of them were involved in the robbery, what was it in those boxes that they were looking for specifically in the first place? Were they looking for what was in Vinnie’s box all along? Or were they looking for something else completely and just came across these photos?’
‘The only box we’ve found with any kind of connection to Carl is Deborah’s girlfriend, Eleanor Jones. Carl must’ve wanted what she had in her box and stumbled on these pictures in the process,’ Brad said.
I yawned. ‘I think she was probably hiding something for Deborah. What was it, though? And if it was something Carl wanted, why would she hide it in his own bank?’
Brad shrugged. ‘Sometimes the best hiding place is the most obvious.’
‘And why didn’t Carl just steal it from that box when he was at work? As the CEO of the bank, he’s got easy access to all the master keys.’
‘It’s not quite as simple as that.’ Brad ran a hand over his hair. ‘When Hacker checked into the bank’s systems, he discovered that the safety box vault must be opened by three members of staff. All three have to give a thumbprint ID simultaneously for the vault to open. Obviously, both Edward and Carl are on the access list, but even if they were both involved in it, they’d still need to drag someone else into it as well. It would look pretty suspicious if they got access into the vault during the bank’s opening hours and started rummaging around in the safety boxes. They’d alert other members of staff to the fact that something weird was going on.’
I chewed on my lower lip. ‘Right. So Carl or Edward had to mastermind a full-scale robbery to get in it.’
‘Unless it really was Levi who organized the robbery to get these photos from Vinnie’s box.’
I stretched my arms above my head. ‘It’s a possibility, but somehow it doesn’t really fit. He’s put up with it all this time; why would he suddenly try and do something about it now?’
‘Everyone has their breaking point. Maybe he’s j
ust had enough of being manipulated by Vinnie. Maybe Vinnie asking him to throw the fight was the last straw.’ Brad stood and rummaged around in the cupboards. He switched the kettle on to boil and scooped out a couple of spoonfuls of aromatic coffee grounds into a French press. ‘No wonder Levi bolted if he thinks his hit-and-run is going to be exposed.’
I couldn’t help thinking how this would affect Letitia. It was bad enough for her that she carried around the crushing depression of desperately wanting children and not being able to have them. Levi’s affair wasn’t doing her stress levels any good, either, but for her husband to have killed someone in a drunken hit and run and kept quiet about it all these years. How would she cope with that? Someone would have to tell her, and I was hoping that someone wasn’t going to be me.
‘And if Deborah was murdered, who killed her?’ I took the mug of coffee Brad handed me, complete with chocolate sprinkles. The sprinkle touch made me smile. Chocolate – the way to a girl’s heart. ‘Was she killed because of what she put in Eleanor’s box? And if so, what was it? Or did Vinnie kill her because Carl told her what was in Vinnie’s box?’ I eased my tight neck round in a circle.
‘Have you got knots in your shoulders again?’
‘I’ve got knots on my knots.’
‘You should learn to relax more.’
‘How can I relax when I’m running around town trying to solve a case?’ I said, but I knew that was the problem with me. I tried to give the impression of being kick-ass but really, I just held a lot of my vulnerabilities under the surface. My mind was constantly dissecting and analysing things, which on the one hand made me a good investigator, but on the other hand, I tended to do it in my personal life, too. Keeping things in, worrying about stuff (stuff equates to Brad and Romeo), and thinking too much wasn’t good on a personal level, was it? Judging by the tension in my shoulders that would be a definite no. What if I was looking too deep inside myself for answers that I couldn’t see what was on the surface? If I only thought about things and never did them, wasn’t that a wasted opportunity?
Brad took the mug from my hand. ‘How about a massage?’
Well, I didn’t need to be asked twice.
****
A phone call woke me early the next morning. I reached my arm out of the warm duvet with slitty eyes, trying to find my mobile on Brad’s bedside cabinet.
‘’Lo,’ I mumbled, glancing over at Brad’s sleeping face. Awake or asleep, he looked sexy and strong and, well, pretty kissable.
‘Did I wake you?’ Carole Blake said.
I sat up, rubbing at my eyes. ‘No, I had to get up to answer the phone anyway,’ I drawled. ‘What’s up?’
‘I’ve got the post-mortem results for Deborah Thomas, and it was a faked suicide. She’d already been strangled before she was strung up.’
‘OK, thanks for letting me know. Any forensic evidence yet?’
‘No, they’re still working on it.’
Brad let out a deep, sleepy moan, and I put a hand over his mouth. His eyes flew open.
There was a pause from Carole before she said, ‘Shit, Amber. Who’s that? Brad?’
Oh, God. I knew I’d have to tell Romeo about Brad and me, but I was hoping to delay it for…well, indefinitely would be good. I knew he’d have a broken heart, and I just didn’t want it to be me that did it.
Aghhhh!
I was such a horrible, horrible person. And the sad and crazy part was that I still loved Romeo, too. I couldn’t just turn off my feelings for him in an instant. The only problem was that I loved Brad more. And if I was honest with myself, truly honest, there was something missing with Romeo that would never be there. That unique spark and passion. The utter belief that I’d die without him. That was missing with Romeo. Why did my life have to be so complicated?
‘Don’t tell Romeo,’ I said to Carole, avoiding Brad’s gaze. ‘He needs to hear this from me.’
‘I’m not saying a word. But, Amber, are you sure?’
No. That was the problem. I wasn’t sure about a lot of things. The only thing I did know for sure was that after all this time, I still couldn’t get Brad from under my skin.
‘Is anyone ever?’ I asked, being deliberately vague.
‘I guess not. Well, good luck with telling Romeo. I’ll let you know if I find anything else.’ Carole hung up.
Brad rolled onto his back. ‘So, are you going to tell Romeo about us?’
‘Yes.’ I flipped back the covers and headed towards the shower.
****
‘Whoa!’ Hacker said when I spread the photos of Levi on his desk.
‘That’s one word for it,’ I said. ‘There’s a license plate visible in this shot. Can you check it out to see who owned this vehicle four years ago? I’m pretty certain this is the new Range Rover that Vinnie bought for Levi that night, but I need to be sure.’
‘Give me two secs.’ He turned to a smaller screen on his desk and got to work.
I leaned back in my chair, chewing on the end of my pen, trying to make sense of the jumble of information in my head.
‘It was registered to Levi.’ Hacker looked at me.
‘Can you check out any hit-and-runs from four years ago?’ I flicked through my notes. ‘I’m thinking this happened the night of his first title fight on February fourteenth or the early hours of February fifteenth.’ Hmm, Valentine’s Day. Poor woman, she’d never be seeing another Valentine’s Day again. Did she have a husband or children out there still grieving the loss of her life?
‘OK, will do. There’s still no activity on Levi’s or Amanda’s bank or credit cards.’
‘Mmm.’ I swivelled in my chair, distracted.
Several things were niggling me about this case. Carl’s passport and half-filled suitcase made me think he was in the process of disappearing to South Africa. If he’d been aware of the illegal betting going on at the bank, maybe the pressure of messing around with the clients’ money was taking its toll on him, or maybe he figured he had scammed enough money and wanted out. And if Carl was running, why even confront Levi about what he’d discovered? I know it was a horrendous thing that Levi had done to her, but why would Carl care so much about this woman who’d been killed? Had she been Carl’s girlfriend? Maybe Deborah wasn’t the only one having an affair in the Thomas household. That would explain why he interrupted his departure to take the time to stop off at the boxing match and shout his hurt and anger at Levi. And Did anyone else know about the woman?
On the flip side, maybe Carl hadn’t been running at all. Maybe he’d just been taking a holiday. He could’ve been perfectly innocent in all this and had suddenly discovered Edward had been using their client’s money for the illegal betting, and Edward arranged to have him whacked. Edward had another motive, too. Carl’s share of the bank’s assets passed to him in the event of Carl’s death.
The other thing that was niggling me was why Edward would lie to me about being injured in a skiing accident, when really it was a road traffic accident? Sometimes the smallest and seemingly most inconsequential lies were the most important.
Why was Deborah murdered, too? What had she found out? She’d set up the security systems at the bank. Had she discovered what was going on with the betting when she was trying to find evidence of Carl’s assets for the divorce? Had Deborah even been involved in the betting scam with Edward? Or for some other reason that I hadn’t got my head around yet? Had both Carl and Deborah been killed by the same person?
I needed to get that photo from Dad’s memory card. Hacker might be able to manipulate it to see who the guy was coming out of Deborah’s house after the burglary. I was pretty sure that memory card held the picture of Deborah’s murderer and the guy who’d organized the bank robbery on it.
Something else was niggling at me, too. Something about Amanda and Levi having an affair didn’t fit. She’d said, “You’ll get me killed”. Harsh words. Yes, there were plenty of spouses who killed their other halves because of affairs, but somehow I couldn
’t imagine Letitia doing it. So who was Amanda scared of? Her laptop had been stolen in the break in, although she’d lied to me about it, saying she’d misplaced it. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking it had her latest erotic novel on it.
I drummed my fingers on my desk, thinking back to what Terry had said about Levi. Levi kept saying he wanted to make things right and live up to his responsibilities. Maybe he’d been about to own up to what he did all those years ago. I was also betting that Levi knew a fair few things about Vinnie’s illegal betting scams and probably numerous other criminal activities as well. It was very possible that he’d been about to expose Vinnie with the help of Amanda. Brad was right – everyone has a breaking point. Vinnie making Levi throw the fight could’ve been the last straw. What if Amanda was writing a book about everything Vinnie had got up to over the years for Levi?
And that meant Levi and Amanda were in serious danger from Vinnie. He’d do everything he could to stop the evidence coming to light, and Levi knew that. He’d recently taken out a million pound life insurance premium so he probably knew his usefulness was over, particularly when Vinnie found out he’d never box again and he couldn’t manipulate Levi anymore. Maybe once any book was made public, Levi would be safe. But until then, Levi was a marked man. No wonder Levi and Amanda had run.
‘Has Edward made any travel arrangements yet?’ I asked Hacker.
He shook his head. ‘I feel like a travel agent this week.’
‘I’ve got this feeling that he’s going to run, so to speak. He knows it’s only a matter of time before I tell someone what he’s been up to at the bank. Try checking out any friends or family members’ names to see if they’ve made travel arrangements. He could be trying to disappear under an assumed name. Also, can you check to see if there were any possible girlfriends that Carl was involved with four years ago? Maybe he was having an affair with this woman. I think Carl must’ve been shouting a woman’s name that night. “I know what you did to…”.’ I shrugged on the last part. ‘We need to put a name to her face.’ I reached for the phone on my desk. Ricky Jackson had been at the party for Levi all those years ago. Maybe he could shed some light on who this poor woman was.