by Lee Weeks
As she opened the canteen door, the familiar smell of stale food hit her. She waited to catch the eye of the young man washing down the surfaces trying to relieve his boredom on the night shift.
‘Is Teen still here?’ she asked him.
He shook his head and went on smearing the dirt from his cloth across the stainless steel.
Willis went out past the front desk of the police station and doubled round to the car park. The road was bright with the rain. It was beginning to crystallise in places as the temperature had dipped to zero. She used the small runaround detective’s car and drove home. After parking outside the terraced Victorian house off Newington Green that she shared with three others, she put her key in the front door and listened intently: no sound of the television, no music. She closed the door quietly behind her and crept upstairs to her room. She was relieved that the house was sleeping. She had a lot of work to get through and she knew Tina would want to have a quick catch-up chat, which would spill into a two-hour talk, easily. Along with her best friend Tina from the police canteen, Willis shared with two other women: a nurse and a teacher. The nurse was at work more than she was home, and the teacher was engaged to a social worker from Camden and hardly slept there any more.
The orange light from the street lamp outside meant there was always some light shining into her room. She never thought to buy thicker curtains. She never moved into a space and made it her own. She had lived a lot of her childhood in children’s homes.
Willis didn’t bother to undress. She’d give herself three hours’ sleep, then up, shower and out of the door. First she checked her phone again for any message from Carter; there wasn’t one. Then she lay back and closed her eyes. But she couldn’t sleep. A half-hour later, she switched on the light and grabbed a coat. She wrapped it around her shoulders as she opened her laptop and lifted the files onto the bed, ready to read.
Just before one-thirty, Carter pulled up at the entrance to Giddewell Park. It was a one-time grand manor house and a hundred-acre estate, now turned into an events venue with a great golf course. It also boasted a two-Michelin-star restaurant.
‘Any problems?’ he asked one of the officers stationed at the entrance.
‘One of the family has ordered a cab and asked to be taken to a hotel near the airport. Did you want us to provide security?’
‘Which member of the family is it?’
‘Eddie Butcher’s widow, Della.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘She’s waiting in the reception.’
‘Okay. I’ll take her where she wants to go. I’ll make sure it’s one of the hotels with twenty-four-hour security and then it should be okay to let her do what she wants. Radio up and tell the officer with her that I’m coming now.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Carter drove along the tree-lined drive, decorated with white fairy lights for Christmas. He pulled up outside the main entrance and waited. Della Butcher was escorted out carrying her bag. The officer put her bag in the boot for her and she got into the passenger seat beside Carter.
She looked across at him: ‘It’s been a long time, Dan.’
Chapter 8
9 December
At half eleven the next morning Della Butcher walked through customs and out into the strong winter sunshine at Málaga Airport. She handed her bag to Marco.
Marco pulled his sunglasses down from his head. He had the air of a gangster on holiday. His blond hair was slicked back. His white shirt was open to reveal a massive gold crucifix, and he carried his jacket casually over one shoulder.
They headed across to the car park. He looked over and grinned.
‘I saw you on the television. You looked hot, dressed in black.’
‘That was my aim. To look hot at my husband’s funeral. Marco, please keep your stupid fucking comments to yourself. Any of the family return yet?’
‘Mrs Butcher is coming with Harold and Laurence – they’re arriving late this afternoon. They’re pissed with you.’
‘Really? I don’t give a shit.’
They walked across to the car, a new black Mercedes G wagon that had been Eddie’s pride and joy. Not seeing Eddie at the wheel hit Della hard in the sternum. The sorrow was mixed with rage at him and at everyone else. People’s comments were still in her ears: it was inevitable, fitting almost, that he should die a violent death; they almost acted like she should have been proud of it. But she knew the softer side of Eddie. He’d always been gentle and sweet with her and, even though people said it was inevitable because Eddie had been a Butcher brother, he’d been straight for years. They had so many plans; so much they were going to do. Why had he let this happen?
She left Marco to load her bag in the car and climbed into the passenger seat. On the dashboard was Eddie’s lighter. She picked it up and put it into the glove box. Marco glanced over at her.
‘Tony wants to see you.’
‘I’m going home first. I’m tired . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she sat back and stared out of the window. They drove out of the airport and hit the motorway and headed west to Marbella. She left the silence between them as she closed her eyes and her mind reran the events of the last twenty-four hours: the funeral, the faces. She was trying to recall the people she knew among them. They flashed into her head like strobe lights. When she opened her eyes, there was the sea. It dazzled her, electric blue. She never stopped feeling lucky to live there, to see the sea every day of her life and to understand that it was a luxury. But today its brilliance, clarity, sent needles of pain right into the back of her eyes. It hurt, everything hurt.
What kind of secrets? Other women? Was he travelling on the pretence of work just to screw his way around Europe? She racked her brains to remember their last conversations. Eddie had been getting more wound up daily. He said he was thinking of leaving it all behind, of them starting afresh. Della had broached the subject of jetting off to the Caribbean to talk things through, to plan a new future. Eddie had agreed far too quickly.
‘You book it, anywhere you like. Make it for Christmas. We’ll spend it on our own in a villa in Barbados, how does that sound?’
‘Too good to be true. What about your mum?’
‘Mum’s got Tony and Debbie. Harold will be over as usual. I want us to start moving away from the family. I wouldn’t mind if we end up living up the coast a bit. Or maybe we head off to Cyprus to live for a year or two?’
‘Is everything all right, Eddie?’
‘Yes, princess. It’s going to be okay. When I get home we’ll start thinking about where we want to live, you and me.’
As she thought it she shook her head. No, their marriage was strong.
They pulled up at the gates of her home, Villa Adelphi. The security guard opened the gates. The immaculate lawn rose before them. They had designed it around the phases of the moon. The lawn was laid out as a series of crescents, differing heights, and palm trees planted in between. The irrigation system was working and sprinklers shot up across the lawn in a synchronised fountain display. The round full moon of Villa Adelphi loomed before them as they drove a circular route. White pillars and arches were designed to create a picture postcard of tranquillity. On a good day it looked like the gates of heaven with its domes and alabaster columns, its Moorish towers. On a bad day it looked like a sixties-inspired mosque. Whereas it used to seem breathtakingly beautiful, an oasis, now it seemed more like a mausoleum.
Inside the villa, Della went to shower and emerged, wrapped in a towelling robe. She walked back through the sitting room and picked up a cold glass of white from the kitchen as she went to sit on the veranda. There was a stillness with a fresh quality to the air before midday. She looked out at the mountains, their muted colours and lights always changing, always majestic. A rooster crowed. She looked down to the gardens that she and Eddie had designed together – even down to the six palms swaying in the breeze and casting reflections in the infinity pool. It should have been a heaven for them but there were a
lways going to be complications.
Marco appeared on the veranda beside her. She adjusted her robe where it had fallen open. She was aware of Marco staring.
‘Are you going to go and see Tony now?’ he asked.
‘In a minute. I’ll walk.’
‘He wants you to go now. I must drive you.’ She didn’t answer. She didn’t look at him as he left. She stayed where she was and drank her wine and bit back the anger and the sorrow. Every time they ever got close to a perfect marriage something, someone, or just Eddie, spoiled it. When he’d built this villa for them they had created the perfect place to hide from the world, but then Tony built his further up the road. Always the family loomed over them.
She downed the rest of her wine and walked back inside to get changed.
Marco drove the few minutes up the road and down the lane to Tony’s villa. They pulled up outside the grand entrance to Villa Cassandra. Set in an acre and a half, it had been built in the style of an executive home in Essex but with the add-ons of a wraparound veranda on each of its three floors, which gave it the look of a ski-resort hotel. It could sleep fifty. It had three guest houses and a staff house, positioned around a central fountain, three pools and a beach house. The villa was accessed via a private lane, which made it easy to police and to secure.
As Della got out of the car and headed up the steps to the main house she looked up to see Debbie watching her approach from the veranda on the top floor. Marco left her. She walked between the alabaster columns and onto the mosaic floor in the hallway.
Tony was facing her as she walked into the trophy room. He was sitting side on to the views of the mountains and the sea. She knew why: he didn’t want to look outside. He had grown sick of admiring nature. It had been ten years since he’d ventured into the town itself. Now he was a prisoner in his own Shangri-La. There were armed guards and there was razor wire on his fences. His dogs were trained to kill. Tony was scared of them.
Della walked towards him. The table in front of him was dusted in white, there were rings of wet from drinks spillage. He was turning a credit card around his fingers.
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said, and pushed a line of coke her way.
She declined, repulsed, and sat down on the adjacent sofa.
He leaned in to vacuum up a fat line. She studied him. His shaven head had silver stubble. His face was stretched over prominent cheekbones. His lips were burned by the whisky. Cheeks flushed. He looked like an angry drag queen without her wig.
‘Thought you might feel like letting go a bit – must have been difficult for you yesterday,’ he said, sitting back and snorting loudly as he tilted his head back and his Adam’s apple moved up and down as he swallowed.
He waited to see if she would speak. When she didn’t, he sat up, took a few swigs of whisky and slammed the glass onto the table. He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees as his head hung down. Della watched him. She listened to the hum and hiss of the water sprinklers outside the open doors and windows. A lizard had waddled in and was climbing the wall in bursts of activity. Somewhere in the house she heard movement. She knew Debbie would be hovering close by.
After a few minutes, Tony sat back on the sofa, with his arms outstretched on the sofa’s spine. He looked up at the photo of Ronnie and Reggie Kray on the wall. He picked up his Scotch. ‘The Krays, Eddie, all the good ones are gone. Hey? Aren’t they, princess? Hey, you agree? You talking to me?’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘They left his body dumped like it was rubbish,’ Tony said as he shook his head mournfully. ‘They left him mutilated, like he was a joke. Like he was a fucking joke! And, I can’t even go to his funeral. I can’t even go to my little brother’s funeral.’ He glared at her for a few seconds before finishing his whisky just as Sheena, the maid, came in with a small tray and a glass of wine for Della. She placed it on a mat on the glass table. Della thanked her.
‘Sheena?’ Tony waved his glass in the air. ‘Drinky?’ He rattled the ice. ‘Fresh drinky? Remember – your fucking job, Chinky . . .’ He laughed and Sheena smiled back nervously. They heard the sound of Debbie talking to one of the servants in the hallway and then her feet shuffling their way.
‘Debbie? Get the fuck in here,’ he called out.
‘Yeah, babes?’ She arrived, and stood before him in a pair of lime-green towelling shorts, framing stick-thin, mahagony-coloured legs. He pushed a line of coke her way. She shook her head.
‘Not now.’
‘What the fuck? What is the matter with everyone?’ Tony sat back annoyed and then looked at her with drunken, doleful eyes. Wet on his lips. His eyes flicked Della’s way, and then he reached forward towards Debbie and slid his hand beneath her shorts.
She giggled, embarrassed, as she tried to push his hand away.
‘I have to get on with things, Tony. We have everyone arriving here in a few hours.’
He tilted his head Della’s way: ‘She’s back.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Debbie turned to her. ‘I heard you left the wake early,’ she said.
Della wasn’t surprised. She knew the family, mother Sandra, Debbie, they always had it in for her.
‘People started getting too drunk. I was exhausted. I’d done my duty.’
‘Course you had. Course you bloody well had,’ Tony said, waving Debbie away. ‘And you can get on with your duties. I’m going to talk to Della here, our princess.’ He slapped Debbie hard on the bottom as she turned to walk away. She rubbed her smarting backside and glared at Della, defying her to smirk.
Tony’s jaw started sliding as he talked. His foot tapped incessantly. The sound of phlegm and cocaine chugged at the back of his nose and throat. ‘I paid enough for it all – thousands that cost me. What the fuck went wrong, was this just a fucking joke?’
She shook her head. ‘It went okay, Tony. It was always going to be risky putting on such a display.’
‘Don’t call it a display. Don’t say that. It was the kind of funeral for statesmen. I’ll fucking kill the kid who threw that firework.’
‘It wasn’t what Eddie would have wanted.’
‘What wasn’t?’
‘He wanted to be buried here in Spain, in the olive grove, at the back of the villa. Something simple.’
Tony laughed, too loud, too long.
‘Did he? Really?’ Tony composed himself and grinned away as he went back to chopping coke. ‘I think he said that just to keep you happy. He said that to make sure you opened your legs every day. Hey, princess?’
She stared at him. She couldn’t help feeling that Tony was getting madder every day. She couldn’t wait to leave, but, at the same time, there was something morbidly fascinating watching Tony. She wasn’t going to be scared of him.
‘I saw it was pissing with rain,’ Tony continued, watching her closely. ‘I thought, Can you fucking believe it? But you know what? Then, I thought it added something regal to the whole thing; what do you think, princess?’
He sidled to the edge of the sofa and reached over and laid his hand on her leg. She stared at it. It wasn’t the first time, but certainly it was the most blatant. He never would have dared in front of Eddie. ‘Hey, princess?’ He patted her leg before removing his hand slowly. ‘I want you to move into one of our houses on this estate.’
‘Why would I do that? I’m all right where I am, in my own place. What did you want to see me about, Tony? I’m very tired right now.’
‘We’re all fucking tired,’ he snapped. ‘Okay. Okay.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘You’re tired, I understand. But I want you to come to dinner tonight; Mum will be back. She’s going to need us all around. After all, she had to bury her son yesterday, not something any parent should have to do. Laurence and Harold are bringing her over and I want us all to be together this evening. We need to talk, as a family. There are things to be discussed.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like the future and what Eddie would have wanted.’ Tony took a
gulp of his drink and wiped his mouth. ‘Is Marco over at yours? Did he run you up here?’
‘Where else would he be? You sent him over to spy on me.’
‘Now, why would I do that? I put him over there to protect you. It’s what Eddie would want me to do. Now, more than ever, you need to be careful.’
‘Eddie was a legitimate businessman who was murdered. What has that got to do with me? The police will find who did it.’
‘The British police? Really? Do you think they’re not laughing themselves sick with all this that’s happening to us? It’s all their Christmases come at once. They must think it couldn’t have happened to a nicer family. Eddie was tortured and executed. Now, I would say that was a little worrying, wouldn’t you?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand any of it. My husband built villas for a living. He was a property developer. He was not a criminal. Eddie didn’t need to make shady deals, he earned good money from the villas.’
‘Earned, past tense. Not recently, princess. This lifestyle doesn’t come cheap.’ He shrugged and began splitting the cocaine into lines again. ‘Eddie had a life you never knew about.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m only saying Eddie put himself at risk by dealing with the wrong people. He should have known better. Life is cheap, princess. But, don’t worry: we’re going to make them pay for what they did to Eddie.’
‘Who? Who did it? Why don’t you tell me the truth?’
‘Because I’m still working it all out in here.’ He tapped the side of his skull with his forefinger. ‘Lots of things need to come together, princess, then it will be crystal.’
Della got up and began walking away. He called after her.
‘Wear something sexy tonight, in honour of Eddie.’
Chapter 9
Willis caught up with Carter at eleven that morning. He was heading into work.