by Jamie Raven
‘So where is he?’
He ignored the question. ‘I don’t think he’d be pleased to see you even if he was here. In fact I reckon he’d give you a slap for what you said to those coppers. We just watched it on the telly.’
‘They were legitimate questions,’ I said.
‘Bollocks. You were trying to stir things up and get a reaction. Just like you always do. Ain’t that why they call you The Ferret? You’ve been making a fucking nuisance of yourself around here for years.’
‘How would you know?’ I said. ‘We’ve never met.’
He snorted out a laugh. ‘I know a lot about you, Chambers. I knew that nigger who married your mother and I know the good-for-nothing prick who married you. I also know what happened to your turd-coloured brother.’
He paused to see if I’d react. When I didn’t he carried on.
‘The reason we’ve never met is because so far you haven’t given us any grief and because Danny, bless him, is squeamish about hurting women. But it doesn’t bother the rest of us. And that, my darling, is why I invited you upstairs. I want you to know that we won’t stand for you sticking your nose in our business or in Danny’s private life.’
I gritted my teeth and the rage simmered inside me.
‘Is that a threat?’ I said. ‘Because if it is I’m sure the police will be happy to add it to the assault charge.’
‘You haven’t been assaulted.’
‘When that man put his hands on me it was assault.’
Bishop laughed at that and so did the others. I felt a cold panic tighten in my chest as I watched Bishop stand up suddenly and walk around the table towards me.
When he reached me he pulled back his lips to reveal a set of off-colour teeth. And then he slapped me so hard across the face that I went flying off the chair and onto the floor.
‘Now that was an assault, you stupid fucking bitch,’ he yelled.
The pain was excruciating, and for a few moments I was too stunned to move. My cheek burned and my heart felt like it was about to crash out of my body.
‘Get her up,’ Bishop ordered, and two of the others took hold of my arms and hauled me to my feet.
‘Before you start ranting on about calling the filth just ask yourself what the fuck they can do,’ he said, his voice acidic. ‘No one saw me lay a hand on you. In fact you came in here to attack me for no good reason. And these men will bear witness to that.’
I shook myself free and stared daggers at him. I wanted desperately to cry, but I fought against it because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing how hurt and scared I was.
‘I’ll make you regret this,’ I said, and even to my own ears it sounded like an empty, pathetic threat.
‘You’re the one who’ll regret it if you start sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong,’ he said.
‘You don’t scare me, Bishop.’
‘That just shows what a fucking gobby little moron you are, Chambers. I have only to say the word and I can make you disappear.’
I felt a sudden breathlessness.
‘You bastard,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘I’d like a pound for every time someone has called me that.’
I sucked in air through my teeth and reached for my bag, which had been placed on an empty chair. My hands were shaking uncontrollably.
‘I’m going,’ I said. ‘Don’t try to stop me.’
‘I don’t intend to. Just keep in mind what I told you. And don’t think you’re off limits because you’re a reporter with lots of police contacts. That in itself makes you a piece of scum in our eyes.’
There was a burst of laughter around the room as I shuffled towards the door clutching my bag close. One of the men opened the door for me and I hurried through it and down the stairs.
I managed to hold back the tears and the vomit until I stepped onto the pavement. Then it all came out and I spewed up my guts in the road behind the waiting taxi.
As soon as I’d emptied the contents of my stomach the tears gushed out, and it was a full minute before I was able to tell the driver where to take me.
11
Ethan Cain
DCI Redwood hung up the phone and turned to Cain.
‘You won’t believe this,’ he said. ‘Danny Shapiro just turned up at the nick. He said he’d heard we were looking for him.’
Cain acted like he was surprised, but of course he wasn’t. Just over half an hour had passed since Danny had called to tell him that he didn’t murder Megan Fuller.
‘I was nowhere near Balham last night,’ he’d said. ‘And I can prove it. I have a watertight alibi.’
Cain had told him to go straight to Wandsworth to hand himself in.
‘I don’t want anyone to know you phoned me directly,’ Cain had said. ‘It’ll look suspicious.’
The two detectives were still in Ramsden Road gathering evidence and interviewing neighbours. Now Redwood was keen to get to the station to talk to Shapiro.
‘Let’s go see what the slippery bastard has to say for himself,’ he said.
They left the SOCOs to continue their sweep of the house, but so far nothing of great significance had been found. They’d bagged and logged plenty of potential evidence – hairs, fibres, prints, the victim’s personal stuff. But the killer, it seemed, had not left behind any obvious markers that would point the investigation in his or her direction.
They drove in separate cars back to Wandsworth and Cain was glad of that because it gave him a chance to gather his thoughts. He was worried about sitting in an interview room with both his boss and Danny Shapiro. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d questioned Danny, but the huge conflict of interest always filled him with trepidation. It was like walking a tightrope between two contradictory parts of his life, the good and the bad. The part he was proud of, which included his lovely daughter, and the part that he was ashamed of. But that was how it was. He’d sold his soul to the devil a long time ago in return for cash, coke, and horny young tarts.
He hadn’t always been a reckless thrill-seeker, or a victim of his own pathetic avarice. It seemed like not so long ago he was an idealistic copper who’d been blessed with good health and a promising future. Then a combination of factors contrived to bend his life out of shape.
It began with the realisation that his career had stalled and that his heart was no longer in it anyway. At the same time he sought to distract himself through gambling, mostly slot machines and the ponies. But that had just been the start of the slippery slope. It wasn’t long before he was spending his winnings on drugs and whores.
He tried to sort himself out when it struck him that his behaviour posed a threat to his marriage. He went to Gamblers Anonymous and attempted to give up the drugs. But he’d left it too late and the walls of the hole he had dug himself crashed in on him.
Losses, debt and addiction drew him to Danny Shapiro’s attention, which led to an offer from the firm that at the time was too good to refuse.
Luckily Danny didn’t expect much in return for the money he gave him. The occasional tip-off about impending raids, the identity of police informants, the nod when the organised crime lot were mounting a major surveillance operation.
It assuaged Cain’s guilt somewhat to know that he wasn’t the only crooked copper inside the Met. There were dozens, and a few of them he knew about because they’d let it slip in unguarded moments or when they were pissed.
But it was nothing new. Police corruption was as old as the force itself, and the top brass had given up spending too much time and energy trying to root it out.
That didn’t mean he could afford to be complacent, especially while working alongside Redwood. If he were to be exposed he’d face a long spell behind bars and then be at the mercy of some of the nuts he had put away.
So facing Danny Shapiro across an interview table was always going to give him cause for concern. And even more so on this occasion because he wasn’t sure he’d believed Danny when he’d said he hadn
’t murdered his ex-wife.
At the nick they were told they couldn’t talk to Danny immediately because he wanted his lawyer present and the guy hadn’t yet arrived.
‘In that case we’ll brief the troops,’ Redwood said. ‘Let’s get everyone together.’
An incident room had already been set up during the morning. It was now crammed with detectives, some of them tucking into sandwich lunches.
Cain hadn’t eaten all day but he had no appetite. He settled instead for lukewarm black coffee from the machine.
Two large whiteboards had been placed at one end of the room and to these were attached photos of Megan Fuller and the crime scene.
‘Okay, listen up, everyone,’ Redwood said, positioning himself between the boards and clapping his hands to get their attention. ‘We have developments to discuss and a murder to solve, so we need to get cracking.’
A hush descended on the room as Redwood began with a pointed reference to Beth Chambers.
‘That woman put us in a difficult position today and I don’t want it to happen again,’ he said. ‘The fact that she was able to talk to Nigel Fuller before we had finished interviewing him was a major cock-up on our part. We have to be more careful.’
He gave a little cough before continuing. ‘I know most of you are acquainted with Beth Chambers because as well as a crime reporter she happens to be Detective Cain’s former wife. But I don’t want anyone to talk to her about this case. I’m happy to accept Ethan’s assurance that he never discusses work with her. And I want the same assurance from the rest of you that you won’t pass anything to Chambers or any other journalist.’
Redwood waited for everyone to respond by murmuring a yes or giving a nod. Then, having dealt with that issue, he went on to describe the scene in Megan’s house for the benefit of those officers who hadn’t been there. He pointed to the photos of the body and explained that she died from a single, vicious stab wound to the throat.
‘There’s no sign of the murder weapon,’ he said. ‘Forensic evidence taken from the scene is being processed and some of the CCTV footage from the area is being viewed. As you all know, the body was discovered by Megan’s father. We’ve spoken to him briefly, but he’s being brought back here to the station this afternoon to give us a full statement.
‘The gist of it will be that Megan asked him to go to the house this morning so that she could talk to him. She was upset apparently and had told Mr Fuller that her ex-husband, one Danny Shapiro, had made threats against her during an argument over the phone earlier in the day.’
Everyone knew that Danny was waiting to be questioned. Word had spread like wildfire within seconds of him walking into the building.
‘I’m anticipating that he’ll claim he knows nothing about what happened in Ramsden Road,’ Redwood said. ‘But he’s our prime suspect. For one thing it appears he had a motive, as we discovered from an email that Megan sent to him.’
Redwood picked up a black marker pen and using his notes he wrote the message Megan had sent to Danny on one of the whiteboards.
Don’t make the mistake of ignoring me, Danny. A one-off payment is all I’m asking for. I know you can afford it. So if you fuck me about you’ll seriously regret it.
‘So there you have it,’ Redwood said. ‘Megan was trying to squeeze her ex for money. She was blackmailing him, probably threatening to reveal some of his secrets in her forthcoming book.’
Cain felt a spurt of anxiety. He had to admit it didn’t look good for Danny. That email would almost certainly have provoked an angry response. Danny wasn’t the kind of man to take such things lying down.
‘However, despite the way it looks we need to keep an open mind in respect of Danny Shapiro,’ Redwood said. ‘That’s because he’s not the only suspect. There’s also a boyfriend who appears to have been dumped by Megan for slapping her around.’
He threw to DC Rachel Fisher, who had been tasked with looking into Megan’s personal stuff, including her bank accounts and phone records.
Fisher was the youngest member of the team and one of the sharpest. She’d just returned from holiday and her face was tanned a rich shade of coffee.
‘Megan’s phone records show that she was in regular contact with a man named Sam Jones until recently,’ she said. ‘We’ve identified him from his mobile number and it turns out he has a criminal record for domestic violence against his former wife. He used to own a bar in Balham, which is presumably how they met. But it closed down a year ago and he was made bankrupt.
‘I showed his photo to Megan’s next-door neighbour and she confirmed that Jones used to be a regular visitor to the house. She also said they had frequent rows and that Megan told her two days ago that she’d dumped him.’
Fisher referred to the text Jones had sent to Megan apologising for hitting her.
‘She sent one back saying it was over and warning him not to come to the house,’ she said.
Fisher explained that Megan’s bank account showed her to be massively overdrawn. Seven months ago she had remortgaged her house to pay off debts after losing her savings on a venture into the stock market.
‘Do we know what that was all about?’ Redwood asked.
‘Only from what the neighbour told me,’ she said. ‘I haven’t had time to confirm it. But it seems that her then boyfriend persuaded her to give him money which he used to buy some company shares that were meant to go through the roof. Instead the value of the shares nosedived and they lost the lot.’
‘Which is probably why, out of desperation, Megan decided to put the screws on her ex-husband,’ Redwood said. ‘And that could have been another costly mistake on her part.’
Fisher said they were trying to track down Sam Jones. He had a flat in Tooting, but officers who had called there had reported back that he wasn’t in. A neighbour said she’d seen him going out this morning. Plus, his mobile phone wasn’t transmitting a signal so had probably been switched off.
‘Keep trying,’ Redwood said. ‘We need to find this guy as a matter of urgency.’
DC Toby Dean, who had also been at the house, pointed out that the techies had examined Megan’s laptop but hadn’t so far found any document pertaining to the book she was supposed to have been writing.
‘However, there are emails from her agent asking her why it was taking her so long to provide a synopsis,’ he said.
‘That might be because she hadn’t actually got round to doing anything,’ Cain chipped in. ‘And perhaps she never intended to.’
Redwood frowned. ‘What makes you say that?’
Cain rolled his shoulders. ‘I just think it’s possible she was bluffing about the book and it was an empty threat to extract money from Shapiro.’
‘It’s a thought,’ Redwood said. ‘We should check it out.’
The meeting carried on for another fifteen minutes, until word came that Shapiro’s lawyer had arrived at the station.
But before going along to the interview room, Redwood and Cain were asked to go and look at several clips of CCTV footage that showed an individual who might have been Megan’s killer.
They both entered the little viewing room hoping for a big break in the case. The officer who was going through the tapes that were so far in sat in front of a computer monitor.
‘The house itself is in a CCTV black spot,’ he said. ‘But there are cameras at both ends of the street. This guy was caught entering from Balham High Road just before ten. He was then picked up retracing his steps thirty-five minutes later. He’s caught on one other camera heading along the High Road towards Clapham before he disappears. It’s possible he flagged down a cab or got into a car.’
The officer ran the clips, but what appeared on the screen was blurred and indistinct. The figure the officer was referring to couldn’t be identified because he was wearing a hood and didn’t once look at the camera.
For Cain it was a huge relief. The figure might well have been Danny, but it was impossible to tell for sure.
Redwood didn’t bother to hide his disappointment.
‘This is fucking useless,’ he said. ‘The only thing I’m pretty sure of is that we’re looking at a man.’
‘I’ve tried blowing up the image but it doesn’t help,’ the officer said. ‘More tapes are due in soon so maybe we’ll strike lucky then.’
Redwood turned to Cain. ‘What do you reckon, Ethan? Could that guy be Danny Shapiro?’
Cain smacked his lips together as he stared at the moving footage. ‘Actually I have my doubts, guv. From what I remember Shapiro has more of a swagger when he walks. And I can’t see him wandering around that part of town without at least one bodyguard.’
He wasn’t going to tell his boss that Danny preferred to go out without minders.
Redwood nodded. ‘You’ve got a point there, except that if he was going to Megan’s house to kill her he would have wanted to go by himself. Surely.’
Cain shrugged. ‘I suppose so. But then it comes back to my point about him not being stupid. Why would he walk to the house and risk being caught on camera? It would have been much safer to go there in a vehicle that was stolen or couldn’t be traced.’
As Redwood thought about it, Cain couldn’t help wondering how many times in the coming hours and days he would try to point the investigation in the wrong direction or be forced to lie.
And whether the gaffer would eventually become suspicious.
12
Beth Chambers
The Post was part of a large media conglomerate that occupied a tall glass building close to London Bridge railway station, so it didn’t take me long to get there in the taxi.
But I didn’t go straight into the ultra-modern reception area. First I needed to go for a short walk because I felt all twisted up inside and my gut was still fighting waves of nausea.
What had happened had unsettled me, and I was struggling to regain my mental footing. It wasn’t the first time I’d been attacked while pursuing a story, and I felt sure it wouldn’t be the last. But what I’d experienced in that room above the snooker hall had been more vicious, and more scary, than anything I’d encountered before.