by Jamie Raven
‘That’s it,’ he screamed out. ‘That’s what happened.’
It all came back to him then in a burst of clarity, just as he had suspected it eventually would. He remembered everything that had gone on in Megan’s house from the moment he entered it to the moment he left.
And the relief was almost palpable because he knew now that he didn’t kill his ex-wife.
17
Beth Chambers
The next day, Sunday, the weather turned nasty again. A crack of thunder woke me from a fitful sleep, and when I got up to look out of the window a flash of lightning cut across the sky.
The rain was biblical, pounding the pavements and creating instant puddles in the road in front of the house.
I’d had a rough night, during which I’d been taunted by the faces and voices of two men – Danny Shapiro and Frankie Bishop. I’d thought about them and dreamed about them, and their threats were still resonating inside my head.
Bishop’s warning to me to back off was the most chilling, especially as he had followed it up with a menacing call to the house. But Shapiro’s threat to sue me had been delivered with just as much venom, and the look in his eyes had unnerved me.
It wasn’t unusual for me to upset people. My job involved sticking my nose in other people’s business, and rooting out the facts of a story even when the parties involved wanted to conceal them.
A year ago I was attacked by a Roma gipsy woman while investigating a West End pickpocketing racket. She punched me twice in the face before chasing me down the street with a knife.
A few months after that I received a death threat while investigating the Russian mafia’s dominance of organised crime in Soho. I’d ploughed on regardless and produced a centre-page spread that the editor had deemed worthy of a cash bonus. Needless to say I got to spend the money and did not end up in a ditch with my throat cut.
And therein lies the problem – having to decide whether or not to take a threat, any threat, seriously.
The problem had mushroomed in recent years with journalists among the most frequently targeted on social media. Sites like Twitter and Facebook had made it easy for internet trolls to intimidate and threaten and to do so with a degree of anonymity.
I was used to being abused and attacked via the web. One Twitter troll threatened to rape me for writing an opinion piece criticising an armed robber’s early release from prison. Another said my home would be burned down for exposing a sex slavery scandal in west London.
Everything that had been thrown at me before today I’d taken in my stride. But for some reason Danny Shapiro and his psycho enforcer had made me feel particularly uneasy. His threats came as a salutary reminder that my single-minded determination to uncover the truth often exposed me – and by extension my family – to dangerous situations.
It was something my mother was acutely aware of and why she had accused me more than once of being reckless and selfish. Of course, she was absolutely right. But the brutal truth was that if I chose to be risk-averse I’d never be able to do my job. I’d have to give up chasing the bad guys.
So it was a true dilemma, and one I shared with most investigative journalists and crime-busting police officers who had families to think of.
I looked at the bedside clock and saw that it was only 7 a.m. Mum and Rosie wouldn’t be up for a while and I knew I’d never get back to sleep. I slipped on my robe and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
I drank it at the breakfast bar while checking my emails. There was nothing worth reading except for a message from Trevor, my Friday night date. He wanted to know if I would go out with him again. But the thought of it made me cringe so I tried to let him down gently.
You’re a great guy, Trev. But I don’t think we’re right for one another. Best of luck in the future.
That was what I liked about online dating. There was never any pressure to meet someone again. Just drop them an email or a text and move on to the next one. Simple and straightforward, but admittedly not always pain-free.
I then pulled up the online editions of the Sunday papers. All the tabloids were leading with Megan Fuller’s murder, and I was pleased to see that none of them had anything we didn’t have. They all carried the line that Danny Shapiro had been questioned and released. Two of the papers pointed out that detectives had ascertained that he was in another part of London at the time of the murder. There was no mention of Tamara Roth, which encouraged me to believe that if I could get her to talk it would be an exclusive angle for The Post.
A lot of column inches were devoted to Megan’s marriage to Shapiro and to his alleged involvement in organised crime. The Mail’s crime reporter had written a well-researched piece about how Danny’s father had built his south London criminal empire. The paper carried a photo of Callum standing outside one of his clubs. Dressed in a double-breasted suit and smoking a fat cigar, he reminded me of one of those legendary gangsters from America’s prohibition era.
By contrast the post-divorce pictures of his son showed Danny casually dressed in jeans, T-shirts and jumpers. In several he wore a baseball cap that really didn’t suit him but was probably meant to make him less conspicuous.
I was still wading through the papers when my mother came into the kitchen complaining that the rain against her bedroom window had woken her up. She was wrapped in her oversized dressing gown and wearing a hairnet.
‘I’ll make you a cuppa,’ I said and as I put on the kettle she sat on the stool next to mine.
‘Are you going to have to work today?’ she asked me.
‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘But it depends if there are any developments with the story. I suppose you know they questioned Megan’s ex-husband and then let him go.’
‘I saw it on the news.’
‘Yeah, well between us the police aren’t convinced he didn’t do it. They think he may have come up with a dodgy alibi.’
‘Can’t say I’m surprised,’ my mother said.
As I placed her tea on the breakfast bar I saw that she was looking down at my iPad which was displaying the front page of the Sunday Mirror. A photo of Megan and Shapiro together was spread across two columns.
‘The bastard should be locked up along with his father,’ she said through clenched teeth.
Her voice was pitched higher than usual and it took me by surprise.
‘I’m sure you’re not the only person who’ll be thinking that this morning,’ I said.
She stared at the photo and there was a hardness in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before.
‘It’s not right, Beth,’ she said. ‘People like him never pay for their crimes. He’ll have the police, judges, and local politicians in his pocket for sure. Just like his old man did.’
My mother never reacted strongly to anything in the news, but then this was the kind of story that stirred the emotions.
‘Speaking of the father,’ I said. ‘I’ve got something to show you. I came across it yesterday.’
I picked up the iPad and opened the online page with the photo of Callum Shapiro and his son from years ago.
‘I thought it might interest you,’ I said. ‘It was taken on the Common, probably around the time he was one of your customers on the stall.’
I handed the device over and she squinted at the photo.
After a moment, she said, ‘That’s just how I remember him. Callum bloody Shapiro. He tried to act like he was a kind-hearted family man when in reality he was a cruel, manipulative murderer.’
I was taken aback by the sharpness of her tone and the flush that suddenly burned across her cheeks.
‘I know what he was like, Mum,’ I said. ‘It was common knowledge. But I didn’t realise you had such a strong opinion of him. You’ve never mentioned it before.’
‘That’s because I’ve not had to think about him for a long time. Now everyone is talking about him again because of that murdering son of his.’
I reached over and put a hand on her arm. ‘I still don’t ge
t it, Mum. Why does it bother you so much? Callum Shapiro never did you any harm, did he?’
She turned towards me then and there was a haunted look on her face. She started to speak but the words seemed to get stuck in her throat.
‘Jesus, Mum. What is it? What’s wrong?’
Tears rose in her eyes, but she blinked them back. I had no idea what had got into her and it scared me.
‘Come on, Mum,’ I urged her. ‘Spit it out. You’re clearly upset and I want to know why.’
But she shook her head and tried to regain her composure.
‘I’m sorry, Beth. I don’t know what came over me. I’m just being silly.’
‘Don’t fib, Mum. I’ve never seen you like this. All this business with the Shapiros has got to you for some reason.’
‘No, Beth. I’m just angry because it’s not fair. It’s not …’
What happened next completely threw me. My mother dissolved into tears, great racking sobs that made her body shake.
I was shocked, confused, momentarily lost for words. I hadn’t seen Mum cry since Michael’s funeral. Those, though, had been tears of sadness and loss. This was different. Something other than grief had brought it on; something from the past that was just as painful, though, and that she had bottled up for a very long time.
I put an arm around her shoulders, felt myself well up.
‘Talk to me, Mum,’ I said, my voice high and shrill. ‘What in God’s name is so upsetting for you?’
I pulled her close and held her tight until the tears subsided, which took longer than a minute. I could feel the heat rise from her body and the anguish in her sobs.
‘Surely it can’t be that bad,’ I said. ‘Otherwise you would have told me about it before now.’
She lifted her head and looked at me. Her eyes were red and tears slid down her cheeks.
‘It’s worse than bad, Beth,’ she whispered. ‘That’s why I’ve kept it from you. I didn’t want you to know.’
‘Christ, Mum. You’re scaring me. What is it you didn’t want me to know?’
She picked up a tea towel and used it to wipe her eyes.
‘I’m so sorry, Beth. That woman’s murder, that photo – it’s just brought it all back to me what that man did.’
My chest began to cramp and a bout of trembling gripped me.
‘What man are you on about, Mum? And what the hell did he do?’
She stared right at me, her large wet eyes burning with intensity.
After a long, agonising moment, she said, ‘It was Callum Shapiro. He did it. And he got away with it, Beth. Just like his bastard son will get away with it this time.’
I felt my brow furrow. ‘I don’t understand, Mum. What did Callum Shapiro get away with?’
As she spoke her face collapsed again and her voice broke into a sob.
‘He killed Tony, Beth. He killed your stepfather. That’s what he did, and it’s why I hate him so much.’
18
Beth Chambers
My hands flew to my face in horror.
‘It’s true, Beth,’ my mother said. ‘I really thought it was best that you didn’t know.’
The revelation that my stepfather had been one of Callum Shapiro’s many victims hit me for six. I felt a cold numbness envelop me and a lump formed in my throat.
Surely it wasn’t possible, I told myself. I’d been writing about the man for years. I’d covered his trial, watched the judge send him down for a quarter of a century.
How could my mother have harboured such a secret for so long? That was just one of the many questions that suddenly piled up inside my head.
‘You should have told me, Mum,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe you kept it from me for all these years.’
I was 14 when Tony was killed. At the time I was told only that a bad man had shot him, and I wasn’t aware he was a criminal himself. It wasn’t until afterwards that I discovered via the internet that he’d been a small-time villain who had been to prison as a young man after being convicted of robbing a jewellery shop.
His murder remained unsolved to this day. He was shot twice in the head after leaving a pub in Tulse Hill. The killer had never been identified and the motive had never been discovered.
‘I didn’t know at the time that Callum Shapiro got someone to carry out the killing,’ my mother said. ‘The rumours started to circulate a few years later and the last thing I wanted to do was bring it all up again. You had got over his death by then and I was terrified that if Michael found out he would have done something stupid.’
I had to concede that my mother had a point there. As young as he was Michael would probably have taken it upon himself to try to avenge his father’s death.
I sat back on the stool and felt my eyes blur with tears. Now it was Mum’s turn to console me. She reached out and squeezed my knee.
‘It was never meant to come out, Beth. I won’t forgive myself for losing control like that, and after all this time.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m glad you did. But you can’t just leave it at that. I need to know everything.’
As she spoke I struggled to hold it together against a whirlwind of emotions. Some of what she told me I already knew – that as a young man Tony had lived in Brixton where he’d been a member of the notorious Ghetto Guys, one of the most bellicose gangs in London. After serving time in prison he moved to Peckham and ran with a bunch of drug dealers and petty thieves.
‘I met him soon after he moved here,’ my mother said. ‘I knew he was trouble and I should never have got involved with him. But as you know yourself, Beth, he was a charmer and such fun to be with. I fell head over heels in love with him even though I should have learned my lesson with your real father, who never did an honest day’s work in his life.’
My mother explained that Tony and his pals eventually came to the attention of other gangs, including the Shapiros, because they started to expand their operations into Streatham, Brixton, and Stockwell.
‘Callum was among those who warned them off,’ she said. ‘He actually threatened Tony in a club one night and Tony told him to sod off. Shortly after that two of Tony’s people were badly beaten. I urged Tony to stop antagonising Shapiro and the other gangs and to go straight for the sake of you and Michael. Eventually that’s what he decided to do. He took me out for dinner on my birthday and said we were going to move away from the area and he was going to get a job. Two nights later he was shot.’
I flashed on a memory – the police coming to our home to break the news and my mother collapsing in a heap on the floor.
‘The police told me they had lots of suspects because Tony had lots of enemies,’ she said. ‘And I knew that to be true. But three years later someone who knew Tony told me about the rumours that Callum Shapiro was behind the shooting. I actually went to a pub he frequented and confronted him. He denied it, of course, but I could tell he was lying. So I went to the police, but they said there was no proof so nothing was done. I knew then that I would have to live with it and that I couldn’t tell you or your brother.’
I realised then the extent of the burden my mother had carried for so many years. How painful it must have been to know – or at least to believe – that the man responsible for having Tony killed had got away with it.
‘One of the happiest days of my life was when Callum Shapiro was sent to prison,’ my mother said. ‘You were still with Ethan at the time so you wouldn’t have known that I bought myself a bottle of champagne to celebrate.’
It was all too much and it suddenly felt as though my brain had turned to mud. I leaned forward, hugged my mother, and kissed her on the cheek.
My heart was in free fall and I knew it was going to take a while for me to come to terms with what I had just been told.
I also knew that the name Shapiro would from now on arouse in me intense feelings of bitterness and antipathy.
19
Danny Shapiro
Danny hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after waki
ng in the early hours. He was too hyped up, having suddenly remembered everything that had happened at Megan’s on Friday night.
The fragments of his memory that had been temporarily blacked out by alcohol had resurfaced and it had come as an immense relief to know that he hadn’t killed Megan.
He had been going over it in his head now for something like five hours, and the more he thought about it the harder it was for him to accept that very soon after he left there she was stabbed to death.
Had the killer or killers watched him leave? Was it conceivable that they were in the house the whole time, listening to him and Megan shouting at each other?
He recalled her parting words now, hurled at him as she followed him down the hall to the front door.
‘I’m desperate, Danny. I’ve got no money and I’m getting deeper into debt. I know enough about you and the business to fuck up your life if you don’t come up with the cash.’
At the door he had been tempted to hit her just to shut her up.
Instead, he’d said, ‘You’ve had enough from me, Megan. I’m not to blame for the state you’re in. You need to sort yourself out and stop harassing me. Write your frigging book. I don’t care.’
‘For your information it’s already written,’ she’d said as she wrenched open the front door. ‘I’ll give you a week to come up with the money or I’m sending it to the publishers. Then we’ll see if you still don’t care.’
‘There’s such a thing as the law of libel, Megan. So why would they publish shit about me? They’d know I’d sue them.’
‘Yeah, well, I only have to stir things up enough to get the police interested. Plus, I’ve got lots of personal titbits that will embarrass the hell out of you. And what the publishers shy away from the papers will lap up. The tabloids have already put in bids for exclusive interviews. And on top of that there’s the muck I can spread all over the internet.’
‘You’re lying, Megan.’
‘Well, if that’s what you think you’re in for a shock. Now fuck off so that I can go to bed.’