by Jamie Raven
‘I think you might find that he spent the night away from home.’
‘Why do you say that?’
She shrugged. ‘My husband and I heard him drive off last night quite late. And this morning when I looked outside his car wasn’t there.’
‘What time was that?’
‘About half five. We’re always up early, you see.’
‘Can you remember what time he went out last night?’
‘Not exactly. Must have been about eleven. It was shortly after he had visitors.’
My heart fluttered in my chest. ‘How do you know he had visitors?’
‘Because I was closing the curtains before getting into bed. I looked out of the window to see if it was still raining. That’s when I saw two men walking up Peter’s driveway.’
‘Did you see their faces?’
‘No, I didn’t. It was too dark.’
‘But you’re sure they were men?’
‘As sure as I can be. But to be honest I didn’t pay them much attention.’
‘One last question,’ I said. ‘Have you spoken to any police officers this morning?’
Her eyes narrowed even further. ‘Of course not. Look, who exactly are you and what’s going on?’
‘The truth is I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I’m determined to find out.’
I came away from Peter Kline’s house with the blood thundering in my ears. I knew now that I had been right to be concerned and suspicious. Something bad had happened to him. I was sure of it.
Following my visit last night two men had arrived at his home and soon after his car was driven away. Now he was missing and I couldn’t help wondering if it was down to me.
Was it possible that someone had followed me from Tamara Roth’s house in Vauxhall to Maida Vale? Or did Kline call Tamara after I’d left to warn her that the police had been round asking questions? If so, then she would have got straight onto Danny Shapiro to tell him that his alibi was about to be blown apart. And Shapiro might have instructed two of his thugs to make sure that Kline told nobody else.
I felt my knees weaken as I hurried along the street with the canal on my right. Tremors ran through me and the pit of my stomach turned icy.
At the end of the avenue I stood on the bridge that crossed the canal and took out my phone. I had to tell Ethan what I’d found out. It was time he took Peter Kline’s disappearance more seriously.
As soon as he answered I spluttered out what I wanted to say, tripping over my words. So he got me to repeat myself, and after I’d finished he was silent for so long I thought we’d been disconnected.
‘Are you still there, Ethan?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well then, don’t you think it’s time you launched a full-blown search for Peter Kline? He might well have been kidnapped – or worse.’
‘You’re jumping to conclusions, Beth. There’s no evidence to suggest that the two men who called at his house last night were up to no good. They might have been a couple of mates.’
‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’
‘I honestly don’t know what to believe, Beth. But what I do know is that you should remember that you’re a reporter and not a detective. We don’t need you to do our job for us.’
I felt myself recoil at his words and a flash of anger tore through me.
‘Jesus, Ethan. What the fuck has got into you? It’s obvious that something’s not right and that Peter Kline’s life could be in danger. He’s the one person who can prove that Danny Shapiro lied about his alibi. And he’s gone missing.’
‘And I’ve told you I’m looking into it.’
‘Is that right? Then how come you didn’t speak to his next-door neighbours when you came to Maida Vale this morning?’
‘I did speak to a neighbour. That’s how I found out that he drove off in his car last night.’
‘Well, I don’t know who you spoke to because those on either side of him said they haven’t spoken to the police.’
His tone grew sharper. ‘I didn’t say I spoke to any particular neighbour, Beth. And I don’t see why I have to explain myself to you anyway.’
I was on the verge of losing my temper with him and I didn’t want to. Instead I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, pressing my fingers into the sockets.
‘You need to trust me, Beth,’ he said. ‘I am looking into this and now you’ve told me about the two men I’ll put more effort into it.’
I opened my eyes, stared up at a sky streaked with ragged strips of cloud.
‘The thing is there’s been another development,’ he added. ‘And I’ve been focused on that since I got back.’
‘What’s happened?’ I said.
‘It’s Megan’s ex-boyfriend. Sam Jones. We’re bringing him back in because there’s a hole in his alibi. It looks like he could be our murderer.’
This came as a shock, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. If it was true then I was way off course. But I found it impossible to believe.
‘Tell me what you know,’ I said.
He gave me the details and insisted I wasn’t to run the story just yet. I said I wouldn’t if he promised that I’d be the first to know if Jones was charged. He agreed and then said he had to go because Jones had just arrived at the station.
There was more I wanted to ask him but didn’t get the chance. I was left feeling totally confused about what he’d told me.
How could the police possibly think that Sam Jones had killed Megan? Danny Shapiro was the man responsible. That was why he got Tamara Roth to lie for him and why he was so keen to silence me.
I glanced at my watch. It was coming up to midday. I decided to look for a café so that I could have a coffee and a think. There were quite a few in the area so it didn’t take me long to find one. Over a double espresso I took out my pen and pad and jotted down some notes, along with a list of questions. But it didn’t make things any clearer when I read it all back and asked myself the questions out loud.
Was Megan murdered by her ex-boyfriend or her ex-husband?
If it wasn’t Shapiro then why did he concoct an alibi?
And why had Peter Kline disappeared? Had he been seized from his home so that he wouldn’t be able to tell the police that Tamara Roth was with him on Friday evening?
I rubbed my face, my eyes. Trying to think, to concentrate. Nursing the questions in my head until it felt like my brain was overloaded.
By the time I’d finished my third espresso I’d convinced myself that I should trust my own instincts, and they were telling me that Shapiro was Megan’s killer. Not Sam Jones.
To me the evidence against him was overwhelming. Megan had told her father that Shapiro had threatened her. It was a fact that she’d been trying to blackmail him. Therefore there was a strong motive. He was doing all he could to stop me pursuing the story with my usual vigour. And he’d gone to the trouble of making up an alibi.
It should have been enough to convict the bastard. But it was obvious to me that the police were allowing themselves to be distracted, which made me feel like the onus was on me to find a way of exposing Shapiro’s lie for what it was and to get the cops to take Peter Kline’s disappearance more seriously.
It took a few more minutes of careful consideration before I came up with an idea. It was one that was sure to piss Ethan off, but that was the least of my worries.
I left the café and went in search of a public phone box. The first one I came across wasn’t suitable because it was within sight of a CCTV camera. If the call I was intending to make was traced then I didn’t want anyone knowing it was me who made it.
The second phone box was in a side street set back from the canal and there were no cameras in sight. I slipped inside and a few moments later I was through to the murder incident room in Wandsworth.
I put a tissue over the mouthpiece to help disguise my voice and spoke with a forced cockney accent.
‘I’m calling with information about a man who’s been ab
ducted by two men from his home in Little Venice, London,’ I said. ‘His name is Peter Kline and his home is on Maida Avenue. He hasn’t been seen since last night.’
The person on the other end of the line tried to interrupt me but I continued talking.
‘This is not a crank call. I’m telling you because I happen to know that Mr Kline has information that will prove Danny Shapiro’s alibi for Friday evening is false. He was not in Vauxhall with a prostitute as he claims.’
I then abruptly hung up and stepped back out onto the street.
My insides were churning, and I had to tell myself that I’d done the right thing. If nothing else, at least the search for Peter Kline should now begin in earnest.
35
Danny Shapiro
Danny was in a bad mood and had been all day. It was because he hated having the blood of an innocent man on his hands.
Over the years he had instructed his people to carry out a total of three murders. He himself had ended the lives of two men, both of them rivals who’d wanted to kill him.
But all of those killings had been gang-related. The victims had deserved to die. In contrast Peter Kline, the investment analyst who worked in the City, had done nothing wrong. The poor sod was just a victim of circumstance; and that preyed on Danny’s conscience.
But there was no way they could have allowed him to live, not after his little chat with Bethany Chambers.
Bishop had told Danny that the hit had gone smoothly and that DI Ethan Cain had played his part, just as Danny had known he would. There was only one thing the detective cared about and that was himself. The thought of being found out and going to prison would have scared him witless.
After leaving Maida Vale, Bishop had driven to a building site in Streatham owned by the firm and had dumped the body in the foundations of a block of flats. Peter Kline was now encased in concrete and within six months there’d be around a hundred people living on top of him. His Lexus car had been dropped off at the firm’s scrapyard in Kennington where by now it would be just a mangled wreck.
They had such things down to a fine art, so they didn’t have to worry about anyone finding out what had happened to the man.
Despite that, Danny still couldn’t relax. As he stood at his office window above the snooker hall, he had a feeling that it wasn’t over by a long shot. Things had almost come unstuck because Chambers had spotted the calendar on Tamara’s kitchen wall. It was only through a stroke of luck that the Old Bill hadn’t seen it when they’d called at the house. According to Tamara they’d spent all their time talking to her in the living room and hadn’t ventured into the kitchen. But it had been a close call and was a prime example of how easily things could go wrong.
Tamara had been shocked when he’d told her and had since destroyed the calendar. He’d also had to tell her that Kline had been dealt with, but she understood why and didn’t ask for details.
That bitch of a reporter Bethany Chambers still worried him, however. He’d been making inquiries about her and what he’d found out made him uneasy. The moniker someone had given her was well deserved. The Ferret. Hardly flattering, but an apt description of how she operated.
She was the girl from Peckham who had done good. In that sense he and she were alike. Both brought up in the same rough manor and both now at the top of their respective fields. It was a quirky fact that almost made him smile. But not quite.
Bethany Chambers was one of those tenacious reporters who were infused with a sense of purpose. Within the Met she was liked and disliked in equal measure. It was clear that she had a lot of police contacts – and that in itself made her dangerous.
Across the newspaper industry she was well respected even though it was rumoured that she often stepped over the ethical line. Danny had already discovered for himself that she wasn’t shy when it came to breaking the law. It took a lot of front for a journalist to pose as a copper in this day and age. Despite himself, he had to admit that he had a grudging respect for her.
The thing that bothered him wasn’t that she was good at her job. It was that she was too bloody good. Plus, she didn’t scare easily, unlike most of her contemporaries, especially the female reporters. He wasn’t the first villain to have threatened her. She’d even stood her ground against the Russian mafia, for Christ’s sake. He’d heard on the grapevine how much she’d pissed those guys off. Yet it hadn’t stopped her writing about their operations in Soho.
The thought of having to use brute force to get her off his back did not appeal to him, so he was hoping that her ex-husband would make her see sense. If not, then he might have to get Bishop to rough her up a bit.
The call from Ethan Cain did nothing to improve Danny’s mood. It came just as he was winding up a meeting with the crew and was thinking about retreating to his West End bolt hole.
He had asked Cain to provide him with an update before the press conference so that he would know beforehand what was going to come out.
‘There’s stuff you need to know, Danny,’ Cain said, his voice fretful.
Danny responded as he stepped out of the meeting room and back into his office.
‘Does that mean you’ve got a confession out of that tosser Sam Jones?’
Danny had heard that Megan’s ex-boyfriend had been hauled in again for questioning and he’d been praying the bastard would be nailed for her murder.
‘No such luck,’ Cain said. ‘He’s still denying it. And we still haven’t got enough evidence to charge him.’
‘But you told me his alibi didn’t stack up.’
‘It’s certainly not rock solid. He left the boozer he was drinking in for about an hour around the time that Megan was killed. But he claims he went home to get some money because he ran out of cash. He lives just round the corner from the pub and so far we can’t prove that he’s not telling the truth. We’re checking CCTV cameras as we speak but unless we can pick him up on one in Balham a charge won’t stick.’
Danny screwed up his eyes in despair and swallowed the phlegm that had gathered at the back of his throat.
‘So what other joyous news have you got for me, Ethan?’
‘There was an anonymous call to the incident room a while ago,’ Cain said. ‘It was a woman and it must have been Bethany.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because she rang me from Maida Vale earlier to say she’d spoken to Kline’s neighbours. One of them told her she saw two men walking up the driveway last night before Kline’s car was driven away. It’s convinced her he was abducted.’
‘Holy fuck. Frankie told me nobody saw the pair of you.’
‘Well, he was wrong.’
‘So why did she call in anonymously? I don’t get it.’
‘She’s convinced Kline was kidnapped and she thinks we should be doing more to find him. I told her to leave it with me and to stop playing detective, but she’s impatient to move things along quickly without implicating herself.’
‘What exactly did she say when she rang in?’
‘She gave Kline’s name and said he’d been abducted from his home in Maida Vale by two men. She also suggested that Kline was snatched because he can prove that you weren’t at Tamara Roth’s house on Friday night.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. So how have your lot reacted?’
‘A missing person investigation has been launched and a forensic team has been sent to Kline’s house. My boss wants us to find out everything we can about the guy and that means pulling up his phone records. They’re bound to link him to Tamara so you’d better mark her card about that. And if by chance she told him in a text that she’d be at his place on Friday she needs to say she cancelled the appointment to be with you.’
Danny felt the blood stir in his veins. ‘This is a fucking shit storm, Ethan. You were supposed to muzzle Chambers.’
‘I’ve tried. But Beth is a law unto herself. There’s only so much I can do and I can’t guarantee that she won’t make things more difficult for both o
f us.’
‘Then I suppose it’s up to me to sort her out.’
‘You can’t hurt her, Danny. She’s too high-profile and too well connected.’
‘Bollocks. She’s another tabloid tart who likes to see her name in print. And from what I hear she’s got plenty of enemies.’
‘That’s not the point. You can’t just go around having people killed because—’
‘I didn’t say I was going to have her killed, Ethan. I’ll just make sure she’s taken out of the equation until this shit storm blows over.’
‘But that’s not—’
‘Shut up, Ethan. I don’t give a frigging fart if she’s your ex-wife and you’ve got a kid between you. As far as I’m concerned she’s a threat to us. If she keeps beavering away there’s a chance she’ll turn up something else that your lot have missed. And then we’ll all be in a hole.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘It’s best you don’t know. Just do your job and find out who murdered Megan. It wasn’t me so it’s either Sam Jones or someone else who had a grudge against her. Find that scumbag and our problems go away.’
‘We’re doing our best,’ Cain said.
‘Yeah, well, your best is not fucking good enough. In fact it’s time I got my own people to have a look at whatever you’ve got, including all the info on Sam Jones and the forensic reports.’
‘That’s not possible, Danny.’
‘Bullshit. You’ve done it before. It’s all on your computer. Just attach the main documents and statements to an email and send them to an address that I’ll give you.’
‘You’ve got to be joking. This case is different. It’d be too risky and would leave a trail.’
‘Then dump it onto a flash drive. And do it right away. I want it this afternoon.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Cain said. ‘I’m snowed under here and we’ll soon be staging the press conference.’
‘That’s not happening until five. So you’ve got plenty of time to nip out before then. I’ll send Frankie over to meet you near the nick and he can pick it up.’
‘It’s really not a good idea, Danny. I can drop it off later tonight. I need to talk to you anyway about something.’