by Jamie Raven
‘Bitch,’ he screamed.
There was no way I could avoid his fist, though I did manage to turn away so that it struck my left ear instead of hitting me full in the face. The pain was no less intense, however. It was like a nail bomb going off inside my head.
My vision blurred and my mouth flew open in a silent scream of agony.
Through the tears I saw Bishop lining up another slap or punch and I tried to brace myself.
But instead of lashing out he went for my throat and drove his thumbs into my windpipe.
The bastard was going to throttle me and I couldn’t fight back. I could feel him choking off the air supply and a burning sensation rose up through my chest.
Then his hands suddenly fell away and the breath spluttered out of me.
It was a couple of seconds before I realised that I had Danny to thank for saving my life. He had managed to get up and grab hold of the gun.
And I watched as he used it like a hammer to batter Bishop’s head into a bloody mess.
Danny finally stopped smashing Bishop’s face and head with the grip of the gun. He must have struck him five times before dropping the weapon on the floor.
By then Bishop was sprawled out on his back, his face almost unrecognisable. Even my untrained eye could see the man was never going to get up again.
Danny stood above him, his chest rising and falling dramatically with every breath. His lips quivered and his face was clown-pale.
For several seconds the silence was deafening and the only sound was the rapid beating of my own heart. My gut swirled with nausea and my throat throbbed from where Bishop had squeezed it.
Danny eventually turned to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
‘I had to do it,’ he said. ‘He would have killed you. I’ve seen him like that before. Like he’s fucking possessed.’
Danny then knelt beside Bishop and checked for a pulse.
‘He’s dead,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘I’d say that was bleeding obvious.’
‘I’ll get something to cut those ties.’
He found a pair of strong scissors in one of the drawers and used it to sever the zip-ties around my hands and ankle. Then he took my arm and led me out of the kitchen and into the living room, where the furniture was draped in white sheets.
The shock of what I’d witnessed hit me then with a vengeance. I dropped onto the sofa and let my head fall into my hands. There were more tears, and I started gagging. But I brought up only bile.
Danny went and got me a glass of water and insisted I drink it. He patted my back. Told me I was going to be okay.
I started taking slow breaths, trying to get a handle on my emotions. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, and the room felt hot and airless.
Danny left me to it for a few minutes and went into the kitchen. I heard his voice and assumed he was speaking to someone on the phone.
When he reappeared he was holding his mobile in one hand and the gun in the other. I noticed it had been wiped clean of blood.
‘Who were you talking to?’ I asked him.
‘Some people who will come here in the morning to clean up the mess and dispose of the body.’
He stood looking down at me, waiting for a reaction, for me to tell him that I couldn’t let that happen, that we had to call the police. But my brain was numb and clouded and I spluttered out some words that made no sense even to me.
‘We can’t let the police get involved, Beth,’ he said. ‘There’ll be too much explaining and everyone will suffer, including your ex-husband who helped me find you. This way we get to carry on with our lives and the world will be a better place without that nutcase anyway.’
He held out his phone to me. ‘Just be grateful that you’re alive and call your mum. She must be worried sick.’
I reached out, took the phone, flinched at the sight of Bishop’s blood on his sleeve.
‘We can’t just act like it didn’t happen,’ I said.
Danny shrugged. ‘Why not? Nobody needs to know. Frankie had no family and he wasn’t married. He was a loner. So no one is going to miss him. And, trust me, the filth will be glad he’s gone.’
I didn’t know what to think so I decided not to. Instead, I tapped our home number into the phone and called Mum. She gasped when she heard my voice and broke down after I told her I was all right.
‘How’s Rosie?’ I said.
‘She’s fast asleep. I didn’t bother putting her to bed because she was too upset.’
‘Have you spoken to anyone?’
‘Only Ethan. He called me. He knew what had happened, Beth.’
‘I know. He helped me, Mum. It was thanks to him that Danny found me.’
‘Danny?’
‘It’s a long story,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. Don’t talk to anyone in the meantime.’
I hung up and handed the phone back to Danny.
‘So can I depend on you, Beth?’ he said. ‘Will you keep what’s happened and what you’ve heard to yourself?’
I stared up at him, my sight still blurry with tears. Some of the colour had returned to his cheeks and he’d wiped the sweat from his face. He was back to being handsome again and more like the man who used to prance around London with a soap star on his arm.
It was hard to believe that he was a notorious criminal and harder still to think that we shared the same father.
‘I need to know, Beth,’ he said. ‘Because if you insist on going to the police then I’m done for.’
I took a deep breath and nodded. ‘I won’t tell them. It’s the least I can do since you came after me and saved my life.’
The most horrendous day of my life was over. The day during which I discovered that my real father was a gangster. The day someone tried to strangle me. The day I witnessed a man being beaten to death.
But the nightmare continued into the early hours of the following morning. Midnight had come and gone and now I had to face up to the prospect of living with what I had seen and agreed to. There was no going back once we left the house and the firm’s ‘clean-up’ crew moved in to destroy all evidence of what had happened here. Despite my reservations and the guilt that sat inside me I knew I wouldn’t tell the police.
Danny Shapiro had in no way redeemed himself in my eyes. He remained an unscrupulous villain with Peter Kline’s blood on his hands. Yet if it hadn’t been for him I’d be dead and Rosie would be without a mother.
‘It’s time to go,’ he said.
I’d been sitting as if in a trancelike state in the living room while he got things sorted. He destroyed Bishop’s two pay-as-you-go phones and wiped our prints from everything we had both touched. He said he would dump Bishop’s gun on the way back to London. When we went outside he picked up the revolver that Bishop had made him drop on the driveway.
I sat next to him in the front of his BMW and that in itself was a surreal experience. Danny Shapiro and me in the same car! Who would have thought it would ever be possible?
Neither of us spoke as we left Bishop’s house and drove out of the city. He kept within the speed limit so as not to draw attention to us.
My mind was sludgy and my eyes burned. I could still feel Bishop’s fingers on my throat and hear the crack of his skull as Danny laid into him. But at least my heart had slowed down and the tears had dried up.
When we hit the motorway and headed north we started speaking to each other. Danny asked what Bishop had said to me.
‘He told me you got him to kill Peter Kline and that you made Ethan go with him,’ I said.
He didn’t respond, just kept his eyes on the road ahead.
‘I take some responsibility for what happened to Mr Kline,’ I said. ‘If I hadn’t found out that Tamara had spent Friday night at his place then he wouldn’t have become a target. And he’d still be alive.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Beth,’ he said. ‘You were doing your job. Nothing more.’
‘You didn’t
have to kill him. He was an innocent bystander.’
‘I panicked. I knew the coppers would think I killed Megan and they’d pin it on me. I’m not proud of what I did, but then there’s not much I do that I’m ever proud of. It’s what I am, though. What I’ve become. We may well have the same father but from an early age our lives went in entirely different directions.’
‘Did you have any idea that you had a half-sister?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘There were rumours years ago that he’d fathered a child by someone else. But he told me and my mum that they weren’t true and we believed him.’
‘What was your mother like?’
‘She was terrific. Far too good for Callum. She did everything she could to try to stop me following in his footsteps, but he insisted on moulding me in his image. And he desperately wanted me to take over the business. So that’s what I did when he went down. I didn’t feel I had a choice. It was the main reason my marriage to Megan broke up.’
We drove in silence for a while. Then he pulled over onto the hard shoulder and dumped Bishop’s gun under a pile of earth on the wooded embankment.
When we were on the move again I asked him how long Ethan Cain had been taking bribes from the firm.
‘About four years,’ he said. ‘How do you feel about that?’
‘Numb,’ I said.
‘Still, it was thanks in part to him that you’re alive. He was really worried and he came through with the location of Bishop’s house. In fact I ought to call him and tell him you’re okay.’
‘There’s something else you need to tell him,’ I said. ‘Bishop told me he’d sent a flash drive to the police with evidence on it that will incriminate Ethan.’
He shook his head. ‘The git.’
‘Do you know what he was talking about?’
Danny nodded. ‘It’s something we put together. Photos, video and audio of Ethan in compromising positions. We do it with all the coppers on our books. It helps to keep them in check.’
‘So what will happen to Ethan when the police see what’s on it?’
Danny cleared his throat. ‘They’ll throw the book at him and I expect he’ll go to prison for a long time.’
I didn’t want to talk after that. I was hit by another wave of anger and revulsion. It wasn’t that I felt sorry for Ethan. It seemed to me that he deserved what was going to happen to him, but I saw it as another example of the dirty, squalid, vicious world of Danny Shapiro.
A world I had only seen from the outside. A world I’d written about and talked about. But until this moment I had never fully appreciated just how ugly it really was.
58
Beth Chambers
Danny took me all the way home to Peckham and we arrived at the house at half four in the morning.
‘You should come in,’ I said. ‘I think it’s only right that you should meet my mother.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ he said.
‘But aren’t you curious? She’s the woman your father had a six-year affair with.’
‘All the more reason to keep a wide berth I think.’
‘Nonsense. After tonight you and me may never see each other again. So I’d like her to meet the man who saved my life.’
I got quickly out of the car before he could respond and he followed me. My mother opened the front door as we approached it. She seemed not to notice Danny at first as she flung her arms around me and cried tears of relief into my shoulder.
‘Oh my God, Beth. I thought we’d lost you.’
I squeezed her back. ‘I’m here because this man saved me, Mum.’
She stood back and looked at Danny and I feared she was going to say something nasty to him. But instead she smiled and said a little stiffly, ‘Thank you, Mr Shapiro. I’m very grateful.’
We followed my mother into the house. Rosie was asleep on the sofa under her comfort blanket but I couldn’t resist taking her in my arms even though I knew she’d wake up. She was relieved and delighted to see me and I had to reassure her that the bad man was gone.
‘Who’s that?’ she said, pointing at Danny.
‘He’s a friend, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘He’s the person who brought me back.’
Danny stared at her like he had never seen a child before and it occurred to me that he was probably a pretty lonely guy. Apart from his father, Rosie and I were the nearest he had to a family.
Mum made us tea and the next hour was pretty weird. After I put Rosie to bed I told Mum what had happened and it made her shiver.
‘So we can never talk about it,’ I said. ‘We’ll all be in trouble if it gets out.’
‘I understand,’ she said. Then to Danny, she added, ‘You look just like your father did when I knew him.’
Danny cleared his throat. ‘He told me he loved you, Miss Chambers.’
My mother nodded solemnly. ‘But he loved your mum more. I can’t complain, though. He gave me Beth.’
An awkward pause. Then Danny said, ‘He wasn’t responsible for what happened to Tony. He really wants you to know that.’
She thought about it and shrugged. ‘That won’t be easy. I’ve believed it for a long time.’
‘Well, maybe you should go and see him. He might convince you that he’s been telling the truth all along.’
My mother shifted her gaze away from him and sipped at her tea. I could tell she didn’t know what to say.
Danny’s phone rang then and he checked it before he answered it.
‘It’s Ethan,’ he said. ‘I’d better take it.’
He stayed in the room with us and we heard him tell Cain what had happened. He also broke the news about the flash drive that Bishop had supposedly sent to the police.
‘He might have been lying, mate,’ Danny said. ‘I don’t know.’
I thought that would bring the conversation to an end, but Cain was saying something that had Danny listening intently.
After a minute Danny handed the phone to me. ‘He’s got something to tell you.’
Ethan began by telling me that he was glad I was safe and that he was sorry for all the lies he’d told me.
‘I know what you think of me, Beth,’ he said. ‘And I deserve what’s coming my way. But before the shit hits the fan I want you to know that there’s been a development in the Megan Fuller murder case and I’m telling you before anyone else finds out. It’ll be another exclusive.’
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘We’re about to interview the man who killed Megan,’ he said. ‘And you’ll never believe who it is.’
59
Ethan Cain
Cain told Beth what he could in the short time he had. Then DCI Redwood summoned him to the interview room.
He had to force himself not to think about the flash drive. If that bastard Bishop had been telling the truth to Beth he was fucked.
But there was no time to dwell on it now. The suspect they had brought in last night was ready to be questioned. He’d been given time to talk to his lawyer and his house had been searched.
The evidence against him was coming together nicely. They had CCTV footage of his car near Megan’s house on Friday evening and they’d found traces of blood on a pair of his shoes. Now they were going to throw everything at him in the hope of extracting a confession.
Nigel Fuller was already waiting for them in the interview room. He was sitting beside a thin guy in a light grey suit, who introduced himself as Paul Barton.
‘I’m Mr Fuller’s legal representative,’ he said. ‘And I’d like to make clear at the outset that I’m not happy with the way my client has been treated. He’s been here for a number of hours now and he still hasn’t been told what it’s about.’
‘I beg to differ, Mr Barton,’ Redwood said. ‘It’s been made clear to him that we need to ask him some questions in connection with the murder of his daughter, Megan.’
‘But he’s already told you everything he knows,’ Barton said.
‘That was before
he became a suspect. Now we’ve got a different set of questions for him.’
Sweat beaded on Fuller’s upper lip and a muscle twitched under his left eye.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘How can I be a suspect? I was the one who found her. I was nowhere near Balham on Friday night.’
Redwood looked at Cain and raised his brow, the cue for Cain to take over.
‘So remind us where you were on Friday night when Megan was killed,’ Cain said.
‘I told you. I was at home in bed with Amy. She told you that as well.’
‘So how come you left your house in Lewisham just after nine and drove to Balham?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘In that case who else has access to your car?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, we have CCTV footage which shows your Vauxhall Astra travelling between Lewisham and Balham on Friday evening.’
‘That’s not possible. It must be a mistake.’
‘It’s not a mistake,’ Cain said. ‘And it’s not the only evidence we have that convinces us you stabbed your daughter to death.’
A frown tightened Fuller’s forehead, and he swallowed a lump the size of a plum.
‘You played the grieving father really well, Mr Fuller,’ Cain said. ‘You had everyone convinced, including me.’
‘You’re wrong. I swear I had nothing to do with it. I loved Megan. She was—’
His voice broke then and he started to cry.
‘We found a shoe at your house with blood on it,’ Cain said. ‘A black slip-on that you must have worn when you went to Megan’s house on Friday.’
Barton chipped in, saying, ‘If it is indeed the victim’s blood then that can easily be explained. My client’s shoes were contaminated when he found his daughter’s body on the Saturday morning.’
Cain shook his head. ‘The shoes he was wearing on Saturday were taken away by the scene-of-crime officers.’
Cain turned back to Fuller. ‘So how come your other shoes have blood on them?’
Fuller couldn’t explain it so he didn’t try. He wiped his eyes and said, ‘I can’t believe you’re accusing me of killing my own daughter. Why would I? It makes no sense.’