Dance With the Dead

by James Nally

  ‘He’s gone home.’

  ‘What, to the Woodberry estate?’

  ‘No, home, home. He should be on the plane right now.’

  ‘What a coincidence.’

  ‘He said it was out of his hands. He’s done all he can.’

  ‘He’s clearly done exactly what we feared he’d do. He set Conlon up to get whacked by the IRA. Then he scarpered. I want you to book two plane tickets to Dublin this Sunday, Fintan. We’re going to have a long overdue family showdown.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I can do this alone …’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  ‘Shame the fucker’s not here,’ I told him. ‘Arresting my own dad for murder … now that’d get me noticed by a murder squad.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘For this Fintan, one day I will.’

  Chapter 39

  East Dulwich, South London

  Monday, April 12, 1993; 17.00

  ‘Showtime.’ Shep smiled, rubbing his hands, as I joined him spy-side of a two-way mirror.

  He introduced me to the interrogators limbering up behind him, Detective Sergeants Price and White. On the other side of the glass, Bernie Moss sat alone, staring into the tabletop.

  ‘He arrived without a brief, Lynch,’ said Shep. ‘What do you make of that?’

  ‘Well, he thinks he’s pretty smart. He likes to show off how well-read he is.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t want Jimmy Reilly to find out he’s here. Everyone knows how much he hates rats.’

  They all had a chuckle about that.

  ‘You’ve met Bernie, haven’t you, Lynch. Any tender spots?’

  ‘He seemed genuinely shocked when I told him about Liz Little’s murder. I don’t think he was involved. He might even have had feelings for her.’

  Shep squinted at the glass. ‘Or he was in on her shakedown, whatever that was. Either way, he’ll be thinking only of self-preservation now. We’ve got our knock-out punch worked out though, Lynch, so sit back, look and learn.’

  Price and White walked in, switched on the tape recorder and set to work.

  ‘Bernard Moss, is it okay if we call you Bernie?’

  ‘Everyone else does.’

  ‘Tell us where you work and your position there.’

  ‘I’m head of security at the Florentine Gardens Club, on Conduit Street, W1.’

  ‘Have you ever been to 42 Ennerdale House on the Woodberry Estate in North London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I ask you when and what you were doing there?’

  ‘About three weeks ago, one of the girls who works at the club asked me to sort out a flat for her. She was having domestic trouble with an ex-boyfriend. So I arranged a short term let at that address.’

  ‘Which girl asked you to do this?’

  ‘Georgie. Georgina Bell.’

  ‘You are aware that Georgie is now dead?’

  ‘Yes, terrible business that. Terrible.’

  ‘Why would a girl earning all that money go and live in a rough old estate like the Woodberry?’

  ‘I got the impression most of her money went up her nose. She had a bad coke problem.’

  ‘The pathologist didn’t find any evidence of cocaine in her system or at the scene.’

  ‘That’s because there wasn’t any of her left,’ he sneered. ‘At least that’s what I heard.’

  ‘Who killed her Bernie?’

  ‘I don’t know that she was killed. I assumed she’d had some sort of coke seizure, collapsed and died, then the dogs had her for dinner.’

  ‘We’ve found your prints at the scene, Bernie. You brought her dead body there, didn’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you then brought the dogs, didn’t you?’

  ‘No. I went to that flat once, and that was to make sure it was safe for her to move into. That’s the only time I set foot in it.’

  ‘What can you tell us about Liz Little, Bernie?’

  ‘I didn’t know her that well. She seemed a bright girl. Popular.’

  ‘Did she have any enemies?’

  ‘None that I know of.’

  ‘When did you last see Liz Little?’

  ‘I saw her at the club on the night before she died, the Friday.’

  ‘Did you speak to her that night?’

  ‘No. She was flitting about, talking to different people, then she was gone. I didn’t see her leave.’

  ‘DS Price is producing a piece of paper with a typed list of six names,’ White told the tape recorder.

  ‘Take a look at this, Bernie,’ said Price, handing it over.

  ‘Tell me about the girls on this list.’

  ‘They all work as hostesses at the club.’

  ‘They’re a select group, known as the IT girls. Tell us what IT stands for and what these girls do for Jimmy Reilly.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘We’ve got their travel records, their bank accounts. You might as well tell us.’

  ‘Tell you what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘DS Price is now producing a can of specialist paint. Do you recognise this paint, Bernie?’

  He nodded, slowly.

  ‘You have to speak for the benefit of the tape, Bernie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Shep leaned forward. ‘His brain’s doing fucking cartwheels now.’

  ‘How are you familiar with this paint?’

  ‘Jimmy uses it at the club, to repair cigarette burns to the terrazzo floor.’

  ‘We found traces of this material at both the Liz Little and Georgie Bell murder scenes, Bernie. Do you know how it would have got there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Someone employed at the Florentine Gardens Club killed both women. And this proves it.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘In fact, we feel pretty certain that both Liz and Georgie were murdered inside the club. The traces of paint inside their wounds prove that. As Jimmy’s head of security, you must have known about it.’

  ‘No.’

  Shep shuffled in his seat. ‘Missile one, incoming.’

  ‘How important is that terrazzo floor to Jimmy?’

  ‘He loves it. It’s his baby.’

  ‘How do you think he’ll feel when we turn up later today with a forensic team in tow to dig it up?’

  He laughed. ‘You can’t do that. It’s protected by a preservation order.’

  ‘Oh, but we can,’ said Price, ‘and we’re at the High Court securing that order right now.’

  Bernie’s face fell.

  ‘Imagine,’ said White, ‘his head of security’s in custody and suddenly we turn up and start smashing up the terrazzo? That’s gonna put him in a great mood.’

  The officers had a good laugh at that.

  White continued. ‘Do you know a senior police officer called Alex Spence?’

  ‘Missile two,’ said Shep.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, come now, Bernie, have a think.’

  ‘No, I can’t say that I do.’

  ‘DS Price is passing a photo of Superintendent Alex Spence to the suspect. Recognise him, Bernie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Interview terminated at sixteen-o-seven hours,’ White told the tape.

  Both men got up and walked out.

  Shep stood. ‘There may be trouble ahead,’ he sang as he strode out to the hallway, then into the interrogation room.

  ‘But while there’s music, and love and romance,’ he sang, doing a little Sammy Davis shoe shuffle, ‘let’s face the music, and dance.’ Bernie didn’t even blink.

  Shep raised an apple to his mouth and took a noisy bite.

  ‘Bernie, Bernie, Bernie,’ he said, chomping and pacing about at the top of the room.

  ‘You might not know Superintendent Alex Spence, but Superintendent Alex Spence certainly knows you.’

  Bernie pulled a contemptuous face as She
p took another crunching mouthful.

  ‘And he’s very close to Jimmy Reilly. In fact, it was Spence who provided him with that list of IT girls we just showed you, you know, the one with the two murder victims on it.’

  He stopped pacing to inspect the apple and take another bite. He leaned down against the tabletop on both hands, peering intently into Bernie’s bored face.

  ‘Spence is what we call a bad apple, Bernie. Now your boss Jimmy is very keen to know where we got that list of names from. We all know how excitable he gets about grasses, don’t we? I’ve got an officer sitting behind that glass willing to make a statement that he got this list from you. I’ve got a handwriting expert poring over your Times crossword that we lifted from your club last Saturday, willing to confirm that some handwriting on the original list is yours. And then I’m going to make sure Spence accidentally gets wind of this shocking little development.’

  ‘That’s not my writing, and you know it.’

  ‘Yeah, but dear old Alex Spence doesn’t, does he? Or Jimmy Reilly? And who are they to overrule a venerable handwriting expert?’

  ‘Jimmy won’t fall for any of that shit.’

  ‘Jimmy will also be somewhat alarmed tonight when his four IT girls get lifted on their way back from Malaga. You won’t be able to do anything about it because you’ll be here, in custody. And you’ve already made your phone call, haven’t you, Bernie? I wonder what will Jimmy make of that? His smuggling team gets busted six hours after his head of security gets arrested! All while we’re digging up his precious floor. Dear oh dear.

  ‘And we’ll get those girls talking tonight, Bernie, you can count on that. Because if they don’t, their mums and dads will be reading about how they really earn their livings in this weekend’s Sunday News.’

  Bernie crossed his arms and shook his head, seemingly in mild amusement.

  ‘The wheels are starting to come off, Bernie. And there’s going to be one hell of a crash. You’re a smart man, I’m told. The smart thing to do right now would be to switch horses. We could provide you with a very attractive package. And that sounds a lot more pleasant to me than propping up Jimmy’s terrazzo. You’ve got eighteen hours now to think about it in the comfort of your cell.’

  Shep strode to the door, humming merrily. He opened it and turned: ‘You can’t have Jimmy finding out that you were helping Liz – or was it Georgie – shake him down either, can you, Bernie? Imagine, while we’re interrogating those four girls tonight, if that rumour were to reach our old friend Spence?’

  He took one final bite and tossed the apple. Bernie swerved it, just.

  ‘They have their uses, you know Bernie, these bad apples. And you might not be able to dodge it next time …’

  Chapter 40

  East Dulwich, South London

  Monday, April 12, 1993; 20.00

  Fintan joined us in East Dulwich for tonight’s radio feature, ‘The Heathrow Hustle’.

  He sat with Shep and me at the helpless end of a customs radio link, eavesdropping on the shakedown of Jimmy’s four remaining IT girls as they flew in from Malaga.

  To pass time, we speculated on the nature of the racket.

  ‘Chemicals,’ said Fintan. ‘Raw materials for these designer drugs he’s developing, so not technically illegal.’

  ‘Too tacky,’ said Shep. ‘I’m plumping for gems. Easiest thing in the world to smuggle. You just have to set it in jewellery and wear it. A massive stone wouldn’t look out of place on any of those girls.’

  ‘Gold,’ I said, ‘a classic VAT fraud. Each girl carries in one twelve and a half kilo bar on each trip. Reilly passes it on to a dealer and they split the VAT on the sale. That gives them a fifteen grand cut each per bar.’

  Shep dialled in all three scenarios to our customs’ foot soldiers. They didn’t bother disguising their resentment.

  ‘I don’t care what their racket is, so long as you bust them with something,’ demanded Shep. He turned to us: ‘That’ll give us the ammo we need to bust Bernie’s balls.’

  After an agonising wait, our airside contact finally buzzed in.

  ‘All four girls clean, all their belongings clean,’ he stated flatly.

  ‘What about the dogs?’ said Shep. ‘All we need is one growl to arrest.’

  ‘No reaction. None of the four has been in contact with drugs in the past couple of days.’

  ‘Are any of them talking?’

  ‘All no comment. We can’t hold them for much longer.’

  ‘What the hell are they up to?’ boomed Shep. ‘If they’re not bringing something in, what are they taking out?’

  ‘Dirty money, perhaps,’ said the man from customs, ‘We’ll never know now.’

  Liz’s visit all those nights ago flickered in my vision, those bundles of filthy banknotes tumbling out of her puppet-like figure. Of course, I thought, this is what she’d been trying to tell me. I needed to have faith in these visions, invest more time into deciphering their meaning.

  ‘Okay, let them go,’ Shep said with a sigh.

  ‘Why would they take cash abroad for Reilly? asked Fintan.

  ‘To pay criminals or drug suppliers? Who knows?’ said Shep. ‘Whatever it is, that’s our chance to find out gone.’

  My mind snagged on a minor detail and wouldn’t let go. ‘You said the girls all went to the same Bureau de Change before the trip,’ I said. ‘Which one?’

  ‘It’s in the paperwork somewhere,’ said Shep. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘Could be.’

  He rifled through his briefcase, finally pulling out a report.

  ‘Money Transfer, 222 Praed Street, London W2,’ he said. ‘Ring a bell?’

  ‘Every bell in London, guv. I think we’ve cracked it.’

  They hauled Bernie back to an interview suite as I tried to stop his excited visitors pissing the floor.

  The mention of those sniffer dogs at Heathrow first set my nose twitching.

  At the Florentine Gardens Club that first night, Bernie had stated his pet hates to me: rudeness to service staff and cruelty to animals. I’d seen him run to check on those dogs after Tammy’s pepper-spray assault on the club’s air-con vents. Slob claimed he preferred animals to people. He’d been an animal rights’ extremist and a hunt saboteur.

  No one else’s prints had been found at 42 Ennerdale House. I allowed myself to draw three conclusions. One: he brought Georgie Bell’s dead body to the flat. Two: he brought the dogs that devoured her dead body to the flat, unwittingly. Three: he took those dogs away again. ‘There wasn’t any of her left … at least that’s what I heard.’

  Of course Georgie Bell’s wham-bam am-dram performance the other night had sowed the seeds for this narrative leap. How much is that doggie in the window … Now I was counting on a pair of whining mutts to prove my theory.

  Jimmy Reilly would’ve told Bernie, in no uncertain terms, to destroy these dogs as soon as they’d devoured Georgie. After all, their doggie DNA could connect Bernie to the crime scene. It should’ve been the final, straightforward act in a painstakingly planned and executed ‘perfect murder’.

  But animal-loving Bernie couldn’t bring himself to do it. The dogs had suffered enough. Surely better that he find them a loving owner.

  Where are the dogs?

  Somewhere they’ll get treated right.

  Where’s a better place to hide a needle than in a haystack? With other needles …

  An hour or so ago, I drove down to Battersea Dogs’ Home to ask if one Dean S Sombrero may have donated a pair of emaciated German Shepherds. They hadn’t heard of Senor Sombrero but, three mornings ago, they’d found two maltreated hounds of that breed tied to an external gate.

  Now Shep couldn’t wait to cry havoc and release these dogs into suite three.

  Their frantic yowling gave them away before Shep managed to get the door open.

  Bernie’s face shot up at the canine clamour, wide-eyed with joyful surprise, then dawning horror as they raced in and mobbed him.


  ‘Dog hair, the bane of my old lady’s life,’ declared Shep solemnly. ‘Devil’s dandruff she calls it, Bernie. She spends half her life vacuuming it up, the other half beating rugs and throws out in the back garden.’

  Bernie now bore the look of a beaten man.

  ‘But it has its uses too,’ said Shep. ‘Even minus a root, we can extract a dog’s DNA profile, which is something we can’t do with human hair. And dog hair is tough. You can clean it, burn it, bury it or leave it out in the open for months, and we can still extract what they call mitochondrial DNA, which is very stable.

  ‘But here’s my favourite part, Bernie. Because they self-groom, each hair usually comes with a bonus, a lovely coat of thick doggie saliva.

  ‘As we speak, forensics officers are searching your home and car for stray dog hair. And we’re currently awaiting a warrant to search the Florentine Gardens. But here’s the best bit. I’m sure you know all about the murder of Helen Oldroyd? She was found stabbed to death in her Jaguar car, outside a leisure centre in Brentford. Well, it turns out that the Bureau de Change she co-owned in Paddington – Money Transfer on Praed Street – is the very place Jimmy’s IT girls have been laundering his dirty money to smuggle abroad.

  ‘Now we know that our resident bad apple, Detective Superintendent Alex Spence, made sure that Oldroyd’s car suffered human contamination at the scene, to take the heat off his new pal and significant creditor, Jimmy Reilly.

  ‘Guess what. Her car is still in our pound. And even though it was contaminated by humans, so to speak, it hasn’t been contaminated by dogs. So we’re searching that car for doggie hair too. All we need is a single strand to match either of these dogs, and we’ve got you. So this Bernie has turned into your very own Dog Day afternoon.’

  Chapter 41

  East Dulwich, South London

  Tuesday, April 13, 1993; 09.10

  Bernie sought a deal.

  Shep spelled out the terms and conditions.

  ‘You cough, Bernie, about everything, and I’ll think about whether or not you merit a berth on our much-coveted Witness Protection Programme. Trust me when I tell you it’d be easier to get a seat at the Last Supper.

  ‘You see Bernie, I’ve got to ensure that the hard-pressed British tax payer will be getting value for money supporting you for the rest of your life. And value for money represents nothing short of the taking down of Jimmy Reilly. Understand?’