Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery)

by Alison Joseph

  The offensively opulent Castle had more CCTV cameras than a presidential palace. I smiled and felt the familiar cold prickle of excitement that accompanied entering the lion’s den. Like going on stage, I imagine, but with infinitely more at stake. Excited and shit scared, the possibility of not returning. Nothing so simple as a death wish, more an embracing of uncertainty and the adrenalin rush of knowing you cannot control events. The boxer chooses to go in the ring but does not wish to get hurt, which is a likely outcome of going into the ring. We are all bee boxes of contradictions. I can go on like this for hours.

  Gold tipped iron gates, a driveway long enough to land a Boeing 707. A front door the size of a small bungalow and framed by Corinthian pillars, opened as I approached the house which stood like a giant wedding cake; inside were Rococo architraves, rooms you needed a taxi to cross and the hall had a ludicrous ceiling fresco of the whole family as Olympian figures. My guess was that this was not Pop’s doing, nor Ma’s, but a result of the gargantuan ego of Tony. As Jimbo, all sugared up burnt out energy in a bomber jacket and jogging bottoms, showed me in, he smiled as I looked up and took in the full tastelessness of the thing.

  “Load of crap, that’s what Pop thinks. Ma tried to scrub it off. Tony’s idea. Had it done while we was at the villa in Portugal.” Bingo. I’m nearly always right except when I’m wrong.

  Jimbo took me into a sitting room kaleidoscopically lit by the setting sun through stained glass windows. There were five sofas, six clocks and eight expensive rugs on a marble tiled floor. I count things – it’s one of my many compulsive disorders. Already this place was wearying me with its tacky and stifling opulence. We sat. I realised that Jimbo had been given the twin job of putting me in the picture and appraising me before I was allowed to see the King of this little sugar pile.

  “Know why you’re here?” asked Jimbo, his knee jerking up and down.

  “To find out who killed your brother,” I said.

  “Shot and trussed up like a bleedin’ chicken. Pop had a bit of a turn when he saw him.”

  He gave me a photograph of a corpse bandaged like a mummy in an old raincoat, and I counted blood from ten gunshots staining the material. I had a ton of questions but now wasn’t the moment to ask.

  “Some basket with a death wish trying to show us his meat and two veg is bigger than ours,” said Jimbo. “You up for it?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said, smiling.

  “OK, lift off. Four ton a day plus expenses, Pop says.”

  “I’ll take a hundred a day. Pay my own expenses.”

  Jimbo looked at me curiously. No one turned down money. I smiled again, knowing I was being watched on at least one monitor somewhere in the house. Two cameras in opposite corners of the room.

  “It’s my proletarian roots. Plus, it makes me feel as if I’ve negotiated the deal and not you and your family,” I said.

  He liked this. The face cracked a large smile. “They said you was a bit of a ding-a-ling. If you want peanuts, we’ll chuck ‘em. Done deal. ”

  I wasn’t being modest, but pragmatic. If you get greedy you get hasty, and also your employer thinks he owns you. I wanted at least the illusion of exercising some control. I’d been vetted, and as though he’d received some electronic signal Jimbo sparked to his feet and told me to follow him; up a Bollywood musical staircase to the first floor. We entered a drawing room lined with leather sofas. I quickly scanned fifteen pictures on the wall, mostly of Pop Steele shaking hands with Establishment figures: Chief of Police; a judge; Archbishop of Canterbury. One thing about England today – everyone is in bed with everyone else. In one corner was Philly, the daughter. She looked like the horny side of Soho, about thirty, danger to mankind, thickset but sexy. In the other corner was Tony – his face showing what lurked beneath: the stew of cocaine, sadism and terror that made him a psychopath. In front of me, sitting incongruously on a char’s wooden stall, was Ma, legs apart and hands on knees, thick black woollen stockings and a cheap black dress. Built like a navvy. Desperate Dan chin. This was not a woman to cross. She and Pop had met when in their teens and been a formidable team ever since.

  “This is the Rook bloke, Ma,” said Jimbo.

  “Looks more like a shithouse rat to me,” said Ma.

  “It’s nice to meet you too, Mrs Steele.”

  Jimbo indicated Tony, who just stared at me, and Philly nodded, puffing furiously on a B&H.

  “And when do I have the pleasure of meeting Mr Steele?”

  “Later,” said Ma. “You got one week to find who killed my son. It’s important things are done quick and clean in our family. I promised Danny Boy he’d get justice.”

  I looked at her curiously.

  “In my prayers I told him. So’s he can lie peaceful, forgetful of all ill. Where’d you want to start?”

  “I’d like to talk to you individually,” I said, but then things happened quickly. Tony’s phone beeped, he shot me a glance of pure hatred, got up and left the room. There was a lot of noise coming up the stairs. Then a dark suited muscleman with a neck as thick as a postbox brought a young girl in, arm locked. She winced as he tightened his grip. Tony looked at me. I had no doubt he and the muscleman were armed. I looked at the girl and she at me. It was my daughter. Cass. Shit.

  Chapter III

  ‘Evil is unspectacular, and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our table.’

  W. H. Auden

  “Snooping around the fence. Says she knows Einstein here,” said Tony, indicating me with a perfectly manicured hand. I swear I could detect nail gloss.

  Ma looked at me coolly. “And do you?” she asked.

  I nodded. I often look at my most calm when I have the screaming terrors.

  “So why would you ‘ave some girl snooping around our place?”

  “I told you this was a mistake. We can sort this ourselves without some greasy choad and his nosy tart,” said Tony.

  Cass was scared but trying not to show it in the tight lipped face she used to wear as a little girl after I’d read her a bedtime story and then she knew she’d have to face the dark alone. No matter how often we told her there was nothing to fear, she dreaded the nights. I ached to make everything all right for her then as now. It was vital to remain uber calm. I decided that a half truth was the best, if least plausible, option. Especially because someone as thorough as Pop must already have done some sort of background check on me – for all I knew he’d have seen photographs of Cass. If things got nasty I would first try to talk our way out of it – always the best option – failing that I’d say that in fact I was working for the police and they knew both Cass and I were there – failing that I would either fake a fit or run headlong at the muscle giant and hope Cass had at least a chance to run. I had told Cass my interest in the underworld was academic, a strange intellectual fetish. Now she must be bursting with questions, all sensibly held in check by fear.

  “This is my daughter, Cass. She needed money for a train fare to London for some research she’s doing. Sorry, Cass. I just forgot.” I took out my wallet and gave her twenty pounds, which she took. Her hand trembled. I wanted to hold her tight. I was also ice and fire angry with her. Why did she follow me? More to the point, why didn’t I notice? This was all my stupid fault.

  “You think we believe that?” asked Tony, his face zipped into a smirk.

  “Research? Into what?” Ma asked.

  “Crime and punishment,” said Cass quick as a whippet.

  There was a silence you could hack through. Then a splutter as Jimbo burst into a giggle. It relaxed Ma, who smiled and saw the joke.

  “Big subject, that, my girl. You best get going. Take a bleedin’ lifetime.”

  Tony almost choked. “You’re not letting her go. It’s mad. She could be anyone.”

  “We know who she is. And letting her go is exactly what I’m doing. Dino…” – he nodded at the muscleman – “...escort this young person from the premises. She’s a good girl, and we don’
t want her Dad worrying about her.” Dino took her arm and I smiled again at her.

  “See you later,” I said and gave her a kiss on the cheek. It was white with fear. Then she was gone. She would probably be sick when she got outside. I hoped she wouldn’t tell Lizzie. You never knew with Cass. She could be as independent as the sun one moment and little girl lost the next. But why why why had she followed me? I was aware the sides of my nose were beaded with sweat but to wipe it away would be to acknowledge it.

  “Does she know why you’re here?” Ma asked.

  “No. As you said, she’s a good girl. She doesn’t ask too many questions,” I lied.

  “He’s lying. The nonce is lying,” said Tony.

  “Then the nonce will be sorry,” said Ma.

  All this time Philly had sat in a corner watching, like a damaged bird of prey. She’d smoked three cigarettes. What the hell had I got into?

  An internal phone rang. Ma picked it up, listened, and returned it to its holster.

  “Praise the lord, ‘is Whiskers is up and breathing and wants to see you.”

  As I passed Tony I could smell expensive aftershave. Gucci or one those crappy designer names that puts a logo on cheap perfume and multiplies the price by fifty. I imagined Tony’s mind as a Thames sludge pool with evil things fermenting and hatching in the mud’s poisonous gases. But Cass was safe – that was all that mattered. Now the crisis was over I could feel something deep in me churning with what might have beens. What am I doing?

  *

  A dark bedroom with curtains drawn, a few wall lights, and maps everywhere: on walls, propped up against shelves, even one of the world on the ceiling, a large revolving globe lit from within on a circular mahogany table, the legs carved like dolphins. There was a large glass ornament, like a cloud, on the floor. Pop Steele was in a wheelchair, eyes closed, and listening to the radio shipping forecast. Odd time for a shipping forecast – they usually came early or late. He was unshaven, wearing a dressing gown, his swollen ankles oozing over tartan slippers. His lips moved in synch with the announcer’s voice: “There are warnings of gales in Rockall, Hebrides, Bailey, Fair isle, Faeroes and Southeast Iceland...” One eye drooped slightly and there was a slight downturn of his left lower lip. Mild stroke, but you could see he was tough. It would take more than lightning to the brain and a hammer to the heart to down this old turkey.

  “My name is Rook,” I said somewhat unnecessarily. He indicated a seat. I sat. The announcer droned on: “Viking North Utrise variable, mainly northwest, becoming north east five to seven, perhaps gale eight in North Viking...”, then Pop turned down the sound.

  “I didn’t know you were a nautical man,” I said.

  “Fisher German Bright Westerly three or four,” he said, then turned up the volume and the announcer said the exact same words. He turned it down and said “South Utrise Cromarty Forth Tyne Dogger Variable three,” and turned up the volume. Again the announcer repeated the same words. Either Pop was a mystic or it wasn’t a radio, it was a recording and Pop had learnt it all by heart. He smiled.

  “June 13th, nineteen eighty three. One of my favourites.”

  “You record the shipping forecasts and learn them by heart?” I asked.

  He indicated a shelf that had hundreds of CDs.

  “Soothing, the names. Poetry. Like praying.”

  “You believe in God?”

  “Probably not. I believe in the weather. Oceans. You’re here to try and find my son’s killer.”

  “Yes. Any idea who it might be?”

  Pop picked up a copy of the telephone directory and threw it at me. I got the point.

  “We need a neutral. Someone who might see something because we’re too close to be able to. I’m tired, Mister Rook. I was wild once. Not now. Now I enjoy the wine but I want others to pick the grapes.”

  We stopped and listened to the shipping forecast for a while. Dogger Bank. Humber Thames Dover. I was beginning to see the point of it.

  “If I start to think you’re wasting my time you need to worry, Mister Rook.” He looked at me closely. “Tell me what you’ve discovered about me since you came in this room.” Another test.

  “You’re not well, but you’re strong. You’re a watcher, especially when creating the impression you’re doing something else – I came in the room and you had your eyes almost closed and ignored me, but you were watching. An observer – I suspect that’s partly why you’ve been so spectacularly successful. You notice things other people don’t – weaknesses, mannerisms, hesitations, tiny holes in the mask. You often dispense with verbs. Twice you used sentences containing only a noun. Suggests you like to cut to the chase...”

  He raised a hand to stop me. “And what have you worked out about Tony?”

  “He’s a live wire.”

  “I meant the truth.”

  “He’s a psychotic monster. Useful on occasions but a colossal liability. You’re probably very worried about what will happen to the family when...”

  “My ashes are floating down the Thames,” he finished for me.

  Telling the truth about Tony was a calculated risk; and it worked. Pop smiled, but then his face clouded. I saw what the little fish must see just before the shark attack.

  “You find whoever it was who killed Danny. He was my favourite. After...never mind. I could have anyone I wanted brought here and have things done to ‘em you can’t imagine to find out who killed my boy, but half of them would grass anyone up just to stop it, and some would be so scared they’d admit to anything. So it’d be bloody pointless. You find ‘em. Otherwise you got me to deal with.”

  “No pressure then.”

  “No pressure.”

  “What gun was used to shoot Danny?”

  “Funny that. Old fashioned luger. Like some forties throwback.” His mood filled the room, like a vapour. “My wife will have lots of theories. About everything,” he said wearily.

  “Yes, she doesn’t strike me as the retiring type.”

  Pop smiled. He was starting to like me, against his will. God knows, I needed an ally in this family. “Congratulations. You spot a domestic rift. In fact she’s listening right now, outside the door. Are you married?”

  “Technically. Separated. Polite word for crucifixion.”

  He looked at me. We both felt someone listening outside.

  “I’m still head of the family. Ma knows that. For thirty years I brought home the bacon that made her fat. I did things...now get out and do your job, Mister Rook. Moderate or poor, becoming cyclonic...” And he turned up the volume. I’d been dismissed.

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