Deadly Pleasures

by Martin Edwards

  ‘Listen, if I waited for council approval before starting to build, I’d never get anything done.’

  ‘Let’s get back to your wife,’ said May. ‘You think someone was trying to get at you through her?’ He thought, If that was the plan, they didn’t succeed. He’s not upset or even surprised.

  ‘Why else would anyone bother with her?’ Kastopolis pushed past them and began slicking down his hair before an elaborate gilt mirror. ‘She didn’t know nobody important.’

  ‘But she worked for you.’

  ‘Secretary stuff, posting the mail, making coffee, that sort of thing. I made her come to work just to keep her out of the shops, spending my bloody money. And to stop her eating. She was getting as fat as a pig.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘When she left the office yesterday evening. She was going out with her mates to some cocktail bar maybe, I don’t know what she does no more.’

  ‘She didn’t come home?’

  ‘We got a lot of places, and she’s got keys to them all. She stays in different ones when she’s had a few.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Of course alone! What are you bloody saying?’

  ‘And you, do you stay in these flats?’

  ‘That’s got nothing to bloody do with it.’

  ‘It has if you can’t vouch for your whereabouts between last night and today.’

  Kastopolis nearly ruptured a vein. ‘Ask my boys upstairs where I was. They was with me all evening. We left here at eight and went to the Rajasthan Palace until midnight. They was all with me again from six o’clock this morning. We work long hours here. Why you think we make so much money? Are you sure she’s dead?’

  ‘Very sure. She was stabbed.’

  ‘Primrose Hill, eh? No blacks around there, don’t know how she got stabbed. I can’t bloody believe this. I gave her everything. She didn’t have nothing when she met me, came down from Liverpool without a penny to her name. She owed me big time, and this is how I get paid back.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Stands to reason, innit? She was seeing someone behind my back.’ Kastopolis checked his hair in the mirror and turned to them. ‘Where do I pick up her body?’

  ‘What a revolting man,’ said Bryant as they headed back along the Caledonian Road. ‘All that grey chest-hair poking out, it made me feel quite ill. Surely no one would speak about his wife like that if he’d killed her.’

  ‘Obviously it’s a long time since he cared anything for her. It sounds to me like the arrangement of staying in empty apartments was more for his benefit, not hers.’

  ‘I think we should talk to someone she counted as a friend,’ said Bryant, ‘rather than a husband.’

  They found Kaylie Neville seated alone in the Lion and Unicorn pub nursing an extremely large gin and tonic. Judging by her swollen red eyes and the number of lemon wedges in her drink, she had already been informed of her friend’s death. The pub was so still and quiet that the detectives stirred the dust-motes in the late afternoon sunlight as they sat down beside her at the copper-topped table.

  ‘Phantasos called me and just started having a go, yelling and carrying on like I’m to blame,’ she said, anxiously searching their faces. ‘You mustn’t believe anything he says about her. Nothing true or kind has ever come out of his mouth. He cheats, he steals, he has affairs. There’s not a decent bone in him. The things he gets up to in those flats, you don’t want to know.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Bryant, ‘but if Mr Kastopolis is such a terrible man, why did Marsha marry him?’

  ‘She’d had a rough time of it. She came to London to escape a bloke in Liverpool who said he would kill her.’

  ‘Why did he say that?’

  Kaylie tapped nervously at her glass with bitten painted nails. ‘He was staunch Irish Catholic, and she had an abortion. He threatened to come down and cut her up. She was a lousy judge of men. But a kind heart, a good heart. I did what I could for her. You do what you can, don’t you? She met Phantasos and he offered to look after her. Then she found out what that involved.’

  ‘What did it involve?’

  ‘Keeping the clients sweet. Doing anything they wanted. I mean, anything.’

  ‘You’re saying he prostituted her out to them?’ said Bryant, always one to accurately title a gardening implement.

  ‘She said no, of course. But he found plenty of other ways to hurt her.’ Kaylie took a sudden alarming gulp from her gin, nearly finishing it. ‘She told me he started using her identity to hide cash in different accounts, all kinds of dodgy goings-on. I keep away from him. If he knew half the things I know, I wouldn’t fancy my chances.’

  ‘Do you think he had something to do with his wife’s death?’ asked May.

  ‘He must have done,’ Kaylie replied. ‘See, she was smart. She kept everything written down in a little notebook, just in case there was ever any trouble.’

  ‘What sort of things did she write down?’

  ‘Account numbers, deposit dates, details of all the rental contracts he faked, the councillors he bribed, everything.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you know where she kept this book?’

  ‘She never told me. Not at home, maybe in one of the rented properties, but there’s fifty or sixty of those. He’s got people everywhere. They’re always on the lookout for trouble, that lot.’

  ‘And you think that’s why she died? Because she was keeping track of him?’

  ‘You have to understand, he goes on about arriving in London without a penny, how he built up an empire, how no one can stop him. Then she started standing up to him. She told me she’d had enough. She was going to take the notebook to the police.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘She said it last night. She’d said it loads of times before, but this time I think she was really going to do it.’

  ‘We’re going to find out who killed her,’ said May.

  ‘If we can find out how he did it,’ said Bryant.

  The temperature was dropping again, and the brown pavement ice had become treacherous. May kept a tight hold of his partner’s arm as the pair made their way around the corner to their unit. Central London in the snow was never picturesque for more than the first hour.

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Bryant. ‘You can see the kind of a man Kastopolis is, a feral throwback, like something out of the 1970s, crafty but not too bright. His wife was lured out into the middle of that park and killed – that’s why somebody called her from a phone box just before her death, to make sure that she was keeping her appointment. You heard what Miss Neville said; Kastopolis has men everywhere. Central North is his turf. Everybody knows the local villain, and that’s the way he likes it. He needed this to happen off his patch. What I don’t understand is how he did it, and he knows that we don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe he’s smarter than you think he is,’ said May. ‘Perhaps he wants to divert our attention into trying to work out how it happened.’

  ‘Let’s talk to Giles,’ said Bryant. ‘He might have had a chance to examine her properly by now.’

  They found Giles Kershaw in the darkened Forensic Pathology office at Camley Street, where he had recently taken up the position of coroner for St Pancras. ‘You’ve caught us at a bad time,’ warned Giles, ushering them in. ‘The power’s out. Ice pulled down the lines. The fridges are on a separate grid but we’re working by torchlight until tomorrow morning. I don’t know how Canada manages. A few millimetres of snow and the whole of London grinds to a halt.’

  ‘What did you get from Mrs Kastopolis?’ asked Bryant. ‘Is there any tea going? I’m perished.’

  ‘I didn’t get much, and it’s probably not what you’re after. I don’t think she stayed overnight in Primrose Hill. Went there first thing this morning, I imagine, but you’ll know that once you’ve checked her Oyster card.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘What, that she went by tube or that she’d been
in Islington?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘She had no purse, just the travel card. No make-up, and she’d dressed in a hurry. She was wearing boots that had some fragments of French gravel in the grooves. They hadn’t been there long because there was ice underneath them. Islington uses different tarmac surfacing to Camden, so she crossed boroughs this morning. I’ve got a home address for her in Canonbury, Islington.’

  ‘Her husband says she didn’t come home last night, but she had several empty flats she could have gone to in the Canonbury area. Anything else?’

  ‘We have a time of death because of the phone call. She fell face down and died quickly. There was no weapon of any kind on her, or anything that could conceivably be used as one. It looks like there were two wounds, one opening the carotid artery and the other grazing the trachea.’

  ‘Grazing – you mean cutting it?’

  ‘Yes, just lightly.’

  ‘So the air escaped from her lungs and she couldn’t breathe in,’ said May.

  ‘Exactly. Slashes rather than stabs – they’re not very deep. She’s five six, which would make her killer six feet at least, because the cuts are downward.’

  ‘Except that he couldn’t have been standing in front of her because he left no footprints,’ added Bryant. ‘How do you account for that?’

  Kershaw flicked back his blond fringe. ‘Well, I can’t. Most seemingly impossible situations are the fault of poor infor-mation gathering. Are you sure Dan’s got his facts straight? The obvious answer is that the dog walker killed her and threw the weapon away.’

  ‘That won’t fly,’ said May. ‘He walks his dog at the same time every day, along the same route. He was searched at the site and came up clean, and he has no connection with the deceased. The officer said he was pretty shaken up. There’s no reason to suspect him.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ said Dan, ‘you’re a policeman, you suspect everyone. What about her enemies?’

  ‘An ex-boyfriend in Liverpool. Turns out he died of a barbiturate overdose nearly a year ago. We’ve good reason to suspect the husband, but he has alibis in the form of half a dozen employees, so he must have got someone else to do it. Dan’s searching every inch of the field but so far he hasn’t found any marks in the snow other than the ones we’ve accounted for.’

  ‘A throwing dagger,’ said Bryant suddenly.

  ‘They’d have found it,’ said May shaking his head.

  ‘Not if it cleared the field.’

  ‘Thrown 300 metres?’

  ‘With rockets attached. Or a boomerang. Circus performers. A crossbow with razorblades on the front.’

  ‘I’m going to take him back to the unit now,’ May told Kershaw, patting his partner’s arm. ‘It’s time for his meds.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Bryant insisted. ‘Let’s check Kastopolis’s alibi. His employees are going to say anything he tells them, aren’t they? The Rajasthan Palace, Cally Road, didn’t he say he spent most of last night there?’

  ‘Marsha Kastopolis died this morning.’

  ‘But if he hired someone else to kill his wife, it was because of what she’d told Kaylie Neville, and maybe he planned it in the restaurant. Besides, it’s been ages since I had a decent Ruby Murray.’

  ‘Don’t you ever stop thinking of your stomach?’ asked May.

  ‘I need to keep the boiler functioning in this weather,’ said Bryant. ‘If my pilot light goes out, I’ll never get it started again.’

  From the outside it was not the most appealing of restaurants. The splits in the yellow plastic fascia had been repaired with brown parcel tape, and computer printouts of takeaway menus were plastered over the windows, but the staff were smartly uniformed and the interior was clean enough. May selected a salad while Bryant followed the time-honoured British tradition of ordering twice as much Indian food as he could possibly eat, topped off with a peshwari nan and a pint of Kingfisher. As the waiters got busy he attempted to question them, but they proved reluctant to be drawn on the subject of their customers and anxiously fetched the manager, Mr Bhatnagar, who tentatively tiptoed out toward them.

  ‘Mr Eddie is our very great friend,’ the manager explained, beaming eagerly. ‘Everyone calls him Mr Eddie. He’s coming here regularly for dinner and staying a very long time.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ asked May.

  ‘Last night, same as always. He arrived soon after eight and stayed until we closed.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  Mr Bhatnagar silently calculated the validity of his drinks licence. ‘Midnight,’ he assured them.

  ‘You remember who he was with?’

  ‘His colleagues from the office, all very nice but very fond of a tipple, I think. Very … energetic.’

  ‘I assume you mean loud. Does he bring anyone else here apart from his colleagues?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘Sometimes he comes here with his lovely wife.’

  ‘Does she eat here with her own friends?’

  ‘No, just with Mr Eddie.’

  ‘And who else does Mr Eddie bring to dinner?’

  ‘Many people. Mr Eddie has many, many friends. He is very well known in this neighbourhood.’

  ‘And your staff –’ Bryant waved his hands at the young waiters illuminated by the pale light of their mobiles behind the counter – ‘they were all working here last night?’

  ‘All except these two, Raj and Said.’

  ‘You manage several restaurants along this road, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, half a dozen or so.’

  ‘And Mr Eddie owns them. Do your staff take shifts in the others?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do the waiters move around?’

  ‘Indeed so.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you overheard any conversation last night?’ asked Bryant, already sure of the answer.

  ‘Oh no, sir,’ came the hasty reply. ‘We would never eavesdrop on our esteemed customers, certainly not.’ Mr Bhatnagar gave them both a reassuring smile.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked May as they stepped back into the street.

  ‘I like to get a thorough picture,’ replied Bryant evasively.

  ‘Yes, and I also know when there’s something funny going on in your head. One more stop and we’ll go back to the PCU. The Islington Better Business Bureau. It’s the council’s outsource in charge of the licences for properties along Upper Street and the Caledonian Road. Let’s see what they make of Mr Kastopolis.’

  ‘Do we have any friends there?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘We’re not their favourite people. You gave them grief over a corpse found in one of their properties, remember? A headless murder victim stuffed into a chip shop freezer? Ring any bells?’

  ‘Oh, that. Not someone called Anderson, by any chance?’

  ‘The very one. He’s Kastopolis’s liaison officer. I’m sure he remembers you. You made him go to the old Bayham Street mortuary to identify the victim.’

  ‘Why did I do that?’

  ‘You didn’t like him.’

  ‘Ah. I wonder if he remembers.’

  ‘I imagine it might have stayed in his memory, yes,’ said May. ‘Better let me do the talking.’

  May held a twanging glass door open for his partner. They entered a lobby that resembled a spaceship’s flight-deck from a low-budget film in the late 1980s. David Anderson came down to meet them, waving them anxiously toward a miniscule glass meeting room beside the reception area, a holding pen for those not worthy of being granted full access to the executive suites upstairs. He was slightly plump, slightly balding, slightly ginger, slightly invisible, the kind of man who makes you feel old when you realise with a shock that he’s probably only in his early thirties.

  ‘Our relationship with Mr Kastopolis has been somewhat fractious in the past,’ he explained, placing himself between the detectives and the waiting area outside, for he was none too pleased about having the law visit council offices. ‘He’s quite a larger-than-life c
haracter, as I’m sure you’ve discovered.’

  ‘We’re more concerned that he may—’ Be a murderer, Bryant was about to say, but May kicked him under the table. As this was also made of glass, everyone saw him do it.

  ‘—have done more than just bent a few planning bylaws this time,’ concluded May more diplomatically. ‘Perhaps it would be better to discuss this in your office.’

  Anderson was clearly upset by the idea, but was hardly in a position to argue. The trio rose to the third floor and settled themselves in plusher, more traditional surroundings. Bryant had to be surreptitiously cautioned against rummaging about on Anderson’s desk. The meeting did not go well. The planning officer was prepared to admit that the bureau suspected Kastopolis of flouting property regulations, but was unwilling to divulge any personal doubts.

  ‘What about outside of work?’ Bryant asked. ‘Do you see each other socially?’

  ‘Good Lord, no.’ Anderson seemed genuinely horrified by the idea. ‘We’re expressly forbidden from seeing clients outside of the building. There’s a sensitivity about undue influence, you understand. And after the MPs’ expenses scandal, it’s more than our lives are worth. Can you give me more of an idea why he’s of particular interest to you at the moment?’

  ‘No,’ said Bryant offhandedly, trying to read the liaison officer’s paperwork upside down.

  ‘The seriousness of the matter at hand means we must limit information until there’s a case to be made,’ said May, ‘if indeed there is one to be made. But we appreciate the help you’ve been able to give us.’

  ‘You’re such a pussy,’ said Bryant as they left the building. ‘“We must limit information until there’s a case to be made.” You don’t get anything out of people if you don’t frighten the life out of them. Typical council man, wet as a whale’s willy, reeking with the stench of appeasement, utterly incapable of confrontation. Kastopolis runs roughshod over the lot of them and they do nothing.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ said May. ‘He’s spent the last thirty years finding ways to balance along the edges of the law. Men like that eventually make mistakes.’