by Rhys Bowen
"We're the Major Crimes Unit from headquarters. Where is he?"
"In there with the forensic team. Shall I tell him you're here?"
Bragg's ears had turned distinctly red. "What you can do is get out of the bloody way," he said. "Come on, men. Let's get in there. I knew this was going to happen."
He pushed up his sleeves as if he anticipated a real fist fight and stomped down the alley. One by one Evan and the others ducked under the crime scene tape and headed for the back door of the pizza parlor. The door was ajar and in the wall beyond it a good-sized window opened onto the alleyway. An arm was hanging out over the sill.
"At least they haven't moved him yet," Bragg said, and stalked inside.
The back door led to a narrow hallway with stairs going up. On one side an open door led into the restaurant kitchen. One wall was taken up with a pizza oven and a stove top. A stainless steel table ran along the front of the kitchen. The wall above it was open with a glimpse of vinyl-topped tables and chrome chairs beyond. Pots and pans were neatly stacked on shelves. On one of the shelves there was also a small TV set. Nothing out of order in the spotlessly clean room except for the corpse, who was sprawled across a stainless steel food cart in the window, eerily similar to Martin Rogers. Except that this person was nothing like Martin Rogers to look at. He was big, overweight, olive skinned, and balding. Lying there in his grubby white T shirt and white apron, he looked like a beached whale. His head was turned away from them, toward the open window, but one puddle of blood had soaked the T-shirt, while a second had collected on the floor.
There were five other people in the room, three men and one woman, in white coats, who were busily engaged with fluoroscopes, tweezers, and plastic bags, and one man in a raincoat. They looked up as Bragg barged in.
"What's this then, some kind of delegation?" The man in the raincoat came toward them. He was middle aged, with a receding hairline and the beginnings of a paunch.
"Are you Mostyn?" Bragg asked.
"Yes, and who the hell are you?"
"Bragg. Major Crimes Unit from HQ. Obviously they didn't tell you we were coming."
"Obviously they didn't." Mostyn eyed him belligerently.
"Well, no matter. We're here now, and we'll be taking over."
"Is that a fact?" Mostyn asked.
"Weren't you at the meeting the other day? They've established a Major Crimes Division to be deployed in cases like this."
"Yes, so I heard," Mostyn said. "I couldn't make the meeting personally. We had a nasty case of an old woman being beaten up and her handbag stolen. I thought that took precedence over listening to some windbag."
"Well, we've been deployed, and we're here." Bragg said bluntly. For a second the two men faced each other like two dogs, fur bristling. Then Mostyn said, "You'd better get on with it then."
"So let's hear how far you've got," Bragg said. "The call came in when?"
"Three o'clock this morning. The wife noticed that her husband hadn't come to bed. She got up and found him lying here, dead."
"Three o'clock this morning, and we've only just been notified?"
Mostyn shrugged. "Nothing to do with me, boyo. I wasn't told to notify anybody. And I'm not obliged to call for backup unless I need it. They called me, and I got here just after four. Then the doctor came and certified time and cause of death."
"And the time of death was?" Bragg asked. His manner was only just shy of insolent.
"Before midnight."
"Midnight, eh?" Bragg glanced back at Wingate, Evans, and Pritchard, who were standing in the doorway. "Someone must have heard a shot around midnight. Have you ascertained who heard it?"
"It was shots actually." The forensic tech looked up from where he was crouched on the floor. "Three shots fired. One missed altogether and stuck in the wall over there. The victim took one to the chest and one to the forehead."
"So the shooter wasn't quite as tidy as the last one," Bragg said.
"Last one?" Mostyn looked around at the other men.
"This is the second time in three days that a man has been shot dead at an open window, using what seems to be the same weapon."
"Probably was the same weapon, sir." One of the techs looked up from the floor. "The bullets are identical anyway."
"Holy shit," Mostyn commented. "Nobody told me that. Who was the other one?"
"A professor at Bangor University. Big house in Bangor."
"That's odd." Mostyn scratched his head. "What can he have to do with this man?"
"I don't know. What can you tell us about Alessi?"
"Nothing much. This place has been operating since I came on the force here, and that was fifteen yeas ago. Of course, this isn't the best of neighborhoods. We get break-ins, kids selling dope, slashed tires. The kind of things you find in any urban neighborhood with a high unemployment rate. And Mr. Alessi was known to us-the occasional drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace. Let's just say he was a loud and belligerent drunk, but no real harm in him."
"So no Mafia connections, that kind of thing?"
"I suppose he might have been paying protection money. I know some shops around here have got themselves involved in that kind of thing."
"And he might have got behind with his payments?" Bragg suggested.
"Possible."
"Anybody I should go to talk to about that?"
"Try the local Catholic church," Mostyn said dryly. "They all go to confession, don't they?"
"So there's not a real underworld boss on your turf that you'd know about?"
Mostyn's look was scornful. "This is Llandudno, mate. Nice little seaside resort. We've got our petty crime, the same as anybody, but as for suggesting that the Cosa Nostra is alive and flourishing up here, then that's just bloody nonsense."
"All right. Keep your hair on," Bragg said. "You know as well as I do that sometimes these petty criminals start getting ideas above their station. One of them sees himself as a kingpin, gets a few blokes into a gang, and you've got a full-blown protection racket going."
"Yeah, true enough." Mostyn nodded. "I've seen it. But I think we'd have heard if anything organized was going on around here. In my experience it's only been the ethnic restaurants, Chinese, Vietnamese, targeted by their own people."
"Have you asked the widow?"
"Frankly I couldn't get much out of her. She'd taken a sleeping pill, see. And she was still groggy when we questioned her. Maybe she's woken up by now."
"Right." Bragg rubbed his hands together. "Let's get started, boys." He turned back to the others, still waiting in the doorway. "Mostyn, thanks for your spade work. We'll keep you posted. And you can do something for me."
"Oh yes?"
"You know the criminal element that operates around here. Have a word and see whether Alessi was paying protection money to anyone."
"All right." Mostyn gave a grudging nod. "I can do that, I suppose." He looked around the room at the technicians. "Thanks for your help, boys." And then he pushed past Evans and Pritchard without waiting for them to step aside.
"There go some toes seriously stepped upon," one of the techs muttered.
"What else am I supposed to do?" Bragg asked. "We've been appointed by the Chief Constable and sent out on this case. If he'd been at the meeting, he'd have bloody well known that."
"Oh, I think he knew it all right," Wingate said. "He just wasn't willing to hand over his turf. I expect you'd have felt the same, sir."
"I probably would have." Bragg agreed. "Right. Let's get to work, boys. We're wasting valuable time. The widow first, I think. Come on then."
He led the way out of the kitchen.
Chapter 15
"You want all four of us to be there when you talk to the widow?" Wingate asked, giving Evan a significant glance. Evan suspected that he was used to more autonomy too and was chafing at the bit having to follow Bragg around all day.
"Have you got something better to do, Wingate?" Bragg asked. "Got an appointment to have your nail
s manicured?"
Evan thought that Wingate remained remarkably calm, considering. "It's just that four of us can't find out anymore than one of us can, and time is of the essence."
"And you'd be doing what?"
"There's a crowd outside. They won't hang around all day. I thought someone should question them to see if anyone noticed anything last night or to find out what the neighborhood buzz is about Alessi. These rumors often have a lot of truth in them, you know."
For a while Bragg studied Jeremy Wingate's elegant profile, then he said, "All right then. Get on with it. I want Evans with me when I talk to the widow. You can take Pritchard."
"Thank you, sir," Wingate said. "Come on, Jim. Let's get cracking."
Evan watched as they stepped back out into the sunlight, then he followed Bragg up the stairs. He was glad that Wingate had voiced his own frustration. Bragg turned back to him. "What he doesn't seem to understand is that it's good to have more than one person in the room. While I'm talking you can notice things-what the room looks like, how she reacts to questions. I've always found it's very useful to have extra men hanging round, apparently doing nothing."
So now Bragg was trying to make him into an ally-two against two. Evan stomped behind him up the stairs.
The door at the top of the stairs was not locked and led to a small, square hallway. Ahead of them was a living room. Evan poked his head in and looked around. Shabby, old fashioned. Carpet that had seen better days. A hand-crocheted afghan thrown across the back of the sofa. A lurid print of an Italian street scene on the wall. A new big-screen TV in one corner. There had been a TV set in the kitchen, too. It was clear where Luigi's priorities lay.
"In here, Evans," Bragg barked a summons. Evan followed him into the adjoining room, which was a front bedroom. The curtains were closed. Only a fringed pink lamp beside the bed was on, illuminating the figure in the bed, but plunging the rest of the room into deep shadow. A woman was lying propped up on pillows, wearing a purple satin robe. She was rounded but not fat, with bleached blonde hair, already showing traces of dark at the roots. She must have been quite a looker in her younger days, Evan thought, but now she'd started to sag. And there were plenty of worry lines too.
"Mrs. Alessi?" Bragg said softly. "May we come in?"
"Oh yes. Of course." She pulled up the covers instinctively as they came in.
"Sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Alessi," Bragg said. "We're police officers from the Major Crimes Unit. I'm Detective Inspector Bragg and this is Detective Constable Evans. We'd like to ask you a few questions if you're up to it."
"Yes, I think I'm all right now," she said. It was hard to pinpoint her by her accent. "I was so zonked out earlier. I've no idea what I said to that other officer. Then I went right back to sleep. Can you believe it? Those bloody pills do that to me."
"How often do you take them?" Bragg asked. He looked around for a chair and found none. "Evans, be a good lad and bring me something to sit on."
"Yes, sir." Evan went through to the unit's tiny kitchen and brought back a lime green plastic-and-chrome kitchen chair. Bragg pulled it up close to the bed and sat.
"There, that's more comfy. Now you were saying about your sleeping pills."
"I've been taking them every night recently. The doctor prescribed them because I was having such trouble sleeping. I haven't been well lately."
"Really, what's been wrong?"
"My nerves," she said. "Luigi said it was the change. I'm getting to that age, you know. He may be right. Doctors don't really have time for you these days, do they? They just hand out prescriptions and want you out of there."
"So he prescribed sleeping pills, did he? How long ago?"
"I've been taking them for about a month," she said.
"And they knock you out until eleven in the morning? That can't be good for you."
"Well, you see I don't take it until I have a cup of cocoa around nine. Then I fall asleep around eleven and usually I wake about nine the next morning. Luigi doesn't like to wake up too early, seeing as he's never done cleaning up downstairs until at least midnight, and then he has to watch some telly to wind down."
"So tell me about last night," Bragg said.
"I took my pill as usual around nine," she said. "I fell asleep soon afterward because there was nothing worth watching on the telly. Then I woke up to go to the loo. I often have to go in the middle of the night. When I got back from the bathroom, I looked at the clock and it was almost three, and Luigi wasn't in bed. He falls asleep watching TV in the living room sometimes, so I went in but he wasn't there. So I went downstairs and the light was off in the kitchen. I switched it on . . . and . . . and he was lying there. I went over to him and saw the blood. Blood all around him. Blood on the floor. My head was still so groggy that I couldn't think straight, but I did manage to call the police."
"What did you think when you saw him lying there with all that blood?" Bragg asked.
"What did I think?" her voice rose dangerously. "That he was dead, of course."
"Did you think he might have killed himself?"
She looked incredulous and then laughed. "Luigi? Kill himself? That man had the biggest ego in Wales. He'd never kill himself. Kill somebody else, yes. He could do that all right."
"He had a violent temper then?" Bragg asked.
"When he'd been drinking."
"Did he ever hit you?"
She paused for a moment. "Yes, once or twice. But that was a long time ago. He's been off the booze lately and much better."
"So he hadn't quarreled with anybody recently? Can you think of anyone who might have had a score to settle with him?"
"Not that I know of," she said. "Most people liked my Luigi. He was a friendly sort. He'd go over to the pub and have a few laughs. It was only when he'd drunk too much and somebody got him riled up that he'd take a swing at them. But they were probably as drunk as he was, and they'd swing right back. That's nothing like shooting someone to death, is it?"
"No, it's not. Your husband wasn't in any sort of trouble, was he, Mrs. Alessi? He was Italian, after all. The word Mafia always springs to mind when you think of Italians."
Evan shot a glance at Bragg. It was just the kind of stupid remark he had come to expect from his new boss. Mrs. Alessi obviously agreed with him because she laughed.
"Mafia? That's the kind of thing you see on the telly, not in real life."
"So you don't know whether he might have been paying protection money on his business?"
"Protection money?" She laughed again. "What's there to protect? This dump? To tell you the truth, we'd both have been glad if somebody burned it down. Then we could have collected the insurance and got out of here. Luigi was talking about retiring. The long hours were getting to both of us. He hardly ever took a day off."
"Did you work in the café too?"
"Not normally. When someone called in sick, I helped out."
"So are you employed somewhere else, Mrs. Alessi?"
"Not recently. I used to be a bookkeeper, years ago, but my health hasn't been too good for some time and it got-difficult."
"Right, let's go back to the beginning," Bragg said. "Are you getting this down, Evans?"
Evan whipped out a notebook. "Right."
"You were born where?"
"Not too far from here. In Rhyl actually."
"You're Welsh then?" Evan asked. Bragg turned to look at him.
"Oh yes. But I don't speak the language. Neither do my parents. The family originally came from around Birmingham, back in the days of the slate mines."
"How did you meet Luigi?" Bragg asked.
"I met him at a dance at the Rhyl pavilion. He'd just come here then, and he didn't speak much English, but he was very good looking and all the girls were fighting over him. I wasn't a bad looker myself. We made a good couple."
"What was he doing in those days?"
"He was working in a hotel, but he had plans to open his own place. Big ideas in those days, of course
. A fancy Italian restaurant, white tablecloths, the lot. Always did have big ideas, my husband."
"So what happened to the big ideas?"
"What always happens," she said bitterly. "I got pregnant. We had to get married in a hurry. My folks gave us some money as a wedding present, and we took over this place. Been here ever since."
"You have children then?"
"One child. A daughter. Paulina. She's eighteen now."
"Away at college?"
"She moved out when she was sixteen," Mrs. Alessi said. "She and Luigi didn't get along. She couldn't take his drinking. She went to live with her aunt in Manchester."
"Do you see her often?"
"Not really. We don't get along either. She blames me as much as Luigi for not stopping him."
"Stopping him what?" Bragg asked sharply.
"Drinking."
"So did he ever-attack her?" Bragg asked.
"Of course he didn't. He idolizes that girl. It broke his heart when she moved away."
"We'll need an address to contact her."
"I already gave it to the policeman who was here earlier. She'd want to know about her dad."
"If you can give it to my constable again, it will save time," Bragg said. "And we'll want the names and addresses of your employees here."
"If you wait a few minutes, they'll be arriving for work," she said. "They won't have heard the news yet."
"Right. Evans, go down and warn the constable on guard that any employees are to be sent straight up to me."
Evan went down the stairs and stood outside for a moment, looking at the kitchen window with that arm still hanging out of it. It would have been easy enough to stand in the alley without being seen, get a good angle at the window, watch Luigi moving around inside, and then call him over. And the moment he looked out to see who was calling him-bam. Only this time it was bam, bam, bam. Not such a good shot on this occasion.
Evan made his way around to the front of the building. He had just finished delivering his message to the constable standing duty when Wingate emerged from the hairdresser's shop.
"He's let you out alone, not on a leash?" Wingate said.
"Only to pass on a message to the officer standing guard. Then I've got to go back and stand to attention with my little notepad."