by C. A. Larmer
“Typical,” was her response.
“Did you hear their names? Maybe one of them called the other something? Did you notice any significant logos, that kind of thing?”
Again she shrugged. “Sorry, apart from the sleaze on steroids, they didn’t really stand out. Like I said, could be anybody in this dump of a place.”
“That’s the thing,” said Jackson. “They did stand out at the film night, and they did look out of place, which has got us wondering why they were even there. Wouldn’t have been their style. Sounds like they would have been better suited to the dog track.”
Alicia had a thought. “You said something before, called the movie ‘a flick for old farts.’”
“So?”
“So how did you know about it?”
Casey went to shrug, and then it hit her. “Danielle! Oh I should’ve thought of her.” She glanced around the bar again. “Bummer, she’s not here. But Danni’s your girl. She was in that night, talking about going. I said it sounded like a snore, she said something about her mum loving that shit, got her into it. That’s right, and then those slimeballs said something.”
“What?”
“I can’t remember, but the thing is, they seemed to know her. I’m sure of it, because they weren’t that sleazy with her. It’s like they were old mates or something. You know you just get that vibe? Anyway, they were talking for ages. She might know more.”
Jackson looked relieved. “Great stuff, Casey. Can you give us Danni’s surname so I can try to locate her?”
“I can go you one better.” She reached for her mobile phone. “I can tell you where she is right this second.”
Chapter 20
“Don’t you just love modern technology?” Jackson was saying as they pulled up outside an all-night pharmacy in the downmarket suburb of Redfern.
Alicia was not convinced. “Big Brother more like. I can’t believe people sign up to that app. It tells the whole world—and their stalker—where they are every minute of the day. Creeps me out.”
“But it makes my job so much easier.” He grinned as they got out, taking a moment to survey the scene. “Casey reckons she must work here, said she knew she worked somewhere in Redfern.”
“Maybe she’s buying some bleach to wash away the memory of those slimeballs.”
Jackson chuckled as he led the way inside.
They found Danielle Ligaro stocking shelves at the side of the shop, a white uniform on and a box of multivitamins in front of her.
“Can I help you?” she asked as they wandered up.
“Hopefully.” Jackson presented his badge.
The twentysomething barely bat an eyelid as he explained what he was after, and she didn’t hesitate when he mentioned two sleazy guys in caps that she’d been spotted conversing with at the Jolly Codger the previous Saturday.
“Oh yeah, Scotty and Davo,” she said, placing some vitamins on a shelf. “What about them?”
Jackson played it cool, but Alicia couldn’t help beaming. They were inching closer to identifying two potential killers! She loved being on the beat with Jackson, couldn’t believe he was letting her tag along, and she was soaking it all up. Missy was right. Professional detectives had it so much easier than amateurs. Jackson could just flash his credentials, and people had to answer his questions whether they liked it or not. It was a much swifter process than the Miss Marple meddling caper she and the book club had been running for some time—not to mention a damn site more rewarding than writing for the internet.
Maybe Jackson was also right. Maybe she really was in the wrong profession.
“Any chance you know their surnames or where they live?” he was asking.
Danielle shook her head. “I only know them because they used to hang with my ex, over at the Horse and Spanner, near Central Station.”
“Still go there, you think?”
“Dunno but my ex does, that’s why I’ve started hanging at Casey’s place.”
“Anything else you can tell us about them?”
“I know they come across as flirty, but they’re pretty harmless. Both got partners; one even has a kid and another one on the way.”
That never stopped anyone from committing a crime, Jackson wanted to tell her but kept that to himself.
She continued, “Jeez, they’re nicer than some of the blokes that hang out with my ex. Good riddance.”
“Not a good sort?” Alicia asked.
“Good with his fists,” was her reply.
After they left Danielle to her shelf stacking, Jackson called it a night.
“But aren’t we going to head to the Horse and Wrench or whatever it was she said?”
He smiled as he shook his head. “I am, you’re not.”
And to her pouting lips he added, “I’ve overstepped enough as it is. Indira won’t be happy. But if those guys are our suspects, I’m not having you anywhere near them. Could get rough.”
“I can do rough.”
He just stared at her as if to say, Yeah right.
“Well, if it does get rough, you can’t go in there alone.”
He was already tapping a number into his phone. “I’m not.” He held a hand to stall her as he said, “Yep, found ’em… Nope, pub at Central… Yep… Grab Pauly while I text you the address.”
********
So much for letting her tag along, thought Alicia sulkily as she waved Jackson goodbye at her front door and let herself in.
It was now 9.20pm and Lynette was curled on the sofa watching a movie, Max in a matching curl on the rug below. The film looked familiar, but something was off.
“Evil Under The Sun, the David Suchet made-for-television version,” she explained, putting the episode on pause as Alicia dropped her bag to the floor and slipped off her sneakers.
“I was just keen to see what differences there are from the one we saw the other night. It’s not too far in. Want me to start from the top?”
“Nah, I’ll catch up.” She fell into an armchair. “It’s not like I don’t know the plot.”
“Yes, but this one has lots of variations again.”
She flung the DVD case towards Alicia, who caught it clumsily with both hands.
“The script writers all have to meddle, don’t they? In this one, the Linda character is a slightly older boy called Lionel. Why make him a boy? I’m confused.”
Alicia thought about it. Good point. “And where have they set this one? The last one was some ridiculous-sounding place.”
“Oh this one’s in Devon, which is partly why I wanted to see it. At least they kept to Christie’s setting. I’ve been googling it. It’s filmed at the Burgh Island Hotel, which was, apparently, the original place that first inspired the novel, so that’s something. But everything else is so different. Watch.”
She clicked the remote control, and the movie resumed, suddenly revealing the face of Poirot’s loyal sidekick, Captain Hastings.
“Hey, what’s he doing on the island?” Alicia declared, and Lynette laughed.
“I know! And guess who shows up later to investigate? Inspector Japp! He’s not in the original story either.”
Alicia frowned. She adored David Suchet as Poirot, but she wasn’t sure she was up for more meddling with Christie’s plot tonight. Sensing her reticence, Lynette pressed pause again.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just tired.”
“How’d it go with Jackson?”
She gave her sister the abridged version, causing Lynette to quickly lose interest in the movie.
“So Jackson might have Kat’s killers behind bars tonight?”
“Maybe.”
“So why the long face?”
Alicia didn’t know. She had a vague feeling of regret and was trying to shake it off. She should be rejoicing. The whole thing could be done and dusted by morning. And yet she was feeling a little, well, melancholy.
She gave herself a mental shake.
Was she really so desperate for mystery
and excitement in her life that she’d rather the killer was still out there for her to uncover? Was she really that pathetic?
She grabbed her shoes and stood up.
“I’m all right. Enjoy the rest of the film. I wonder if you’ll work out who the culprit is.”
They exchanged smirks as she made her way up to bed.
What Alicia didn’t know as she slipped into her cotton pyjamas and then settled in with her book, was that the case was far from over. Like the movie Lynette was watching, it had just been placed on pause for a bit.
Chapter 21
Liam Jackson looked through the one-way mirror with a growing sense of exasperation. It was now late Thursday night, and he was sure the man at the interrogation desk was lying through his yellow-tinged teeth, but he had no evidence and no cause to hold him any longer. At least that’s what his lawyer would have said if he or his mate had demanded one, which, fortunately for the detectives, they hadn’t.
Indira was not so convinced.
“I don’t think they did it,” she said, stifling a yawn.
She and Jackson had spent the past two hours going between the two interrogation rooms, first questioning Scott Jalezic and then his buddy David Crow. Both had healthy rap sheets, mostly involving burglary, stolen cars and police chases, although Scott had done time for king-hitting a mate into a coma at a pub a few years back.
With friends like that, thought Jackson, irritably.
Yet despite their seedy reputation, there was no record of any sexual harassment or assault or murder for that matter, and the detectives were now no closer to a confession.
“I mean, if being a slimeball was a crime, sure, it’d be open and shut. But just because these bozos ‘like to watch,’ so to speak, does not mean they acted on it, and there’s no evidence they ever have.”
“There’s always a first time,” Jackson said, turning from the mirror. “I’m just not buying it. They expect us to believe that, during the first half of the film, they couldn’t keep their eyes off Kat Mumford, and suddenly when it matters, they didn’t see a thing. How does that work?”
“Maybe they got hooked on the story. I heard it’s a good one.”
He stared at her deadpan.
She smiled. “I don’t know, Jacko, but they did say things got quiet. She slipped under the blanket and fell asleep remember? So they lost interest. Look, they’re very happy to admit they were perving on the couple earlier, which lends them a degree of credibility if you ask me. If they had denied watching the Mumfords and insisted they had watched the film diligently from the start, then I’d be doubting them.”
Jackson considered this, and she had a point. The two perverts were almost boasting of the sideshow the Mumfords were putting on.
“More fun than the boring crap up on the screen,” one of them had said.
“We weren’t expecting porn that night,” the other had sniggered, making Jackson want to thump him. “But they cooled it in the second half. Pity that.”
“That’s because the husband moved away,” Jackson had reminded each of them, and they both seemed genuinely surprised to hear this. Like they hadn’t noticed.
“So why’d you leave the park early?” Indira had asked, and again they both seemed unfazed by the question.
“Like I said, boring as batshit. Just all these stuck-up snobs poncing about,” said Scott.
“Didn’t want to get stuck behind all the old geezers shuffling out,” was Davo’s reply.
“And where did you go in such a hurry?”
“To the Horse and Spanner. Ask anyone.”
They didn’t need to. Detective Jarrod had just confirmed the fact, having rushed through CCTV footage. They had been caught on camera, strolling through the front doors of the Horse and Spanner at exactly 10.29pm, looking perfectly relaxed.
“Doesn’t mean they didn’t do it before they left,” said Jackson. “She was killed sometime between 9.35 and 10.35, remember?”
Indira wasn’t buying it. “Their fingerprints don’t match the one on the champagne flute. Neither of them is carrying a late-model iPhone, which might have provided motive. We’ve got nothing. No evidence, nada. I think we have to let them loose on the world again.”
“Bloody hell, lock up your daughters then.”
And so the two men were released without charge and the case had stalled all over again.
“Just ’cause we haven’t got any evidence doesn’t mean they didn’t do it,” Jackson said, sulkily, and Indira had to agree.
“But it does mean we can’t hold them. And it also means we need to keep an open mind. I don’t want to focus on those two and forget that plenty of other people had access and opportunity.”
He couldn’t disagree with that.
“So what’d our unhappy camper have to say?”
She looked at him, puzzled for a moment, and then said, “Oh, Guy Peters. He was a font of knowledge, that one.”
It turns out the security officer did recall an older man with a moustache who loitered by the side gate a few times with the other smokers.
“But he didn’t seem real interested in the plot,” Guy had told her earlier that evening. “So we chewed the fat for a bit.”
“What’d you talk about?” she had asked.
“This and that,” Guy replied, rubbing his now sunburnt nose. “Let me think.”
“He remembered a couple of very interesting things as it turns out,” Indira told Jackson now. “Was under the impression the man was waiting for someone, might have got stood up. Reckons he checked his phone a lot and seemed increasingly agitated as the night progressed. Said something about, ‘That’s the last time I trust women’ or something like that.”
Jackson sat up in his chair. “Say again?”
She laughed. “I know what you’re thinking: Was he referring to the victim?”
“Well, was he? You’ve got to wonder. Was he angry with women in general or one woman in particular? And if it was one woman, maybe that woman was Kat Mumford. I mean, run with me here. I’m going to throw some wild theories about.”
She winced but waved him on. She liked wild theories about as much as she liked wild hair, and the tight plait down her back demonstrated exactly what she thought of that.
“Okay, so what if this moustached man—let’s call him ‘Mo Man’—was Kat’s lover or something? Maybe he was furious to find her kissing her husband at the park. Maybe he thought they were separated or something.”
“That’s a lot of ‘maybes,’” Indira said. “Besides, wouldn’t Kat have noticed him? He was about six feet away.”
“She was blind drunk remember? And she arrived late, might not have seen him loitering behind the pregnant woman in the dark.” He began madly clicking his fingers. “Oh no! I’ve got a better one! What if he was Kat’s sponsor? From AA?”
He did a final click in front of her face, looking pretty proud of his hypothesis.
Indira was a lot less impressed. “Okay, so this ‘sponsor’ just happens to be at the film that night and just happens to be seated two blankets away. He notices Kat shit-faced and decides to strangle her? Why would he do that?”
“Maybe he was angry at her for falling off the wagon.”
She laughed and looked at her watch. “Okay, I think we need to call it a night. Get some sleep, reboot our brains.”
“What’s wrong with that idea?”
“Jacko, you’re saying Kat’s sponsor killed her because he was angry that she wasn’t looking after her health. Can you even hear how ridiculous that sounds?”
His shoulders slumped. She was right.
“Come on,” she said, gathering her things. “Whoever Mo Man was bitching about, we do still need to find him, and it will help if we’re fully rested.”
As they switched off lights and made their way out, Indira said, “Eliot Mumford’s right, you know. It is a problematic crime scene. A public park for goodness’ sake! And at night! Loads of strangers, all with a right to be there, no
one with any need to explain who they are or where they are from. So bloody frustrating! Agatha Christie had it so easy. She only ever had a handful of suspects, and they always had full names, addresses and a backstory to dig around in.”
Jackson agreed. “So how do we find this bloke?”
“No idea,” she said, stabbing at the elevator button.
Oh yes. They were firmly—infuriatingly—back at square one.
Chapter 22
Azaria Joves was staring at the floral square, one hand on her hip. Something was not quite right, and it had nothing to do with the quilt she was making. She glanced at the card her husband had just placed on the table in front of her.
What did the police want?
What had they discovered?
And why did Jacob tell her to be “very careful” when he slapped the card down?
She placed the quilt on top of the card and tried to ignore it for the first ten minutes, but eventually, begrudgingly, she gave up. She plucked it from beneath the material, took a deep breath and called the number for Detective Inspector Liam Jackson.
A woman’s voice answered, causing her to flinch. She glanced at the card again.
“Oh sorry, I… I was looking for, um, Detective Jackson,” Azaria said.
“Oh sure, he’s…” Alicia was about to say, “Just in the shower” but quickly said, “occupied, can I get him to—?”
The phone went dead.
Alicia dropped it onto her bed like it was ablaze. She couldn’t believe she had just answered Jackson’s mobile phone. Why had she done that?
In this day and age, what kind of person answers someone else’s mobile phone? Especially when that ‘someone else’ happens to be a police officer and a boyfriend!
That was something desperate wives did in bad Hollywood flicks, expecting the husky voice of a mistress on the other end.
Why didn’t she just let it go to voicemail?
“Why didn’t you just let it go to voicemail?” Jackson echoed her thought aloud, and she swung around to find him standing at her bedroom door with a towel wrapped around his hips, his hair dripping wet.