by Chris Krupa
I took out the knuckledusters and placed them on the table.
His smile quickly faded.
‘Mr. Fripp, I’m an independent agent,’ I said. ‘The less you know about me, the better. I’ve had a bad morning, and I’m short on patience.’
‘What do you want?’
I set the beer down on a coaster and took the seat opposite him. ‘I want you to tell me what you know about the book Broken Trust.’
He cleared his throat and pushed his shoulders back. Suddenly, he appeared bigger than he looked. ‘Before we get into all that, you need to know about the state of play.’
‘Which is what?’
‘I’m taking a huge risk just coming here. This is a scratch my back, scratch your back situation. You’ll have to stump something up.’
His tenacity earned him some points. ‘Okay.’
I indicated the international display of booze. ‘How about I buy you a bottle? Take your pick.’
‘I’m not a bloody alcoholic. What do you take me for?’
‘Okay, then, you’re a materialist.’ I took out my wallet, removed four fifty-dollar notes, and placed them surreptitiously in a pile on the table between us. ‘I’ll scratch first. How about two big ones?’
He took a long pull on his beer, swept up the money, and stuffed it into his crumpled linen jacket pocket. ‘Look, this doesn’t come back to me, okay? And you can’t talk about this to anyone.’
‘You can trust me.’
‘I don’t trust you. I don’t even know you.’
I looked him over properly. He was unremarkable in appearance—male pattern baldness carved its track across a red, sweaty cranium. His cheeks carried acne scars, and his collared shirt appeared yellow at the collars.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ I said.
‘Sorry? That word doesn’t mean anything anymore.’
‘I like to think it does, especially when you mean it.’
He ran a hand over his reddening head. ‘What are we doing here?’
‘I want to know everything about the manuscript. What’s so important about it?’
‘There are some very big allegations in it, that’s what’s so important about it. Ever since we accepted it for publication, someone very powerful became involved. I’m talking about someone who has the means to make sure the past stays dead and buried.’
‘Well, that sort of philosophy goes against my grain, especially when a woman’s missing.’
‘What woman?’
‘The less you know, the better.’
He tossed his beer back and some of it split down the front of his shirt. He swore and tried to wipe it dry with his hand.
‘Fripp, if there’s something you’re not telling me, you need to say it. I could help you.’
He exhaled sharply and slowly replaced his empty glass on the table with a trembling hand. ‘Lyons Media put a court-ordered injunction on us not to publish. Ever since then, I’ve been getting phone calls from an anonymous number reminding me to keep the manuscript under lock and key.’
‘Do you recognise the voice, or any background sounds?’
‘No, he talks in a whisper. It could be anybody. He calls me every Friday at work and tells me what my eight-year-old son is doing at school. He tells me what games my son plays in the playground. He tells me which friends he’s playing with. He tells me when my son uses the bathroom. He said if I call the cops, he’ll take my son and I’ll never see him again.’
I took a pull on the beer and put the knuckledusters away.
He scoffed. ‘You’re not paranoid if they’re really after you. That’s what they say, right? Does anyone know you were seeing me? I’m hanging my arse out in the open seeing you like this.’
‘No, no one knows. Have you read the manuscript? Do you know exactly what the allegations are?’
He surveyed the bar nervously before he spoke. ‘One of the nine interviewees alleges Jeff Lyons sexually abused her for three years when she was a girl.’
‘Who made the allegations?’
‘His daughter.’
I took a long pull on the beer and considered all the connections. If true, it explained a lot. ‘Did the author verify the allegations?’
‘I verified the allegations. One of the sources is an ex-cop with commendations as long as your arm. He provided a copy of the transcript from when she came into the police station. She said her father was touching her up. She said he forced her to perform with one of the neighbour’s kids in amateur porn films. Lyons denied all of it at the time, and in the end, she retracted her statement. My source says there’s an imbedded code in the force to protect certain prominent personalities who make large donations to annual police sponsored events.’
It clarified Lyons’ aversion to me looking into the book, and explained the sudden heart failure. If any of it came out, he faced the potential collapse of his media empire overnight. The book could also be used as leverage against Lyons, or as the catalyst that may have led to Tamsin’s disappearance.
‘That’s all I know,’ he said. He stood up so quickly that he bumped the table and knocked the glasses over. ‘You can’t tell a soul. I can’t let them hurt my son, do you understand? I need to go.’
‘I think I’ll be able to stop whoever’s threatening your son. Can I keep in touch? My name’s Matt.’
‘Please, just leave me alone. You got what you wanted, didn’t you? Please don’t contact me again.’
He made for the stairs, and I followed him up and out onto the street. The sun had reappeared, and the air felt a few degrees warmer. Fripp quickly made his way to the left, down the narrow street.
A motorcycle accelerated from my right and a helmeted figure in red and black leathers rode past pointing a .45 straight at me. Four shots rang out in a rapid-fire pop, pop, pop, pop.
Chapter 20
Muscle memory from my stunt days kicked in, and I collapsed and rolled. The slugs missed, but by the time I found my feet, Fripp’s body lay on the footpath thirty yards away, with a fleshy hole in the back of his head.
Red mist burst before my eyes. I closed them tight and tried to think happy thoughts, and failed.
Back in Sussex, on another case, a portion of Paul Green’s brain had materialised when he put a bullet through his head, and he didn’t die straight away.
I sat on the gutter and experienced the rollercoaster of sensations: cold sweats, anger, and fear. My heart raced, and I needed a drink, desperately. Maybe they were warning shots intended to scare me, or maybe it was time to buy a lottery ticket. I stayed put as police cordoned off the area around the body and set to work.
A nondescript station wagon arrived, and I half expected to see Detective Constable Ivers step out and shoot me a bored, disappointed look. Instead, a short woman with rock-hard hair emerged and worked her way through the bar owner and three other witnesses before approaching me. She introduced herself as Senior Detective Sandra Casumano, and I told her everything I’d seen. I’d missed the registration, make and model, but told her what I knew about Fripp.
I wanted to confront Lyons as soon as I could, and Casumano read it as nervousness.
‘Do you have anything you need to tell me, sir?’ She chewed the end of her pen.
‘It’s just shock,’ I lied. ‘I wasn’t planning on being gunned down in a back alley and having my thirteen-year-old daughter hear about it on the news.’
If someone was willing to hire a hitman and enact a hit in broad daylight, they were either extremely anxious, or desperate, or a mixture of the two.
I’d become complacent in actively looking for tails since Friday, when Gav followed me through the city, and resigned myself to the fact that I may have been the one who led the assassin straight to Fripp. If nothing else, it confirmed his paranoia.
I thought about his poor son.
Casumano made some notes, gave me her card, and said the same thing Ivers had when I found Renee Prestwidge’s body. Two and a half hours had passed before they let m
e leave the scene.
I stopped at an inner-city pub on the way back to my car and downed a shot of scotch. It didn’t stop the feeling of anxiousness, and it came back up within minutes.
With the window wound down, I drove back to St. Vincent’s and ran into Evelyn as she was coming out of Lyons’ ward.
‘Jeff’s critical, but stable,’ she said. Reading my face, she added, ‘They said he needs to avoid stressful situations.’
‘Look, Evelyn, I need to park whatever’s going on between us for today. I need to talk to Jeff.’
‘The doctor said he can’t have any visitors.’
I made my way down the hall and into his room, and Evelyn pushed in ahead of me. In a seat next to the bed sat the man who clubbed me with a blackjack when I’d visited Zara Venable in Clovelly last Saturday. He still wore the American flag bandana.
Lyons appeared small, his eyes dark and tired. He was propped up on pillows and a little out of it.
Mr. Bandana looked at me as if I’d shot his dog in the guts.
I said, ‘Haven’t we met someplace?’
He nodded and raised his eyebrows. ‘People tell me that all the time. Maybe you’re mistaking me for someone famous.’
‘You don’t look like anyone famous. Your eyes are too close together.’
‘You’re a fucking smart arse.’
Evelyn said, ‘Matt.’
‘A man’s been shot dead in the street, and I had four bullets whip past my ears.’
‘What are you talking about?’
I turned to Lyons. ‘If there’s something you know about this fucking book, you’d damn well better tell me, and I mean right now.’
Lyons shifted, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet and raspy. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Do you know about a manuscript called Broken Trust?’
The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘No.’
‘Apparently, there are some very serious allegations in it.’
Lyons blinked slowly and turned his head to the window. ‘I’m not paying you to follow up wild goose chases, Kowalski.’
Evelyn looked at me worriedly. ‘What do you want, Matt?’
‘I want a revolution. George Orwell said it: ‘in a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’ I just want someone to tell me the truth.’
‘How about you get out before I throw you out?’ Mr. Bandana barked.
‘Shut up, Louis,’ Lyons said. He glanced at Evelyn worriedly, then lowered his eyes to the sheets and cleared his throat. ‘I fuck prostitutes.’
Evelyn flared. ‘Jeff!’
Mr. Bandana shifted in his seat.
‘For fuck’s sake, Evie,’ Lyons said. ‘He’s a private investigator. Either he finds out from me, or he finds out from some other prick who has it in for me.’
Evelyn’s chest rose and fell, and Jeff regarded her with tired eyes. ‘This way I tell it how I want it to be told.’
Evelyn moved next to the bed and gently took Lyons’ hand. ‘Let me call Lexie. He can be here within the hour.’
Lyons shook his head weakly. ‘No.’
‘You know how pedantic he is.’
‘No fucking lawyers, Evie.’
Lyons held firm and Evelyn relented. She let go of his hand and rounded the bottom of the bed to take up a single lounge seat by the window, facing away from the three of us.
The goon glanced between me, Lyons, and Evelyn.
Lyons drank a glass of water and wiped his mouth. When he spoke, he didn’t meet my eyes. ‘On my fifteenth birthday, I lost my virginity to a prostitute. My father paid for it. He told me on his death bed he was in love with her, almost married her. My mother never knew. You could say I’ve had a predilection for prostitutes ever since. I’ve never seen it as anything bad or wrong. It was the way I learned how to be with a woman. Zara found out, and it cost me eleven million dollars.’
‘That’s not what I found out today, Mr. Lyons.’
‘It’s not my concern what you found out. You wanted the truth? You got it.’
I ignored the look from Mr. Bandana and crossed my arms. ‘Jeff, I need to trust my clients, at least part of the way. Between you and Evelyn, there’s a gap in the information, and I feel as if I’m not being told something important, something serious enough for Tamsin to walk away from her life, to delete all her social media accounts, to vanish. I need to know what it was.’
I gave him my hardest look, and he absently rubbed the stubble on his cheeks. ‘I told you, I wasn’t there for her when she was growing up. She exaggerated things when she was young. She had a talent for it. She acted out, made up stories. She only ever wanted my attention. The father-daughter relationship is special, unique. She wanted something I couldn’t give her.’
‘Don’t you think that’s why your marriage to Zara broke down?’
‘Have you even spoken to my ex-wife?’
‘I have.’
‘And you haven’t given any consideration to her motives in all this?’
‘I’ve questioned Zara in relation to Tamsin’s disappearance. She seems to check out.’
Lyons scoffed. ‘Evie?’
Evelyn turned her head.
Lyons pointed to the bedside drawers. ‘Be a darl’? Get my wallet from the drawer, will you?’
She hesitated, then stood rigidly and shuffled in front of Mr. Bandana to get to the bedside drawers. She retrieved a thick brown wallet from the top drawer.
Lyons said, ‘Give him three grand.’
She removed a bundle of notes, counted out the right amount, and held the pile out to me.
I took it, reluctantly.
‘How much trust does that buy, Kowalski?’ Lyons said.
About as the same amount of trust between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.
He continued. ‘I appreciate you calling the ambulance, Mr. Kowalski, but I’ll remind you of the agreed terms in the contract. Find my daughter.’
I didn’t buy Lyons’ desperate diversion tactics, and didn’t notice a change in his behaviour at the mention of the allegations. The one thing I did notice was the look of concern Evelyn swapped with Mr. Bandana when I’d entered the room.
Chapter 21
The café in the cancer respite ward offered a good vantage point of the rehabilitation wing twenty yards away. I pretended to read a paper.
After forty minutes, Mr. Bandana and Evelyn emerged from automatic doors. They stopped and talked for a while before Evelyn walked to her car and drove away.
Mr. Bandana crossed the car park and took up a spot under a Japanese maple tree in a small garden outside the cafe. He lit up a smoke and puffed at it anxiously. He stamped it out as I approached him and set his shoulders. ‘Like a dog with a fucken bone, aren’t ya?’
‘Why so chummy with Evelyn?’
‘None of your fucking business.’
‘You told me to stop looking for Tamsin Lyons, and I want to know why.’
He looked at me with a resigned look. ‘Like I said, leave it the fuck alone.’
‘You don’t get it. I’m not going to give up on trying to find her. I’ll keep looking even if Lyons doesn’t pay me.’
‘You have no idea what the hell is goin’ on. Just walk away, Kowalski.’
‘I’m not letting you leave until you tell me what I need to know.’
‘You want me to smack the shit out of you?’
‘How about you try it from the front this time?’
He had a good three inches on me and at least ten pounds of muscle. He charged and threw a quick right-left combination, which I stepped back from easily. I put my fists up and held my elbows in tight, in case the wilder swings went astray, and he came at me again with a straight hook, which I evaded. He grunted and threw another quick right-left combination, all of which slipped past my nose. I’d compensated for his reach and kept away, and now he dropped his arms and started breathing heavy. I feinted a punch and he flinched.
‘We don’t have to do this,’ I s
aid. ‘You can just tell me what you know.’
He bounced slowly on the balls of his feet, then took up an intimidating brawler stance, at which I made a mental note to stay on my feet. He came at me fast with a straight cross, and I went with it and took most of it on the forehead, which lessened the impact a little.
He sucker-punched me in the stomach, and I buckled and quickly stumbled away, slightly winded. The shaded grass under an evergreen helped me shake off the effects. He came up behind me, and I turned to make sure I kept out of his reach. He threw a right hook too early and missed me by a mile. He was breathing heavier now, and the punches came slower.
‘You’ll be out of steam soon,’ I said. ‘Just sit down and we can talk about it.’
‘Fuck off!’ He swung his left arm in a wide arc.
He over-balanced and his head fell forward. I slapped his left ear with an open palm as hard as I could, causing him to roar and clutch his head. As he stood hunched and dazed, I kicked him as hard as I could in the balls. He grimaced and fell on his side in the fetal position, hands between his legs.
I fell on him quickly and wedged one knee into the side of his neck, the other across his mid-section to lock him in place. ‘You going to tell me now?’
He made a gurgling noise, so I eased the knee off his neck a fraction.
‘Right pocket,’ he said through clenched teeth.
I felt around and pulled out a tiny Nokia flip phone. ‘You got yourself a burner?’
‘I get a call every Friday night from someone. I don’t know who it is. They disguise their voice with an app or something. They tell me to call Lyons, and tell him that if he doesn’t want the book published, to transfer the money.’
‘How much?’
‘Twenty grand.’
‘How long has this been going on for?’
‘Four weeks.’
‘Who hired you?’
‘I don’t know him, just some bloke who says he works for Lyons. He didn’t tell me his name.’
‘You’re blackmailing Lyons?’
‘Not me, fuck! I get three grand to do my bit. He keeps the rest. It’s a business arrangement. I’m just the fucking messenger. I don’t even see the cunt.’