Be Careful What You Wish For (8 page)

‘Interesting.’ Romeo looked off into the distance. ‘Yes, I remember now. The First National Bank robbery. But that was about ten years ago, wasn’t it? Do you think Lee’s still up to his old tricks?’

‘Anything’s possible when you’re dealing with lowlife scumbags.’ I shrugged.

‘I’ll see if Lee has an alibi for the time of the robbery. I’ve already checked any offenders we have in the system who’ve used a similar MO as the safety box robbery before, but so far I’ve come up with zilch.’ He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Why do you think Carl turned up at Levi’s fight, and what was he shouting?’

‘I don’t know yet. I’m still working on that. But I’ve got the name of one of the people who put on large bets. Guess who it is?’

Romeo shrugged. ‘Carl Thomas?’

I grinned. ‘Close. It was Edward Kinghorn – joint owner of Kinghorn Thomas Bank with Carl Thomas.’

Romeo stared out the window, letting this sink in. ‘So you think that Vinnie has been feeding Carl or Edward insider tip-off information about sporting events so they can place big bets on it?’ He turned back to me.

I nodded. ‘That’s how it looks. The question is, are they using their own money or are they using the bank’s money without their clients knowing?’

‘Good point.’

‘Now we know there’s obviously some sort of connection between Carl, Edward, and Vinnie with these bets, but when Carl turned up at the fight he was shouting directly at Levi. Levi knew what he was saying, although he lied to me and told me he didn’t. Vinnie, who was sitting close to Carl at the time, heard what he was saying and he looked pretty worried, too.’ I nibbled another chocolate chip.

‘So what was Carl shouting at Levi?’

‘Hacker managed to work out the first part, but he’s still working on the rest of it. Carl said, “I know what you…”.’

Romeo pursed his lips. ‘“I know what you…”?’

‘That’s all we’ve got to work with so far.’

‘Not a lot to go on. It could mean anything.’ Romeo sat back and rested his arm along the back of the booth, tapping it absent-mindedly.

‘It could, but I think it means Carl knew something about Levi that both Levi and Vinnie didn’t want him to know.’

‘Well that would make sense seeing as Carl is now dead.’

I stared into my empty cup, wishing it was a crystal ball, wondering what it was that Carl knew. ‘Maybe it has to do with this contract that Levi signed with Vinnie. Terry said that Levi signed it when he was young and hungry to be heavyweight champion of the world. He thinks Levi was easily manipulated into signing it. I mean, it makes sense. If you’re just starting out as a professional fighter, you would be more willing to take an unfavourable deal that perhaps wasn’t really in your best interests, wouldn’t you? You hear about it a lot with sportsmen and artists who later go on to sue their managers.’ I paused. ‘But what if there was some other reason for signing it?’

‘OK, I’ll go with that scenario.’ Romeo nodded. ‘Let’s say Levi signed a bad contract because Vinnie was threatening him. Vinnie’s not exactly known for his softly-softly approach in getting what he wants. If someone stands in the way of what he wants, he’ll either get rid of them or threaten to get rid of them. Maybe Carl found out Vinnie had threatened Levi or his family if he didn’t sign this contract and he wanted to confront Levi about it?’

‘But that doesn’t make sense. If Vinnie threatened Levi into signing it, why didn’t Carl confront Vinnie? Because Levi would be the innocent party in it all,’ I said. ‘No, I’m thinking that Vinnie blackmailed Levi into signing it. And whatever he was blackmailing him about, Carl found out about it and tried to confront Levi at the fight.’ I thought back to what Hacker told me Carl had said. ‘Carl shouted “I know what you…”. That fits, doesn’t it?’

‘Why do it at the fight, though? Why couldn’t it wait?’

I stared out the window, people-watching and trying to get my head around this. ‘I don’t know. Whatever it was Carl discovered must’ve been pretty important for him to confront Levi straight away.’

Romeo tilted his head. ‘What’s Levi like?’

‘I don’t really know yet. The only thing I know for certain is that he lied to me about not hearing Carl shouting at him. Terry thinks he’s a great guy, but if he’s prepared to throw his fights, maybe he’s not so great after all.’

‘He could’ve agreed to throw the fight for the same reason he agreed to sign a dodgy contract,’ Romeo said.

‘Blackmail by Vinnie.’ I nodded. ‘Another strange thing is that Levi took out a life insurance policy a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Two weeks before the fight? How much was the policy worth?’

‘A million pounds,’ I said. ‘Strange, huh? Maybe he knew Carl was going to find out whatever he found out and was trying to prepare for it.’

Romeo looked distracted for a moment, considering this. ‘But a million pound life insurance policy isn’t a lot of money for a world class boxer. Levi’s purse for the fights should’ve run into millions each time. It’s a relatively small amount compared to his earning power.’

‘Exactly. Levi’s hardly living the life of someone who earns that amount of money. Maybe the one million policy was all he could afford.’ I rubbed at my forehead. It had been a long day and I had brain ache. ‘Did you know that Ashcombe House was broken into shortly before the robbery at Carl’s bank?’

Romeo sat forward, concentrating on me. ‘No.’ I could see his mind chugging away at this little revelation.

‘I went to see Carl’s wife, Deborah. Apparently, Carl moved out of the marital home a while ago. Hacker looked into their insurance details and discovered they didn’t make a claim for the break-in. Deborah said nothing was stolen, there was just damage to the back door.’

‘Neither of them made any kind of report to the police. And they didn’t mention it when I spoke to them both about the bank robbery,’ Romeo said. ‘Maybe the break in is connected to the robbery at Carl’s bank.’

‘That would be my guess, too. You don’t normally break in somewhere and not steal anything. So either they did take something that Deborah didn’t want to report to the police, or they were looking for something and probably didn’t find it.’

‘And then Carl turns up dead.’ Romeo raised an eyebrow.

‘You should get the forensic guys to check Carl’s laptop at his rented house. There may be something useful on it.’

Romeo nodded. ‘Yes, I spotted that.’

I massaged the jumbled knot of muscles in my neck. ‘OK, you tell me yours now. What’s going on with the investigation into the robbery at Kinghorn Thomas Bank?’

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, then he glanced around, checking no one was in easy listening distance before he began. ‘The robbery took place over a weekend. Two months before the robbery, the offenders rented a building three doors away from the bank. Sometime in between the rental and the robbery, they dug a tunnel under the connecting buildings into the safety deposit box vault. The landlord of the building can’t ID the person who rented it, and the picture he produced with the police sketch artist looks like a cross between Homer Simpson and Tom Jones.’

‘Yeah, I heard those two were a bit dodgy.’ I grinned.

‘The bank is a really old building and was suffering from subsidence. The vault wasn’t up to modern standards and it was due for a refurb. Work was due to begin next week to rectify the foundations of the building and the floor of the vault to repair any weakness. Then lo and behold, it gets robbed.’

‘Did they steal stuff from all the boxes or just some of them?’

He smiled at my question. ‘Just some of them.’

‘So were they looking for something in particular or did they not have enough time to go through all of them?’ I asked.

‘We assume they had from the time the bank closed on the Friday until the time it opened on Monday to go through everything, so I suspect they were looking for something in particular. There were six hundred boxes in the vault and only eighty were broken into.’

‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘Was any money taken from the bank’s currency vault?’

‘No. Weird, huh?’

‘Very weird. Why break into a bank and not steal any money from the vault while you’re in there? So it seems more probable they were actually looking for something in particular in one of the boxes.’

He nodded. ‘At the moment we have no leads, although like all robberies, we’re looking into the possibility of an inside job, especially since there was a foundation flaw in the building that probably only an insider would know. With the burglary at Ashcombe House and now Carl being murdered, I’m thinking that theory is definitely right. SOCO are still going through the trace evidence, and the forensic tech guys are checking into the bank’s computer systems, but so far neither have come up with anything. The alarms in the bank were hacked into before the robbery so they didn’t go off, and the surveillance cameras were as well. They were set up on a continual loop, playing CCTV footage from the night before so we couldn’t even get a glimpse of who was in the vault.

I grinned. ‘Ah ha! But they haven’t got Hacker on their team.’

‘I didn’t hear that. I’m running a police investigation – I can’t have you interfering with it.’

What, little old moi? As if. ‘I’m not making any promises.’

Romeo glanced down at the floor, his forehead pinched into hard lines. Silence stretched into a minute before he finally said, ‘No, that’s the problem, Amber.’

****

Apart from Vinnie and his cronies, about forty other names were on the list of ringside seats that Hacker had given me. There were a few celebrities and ex-boxers on there, and I went into telephone overdrive back at the office, working my way through them in order, to see if any of them had heard what Carl was shouting. I spent four frustrating hours trying to get hold of some of them, and I was still no further forward. No one had heard what Carl was shouting over the noise of the crowd so I called it a day and drove home.

I opened the door to my apartment with the phone pressed in the crook of my neck, waiting for Hacker to pick up. I dumped my rucksack on the wooden floorboards and kicked off my UGGs. Marmalade bounded towards me and wound himself around my legs.

‘Yo.’ Hacker said.

‘Yo. Can you see what information you can dig up on Carl Thomas?’ I scooped Marmalade in my arms and walked the few steps through the living room into the galley kitchen. ‘He’s been murdered.’

‘Sure. So does that mean the hoo-ha has turned into a kerfuffle?’

‘Well, I’d say it’s turned into a bit more than a kerfuffle.’

‘Well, what does a kerfuffle mean, then? Is that the wrong word?’

‘A kerfuffle is a bit like an argument about something,’ I said, doubting that a vicious murder could be a kerfuffle by anyone’s standards.

‘Right. So it’s more like a to-do, then?’

‘Erm…not exactly.’

‘A shenanigan?’

‘Not even close.’

‘OK. I’m giving up learning new Brit slang now. I’m never going to get it.’

‘You are doing a fab job, Hacker. Maybe you should teach me some Haitian when I get time. Especially the Voodoo parts.’

‘I told you, don’t start messing around with that stuff.’

I visualised Hacker clutching the dead chicken’s foot he wore around his neck. And people thought I was crazy!

‘I know, I know. Any other updates?’ I set Marmalade down and he did starving kitten eyes at me, meowing around his bowl like he hadn’t been fed for four days straight. He growled at the empty bowl, telling me to get a move on.

‘No. I’m still working on stuff.’

I glanced down at Marmalade who was busy staring accusingly at me. ‘OK, see you tomorrow.’ I filled his bowl with the equivalent of feline fine dining and left him to wolf down his food.

I wandered into the bedroom on a mission. A relaxing bath with lavender scented bubbles was seriously calling my name. Since my washing basket was full again, I discarded my clothes on the floor. I closed my eyes and made a mental wish for a washing fairy to zap them into a freshly laundered and ironed pile. OK, scratch the superhuman power of invisibility, I’d settle for an instant housework-fix superpower.

Rummaging around in my wardrobe, I managed to find some black skinny jeans right at the back that had escaped being worn, and a long-sleeved black T-shirt to wear later. Why were most of my clothes black? The investigator side of me said it was because black was good for blending in, and everyone knew that black was a kick-ass colour. Not only that, it was very practical because it went with everything. I’d bet that a psychologist would have a field day with what it meant, though.