Death Of A Diva (22 page)

Chapter Fifty

              It was obvious, really, that when a corpse linked to the Lyra Day case turned up, Reid would arrive; and that he’d also have Nick in tow.

              “Well, well, well,” Fisher crooned on arriving at the scene, his raincoat billowing around him and only the fact that he was clutching a Ginster’s pasty reducing the Darth Vader impression, “fancy meeting you here, Danny. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were deliberately going round bumping off anyone who could finger you for the Lyra thing. ‘cept I suspect you don’t mind gettin’ fingered.”

              “Sir,” Nick was squatting down beside the corpse.

              Reid sighed, shoved the remains of the pastry into his gaping maw and looked down at Nick. “What?” he demanded, spraying a light dusting of crumbs.

              Nick held up his finger. At the tip, something sparkled. “Sequins.”

              Reid clamped his jaw shut, swallowed the pie, inhaled deeply through his nose and raised an eyebrow. “Sequins?”

              “Sequins,” I said and made eye contact with Nick, who blushed so deeply red that I almost forgot my anger. Almost.

              Reid turned his head silently from Nick to me and back to the face of the late Leon Baker. “Fisher, take a look around: the fucking place is a Palace of Marabou and glitter. It’s what
his sort
love.”

              “But there’s none here, sir,” Nick said, pulling a tiny plastic baggie from his pocket, into which he placed the twinkling evidence.

              Reid looked around the room. “So? He probably danced around the room in her fucking frocks. I don’t know.”

              “Lyra was a size 6 at her largest,” Nick replied immediately. “I doubt this one was ever less than a 16.”

              Reid looked, once again, at me. Then back at Nick. Then a nasty little smirk crossed his lips. “So,
Danny
, what’s occurring here?”

              For a moment, I thought he was referring to me and Nick, then I realised he meant the death scene.

              “I know this looks bad.”

              “Bad? You’ve been present at three murder scenes in the past few days, mate. In each case I – and, I suspect, my friends at the Crown Prosecution Service – could make a very good case for you having had a real motive for committing said murders.” He flipped a glance at Nick “Put the fucking sparkly away, Fisher,” and turned his angry little eyes back to me.

              “You know, I started off thinking that you were in some nasty little Falzone business. But you know what? I don’t think even Chopper would be so stupid as to think he could send the same killer to three offings and not draw attention. So, like I said Danny: what’s occurring here?”

              I considered pulling the whole
I say nothing till my brief arrives
act, but then remembered I had nothing to hide and actually a few things to say.

              “Have you met Miss Wood?” I enquired politely. “You know: the next door neighbour. The one who was with me when we discovered the body. You haven’t? Well, don’t you think you should talk to her before you roll in here throwing accusations around?”

              Reid opened his mouth, his face turning a frightening shade of puce. Then he closed it and the smugness settled back in. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone offed a vic, then set up the discovery to fake an alibi.”

              “Christ,” I sighed, my exasperation overtaking my fear at what was becoming a rather usual predicament, “am I in CSI:
Stupidity
? Does he get many convictions?” This last addressed to Nick. “Talk to her, Reid; I’m going nowhere. Then have a look around the place – get all your chorus line of coppers to take it apart. After that, come and tell me what my motive was. And also, tell me why you can’t find a single frock in this
Palace of Marabou and glitter
that matches the sequins beside the body.”

              Reid opened his mouth again and whistled slowly. “You got some balls, boy. Fisher: keep an eye on him,” and he left the room, his billowing black mac leaving, in his wake, an aroma of BO and onion.

              Nick beamed at me. “Jesus! Nobody’s ever stood up to him like that before.”

              “Can it, mate,” I snapped. “Every time I need you, you do the whole conflicted little copper act. I think you want me, then I think all you want is to use me to get at Chopper, then we’re back to wanting me, only you won’t look at me when your mates are around. I’ve had enough!”

              I sagged: I really had had enough. I felt like I had nothing left in the tank.

              “I didn’t do this,” I gestured at the corpse.

              “I know,” Nick said, stepping over the body, “and I’m sorry. You’re right: I started off thinking I could be some sort of Donnie Darko. Stupid.”

              “First,” I said, “I think you mean Donnie Brasco. Donnie Darko was the one with the giant rabbit. Donnie Brasco was the one where Johnny Depp went undercover.”

              “Wait: wasn’t the giant rabbit Harvey?”

              I ignored him. “Second: I think I know who did it.”

Chapter Fifty-One

              Robert arrived at the Marq before nine am the next morning.

              His car pulled up outside the pub, the engine was turned off and he sat, in silent contemplation, in the car for another thirteen minutes before stepping out of the vehicle, walking up to the front door of the pub and knocking.

              I knew all of this because I was watching him from the window of the room where Lyra had been killed.

              Ali – who’d been prepped in advance – admitted him and led him through the bar into the private quarters and up the stairs to where I was waiting.

              “Danny,” he strode forward, clasping my hands between his in the style so beloved of dodgy politicians everywhere. “I came as soon as I got your call. Thank you so much for seeing me. I know you must still be furious with me but...” he frowned looking around him. “Is this – is this where it happened?”

              “Where Lyra was killed? Yes, Robert, it is. This is where my life – which I had thought couldn’t get much shittier after you broke my heart – got worse.” I held my hand up to stop his protestations. “Don’t bother, Robert; you broke my heart. It’s true. But you know what? I think it was a blessing in disguise.”

              “Danny,” he let go of my hands, his own coming up open and held out to me, “I can’t tell you how sorry–”

              “Sorry you did it? Or sorry I caught you.”

              “Sorry I hurt you. All those years and I was so completely ignorant. I thought I knew you, thought it wouldn’t really matter, thought you’d be OK with it. If I could undo one single thing in my life.”

             
Just the one
? I wanted to say.
Was it really just the one?
But I’d already decided that this was not going to be the point where I let Robert see me cry. This meeting was business.

              “But you can’t,” I said. “Anyways, I suspect – sooner or later – Andy will make you as unhappy as you made me.”

              Robert frowned. “I don’t think there’s any call…”

I pointed at my bruises. “Every time you’ve turned up here recently, I’ve been getting anonymous calls. Silent. Not particularly threatening. I had no idea what they meant, or who was making them. Then you arrange a little dinner-a-deux, ‘a chance to discuss something important’, I think you said, and the lovely Andy has a bunch of his mates beat the living shit out of me to deliver ‘a message from a mate’.”

“It couldn’t have been Andy,” Robert’s face was horror-stricken.

“He stayed at the end of the alleyway where I couldn’t see him; but the light caught his hair a few times – a blond halo.”

“Lots of people are blond. You’re mistaken. It was this bloody gangster.”

“They threw a chamois over my head to start with. It was smelly and damp and leathery. A window cleaner’s chamois, Robert. I can’t blame him. He nabs you even though you’re already with me; the guy must live in terror that you’ll get tired of him and move on. And for you now to be hanging around me… I take it you haven’t told him
why
you’re hanging around me, so his imagination must have filled in the blanks and assumed you and I were getting too friendly again.”

I took a deep breath.
Get this thing done and you never have to see either of them ever again.

“What are you going to do?” He asked. “About this?”

“That depends. Do you love him, Robert?”

He nodded. “Andy and I... we want to be married.”

              I was sure at that point: I’d been doubting if my hypothesis around who killed Lyra could possibly be true, but the rage that swept through me was all the proof I needed. I shook my head in silent wonder.

              “And does he know about these plans?”

              Robert looked sheepish. “Jesus, Robert!
Tell him
! If he knows, he’ll be less paranoid and I might not have to look over my shoulder every time I go to put the bins out.”

              “I want to make everything right,” he whined. “Between us. Financially.”

              I snorted. “I don’t want a penny from you.”

              “No,” he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a piece of thick creamy paper, unfolding it as he continued. “I didn’t think you would.”

              “I gave you seven years.”

              “Six and a half.”

              “Seven, Robert. Seven years of playing housewife while you marched relentlessly up the ladder. I took a bloody drugs rap for you!”

              “And for that,” he said, “I will be eternally grateful.”

              “Don’t do that Robert: don’t talk to me like I’m one of the fucking typists at work. I spent seven years telling every one of my friends – every one of my colleagues – that you ‘weren’t the sociable kind’ when really you just couldn’t bring yourself to mix with the sort of people I actually liked. Meanwhile, I spent seven years going to dinner parties and corporate dos and smiling politely at fuckwits who were either visibly uncomfortable in my presence, or secretly trying to get rid of their wives early on the off chance I’d accompany them to a Premier Fucking Inn.”

              “Once,” he said, “that happened once.”

              “That I told you about; I stopped telling you after that. You know why?”

              “Look – I don’t really think we need to open this can of worms.”

              “I’ll tell you why, since you obviously don’t remember: because your response when I told you that one of the senior partners had just propositioned me was to say ‘I hope you were nice when you rebuffed him. He’s doing my review next week.’”

              “I was joking!”

              “Were you?” I sighed. “Whatever; it doesn’t matter. Thing is, even though I don’t want a penny from you, I could take a hell of a lot. I’ve been looking into it, you see and – well, you’re a lawyer, you probably already know this – but, since we lived together, dearest, well, technically I’d be entitled to community property.”

              “But you don’t want any money,” he started again, unfolding the letter in his hand and producing a pen – the Mont Blanc that I’d saved two months’ salary to buy him, “so I need you to sign this. If you mean that.”

              He trailed off as I took the document from him, without looking at it and tossed it on to the dressing table behind me.

              “Mind you,” I carried on, “apart from the financial aspect, I could cause you a great deal of professional discomfort, couldn’t I? I daresay there are some solicitors who might actually enjoy causing you massive embarrassment by repeating the full story behind our break-up in open court? Or who might get a great deal of mileage out of the suggestion that the purchaser of all that grade A coke was not little old me on my mailroom salary.”

              “That suggestion would never be admissible.”

              “What about the suggestion that your psychotic loon of a boyfriend tried to have me killed because he thought that – rather than trying to ingratiate yourself so you could screw me out of the few quid I was legally entitled to – you were screwing me for mutual pleasure? Would that be admissible?”

              “Danny,” the hands were back up now, but in a pleading pose, “there’s a figure on that letter; a settlement. It’s a fair figure. It’ll save all the pain and suffering of a legal wrangle. Trust me – I’m a lawyer...”

              “Do you remember,” I asked him, “what you said to me the first time we made love?”

              That stopped him in his tracks.

              “Yes, Robert, I know I’m highly unfashionable to refer to it like that.
Shagged
, I should probably say, or
fucked about
. But I was in love. I did love you. And I think you loved me too. We were snuggled together afterwards and I was already dreaming – and at the same time telling myself I was stupid to dream it – of spending the rest of my life with you; of you looking after me and of me helping you to become a bit less starched, and you said ‘I’ll always be here for you, Danny. No matter what happens. If you need me, call me, no matter where you are. I’ll be there. On that you can depend. Don’t ever worry.’”

“Was about six weeks before I realised you’d been quoting Diana Ross. But I didn’t care, cos I was in love. I loved you. I almost pity poor Andy, cos if he’s this freaked out at the prospect of you cheating with the one person who
definitely
doesn’t want you, Lord help him when he realises that you’re so far up your own arse you’re almost inside out.”

He stared at me silently. This was good. Robert was rarely silent for long; so I seized the opportunity.

“Alright,” I said, “I want no money from you. It’s yours; you can keep it. I didn’t fall in love with you for the
money
. I’ll even sign something to that effect. But you
are
going to do something for me and I’m not going to sign the paper until you’ve done it.” And I told him what I wanted from him.

He was horrified at first; then he argued against my plan, finally pleaded with me, then, sensing defeat, told me that what I was proposing would be legally questionable. I told him not to worry, that I had the police working on that aspect of it.

Eventually, he agreed to my proposal and, having informed him that I would call him with dates and times, I turned my back on him to signal that the interview was over.

Only when I heard the car start outside did I glance at the paper, at the monetary amount I’d thrown away on the biggest gamble of my life.

Caz will fucking kill me
, I thought.