Friends to Die For

Seven

George and Billy’s luck did not immediately improve upon arrival at Charing Cross police station. They were mildly surprised to find one of the big wooden doors standing open, and might have been encouraged by this as they stepped into the lobby of the Agar Street main entrance.

Unfortunately, however, they were dealt with by a civilian public access officer whose never particularly good temper had that day been further frayed by learning that his services would soon no longer be required. He shouldn’t have been too surprised, as the Met were in the process of phasing out civilian front-office staff in favour of a rota of serving police officers, but that didn’t stop him feeling affronted. Michael Carter was a former uniformed sergeant of the old school, and even though he’d been retired from the force for several years he continued to fail to see quite how the Met could survive without him. In addition, Carter was a cat man who had no interest whatsoever in dogs. Indeed, he actively disliked them. He considered dogs to be dirty, disobedient creatures who fouled pavements and every so often lost the plot and bit somebody. Usually a child.

Nonetheless, he dutifully went through the motions of recording all the details of the two missing animals, asked George and Billy if their dogs were chipped, which they were, and said he would file a report.

‘But what will happen? I mean, what can you do? Will you look for our dogs?’ asked George plaintively.

Even Billy, in his state of deep distress, knew better than to believe that the Metropolitan Police Force was likely to conduct a formal investigation into the disappearance of a couple of dogs. But he too stared at Mike Carter with a hope born of desperation.

Carter looked George up and down in a pitying sort of way. However, no sympathy at all for the loss of George’s dog was implied.

‘We will put out a notice to all officers, dog sanctuaries and so on, according to procedure,’ he said, as if reciting from a manual. ‘And should the dogs be found or we discover anything at all pertaining to their whereabouts, you will be notified at once.’

George merely nodded. Billy found some spirit.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘There’s more to this than just two missing dogs.’

‘Really, sir,’ said Carter, sounding totally uninterested.

Billy persisted. He began to relate the series of incidents which had befallen the friends.

The Mr Tickle story caused the corners of Mike Carter’s more or less permanently downturned mouth to twitch. Just a bit. Fleetingly, he glanced at George with a little more interest. By the time Billy had related how Bob’s plants were taken in the night, however, Carter was looking thoroughly bored again. He raised an eyebrow at the slashing of the tyres on Greg’s van, but merely muttered something about wanton vandalism, much as Greg had done in Johnny’s Place.

Then Billy told him about Marlena.

‘It seems almost certain she was hit deliberately by the cyclist,’ he said.

‘Was the accident reported to the police?’ asked Carter.

‘I think so. I’m not sure,’ said Billy. ‘Only we don’t believe it was an accident, do we, George?’

George shook his head.

‘Hold on a minute,’ said Carter.

He retreated to a computer at the rear of the front office and began tapping away.

‘I don’t see how this is helping us find the dogs,’ muttered George. ‘That man doesn’t give a toss, does he? He’s made himself perfectly clear. We’d be better off out on the streets looking for them than hanging round here.’

‘Let’s at least wait until he comes back,’ said Billy. ‘If he begins to believe what we all do, we might yet get some help.’

As he finished speaking, Mike Carter returned.

‘We apparently had two officers at the scene of the incident involving your friend Marlena,’ he began. ‘They have since interviewed her and various witnesses. I have just read their report and there is nothing in it about the possibility of deliberate intent. It is true that the cyclist didn’t stop, but unfortunately that sort of reckless behaviour is not unknown on the streets of this city. And the victim said nothing about having been deliberately targeted.’

‘Didn’t she?’ asked George. He shot Billy a surprised look.

‘She must still be in shock and in a lot of pain,’ persisted Billy. ‘And she’s an old lady. I shouldn’t think she’s capable of thinking straight right now.’

‘No, of course she isn’t. But Alfonso, our friend Alfonso who more or less saw it happen, he didn’t think it was an accident,’ said George.

‘Ah, yes.’ Carter glanced down at the computer printout he was holding. ‘Mr Bertorelli. Our officers did comment on the coincidence of his presence at the scene.’

‘What the heck do you mean by that?’ countered Billy. He was a corporate lawyer, quite unused to visiting police stations and dealing with situations such as this, but his legal brain had switched on automatically. ‘One minute you’re telling us Marlena was merely the victim of an accident, and the next you appear to be making insinuations about Alfonso?’

Carter’s face was set in stone.

‘I can only tell you what is in our officers’ report, sir,’ he said. ‘And indeed I cannot go into any more detail. I will file a report on your missing dogs, as I have already told you, and make a note of your other comments, which will then be on record. But under the circumstances, there is nothing further I can do for you at this stage.’

‘I do hope your report is a full one and that it will be swiftly brought to the attention of those who may feel able to take action,’ said Billy, forcing himself to remain calm. At least on the surface.

George made no attempt to control his rising anger. ‘For God’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘We’re a group of ten friends and now something weird, or unpleasant, or downright frightening, or even violent, has happened to six of us in less than a fortnight. Never mind the coincidence of one of us witnessing Marlena getting injured, don’t you think there may have been one or two other coincidences too many in all of this?’

‘I understand that you are upset, sir,’ said Carter. ‘But you need to calm down. Of course, if any further incidents occur, you should let us know.’

‘Oh, what’s the fucking point?’ said George, and flounced off through the open door onto Agar Street with Billy following.

‘Drama queens,’ muttered Carter under his breath, making quite the wrong assumption about George, who did a rather impressive flounce when he put his mind to it, as well as wearing tight trousers and smelling strongly of cologne. Bizarrely, Carter made the same, and in that instance correct, assumption about Billy, who was dressed in a business suit and had maintained his professional demeanour throughout, only because of his association with George. Once upon a time Carter would have had a lot more to say, and rather more loudly, but police officers and those affiliated to the force could no longer express their prejudices in public without landing in trouble. It didn’t alter the fact that, so far as Carter was concerned, George and Billy were still a pair of poofs, and if he’d been dealing with two straight men he may well have been more helpful. Or at least listened more carefully.

He would have denied that, though, and believed his own denial. So he remained a diligent officer, duly filing a report on the missing dogs and including the suggestion that this might be linked to other incidents.

George, Billy and Tiny continued to look for their dogs the rest of that day and into the night. Bob, having popped round to see how Marlena was and been told by her that Daisy and Chump were missing, joined in.

The four men combed the streets, enquired in pubs and shops, and appealed to passers-by, all to no avail.

Meanwhile, after returning home to be with Karen and help her put the kids to bed in a bid to maintain some sort of normality, Greg was finally able to make his way to Soho in an attempt to see the man he’d been thinking about all day, in between trying to help his friends.

It was nearly ten p.m. before he arrived at his destination, a gambling club called the Zodiac, in the heart of Chinatown. The entrance, flanked by a pair of Oriental heavies wearing black suits and dicky bows, who were both about half the size of Tiny and twice as menacing, was at the Wardour Street end of Lisle Street. Greg walked towards it resolutely, albeit on the other side of the road. And it was only when he was directly opposite that he paused. Then he walked on past and stopped again to step into the doorway of a closed Chinese supermarket.

His heart seemed to be beating much faster than usual. He could feel sweat forming on his forehead. He needed to calm down and work out exactly what he was going to say before entering that club. He took the last of his secret cigarettes from the packet in his pocket and lit up, checking before he did so that he still had the extra-strong mints he would need in order to conceal his misdemeanour from Karen later.

Lost in his own not entirely pleasant world, he bent forward slightly to light up, cupping his hand around cigarette and lighter. As the flame illuminated his face, he heard a familiar male voice.

‘Greg? What you doing here, mate?’

It was Tiny.

Greg breathed out a lungful of smoke.

‘Just popped out for a sneaky ciggy,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell the missus, will you?’

Tiny looked puzzled. Greg guessed the big man was wondering why he needed to ‘pop’ this far from Bishops Court in order to smoke an illicit cigarette. But Tiny passed no comment. Of course, he had his own preoccupations.

Greg took another welcome drag. God, why was smoking so damned good, he wondered.

Tiny still hadn’t spoken.

‘Any news of the dogs, mate?’ Greg asked him, though he could tell from the way Tiny looked that there hadn’t been. Or if there had, it wasn’t good news.

Tiny shook his head.

‘They’ve disappeared without a trace, Greg,’ he said. ‘Billy and I have been everywhere twice, and Bob’s pitched in too.’

‘Anything more I can do to help?’ asked Greg, hoping that Tiny would answer in the negative.

Tiny shook his head again. ‘Billy’s having one last look back at the park, even though it’s closed this time of night. Ari’s printing up some posters and said he’ll fly-post them all over the West End in the morning. Meanwhile, I’m on my way home to get the drinks poured ready for when Billy gets in. We thought we might get blind drunk.’

‘Trouble is, that makes things even worse when you come round in the morning with a hangover as well as the shit that’s going on,’ said Greg, who was considering doing exactly the same thing.

He hugged the big man.

‘Just remember, a dog’s job is to break your bloody heart and worry you to death. They’ll probably turn up, the pair of ’em, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as if nothing’s happened. With or without one of those silly notes.’

‘Thanks, Greg,’ said Tiny, managing a small smile, even though he didn’t believe a word of it.

‘Now take care, yeah?’

‘Yeah. You too, mate. Take care. And of the missus.’

Greg watched his friend carry on down the street, head bowed under the weight of his worries.

If only you knew, pal, he thought, if only you knew. He finished his cigarette, threw the butt down and stamped it into the ground. Then he stood for a moment, looking up the street at the Zodiac gambling club: its dimly lit entrance standing out by default among the bright lights of Soho, its name discreetly engraved on a brass plaque to one side of the doorway. This was a club of long standing and considerable reputation. It did not need to advertise. Greg watched a group of punters arrive. They looked like regulars, hurrying through the door, eager to begin their play. A tall man wearing a dark overcoat with its collar turned up left shortly afterwards. His head was down. Greg wondered how much the man had lost. The stakes were high at the Zodiac.

Greg shuffled his feet. He was nervous. And that chance meeting with Tiny had somehow further dampened an already ebbing resolution. He no longer had the stomach for a tricky and delicate confrontation, even though he’d been planning it all day.

He told himself that not only might it not be necessary, that his suspicions may have been ill founded, but also there was a risk that by going there he would only increase the danger he and his family were in.

No, he decided, he would put it off until the following day. Who knew what might have developed by then?

He shivered in the cold night air, thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his bomber jacket, and strode off down Lisle Street, heading for home.

All he wanted was to kiss his sleeping children goodnight, climb into his warm double bed and hold his wife close and tight.

Michelle arrived unannounced at Marlena’s flat. She was carrying a small suitcase, the sort that fits under the seats of aircraft, and looked as if she had been hurrying.

‘I hope you don’t mind me coming round so late,’ she said. ‘My plane just got in and I rushed straight here.’ She gestured at her bag. ‘I wanted to see for myself how you were.’

Marlena tried to smile. Her lips stretched into a thin hard line.

‘Ask me a load of questions, more like,’ she said grumpily.

Michelle did a double take. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll go, if you like. You’re right, of course. I did also wonder if I could help, though.’

‘Oh, please don’t go,’ said Marlena, pushing aside her moment of pique as quickly as she’d allowed herself to display it. ‘I’m sorry too. My damn foot is hurting so much its wreaking havoc with my temper.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Michelle. ‘What about painkillers? You must have been given some. Are they not working?’

‘Not nearly enough. I’ve already taken more than my quota for today. But to hell with that, I shall definitely be seeking oblivion at bedtime.’

Michelle smiled. ‘Don’t blame you,’ she said. ‘You will be careful though, won’t you?’

Marlena smiled back. ‘I am always careful, dear child,’ she said. ‘Even if it doesn’t look that way right now.’

‘It doesn’t,’ said Michelle. ‘I presume you’ve had a police visit or two about this, haven’t you?’

Yes. Pair of charming young men with a penchant for the obvious.’

Michelle laughed. ‘Sounds like a definition of all too many coppers I know,’ she said. ‘Not sure about the “charming” bit though.’ She paused. ‘Anyway, I’m back on duty tomorrow, and one of the reasons I’ve dropped in on you like this is because I thought I might gee things up a bit. It’s not my beat, and even if it was I’d be regarded as personally involved so I couldn’t take part in any inquiries, but there really should be a proper police investigation. Too much has happened for this all to be coincidence. You’ve heard about the boys’ dogs, I expect?’

Marlena confirmed that she had.

‘Both dogs, same place, same day, and within a couple of hours of each other. Another so-called coincidence? I don’t think so.’

She asked Marlena if she’d go through the details of her collision with the hooded cyclist again.

Marlena protested mildly. ‘The two constables who were at the scene and then came to the hospital made me do that, even though, charming or not, they didn’t seem very interested,’ she said.

‘They didn’t know the whole picture, did they? Anyway, there’s a CID man I know who won’t be able to resist this case. It will intrigue him, I’m sure. Come on, Marlena. We really can’t let this go on, it’s getting frightening. One more time, please. Tell me exactly what happened.’

Marlena did so, giving as thorough an account as she could, albeit a little wearily.

‘And the cyclist, the hooded man, if it was a man, just rode off?’ prompted Michelle, after Marlena had come to the end. ‘He didn’t stop?’

‘No, he didn’t stop. Come on, would you expect him to?’ Marlena sighed. ‘I’m still not convinced it was deliberate, though,’ she added. ‘I think that’s too far-fetched.’

Michelle studied the older woman. There was an element of doubt in her voice, as if pleading for reassurance rather than proclaiming what she believed to be true.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Michelle said, unable to offer the reassurance her friend craved. ‘But I do know one thing: it’s damned well time somebody found out.’

The following morning Michelle reported for duty at Charing Cross at 7 a.m. On the way to the station she’d encountered Ari, who, good as his word, was already fly-posting the neighbourhood. He showed Michelle one of his posters, which bore photographs of both dogs, emailed to him by their owners, and the slogan: Missing. Daisy the chihuahua, light brown, long-haired bitch, and Chump, male Maltese terrier, white. Generous reward for anyone with information leading to their recovery. The poster also gave the details of when and where the dogs were last seen.

‘Well done, Ari,’ said Michelle. ‘Let’s hope something comes of it.’

‘Yep, let’s hope.’

‘You’re out and about early,’ she told him then added, grinning: ‘I doubt you’ve ever been out this early before, unless you were coming home from somewhere.’

‘Oh, ha bloody ha,’ said Ari. ‘I wanted to catch people going to work, and people walking their dogs before they go to work. They’re probably the most likely to have seen or heard something.’ He paused, his face falling. ‘If anyone has.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Michelle, giving him a quick hug.

At the station she checked what reports had been formally filed and what action had so far been taken: little or none. Then she set about contacting the CID man she’d mentioned to Marlena the previous evening.

In the dark days immediately after her transfer to the Met, still aching from the pain of her marriage break-up, Michelle had made a clumsy pass at Detective Sergeant David Vogel outside the Dunster Arms following a farewell party for some veteran uniform she didn’t even know. She had been very drunk at the time, desperate to blot out her anguish at the betrayal and humiliation she’d suffered when her husband left her. With his wispy fair hair, wispy fair beard and penchant for elderly corduroy, Vogel didn’t look much like a police officer; and unlike most of his colleagues that evening, he had been totally sober. As far as Michelle knew, he didn’t drink. And he was rumoured to be a vegetarian. He was a man who seemed to allow himself few personal indulgences. And playing away from home was apparently not one of them. His response to her unsolicited display of affection had been to blink rapidly behind his hornrimmed spectacles and decline, quite kindly, on the grounds that he was married with a young daughter.

Unaccustomed to the company of honourable men, Michelle had felt a total fool. But she’d been impressed too. From that night, Vogel had seemed all the more attractive to her, though she made sure to hide the fact for fear of embarrassing them both. In any case, unless she was really stupid and repeated the performance of throwing herself at him, Vogel could be relied upon not to notice. He wasn’t the sort of man most women found attractive. Which, of course, with the sorry history of her wrecked marriage still ruling her every emotion, was probably why Michelle was so taken with him.

She sensed that Vogel was an unusual copper as well as an unusual man. They called him the Geek at Charing Cross, but not without grudging respect. The name was a twisted tribute to his intelligence and his ability to sift through endless layers of facts and figures and come up with connotations and conclusions that no one else could.

It turned out that Vogel wasn’t on duty until noon that day, so Michelle dropped him an email outlining her concerns about the various events that had befallen her friends. She concluded by asking if he would do her the favour of having a quick look at the Marlena incident and maybe keep an eye on the missing-dogs scenario.

She then took off for another edifying day in the division she so disliked. There was a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, and she was on point duty for the rest of her shift. That meant aching feet and zero job satisfaction: just another day in Traffic.

David Vogel picked up her email shortly after coming on duty. He read it through carefully, but at speed. His lips twitched, just as Mike Carter’s had done, at the Mr Tickle story. Vogel was not without a sense of humour, though this was not generally recognized within the Met because it was so much gentler than that of his colleagues. He pondered for a moment or two. A pair of mystery pranks, an act of apparent wanton vandalism, two dogs going missing on the same day at the same place, a possibly deliberate attack on an elderly woman... Vogel was intrigued, just as Michelle had predicted. However, a mountain of paperwork sat on his desk. Twice as much data again awaited his attention on screen. The minutiae of a complex fraud case that nobody had yet been able to untangle. To most police officers, indeed most people, sifting through this lot would be a horrible chore. To David Vogel it was a delight. He loved paperwork. He relished the opportunity to seek out details others had overlooked. Loved discovering what lay behind an apparently meaningless jumble of bald facts and figures. Shortly before switching off his computer and heading home the previous evening, almost three hours after his shift had officially ended, he’d thought he might be close to a breakthrough. He couldn’t wait to get stuck in again.

Mr Tickle would just have to wait, he told himself, with the smallest stab of regret. Besides, there might be nothing to it. The dogs would probably turn up unharmed and without explanation, as dogs did, and there might be no link whatsoever between the other events. He simply didn’t have the time to do anything about it at present. He did, however, send an email to Dispatch saying that these matters had come to his notice, and asking could he please be kept informed of any developments.

At three in the afternoon, Jessica Harding, a bright young PC working in Dispatch, called his extension.

‘Looks like there’s been a development in that case you’re interested in, Sarge,’ she told him. ‘Some Big Issue seller just found the remains of two dogs in a rubbish bin on Long Acre. He told a passer-by who called us. Apparently they’ve been badly mutilated.’

‘Are we sure they’re the same two dogs?’ asked Vogel.

‘Well, they need their microchips checking, assuming they have them, but the descriptions match,’ PC Harding replied.

Vogel had already begun calling up the relevant report: ‘A chihuahua and a Maltese terrier,’ he read from his screen. ‘The breeds are right then?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Jessica Harding. ‘In as much as anyone could tell. Sounds like they’re in a terrible state. Their sexual organs have been removed, their eyes gouged out, tails cut off — that sort of thing. The Big Issue seller went into shock and had to be taken to hospital, and, according to the response team, the man who called us wasn’t in much better shape either. The chihuahua’s head’s been more or less hacked off and—’

Vogel interrupted. Unlike former sergeant Mike Carter, David Vogel liked dogs. He had a border collie called Timmy at home, and if anything like that ever happened to Timmy, Vogel feared what he might be capable of doing to the perpetrators.

‘All right, Harding, I get the picture,’ he said. He was about to end the call when a thought occurred to him. ‘Has anyone notified the owners yet?’

‘Not yet,’ responded Harding.

‘Good,’ said Vogel. ‘I think we should ask PC Michelle Monahan to do it. She knows them, apparently. And she knows the background to all this. They’re going to be shocked rigid, whoever tells them, but she may be able to get more out of them.’

‘Isn’t she Traffic?’

Vogel sighed. ‘She’s still a police officer, Jessica,’ he said. ‘And she was previously in CID.’

‘Right. OK. I’ll tell my boss you’re handling that side of it then, shall I?’ asked Harding.

‘Yes.’ Vogel was no longer really listening.

He ended the call and, trying to ignore the queasiness in the pit of his stomach, sat and thought for a moment or two before contacting Michelle’s team leader to ask if he could borrow her for a special task. Like Michelle, David Vogel didn’t believe in coincidences. And he was beginning to get a bad feeling about the increasingly sinister and unpleasant sequence of events which he now felt impelled to investigate.