Be Careful What You Wish For (12 page)

‘What you want, Nosy? How you get through gate?’ Thuggy growled.

‘What do you want?’ I corrected him.

He frowned. ‘Huh?’

‘What
do
you want,’ I repeated.

‘Me asked first.’ He narrowed his eyes at me, giving me a squinty-eyed death glare.

My lesson in English was lost on him, and I figured it could get ever so slightly confusing if I carried on.

‘Who you?’ Thuggy turned his attention to Brad, who was calmly staring back at him. Thuggy looked him up and down like he was a piece of dog poop he’d just stood in.

I knew Brad’s calm exterior was just a front. Inside, he would be weighing Thuggy up. Knowing Brad, he would’ve already worked out Thuggy’s weaknesses, and how he could put him out of action with one lightning move if the need arose.

‘I’m her bodyguard.’ A slight smile played around Brad’s lips.

‘What you want?’ Thuggy asked again.

I fought the urge, but I just couldn’t resist it. ‘What
do
you want.’

Thuggy’s eyes shrunk to pinpricks in his bald head. ‘Why you keep repeating me?’

OK, OK, I’m definitely giving up now
.
Sarcasm is obviously not one of Thuggy’s strongest points. It would be mean and cruel of me to carry on.

Since there was definitely no hope in this lifetime of improving Thuggy’s grammar, I said, ‘I love your outfit. I didn’t know the stuffed sausage look was in this year.’

Thuggy furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. I didn’t think he could work out whether that was a compliment or not.

I slapped a hand over my mouth. ‘Whoops – did I just say that out loud?’

‘What you want?’ Thuggy glowered at me.

Stuck record, or what?

I smiled. ‘We want to talk to Vinnie. Is he in?’

He stared at us for so long I thought he’d forgotten the question. Maybe it took a long time for his brain to catch up with his mouth.

Finally, he said, ‘Not sure if he here. Will ask him,’ Thuggy growled.

Thuggy turned behind him and yelled into the house. ‘Vinnie, you in?’

‘That depends who it is,’ Vinnie shouted back.

‘Nosy and her
bodyguard.
’ Thuggy said the word bodyguard in a girlish voice and turned back to Brad with a yeah what-you-gonna-do-about-it grin.

Uh-oh, messing with Brad was not a good idea. I didn’t point that out, though. Thuggy would probably end up figuring that out all on his lonesome if he carried on.

‘Send her in,’ Vinnie’s voice echoed back at us.

Thuggy jerked his head towards the house. ‘In.’

A man of many words.

Inside, there was a grand staircase with black and white chequered tile flooring everywhere. Thuggy led us past the staircase and into a huge living room with an inglenook fireplace at the end and lots of black velvet armchairs and chaise longues arranged opposite each other. An antique mahogany coffee table sat in between them. Funny, Vinnie had never struck me as a chaise longue kind of guy. Next to the fireplace was a wooden writing desk and matching chair.

Vinnie sat in one of the armchairs, stroking a cream and brown fluffy cat on his lap with one hand and reading through some documents with the other. He glanced at us over the top of his paperwork as we entered the room.

‘Well, well, well. If it isn’t Miss Nosy Fox.’ He smiled, but it was a chilling smile.

I’d been called a lot worse in my time, but the words weren’t the problem. Although he didn’t admit it, it was pretty obvious he’d sent me the nose. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck bristle, and I resisted the urge to reach up and touch my own nose. Instead, I shoved my hands in my pockets and smiled back.

I saw a slight stiffening of Brad’s shoulders. He hid it well, though. Unless you knew him like I did, you probably wouldn’t have even noticed.

‘Who are you?’ Vinnie asked Brad as he unwrapped a toffee and shoved it in his mouth, discarding the wrapper on the arm of the chair with a collection of others.

Brad gave him an equally chilling smile. ‘Let’s hope you never have to find out.’ His threat hung in the air, although I don’t think Thuggy got it.

The cat jumped off Vinnie’s lap and padded over to me, nudging its head against my shoes and purring away in ecstasy. Either it could smell Marmalade or I was giving off some serious pussy pheromones.

I bent down to stroke it.

‘Don’t touch Coco!’ Vinnie said through a mouthful of toffee. ‘Coco’s a thoroughbred Birman. I don’t want him contaminated by a Fox.’

I ignored him and gave it a little stroke. You should’ve seen Vinnie’s face. Think Freddy Krueger meets Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
and you’d get the picture.

‘Well, this is all very entertaining, but what do you want? And get away from my cat.’ Vinnie’s face turned an unflattering shade of red as I ignored his instructions. In the end, he glared at Thuggy who picked up the cat.

‘Don’t mess with cat.’ Thuggy glared at us and disappeared with it.

‘Do you want to know what happened to the last person who touched my cat?’ Vinnie sneered at me.

A vision of the nose popped into my brain. I didn’t want to know, but I guessed he was going to tell me anyway.

‘Fingers off,’ Thuggy grunted at me as he reappeared, minus Coco.

‘Are you actually capable of stringing together a complete sentence?’ I smirked at Thuggy.

A confused frown settled on his forehead.

‘It’s OK, that was a rhetorical question. You don’t have to answer it,’ I said, although I seriously doubted that he could, anyway.

Thuggy looked to Vinnie for some guidance on the matter.

‘I pulled their fingers off, one by one,’ Vinnie said.

‘My, you’re touchy, aren’t you? They do wonderful products for PMT these days.’ I tilted my head and gave Vinnie my sweetest smile. ‘What’s going on with you and Levi and the Kinghorn Thomas Bank?’ I asked.

He snorted. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

‘What did you have in your safety deposit box, Vinnie?’

Double snort. ‘Yeah, right. Like I’m going to tell you.’

I had to hand it to him; he was good at snorting. On a snortometer scale, I’d give him a ten out of ten.

‘Did you blackmail Levi into signing a contract with you?’ I waited for the next snort.

There was a flash of anger in Vinnie’s eyes. ‘Don’t mess with me, Nosy Fox.’

‘Whatever it was, Carl found out about it, didn’t he?’ I ignored him and carried on. ‘That’s what he was shouting about at the fight. You looked pretty worried at the time, Vinnie. In fact, you looked like you’d seen a ghost.’

Vinnie just stared his chilling stare back at me. ‘I didn’t hear a thing.’

‘You ordered Levi to throw the fight in the eighth round, but when Carl turned up it distracted him and he went down in the sixth instead.’ I folded my arms. ‘Funny how hundreds of bets were placed on Levi going down in the eighth, and even funnier how none of the people betting actually exist apart from Edward Kinghorn. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?’

‘Get out of my house and take your
pansy
bodyguard
with you.’ Vinnie picked up his documents and ignored us.

 Brad and I exchanged an eyebrow raise at the “pansy” bit before we took his subtle hint and left.

‘You didn’t really expect him to tell you anything, did you?’ Brad said as we slid inside the Hummer.

‘No, I just wanted to see his face when I gave him a snippet of what I know so far,’ I said. ‘Levi was being blackmailed by Vinnie, I’m sure of it. Somehow the robbery at Kinghorn Thomas is connected to Levi, and Vinnie is slap bang in the middle of it all. Did Vinnie have something in his safety box that he used to blackmail Levi with, and if so, what was it?’ I sighed, my brain racing at a hundred miles an hour. ‘And if he did have something in there, and that’s what Carl found out, then Carl must’ve been involved in the robbery, too, because how else would he have got hold of the information?’

‘You said Romeo suspected it was an inside job all along. It would make sense if Carl was involved.’

‘And is Edward Kinghorn involved as well? It’s obvious he was getting insider information into Levi throwing the fight because he placed huge bets on him going down in the eighth round.’ I eased my neck around, rubbing at my tense shoulders. Not that I’d let on to Vinnie, but his stare had kind of got to me. Well, that and the nose. ‘Why didn’t you say anything in there?’ I suddenly felt vulnerable. ‘You should’ve backed me up with a few hard-nut grunts or something.’

‘Because you told me not to, remember?’

‘Yes, but since when did you ever do anything I told you?’ I rolled my eyes at him.

‘You women! You say one thing and mean the complete opposite.’

‘I don’t know what you mean!’ I said, meaning the complete opposite.

‘I’ll get Hacker to start digging deeper into Levi’s background,’ Brad said.

‘Good idea. Whatever started this thing with the contract happened after Levi won his first title fight four years ago,’ I said.

 Brad pulled over at the side of the road, stopped the Hummer, and slowly turned to face me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Turn your back to me.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it. Hacker’s been teaching me his Reiki techniques,’ Brad said.

I turned my back on him and lifted up my mass of curls. I couldn’t feel Brad’s hands on me directly, but they were there, hovering over my shoulders. I felt heat instead, a warm energy seeping into my shoulders and easing the tension.

‘If you’re lucky, I’ll give you a massage later,’ Brad whispered.

Uh-oh.

Chapter 8

It was time to pay closer attention to the Lee Dawson angle. Sure, he had what seemed to be a solid alibi for the bank robbery. Being in Spain for the whole weekend was incredibly convenient, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t organized the whole thing.

I thought back to the robbery he’d pulled off at the First National Bank about ten years ago. I had to admit that the MO was different to the Kinghorn Thomas robbery, but people like Lee never changed, and I wouldn’t put anything past him.

Four masked men with sawn-off shotguns had walked into the First National just before closing time. Luckily, there were only a couple of customers in the building at the time and no one got injured. Lee and Co. didn’t even have to fire a shot since the staff and customers complied with their instructions to fill their large holdalls with money. The crew got away with a total of about five hundred thousand pounds. There was only one thing that gave them away.

Lee Dawson was the leader of the four-man team. The others were Craig “The Knife” Hanson (he once stabbed his friend over a row during a poker game), Jimmie “Axe-Man” Jones (he had a penchant for chopping off fingers with an axe), and Bobby “Big Gun” Bronson (not sure if he really had a big gun or if he just had a male inferiority complex and was trying to make up for it). They were all part of Vinnie Dawson’s gang. If anyone pissed off Vinnie, the others got involved. Vinnie hadn’t become the most powerful sports promoter in history without some underworld help. His rivals were scared enough of the gang to bow down to Vinnie at every turn.

Bobby “Big Gun” Bronson was found dead in prison after I’d put all of them away for the robbery. A razor blade was used to cut his throat. One of Bobby’s fingerprints had been found on the counter at First National Bank, which is what cracked my case. At some point the idiot must have taken off his gloves, and when confronted with it during my interview with him, he cracked and spilled the beans on the others. No one ever found out which one of his partners in crime whacked him. 

Jimmie “Axe-Man” Jones had died three years ago after an unusual axe incident. He was found on a patch of wasteland with it buried in his head. What goes around comes around. No one was ever caught for his murder. Shame.

And then there was one…

****

Craig “The Knife” Hanson lived in a flash apartment overlooking the Union Canal. Communal gym, secure underground parking, indoor swimming pool – slightly different to my crappy apartment. Maybe crime did pay.

I pressed the intercom on the communal stairs and spoke to his wife. Since I also put Craig away for the robbery, she wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear from me. A few swear words that even I’d never heard before echoed down the intercom in dulcet tones.

‘He’s not here. He went out for a packet of cigarettes six weeks ago and never came back. Fucking good for nothing piece of bastarding shit.’

I wasn’t too sure if her last term of endearment was meant for Craig or me.

‘Where do you think he went?’ I asked.

‘All he does is spend his money on poker anyway, and go down the boozer all the time. He’s probably with one of those tarts he’s always shagging.’

‘So you don’t have any idea where he could be?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t fucking care anymore so fuck off!’ she yelled.

A loud buzzing noise sounded down the intercom as she hung up on me.

Damn. So, where the hell was Craig, and had he been involved in the Kinghorn Thomas robbery?

****

I wandered into Kinghorn Thomas Bank and was met with hustling, bustling activity. Queues of people kept the cashiers busy, phones rang out, and conversation hummed. Despite the recent recession, if the frantic activity was anything to go on, Kinghorn Thomas was doing pretty well for itself. And the safety deposit robbery last week didn’t seem to have scared people off, either. If I was a customer, I’d have been down here like a shot, demanding to take my money elsewhere. Not that I had much to steal, but that wasn’t the point. They must’ve been exceptional bankers if the place was buzzing like this.

I asked to see Edward Kinghorn and was eventually met by his secretary, who was stout and sturdy with a beehive hairdo that I suspected she’d had ever since the 60s. She led me through a secure doorway to an elevator. When we reached the top floor of the four-storey building, we reached an outer office.

‘Have a seat, please.’ She swept a hand to a brown leather Chesterfield sofa in front of the empty desk. ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’ She wandered past the desk and knocked on a heavy wooden door behind it.

I heard muffled voices before she reappeared and held the door open for me. ‘You can go in now.’

As I entered the large, expensively decked out room, I heard a soft click as the door closed behind me. Full bookshelves lined one wall. The opposite wall held numerous computer screens, flashing away with various numbers that changed by the second.

‘Hi, I’m Amber Fox from Hi-Tec Insurance.’ I approached Edward’s desk and noticed he was in a wheelchair. He was slim, almost gaunt, wearing an expensive suit and aftershave. He had silvery-grey hair with just a hint of its original black.

‘Edward Kinghorn.’ He extended his hand over the desk, and I was given a limp, wet-lettuce handshake. ‘I’m the Director and joint owner of Kinghorn Thomas.’

‘I’m really sorry to hear about Carl.’

Edward gave me a nod. ‘Yes, we’re all struggling to come to terms with his death.’

‘I’m carrying out an insurance investigation, and I need to ask you some questions about the recent safety deposit box robbery.’ I kept the information deliberately vague.

‘Please, have a seat. Would you like a beverage? Some tea or coffee perhaps?’

I smiled and took a seat in a leather chair opposite him. ‘No, thanks.’

He shuffled some papers on his desk into a neat pile before speaking again. ‘The bank isn’t insured with Hi-Tec. How could you possibly be looking into the robbery? All claims for losses must go through our own insurance company.’

‘The insurance claim involves Carl’s recent death.’ OK, a little white lie, but don’t hold it against me. Amber Fox rule number three: white lies are acceptable for furthering a case. ‘I think there could be a connection between his recent death and the robbery.’

Edward’s eyes widened. He emitted a slight gasp. ‘Really?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s tragic what happened to Carl. Absolutely tragic. But you think it’s somehow connected to the robbery?’

‘Don’t you?’ I asked. ‘His murder occurred barely a week after the robbery.’ Even an idiot would’ve found that suspicious, and I doubted Edward Kinghorn was an idiot.

He tapped the fingers of his right hand on the desk, coolly appraising me. ‘I admit that it seems suspicious, but I don’t believe Carl could’ve been involved with the robbery in any way.’

‘Do you think any of the boxes were targeted deliberately?’ I asked, even though I knew the answer I’d get.

‘Ms. Fox, the whole point of a deposit box is that it’s confidential.’ His tone was condescending. ‘I don’t know what people put in them.’

‘Do you know Craig Hanson?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so. Who is he?’

‘How about Lee Dawson?’

Edward coughed, as if he were taken by surprise and trying to buy time before answering. ‘No,’ he said.

Hmm. I was pretty convinced he didn’t know Craig, but if he didn’t know Lee Dawson then I was a chocolate teapot. Edward had been using Vinnie’s tip-offs to place big bets, it stood to reason that Lee was involved, too, especially since Lee owned a bookies.

‘So, how’s business here after the robbery?’ I asked.

His lips formed into a tight line. ‘Business is brisk, thank you.’

‘And, as Carl was joint owner with you, what happened to his share of the bank in the event of his death?’

‘His share passes to me. We both made the same agreement when we set up the bank thirty years ago.

Interesting. Very interesting. That could be a whopper of a motive for killing Carl right there.

I thought back to the five million pounds that Carl had in his South African bank accounts. ‘Do you think Carl was involved in any illegal activity here?’

Edward stopped tapping abruptly and his mouth snapped shut. He didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally, he said, ‘Are you talking about embezzlement?’

Embezzlement hadn’t been top of my list. It wasn’t exactly news that the bankers were getting huge bonuses in recent years, even though their customers were suffering from the banks’ actions of irresponsible lending. I supposed the five million could’ve come from bonuses, but, equally as likely, it could’ve come from embezzlement or from illegal betting with clients’ money.

‘Carl and I had joint responsibility of this bank. I can assure you that nothing untoward has been going on here.’

‘What about illegal gambling?’ I crossed my legs and sat back in the chair. ‘Was anyone at Kinghorn Thomas using the clients’ money to bet on sporting events after being given tip-offs?’

‘I find that kind of questioning very offensive!’ His voice sharpened, raising to ear-splitting level. ‘Very offensive indeed. What kind of a question is that?’ He examined me like I’d just been beamed down from Mars and his mouth twisted in an expression of disgust.

I thought his head might actually explode, too, judging by the bulging vein in his forehead.

Amber Fox rule number four: If someone tries to make you feel bad about answering a question, there are usually only two reasons why: either they don’t know the answer and don’t want to admit it, or they don’t want you to know.

Since Edward’s eyes had flitted to the left and back to me in split-second movement before he answered me, I was guessing it was the latter.

I’d studied body language during my years as a cop. People give away a million involuntary signs by the curl of a lip or the flicker of an eyelid. They don’t even know they’re doing it. While the eye movement wasn’t complete evidence of a lie, I already knew Edward had made huge bets on Levi’s fight. If he was prepared to tell one lie, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell me another.

‘Well, I apologize if you find that question offensive, but there’s a murder involved here.’

Edward blew out a deep breath and took a moment to compose himself again. ‘If you’re looking for a real motive for Carl’s death, you should look more closely at Deborah Thomas. She was out to screw him for every penny he had in the divorce. She was fighting pretty dirty to get her hands on all his assets.’

It didn’t escape my notice that he’d tried to steer the conversation away from gambling.

‘Carl recently changed his will. Deborah didn’t inherit very much after Carl’s death because most of their assets were in his name,’ I said. ‘His estate went to his niece, Amy. So I’m guessing that Deborah would’ve wanted him alive long enough to get her divorce settlement sorted out.’

The five million that Carl had stashed in his account in South Africa was a lot of pennies, but a lack of motive meant it didn’t point to Deborah being involved in his murder. Unless…unless Deborah had been involved in whatever was going on at the bank, too, and wanted Carl dead to shut him up.

‘I didn’t know that.’ Edward did the finger tapping again. 

‘Did Deborah ever work here?’

‘Yes. But that was a long time ago. That’s actually how Deborah and Carl met. She set up our computer security systems.’ He waved a hand. ‘That was until they got married – then she got some high-powered job working for an insurance company. Carl always wanted her to be a stay-at-home housewife. Being a banker’s wife involves a lot of entertaining, you know.’ He smiled at me.

‘Yes, but at whose expense? The clients’?’ I stood up before he had a chance to answer. ‘Well, thank you for your time.’

His secretary led me back downstairs and out onto the banking floor in silence.

Now I had another possibility. If Deborah had been involved in the bank’s security systems, did she find out something was going on at the bank and tell Carl? Is that how he knew something about Levi? And if so, what was Levi’s connection to the bank? If Carl had got the information about Levi from Deborah, it meant that maybe Carl wasn’t involved in the robbery at all. Maybe Edward was instead. Or had Deborah masterminded the whole robbery herself? And if she had been involved, did she murder Carl to stop him from blabbing to anyone else?