Friends to Die For (20 page)

And so Michelle found herself feeling surprisingly positive as she began to walk home, not allowing herself the luxury of a second cab in one day and unwilling to face public transport in the
early hours. Besides, she enjoyed walking in London at all times of the day and night. It was good thinking time. And after the amount of wine she’d dispatched, she hoped the night air might
clear her head.

Naturally, her thoughts returned to Vogel and the investigation. He’d be sure to get to the bottom of it all, she told herself. And if he could find no sinister link between the incidents
. . . well, that must mean there was no connection. But Michelle didn’t really believe that. And she didn’t believe Vogel was the sort of man who would write the whole thing off as
random. No, he would persevere until he had everything satisfactorily accounted for.

She was still considering what path Vogel’s investigations would take, and what conclusions he may or may not come to, as she crossed Southampton Row, heading into Theobalds Road.

The punch, when it came, was a total surprise. A fist smashed into her nose, its force all the greater because its perpetrator, whom she saw only at the very last moment, was riding a bicycle.
She did not even register whether the cyclist was a man or a woman. His or her face was obscured. She had a vague impression of some kind of goggles or glasses beneath a grey hoody, and maybe a
scarf wound round the chin of her assailant. At any rate, the lower face was covered.

The next thing she knew, she was going down like an axed tree trunk. There was blood everywhere. It was as if her nose had exploded. But at first she was too dazed to register the damage, or to
notice that her handbag had been wrenched from her shoulder.

She was, however, aware of the searing pain emanating from her shattered nose. It seemed to spread across her face and right through her entire head, piercing into every nerve. She started to
scream and couldn’t stop.

Then suddenly, strong arms were wrapped around her, and a soothing voice told her to lie very still, that help was on the way, that she shouldn’t worry about anything.

‘I’m here, I’ll look after you,’ said the voice. It was a familiar voice.

Michelle stopped screaming and struggled to focus. Panic momentarily engulfed her because she couldn’t see clearly. What had happened? Had she been blinded? She reached for her eyes with
one hand and rubbed the back of it across them. It was then that she realized that her eyes were covered with blood. And although the pain remained as excruciating as ever, it came as a huge relief
when her sight cleared as she wiped the worst of the blood away.

Now she could see. She looked up into the concerned face of the man who was cradling her in his arms.

No wonder his voice had been familiar. It was Alfonso.

Vogel was sound asleep when the call came at around 4 a.m. He always slept well and took the attitude that anyone who didn’t probably did not work hard enough.

He had issued instructions at Charing Cross and throughout every relevant department within the Met that he should be notified at once in the event of any incidents involving the Sunday Club
members. As luck would have it, when responding officers called in details of the attack on Michelle, PC Jessica Harding was on duty in Dispatch. Two days earlier, she’d contacted Vogel when
the mutilated dogs were found, and had been sufficiently intrigued by the case that, even without a written directive, she would have alerted him to the latest development. A violent assault on a
serving police officer took the investigation to another level. Finding whoever was responsible for the attacks on this group of friends would now become a priority, not just for Vogel, but for the
Met’s top brass.

Vogel had the knack of waking up quickly, but the news PC Harding imparted caused him to awaken even more quickly than usual. He groped for his spectacles, without which he was virtually blind,
and sat bolt upright, listening intently as Harding concluded her report with the news that Michelle had been taken to University College Hospital, where she was expected to be detained for the
rest of the night.

Vogel’s next, perhaps somewhat obscure, response was a sense of relief. This must mean that Michelle could not be responsible for the other incidents. After all, she could hardly have
mugged herself. Then the pedantic nagging voice Vogel could never quite discount began to make itself heard, asking questions he did not really wish to consider. Could Michelle have arranged the
assault in order to eliminate herself from his inquiries? Had she hired some lowlife to stage an attack? Perhaps the hired thug had hit her with more force than she’d bargained for. If the
hospital had decided to keep her overnight, then they probably suspected concussion or something more serious than a black eye.

Given that Michelle was a police officer, there was also a possibility that the attack was connected to her job rather than Sunday Club. Working in Traffic, she didn’t come in contact with
the sort of violent criminals that officers in the serious crimes squads dealt with, but the anger of motorists who believed they had been unjustly treated was legendary. Could it be that someone
had recognized her out of uniform and taken revenge?

‘Any witnesses?’ he asked.

‘Yes, a passing motorist and a pedestrian,’ replied PC Harding. ‘It was well gone midnight but there were still a few people about. Craddick and Parsons were the responding
officers. They took two witness statements, each giving more or less the same account of a hooded cyclist riding straight up to Michelle, punching her full in the face, nicking her bag and riding
off.’

‘Bit like the other incident with Marlena, then.’

‘Yep.’

‘Nobody tried to stop this cyclist?’

‘Well no, Sarge. Sounds like it was the usual story: all happened so fast, and so on.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Well, one of the witnesses – the pedestrian – said he knew Michelle. He happened to be walking home from work and saw the whole thing. Quite a coincid—’

Vogel interrupted sharply.

‘Name?’ he barked. ‘Do we have a name for this witness?’

‘Of course,’ responded Jessica Harding. There was a brief silence. Vogel assumed she was checking the report on screen.

‘Alfonso Bertorelli,’ the PC continued. ‘Oh, isn’t that one of the other names on your list?’

Before Harding had finished speaking Vogel was half out of bed, trying to dress with one hand while using the other to keep the phone clamped to his ear.

His wife propped herself on one elbow.

‘Try not to wake Rosamund, won’t you,’ she said.

Vogel nodded, smiled, and mouthed the word ‘sorry’, but his mind was elsewhere.

‘What address did Bertorelli give?’ he asked Harding.

Harding read out the Dagenham address Alfonso had given Vogel the previous afternoon.

‘And where is he now?’ Vogel asked, keeping his voice as low as he could.

There was another silence while PC Harding did some more checking before she spoke again.

‘His present whereabouts is unknown. According to the report, he went to the hospital, travelling in the ambulance with Michelle. When nursing staff told him she was being detained, he
left.’

‘And we don’t know where he went?’

‘Well, no. Home, I should imagine.’

‘Do we know what time it was when Bertorelli left the hospital?’

Another pause.

‘He was still there when Craddick and Parsons turned up to get a statement from Michelle. She’d been in a state of shock when they tried to question her at the scene, so they
followed the ambulance to UCH. It would seem Mr Bertorelli left the hospital about the same time they did: around three a.m.’

‘Unlikely he was going back to Dagenham at that hour.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said Harding.

‘I bloody know,’ responded Vogel, rather more loudly than he’d intended.

‘Shhhhh,’ said his wife.

Turning to her, Vogel pulled an apologetic face. Then he spoke again into the phone.

‘Why the hell didn’t those two idiots stop him leaving?’

‘Stop him? Why would they?’

Still holding the phone to one ear, his shoes clutched in his free hand, Vogel tiptoed out of his bedroom and along the short corridor past his daughter’s room towards the kitchen. He
needed coffee.

‘Because he should have been brought in for formal questioning, at the very least,’ he said. ‘Not only is Alfonso Bertorelli one of these Sunday Club people, he was also the
star witness when Marleen McTavish was knocked down by a hooded cyclist. Didn’t Craddick and Parsons realize that? Didn’t anybody in Dispatch check it out? It’s all in the system.
Every detail. I’ve made sure of that.’

Harding mumbled something incomprehensible in response.

‘We need to find Bertorelli, and we need to find him fast, before he has a chance to dispose of any evidence,’ Vogel went on. ‘I think I know where he’ll be: at his
nan’s place, King’s Cross. Full address already on file. I’m going over there. I’ll need back-up. You don’t have a response unit nearby, do you?’

‘Hold on,’ said Harding. This time there was a silence lasting three or four minutes before she spoke again.

‘There’ll be a patrol car outside your place in ten minutes,’ she said. ‘DC Jones will meet you at King’s Cross with a second team.’

Alfonso was wide awake when he first heard the wail of a siren, some time approaching 5 a.m. he thought. He was indeed at his nan’s place, and had arrived there shortly
before 4 a.m., having walked from the hospital just along the Euston Road. He hadn’t bothered going to bed because he knew there was no hope of getting any sleep that night.

Instead, for reasons he was later unable to explain to himself or anyone else, still wearing his black waiter’s trousers and the white shirt stained with Michelle’s blood, he had
lain down on the velveteen sofa in his nan’s front room. The night was chilly. He was shivering with cold, but did not even think about digging out a sweater or a blanket. The TV in the
corner was tuned to a bad movie, but Alfonso was not really watching.

His family were all devout Catholics. He had taken one of his nan’s several crucifixes off the wall and was clutching it to his chest. He could not explain why he was doing that,
either.

Alfonso’s mind was racing, replaying the events of the last few days, particularly the attacks on Marlena and Michelle and the injuries they had both suffered. He’d been told at the
hospital that Michelle would require plastic surgery to repair her face. But it wasn’t only the extent of Michelle’s injuries that had left him in a state of shock. He couldn’t
stop thinking about his own situation. Now only he and Ari remained unscathed, as it were. And if that wasn’t enough to draw the finger of suspicion, Alfonso had been in the immediate
vicinity of the two most brutal incidents.

The two officers who’d arrived while the ambulancemen were attending to Michelle had been unaware that it was the latest in a series of incidents. When they asked what had happened, he
told them that he’d been walking home from the Vine when he heard a woman screaming. His name was already on the police computer because of the statement he’d given about the attack on
Marlena. The similarities between the two attacks would not go unnoticed. Particularly when they came to the attention of that CID man with the intelligent eyes. He had already seemed suspicious of
Alfonso when they’d met for coffee the previous evening. How would he react when he learned that Alfonso had been witness to a second attack? Detective Sergeant David Vogel did not strike
Alfonso as a man who would be prepared to accept a single coincidence, let alone a double one.

The wailing siren seemed to be very close now, loud above the noise of the TV. Perhaps it was more than one siren. Alfonso wasn’t sure. They couldn’t be coming for him, could they?
Not yet. Not that quickly. He jumped up off the sofa and ran to the window overlooking the street.

Tugging the heavy brocade curtain to one side, he peered out. He couldn’t see a police car and neither could he hear one any more. Maybe it had passed by. He tried to reassure himself that
was what must have happened, but in his mind’s eye he pictured the patrol car parking up outside, and police officers climbing the concrete staircase to the walkway that ran along the 1950s
council block to his nan’s flat. He had after all, under protest and against his better judgement, given DS Vogel the full address.

He stood by the window of the third-floor maisonette, listening and watching for less than a minute. It seemed longer. Part of him wanted to run away, to escape from it all, but he had nowhere
to run to.

When he heard the hammering on the front door, it came almost as a relief. Bang, bang, bang. Then a male voice calling out – not Vogel; this voice was harsher and much harder.

‘Police, open up. Police. Open up!’

On autopilot, Alfonso did as he was told. He walked into the hall and opened the front door. Several police officers burst in, including a woman in plain clothes, another detective, Alfonso
assumed. One of the male uniformed officers grabbed his arms and held them firmly behind his back. Vogel followed, his manner far less aggressive, those intelligent eyes sweeping over Alfonso.

‘Mr Bertorelli, DC Jones and I need to question you further in connection with the attack on PC Michelle Monahan a few hours ago,’ Vogel said. ‘I understand you were a witness
to this attack and that you travelled to University College Hospital with PC Monahan. Is that the case?’

Alfonso agreed that it was. ‘I was walking back here,’ he continued lamely.

‘Isn’t it rather a long walk, Mr Bertorelli?’

Alfonso shrugged. ‘I do it in about forty-five minutes,’ he said. ‘The only exercise I take is getting to and from work.’

‘I see,’ said Vogel, in the unmistakable tone of voice of one who clearly did not. ‘Well, sir, I should warn you that there are certain formalities we must now proceed with,
and that I have a warrant to search this property.’

Alfonso had been half-expecting this, but he was stunned all the same. He knew he wasn’t functioning properly and felt as if he would probably never function properly again.