Friends to Die For (26 page)

Alfonso was processed in the custody suite, his personal possessions and his clothes taken from him as before, even though this time Vogel did not expect them to necessarily provide evidence. He
was then offered a cup of tea. Everything by the book, said Vogel, who countered his eccentricity in certain areas by acting with almost obsessive adherence to regulations in others.

While this was going on, Clarke summoned Vogel to the office which had been temporarily assigned to her. The DCI had a real presence about her, Vogel thought, emphasized by her height and her
stylish appearance. Her dark blonde hair, its length pushing the limit of Met regulations, fell nearly to the collar of her sharply tailored jacket. Her manner was confident and authoritative
without being imposing or domineering. She welcomed Vogel to MIT, told him she was looking forward to working with him as her number two, then cut to the chase.

‘Everything does now point to Bertorelli,’ she said. ‘But the more we can interview out of him the better. And you should know what the search team have found at
Marlena’s apartment.’

Vogel looked at her enquiringly.

‘There was a suitcase under her bed containing memorabilia from her time in Paris. Back then, she was known as Madame Lola. And it appears she ran an upmarket brothel.’

‘Wow!’ said Vogel.

‘Indeed,’ Clarke agreed. ‘There were photographs both of her and various clients. A very elite clientele, from the look of it. We’ve been on to the French police. As
you’d expect, they knew all about Madame Lola. They lost track of her twenty years ago after she fell foul of the mob. Word had it she’d got overambitious, decided to try her hand at a
bit of blackmail. Only she chose the wrong victim. When she suddenly disappeared, the gendarmes weren’t sure whether she’d gone to ground or been buried six feet under it. Turns out she
must have fled the country.’

‘So is it possible someone from her past has caught up with her, ma’am?’

Clarke nodded. ‘Must be a possibility, I suppose. But she came back to the UK, reinvented herself, has lived in Covent Garden ever since, and there seems to be no question of her having
set herself up as a madam again. Made plenty of dosh before, apparently. No, why would anyone from her Paris days come after her twenty years after the event? It must be Bertorelli. We already have
hard evidence, don’t we? I just wanted you to be aware of what we’ve learned about Marlena, that’s all.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

Vogel stood up to leave. When he reached the door, DCI Clarke called after him. Vogel turned to face her.

‘Listen, Vogel,’ she said. ‘Would you stop calling me bloody ma’am. This is MIT, we’re not a bunch of provincial wooden-tops, and you’re my assistant SIO.
Call me Nobby, for Christ’s sake.’

Vogel gulped. He could not imagine calling any woman Nobby, let alone his rather impressive superior officer.

Clarke seemed to be waiting for him to respond. He didn’t know what to say.

‘Oh, all right, then,’ she continued eventually. ‘Boss will do. Anything but bloody ma’am.’

‘Yes, ma— I mean boss,’ said Vogel.

DC Jones was hovering in the corridor ready to take the first interview shift with him.

‘Pam, do you know why the boss calls herself Nobby?’ Vogel asked.

‘Isn’t it to do with the clerks in the City wearing top hats in the old days? People took to calling them nobby and it stuck. So if your surname’s Clarke, you’re liable
to get called Nobby. Thought you’d know that, guv.’

‘Yeah, but I thought it was just men. I’ve never come across a woman called Nobby. What’s her real first name?’

‘Nobody knows,’ replied Pam Jones. ‘Apparently she hates her given name and won’t let it be used.’

‘Dear God,’ said Vogel, his thoughts immediately turning to a famous fictional detective. ‘Hasn’t anyone tried to find out?’

‘Carlisle and Wagstaff have a real thing about it. They’ve checked her out big time – the electoral register, everything. She’s always Nobby Clarke. They even managed to
get hold of her driving licence. Nobby Clarke.’

Vogel found himself smiling. His new superior officer was certainly different.

He turned his attention to the matter in hand as he and Pam Jones approached the interview room where Alfonso Bertorelli was waiting for them. The Italian had tried to get Christopher Margolia,
the criminal lawyer previously called in via Billy, to be by his side, but it seemed Margolia had jetted off to Prague for the weekend. A duty solicitor had been duly provided.

Nothing Clarke had told Vogel made him any happier about the Bertorelli situation. Quite the reverse, in fact. But neither did he believe that Marlena had been the victim of some mobster hitman.
He just hoped, as he sat down opposite Alfonso, that the ensuing interview would prove to be fruitful. Who could tell, the man might even confess, and that would solve everything. But Vogel
didn’t think so, somehow.

‘To begin with, Mr Bertorelli, could you please take us through your movements after you were released from police custody yesterday?’ he asked.

Alfonso looked a wreck. His eyes were red-rimmed as if he’d been crying. His response took Vogel by surprise. He made no attempt to answer the question, instead he took off on a
tangent.

‘I loved Marlena, she was probably the most important person in the world to me, after my mamma and my nan,’ he said. ‘How dare you accuse me of murdering her? I wouldn’t
have harmed a hair on her head.’

‘Mr Bertorelli, I have merely asked you to account for your movements—’

‘Yes, on the day Marlena was murdered. You’ve arrested me, for God’s sake, for murdering her. Me! I can’t even think straight.’

‘You must try, Mr Bertorelli. If you are innocent, then help me prove that. I’m going to ask you again. Would you please take us through your movements on the day that you were
released from police custody?’

Alfonso took a deep breath.

‘I don’t know my movements,’ he said. ‘After you lot released me I walked for a bit and then I went into a pub. I think I had a bit too much to drink. I must have done. I
lost most of the day. I just wanted to blot everything out.’

‘What was the name of the pub?’

Alfonso held his hands out in a despairing gesture.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t look. I just wanted to drink.’

‘Well, do you know where the pub was, the street perhaps?’

Alfonso shook his head.

‘OK. Do you remember what direction you were walking?’

Alfonso shook his head again.

‘Not really, towards Soho, I think, but I can’t be sure. I was trying to clear my head. I just walked around for a bit, without taking any notice of where I was.’

‘Right. Do you have any idea how long you walked for before going into this pub?’

‘I’m not sure of that either. A while. Twenty minutes. Maybe more.’

‘And you were on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you were drinking alone?’

‘I didn’t have anyone with me, did I? Of course I was drinking alone. Who would have wanted to drink with me? Me, the prime suspect.’

‘Did you speak to anyone?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. Maybe. I’m not sure.’

‘What about the landlord, or whoever was serving behind the bar?’

‘Well, I ordered drinks, so I must have spoken to someone behind the bar, I suppose.’

‘But no conversation?’

Suddenly Alfonso mustered a bit of attitude.

‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘I had a chat about my morning. “I’ve just come out of the nick. They think I’ve mugged a young woman police constable.” You know the
sort of thing. Oh yeah, I had plenty to chat about.’

Alfonso put a heavily sarcastic emphasis on the word ‘chat’.

Vogel studied him wearily. This wasn’t helping, and he suspected Alfonso knew it. He ignored the sarcasm and continued.

‘And after that, after you left the pub, what did you do then?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose I was drunk.’

‘You don’t remember anything else that you did that day?’

‘No.’

Alfonso looked as if he didn’t care. As if he had given in.

‘Do you remember returning to your nan’s place?’

Alfonso shook his head. ‘I remember waking up there though, in the early hours of this morning.’

‘And then what?’

‘What do you mean, then what? I felt like shit, obviously. Because of what had happened and because I’d got wasted. But I decided the best thing was for me to carry on as usual. I
was on lunchtime shift at the restaurant, and on Sundays lunch is always extra busy. I thought going to work might keep me sane and I was pretty sure nobody there knew I’d been arrested. Not
the first time. I’d asked my nan to call me in sick, hadn’t I.’ He paused. ‘They bloody know now though, don’t they? The rest of the bloody world, too, I expect. And
this time I’m facing a murder charge. I didn’t bloody do it, do you hear? I didn’t bloody do it.’

Alfonso’s voice rose to a near hysterical shriek.

Vogel carried on, keeping his own voice calm and level.

‘So you decided to go to work as usual. But from what you have told us, if you really were so drunk that you couldn’t remember what you did yesterday, then you must have had one heck
of a hangover this morning, didn’t you?’

Alfonso nodded.

‘I just said that.’

‘Yet you went to work?’

‘Best thing to do with a hangover – work through it. Besides, I didn’t have to be in till almost midday,’ said Alfonso.

‘Are you a big drinker, Mr Bertorelli?’

Alfonso shook his head.

‘Only on special occasions,’ he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm again.

Again Vogel ignored it.

‘I didn’t think you were, you don’t have the look of a drinker.’

He paused. Sometimes if you left a silence interviewees would feel obliged to fill it. You could learn a lot that way, Vogel believed. But Alfonso made no attempt to fill the silence.

‘So, you are not a big drinker and yet you got so drunk that you remember nothing from the moment you entered a pub you do not remember the name of until you woke up at your nan’s
place in the early hours of this morning, is that right?’

Alfonso nodded. The man looked ill. It was hard for Vogel to think of him as a cold-blooded murderer. And whoever had killed Marlena would have had to be cold-blooded in the extreme. Lacking any
normal human feelings, Vogel thought. But if Bertorelli was innocent he was doing nothing to help himself.

Vogel terminated the interview and told Alfonso he would be taken to a cell to await further sessions, and would almost certainly be detained overnight. The other man seemed to sway slightly in
his seat. Vogel hoped he wasn’t going to pass out again and made a mental note to remind the custody team to keep a close eye on him.

Of course, Alfonso had already spent a night in a cell, following his earlier arrest. The first time, for someone who’d never been near a police cell before, was always a nasty shock. Now
he faced another night in police custody. And he now knew all too well what it was like. Vogel had been told the smell was the worst thing. The mix of disinfectant and sweat and urine. That and the
total lack of privacy. En suite, the regulars were inclined to joke. But there was really nothing very funny about a toilet in full view of the slot in the cell door.

Wagstaff and Carlisle, the two DCs Vogel had first met when they’d arrived at the scene of Marlena’s death with DCI Clarke, were sent to check out the pubs within a
thirty-minute walk of the nick. It was another cold wet day. As MIT officers, Nick Wagstaff, a bespectacled and prematurely grey young man, and Joe Carlisle, who would have been darkly handsome if
he didn’t almost always look moody, both considered themselves rather above such routine foot-soldier activity. They were not best pleased.

‘Dunno why they couldn’t have put a couple of woodentops on this,’ grumbled Wagstaff.

‘Bastard’s probably lying through his teeth, anyway,’ muttered Carlisle. ‘And even if he did go in a pub, he could have been walking in bloody circles from what he said.
How many pubs do you reckon we’re going to have to check out?’

Wagstaff had a computer printout of local public houses in his hand.

‘At least twenty,’ he said.

‘And we can’t have a single bloody drink,’ responded Carlisle.

The tenth pub they visited was the Dunster Arms, which seemed to them a rather insalubrious hostelry in need of a deal of TLC. As they were only temporarily based at Charing Cross the two
officers were unaware that it was a regular haunt of a number of their police colleagues. And it was actually a busy and curiously popular little place, with relatively low overheads, which
provided a fair income for its landlord who escaped from it to play golf in Portugal as often as he could. He was currently away. His stand-in, Jim Marshal, a retired landlord himself, was behind
the bar. Wagstaff showed Marshal a mugshot of Alfonso.

‘Have you ever seen this man in here?’ asked the detective.

‘Don’t think so,’ responded the stand-in.

‘It would have been yesterday, lunchtime, and perhaps through the afternoon,’ persisted Wagstaff. ‘Were you behind the bar then?’

Jim Marshal nodded, looking down at the picture.

‘Definitely not seen him, not yesterday anyway,’ he said.

‘How can you be so sure?’ asked Carlisle.

Marshal jabbed a stubby finger at Alfonso’s black goatee beard. ‘Pretty distinctive, isn’t he?’ he said. ‘Anyway, I never forget a face.’

‘How many times have you heard that?’ muttered Wagstaff as he and Carlisle continued down the street to the next pub on their list.

‘Not for the last time, that’s for sure,’ said Carlisle. ‘Come on, let’s get this over with. Then perhaps we can have a pint or two ourselves.’

During the course of that evening the two officers dutifully visited every one of the twenty pubs on their list, and drew a complete blank. No one remembered seeing Alfonso Bertorelli at any
time on the previous day.

‘Just what I bloody expected,’ said Carlisle. ‘We’ve been handed this Bertorelli on a plate, trussed up like a chicken with all the trimmings. Trust our new assistant SIO
not to be satisfied though. Typical of the nit-picking bastard, from what I’ve heard.’