Friends to Die For (32 page)

It was a pair of young mothers from the suburbs, in London on an away-day, their children in the care of their own mothers, who stopped to check on her, almost two full hours after Michelle had
been killed. They took in the swollen face and the staring eyes and reached out to touch skin that was already cold. With trembling fingers one of them then dialled 999.

Vogel was taking an early lunch at a vegan cafe just off the Strand when the news reached him. He was told that the first officers on the scene, being from Charing Cross police station, had
recognized Michelle and put a call in to Dispatch to report that one of their own was down. Vogel at once abandoned his stuffed organic tomatoes with brown rice and headed to the crime scene. He
could not, in any case, have eaten any more of his food. He felt sick.

It took him less than five minutes, half walking and half running, to get there. He passed the police station on the way. The fire exit gateway where Michelle’s body had been discovered
was a few yards from the end of Brydges Place, almost within sight of the back door of the station. Somehow, that made the discovery of her body all the more shocking. The SOCOs were already at
work. The scene was cordoned off and several uniformed officers were ensuring its authenticity and keeping the public at bay. Vogel, though he hated it, duly kitted himself out in a Tyvek suit
before approaching Michelle’s body.

He reckoned he wasn’t going to need the expert guidance of the pathologist, whom he was assured was on her way, to ascertain how Michelle had died. The signs of strangulation were obvious.
You could see the marks of the gloved fingers that had been wrapped around her neck and pressed into her flesh. These were surrounded by puffy discoloured skin. But then Vogel noticed that the hair
on top of Michelle’s head was matted with blood. He leaned forward for a closer look, careful not to touch anything. Already the indefinable odour of death was emanating from the corpse. He
thought there might be an indent in Michelle’s skull, but he wasn’t sure. The distorted face seemed to grow bigger, its death-induced deformity more clearly defined, as he examined it.
He felt his head begin to swim, that familiar sinking feeling. He wasn’t sure if his body was swaying, but he certainly felt as if it was. As soon as he’d seen enough he closed his eyes
to shut out the sight before him, turning away so as not to attract the attention of the SOCOs, and straightened up.

The sight of a corpse almost always affected him deeply. But this was a fellow officer, a young woman Vogel had grown fond of. A young woman he now believed he had let down. And fatally so. He
felt weak as a kitten.

He made himself stand very still, with his legs slightly apart and feet firmly planted, waiting until he was sure that he would not fall over before opening his eyes again. The world around him
was no longer spinning, which was a good sign. Making a conscious effort to breathe deeply and evenly, he moved away from the cordoned-off area of the crime scene.

His lips were parched and his head had started to ache. He knew it made no sense, but he couldn’t help feeling responsible for Michelle’s death. He thought of the courage it must
have taken for her to approach him when these troubling incidents first began. Despite being eaten up with embarrassment over that silly pass she’d made at him, she’d come to ask for
his help. She might still be alive if only he hadn’t made it quite so clear that he considered her a suspect.

Only that morning, he’d listened to Ben Parker suggesting that she might be capable of a brutal murder, and instead of leaping to her defence he’d sat there methodically calculating
whether it were possible.

And now Michelle had been murdered. Proving her innocence in the most terrible way possible. If only he’d gone to see her, warned that she could still be in danger and to take extra
care.

He blamed himself totally, but he knew he must dismiss such thoughts from his mind. Nothing he could do now would bring Michelle back, but at least he could make amends by bringing her killer to
justice.

The killer may have used his hands and not a knife on this occasion, but Vogel was convinced that Marlena McTavish and Michelle Monahan had been murdered by the same man. Sunday Club was at the
root of it all, it had to be, yet despite the hours he’d spent questioning the various members he still had absolutely no idea what the motive might be.

Unlike Marlena’s killing, which had been carefully planned, Vogel thought Michelle’s murder had been committed on the spur of the moment, provoked by he knew not what. Fear maybe?
Had Michelle, knowingly or unknowingly, been in a position to expose the killer’s identity?

She might still be alive if he hadn’t bowed to pressure from his superior officers. He’d been swept along in the general wave of euphoria at the arrest of Alfonso Bertorelli, even
though he had never, in his heart, believed Bertorelli to be guilty. He wondered if his head had been turned by his secondment into MIT and the attentions of DCI Clarke. Vogel hoped not.

He glanced back at the small ribboned-off piece of London. He watched the SOCOs step aside to allow Pat Fitzwarren through. The pathologist was intent on getting quickly to the corpse. It was
always different when a police officer had died. Vogel was too preoccupied to greet her properly, merely nodding acknowledgement of her ‘good morning’ with a distracted nod of his
head.

He knew some of his colleagues might cling to the belief that they had Marlena’s killer in custody, that Michelle’s death was in no way connected to the events surrounding Sunday
Club. But that was a coincidence too far. No, this was all the work of one man. And clearly that man was not Alfonso Bertorelli. If there was one good thing and only one good thing about being
locked in a police cell, reflected Vogel drily, it proved a cast-iron alibi.

There was no point hanging around the crime scene any longer. He had work to do. And, he felt, people to protect. The friends were falling like flies. He could not fail another.

Vogel’s mobile rang as he was hurrying back to Charing Cross. The caller was DC Wagstaff.

‘The boss wants a full report from you soonest, guv,’ he said. ‘We’re all gutted here. Just can’t believe—’

‘I know.’ Vogel cut him short. He didn’t need to be told what the atmosphere would be like in the station.

‘Tell Clarke I’m on my way,’ he said.

‘Another thing, guv,’ continued Wagstaff. ‘Some bloke’s turned up in the front office, says he’s got information about Bertorelli. Something about an alibi.
He’s not very clear. And he stinks of booze, but—’

‘Put him in an interview room,’ interrupted Vogel, who reckoned any possibility of clarifying the Bertorelli situation was worth investigating.

The man awaiting him, who said his name was Charles Timpson, had bad teeth, a drinker’s bulbous nose, and smelled not only of alcohol but also stale sweat. He actually seemed sober, but,
as indicated by Wagstaff, was not particularly coherent.

It took Vogel some time to gather the gist of what Timpson was trying to tell him.

‘So you recognized Alfonso Bertorelli from a picture in a newspaper, and you think you were drinking with him in the Dunster Arms on the day that Marleen McTavish was murdered, is that
it?’ Vogel asked.

‘I’m bloody sure I was,’ muttered the man. ‘My wedding anniversary, see – not that I have a wife any more. She kicked me out years ago.’

‘Right, so can you remember what time Mr Bertorelli arrived at the pub?’

‘Not exactly, but I was watching the cricket on TV. The IPL. I’ve got nothing better to do, so I go to the pub most days and watch whatever sport they’ve got on. It
hadn’t been on long – the early games start at eleven thirty. I’m not mad about blokes playing cricket in their pyjamas, but there you go . . .’

Vogel let Timpson ramble on about cricket while he processed the relevant information. It appeared Bertorelli had gone straight from the station to a nearby pub, exactly as he’d
claimed.

‘Can you remember how long you were drinking with Mr Bertorelli?’ Vogel asked.

‘Oh, most of the day.’

‘Any idea what time he left the pub?’

‘No. But I didn’t go till around seven. I know that because the second game had just ended.’

‘And Mr Bertorelli was still there?’

‘Yep. He’d fallen asleep. ’Course the regular landlord wouldn’t have stood for that. Nor Jim Marshal. But it was only Micky behind the bar that day.’

‘How on earth can you remember so much if you’d been in the pub all day?’ Vogel demanded. ‘You must have been well plastered.’

‘I can always remember cricket,’ Timpson said, taking umbrage. ‘And that Bertorelli, well, he just looked out of place. I could tell he wasn’t a drinker. I was sort of
keeping an eye on him.’

‘I see. Why has it taken you so long to come forward with this information, Mr Timpson?’

The man looked sheepish. ‘Well, I’ve been on a bit of a bender,’ he said. ‘Haven’t been sober for a week or so. I have a newspaper delivered at home every day,
’cos I do the horses, you see. But I’d been too pissed to look at ’em. It was only this morning that I saw the report about the murder and the picture of the man who’d been
arrested. I knew I had to come and give a statement.’

‘Thank you, Mr Timpson,’ said Vogel. ‘Thank you very much indeed.’

And that clinches it, he thought to himself, as he made his way to Nobby Clarke’s office to give her his now delayed report. He hoped she would agree that the delay had been worth it.

Vogel was about to knock on the door of the office temporarily assigned to Clarke, when he was intercepted by DI Forest, bristling with indignation.

‘What the hell is going on, Vogel?’ Forest demanded.

In no mood for the DI’s posturing, Vogel replied, ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind stepping out of the way. I need to report to my SIO.’

Forest had positioned himself so that he was blocking the door to Nobby Clarke’s office. Instead of moving aside, he barked, ‘Tell that flash bitch Clarke she needs to get this
sort—’

At that moment the door behind Forest opened to reveal a sardonically smiling DCI Clarke.

‘Thank you for your input, DI Forest,’ she said quietly.

Forest glanced anxiously over one shoulder. His ruddy complexion had turned even redder. DCI Clarke was a good six feet tall, Vogel reckoned. And, in the heeled boots which accompanied the
tailored trouser suits she invariably wore to work, she towered over Tom Forest.

Vogel’s wife was tall. She’d told him that a lot of short men were intimidated by tall women, even if they wouldn’t admit it, particularly if the women were in a position of
authority over them.

Forest certainly looked intimidated. And serve him damn well right, thought Vogel.

‘Yes, oh, yes, well, as long as we all pull together, I’m sure we will get the right result,’ Forest blustered.

‘Perhaps if you’d let my assistant SIO pass,’ said Clarke, her face expressionless, ‘we could get on with achieving the right result that much quicker.’

‘Yes, right, yes.’

As a flustered Forest departed, Clarke shook her head sorrowfully.

‘We were at Hendon together, you know,’ she told Vogel as she ushered him into her office. ‘We used to call him Einstein. And now he’s a DI. Not changed a bit,
though.’

She sat down behind her desk, and gestured for Vogel to take a seat. ‘There’s nothing worse than losing a fellow copper,’ she sighed.

‘No, boss, there isn’t,’ agreed Vogel.

‘What do you make of it?’ she asked.

‘Clearly Mr Bertorelli couldn’t have killed Michelle Monahan. And it now looks as though he’s got an alibi for the day Marlena was killed . . .’

Vogel told her about Charles Timpson and the statement he had given. The DCI made a disparaging remark about the quality of Wagstaff and Carlisle’s pub check, and told Vogel to send them
back to the Dunster Arms to verify Timpson’s story.

‘We probably need to drop all charges against him,’ said Vogel. ‘I shouldn’t think the CPS will want to know after this.’

‘All charges?’ she queried. ‘I agree it’s impossible for us to proceed with the murder charge, but what about the earlier mugging of PC Monahan? A considerable amount of
incriminating evidence was found at Bertorelli’s place of residence, was it not? The hoody, the bike, and even Michelle Monahan’s handbag.’

‘Yes, just as we found a pair of his old trainers covered in Marlena’s blood when we went to arrest him for her murder, a murder he now has an alibi for,’ Vogel pointed out.
‘Bertorelli has always maintained that those items were planted at his gran’s. Forensics could find no trace of his fingerprints on the bike or the bag, which was why the CPS
didn’t want to charge him after PC Monahan was mugged.’

‘So now we have to accept that he was telling the truth about being set up?’

‘Right, boss. And the blood-spattered trainers could only have been planted by the person who murdered Marlena.’

Clarke sat pondering this for a moment. ‘You think the same person is guilty of all these crimes involving the Sunday Club people, don’t you, Vogel?’

Vogel agreed that he did.

‘But the killings of Marlena and PC Monahan each followed a very different MO – how do you account for that?’

‘Marlena’s murder was premeditated. He had it all planned: drugging the champagne, taking along one of Bertorelli’s trainers to incriminate him, presumably making sure he had a
change of clothes because his own would be covered in blood . . . it was all carefully set up to make sure that he would get away with it.’

The DCI was listening intently, she nodded for him to continue.

‘Michelle was killed in broad daylight a short distance from this police station. Not the ideal time or location if you’re planning a murder – far too much risk of being seen.
That tells me he was in a hurry. It could be that Michelle had seen something or remembered something that would put him at risk, so he had to act fast to silence her. Maybe she was on the way
here, and that’s why he killed her where he did.’

Clarke did not respond immediately but sat weighing up everything he had told her. Vogel waited in silence, enjoying the novelty of a superior officer who took the time to mull things over.