Friends to Die For (34 page)

‘Do you know what the time was when you arrived at the house?’

‘Yes. Nine o’clock. Well, actually it was a few minutes before. My appointment was for nine o’clock. I was early. I just waited around for a bit outside.’

‘And what time did you get back to central London?’

‘I’m not sure. Around noon, I think. I did some food shopping in Marks on the way home. I guess I’d been in about an hour when the heavy brigade arrived.’

Vogel nodded. He mulled this over for a moment before putting his next question.

‘Mr Stephens, as members of a group of friends who have been the victims of an increasingly nasty succession of crimes culminating in murder, you and your partner had been through a very
traumatic time. You had lost your dog in most distressing circumstances and, as you say, you were trying to move on, so you were looking for another dog, and you were going to perhaps choose one. I
understand that. But I find it rather odd that your partner did not accompany you on such an important mission.’

Tiny was no longer meeting Vogel’s steady gaze. The big man looked down at his hands.

‘Billy’s always busy,’ he said. ‘He works very long hours. So it makes sense for me to check things out. I found those dogs advertised on the net. I didn’t know
anything about the people who’d bred them, or about the dogs, ’til I went out to Uxbridge to see them. If I hadn’t liked the set-up, if it had turned out to be a puppy farm or
something, then I wouldn’t have needed to waste Billy’s time. I wasn’t planning to actually buy a dog without him seeing it first, without his say-so.’

Vogel was silent for a moment. He had an idea forming.

‘Mr Stephens, did your partner know that you were going to Uxbridge to look for a new dog?’

Tiny wriggled in his seat.

‘Well, not exactly, no,’ he said eventually. ‘I mean, we’d talked about it, but he didn’t know I was actually looking.’

‘So Billy thought you were at home this morning. He didn’t know you had gone to Uxbridge?’

‘No – you see, he didn’t think he was ready for a new dog. He didn’t think either of us was—’

Vogel interrupted. ‘Mr Stephens, I’m not interested in whether or not you and your partner acquire a dog, I just need to establish your whereabouts at the time of Michelle
Monahan’s death.’

‘I told—’

‘Yes, and you’ve also told me that your partner, the man you share your life with, thinks you were somewhere else entirely. You had better give me the details of the people you
visited in Uxbridge and you’d better hope they back your story up.’

Vogel felt sure that the man’s alibi would prove to be genuine. It was almost too absurd not to be genuine. However, this didn’t particularly please the detective. He was beginning
to run out of suspects.

George was interviewed next. Vogel remembered him as being the most cocky of the friends. Now George Kristos didn’t look cocky at all. His eyes were red and, like Ari
Kabul, his hands were shaking.

‘I can’t believe another one’s dead, not Michelle, she was so lovely, so young and pretty and everything, and now it’s all starting again, and it can’t be Alfonso
who did it because he was in jail, but none of us ever thought he could be capable of murder, not me anyway, and he’d never have hurt Marlena, certainly not her, he worshipped her you see,
so—’

‘Mr Kristos,’ Vogel interrupted sternly.

George stopped talking. His eyes were open almost unnaturally wide. His jaw was slack. Vogel thought he looked like a scared rabbit caught in headlights.

‘Mr Kristos, I need to establish your whereabouts earlier today,’ Vogel continued. ‘Could you tell me please where you were between the hours of nine and eleven?’

‘Right, yes, of course.’

George seemed almost eager to help. And, unless he were guilty, why shouldn’t he be? thought Vogel. Those suspects who were innocent must surely want to see the killer found every bit as
much as he did. Aside from the fact that they would all be under suspicion until the culprit was found, in the absence of a motive there was no way of predicting who the killer’s next victim
might be.

‘I was with my neighbour, Marnie. Well, first of all I went to the shop and got some fresh bread and a couple of Danishes. She likes Danishes, you see. I go round every morning when
I’m not working. We have breakfast together and I tidy for her and keep her company for a bit.’

‘What time did you leave your flat and what time did you arrive back at this Marnie’s?’

‘I went out soon after eight, and I don’t suppose I was gone more than twenty minutes. I was with Marnie by about half past eight. I always get there quite early or she starts to
fret.’

‘And what time did you leave Marnie?’

‘Oh, it must have been eleven o’clock. Very nearly anyway.’

‘You stayed with this elderly woman for two and a half hours? I must say, that is extremely neighbourly of you, Mr Kristos. Indeed, some might say excessively so.’

George coloured slightly and mumbled something incomprehensible.

‘If you have something to say, Mr Kristos, it would help if you spoke up, please.’

George nodded. ‘Well, it’s embarrassing. But actually Marnie’s daughter, well, she pays me to look out for Marnie. Only Marnie doesn’t know, you see.’

‘I don’t see, Mr Kristos. Perhaps you could explain.’

‘Well, Marnie’s daughter, she lives in Ealing now, smart house, young family. All of that. She isn’t up for running into Soho every day to see to her old mum, and Marnie
certainly wouldn’t be up for living in Ealing. No way. Not that she’d ever be invited.’ George shook his head sadly.

‘So in effect this is a job?’ Vogel asked. ‘Looking after your neighbour is paid employment for you. Is that what you are saying?’

‘Kind of, yes,’ responded George, still stumbling slightly over his words, his face bright red now. ‘I do all sorts of work when I’m not acting, which is most of the
time, unfortunately. I do maintenance round the building where I live, I work in a theatre box office sometimes. I mean, I can turn my hand to all sorts of things, and I have to. So, yes, looking
out for Marnie is a job, I suppose, it helps towards paying the rent.’

‘And you go in every morning at about the same time, and always for what, two or three hours?’ asked DC Jones.

George nodded. ‘Yes. Only, well, you see, nobody knows. None of the others. Not my girlfriend either. Nobody. I mean, it’s not very cool, is it? Chap like me, a paid carer for an old
girl like Marnie. I’m ever so fond of her and that, but . . .’

George’s voice tailed off. There was a kind of panic in his eyes.

Vogel stifled a smile with difficulty. This was a murder investigation, yet George Kristos was more anxious about his cool image than establishing his whereabouts at the time of the crime and
enabling himself to be eliminated from police inquiries.

After George, it was Greg’s turn. He said that he’d spent the entire morning in and out of his van delivering crates of whisky all over West London, and beyond,
into Surrey and Middlesex. He’d made an early start. He’d got to Chiswick at about half past eight, then gone on to Ealing, Acton, Hounslow, Twickenham, and further west, he said, to
Kingston, Staines and Slough. On the way back he’d made deliveries to more central addresses in Barnes, Putney and Clapham before returning to his Waterloo lock-up to reload. He claimed
he’d been planning to spend the afternoon making more deliveries, some nearby, in Waterloo itself, and various riverbank addresses, as well as Covent Garden, Clerkenwell, and maybe north to
Camden, Hampstead and Highgate.

‘Then you lot came and that was the end of that,’ he said.

‘I take it you have a record of your movements, Mr Walker?’ asked Vogel.

‘’Course I bloody do,’ snapped Greg. ‘Most of the places I deliver to someone answers the door and takes the stuff in. Sometimes the householder, sometimes caretakers,
porters, cleaning ladies. Sometimes I go next door to a neighbour if there’s no one in. They all sign for it, don’t they? My clipboard’s in the van. I’d have shown it to
your boys if they’d given me half a chance. But they were in too much of a bloody hurry to strong-arm me down here, weren’t they?’

‘Mr Walker,’ said Vogel, ‘I’m quite sure you weren’t strong—’

Greg cut him off. ‘That’s as maybe, but I heard my missus crying earlier. Sobbing ’er heart out, she was, and don’t tell me it weren’t her because I know bloody
better. Whaddya think you’re doing, making a doll like her cry? Never hurt a fly, my Karen.’

‘Mr Walker, two women have been murdered, a police officer, my colleague, and an elderly lady, both, I believe, friends of yours. Both were violently attacked. I have to make whatever
inquiries I deem necessary in order to find whoever has committed these dreadful crimes and, in each case, bring him . . .’ Vogel paused, ‘or her, to justice. And I am afraid that means
questioning every member of the group of friends Michelle and Marlena were part of. Almost everyone in that group has recently been the victim of some type of incident, ranging in severity from
malicious pranks to murder. Those of you who are innocent of any wrongdoing could be in extreme danger. That includes your wife. If she is innocent, as you say, then I must do everything in my
power to establish her innocence and to ascertain if there is anything she knows, albeit unwittingly, that might lead us to the guilty party. And if she or anyone else is upset by being questioned,
well, so be it.’

Vogel glanced to the side and saw DC Jones staring at him. Vogel coughed, clearing his throat noisily to hide his embarrassment. He was aware that he was not conducting this interview in a
professional manner. Nor strictly according to procedure. He didn’t have to explain himself to anyone. Least of all to a suspect.

Greg was also staring at him. And it was he who broke the silence.

‘You’re right,’ he said, taking Vogel by surprise. ‘I’m not thinking straight. You gotta do what you gotta do to find this bastard. It’s not the Fonz, we know
that now. He couldn’t ’ave killed Michelle anyway, right?’

Vogel nodded.

‘Yeah, so the bastard’s still at large. My Karen could be next. Any of us could. And Michelle, I can’t believe she’s dead. She was that pretty and full of life
always.’ He broke off. ‘I mean, not that it makes any difference, that stuff. My Karen, well, she’ll be crying about Michelle as much as herself.’

He looked directly at Vogel.

‘Anything you want to know, anything I can do to help, guv,’ he said.

‘You can tell me about your own relationship with Michelle.’

‘We were friends. Not close friends, like, but good friends. Just part of a group that met every Sunday really . . . but you know that.’

Vogel nodded. He did indeed know that, and he was sick of asking the same questions and getting the same answers. He felt he was getting nowhere. All he could hope was that the boys doing the
searches, and the various forensics results they were awaiting might give him some of the answers he needed. In the meantime, he could only continue to go through the motions. The answers continued
to be repetitive.

Greg got on very well with Michelle. No, there had never been any ill feeling between them. And no, he could think of no one with a grudge against her.

‘Except maybe her old man, Phil, another copper. Did you know she was married to a copper, and that they’re separated?’

Vogel nodded.

‘Yeah, he ran off with some woman Michelle always referred to as “that tart”.’ Greg grinned. ‘She was always going on about him. No love lost there, either way
round.’

Vogel sighed. The team had already checked out Phil Monahan. Vogel had asked for that to be done as soon as he’d heard about Michelle’s death. He now knew that Monahan had been on
duty since 8 a.m. that day and had spent most of the morning at his desk in Dorchester CID. He certainly would at no stage have had time to nip up to London, murder his estranged wife, and nip
back. Even if he’d had any desire or inclination to do so.

The final interviewee was Bob.

‘Of course I can prove I was at Chatham Towers all morning,’ he said. ‘Twice a week I go there and it takes me ’til early afternoon. I get there about eight and I
don’t usually leave ’til after two. I know the people who go off to work early, and I do their terraces first. Then I do the public areas. The place is usually deserted by nine
o’clock, you see, because it’s all professional people, lawyers, accountants, City workers, that sort of thing. So I don’t get in anyone’s way. Before I start, Pete –
that’s the porter – he always makes me a cuppa.’

‘And he did that this morning?’

‘Yes. We take a bit of a break, sit down in his little room in the basement, have a chat. Then I get stuck in again. There’s a lot to do at this time of year on the terraces and
outside, clearing the last of the winter stuff, putting in the spring bedding plants and so on. And in the foyer, well, they always like it to look tiptop with a bit of colour, so I’m
constantly replacing plants, usually just rotating them, you know. I don’t like to throw living things out. I bring them back to my place if I can find the room, put them in my cold frame if
I need to, give ’em a bit of TLC—’

‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Vogel impatiently. He didn’t need a lecture on horticulture, and if he’d been less wearied by the lack of progress he probably wouldn’t have
let Bob go on as much as he had. He did his best to persevere.

‘So how long did you and Pete spend together drinking tea this morning?’

‘Oh, about twenty minutes, I suppose,’ said Bob.

‘And then you worked on the public areas. Was this Pete with you then?’

‘Some of the time. He has a desk in the foyer, but he has various jobs to do. He can confirm that I wouldn’t have had the chance to nip off and murder little Michelle Monahan.’
Bob shook his head sadly. ‘Look at me,’ he instructed. ‘Do you really think I’ve got it in me to murder somebody?’

‘You were in the army, Mr Buchanan, you have been to war.’

‘A long time ago. And one thing that did was to make me never again want to have anything to do with the death of another human being. If I’m the best suspect you can come up with,
then I’d say you haven’t got very far with this investigation.’