Murder Comes Calling (11 page)

Rex thought his friend in an uncharacteristically good mood, but was too absorbed in the matter at hand to pay it much mind. “The four victims moved here almost twenty years ago. Ernest and Barry were Essex boys. And Valerie, who could be Sylvia, was a bookkeeper. I’ve definitely got the goose bumps, Malcolm.”

“It’s all beginning to make more sense,” his friend agreed as he deposited a platter of sandwiches between them with a grandiose flourish. “Curried egg salad.” He paused for a moment as he contemplated his creation.

“Malcolm, whatever is wrong with you? You look all mooney.”

“If you must know, I saw Charlotte just before lunch and gave her the chocolates.”

“Well, well. You sly old dog. And?”

“I caught her as she was returning from the post office. She was quite receptive to my overtures, I think. I managed to sneak in the fact that you’re engaged and I’ve been a widower for three years. She was very sympathetic. It appears she lost someone special too. In a car accident.”

“I applaud you, Malcolm. Such a bold step deserves a beer.” Rex got to his feet to retrieve two cans from the refrigerator.

“And you deserve praise for your work on the case. I knew I could count on you!”

“Not so fast,” Rex said. “It’s all supposition at this point.”

Malcolm suddenly appeared solemn. “But if the Russkies
are
responsible for the murders and find out about our involvement, our goose is cooked. Look what they did to my neighbours.”

“Most uplifting, Malcolm.” Rex shot his old college friend a look loaded with sarcasm.

“Don’t mention it.”

Were the Russian mafia really involved? A chill slid down Rex’s spine. This was a potentially dangerous situation, beyond anything he had encountered before, and he suddenly felt out of his depth.

fifteen

Rex continued his research
after lunch while Malcolm was in the garden finishing the work he had abandoned to see Charlotte. He could hear his friend digging somewhere out back by the river, the shovel scraping into the gritty earth. Pausing in his online reading, Rex wondered if they should warn Charlotte about Mrs. Jensen’s prowler and the poisoning of the dog, in case she had a dog. Charlotte Spelling was alone in her house and the fact it was for sale could not be ignored.

He got up from his chair and looked under “Spelling” in the directory by the phone in the hall. Not bothering to put on a coat, he exited the kitchen door to the back garden, where he found Malcolm, spade in hand, uprooting a tangle of brambles.

“It’s warmed up nicely,” Rex commented, looking towards the river where beams of light played off the water visible a short distance away between the reeds and bushes, turning the surface from cold pewter to sea glass green.

Malcolm leaned his forearm against the wooden handle of his gardening implement. “Glorious weather,” he agreed. A sheen of perspiration coated his face, which had lost some of its usual pallor as a result of being out in the wind and sun. A renewed energy in his movements added to the impression of newfound vigour. Rex was in no doubt as to its cause.

“Have you come to help?” his friend asked. He pointed to Rex’s feet. “You’ll need sturdier shoes.”

“Actually, I came to ask if you had Charlotte’s number. She’s not listed in the phone book.”

“I don’t. I thought it too forward to ask for it earlier. Why?”

“I thought maybe we should tell her aboot the man lurking across the street from her house last night, if you haven’t already.”

“It would only frighten her. I think we already did a good job of that yesterday. If Lottie was really concerned, she would have called me about it, but there were no messages.”

“All the same, I feel it would be remiss not to warn Charlotte, especially if, heaven forbid, something were to happen. I got the impression speaking with her yesterday that she doesn’t have much to do with the neighbours, so I doubt she’s heard.”

Malcolm wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve. “Right, well, leave it to me,” he said. “It’ll give me another excuse to go and see her.”

“Do you need more chocolates?” Rex joked.

“Very funny.” Malcolm grinned boyishly and went back to his digging. Just then, the phone trilled from the house. “That might be Lottie now,” he said, one foot poised on the base of the shovel. “To tell me about the dog poisoning. Or it might be a nuisance telemarketer.”

“I’ll get it,” Rex offered, heading back. “I’ll call you if it’s urgent.”

He trotted to the back door, wiped his feet on the mat, and hurried to the ringing phone. “Hullo, Rex Graves speaking,” he announced upon picking up the handset.

“Oh, Rex,” a female voice replied at the other end of the line. “This is Charlotte. I was expecting Malcolm.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” he said in good humour.

“Not at all. Is he available? I wanted to thank him for the delectable chocolates.”

“He’s in the garden attacking a bramble patch. I’ll go fetch him.”

“Not if he’s busy. But if you could give him my mobile number. It’s the only way to reach me as I’m not in the book.”

“Be glad to.” Rex wrote down the digits, thinking Malcolm would be glad she had called. And it was a lucky coincidence she had. “While I have you on the phone,” he said, “I wanted to advise you of something I heard from Lottie this morning. In case nobody mentioned it to you.”

“No. What?”

“A prowler was spotted by Mrs. Jensen, who lives across the street from you. At around two this morning.”

“Doing what, exactly?” Charlotte asked sharply, and Rex wished he hadn’t had to be the one to deliver the sinister news.

“She saw a man keeping to the shadow zones between the street lamps, possibly wearing a balaclava.”

Charlotte laughed unexpectedly. “Sorry, but isn’t that just too ludicrous to be believed? I mean, really.” She giggled again. “And all because the lady loves Milk Tray?”

“Come again?”

“Remember those adverts where a man in a balaclava rappels down the side of a building and enters a window, and then presents a box of chocolates to a woman in a neglig
é
e? That’s what your description reminded me of. I suppose it’s because I have chocolates on my mind.”

“Oh, I see.” Rex smiled. “Do they still run that ad?”

“I don’t know. I don’t watch much telly.”

“Well, I just wanted to pass that information on. Better safe than sorry, if you’ll pardon the cliché. Make sure you lock up at night. In fact, all the time for now.” The four murders had been conducted in broad daylight, after all.

“I will, and I appreciate your concern, Rex. Bye now,” Charlotte breathed into the phone, and she hung up before he could respond or ask if she had a dog.

A sense of guilt niggled at him as he stood with the phone in his hand and tried to fathom why. Guilt for enjoying the caressing sound of her voice? For speaking and joking with her when Malcolm should have been having that conversation? Guilt for worrying her with some silly gossip? Irritated without quite knowing the reason, he replaced the receiver and went to tell Malcolm that Charlotte had called and left her number.

“I warned her aboot the prowler, but she didn’t seem unduly concerned,” he reported. He didn’t mention the anecdote about the Cadbury chocolates. At least he hadn’t called her Charlie, the nickname she went by—as she’d mentioned the day before.

“Do you think I should ask her out for dinner?” Malcolm looked eager, evidently pleased she had taken the initiative to call. “Strike while the iron’s hot, sort of thing? But it’s Saturday. What if she already has a date?” Frowning, he kicked the shovel loose of clods of earth.

“Then you’ll find oot one way or the other. But she did phone to thank you for the chocolates and to leave her number,” Rex encouraged his friend.

“Right,” Malcolm said, perking up. “And she must have gone to the trouble of looking mine up since I never gave it to her.”

Rex experienced a bizarre feeling of déj
à
vu, of being back at university trying to gauge a girl’s interest and debating whether or not to ask her out. Malcolm had always been a vacillator in that regard.

“The King’s Head or perhaps something fancier? There’s a nice Italian restaurant on the high street in Godminton.”

“Ask her,” Rex suggested.

“Oh, I say, you don’t mind me leaving you at home, do you? Why don’t you come along? It might be less awkward.”

“Not for me. I’d feel like a third wheel. And I can easily fend for myself.”

“Anyway, it may be moot, since she may have other plans.” Malcolm took the spade to the shed, relatched the door, and returned without his gardening gloves. They walked back to the house.

“‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,’” Malcolm quoted from Shakespeare’s
Henry V
. “What if she says no?”

Rex pushed his friend towards the hall phone where he had left Charlotte’s number and retreated to the kitchen, closing the door behind him. All but oblivious to the murmur of Malcolm’s voice down the hall, he focused on his research where he had left off half an hour previously.

_____

John Calpin’s article in the
Scotsman
hinted at revelations in his upcoming book,
Baddest British Mobsters
, due out in August of the following year from Penworth Press. The exposé had simply summarized the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars of the eighties and showed how the Cruikshank Twins had successfully implemented the model in Essex, thereby attracting the attention of a Russian gang operating out of northeast London. Rex felt he might be getting closer to solving the riddle of the Russian letters, even though the article made no mention of them. It was elsewhere that he had read about a London gang using
MИP
as their symbol. What if it were the same gang, he thought with excitement.

The article was merely a teaser. More was to be divulged in the journalist’s book. Rex wished he could get his hands on it now.

Malcolm burst into the kitchen. “She said yes! We’re going to the King’s Head. I’d better go up and shower. Shirt and tie, or pullover?”

“Pullover.”

“And you’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Of course not. I’m up to my eyes in research. You know how I get.” A few hours of peace from Malcolm would be a boon, Rex thought, and he was happy that Charlotte had accepted his dinner invitation. His friend definitely needed more of a social life.

Malcolm left the room in a whirl and Rex heard him run up the carpeted stairs. Minutes later, the sound of water gushing through the pipes signified his friend was in the shower. The drowned-out words of a tuneless song reached him from the bathroom as he considered the implication of the words on his screen and how they might relate to the Notting Hamlet murders.

Frank Cruikshank, he learned, was most often referred to as Frankie in references to the notorious Essex gang. Rex remembered the name Frankie coming up in a conversation with a resident and reviewed his notes. He quickly found what he was looking for. Ernest had mentioned the name to Lottie in the context of it being time for him and Frankie to move on. A slip-up, no doubt, on Ernest’s part. The name was such a coincidence that Rex all but concluded Ernest and Barry were the elusive gangland twins, and if Frankie had been Barry in his new identity, Ernest had been Kevin, or Kev, as he’d been commonly known. He had also gone by “Kevlar Kev” or just Kevlar.

Online sources alluded to Kev as the leader of the gang, a man not to be trifled with and who had managed to avoid justice at every turn, thus earning him the sobriquet. Perhaps the fact he had escaped the arson attack on his family and other mob hits had reinforced his reputation for invincibility.

Rex unearthed a second photo of the nephew who had overseen the ice cream vendors and controlled their runs. Darrell Cruikshank had also directed the family’s bookmaking, loansharking, and other nefarious activities until an investigation by MI5 and the Inland Revenue resulted in his imprisonment. Darrell had not given up his uncles, which had presumably done nothing to commute the length of his sentence, and he was only due for release in October of this year, according to the online information. “Wait a minute,” Rex said aloud. “That’s last month!” He would make enquiries first thing Monday morning at the high-security prison where Darrell had resided for twenty years at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

Malcolm popped his head round the door, his face scrubbed pink and his hair, neatly parted at the side, still damp from his shower. “Wish me luck.”

“The best.”

“How’s the research coming along?” Dressed in dark slacks and a navy blue crew-neck sweater, Malcolm approached the table where Rex was working.

Rex gave his friend a brief overview of his findings, including an account of the Cruikshank family’s “financial services” in ironic quotation marks.

“So the Cruikshanks were not only drug traffickers, but loan sharks?” Malcolm whistled softly.

“Correct. Not nice people.”

“Do we really care that they’re dead?” his friend asked. “That’s if they are, in fact, our Notting Hamlet victims.”

“That’s not the point. Somebody murdered them and we undertook to discover who. The nephew was supposed to have been released from Belmarsh in October.” Rex scratched his beard. “He may well have an axe to grind with his family’s murderer and want to see them brought to justice. I wonder if he would talk to me. Anyway, get off with you. You don’t want to be late on your first date with Charlotte.”

“Heavens, no. See you later. Don’t work too hard.” Malcolm accompanied his admonishment with a smile, knowing from experience that Rex would do just that. “And don’t forget to eat.”

“Stop fussing!” Rex shooed him off in jovial spirits, and Malcolm left.

The garage door clanged open and shut and the sound of Malcolm’s car grew fainter. Through the kitchen window Rex saw it was already growing dark. Easing back into his project with full concentration, he managed to find old photographs of the Cruikshank twins and, though in grainy black-and-white, they showed they were not identical. In their new lives in Notting Hamlet, Ernest and Barry were 81 and 79 years old respectively, no doubt to disguise their true identities better.

Rex also found a photo of the daughter, Sylvia, leaving the Old Bailey in 1995 after her father was acquitted of a murder, but she bore little resemblance to the picture of Valerie Trotter from the media photo, procured Rex knew not where. One police mug shot showed Fred the Spanner as a young man, before his disfiguring scar, though he had never been an Adonis. Compared to the recent newspaper photo, there could be no doubt he was Vic Chandler: the same bullet-shaped head, pug nose, and prominent ears, though he had taken to shaving off his hair, or what remained of it.

The background material on the Cruikshank gang suggested organized crime had not been a family business before the twins saw the potential of selling drugs in the as-yet unsaturated market of Essex, a county endowed with ports and strategic proximity to London. Born to an Irish Catholic gas meter reader and his wife Eileen, Kev and Frankie Cruikshank grew up in Clacton-on-Sea, the eldest of nine children, but hadn’t recruited among their brothers and sisters. In fact, they seemed to have made it their mission to improve the lives of their siblings by footing the bills for vocational training, as well as extracurricular school activities for the youngest of them. The screen began to blur. Rex rubbed the inner corners of his eyes between thumb and forefinger. Tired from staring at the computer, he went back to his notes and read over his interviews with the residents.

Ernest Blackwell and Barry Burns had portrayed themselves as amiable old duffers, no doubt playing up their senile ailments, and had acted the part of good neighbours without, however, getting too close to the other residents. Ernest’s dread of hospitals made abundant sense now in light of his new identity. Lie low and avoid all risk of detection would have been his mantra, as with the rest of the gang.