17 Cavendish Square Read online

  SEVENTEEN CAVENDISH SQUARE

  David Field

  Sharpe Books

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  Copyright © David Field 2019.

  David Field has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2019 by Sharpe Books.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’

  Virgil's Aeneid

  Chapter One

  Shirley Heathcote took a generous swig from her gin and tonic, placed the glass carefully back on the side table, thrust her wrists clear of the cuffs of her frilly blouse and broke into the first few bars of ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’. Then she allowed herself a slow smile of irony at her choice of music – here in the Pelican Club, they were all misbehaving.

  Even cute little Diane on Reception. Just out of business college, and skimming one in four of the credit cards that came her way over the counter, as the punters paid in advance for what the establishment had on offer. They were hardly likely to complain to the police after all, and little did their wives and girlfriends realise that the sizeable debits on their account records in favour of ‘West Brampton Wholesalers’ was another little joke, this time invented by the boss – ‘Her Upstairs’, as the staff called her – Linda Clifford, who might well be past her own sell-by date, but knew exactly how to run a modern brothel in the age of electronic finance.

  Shirley’s eyes rose from the keyboard to resume ogling Tam the barman, that tall spunky Scotsman who was welcome to go roaming in her gloaming any time he liked, but who seemed to prefer to spend his time selling little packets of relaxation to the more nervous of his clientele, while ripping the boss off by adding a couple of quid to the price of every drink. The only one who never paid even the normal price was the bouncer, ‘Jimbo’, who was currently doing his best to chat up the dark-haired woman sitting up at the bar, who at the same time was trying to sell some sort of wholesale liquor deal to Tam and Jimbo, not realising that neither of them were even remotely ‘management’. She maybe thought Jimbo was the manager, and probably wouldn’t be quite so keen on him cosying up to her as eagerly as he was if she knew that he’d done time for GBH. At the same time she seemed to have eyes only for Tam, so she clearly had taste.

  It was only early afternoon, but already it was getting busy, and nervous punters were sidling into the bar area by the minute, easing themselves into the plush chairs and eyeing the talent on display – which, in this establishment, also meant on offer. In the far corner, the demure Chinese-looking girl calling herself Suzy was actually Vietnamese, and her clients would no doubt be very surprised to learn that the alter ego of ‘Suzy Thong’ was in fact an overseas dental student whose parents had no idea how she supplemented their already generous allowance towards her career aspirations. Likewise, ‘Voodoo Vanda’, whose speciality was a fertility rite that featured dead chickens, was in real life a trainee physiotherapist called Gloria who had never got any closer to Haiti than a holiday to Barbados to be reunited with her cousins.

  Shirley finished the number with one of her characteristic glissandos, and lit up a cigarette. A thirty-four year old schoolgirl put her wine glass down on the top of the piano for long enough to raise her box-pleated skirt and adjust a suspender.

  ‘Afternoon, Kim,’ Shirley said breezily. ‘Another Oscar-winning performance as Samantha the Sex-crazed Sixth-former?’

  ‘It’s better than “Sister Helen the Heavenly Head-job” anyway,’ Kim replied with a grimace. ‘I’m still trying to get the jizz off my habit from last Friday. I reckon that bloke had been saving up for a month!’

  The saleswoman with the dark hair slid from her barstool, and Tam went out through the back door of the bar.

  ‘Since no-one’s likely to be taking the money for the immediate future, what’s that wine you’re drinking?’ Shirley asked Kim. Kim smiled back as she watched Shirley slip behind the bar and help herself from the optic.

  ‘You’re going to get caught doing that one of these days, and then you’ll be out on your arse.’

  ‘Trust me,’ Shirley reassured her. ‘I’ve been doing it for years, and Her Upstairs can afford it. Semillon Blanc, wasn’t it?’

  With her reloaded gin and tonic glass in the other hand, Shirley retrieved her cigarette from the ashtray at the bass end of the keyboard and took a few heavy draws before extinguishing it.

  ‘Time for my meal break,’ she told Kim. ‘D’you fancy a kebab from down the road?’

  ‘No thanks – they give me flatulence. Can’t go farting all over the paying customers.’

  ‘Who knows? It might be the start of a new specialised service,’ Shirley grinned, then nodded towards her drink.

  ‘Keep an eye on that for me, there’s a love. I’ll be back in a couple of shakes. What time’s your strict headmaster due, anyway?’ she enquired, and Kim glanced up at the wall clock.

  ‘Not until around three o’clock, or so Diane said. I only hope that he’s not a real schoolteacher, dropping in for a quick one after school’s finished.’

  ‘School wasn’t like that in my day,’ Shirley observed despondently. ‘Mine was full of nuns anyway.’

  ‘Please don’t mention nuns!’ Kim pleaded as Shirley retrieved her handbag from under the piano and headed for the front door.

  Kim was well down her second glass of wine when a succession of piercing screams echoed down the staircase, and a buzzing red light flashed behind the bar. Jimbo raced in from Reception just as Tam reappeared from somewhere near the cellar door and glanced down at the room number that was being displayed.

  ‘Twenty six!’ he shouted to Jimbo. ‘Hey, hang on a wee minute– is that no’ the boss’s quarters?’

  ‘Bloody right!’ Jimbo shouted, as he took the stairs two at a time.

  It was all chaos on the next floor up, as men and women in various stages of undress and fantasy costume milled out of the boudoirs into the hallway to investigate the noise. Jimbo raced up the two flights as if taking part in an alpine marathon, and skidded to a halt in the open doorway of Room 26, where a speechless cleaner was pointing with horrified eyes and shaking hands at something lying on the bed. The ‘something’ was Linda Clifford, and she had not died from any cause that might be remotely described as ‘natural’.

  Her back was arched as if she had been limbo dancing, and her hands were clawed like talons as they reached for the ceiling. There was vomit all down the front of her tailored tank top, the tourniquet was still around her arm, and the hypodermic was lying on the floor at the side of the bed. After checking, and noting the absence of any pulse, Jimbo closed the door quickly and ordered everyone back downstairs. After reassuring the cleaner that she had seen nothing – or else – he ran back down to the bar and grabbed Tam by the bow tie.

  ‘What the fuck did you give the boss today?’

  ‘The usual – why?’

  ‘She’s fucking dead, that’s why. I’m going to have to call the police, but keep your gob shut and play stupid. You shouldn’t find that difficult.’

  He turned to address the curious crowd of punters and working girls who were still in the bar area.

  ‘Party time’s over for today, folks. The boss seems to have died in somewhat dodgy circumstances, and in a short while this place will have more cops in it than a pub after closing time. If you don’t want to have to answer any inconvenient questions regarding your presence here, now might be a good time to return to your parking meters.’

  They needed no further persuasion, and by the time that the first siren became audible in the distance, the place was as empty as a synagogue in Beirut. Further down Cavendish Square, Shirley looked out from the doorway of the Olympus Kebab Palace, saw the first marked police vehicle skid to a sideways halt outside her place of unofficial employment, and decided that she would forfeit the remainder of her gin and tonic.

  It was a further half hour before a police surgeon took one look at the mortal remains of Linda Clifford and called in a pathologist. The two men stood conversing in the plushly-carpeted private room on the second floor when the door opened wider, and a prematurely greying, somewhat underweight, man in a grey suit that looked slept in flashed his warrant card, and absent-mindedly advised them that he was ‘DI David Petrie, Homicide’, while gazing in amazement at the corpse on the bed.

  ‘What the Hell caused that?’ he asked. The pathologist pulled rank on the police surgeon in order to get in the first diagnosis.

  ‘Dr James here and I agree that it looks like strychnine poisoning. The symptoms are almost textbook classic, and I think you’ll find the medium of its introduction on the floor there.’

  ‘What, heroin you mean?’ Petrie enquired as he became aware of the hypodermic on the carpet.

  ‘Unless she was a diabetic,’ the police surgeon replied, with a strong hint of sarcasm, ‘but in a place like this, heroin is probably as common as talcum powder.’

  ‘A place like what?’ Petrie demanded.

  ‘I can only assume you’re new to the west side,’ the pathologist replied politely. ‘This is the best-known brothel west of the town centre. In the
annals of negotiable virtue, Number Seventeen Cavendish Square ranks up there with the best.’

  ‘But the Square itself looks pretty up-market,’ Petrie objected.

  ‘So’s the brothel – or so they tell me,’ Dr James advised him. ‘Knocking shops aren’t all located in the rear of Chinese tattoo parlours these days. It’s big money.’

  There was a flurry of activity in the doorway, and the sound of a brief argument. Then into the room strode a tall, slim Indian woman in her late thirties, her warrant card still held high in the air for inspection.

  ‘DI Morton, Special Operations. Who’s allegedly in charge here?’

  ‘I am,’ the underweight man in the crumpled grey suit advised her haughtily. ‘DI Petrie. Central Homicide.’

  ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I’ll keep this polite, since we may finish up working together on this,’ Vandana Morton replied, ‘but you have to know that anything to do with brothels in Brampton is now under the priority remit of Operation Delilah.’

  ‘Operation what?’

  ‘Delilah.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘Read your e-mails,’ DI Morton snapped back. She looked again at the body on the bed, then at the two medical men.

  ‘Strychnine?’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ the pathologist declared.

  ‘Classic post-mortem indicia,’ Morton replied casually. ‘Professor Gillies didn’t miss much during our pathology course.’

  ‘She’s missing this, though,’ the pathologist advised her. ‘She’s on long-service leave back in Edinburgh. I’m Charles Wheeler, her new deputy.’

  ‘Van Morton, pleased to meet you. PMI less than two hours, at a guess.’

  ‘Right on the money.’

  Morton turned back to face Petrie.

  ‘This being the sort of establishment it is, all the punters will have fled as if pursued by demons, but the staff should still be here. I know a few of the girls I spotted on my way in, so I’ll begin questioning downstairs.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing until I get clearance from Central,’ Petrie insisted, but Morton was already on her way out of the room. She turned in the doorway.

  ‘By the time you’ve done that, I can have half a dozen useful lines to follow up. I’ve brought my own team, so yours won’t be compromised, should I be out of line. Somehow I doubt it, though. Contact ACC Willows if you’re still feeling challenged.’

  Petrie stabbed at his mobile phone, his face a mask of determination, as Dr Wheeler gave permission for the photographer to begin work ahead of the SOCOS who would take the room apart item by item, seeking forensic inspiration among the plush velvet and leather.

  Downstairs, Van Morton smiled at the pale-faced schoolgirl.

  ‘Hello, Kim. Worried that you might be late handing in your homework?’

  ‘Are we all being busted?’ Kim enquired.

  ‘Not today,’ Van assured her. ‘At least, not if I get the information I’m after.’

  She raised her voice to be heard above the background hum of conversation.

  ‘OK, let me keep this brief. Detective Constables Bradbury and Keating here will take your details, and make arrangements for you to come into police headquarters in the next day or so to give full statements. And as an additional guarantee against failing memories, they’ll also take your mug shots on their mobile phones. Now, who’s in charge of security here?’

  ‘That’s me,’ Jimbo replied as he stepped forward. Van Morton flipped open her notebook.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Jimbo.’

  Van frowned.

  ‘Presumably your parents didn’t christen you “Jimbo”?’

  ‘James Boyce,’ he muttered reluctantly by way of additional information. ‘Flat One Twenty Six, North Tower, Bidwell Estate.’

  ‘Thank you. Now who’s the pianist?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The pianist? That’s someone who plays the piano. I’ve already looked inside the lid, and the distinct absence of piano rolls inside it tells me that it was, until very recently, powered by human hand. But all the girls in this room are primarily employed for their horizontal skills, so who plays the piano whose lid is still raised, with a collection of Fats Waller music on the hanger?’

  ‘That’ll be Shirley,’ Jimbo advised her. Van looked round the room.

  ‘Which one’s she?’

  ‘She’s not here. Must still be on her lunch break or something.’

  Van glanced at her wristwatch.

  ‘At ten to four in the afternoon? Try again. When did you last see her?’

  ‘While I was up at the bar, talking to a sales rep.’

  Van beckoned for the female DC to stop what she was doing and come over, then pointed to the half-empty gin and tonic glass and the ashtray.

  ‘Jill, get these bagged and sent for fingerprints and DNA, would you?’ She turned back to Jimbo.

  ‘Does this Shirley have a second name?’

  ‘Not in here. Nobody does.’

  ‘That must make it difficult to fill out the salary cheques every month,’ she replied sarcastically, as Jimbo replied with a wan smile.

  ‘OK,’ Van continued, ‘so to the best of your knowledge, how long before the discovery of the body did your resident musician cease entertaining the punters and go for her meal break?’

  ‘Less than half an hour or so, I reckon.’

  ‘And the sales rep. you mentioned?’

  ‘She left before Shirley did. I was back at the front desk when Shirley went out for her meal break.’

  ‘What did the sales rep. look like?’

  ‘I couldn’t give you a good description, apart from the fact that she had long dark hair, all crinkled like it had been in a steam press. She was roughly mid-thirties, spoke with an accent of some sort, and was very pushy. She seemed a bit annoyed when I joined her and Tam – he’s the barman over there. I think she was trying to sell him a wholesale deal on the booze, but the boss handles – sorry, handled – all that side of things.’

  ‘And being a “pushy” type, as you say, she’d have left a brochure, or at least a business card?’

  ‘Not with me, she didn’t – ask Tam.’

  ‘I will, but not today. OK, that’s all for now.’

  The rest of her team had completed the simple task of collecting names, addresses, telephone numbers and mug-shots by the time that DI Petrie came back down the stairs with his own acolytes in silent attendance. He paused on his way out, and looked across at Van.

  ‘You got away with it this far, but ACC Willows says he’ll sort out the pecking order tomorrow. I take it you’ve got all the names and addresses of this lot?’

  ‘Of course. I don’t miss routine tasks like that,’ Van replied haughtily.

  ‘You did omit to ask the name of the deceased,’ Petrie gloated back.

  ‘Oh, I already knew her,’ Van smiled. ‘Name of Linda Clifford. Aged forty-eight, a record as long as your face for “living off ”, former proprietor of the motel with the mostest down by the river, and most recently resident manager of this house of accommodation.’

  ‘Former employer?’ Petrie enquired acidly. Van walked across to within inches of his face with an expression of pure revulsion, and spat out her response.

  ‘Former informer. Someone just did away with one of my best contacts, and you can rest assured that this will go much higher than ACC Willows.’

  Chapter Two

  Mike Saxby sighed for the tenth time that day, and checked his wall clock for the twentieth. Just after four fifteen, and over an hour to go before he could end his misery and boredom for another day. He reached reluctantly for the file marked “Roster Allocations, May 2013”, pulled it towards him and opened it. Under-staffed, under-funded, under-used, and no doubt under-valued. And what idiot suggested the idea of ‘clustering’ Northern CID in the first place? It might work for the uniforms, but CID relied heavily on local knowledge.

  The phone rang, and he picked it up absent-mindedly, hoping that it was someone in H.R. to tell him that they’d miscalculated, and that his pension was available now, and not in 2021.