Death by Indulgence Read online

  ‘This is it? This is the entire business premises?’ he asked as he was led around the perimeter of the building. They walked through the compound containing a vast collection of mechanically unsound vehicles in various states of disrepair, piles of old tyres, discarded oil drums, and a hillock of hardcore that Barney used for filling pot holes in the yard. Having escorted him on the grand tour of the business, with Malik expounding the virtues of CCTV and motion sensor equipment, Annette was getting rather irked by his overuse of the familiar term “luv”. The word peppered the end of many a comment from the sharp dressed Asian man with a pseudo East End gangster persona. Cocky and irritating were the two words that sprung to Annette’s mind as they completed the circuit of Ribble’s Garage.

  She eventually paraded a shivering Mal through to the small convenience store that served the village of Lower Marton.

  June honoured the visitor with a surly nod. ‘Come far ‘ave you?’

  ‘Not too far. Crewsthorpe.’

  ‘Should have hopped on a train in this weather.’

  ‘Er, yes. Maybe I should,’ Mal replied brushing snow from the lapels of his suit and wiping his shiny black leather shoes on the doormat.

  ‘Forgot your coat, did you?’ June asked without any sympathy linked to her enquiry. ‘Still, I don’t s’pose you need one where you come from.’

  ‘June!’ Annette was about to step in with an apology when Mal responded. ‘I was born in Crewsthorpe, luv. It’s just as cold there as it is here in the sticks.’

  Hustling Mal to the door at the back of the shop, Annette took him into the homely residence attached to the garage business. ‘Sorry about June. She’s not very worldly wise.’

  He stared about him, underwhelmed and momentarily silenced at the sight of mediocre furnishings past their best and décor from another era.

  ‘Shabby chic,’ Annette said ignoring the disappointment present in Mal’s tone when he asked if they had only recently moved in. She found herself laughing at his judgemental approach to life. ‘Your place is a bit swanky then is it?’ He didn’t need to reply, she knew as much already.

  Mal tiptoed around the kitchen furniture, holding his hands away from any surfaces or chair backs as if touching them would result in contamination. Annette directed him to follow her upstairs and into her film-editing studio. No larger than the average double bedroom it was kitted out with monitors, mixing desk, computer and an ample supply of snacks to keep Annette provisioned with additional calories between meals.

  ‘Have a seat, young man.’

  With a resigned sigh Mal placed himself on the edge of one of the office chairs in front of her desk as Annette squeezed her backside between the two arms of her well-worn seat.

  ‘From all your sales patter it seems you are a bit of a whiz-kid when it comes to CCTV security systems. So, as you will have noticed, there are a number of cameras around the premises which cover the forecourt. We have them linked to record any flagrant breaches of the law. You know the sort of thing: break-ins, drive offs, scallywags after nicking themselves a motor.’

  ‘Right, so what do you need me for? Staff theft?’

  ‘No, bigoted she may be, but June’s as honest as the day is long. We have a tricky problem and I was hoping you could shed some light on this.’ She pointed towards one of the monitors to her left and pressed a button on a keyboard illuminating the screen with an overhead shot of two people making their way through a secure gate. One was wrapped up against the weather and wore a baseball cap hiding their face, the other was plain to see, dressed in a single breasted Chesterfield style overcoat, scarf tied neatly, cravat style, at his throat.

  ‘Where is this exactly, luv?’ Mal asked.

  ‘Recognise it?’

  ‘No, not immediately.’

  Annette gave her visitor a sideways glance to check his level of interest. He was staring intently for several seconds before his facial features stiffened. ‘Hang on. What is all this about, luv?’

  ‘You obviously recognise the taller of the two, but can you help us to identify the one in the cap?’

  Mal sat back moving his chair from the desk and he tensed, ready to stand up and leave. ‘This is not what I’m qualified for.’

  ‘You’ll get your money. Don’t fret about that. Konrad contacted you because we are looking for Ella Fitzwilliam in connection with a friend’s disappearance.’

  ‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with me.’

  ‘Don’t you? That’s a peculiar thing to say. Staff at Buxham’s, where that film was taken, say you are her step-brother, and that you collected her belongings from there when she lost her job. Konrad was keen to ask you about where we can find your sister. She seems to have gone to ground.’

  Mal stood. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake. You must be looking for another Malik Khan. It’s a popular name, luv. Very common.’

  Annette swivelled her chair around to face Mal. ‘We weren’t looking for a Malik Khan, actually; we were directed to contact a Mallory Fitzwilliam. He seems to have the same telephone number as you.’

  ‘As I said, I can’t help you.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t help?’ Annette raised one hand, palm facing her anxious guest who had blanched at the sight of Marcus Carver on the screen. With her other hand Annette pressed another key and a picture of a Mercedes A class appeared. Through the windscreen the driver could be seen, an Asian man wearing a flat cap. Blurred indistinct outlines of two female passengers in the rear could barely be made out.

  Annette could feel the moment when Mal stopped breathing. He shook his head. ‘No I’m sorry, you’ve got me there. I’ve no idea why you are showing me these pictures, luv.’

  ‘So that car doesn’t belong to your cousin Dinesh Khan?’

  ‘Look, lady, it may belong to someone called Dinesh Khan. How the hell would I know and what are you doing with these pictures anyway?’

  Annette had him where she wanted him. He couldn’t leave. He would have to find out why she had these shots of him and of Marcus Carver, and how she had them in her possession.

  ‘Oh dear. It seems Kon and I may have made a terrible mistake. I’m so sorry. I can’t apologise enough, Mr Khan. Please forget that you ever saw these pictures, forget the name Ella Fitzwilliam.’ Rolling forward, Annette put both hands on her knees and extricated herself with some difficulty from her chair. She grunted, risking a brief glance at Mal for his reaction.

  ‘I’m editing tomorrow’s Crime Watch programme for the BBC, you see. The police are keen to know where our friend Harry Drysdale has disappeared to.’

  She sighed dramatically, hoping that he would accept her story.

  ‘Such a shame. We honestly thought you were the man we were looking for and you do look just like the bloke driving that taxi. We think young Ella is in deep trouble, but then, if you don’t know who she is, you can’t help…’ Annette suddenly put a hand to her mouth before dropping it again, eyes wide. ‘Oh, my word. How stupid we’ve been. The police would surely have spoken to the real Mallory Fitzwilliam by now, unless they don’t know about him yet.’

  Mal had moved to the door but lingered there. ‘Why would the police want to talk to him?’ he asked.

  Finally, Annette had him where she wanted him. ‘What’s it to you… luv?’

  33

  The day Harry disappears

  ‘Yes, he’s definitively dead.’ There was no sense of panic in her tone. She sounded almost matter-of-fact as she held her ear to Harry’s mouth and looked down to his chest for signs of movement, of breathing.

  Marcus sat in an elegant gilded chair, holding silken curtain ties in one trembling hand, a stethoscope in the other. All strength sapped by fear, he let them dangle there as he stared at Ella examining Harry Drysdale’s limp body.

  ‘This can’t be happening… You killed him.’

  ‘Me? I don’t think so Dr Carver. You killed him. I was merely trying to protect myself when you sought to rape me. See?’ Ella held her wrists in t
he air and the red welts on her flesh were plainly recent.

  ‘You pushed me. I fell.’ Marcus felt cold. His throat closed as if suddenly swollen.

  ‘Is that what you’re going to tell the police?’ she asked.

  His hastily thought out stunt to make Harry suffer in repayment of his teasing photos and videos the previous week, had backfired completely. To add to his state of panic, the girl in front of him was acting as if she was in a television drama. Her response to the whole diabolical situation had been most bizarre, and she was becoming increasingly agitated and restless. Wasn’t she supposed to be in a state of shock too?

  ‘Can’t we leave him to be found in the morning? As if he died in his sleep?’ she said, shrugging.

  ‘He doesn’t exactly look as if he died in his sleep does he?’ The words had come without thinking. ‘No pathologist will fall for that.’ Marcus unsteadily levered himself from his seat and made his way towards her. ‘How the hell are we going to clear up this mess? I can’t be involved.’

  ‘That’s a thought. We could throw him out. Put him in the skip with the Christmas trees.’ Ella’s eyes sparkled like the tinsel in her hair.

  Marcus stopped suddenly, startled as Ella leapt up and began to jump on the spot, clapping her hands in gleeful applause at her own inventiveness.

  ‘Shut up, woman, and for God’s sake stop bouncing about, if someone makes a complaint we’ll be discovered and I need time to think what to do.’ His voice quavered as he touched at his clammy forehead. ‘Fuck. Fuck…’

  Ella couldn’t hold back. She was bursting with delirious levels of anticipation. ‘Two little fucks, twenty-two. Gone to heaven, thirty-seven. Devil’s door, number four. He’s gone blue, number two.’

  Incongruously, Ella produced a guttural laugh and Marcus stepped towards her to place a silencing hand over her mouth, when suddenly his mobile phone vibrated its way across the table in the middle of the room.

  Releasing a gasping but bemused Ella, he walked across picked it up and stared at it, freezing.

  It was Lydia.

  In the time it had taken for him to glance at the number of missed calls and at the texts he found, Ella had moved at an alarming speed and pounced back onto the bed. She was now wrapping a dead Harry Drysdale in the bottom sheet.

  ‘Stop. What are you doing?’ Marcus called out in a stage whisper.

  ‘What does it look like? I’m tucking him up in a shroud. Then I shall proceed to the waste bins outside, unwrap a Christmas tree and bring the plastic up here. Then you and I will transport Mr D back down in the lift disguised as an unwanted tree and dispose of him with the others. The waste collection is in the morning, monsieur.’

  Marcus shook his head in a pathetic effort to clear it. ‘What the bloody hell are you talking about?’ The girl was behaving as if she was drunk or on some weird cocktail of drugs. One moment she was elated and rambling the next animated and coherent.

  ‘We can’t leave him here. And if we are as equally guilty for his death as one another, then we have to move him. Why, what was your brilliant notion, monsieur?’ Ella asked, speaking rapidly. Marcus didn’t reply. He was stumped. This wasn’t supposed to have happened. He had wanted to punish Harry for his cruel stupidity, not to kill him.

  With his brain working through a furious jumble of tangled possibilities, he mulled over the girl’s outrageous proposition. Disposing of the body had to be preferable to calling the police and losing everything. If the police became involved, he would be exposed in the press as a pervert. His past would return to humiliate him, he would be marched in front of the Royal College and suspended, even if they believed his side of the story. He swallowed hard.

  Sitting in a lavish suite with a dead barrister and a mad woman he grappled with the outrageous conundrum of finding a way to cover up this appalling catastrophe. He didn’t have the luxury of time. The messages on his phone had been unnerving. Lydia was at home in terrible pain, the children were due back from her parents in the morning and she was asking for his advice. He was desperate to avoid her calling for an ambulance too soon; people would ask why he wasn’t at home. At the same time he was afraid that if she left it too late to seek help, she could be risking her health if not her life.

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ he asked Ella, who replied with speed.

  ‘We’ll use the service lift. The kitchen and bar have closed ages ago and the staff have gone, all apart from reception and the waking night manager who’ll be in his office. I’ll confirm when I go down to retrieve the plastic and twine. You remain here and begin packing his bags, and then you need to pack yours before we go.’

  ‘We should throw his bags out too.’

  Ella laughed scornfully. ‘Hypomania rules, Dr Carver. It sharpens the mind.’

  He looked at her, not understanding.

  She explained, exasperated. ‘I have Bipolar Disorder. It has its up sides,’ she said tapping her temple with a forefinger. ‘If we throw the bags in the bin with the body, they will be found together. If the bags leave the club with a person carrying them then it will be assumed that the person is the owner of the bags. Comprenez-vous?’

  He did understand but a cold feeling of dread was threatening to incapacitate him. His breathing was deep and rapid, leaving him light-headed, reeling. Amid the madness this girl was as bright as she was bonkers, if there were such a thing, and he realised that she was right. They had to hide the body. Although she was the one exploring possible solutions to their plight, they were both implicated in the death of Harry Drysdale. Whatever the decision, he needed to return home to Lydia as soon as possible to avert another crisis of his own making. The walls were closing in creating a tunnel, a single pathway with no room for U-turns.

  He sent his wife a text.

  I’ll be home in a few hours. If the pain gets any worse, then call an ambulance.

  Pacing around the suite, Ella dressed herself in a cardigan she found in Harry’s wardrobe. It was a little snug, but she managed to button it up at the waist. Marcus gathered together the rest of Harry’s belongings. He found a suitcase and began to throw items in haphazardly. Thoughts were spiralling. If Harry had been a true loyal friend, then he wouldn’t have been cruel and teased him and this would never have happened. If Konrad Neale had not called to Harry as he made his way back from the gents’ toilets earlier that evening then Harry would still be alive.

  Harry had broken every rule and introduced Konrad Neale to the occupants of table eighty-eight, showing off, inadvertently sealing his own fate.

  ‘We love it here,’ Harry had said to Konrad. ‘Bloody amazing place, very discreet.’ Marcus had watched in stunned silence as they threw their heads back laughing and patting each other on the back. The giveaway moment had been Harry’s parting comment. ‘As I always say, there’s no fun without flesh.’ Konrad had then left to re-join his friends, chuckling. Marcus knew who he was instantly, just like everyone else in the restaurant had done.

  ‘What if he had recognised me, you bloody idiot?’ Marcus had spat those words in Harry’s ear. He knew that he could never forgive the thoughtlessness and began, at that very moment, to make a plan for revenge; a punishment for Harry’s teasing and for that idiotic breach of trust.

  34

  Disappearing Harry

  Entering the service lift their chests heaved with exertion as they struggled to manage the awkwardness of the body now wrapped in thick grey plastic sheeting, tied with brown hemp twine.

  Once inside the relative safety of the elevator, Ella pressed the button to take them to the ground floor and to the loading bay at the rear of the stores. She lifted the soft woollen cuff of Harry’s cashmere cardigan to check her delicate dress-watch and was relieved to see that time was on their side.

  Cup of tea, number three.

  Not quite three o’clock in the early hours of the morning. Plenty of time to make preparations to depart before the hotel came to life. She felt astoundingly smug about how well her strategy fo
r disposing of Harry’s body had gone, so far. It was physically tiring but not impossible.

  With the lift descending at a snail’s pace, Ella leant against the dull sheet metal of the interior, trying to recuperate. The head end of the bundle lay over her feet. Harry Drysdale was dead, and Ella felt vindicated. It wasn’t her fault he was dead, but the means of his death put her in an unassailable position as far as manipulating Marcus Carver. Val would have her day. One down, one to go.

  Marcus held on to his kneecaps, gasping for air, preparing for the next few minutes of exertion. The lift shook more than anticipated, and steadying himself he looked up at Ella, somewhat baffled. ‘Back in the room, you said we’d met before. When was that?’

  Deep in thought, she didn’t answer. The lift juddered to a clattering standstill and there was a gut-wrenching delay before the doors eventually began to part. When they did open to their fullest extent, only the light from within the lift illuminated the stark concrete of the rear service area. The air was chill. To their right were lengths of clear plastic strips, beyond that the stores door, firmly padlocked. Left was an area containing metal cages on castors and large plastic laundry baskets on wheels, waiting to be collected for use by housekeeping in the next few hours. Ahead, and with only a faint green glow from the fire evacuation lighting showing their outline, were double doors with a push bar across them.

  In a most unladylike fashion Ella stepped over Harry’s body, pressed the lift button to hold the doors and skipped to a panel next to the exit. ‘I need to disable the door alarm. We do it all the time. Don’t worry.’

  ‘What about the CCTV?’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Great plan,’ Marcus moaned.

  Momentarily, Ella considered the advantages and disadvantages of the first notion that popped into her head. Without more than a second’s hesitation she hoisted her dress up and pulled down her briefs. White and accommodating, she hoped they would help to give the illusion of frosted glass, should reception care to look too closely at the changing screens on the monitors set behind the desk.