Gun Street Girl (20 page)

Alan looked confused.

He let his hand drop to his side.

“What's this about?” he asked.

“Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

“Uhm. Sure. Yah. Conference room. Follow me. Sheena, will you bring us in some coffee?” he said to the receptionist in a very posh voice.

We sat down and showed him our warrant cards. He inspected them gravely and gave them back.

“So how I can help?” he asked.

“We're investigating the death under suspicious circumstances of one Michael Kelly. I believe he's known to you?”

Osbourne shook his head. “Michael Kelly, uhm, the . . . the, uhm, name doesn't ring a bell.”

The tips of his ears were turning red as he spoke and he was sweating bullets. Osbourne was not an accomplished liar.

“He was at Oxford with you.”

“Michael Kelly? Uhm, was he at my college?”

“He wasn't. But you were with him on at least one occasion. The night Anastasia Coleman died. On Fyfield Road in North Oxford at Gottfried Habsburg's rented home. There was a party there for the Round Table Club. Apparently most of the partygoers went back to their own digs and colleges, so only you and Gottfried Habsburg and Michael Kelly were left in the house that morning. All three of you found Anastasia Coleman's body, apparently with a needle still in her arm. Gottfried called the authorities and he and Michael decided to stay there and, quote, ‘face the music,' unquote, but you thought that discretion was the better part of valor and hightailed it home. Is that an accurate depiction of events?”

The color had drained from his cheeks, his grin had become fixed and his eyes were glassy, almost teary.

“Mr. Osbourne?” I said softly.

He put his face in his hands.

“I'll be ruined! Father will be ruined.”

“Oh no, Lawson,
Father
will be ruined,” I said.

Osbourne looked at us like a hunted animal. “Oh my God! Gottfried, he must have . . . The Reform Club . . . I should have . . . I'll need a solicitor, won't I?”

“Sir, if you could just calm down and—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute! I'm not under arrest! You haven't arrested me. I don't have to tell you anything, do I?”

“Mr. Osbourne, you are not under arrest. You are under no legal obligation to tell us anything. However, your cooperation in this matter would greatly benefit our inquiries. At the moment you are tangential to the Michael Kelly murder investigation. But, depending upon your level of cooperation in the next few minutes, you could instead become a major focus of our investigation. It would not at all be difficult to come back here this afternoon with several detectives from the Metropolitan Police and maybe even a few reporters from the
Mail on Sunday
or the
News of the World
,” I said.

Osbourne was sweating now and he took out a large polka-dot handkerchief and mopped his forehead.

“My name won't necessarily have to come up at all, will it? If I tell you everything I know.”

“If you tell us everything you know,” I insisted.

“Whew. Well, then I suppose . . . well, I suppose I should say first of all how sorry I am to hear about Michael's death. I had no idea. I've been very busy.”

“I'll be sure and tell Michael's next of kin how moved you were. Oh, wait, his next of kin got murdered too,” I said.

“You were the ‘third man' in the house on Fyfield Road that morning, then?” Lawson said.

“Yes . . . I was there. It was a Round Table Club—sanctioned event so I had to go.”

“And Anastasia, she was your girlfriend?” I asked.

“Christ, no! Who told you that? She was trouble! Everybody knew that. She asked me to take her and I knew it would be less hassle to take her than to leave her, so I brought her along.”

“How did you know her?”

“Her father and my father are friends. Known her since forever.”

“What does your father do?”

“He's a banker. But . . . he's also a wheel in the party. Behind the scenes. Chairman of the constituency groups. You wouldn't have heard of him.”

“Did he get you your present job here?” Lawson asked.

“I got a first in PPE. That's a pretty strong recommendation,” Osbourne said defensively.

“If I could bring you back to the night of Anastasia Coleman's death. Tell me in your own words what happened,” I said.

“I don't know what happened. I went to the party. It was up in North Oxford. I had a lot to drink. I didn't want to walk all the way back to Brasenose. Char— uhm, a friend of mine offered to drive me home but he was so plastered I thought it was safer to just crash at Habby's . . . Gottfried's, I mean.”

“What happened then?”

“I fell asleep. Next thing I know Habby's waking me up and telling me that Anastasia is dead. I told him to call an ambulance but he'd already done that. He told me and Michael to make ourselves scarce. I took his advice and got out of there.”

“And then what?”

“I left. Michael stayed to help Gottfried deal with everything. I don't know why he did that. I assumed it was some kind of Irish thing.”

“And then?”

“Well, then . . . nothing.”

“Did you ever get contacted by the Thames Valley Police?”

“No.”

“The coroner's office? Reporters?”

“Couple of tabloid hacks were sniffing around the Round Table Club looking for gossip, but no one told them anything.”

“You must have seen the artist's impression of yourself in the papers?”

“Yeah, all that third man stuff. I was shitting myself for a week or two.”

“Did you have any contact with Michael or Gottfried after the party?”

“I never saw Michael again. I saw Gottfried at the Reform Club a couple of months ago. We didn't talk. I sort of avoided him.”

“Do you have any idea why someone would have wanted to murder Michael Kelly?”

“No. I don't.”

“Think about it for a minute or two before you answer.”

He thought about it and shook his head.

“Has anyone tried to blackmail you about your involvement in Anastasia Coleman's death?”

“To tell you the truth, until you two came along I'd barely thought about it since I started here in September.”

I looked at Lawson. He gave me a little nod. He was thinking the same thing: Osbourne was a scumbag, but an honest scumbag. Unless we were very much mistaken those chubby, boyish chops were the chubby, boyish chops of verisimilitude.

“So why do you think someone might have killed Michael Kelly?”

“I have no idea. I mean, it's Northern Ireland, isn't it? People are getting killed over there all the time.”

“Michael's death was not a random act of violence. We believe it was a very deliberate murder concealed to look like a suicide.”

Osbourne shook his head, horrified.

“Are you sure
he
wasn't blackmailing you about Miss Coleman?”

“Michael wouldn't do anything like that. Michael could have left that morning but he didn't. He stayed to help Gottfried. That was the kind of guy he was. How do you think he got into the Round Table Club? Those are old-money clubs and Michael was Irish and new money, but people liked him. And then there was the whole gun thing. Everybody loved that. He was charming and—”

“Sorry, what gun thing?” I asked.

“The AGC. The Antiquarian Gun Club. Michael was president. All the Round Table guys loved it. Everyone in the Dangerous Sports Club too. We all went to the AGC events.”

Osbourne explained that the AGC liked to shoot old shotguns, muskets, arquebuses and the like. They were enthusiasts, collectors; some of them were also re-enactors of ancient battles.

“Michael even got us permits to fire old cannons on Christchurch Meadow. Apparently there's an old university law that allows you to do that. We did it on May morning! That shook everyone up!”

“So, in fact, you knew Michael quite well?” Lawson asked.

Osbourne nodded sadly. “He was a good chap.”

“Tell us more about the guns,” I said, intrigued by this turn in the inquiry.

“He really knew his weapons. He had a great eye for a gun. The AGC was dying until he took it over. He became a very active club president and treasurer.”

“Any financial irregularities?”

“Quite the reverse, actually. The best treasurer they ever had. It became one of the wealthiest non-dining clubs in Oxford. Under Michael's stewardship it had become
the
club to be in. Some clubs just become
the
club and that's what happened to the AGC. It had always been the club for people wanting to go into the MoD, British Aerospace, and so forth, but under Michael it became positively
trendy
. In the end he had to start turning people down for membership.”

Lawson and I were scribbling furiously now. Oxford CID had discovered none of this. But was it relevant?

“So how would it work? You would all just meet up and fire old guns?”

“And new guns too. So exciting. Pistols, rifles. I suppose in Northern Ireland you're around guns all the time?”

“You don't remember if Michael was a good shot, do you?” I asked.

“Yes, he was actually. An excellent shot. Some of us thought he could have competed at club or even international level.”

“And this was modern weaponry as well?”

“Oh yes. Michael's friend Nigel got us access to the government range at Dartmoor. That was a trip we'll never forget. Machine guns, grenade launchers. Boris even got to shoot a Blowpipe missile!”

“Who was this Nigel?”

“Oh, a lad from Belfast. An old friend of Michael's.”

“An old friend of Michael's from Belfast?”

“Yes.”

“Second name?”

“I didn't catch it actually. Really.”

“And he got you access to the government range at Dartmoor?”

“Yes. Nigel was connected to some factory in Belfast that made missiles. They always needed the range for testing.”

“Short Brothers?”

“I don't know.”

Lawson looked at me.
Yes, this was a very interesting development indeed
. I wrote “Nigel . . .” in my notebook. Old school friend called Nigel, possibly connected to Shorts, had once used his pull to get access to the MoD range at Dartmoor—shouldn't be that hard to find out a surname with a little old-fashioned legwork.

“This all must have cost a fortune?” I suggested.

“Michael made the AGC a very profitable enterprise.”

“Through membership fees?” Lawson asked.

“Not just that. Like I say, he had a great eye for a gun. He would go to auctions and estate sales. Always came back with a bargain or two. He found an old Ottoman matchlock for my father. Pride of place in our living room.”

“He bought guns for the club?”

“And for the collectors.”

“Would he sell guns as well?”

“Of course, yes. It was all perfectly legal, Inspector. There was no suggestion of wrongdoing.”

“But it wouldn't be unfair to say that by the time he, er, left Oxford he was well established in the network of gun dealers and buyers?”

“Well, yes.”

We asked him a few more questions about the gun club and his relationship with Michael and the mysterious Nigel: a tall, thin man with long blond hair and a Belfast accent.

I asked Osbourne to give us the room for a minute so Lawson and I could talk privately.

“Just wait outside the door, sir. We'll let you know when we need you again.”

He exited nervously.

“Thoughts?” I asked Lawson.

“Arms dealing. Quite the growth industry. Legal and illegal, especially in Ulster. Maybe he made some enemies? And we'll definitely have to find this Nigel guy.”

“What else jumped out at you?”

Lawson looked at his notes. “Michael, apparently, was an excellent shot.”

“So he could have murdered his parents after all. Fast, like a pro.”

We called Osbourne back in.

“Mr. Osbourne, where were you on the night of November 11, 1985?”

“Uhm . . .”

“Working late here at the office with lots of witnesses?” I suggested.

“Uhm, well, actually we had the week off. Post-conference lull, you know? We all worked really hard for the conferences. I mean after last year. You remember what happened last year?”

I remember it only too well, son. I was fucking there
.

“So what were you doing if you weren't working?”

“Oh, you know, just hanging out at the flat. At the weekend I went home, saw a whole bunch of friends.”

“By the weekend Michael Kelly and his parents were dead.”

“Look, I've never been to Northern Ireland in my life. I don't think I even have a current passport!”

“You don't need a passport,” I said.

I got to my feet.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Osbourne. And if I were you I'd try and think of an alibi for the night of the eleventh.”

A smile creased his chubby cheeks. “So that's it for now?” he asked hopefully.

“For the moment that's it. We're going back to Northern Ireland tonight, Mr. Osbourne.”

“And, and what about . . . what about my name? It won't get in the papers?”

“We have no interest in releasing your name to the press, Mr. Osbourne, and it seems that Thames Valley Police and Gottfried Habsburg are of like mind. Today is your lucky day in what seems to have been a life filled with lucky days.”

“Well, it's not quite all—”

“We may want to interview you again, sir, so please don't leave the country and please give Constable Lawson here your address and home phone number.”

“And that alibi would be very helpful if you can come up with one, sir,” Lawson said, giving him the Carrickfergus CID phone number.