Love Story, With Murders (15 page)

They’re finished inside. Rhys comes to the door, lets us in.

Dad is rolling his shoulders, eyes smouldering. Buzz stands aside, watching everything. We say goodbye.

Dad, Buzz, and I get into the Range Rover, head back into town.

‘Where can I drop you?’ says Dad. The first words since we left.

Buzz and I exchange looks.
The three main choices: Buzz’s flat, Cathays, or Dad’s club. But it’s no choice really.

‘We’d better go to the Unicorn, interview people there. Sorry, Dad.’

‘No, no. No sorries. You two have got a job to do.’ He drives on in silence. The rain is back again, but more heavy now. Welsh weather. ‘Listen, I’m sorry I
shouted.’

‘That’s okay,’ says Buzz. ‘You had every right.’

‘Bloody
traffic.’ Dad mutters a little later, but before long we’re at the Unicorn.
The Virgin and Unicorn
. A neon sign. The word
Virgin
in simpering pink, the
word
Unicorn
in deep flesh red.

Buzz and I get out, say goodbye to Dad. He apologises again and drives off with a fierce sprayback from his rear tyres. My face can’t feel or not feel the rain. It’s already inside
the club, with its girls,
its cashbooks, and its secrets.

Later. Ten thirty in the evening. The rain gone and skies clearing.

Buzz and I leave the club. Only now is it starting to get busy. On the stage behind us, the first breasts and thighs are starting to appear, like stars emerging overhead.

It feels weird being here with Buzz. Knowing that he’s a bloke. That his hormones are tugging
him backwards into the bar behind us. I haven’t looked down, but for all I know
he’s aroused. Why wouldn’t he be? Why shouldn’t he be? We walk out into the night, feeling weird.

Watkins is there waiting. Her silver-grey BMW, sleekly parked, sidelights on. The Ice Queen’s face expresses no sign of her having seen us, but the car purrs into life and the sidelights
switch to headlights.

Buzz gets in the front. I get the back again. The child’s seat. Swinging my feet and thinking about ice cream.

We drive to Cathays.

Not much conversation. We’ve already briefed Watkins by phone. We’ll have a proper debrief in her office. As we drive, she asks us to get Susan Konchesky to join us. It’s an
order, obviously, but first I do nothing, somehow assuming that Buzz will call
her. But that’s not the police way of things. I’m the junior officer in the car and anything boring is my
job, anything interesting is someone else’s. Buzz moves uncomfortably in his seat. His way of reminding me to stick to the party line: We don’t keep our relationship a secret, exactly,
but nor do we do anything to advertise it. Him making the call instead of me would be an advertisement,
albeit not a very big one.

So I jump to it. Find my phone, make the call. Tell Susan Konchesky that if she’d had any idea of having a nice evening, she could pretty much forget it. I don’t put it quite like
that, but I put it enough like that that Watkins’s habitual air of grim annoyance thickens into something soupier.

Susan says, ‘Okay, if I have to. Where are you now?’

I say,
‘In a car, with DI Watkins.’

She says, ‘You’re joking,’ but she can tell I’m not.

When we get to Cathays, Buzz, being a man, has to go and pee. Konchesky hasn’t yet arrived. I find myself going to the kitchenette with Watkins to make coffee. While we’re waiting
for the kettle to boil, I put my hand out to feel the fabric of Watkins’s suit sleeve.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Do you mind? It’s
lovely.’

If she does mind, it’s too late. But she doesn’t, or doesn’t say she does. The kettle boils. Three coffees for everyone else, peppermint tea for me.

There’s a stupid moment of awkwardness at the door as we’re sorting out who picks up which mug and how we get out of the door without pouring boiling fluids over each other. Which is
good. I’ve made Watkins the Badge nervous. A
stupid triumph, but sometimes I enjoy stupid things.

To Watkins’s office, with mugs. Buzz arrives, bladder nicely empty. Konchesky too, nervous, clutching paperwork.

All the lights are on. Ceiling tiles and that unblinking fluorescent glare. It feels wrong. Unsettling.

Watkins to Buzz: ‘Okay, from the beginning.’

Buzz reports everything that happened. Or rather, he takes a series
of life events and translates them into police-ese. ‘The witness confirmed his identity as Rhys Jordan and that he has
been employed as manager at the Virgin and Unicorn for a total of nine years.’ He doesn’t normally talk like a training manual, but everyone behaves weirdly in front of Watkins.

‘When we got to the club, we spoke to Colin Jones, who produced the relevant cashbooks. We have
them with us now. In the eight months before her death, Mary Langton received cash payments
from the Unicorn on fifteen different occasions. Amounts ranging from twenty to eighty pounds.’

‘Dates?’

I have a list of the dates in my notebook and pass them over.

‘Susan?’

Konchesky has been doing a lot of the gruntwork on Khalifi. She’s been back through his bank records for a full
nine years. He was no saint. Numerous card transactions place him in clubs
and bars. He’s been more abstemious in recent years, but further back he appeared to have been out on the town most Friday and Saturday nights. She has the dates in front of her. Dates when
Khalifi used his card in the Unicorn. None of those dates match the Langton ones.

Khalifi also used plenty of cash. He used
to withdraw four hundred pounds at a time and spend it fairly rapidly. So perhaps he was in the Unicorn on one of those Langton nights, but spending
cash. No suggestion that he was trying to keep himself invisible, just that he liked to use cash.

Watkins, Brydon, and Konchesky bend over the various lists and printouts trying to find a match. I lean away, wondering if it would be okay to
turn off the overhead lights and just rely on the
desk lamp. I don’t like the brightness. The other three mutter to each other as they compare lists.

I say, ‘Cash payments to Langton all fell on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The Thursday payments tended to be lower.’

Everyone looks at me.

I say, ‘According to Jordan, the girls make most of their money from tips. I imagine
waitresses worked for tips only on Fridays or Saturdays.’

They all look again at the lists. Langton drew no payments from late November to early January either, although she’d worked the autumn before and in the months immediately after.
‘Christmas,’ I say. ‘More trade, bigger tips.’

Watkins looks up from the desk, staring at me. I don’t look away.

She says, ‘So, your hypothesis
is that Langton was working for tips only on some of the nights that Khalifi was there?’

There’s a prickling feeling in the room. A sense of movement or hidden life. I don’t know why.

I say, ‘Yes.’

Three heads bend back over the lists. Not mine. I’m trying to work out what this prickling sensation is. I can’t. I try to understand the feeling. What bit of me is feeling what? I
try
to dissect my own sensations the way my psychiatrists once taught me to, but I don’t get anywhere.

I say, ‘Langton called her mam most nights.’

Watkins glares at me. A bit of jaw action, but not much. She pulls the phone records away from Susan Konchesky. The records list dates and times of calls. Langton used to call her mother briefly
– a minute or two – then her mother would call
back to save on the phone bill. Mostly Langton called fairly late – 9 or 10
PM
mostly. On nights when
Langton was working, she called much earlier, 6 or 7
PM
, and spoke for less long. There were a number of Fridays and Saturdays over the right period when Khalifi was in the
Unicorn and Langton was calling her mother early.

Watkins and the others have a bit of discussion about this. Langton
was a student, so if she wasn’t working on a Friday or Saturday, she was probably going out for the evening anyway.

Buzz says, ‘Yes, but she wouldn’t go out that early. A girl like that wouldn’t go out on the town until nine o’clock or whatever. It wouldn’t have been
cool.’

Buzz is a nice man, but he’s about as cool as I am and I’m as cool as a lump of coal. Konchesky is a mother of
two who works part-time. She’s hardly got her finger on the pulse
either, but she agrees with Buzz.

Watkins grabs all the paperwork now and bends over it, leaving nothing for the others. I’m fed up with the overlit room and turn all the lights off, except the spot directly over where
Watkins is sitting. When she glares at me, I say ‘Sorry,’ but don’t put the lights back on. It feels better
now. The prickling feeling is still there, but not in a bad way.

‘Isn’t this nice?’ I say to no one in particular. Everyone stares at me but no one says anything.

Then Watkins is done. It seems probable but not certain that Khalifi knew Langton. Watkins will arrange a full set of interviews in the morning. A load of DCs will be sent to talk to
Langton’s former colleagues at the Unicorn
to see if any of them can connect her to Khalifi.

The meeting breaks up. Watkins says to Buzz and me, ‘Good work, well done.’

Buzz says something. I nod and look like a Keen Young Detective.

In the street outside afterward, Buzz says, ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll be okay, driving?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not too fast, all right?’

‘All right.’

‘Back to mine?’

‘Yes.’

I don’t know why I’m talking like everyone’s favourite village idiot, but it doesn’t bother me and Buzz is used to it.

We go back to his place. I don’t speed. I park neatly. We go up to his flat. He has a glass of wine. I walk around the flat fiddling with light switches and being annoying. Then Buzz lifts
me up, carries me over to the bedroom. I’m not quite in a head space for sex, but
I pretend that I am. I fake it. Fake the moves, the noises. I TV-movie my way into a performance of some
kind, and at some point the hormones take over and I do start to feel things. The TV-acting falls away and I become a bit more me again. When we’re done, I say, ‘Mmm. Thank
you.’

He says, ‘You’re very welcome.’ He’s quite pleased with his sexual performance, is Mr David Brydon, but
that’s allowed.

‘Do you think your dad was for real earlier?’ he asks.

‘I assume so. He seemed pretty angry.’

‘I thought he was going to rip Jordan’s head off.’

‘Yeah, well, the old Dad might have.’

I’m lying. I’m pretty sure the whole thing was a show.

I think Dad knew from the very beginning of the original investigation that Langton had worked in his club. When the leg
showed up in Cyncoed, he was aware of the possibility that the leg would
turn out to be hers. That’s why he changed my word ‘Llanishen’ to ‘Cyncoed’ on the phone that first night. His way of saying that he knew what he needed to know.

I don’t, in fact, think that Dad has anything to hide, but if there had been any risks to his business, he would have known about them long before Watkins
did. Known about them and dealt
with them.

As it was, I assume Emrys spoke to Dad. They both spoke to Jordan. Checked the cash-books with Colin. Discussed possible risks to the business. Decided any risks could be controlled, so put on
the entire play for our benefit. Yes, there might have been some minor tax issues arising from the way the business was run, but cops on a murder enquiry
are hardly tax specialists, and if people
give us good-quality information we’ll overlook minor misdemeanours. I think the whole Dad-’n’-Jordan show was aimed at ensuring that Dad was clean as clean in the eyes of the
law.

Once again I’m awed by my father’s dangerous competence.

I don’t say any of this, however. But I do come in for some stick from Brydon for my Mortimer theory. He
says, ‘Looks like that one might get laid to rest.’

I don’t feel like talking about that now, so I just say, ‘Did you say “get laid”?’ and I run my hand down his stomach until I’m all out of stomach.

He keeps my hand where it is and we fall asleep like that. Lights off. Listening to the city being the city.

But I can still feel that prickling feeling from before. That sense of something
hidden.

And when I started to investigate Mark Mortimer, two men became overinterested in where I was and what I was doing. When I put one of them in hospital, he gave a false name and address and
walked out as soon as he could.

As far as I’m concerned, the Mortimer connection is still live.

Next morning, a Saturday, I sleep in until Buzz wakes me. Back from a run, sweaty T-shirt off, shorts still on. He looks yummy, in a rough-and-tumble kind of way. I watch him
getting into the shower, then watch him more as he gets out. He knows I’m watching, makes the most of it. Sits on the bed naked and lets me bite him on the back of his neck, which is both
salty and soapy.

When we’re done fooling around, he tells me that there’s fresh juice, bacon, eggs, everything in the fridge. He’s already eaten.

‘You’re off already?’ I remember he has some family shindig today, but thought it wasn’t till later.

He gives me a crooked smile. ‘Watkins. She wants to work this angle. She’s got me, Konchesky, couple of others coming in today.’

The
news surprises me, then bothers me. As far as Watkins is concerned, the glory of the Rhys Jordan breakthrough belongs equally to me and Buzz. As far as reality is concerned, of course, the
glory is shared between a triumvirate of me, Emrys, and Dad. But by ordinary police logic, Watkins ought at least to have offered me the chance to join the inner team. That’s surely what
yesterday was about.

I know why I’m being ditched. Watkins the Badge has an icily tedious adherence to the rules. My father owns the club where Mary Langton might or might not have met Ali el-Khalifi in the
months before her death. If that connection turns out to have a bearing on the case, I may have to appear as a witness in court. A defence lawyer could make merry play of some potential conflict of
interest
between me, my father, and the police investigation, so Watkins is keeping me well away from the epicentre. That strikes me as wildly unfair, though I also know that Watkins is making the
right call.