Death and Deception (12 page)

He hadn’t been able to get to see Jenna because of her stupid moron of a father, and he didn’t know if he had the guts to try again. The guy had almost smacked him one. If that woman hadn’t been coming up the path, he wasn’t sure he would still be walking and talking.

Jamie put his head onto his arms and rested them across his bent knees. Carly had been glowing, just beautiful that night at the party. All her dreams were coming true. He’d spent everything he had on a silver and onyx ring and waited until just the right moment at the party to give it to her. He’d taken her outside into the back garden where the music and laughter was like a love song in the background. She had opened the little black velvet box with a funny expression on her face, and asked him if it was a friendship ring.

Jamie’s heart was crushed at that very moment. He could still feel it hurting him now, a real pain in his heart. He loved Carly, he wanted her to be his proper girlfriend, not just a ‘friend’. But she had laughed at him in disbelief and kissed him on the cheek and said she had never thought of him like that, but that they would always be friends.

And then she had turned around and walked back into the house, and draped herself around the neck of Miles fucking Westlake, who couldn’t see him, out there in the night, alone.

Jamie shook himself like a wet dog getting out of a river. He wanted to howl like a dog too. How had everything gone so wrong? How could he have lost Carly before he had even got her to be his?

He felt his bruised ribs. What would the Police do when Miss Quick told them what he had done to her? He may have to go to prison. His heart pounded. His head pounded. He had to think, but the horror was too much for him to bear. He punched himself in the head as hard as he could, wanting to stop the pain, but he couldn’t prevent the thoughts from circling round his head like angry biting midges.

The noise of his mum’s old Fiesta coughing into life and hiccupping backwards down the drive, was his cue to move. He hobbled down the path, wincing as the blood rushed back into his legs and feet, pushed the wheelie bin under the window and balanced on top of it. He prised open the downstairs toilet window and wriggled, panting and cursing at the pain radiating from below his ribs, through the small gap, down over the toilet and onto the bathroom floor.

Forty minutes later, he had showered, gelled his hair, charged his phone and dressed in his alternative uniform of black tee shirt, black jeans, black biker boots and black hoody emblazoned with a skull and the words ‘War Death’ on the back. He ate four pieces of toast, raided his mum’s gas bill pot and left by the back door, feeling a little better than he had before. He had to get his guitar back, and he hadn’t finished dealing with Westlake’s betrayal yet.

Date: Tuesday 25
^th
April Time: 13:30
Irina Akis
, Illusion Studio

The sound of the glass door closing muffled the footsteps of DC Sam Knowles and DCI Ian Gould as they escorted Jed Abrams out of Illusion

Studios and off to the station for formal questioning about the death of Carly Braithwaite.

Chas Lloyd stood beside the glass and chrome reception desk, dwarfed by its 1980’s opulence. She was scared. Irina Akis rose smoothly from the sofa and took her hand.

‘Chas, darling, I would like you to take a long lunch, but the boys and I have work to do and there are no recordings today, are there?’

The girl shook her head.

‘Come back at about three o’clock, OK?’

Chas was flustered. Did the fact that Dan had sent other officers to pick up Jed mean that their very brief romance was over? She had been totally pissed off the night before when he’d come over all Jane Austenish and sent her home, virtue intact, but she still kind of liked him.

Why were the Police pushing Jed so hard? What did they know? He was such an idiot, but she couldn’t see him murdering Carly. She was too old for him, anyway. But they could easily do him for porn stuff if they had a little look around. And what were the Latvians going to do in the Studio when she was out?

She didn’t dare ask. She got her coat and bag and made her way up the stairs without another word. She knew that Jed made porn films for the Latvians, she’d been in the video room often enough, but she didn’t want to know any of the sordid details. As far as she was concerned, the less she knew the better. She jumped into her Mini and backed out onto Sidwell Street, wondering what to do in her extended lunch hour.

Irina waited until the girl had gone and signalled Grigor to remove the CCTV disk. Then she rang Filip to tell him to drive the van into Chas’s spot. In less than two hours they had loaded the completed DVDs and removed all of Abram’s recording equipment, including forty DVD recorders into the back of their Mercedes van. It paid to be cautious. If the Police wanted Abrams for murder, which they might do, they would search the place.

Irina checked the studio over before they took all the equipment away and she could replace the CCTV disk. Tomorrow, she would dispose of the recorders in the North Sea. And in a couple of weeks she would have sold the DVDs and made herself enough money to pay off her father and escape, properly and for the last time, this miserable life.

Date: Tuesday April 25
^t
h
Time: 13:59
Jed Abrams, Exeter Road Police Station

Dan took the stairs two at a time. He could see Sam Knowles waiting at the top, hopping from side to side like an anxious heron. Dan stopped next to him.

‘Got some news, Sam?’

‘Sir, we brought Jed Abrams in and he’s in Interview Room 1. I collected the security camera DVD from the girl on reception. She’s called Chas.’ He blushed and Dan felt a bit better about his treatment of the girl the night before. She was more Sam’s age, and type, than his. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking of.

‘Good work, Sam. Where is DCI Gould now?’

‘He’s stood outside the Interview Room watching Abrams, sir, and having a cup of coffee.’

‘OK, go into the video room and study that DVD for all of Sunday, not just from 7.00pm. I want to know about anybody who entered or left the building. Got it?’

Sam nodded and disappeared.

Jed felt trapped. He’d told the Latvians not to stay in the reception area when the Police came, but they had some stupid notion that they would be able to intimidate them somehow by their mere presence. They couldn’t understand that the way it worked in their country was a very different beast from the way it worked in the UK. Or, maybe they were sitting there to intimidate him into keeping his mouth shut. As if he needed the reminder.

Abrams realised that the Police were on to him, even if they didn’t know exactly what they were onto him for. He also knew that if they got into his video room he’d be finished, and in prison very soon afterwards. He couldn’t decide whether or not to call in a solicitor. Would it make him look more guilty, or less? They were only questioning him, he reminded himself, he hadn’t been arrested. Either way, he was in deep shit. He wiped his face with the hem of his shirt. If he couldn’t have a drink, the shakes would start soon.

Why had the stupid little bitch got herself killed? He was on to such a lucrative contract with the East European markets, and now he could see it going down the toilet in front of him.

He weighed up his options: talk to the Police, probably go to prison for a while, and live the rest of his life on the run from the Latvians. Or keep his mouth shut, close the business in Exeter and move away as fast as he could to start somewhere else. Perhaps Spain. There was no contest.

Gould turned as Dan entered the little corridor that ran alongside the three Interview Rooms and signalled him to stay quiet. They both looked through the one-way glass at Jed Abrams. He was sweating and using the hem of his shirt to wipe his face, exposing his pale paunch. His eyes were jittery, unable to focus on the statement he was supposed to be preparing for the interview.

‘He’s a wreck,’ said Dan, ‘worse than when I saw him yesterday. And why no solicitor? Doesn’t he think he needs one? On a murder investigation? That’s just weird.’

‘That’s not all,’ replied Gould. ‘He stinks of booze, which might explain the jitters, but I think there’s something else going on.’ He paused to collect his thoughts.

’There were three characters in the studio when we got there this morning. A beaut of a girl, tall with short blonde hair and cheekbones you could cut yourself on, and two blokes, one with a cauliflower ear and muscles and the other like an extra from a Quentin Tarantino film, all sharp suit and shaved head. I thought they could have been a band, but not when I saw how nervous Abrams was around them. They didn’t speak a single word while we were there, and I’ll bet my pension they weren’t English.

‘I think our little friend in there is up to something dodgy, even if he didn’t do for the girly.’

Dan bit back the temptation to tell him off about his casual use of language when describing suspects and victims, but he knew Gould came from different times - what was the point? And he had a sneaking suspicion Gould did it on purpose, because he knew it would wind him up.

‘So,’ he asked instead, ‘what do you reckon? Dodgy DVDs? Cheap music rip-offs?’

‘What if,’ Gould teased the filmy thoughts out of his head. ‘What if the girl did go to the studio but Abrams wanted her to do more than just sing? What if he’s making porn, and the foreigners are the distribution arm? What if she argued, or said she’d tell her Dad, or the Police? That would be a reason to keep her quiet, wouldn’t it?’

They looked at each other, united for the first time in their shared pursuit of the murderer. Dan nodded, lips pursed as he reached for links, pulling his Mind Map together into a potential answer.

‘He could have killed Carly and moved her body in the van without anybody even noticing.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t see all the rooms in that studio, did you?’

Gould shook his head. ‘Sam had a look at the Control room and I went to the toilet, but actually had a nosy round the kitchen and his office.’

‘So none of us has been in the Post-Production room, have we? Who knows what we might have found?’ Dan angled his head toward the Interview Room window. ‘Let’s get in there and see what we can shake from the tree.’

Gould entered the room talking. ‘Right, Mr Abrams, let’s not piss about. You want to go home and we want to catch a killer, so let’s co-operate, shall we?’

He switched on the recorder and the policemen identified themselves and the detainee for the record. Gould sat opposite Abrams and Hellier sat on his right side, just to disconcert him. The PC who had been watching over Abrams left for a much-needed toilet break with instructions to return with coffee.

‘You have already told DI Hellier that Carly Braithwaite did not arrive at the studio last night, but you seem to have no witnesses to that effect. You then told DI Hellier that you went for a drink, but couldn’t remember where, until, oh yes, you remembered that you went home, but nobody saw you do that either.’ He paused, leaned across the table and glared at Abrams. ‘Can you see why my antennae are waving, Mr Abrams? Can you?’

Abrams drew himself up in his chair until he was the same height as the two policemen. He took a breath. He’d worked out exactly what to do.

‘Would it be possible for me to go to the toilet, please?’ he asked.

Gould shook his head.

‘Not just at the moment, sir, as we’ve only just begun. But, of course you may go to the toilet when we have a comfort break later.’

Dan smiled to see Gould struggling with the proper protocols for looking after a person being interviewed. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act had a lot to answer for.

The door opened and PC Foster came in with a tray of drinks. Dan got him to escort Abrams to the toilet during the disruption. He took a moment in the quiet that followed.

‘Ian, don’t bully him into talking. He’s a wreck as it is, I want anything we get out of him to stand up in court.’

Ian raised an eyebrow. ‘Me, bully someone? Never let it be said, Inspector. He just makes my skin crawl. We should be able to break him without resorting to my usual bullying tactics, though.’

He smiled with his teeth to show Dan he hadn’t taken offence at being told off by someone twenty years younger and of a lower rank than himself, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Dan was relieved when Abrams returned. Gould was still touchy, it seemed. The rest of the interview did not go as planned. Abrams was unwilling to add any further details to those he had already provided about the night of the
girl’s death. H
e simply said ‘I don’t know’ to questions he didn’t or couldn’t answer.

Rolling his eyes, Gould tried another tack. ‘Do you do any other kind of productions in your studio Mr Abrams? Films, for example?’ He looked hard at Abrams, saw the man’s pupils widen. He pressed on, ‘Who were those people in the studio this morning? They didn’t look like the latest boy band to come out of Exeter. Foreign, weren’t they?’

Abrams busied himself putting sugar in his coffee. ‘Of course they’re a band, that’s what I do, record bands.’ He stirred clockwise, then anti-clockwise.

Dan felt a small buzz of excitement in the pit of his stomach. Were they getting close? He interrupted, ‘It’s hard making ends meet these days, isn’t it, sir? We all have to look for ways to boost our income, and there’s a good market in Europe isn’t there? Especially if you can sort out distribution…’

Abrams stopped stirring his coffee and raised teary eyes, ‘Ok, I admit I have done a bit of bootlegging of music CDs and DVDs in the past. I know it was stupid but I’m not doing it anymore, honest.’ He looked from one police officer to the other. ‘Since the kids started downloading music, there’s no market anymore, so I don’t do it now. I didn’t have anything to do with the girl’s death, I promise.’

Gould snorted and sat back on his chair, folding his arms over his stomach.