Friends to Die For (13 page)

Unaccustomed to the company of honourable men, Michelle had felt a total fool. But she’d been impressed too. From that night, Vogel had seemed all the more attractive to her, though she
made sure to hide the fact for fear of embarrassing them both. In any case, unless she was really stupid and repeated the performance of throwing herself at him, Vogel could be relied upon not to
notice. He wasn’t the sort of man most women found attractive. Which, of course, with the sorry history of her wrecked marriage still ruling her every emotion, was probably why Michelle was
so taken with him.

She sensed that Vogel was an unusual copper as well as an unusual man. They called him the Geek at Charing Cross, but not without grudging respect. The name was a twisted tribute to his
intelligence and his ability to sift through endless layers of facts and figures and come up with connotations and conclusions that no one else could.

It turned out that Vogel wasn’t on duty until noon that day, so Michelle dropped him an email outlining her concerns about the various events that had befallen her friends. She concluded
by asking if he would do her the favour of having a quick look at the Marlena incident and maybe keep an eye on the missing-dogs scenario.

She then took off for another edifying day in the division she so disliked. There was a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, and she was on point duty for the rest of her shift. That meant aching
feet and zero job satisfaction: just another day in Traffic.

David Vogel picked up her email shortly after coming on duty. He read it through carefully, but at speed. His lips twitched, just as Mike Carter’s had done, at the Mr Tickle story. Vogel
was not without a sense of humour, though this was not generally recognized within the Met because it was so much gentler than that of his colleagues. He pondered for a moment or two. A pair of
mystery pranks, an act of apparent wanton vandalism, two dogs going missing on the same day at the same place, a possibly deliberate attack on an elderly woman . . . Vogel was intrigued, just as
Michelle had predicted. However, a mountain of paperwork sat on his desk. Twice as much data again awaited his attention on screen. The minutiae of a complex fraud case that nobody had yet been
able to untangle. To most police officers, indeed most people, sifting through this lot would be a horrible chore. To David Vogel it was a delight. He loved paperwork. He relished the opportunity
to seek out details others had overlooked. Loved discovering what lay behind an apparently meaningless jumble of bald facts and figures. Shortly before switching off his computer and heading home
the previous evening, almost three hours after his shift had officially ended, he’d thought he might be close to a breakthrough. He couldn’t wait to get stuck in again.

Mr Tickle would just have to wait, he told himself, with the smallest stab of regret. Besides, there might be nothing to it. The dogs would probably turn up unharmed and without explanation, as
dogs did, and there might be no link whatsoever between the other events. He simply didn’t have the time to do anything about it at present. He did, however, send an email to Dispatch saying
that these matters had come to his notice, and asking could he please be kept informed of any developments.

At three in the afternoon, Jessica Harding, a bright young PC working in Dispatch, called his extension.

‘Looks like there’s been a development in that case you’re interested in, Sarge,’ she told him. ‘Some
Big Issue
seller just found the remains of two dogs
in a rubbish bin on Long Acre. He told a passer-by who called us. Apparently they’ve been badly mutilated.’

‘Are we sure they’re the same two dogs?’ asked Vogel.

‘Well, they need their microchips checking, assuming they have them, but the descriptions match,’ PC Harding replied.

Vogel had already begun calling up the relevant report: ‘A chihuahua and a Maltese terrier,’ he read from his screen. ‘The breeds are right then?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Jessica Harding. ‘In as much as anyone could tell. Sounds like they’re in a terrible state. Their sexual organs have been removed, their eyes gouged out,
tails cut off – that sort of thing. The
Big Issue
seller went into shock and had to be taken to hospital, and, according to the response team, the man who called us wasn’t in
much better shape either. The chihuahua’s head’s been more or less hacked off and—’

Vogel interrupted. Unlike former sergeant Mike Carter, David Vogel liked dogs. He had a border collie called Timmy at home, and if anything like that ever happened to Timmy, Vogel feared what he
might be capable of doing to the perpetrators.

‘All right, Harding, I get the picture,’ he said. He was about to end the call when a thought occurred to him. ‘Has anyone notified the owners yet?’

‘Not yet,’ responded Harding.

‘Good,’ said Vogel. ‘I think we should ask PC Michelle Monahan to do it. She knows them, apparently. And she knows the background to all this. They’re going to be shocked
rigid, whoever tells them, but she may be able to get more out of them.’

‘Isn’t she Traffic?’

Vogel sighed. ‘She’s still a police officer, Jessica,’ he said. ‘And she was previously in CID.’

‘Right. OK. I’ll tell my boss you’re handling that side of it then, shall I?’ asked Harding.

‘Yes.’ Vogel was no longer really listening.

He ended the call and, trying to ignore the queasiness in the pit of his stomach, sat and thought for a moment or two before contacting Michelle’s team leader to ask if he could borrow her
for a special task. Like Michelle, David Vogel didn’t believe in coincidences. And he was beginning to get a bad feeling about the increasingly sinister and unpleasant sequence of events
which he now felt impelled to investigate.

And so it was Michelle who broke the news to the boys. She called round to see them after she’d finished traffic duty at the palace. First George, then Tiny and Billy. By
then it was early evening, and she found all three men at their homes, as she had hoped.

George burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying.

‘This shouldn’t have happened,’ he said. ‘Not to those dear little dogs. Whatever else is going on, this shouldn’t have happened.’

Michelle made soothing noises, which was about all she could do.

‘They must have suffered, they must have suffered so,’ muttered George through his tears.

Michelle could find no words to argue with that. She was aware of the condition both dogs had been in when they were found, and although she tried to spare George that knowledge, her friend
insisted on being told. No wonder he was so upset, thought Michelle. And she too dreaded to think what the two little dogs must have gone through before death had eventually brought them
release.

Realizing that George was on the brink of hysteria, Michelle made sweet tea and forced him to drink it. The tea didn’t appear to do a lot of good. She reckoned he needed something
stronger. She found a bottle of supermarket brandy in a kitchen cupboard and poured him a large glass which he swallowed quite obediently. Then she sat with him.

It took more than an hour before she felt able to leave George. Even then she only did so because she feared that if she didn’t go to Tiny and Billy soon, they might find out from some
other source. Reluctant to leave George on his own, she popped next door to ask his neighbour, Marnie, the elderly woman George had once told her looked upon him as a surrogate son, if she’d
call round and keep an eye on him.

Marnie, it turned out, was in a wheelchair – to Michelle’s embarrassment, as she’d never met the woman before and yet here she was asking her a favour, albeit on George’s
behalf.

But Marnie, whose eyes welled up when Michelle told her as gently as she could that Chump had been killed, was eager to help.

‘Oh, that poor little dog,’ said Marnie. ‘Don’t you fret, dear. I can get next door all right in my chair. ’Bout as far as I can go nowadays without help. But
don’t worry, I’ll look after my Georgie. He does enough for me, that boy, I can tell you.’

Billy and Tiny took the news equally badly, albeit rather more quietly. The big man shed silent tears which ran freely down his broad cheeks. He made no attempt to wipe them away. It was almost
as if he was unaware that he was weeping.

‘But have the chips been checked yet?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Well, no, not as far as I know,’ responded Michelle. ‘The dogs are the right breeds, though. I mean, it really would be one heck of a coincidence if it weren’t Daisy and
Chump, I’m afraid.’

‘’Course it would,’ said Billy. His face was ashen. There was not even any colour in his lips. ‘Stop clutching at straws, Tiny. It’s our little girl.’

‘All right, but I want to see her. I want to see her. Before . . .’

Tiny couldn’t seem to get any more words out.

Michelle hesitated. She had told all three boys that the dogs had been mutilated, but so far Tiny and Billy hadn’t asked her for the details.

‘Look, Tiny, don’t you think you’d rather remember Daisy how she was?’ she suggested.

‘No, I want to see her. I want to see my Daisy,’ Tiny persisted.

Michelle glanced towards Billy and imperceptibly shook her head. Unfortunately Tiny caught her at it.

‘You haven’t told us exactly how Daisy died, have you, Michelle?’ the big man asked. ‘Was it really that bad? Come on, tell us what happened to her. Everything. I, for
one, need to know.’

‘Well, we can’t be absolutely sure,’ said Michelle. She realized she was prevaricating, but couldn’t help herself. ‘I’m afraid Daisy did suffer appalling
injuries, but they could have happened after her death.’

‘Are
you
clutching at straws now, Michelle?’

‘No. The truth is, we don’t know. Perhaps there will be a pet autopsy – I’m not sure what the form is. The dogs were stolen, and that, coupled with the fact that they may
have been subjected to undue suffering, means that criminal offences have almost certainly been committed. So I should think CID will push for a full post-mortem veterinary examination.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Michelle, just tell us what you know, tell us what happened to our dog.’ Tiny, usually so softly spoken, may have taken the initial news quietly and
apparently quite calmly, perhaps because it was no more than he had expected, but now he was shouting.

‘Right.’ Nothing else for it, thought Michelle. Tiny, like George, was evidently not to be deterred.

She told them, in the most clinical and unemotional way that she could manage, that Daisy’s tail had been cut off, that her sexual organs had been removed, that her throat had been cut and
her head almost severed.

Th-that’s why I think it better that you don’t see her,’ Michelle stumbled.

Billy’s reaction was physical. He retched a couple of times then ran out of the room in the direction of the bathroom.

Tiny sat very still, staring straight ahead. Curiously, the tears stopped. Michelle thought he had gone beyond crying. She looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. Her palms were sweating.
Silently she cursed David Vogel for asking her to do this, she cursed herself for agreeing to do it, and she cursed the whole vicious twisted world in which she lived.

Eventually Tiny spoke.

‘Are you going to find who did this, Michelle? Are you?’

‘Well, not me, Tiny, but there’s a top CID man on it now, he’s looking into what happened to the dogs and all the other stuff that’s been going on with Marlena and
everything. There’ll be a major inquiry, I’m sure of it.’

Tiny nodded, a faraway look in his eyes.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

‘What? Of course it matters,’ countered Michelle.

‘No.’ Tiny’s voice was hard. ‘It doesn’t matter. Because if the police don’t find the bastard who did this, I will. And then I’m going to do to him
exactly what he did to my Daisy.’

David Vogel put the fraud case which had previously consumed him to one side. Vogel could get away with that sort of thing. His superior officers valued his unique abilities
and tolerated his eccentricities. As far as was possible, they allowed his butterfly mind to flutter at will, because of the extraordinary results it produced. Vogel operated with a freedom
virtually unknown, not only at the Met but within any British police force. His colleagues sometimes resented this, but most had benefited at one time or another from his particular talents. He was
always willing to study a passed-on bundle of paperwork or a list of facts that had previously revealed little or nothing to those working on a case, and rarely failed to pick up on something,
however tiny, of previously overlooked significance. In addition, even if his rare exactitude led to a solution that otherwise may never have been reached, Vogel showed no inclination to take the
credit. His sole interest was achieving a successful conclusion.

Now Vogel’s attention had, almost without him wishing it, become totally focused on the events Michelle Monahan had brought to his notice, starting with those pranks which, it seemed, were
escalating into something very nasty indeed.

Vogel checked through the reports filed by the officers who had attended the scene of the alleged accident which had left Marlena injured, and also the report filed by Mike Carter when George,
Tiny and Billy had reported their dogs missing.

There had to be a link, he was sure of it. But what could possibly be the motive? This group of friends, whom Michelle had told him met most Sundays at Johnny’s Place, appeared on the
surface to be an oddly mismatched bunch. Vogel needed to learn more about them, the kind of people they were and the kind of lives they led.

He wondered if he should join them one Sunday evening. But he didn’t think he would be very welcome, even though Michelle was one of the group. And in light of the most recent events, he
wondered if the Sunday evening suppers would continue.

After all, the entire group must suspect each other now. Unless they had reason to believe they were being targeted by some outsider they all knew.

Michelle had emailed him a rundown on the members of the group, giving him a summary of what she knew about each one and also how they had met.