Episode 35 - Sykes Returns

Three hours, seven cups of coffee and several buns later, Sykes finally arrived.  He closed the door and leaned against it.

He glared at Buteske.  “Get anything meaningful out of this clown?”

“Not really.  Adamant there was a body, he was tied up, but I’m not so sure about how he got free.  Still, there’s nothing conclusive to tie him to anything but breaking and entering.”

“Right.  We’ll talk more about this later.”

Buteske stood, nodded, and left the room.

When we were alone, Sykes glared at me for a full two or three minutes.  Then he said, “No body, no trace of a body, or anything that would convince me there was a body in that room.  I should charge you with wasting police time.”

“He was there.”

“So you say.  Go home.  Stop meddling in police business.  Don’t let me catch you anywhere near the Outtell Finance Company, or any of the partners, their wives, or their staff.  Your business with them is done.  Finished.  Is that clear?”

Harry thought it best to agree, and sort of the details later.

He opened the door.

“Get out of my sight, Walthenson, and don't darken my door again.”

“What about Jeremy Brightwater?"

I could see he was considering ignoring me.  Perhaps the lesser of the evils was to just tell me.

"We're looking for him.  Considering the attrition rate for those who manage Outtel, I don't fancy our chances.  He's not at home, and his housekeeper said he was away on business."

"Sounds a bit suspicious to me."

"It can sound whatever it likes.  You keep your nose out of this.  It's police business now.  Not yours."

Unless, Harry thought, he found the mysterious woman in the red dress and got an explanation out of her.

© Charles Heath 2016-2018

Episode 34 - A daughter, maybe

Buteske was sharp, and a lot cleverer than he looked.  Perhaps the persona he wanted to portray to people like me was for disarming purposes.

“I can assure you there was no one else there but me.  The aroma of perfume must come from one of the women who worked there during the day, like a secretary.  Some women seem to shower in the stuff.”

“Right.  Are you going to stick with that story?”

“It’s the truth.”  It wasn’t, and I hoped I'd sounded convincing.  I didn’t think I had.

He made a note in his book.

“You arranged to meet Al in the car park?”

“No.  He was there waiting. Scared the living hell out of me when he turned up.”

“How did he know you would be there?”

“No idea.  Perhaps he was following me.”

“Shouldn’t that be the other way around?”

No disguising the contempt.  Perhaps Sykes had already told him what he thought of my detective abilities.  Certainly, Sykes didn’t think much of me.

“Perhaps.”  I tried to keep a straight face.

“What did he want with you?”

“He asked if I'd got a picture of Joseph with his wife.”

“Al’s wife Jennifer?”

“Yes.  He wanted to know if I’d caught them together yet.”

“And Sykes tells me you told him Al’s wife Jennifer had asked you to get a photo of him with some woman called Miriam?”

“Jennifer Jones called her the red-headed floozy.”

Another not in his book.

“Did she say she was looking for a reason to divorce him?”

“She didn’t say exactly.”

“What were you doing for Joseph Jones?”

“Joe wanted me to get a photo of his wife with Al.”

“All a bit of a tangled web, don’t you think.  Did it occur to you they all might be pulling your leg.”

“Al gave me a wad of money so I don’t think he was joking.”

Another note.

“You asked if Al had a daughter.  Why?”

“Just conversation.”

“Maybe, maybe not.  Al had one, but she died four years ago.  It was why he was briefly sent to prison.   In the end, they couldn’t make the murder charge stick.  If anything, I would say Jennifer Jones would pay any amount to have him killed.”

© Charles Heath 2016-2018

Episode 33 - In a small room, sweating

Harry had to admit there were a lot of things about this case he didn't know much about.  Perhaps if he had read the papers more, he would be better informed.  He decided that from this day on he would read more than just the comic strips and do the crossword.

Not that it would help his current situation.  That was in the lap of the Gods.

Buteske ushered him to an interview room. It wasn't much a room with just a table and four chairs.  Somewhere, he assumed there was recording equipment, perhaps a video camera.  An atmosphere designed to make the interviewee squirm before the interrogation.

He wasn't under arrest, just assisting the police with their inquiries.  Pending Sykes' leisure, whatever that meant.  Buteske no doubt had a good idea but wasn’t in the mood to discuss it with him.

As he shut the door, he grinned.  "I’d get used to small spaces.  If  it’s up to Sykes, you'll never see the light of day again."

“And what do you think?”

“You’ve got to stop pissing Sykes off.  What really happened?”

He sat and took out his notebook, pencil poised to start writing.

“Exactly what I said.  A hit on the head, I woke up, bound, next to Al’s body.  It was there.  He was dead.”

“How did you untie the ropes then?”

I realized then I'd offered too much information, but that was with the benefit of hindsight.  I was not to know the woman was going to disappear and take the evidence with her.

“Loose knots and perseverance.”  It didn’t sound very convincing, and the expression Buteske’s face agreed with that assumption.

A sigh.  “How long did it take?”

He was like a dog with a bone.  Buteske would see through the lies.  I had to think.

“A few minutes.”

“Show me your hands.”

I put them on the table, and he examined them, more intensely than I'd expected.  Looking for what?”

When he’d finished the examination he said, “I’d expect some residue from the rope in your fingernails if you untied the ropes yourself.  If you want my opinion, Harry, someone undid those ropes for you.”

“Al?  He was dead.”

“Well, unless you’ve taken to wearing women’s perfume, I’m sure there was someone else in that room with you.”

© Charles Heath 2016-2018

Episode 32 - Brightwater in deep water

Harry had to admit things were going from bad to worse. 

Al had lied, the woman in the red dress had lied, and now he had lied.  He had handled the murder weapon.  All that was saving him from life in prison was the lack of a body and the hidden gun.

Sykes came bounding back up the stairs and came over to us.

“Seems there’s been some activity by the loading dock, blood and such.  I’m getting forensics to look into it.  How much they pay you to stall calling the police so they could get away?”

His theoretical charge list moved from murder to aiding and abetting.

“What?  Are you mad?  I did nothing of the sort.”

Sykes nodded to his assistant.  "Take him back to the station for questioning.  I want to know everything by the time I get back.  You have an hour."

Harry assumed from his manner that Buteske was not altogether happy with Sykes approach to police work.

After a short distance, Buteske turned to Harry, and said, "You do realize you’ve opened a can of worms working with these people, don’t you?  I mean, do you actually do any homework on people before you take them on as clients?"

At this stage of his career, Harry couldn’t afford to be picky.  But at the very least he should have done a more extensive check of his ‘clients’. "It was work, and I’m not yet in a position where I can pick and choose."

"Don't you read the papers?"

Although he wouldn't admit it, he didn't read as much as he should.  Nor watch the news on TV.  "Why?"

"Both Al and Joe were about to sue Brightwater over some loss-making deals he made.  It involves a rather large sum of money.  I thought you knew."

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

Episode 31 - A daughter, no

They found nothing on him.  Quick thinking had saved him.

For the moment.

It was still possible they would search the office from top to bottom, but that would be tomorrow and Harry planned to be somewhere else by then.

Sykes just grunted when he heard the searching officer’s report, and went back downstairs.

His partner, a detective by the name of Wally Buteske, came down the stairs from an upper level, his expression conveying that he had just been wasting his time.

I got along with him better than Sykes.

“Nothing,” I asked.

“Nothing.  What happened?”

“I was talking to Al in the parking lot and someone hit me from behind.  Next thing I know I’m here, lying next to a dead body.  Al Jones.  It shakes you up, the first, I mean seeing it close up like that.”

“You get used to it.”

He pulled over a chair and sat down.  If it was anything like any of Sykes other cases, it was going to be a long night.

”Is anything happening in the Joseph Jones case?  I asked Al if he did it, and he said Joe was the brains of the outfit.  Makes you wonder what Jeremy Brightwater’s roles is all of this?”

“At the moment we don’t really know.  He’s apparently gone missing and no one seems to know where he is.”

“So would I if two of the other partner’s suddenly turned up dead.”

“Sykes is still toying with the idea you might have done it.”

“Be a bit silly if I started killing clients wouldn’t it?”

“We have to consider all of the possibilities.  After all, you have been at both the murder scenes so you had the opportunity, maybe motive.  Al’s wife, Jennifer, seems the sort who could persuade a man to do anything for her.”

An older man, maybe, but not me.  She was as old as my mother.

“Al got any family, other than a wife?”

“No.”

“No daughter?”

He shook his head.  “Where did you get that idea?”

“Just asking.”

And now panicking.  Who the hell was the woman in the red dress?

© Charles Heath 2016-2018

Episode 30 – Interrogation

Sykes burst back up onto the main floor, much the same as he had when he came through the front door.  He came over to where Harry was waiting and stood in front of him making his extra six inches in height intimidating.

"Where the hell is my body?"

“I have no idea.  One minute it was there, in the room, and I was lying next to it.  The next, it was gone.”

“Bodies, especially dead bodies, do not get up and walk away.”

“It was in that room.  I came up here to call you.”  He’d already decided not to tell Sykes about Al’s daughter Cathy.  It would only complicate matters, and he needed to talk to her before Sykes did.

“I want this place searched from top to bottom,  Now,” he yelled out to no one in particular, and men started running in all directions.

His face was turning red, a sure sign he was getting impatient and very annoyed.  He turned back to face me.  “How long were you up here?”

“Five minutes tops.”

“And you went back down?”

“Yes.  By the time I got back down there, the body was gone.”

Sykes glared at him, and said nothing.  Harry could almost see the wheels turning in Sykes’ brain.  There were at least a dozen questions Harry knew Sykes should be asking but hadn’t.

Yet.

Then he did ask one, but not the first on Harry’s list.

“How are you involved in this?”

“I told you on the phone, one minute I’m talking to Al, the next I’m waking up here, in the basement, next to a body.”

“Yes, are you sure that whack on the head isn’t causing hallucinations?

I was beginning to think it might, considering how both Al and Cathy had come and gone without a trace.  “It’s possible.”

“And remind me again, what’s your connection to the Jones’?”

"The brothers were both my clients.”

"They were, it seems your clients.  They’re both dead.  Are you sure you didn’t kill both of them for their wives?  I’ll be checking your bank account you know.”

Of course, but there wouldn’t be much in it.  And, Harry thought, it was almost laughable that Sykes could even imagine that Harry could be a hitman.

“What were you doing for Al?"

"Watching his brother."

“That didn’t turn out so well, did it?  What were you doing for that brother?"

“Watching Al to see if he was having an affair with the company secretary, or Joe’s wife.”

“Was he, with either or both?”

“Didn’t get far enough into the case to find out.  But I had nothing to do with either of the deaths."

"You have been at the site of both murders.  Not a very good start to your defense.  Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?"

"Client confidentiality.  Al was alive then."

"You said you were brought here.  I didn't see any evidence of a fight, nor you being held captive."

"My hands were tied."

Harry held out his hands, pulled up his sleeves, but the marks made by the rope had disappeared.  Nor Harry remembered, had there been any rope, or anything else, left in the room.  Except for the gun, which he hoped he had buried deep enough in the boxes.

"A likely story then."  Sykes looked at the uniformed officer.  "Search him."

© Charles Heath 2016-2018

Episode 29 – Where is Al?

Harry dashed back down to the basement to see if Cathy was still there.

She was not in the room where he had last seen her.  He then frantically searched the rest of the basement.  It was empty except for him.

He could feel the gun weighing down his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at it, had a smell.

It had been recently fired.

Very recently.

Al.

He instantly realized he was holding the murder weapon and his fingerprints were all over it.  About the same time as the thought that perhaps Cathy had shot her own father, and she had just made him the number one suspect

He went back into the room where Al was and turned on the light.

Another shock, if it was possible.  Al was gone.  No body, no blood, no rope, nothing.  It was as if he had never been in the room.

Harry carefully and quickly wiped the gun clean of his prints and hid it away in the bottom of one of the storage boxes, and made it upstairs just in time to see Sykes and several other police cars, sirens blaring and lights flashing arrive outside the building.

Harry had a feeling of impending doom the moment he saw the police car screeching to a halt, and Sykes leap out of it while it was still moving.

Sykes was not alone.  Suddenly the building was swarming with police, both plainclothes and uniformed officers.

The front door was open, still unlocked from the time Al's daughter had arrived.  

If it was his daughter, or if she worked there at all.  Why hadn’t he considered that possibility before?  Harry, at that moment in time, didn't know what to believe, except she had disappeared and left him holding the gun.

"Where is he?" Sykes demanded as he came through the door.

"He was downstairs."  Harry pointed in the direction of the staircase.

Sykes didn't stop.  "Watch him," he barked at a uniformed officer.  Another detective ran to keep up with him, looking haplessly at Harry as he went past.

Harry shrugged.  Where could he go?  One uniformed officer watched him, another stood at the door.  Others by now covered the other exits.  He was trapped.  He reached for a handkerchief to wipe his brow.  Sweating on a cold night, not a good sign.

Then he heard Sykes start yelling. “Walthenson?”

© Charles Heath 2016-2018