Honeytrap: Part 3
Authors: Roberta Kray
Through her marriage to Reggie Kray, Roberta Kray has a unique and authentic insight into London’s East End. Born in Southport, Roberta met Reggie in early 1996 and they married the following year; they were together until Reggie’s death in 2000. Roberta is the author of many previous bestsellers including
Broken Home, Strong Women, Bad Girl
and
Streetwise
.
The Debt
The Pact
The Lost
Strong Women
The Villain’s Daughter
Broken Home
Nothing But Trouble
Bad Girl
Streetwise
Non-fiction
Reg Kray: A Man Apart
Roberta Kray
First published as an ebook in 2015 by Sphere
ISBN 978-0-7515-6110-4
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Roberta Kray 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Sphere
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
Coming Next In The Honeytrap …
It was over two hours since Harry Lind had been taken to the police station and placed in an interview room. The space was familiar to him from all his own years in the service: the faded magnolia walls, lino floor, an overhead fluorescent light, Formica-topped table and four chairs. He rubbed at his face, fatigue adding an unwanted layer to the shock of discovering that Caroline Westwood had been murdered, not to mention the dull remains of his hangover. He’d been over his story numerous times, but endless repetition didn’t make it sound any better.
The two officers who were interviewing him – a middle-aged DI, Judith Cobb, and a youngish DC called Malcolm Wells – made little attempt to hide their scepticism. They looked at him with cool, cynical eyes, asking the same questions in different ways, trying to establish a truth about Friday night that didn’t actually exist. He was in the frame and he knew it, although he couldn’t be the only suspect. What about the husband? What about the guys she’d been talking to? The evidence against him was purely circumstantial – wrong time, wrong place – but it was enough to keep his interrogators interested.
DI Cobb leaned forward and put her hands on the table. ‘What I still can’t understand is why you wiped the tape. Surely you were supposed to be gathering evidence. Wasn’t that the whole point of the exercise?’
Harry was kicking himself over that decision. ‘It was just … I don’t know, an impulse. It didn’t seem right to give the tape to her husband, especially as I hadn’t even finished the job. I suppose I wanted her to have the benefit of the doubt.’
‘The benefit of the doubt?’ Cobb repeated.
‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘I mean, there was some flirting but nothing … It was all pretty innocent.’
‘So why not let him hear it?’
‘Because it didn’t prove anything one way or the other. In another five minutes she would probably have given me the brush-off, but she never got the opportunity – at least not in a way that could be heard on tape. And that was my fault. I took off in the middle of it all and … Look, I messed up, okay? I didn’t see why she should have to pay for it.’
‘How very chivalrous of you.’
Harry knew how it was coming across, that he’d deliberately wiped the tape in order to hide something incriminating. He could see the way the DI was staring at him, like he was one of those blokes who couldn’t take rejection, who lashed out when a woman turned him down. ‘It was just banter,’ he said. ‘Ask the barman. He was listening in to most of the conversation.’
‘We will,’ she said. ‘You can be sure of it.’
In his head, Harry was still trying to come to terms with the one stark fact he was sure of: Caroline Westwood had been shot in her hotel room late on Friday night or in the early hours of Saturday morning, but her body hadn’t been found until today. The terrible thing was that when the cops had told him the news, and after the initial shock had subsided, he’d felt a disconcerting wave of relief that it was Caroline and not Sylvie who was lying on that hard cold slab at the morgue.
‘So let’s get back to this ex-girlfriend of yours. Ellen, yes?’
‘She wasn’t a girlfriend, just a friend – someone I hadn’t seen in years.’ Harry hadn’t wanted to give them a name – Ellen was skating on thin ice as it was – but then he’d remembered that he’d asked the receptionist if she was booked into the hotel. Lying would not have been a smart move. ‘To be honest, I just meant to catch up with her, grab her phone number and then return to the bar. She moved away a few years ago and we lost touch.’ Even as the words ‘To be honest’ came out of his mouth, he winced inwardly; there was something about the phrase that always made people sound less trustworthy rather than more.
‘And you thought that was more important than the job you were supposed to be doing?’
Harry gave a shake of his head. ‘I didn’t say it was professional. But I thought I’d be a couple of minutes, that’s all. In retrospect, I can see it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it. I couldn’t find Ellen and by the time I got back Caroline had lost interest and was sitting with her friends again.’
‘That must have been annoying. All that effort you’d put in and then she gave you the brush-off.’
Harry looked into the grey eyes of the DI, taking care to hold her gaze. ‘I’d say more resigned than annoyed. These things happen. It was my own fault.’ He wondered what Caroline had said to her friends after he’d run out on her and imagined it was nothing complimentary.
DC Wells chose this moment to try a bloke-to-bloke approach. ‘I wouldn’t have been too happy. Women, eh?’
But Harry knew better than to be drawn into that one. ‘It’s the way it goes,’ he replied calmly. ‘That’s when I decided to call it a night. I left. I caught a black cab from Euston Road and went home.’ He didn’t mention Danny Street stopping to warn him off or indeed that the lowlife had even been at the Lumière. Things were complicated enough without dropping that particular bomb into the mix.
‘And then?’ the DI asked.
‘And then nothing. It was getting late. I had a shower and went to bed.’
‘You didn’t return to the hotel?’
‘Why would I do that?’
DI Cobb’s eyebrows shifted up a notch. ‘I don’t know, maybe you had a think about things, didn’t like the way they’d gone, decided there was unfinished business.’
‘I didn’t go back to the hotel. Check with the receptionist.’
‘There are other ways to get in. Like the staff entrance round the side.’
‘I didn’t go back,’ Harry repeated firmly. ‘And you’re wasting your time here. I had no reason to kill Caroline Westwood.’ If it hadn’t been for that damn tape, he’d have probably been in and out of the station in half an hour. By deciding to delete it, he’d propelled himself up the list of suspects. Only guilty people went around removing evidence. ‘I didn’t even know which room she was staying in.’
‘We only have your word for that.’
‘I’m telling the truth.’
There was a short silence. The two officers stared across the table at him. DI Cobb smiled in what was probably supposed to be a friendly manner but which came across as more cunning than reassuring. She had a small sharp face and wily eyes.
‘Do you have a girlfriend at the moment, Harry?’
‘What does that have to do with anything?’
‘Just answer the question, please.’
‘No.’
Cobb and Wells exchanged a quick knowing glance. Harry could tell they were busy building up a psychological profile in their minds: the ex-cop full of anger, a man who’d once held a position of power and respect but was now reduced to trying to catch out cheating wives, a guy so full of resentment that he might snap at any time. Caroline Westwood, they were thinking, could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Cobb glanced down at her notes, studied them for a second and looked back up. ‘I see you were arrested in the Locke murder case.’
‘And cleared of all charges.’
‘It was his wife, wasn’t it, who tried to set you up?’
‘Yes.’
Cobb produced that sly smile again. ‘Aimee Locke,’ she said. ‘Women seem to cause you a lot of trouble, Harry. I wonder why that is?’
Harry lifted his hands in a what-can-I-say kind of gesture and dropped them gently back on to the table. He hadn’t bothered with a solicitor – innocent men didn’t need one, right? –but now he was beginning to wonder if that was yet another mistake. Still, the onus was on the police to prove his guilt, not for him to prove his innocence. At some point soon they would have to either charge him or let him go.
Mac came out of his office as Harry walked into reception. ‘It’s about time,’ he said, glancing up at the clock on the wall. ‘What’s going on? Why did they keep you so long?’
Harry pulled a face, headed for the drinks machine and jabbed the button for a strong black coffee. ‘Because they don’t like the whole tape business. They think I’m hiding something.’
‘Yeah, well, it wasn’t the smartest move in the world.’
Harry sipped the coffee and gave him a look. ‘Don’t start; I’ve had those two muppets giving me the third degree for the last two hours. They even brought up the Aimee Locke business as if I’ve got a problem with women, as if I’m some kind of sociopath or worse.’
Mac perched on the side of the desk and grinned. ‘You’ve not got the best track record in the world.’
‘Huh?’
Mac counted off the names on his fingers. ‘Aimee Locke, Ellen Shaw, that crazy redhead – what was she called? Antonia, that’s it. And then there’s Valerie … need I go on?’
‘So what’s your problem with Val?’
‘Nothing, other than her dumping you right after you almost got your leg blown off.’
‘She didn’t dump me … not exactly. You know what I was like back then. A bloody saint couldn’t have lived with me. And she stuck it out longer than most women would.’ Harry waved the subject away, not wanting to dwell on those dismal days. ‘Anyway, fascinating as this is, what’s the news on Westwood? You manage to dig up anything?’
‘Yeah, I made a few calls. He’s one rich bastard – inherited a fortune and made another since. He’s got a company that produces designer kitchen appliances: fancy coffee-makers, toasters, kettles, that kind of stuff.’
‘A rich man who doesn’t trust his wife. Who’d have thought it?’
‘Except he’s got an alibi for Friday night and Saturday morning. He was at a country house party for the weekend, nibbling on caviar and knocking back champagne. With lots of witnesses to swear he never left.’
‘So he got someone else to do it.’
Mac pursed his lips. ‘On the same night that he hires us to test his wife’s fidelity? It’s hardly a cute move. He’s going to be top of the suspect list even before the police find out he didn’t trust her.’