The Alibi Page 3

  He was sure he would have held back last night too, whatever the extent of the provocation. But right now he couldn’t be 100 per cent certain. He closed his eyes briefly, cast his mind back to last night, saw himself inside Megan’s house, yelling at her, threatening her.

  The picture kept fading, which came as no great surprise. Although he enjoyed the booze, he wasn’t a heavy drinker, and when he did get rat-arsed he often suffered partial memory loss the morning after. Usually the memories surfaced eventually, but sometimes they didn’t.

  He was reminded of the time he got into an argument with a stranger who got lippy with him in a nightclub. The next morning he remembered the argument, but had no recollection of punching the bloke in the face and then stamping on his head. Luckily Frankie Bishop had been with him in the club and had told him what had happened.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, boss,’ Bishop had said. ‘Most of us don’t remember everything we do when we’re hammered. And I reckon that’s a good thing. It’s just a shame we can’t blank out some of the stuff we do when we’re sober.’

  But Danny was worried. Not knowing exactly what had happened last night sparked a twist of panic in his gut.

  He opened his eyes, grabbed the TV remote from the bedside table, switched over to Sky News.

  And there was Megan’s face filling the screen, her eyes staring right at him. He felt the air lock in his chest and was gripped by a sudden anxiety.

  It was a photograph he had seen hundreds of times before, one of the professional publicity shots distributed by the BBC. It showed Megan at her most stunning, before her life became a train wreck. Her long brown hair framed an oval face with soft, delicate features. Her smile was warm and engaging, and for a split second he remembered why he’d fallen in love with her in the first place.

  His mind carried him back six years to the night they met. It was at a New Year’s Eve bash in a club his father had just taken over in Camberwell. She’d come along with a group of luvvie friends from television and he’d been there with Bishop and some of the crew.

  Danny had introduced himself and had given them two bottles of champagne on the house.

  ‘It’s my way of thanking you for coming to the club,’ he’d said. ‘I do hope it’s the first of many visits.’

  It was Megan who asked him to join them at their table to welcome in the New Year. And from that moment he was beguiled by her beauty and the fact that she was a celebrity.

  At the stroke of midnight they kissed, and he would never forget how good it felt and how his heart raced. It was the start of a passionate relationship that most people – including his father – predicted wouldn’t last. They weren’t wrong.

  Callum Shapiro never did like Megan, and he told Danny he was a moron for getting involved with someone in the public eye.

  ‘Are you off your fucking trolley?’ he said after Danny proposed and Megan accepted. ‘You’re a villain and you need to keep a low profile. You’ve let this celebrity thing go to your head and it’s a big mistake. On top of that you and her are from entirely different worlds. She’ll be trouble, son. You mark my words.’

  But Danny didn’t listen. He loved Megan and he enjoyed the thrill of being in the limelight and going to film premieres and celebrity parties. And he lapped up the attention and the way the tabloids described him as the playboy son of the reputed gangland boss Callum Shapiro.

  Four months after he met Megan they got married on Danny’s twenty-seventh birthday. Then two months after the wedding his father was arrested and the lawyers warned them he was facing a life sentence.

  It fell on Danny to take the reins of the organisation, which made his life more complicated and put an enormous strain on the marriage from the start.

  If Megan had conceived during that first year then maybe things would have been different. But she put her career before a family and at the same time Danny found that being the boss meant a bigger commitment than he’d been prepared for. So the odds were stacked against them from the beginning. It didn’t help that Megan found it tough coping with pressure and suffered bouts of depression, which she blamed on a difficult childhood and low self-esteem.

  ‘Miss Fuller was thirty-two and married for several years to Danny Shapiro, the man who has repeatedly denied any involvement in organised crime in London.’

  Now his own face stared down at him from the TV screen as the newsreader relayed background information relevant to the story.

  Danny’s unease mounted as he watched and listened with a hawkish intensity.

  ‘The couple split up three years ago and were divorced fourteen months ago. Shortly after that Miss Fuller was dropped by the BBC from the long-running soap. A close friend has told Sky News that this – coupled with mounting debts – caused her to become clinically depressed.’

  Danny had known all about the state she got herself into. She’d phoned him often enough to tell him it was his fault for being a shit husband and cheating on her with a string of women. Out of guilt and pity he had given her a large sum of money as part of the divorce settlement, plus two properties – the house in Balham and the cottage in the New Forest.

  But he’d refused to accept responsibility for the fact that she blew the money on high living and a business venture that went tits up. She’d been forced to remortgage the house and put the cottage on the market.

  On the TV the newsreader was saying that Megan’s body was discovered by her own father when he called at the house this morning.

  ‘Mr Nigel Fuller apparently looked through the kitchen window when he got no response from ringing the front doorbell. He then saw his daughter’s body lying on the kitchen floor.’

  Danny’s mind conjured up an image of the scene that would have confronted Nigel Fuller. It caused the muscles in his jaw to tense and brought a lump to his throat. It also made him realise that deep down he still had feelings for Megan despite the friction that had developed between them, and for that reason he was saddened by the manner of her death.

  He started to go through the events leading up to last night again in his head. Megan had called him on his mobile while he was still at his office in Bermondsey. She’d wanted to give him the news that her agent had secured a publishing deal for her autobiography.

  ‘So here’s the thing, Danny Boy,’ she’d said. ‘If you want to stop me dishing the dirt about you and your business then you’d better sort out the money fast. Half a mil buys my silence.’

  She’d severed the connection before he could respond. He’d still been fuming an hour later when he left the office with two minders and headed for a business meeting in Clapham, a short way from Balham.

  The meeting was with a bunch of Turks who had opened up a new drugs supply route into the UK from Istanbul. Over a plentiful supply of booze they’d struck a good deal. The Turks had access to some high-quality coke and heroin, and they were now going to be one of the firm’s main suppliers.

  But as he left the meeting above a pub his thoughts had switched back to Megan. And because he’d been tanked up he’d decided to go to her house to confront her. In hindsight it had been a mistake to have sent the minders home, but he’d wanted to go alone and to have a brisk walk to clear his head.

  Clapham was about a mile away and halfway there it had started to rain, a steady drizzle rather than a downpour. Luckily he hadn’t been suited up. As usual he’d been wearing a fleece with a hood, his ‘uniform of choice’ that allowed him to take to the streets without being recognised. Even so by the time he got to Megan’s house he was wet, miserable and fit to explode …

  ‘A police source has just confirmed that she may have been murdered by someone she let in – someone she might have known.’

  The newsreader’s words seized Danny’s attention again and pulled him back to the present. That was when alarm bells started going off inside his head, and he realised that he had a serious problem. It didn’t matter that he was convinced he didn’t kill Megan. Unless it was obvious to
the cops who did then he was going to be their prime suspect.

  They’d probably find out that she phoned him earlier in the day, even though he used an unregistered mobile. They would know he was worried about what she would write in her forthcoming book. They’d probably drum up CCTV footage of him walking from Clapham to Balham. And he couldn’t be sure, of course, that he hadn’t been seen entering or leaving the house.

  Fuck.

  His heart started booming in his ears and a hole opened up in his stomach. He told himself to stay calm, not to panic, but he had to fight back an urge to scream.

  This was bad. Really bad. The cops would jump at the chance to pin Megan’s murder on him, and once they discovered he’d been to the house they’d have him bang to rights.

  Fuck.

  What he needed was an alibi and he didn’t have one. He also had no idea what to tell the Old Bill when they eventually turned up. He needed to think, to get his mind around the problem and see if he could find a way out.

  A coffee would help, he decided, followed by a hot shower. He had to flush the booze and the sleep from his system so that he could start firing on all cylinders.

  He threw back the duvet and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. At that moment the landline started ringing in the other room. His heart froze in his chest and his body flooded with adrenalin. Only a few people had the number to the house phone – his father, his lawyer, his accountant, and Frankie Bishop.

  He had no idea which one of them it could be or whether he should answer it. He didn’t want to speak to anyone until he knew what he was going to say, so he listened to the ringing for about thirty seconds. After it stopped he didn’t move. He just sat there, his mind whirring, as he tried to think of a way to save himself.

  4

  Beth Chambers

  The story broke even before I left the house. I saw Megan Fuller’s picture on BBC News as I stepped out of the shower. By the time I was on my second mug of coffee they were saying she might have been murdered by someone she’d known. That didn’t surprise me, since most murders are committed by friends or relatives of the victims.

  ‘So is that why you have to go to work?’ my mother said, flicking her head towards the TV.

  ‘It’s a big story, Mum,’ I said. ‘And as I happen to be the paper’s crime reporter they expect me to cover it.’

  ‘But it’s the start of the weekend.’

  I huffed out a breath. ‘I know that, Mum, and I’m sorry. But I can’t help it. I’ll make it up to Rosie. I promise.’

  She gave me one of her long, prickly looks so I kept my gaze firmly fixed on the screen and pretended not to notice.

  I could see her out of the corner of my eye, standing in front of the sink with her hands on her hips. Not for the first time I realised that I would probably be just like her when I too was the wrong side of sixty. I certainly had her temperament. We were both stubborn, strong-willed, opinionated.

  Thankfully the physical resemblance was less apparent. She’d had a hard life and it showed in the lines that were etched into her face. What remained of her grey hair was thin and wispy, and the whites of her eyes were tinged with yellow.

  As a younger woman, Peggy Chambers had been beautiful, and it was no wonder she’d had more than her fair share of male admirers. She was 28 when she gave birth to me. I had only a vague recollection of my father because he was only around for a short time. He popped in and out of my life when I was a small child. He brought me presents and sometimes put me on his lap and gave me a cuddle. But he never took me out or came to any of my birthday parties.

  Mum told me it was because he was married and I was the result of an illicit affair. She also told me that he turned out to be a low-life shyster who couldn’t be trusted. One day when I was 5 he just decided he didn’t want to see her any more and stopped coming to the house.

  I couldn’t even picture him in my mind’s eye, although occasionally a distant memory came to me at night. A tall man with a husky voice telling me that he loved me, and that I was the most beautiful girl in the world.

  My mother fell in love again when I was 8 with a black man named Tony Hunter, who she met in the Nag’s Head pub in Peckham. He got her pregnant and so they married.

  Tony was good to both of us and he treated me like his own daughter. When my brother Michael was born, Tony promised me he would always be there for us. But he wasn’t, and the years that followed Michael’s birth were filled with tragedy and heartache.

  That was why my mother was like she was: tough, assertive, and intolerant. It had been her way of coping with the cruel blows she’d suffered during her lifetime. And however much she annoyed me at times, I knew she would do anything for her daughter and granddaughter.

  Rosie thought the world of her, so she hadn’t thrown a hissy fit when I’d told her that Nanny would be taking her to the park because I had to go to work. I’d sweetened the pill by promising to bring her back a present.

  On the TV they were now showing a photograph of Megan Fuller and Danny Shapiro together, and it drew my mother’s attention back to the screen.

  ‘Do you think he killed her?’ she asked me.

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘But it wouldn’t surprise me. The guy’s a notorious thug. Just like his dad was before he got sent down.’

  I’d written countless stories about Danny Shapiro. I’d even tried to expose the inner workings of his organisation. But along with every other investigative journalist who’d tried I had barely been able to scratch the surface. The guy was more careful, and more insulated, than most other villains I’d come across, which was why the police had struggled to bring him down.

  Shapiro was a known face in this area of London. It was part of his manor, and most people knew who he was and what he did. His father, Callum, had lived in Peckham back in the days when my mother ran a salad stall in Rye Lane. He and a few other south London villains were among her customers. Since then times had changed and so had the Lane. These days it had little to offer well-heeled villains, who preferred more upmarket shopping streets.

  ‘So have you ever met him?’ my mother said.

  ‘Do you mean Shapiro?’

  ‘Who else would I be talking about?’

  I shrugged. ‘Well, I’ve approached him twice for an interview. But each time he turned me down.’

  ‘And what did you think of him?’

  ‘He’s a bit flash,’ I said. ‘He’s a charmer, though, and good-looking to boot. I can see why Megan Fuller fell for him.’

  My mother shook her head. ‘You know what, Beth? That man sounds just like your stepdad. He was also handsome and charming and as crooked as they come.’

  The thought made me shudder, but she was right. Tony had been a career criminal just like Danny Shapiro, which was why he was no longer with us.

  And it was why our lives had been filled with so much drama and sadness.

  Grant Scott had arranged for a taxi to pick me up outside the house. The driver honked his horn to let me know he had arrived.

  I apologised again to Rosie for having to work and she gave me a kiss and told me not to forget her present.

  ‘If you do you’ll have me to answer to,’ my mother said. But as she spoke she had a smile on her face and I knew she’d forgiven me, just as she always did. I hugged her and thanked her for taking Rosie to the park.

  ‘I don’t know what I would do without you, Mum,’ I said. ‘You’re a gem.’

  ‘And you’re a right royal pain in the backside, Bethany Chambers,’ she said. ‘But I love you just the same.’

  So all was well on the home front as I left the house.

  I still felt guilty, though. It was always the same when I left Rosie at home and went to work, even though I knew I didn’t really have a choice. After all, someone had to pay the bills. I found some comfort in the fact that I was luckier than most single mums. My own mother was there to help and I took home a good wage. According to the latest hot parenting book I
was actually setting a good example for my child.

  But that didn’t mean I was able to shake off the brutal burden of so-called ‘working mum’s guilt’. It was going to plague me for years to come; of that I was certain.

  It was chilly out and I was wearing my designer jeans, black T-shirt, and a thick fleece jacket. My hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and I had sunglasses on my head.

  I was carrying my favourite M&S leather shoulder bag containing my purse, iPad, phone, Olympus voice recorder, and small make-up bag. So I was back in reporter mode and ready to roll.

  I gave the driver Megan Fuller’s address and made myself comfortable on the back seat. Then as soon as we were moving I started making calls. The first was to the New Scotland Yard press office. I was well known to the team and they confirmed what I had already gleaned from the TV news. They also told me that the investigation would be run by Wandsworth CID based in Lavender Hill. The officers leading the inquiry were Detective Chief Inspector Jack Redwood, who I’d never met, and Detective Inspector Ethan Cain, the toerag who happened to be my ex-husband.

  It didn’t surprise me that Ethan had been assigned to the case because it was on his patch, and he was part of the murder team. It also didn’t surprise me when he failed to answer his mobile. I knew it’d be because he either wasn’t ready to talk to me or he was too busy. No matter, I thought. I’d call again later when he was bound to have more to tell me anyway.

  The second call I made was to another contact inside Wandsworth nick. He was a senior officer in the uniform division who’d been feeding me with information for years, despite the crackdown on the cosy relationship between the press and the police that followed the Leveson Inquiry. I referred to the officer as Doug, although that wasn’t his real name. In fact I gave false names to all my police contacts because it meant there was less risk of them being outed.