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.
Vogel also made the obvious checks on the implicated men and women. He started with the PNC, the police national computer, and then searched more widely on the web, googling them all and logging in to the major social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter.
Googling Ari immediately brought up a link to his father and the major multinational companies the family owned. The PNC provided further information. And a police mugshot.
The previous year Ari had been charged with and cautioned for possessing a class-A drug: cocaine. He had been arrested after attracting the attention of a pair of Traffic cops by driving his Porsche in an erratic manner. He was found to be under the influence of alcohol as well as cocaine, and was banned from driving for eighteen months.
He did not appear to have a Facebook page or a Twitter account.
George Kristos did have a Facebook page, mostly featuring pictures of himself looking handsome. According to Michelle, he was an actor, so Vogel looked him up on the Spotlight website and found an entry with several references to pantomime performances, and a publicity picture of him dressed as Prince Charming in Cinderella at Rhyl over Christmas the previous year.
Tiny, Billy and Bob did not seem to feature on the web, aside from their names being listed on 192.com. Marlena, known throughout Covent Garden as simply that, with no last name, was unlisted, but did appear on the electoral register under what was presumably her real name: Marleen McTavish — a detail she had apparently supplied to Perkins and Brandt only under considerable protest. Vogel found himself smiling at that.
He was mildly surprised that Tiny and Billy had no web input. According to Michelle, they were in their mid to late thirties and very much gay men about town. But she’d failed to go into much further detail about them, apart from giving a job description for them both, so Vogel didn’t know that their relationship wasn’t entirely out in the open, or not as far as Billy’s family were concerned anyway; certainly reason enough in itself to avoid Facebook.