‘Right, yes, of course.’
George seemed almost eager to help. And, unless he were guilty, why shouldn’t he be? thought Vogel. Those suspects who were innocent must surely want to see the killer found every bit as much as he did. Aside from the fact that they would all be under suspicion until the culprit was found, in the absence of a motive there was no way of predicting who the killer’s next victim might be.
‘I was with my neighbour, Marnie. Well, first of all I went to the shop and got some fresh bread and a couple of Danishes. She likes Danishes, you see. I go round every morning when I’m not working. We have breakfast together and I tidy for her and keep her company for a bit.’
‘What time did you leave your flat and what time did you arrive back at this Marnie’s?’
‘I went out soon after eight, and I don’t suppose I was gone more than twenty minutes. I was with Marnie by about half past eight. I always get there quite early or she starts to fret.’
‘And what time did you leave Marnie?’
‘Oh, it must have been eleven o’clock. Very nearly anyway.’
‘You stayed with this elderly woman for two and a half hours? I must say, that is extremely neighbourly of you, Mr Kristos. Indeed, some might say excessively so.’
George coloured slightly and mumbled something incomprehensible.
‘If you have something to say, Mr Kristos, it would help if you spoke up, please.’
George nodded. ‘Well, it’s embarrassing. But actually Marnie’s daughter, well, she pays me to look out for Marnie. Only Marnie doesn’t know, you see.’
‘I don’t see, Mr Kristos. Perhaps you could explain.’
‘Well, Marnie’s daughter, she lives in Ealing now, smart house, young family. All of that. She isn’t up for running into Soho every day to see to her old mum, and Marnie certainly wouldn’t be up for living in Ealing. No way. Not that she’d ever be invited.’ George shook his head sadly.
‘So in effect this is a job?’ Vogel asked. ‘Looking after your neighbour is paid employment for you. Is that what you are saying?’
‘Kind of, yes,’ responded George, still stumbling slightly over his words, his face bright red now. ‘I do all sorts of work when I’m not acting, which is most of the time, unfortunately. I do maintenance round the building where I live, I work in a theatre box office sometimes. I mean, I can turn my hand to all sorts of things, and I have to. So, yes, looking out for Marnie is a job, I suppose, it helps towards paying the rent.’
‘And you go in every morning at about the same time, and always for what, two or three hours?’ asked DC Jones.
George nodded. ‘Yes. Only, well, you see, nobody knows. None of the others. Not my girlfriend either. Nobody. I mean, it’s not very cool, is it? Chap like me, a paid carer for an old girl like Marnie. I’m ever so fond of her and that, but...’
George’s voice tailed off. There was a kind of panic in his eyes.
Vogel stifled a smile with difficulty. This was a murder investigation, yet George Kristos was more anxious about his cool image than establishing his whereabouts at the time of the crime and enabling himself to be eliminated from police inquiries.
After George, it was Greg’s turn. He said that he’d spent the entire morning in and out of his van delivering crates of whisky all over West London, and beyond, into Surrey and Middlesex. He’d made an early start. He’d got to Chiswick at about half past eight, then gone on to Ealing, Acton, Hounslow, Twickenham, and further west, he said, to Kingston, Staines and Slough. On the way back he’d made deliveries to more central addresses in Barnes, Putney and Clapham before returning to his Waterloo lock-up to reload. He claimed he’d been planning to spend the afternoon making more deliveries, some nearby, in Waterloo itself, and various riverbank addresses, as well as Covent Garden, Clerkenwell, and maybe north to Camden, Hampstead and Highgate.
‘Then you lot came and that was the end of that,’ he said.
‘I take it you have a record of your movements, Mr Walker?’ asked Vogel.
‘’Course I bloody do,’ snapped Greg. ‘Most of the places I deliver to someone answers the door and takes the stuff in. Sometimes the householder, sometimes caretakers, porters, cleaning ladies. Sometimes I go next door to a neighbour if there’s no one in. They all sign for it, don’t they? My clipboard’s in the van. I’d have shown it to your boys if they’d given me half a chance. But they were in too much of a bloody hurry to strong-arm me down here, weren’t they?’
‘Mr Walker,’ said Vogel, ‘I’m quite sure you weren’t strong—’
Greg cut him off. ‘That’s as maybe, but I heard my missus crying earlier. Sobbing ’er heart out, she was, and don’t tell me it weren’t her because I know bloody better. Whaddya think you’re doing, making a doll like her cry? Never hurt a fly, my Karen.’
‘Mr Walker, two women have been murdered, a police officer, my colleague, and an elderly lady, both, I believe, friends of yours. Both were violently attacked. I have to make whatever inquiries I deem necessary in order to find whoever has committed these dreadful crimes and, in each case, bring him...’ Vogel paused, ‘or her, to justice. And I am afraid that means questioning every member of the group of friends Michelle and Marlena were part of. Almost everyone in that group has recently been the victim of some type of incident, ranging in severity from malicious pranks to murder. Those of you who are innocent of any wrongdoing could be in extreme danger. That includes your wife. If she is innocent, as you say, then I must do everything in my power to establish her innocence and to ascertain if there is anything she knows, albeit unwittingly, that might lead us to the guilty party. And if she or anyone else is upset by being questioned, well, so be it.’
Vogel glanced to the side and saw DC Jones staring at him. Vogel coughed, clearing his throat noisily to hide his embarrassment. He was aware that he was not conducting this interview in a professional manner. Nor strictly according to procedure. He didn’t have to explain himself to anyone. Least of all to a suspect.
Greg was also staring at him. And it was he who broke the silence.
‘You’re right,’ he said, taking Vogel by surprise. ‘I’m not thinking straight. You gotta do what you gotta do to find this bastard. It’s not the Fonz, we know that now. He couldn’t ’ave killed Michelle anyway, right?’
Vogel nodded.
‘Yeah, so the bastard’s still at large. My Karen could be next. Any of us could. And Michelle, I can’t believe she’s dead. She was that pretty and full of life always.’ He broke off. ‘I mean, not that it makes any difference, that stuff. My Karen, well, she’ll be crying about Michelle as much as herself.’
He looked directly at Vogel.
‘Anything you want to know, anything I can do to help, guv,’ he said.
‘You can tell me about your own relationship with Michelle.’
‘We were friends. Not close friends, like, but good friends. Just part of a group that met every Sunday really... but you know that.’
Vogel nodded. He did indeed know that, and he was sick of asking the same questions and getting the same answers. He felt he was getting nowhere. All he could hope was that the boys doing the searches, and the various forensics results they were awaiting might give him some of the answers he needed. In the meantime, he could only continue to go through the motions. The answers continued to be repetitive.
Greg got on very well with Michelle. No, there had never been any ill feeling between them. And no, he could think of no one with a grudge against her.
‘Except maybe her old man, Phil, another copper. Did you know she was married to a copper, and that they’re separated?’
Vogel nodded.
‘Yeah, he ran off with some woman Michelle always referred to as “that tart”.’ Greg grinned. ‘She was always going on about him. No love lost there, either way round.’