‘I am asking for my client to be released immediately on police bail,’ insisted Margolia.
‘No, sir,’ said Vogel, quite forcibly for him. ‘I intend to keep your client in custody for as long as I am legally allowed.’
And with that he turned his back on the lawyer and marched off in the direction of the MIT room.
Much as they would have preferred to devote their energies to building a case against Kristos, Clarke and Vogel knew they had no option but to pursue other avenues of inquiry. They immediately set about assigning teams of officers to question the rest of the friends as to their whereabouts at the time of Karen Walker’s death.
Bob had returned to work, trying to carry on as normal. A pair of MIT detectives tracked him down to a boutique hotel off Covent Garden’s Broad Court, where he was attending to the small garden and window boxes. He seemed stunned by the news of Karen’s death. But he was once more able to satisfactorily account for his movements. He had arrived at the hotel just before nine and had remained there ever since. There were a number of witnesses who could vouch for this. He was not re-arrested.
A second team found Ari, near comatose on cocaine, at his home. It proved impossible to ascertain his movements earlier in the day. They therefore arrested him on two accounts, the second as instructed by Vogel before they paid their visit. Suspicion of murder and possession of class-A drugs.
‘If he’s got any coke on him, then let’s do him for it,’ Vogel had said. ‘Sticking a drug charge on him will allow us to keep him in custody, whether his lawyer likes it or not.’
Alfonso had not returned to his job at the Vine, having been told by the management to stay away until the matter was cleared up. In any case, he would have been in no fit state to walk let alone wait on tables. Previously only a moderate drinker, he was now hell-bent on drinking his way to oblivion. He was found in an alcoholic stupor at his mother’s home in Dagenham. His mother affirmed sadly that he had been drunk all day, and had not left his bedroom except for calls of nature. She had taken him breakfast and then sandwiches at lunchtime, but he was not interested in food, she’d said. Just alcohol.
Alfonso was not rearrested.
Billy, who had been suspended by Geering Brothers until, or unless, he was formally cleared, and Tiny, who was so distressed he couldn’t even think about work, and in any case whose duties were almost exclusively nocturnal, were both at home when two detectives arrived. They claimed to have been at home at the time Karen Walker died, and indeed to have been at home together all day. But their only alibi was each other.
They were re-arrested. And along with Ari they were detained at Charing Cross overnight.
Around noon on the day after Karen Walker’s death Greg was finally escorted to the morgue at University College Hospital to see his wife’s remains and to formally identify her body. DC Parlow, as a recently qualified family liaison officer, had been assigned to support and monitor the bereaved man.
Greg couldn’t get over the fact that his last words to her had been ‘fuck off. He hadn’t told the police that. They were already investigating the possibility that Karen had topped herself. But Greg knew better. He hated himself, though, almost as much as he hated the man he believed had murdered his Karen.
The previous evening, Greg had visited his children, who were still staying with Karen’s mother. He’d come away feeling, if possible, even worse than before, having been unable to answer their questions or to provide any comfort. He couldn’t begin to think about how his little family was going to face a future without Karen. He couldn’t think about anything but the fact she was dead and the person responsible was still living.
The staff in the morgue had made Karen Walker look as presentable as possible, her amputated limbs and decapitated head had been arranged in such a way that the body appeared intact underneath the white sheet. The orderly who pulled the sheet back so that Greg could see his wife’s face was careful to reveal nothing below chin level.
Greg knew though. He had guessed from Vogel’s reaction, and the way the detective and his team had tried to persuade him not to see his wife’s body, that she had been decapitated. It had seemed obvious somehow.
The head, in spite of the attentions of the morgue staff, was in any case shocking to look at. Discoloured and distorted. But it was his Karen lying there so horribly mutilated. Greg didn’t flinch. He leaned forward and kissed her poor bloated forehead. Then he left, declining all offers of assistance from DC Parlow, and refusing to allow the officer to accompany him further. But it wasn’t grief that was consuming Greg now, it was anger.
After breaking the news to his children and Karen’s mother he had returned to the home they’d once shared and spent a long sleepless night formulating a plan to deal with the man he held responsible Karen’s death. The prospect of taking revenge was the only thing keeping him going.
The police might think that Karen had been killed by the same individual who murdered Michelle and Marlena, but he knew better. He’d said all along those acts of vandalism directed at him and his family had nothing to do with the attacks on the other Sunday Club members, but no one would listen to him. They were all too scared of Tony Kwan. The police had wasted no time hauling Greg and his friends to Charing Cross nick, throwing them in cells and questioning them for hours on end, but you could bet they wouldn’t try that with Kwan. It would be like every other police investigation into his activities: the case would be dropped due to lack of evidence. Well, Greg didn’t need bloody evidence. He knew it was Kwan. The bastard had picked up that voicemail Karen made him leave, refusing to work for him. The message which said he was sure Kwan would understand, being a family man. Kwan had understood, all right. Knowing how much Greg’s family meant to him, he’d targeted Karen. No beating, no torture his heavies could have inflicted on Greg would have been worse than losing the woman he loved.
But Kwan had made a fatal mistake. Because Greg was now quite mad with grief.
Greg took a cab from Agar Street to his Waterloo lock-up. He went straight to the workbench at the rear of the building and, using a screwdriver for leverage, began to prise a wooden peg from one section of the bench. The moment the peg was removed, Greg was able to easily push the apparently solid workbench to one side exposing the wall behind. One of the bricks was not cemented in place; Greg pulled it free, revealing a small rectangular hiding place recessed into the wall. He reached inside with one hand and lifted out an object wrapped in a soft oily fabric, which he placed carefully on the bench. Then he unpeeled several layers of protective cloth to expose a handgun which his squaddie father had taken from an Argentinian prisoner and brought home from the Falklands. It was a semi-automatic Browning 9mm Hi-Power, standard international army issue at the time. There was also a box containing magazines and cartridges.
Greg had wondered whether the police who’d searched both his workplace and his home would find his hidey hole and the illegal weapon it contained. Fortunately, they hadn’t.
He picked up the pistol and stroked it. He’d only been four or five when his father first showed him the gun, telling him he must never mention it to anyone, and that he should never touch it. Even now he could clearly remember the way his father used to take the pistol out to clean and oil it before wrapping it in the cloth and hiding it away again.
Greg had hero-worshipped his father. If it hadn’t been for Ted Walker abandoning his family, running off with his wife’s younger sister when Greg was fifteen, he would never have got involved with Kwan. Instead his dad’s departure had marked the beginning of Greg’s wild period and his involvement with the Triads, culminating in Karen’s murder.