I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass (The Christy Kennedy Mysteries Book 2)

  I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass

  This edition first published 2016 by Fahrenheit Press

  www.Fahrenheit-Press.com

  Copyright © Paul Charles 2016

  The right of Paul Charles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  F 4 E

  I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass

  By

  Paul Charles

  An Inspector Christy Kennedy Mystery

  Fahrenheit Press

  PROLOGUE

  He could see, but he could not speak. Was that a good or bad thing?

  His hands and legs were bound individually, by gaffer-tape, to the legs of the red plastic chair which bore his weight.

  The walls which contained and restrained him were windowless. The light by which he had judged the passing of two days spilled into the room in rich sharp beams through corrugated Perspex roof sheeting.

  The smells in his room of isolation were a mixture of freshly-baked pitta bread and moussaka, the stink rising from the stains in his trousers and the lingering whiff of sweat and talcum powder of his absent captor.

  His frustration was due, not to his detention, but to the fact that he could hear people continuing their daily lives around him, through the walls that held him.

  He passed the time by simultaneously counting numbers and trying to figure out why he was bound by tape to a cheap, uncomfortable chair, and why this chair was positioned on a platform two feet six inches above the concrete floor.

  He also wondered who would miss him. Not who would notice he was absent from his normal daily routine, but who would miss him because he was absent from their lives.

  He could not think of a single person.

  This realisation threw him into a moroseness which, although brought on by a depressing appreciation of the facts, was an emotion he found pleasant to wallow in.

  This shield of loneliness somehow made his capture almost acceptable, for it didn’t seem to matter whether he was outside going about his chosen business, or restrained there in the large, windowless room.

  Either way, he was alone.

  Perhaps his jailer had even done him a favour by removing him from the chore of twelve hours a day of decision-making. A chore he had hitherto been unsuccessful in escaping.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The coat she wore still lies upon the bed

  - Gerry Rafferty

  ann rea’s vintage Ford Popular chugged down the road. She left Christy Kennedy staring fondly after her as she carefully negotiated the corner of Rothwell Street and Regent’s Park Road and disappeared from sight.

  Kennedy felt empty and listless. He had a million things to do around the house; a million things he knew he should but would not do. Would not because the million things – more realistically, nine or ten things – would never be able to fill the void left by her departure.

  So he wouldn’t even try.

  Noticing that the dry patch where her red and blue car had been parked, was slowly disappearing in the autumn mizzle, he closed the strong, varnished wood door of 16 Rothwell Street, London NW1, and wandered up the stairs, feeling warm about the weekend they had just spent together. He tried to tidy his bedroom, but stopped when he felt the bed sheets: still warm from the heat of their recent passion. He could still smell her freshness and scrubbed cleanness.

  Their relationship had gently nudged the eighth month, and he was still not sure of her feelings toward him. Kennedy returned to his basement kitchen and switched on the CD player. He felt like listening to some music – perhaps to act as a soundtrack for his thoughts. The selection was easy: The Don Williams album, One Good Well, but he could easily have selected any of Williams’ albums, they all shared a quality of transforming sadness into near-enjoyable melancholy.

  Kennedy heard a quiet, siren-like keyboard sound in the song, ‘We’re All The Way’. He’d never noticed it before, but there was no mistaking it. Now that he had become aware of the tone, it seemed to get louder and out of harmony with the rest of the song. Kennedy felt that the siren effect did not really fit in. But whenever he mentioned any such observations to ann rea, she would taunt him with her, ‘Everyone’s a critic,’ line.

  Then he realised that the sound was not coming from the speakers, but from outside the house. As the noise became even louder, eventually drowning out Don’s dulcet tones entirely, it dawned on Kennedy that it was a fire engine – or fire appliance as they are now called. The volume increased to a St Paul’s-like pitch, before gradually quietening. Kennedy calculated that the appliance had turned the tricky corner of Regent’s Park Road and had continued up Primrose Hill Road.

  ‘Not too far away from the sound of it,’ he confided in Don, who seemed totally unperturbed by the commotion outside, as a second and then a third engine raced up the golden-leafed hill. Curiosity, boredom and a sense of adventure – not necessarily in that order – got the better of him and he grabbed his green jacket and cap, leaving Don Williams to entertain the ghosts in his empty house with a flawless performance of ‘Flowers Won’t Grow in the Garden of Stone’.

  The fire engines were peaking Primrose Hill Road by the time Kennedy reached Regent’s Park Road and they were showing no sign of slowing down. He guessed that the magnet drawing these red monsters must either be in Highgate or Hampstead. By the time he turned right on to England’s Lane he was out of breath. Pausing, he noticed vibrant flames stabbing violently through clouds of black and grey smoke shooting furiously through the drizzle into the slate-coloured sky above the rooftops.

  His breath recharged with large gulps of oxygen, Kennedy followed the buzz of activity down a small turning marked Private, which veered off to the right on England’s Lane before it reached Haverstock Hill. This cul-de-sac, whose privacy was being universally ignored by Kennedy’s fellow thrill-seekers, opened out after thirty yards into a large courtyard. The well-trimmed green hedge continued along two sides of the yard, the remainder of the perimeter edged with five large dwellings, all variations on the popular theme of English school houses. Any school that had ever existed on that site would have sent its last pupils off into the world many years, and probably a few million pounds, BY (Before Yuppie).

  It was the loudness of the crackling fire that surprised Kennedy the most. It reminded him of the sound hailstones make bouncing off a tin roof; magnified through hi-fi speakers, turned up so loud you could actually hear them ripping apart. The air smelt hot and unhealthy, but somehow intoxicating.

  Two of the fire engines had made their way precariously down the narrow lane, leaving scrapings of their red paint on the hedge, and the crews were efficiently engaged in a vain battle to save the biggest of the five houses. It looked like they’d been in time to protect the remaining four, the smell would most likely stink the occupants out of their homes for weeks. But, unlike the owner of the main house, at least they would still have a house to be stank out from.

  ‘I didn’t know CID were on call for domestic fires, sir.’

  Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy turned to see WPC Anne Coles standing behind him, but before he had a chance to answer, the ever-efficient WPC clocked his casual dress and realised he was off-duty.

  ‘Sorry, sir, I forgot – you live
near here, don’t you?’ she offered with a smile, which lit up the delicate features on her misleadingly innocent face. Anne Coles was a thoroughly professional and experienced police officer.

  Kennedy returned her smile as he zipped up his jacket. ‘We all love a little excitement in our neighbourhood, don’t we?’ Feeling a twinge of guilt at the flippancy of his remark in what was after all a potential life-threatening situation, he added, in a more business-like tone, nodding toward the flames which had just broken through the grey slate roof of the lean-to section of the house, ‘Any idea if anyone was in there?’

  He was thinking of his own house, of his books, records, furniture and the other treasures he had accumulated over his twenty-three years in London. He was thinking of the grief he had suffered, first collecting, then moving them all around from bedsit to bedsit, bedsit to flat, flat to flat, flat to house, house to house to their current place, his eleventh address in the capital. He was thinking how pointless all that moving and collecting would have been, were it all to go up in smoke.

  ‘No, sir. As far as we can tell from the neighbours, the owner of the house hasn’t been seen all weekend. But that’s nothing unusual sir. He runs a record company.’ She checked her notes. ‘A Peter O’Browne of Camden Town Records. He frequently travels around various parts of the world with some of the pop stars he works with.’

  ‘Hang on – Camden Town Records; isn’t that the blue building opposite the nick?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Seems he’s your neighbour at work as well as at home.’

  ‘Yes well, I’d hate to return to find my home like this,’ Kennedy replied, his attention drawn again to the sight, smell and sound of the fire: home-comforter turned home-destroyer.

  ‘Well, sir, I’d better get on with crowd control and keep all these gawpers out of the firemen’s way.’ She straightened her hat in order to reclaim a few wisps of fine blonde hair from the steady mizzle.

  ‘Firefighters. They like to be known as firefighters these days.’

  ‘They’ve been watching too much TV, if you ask me, sir. They’ll always be firemen to me. Much more sexy than all that handlebar moustache, Village People firefighter stuff. Yes well, I’ll be getting on with it.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course’, Kennedy smiled. ‘I must be getting home, myself.’ There was no reason for him to be there, especially as he didn’t want to be cast in the role of gawper. Despite the drizzle, Kennedy’s journey down Primrose Hill Road was undertaken at a more leisurely pace than the journey up it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  For the sound of a busy place

  Is fine for a pretty face

  Who knows what a face is for

  - Nick Drake

  ‘I know you feel that there is something macabre about this one,’ began DI Kennedy the following day, as he wandered around the deceased Marianne MacIntyre’s living room.

  Mind you, Detective Sergeant James Irvine could be forgiven for making such an assumption. He was Scottish, and the Scots, like the Irish, have a tendency to dig deeper (and more successfully) to find the darker side of life. And the room which had become the final resting place of this poor unfortunate middle-aged woman was dark – as in very dark.

  Her ground-floor flat was defended from the light by a precariously high hedge, about two feet away from the window – just enough space to create a wind trap for rubbish and, at this time of the year, dead leaves from the street.

  The future former owner had not helped matters with her obvious lack of taste in interior design. She had painted her hallway a very deep brown, the room dark green, and the windows were covered with chocolate-brown curtains. The two-inch strip of glass showing at the bottom testified to a better fit elsewhere.

  This was a functional room, not a room for comfort or recreation. The bed, on which she lay sprawled like a scarecrow, looked as if it folded back towards the wall into a sofa – a black sofa. The sheets were ruffled about the corpse, covering the bottom part of one of her legs, but leaving the rest of the body exposed. A red towelling dressing gown had either been pulled open or had fallen open in the struggle. A black baby-doll curly wig had been partially shaken, or fallen, off, exposing short natural blonde hair.

  ‘Why is everything so dark?’ questioned Kennedy.

  ‘Well, sir, as my mother would say, it disnae show the dirt,’ answered DS Irvine impishly.

  The carpet and curtains stank of a mixture of cigarette smoke and stale beer, a combination that reminded Kennedy of mornings after college parties. He noted the absence of a television set and of books. A few days’ worth of Daily Mirrors were scattered under a small coffee table stained with multiple cup rings, which stood in the centre of the room.

  There was one easy-chair (dark and light brown striped pattern) and three hard chairs. Kennedy tried to view the room through the mirror that hung on the wall just above the fireplace – the original hearth had been replaced with a two-bar electric fire – as he found this a surreal but effective way of examining the crime scene.

  On the mantelpiece below the mirror were two photographs in cheap brass frames. One showed the deceased with a young boy who looked about five or six years old. It could have been ten years since the photograph was taken. The other picture was more recent. This time the victim was with a man who looked to be in his mid-forties. They both seemed to be laughing, for each other’s, rather than for the camera’s, benefit.

  There were no other visual distractions, nor apparent clues. Kennedy, happy to have an excuse to escape the glaring eyes of the corpse, went off to investigate the rest of the flat.

  It was the type estate agents would oversell as a ‘two-roomed apartment with bathroom and garden’. Kennedy thought the Monty Python team might have more accurately described it as a ‘large shoe box with slop bucket (one owner).’

  The second room in this Dickensian dwelling was a kitchen with black-painted walls. A Formica table, comforted by two cane-work chairs, bore a quarter-full bottle of HP Sauce, a nearly-empty bottle of vinegar and a wooden pepper pot. Wedged between the vinegar bottle (Crosse and Blackwell) and the pepper pot were a few envelopes, carelessly ripped open.

  Kennedy removed these from their lazy vice and found that they all contained bills. London Electricity (£59.84), British Gas (£48.29), Thames Water (£12.83) and Camden Council (£124.89 for council tax), all final demands issued in the previous three-to-five weeks. All were in the name of Marianne MacIntyre. Kennedy had already recognised in the woman’s body more than a passing resemblance to her namesake, Marianne Faithfull. Both shared blonde hair and faces obviously once beautiful but now – shall we say? – better described as ‘distinguished-looking’. Both had ‘been there’, but only one had come back.

  As Kennedy wandered around the kitchen, his fingers twitching as he thought of Marianne Faithfull and her early recordings, he was reminded of Camden Town Records and its owner. Kennedy wondered how he had taken the news of the destruction of his home.

  The small flat was starting to fill up with various scene-of-crime (SoC) personnel and Kennedy was anxious to leave before someone started swinging a cat. But first he had to conclude his examination of the flat. The sink was half-full of unwashed dishes – in pairs. Marianne MacIntyre had obviously not been alone when she had enjoyed her final meal.

  The windowsill above the sink (funny, Kennedy thought, how most architects seemed to have decided that people like to look out of the window as they wash their dishes) was very busy. It supported Fairly Liquid, Daz, plastic roses (several, various colours) in a vase (dirty cream earthenware with a v-chip on the brim), clock (small, round, yellow metal case and showing near enough the correct time), clothes-pegs (plastic, blue, red and green, packed in a cylindrical container which had once stored Paterson’s Oatcakes – top missing), a beer bottle (Guinness, dirty with three of last summer’s wasps dead drunk on the bottom) and a wine glass (tulip, with a hint of white wine residue).

  To the right of the windowsill, the metal draining-board
gave way to a gas cooker in the corner and then a wall cupboard squeezed so tightly against the cooker that opening the oven door and the lower cupboard door simultaneously must have been a difficult, if not impossible, operation. In the cupboard nestled various tins of soup and other canned stuff you would only use if you had no money for proper food – or if your money was disappearing down your throat in another form. Occupying the other corner was a fridge, empty but clean.

  Kennedy turned round slowly, taking care not to disturb anything, to look at the room from a different angle. This position afforded him a view under the table, where he spotted five empty Guinness bottles. The kitchen smelt of stale dishwater. A towel, once damp, was now dried to stiffness on the radiator behind the door.

  He squeezed past one of the SoC officers and both had to turn sideways to accommodate this manoeuvre. Thankfully, they both resisted the ‘We’ll have to stop meeting like this,’ line. Kennedy made his way to the bathroom, which was painted in lime green, which must have been very encouraging after two and a half pints of Guinness.

  DS James Irvine joined him in the bathroom, which was quite a feat.

  ‘You could sit on the toilet, scrub your partner’s back in the bath with one hand and wash your own face in the sink with your free hand without too much of a strain,’ Kennedy said with a smile.

  ‘Very hygienic I’m sure, but you’d want to make sure you didn’t mix up the actions,’ the DS replied in his best Sean Connery accent, which was in fact his own accent.

  ‘Time to check out the neighbours, Jimmy,’ Kennedy announced as he led the way back out of the front door and rang the bell marked, Flat Two: Hurst.