The Alibi: A gripping crime thriller full of secrets, lies and revenge

2

Ethan Cain

The girl had said she was 18, but Ethan Cain wasn’t sure he believed her. She looked younger. Much younger.

It hadn’t stopped him spending the night with her, though. She was mature enough to know exactly how to please him.

Even if she was underage there was no danger of anyone in authority ever finding out. The girl would be too scared to let slip that she’d been shagged by a 34-year-old man at his flat in Wandsworth.

She was still asleep on the bed and she hadn’t stirred when he’d got up just now to have a piss. It didn’t surprise him. Last night she’d consumed copious amounts of vodka and had sniffed at least five lines of coke. So she’d probably be comatose for a while yet.

But that was okay because he wasn’t in a hurry to get shot of her. It was Saturday and he didn’t have to go to work. Besides, he was already aroused at the prospect of fucking her again, maybe a couple of times this morning if he could manage it.

After emerging from the en-suite bathroom, Cain sat naked in the armchair next to the bed and lit his first cigarette of the day. It was always the best, the most satisfying, and he savoured the acrid warmth that filled his throat.

He knew he wasn’t a pretty sight. He looked far better with clothes on. At least they concealed his paunch and the man boobs that had begun sprouting up after he’d stopped working out. He wasn’t grossly overweight, just bigger and softer than he wanted to be.

The girl, on the other hand, looked good enough to eat. The duvet had been pushed aside to reveal her lying spread-eagled on her back. It was all he could do not to get back on the bed and feast on her bare flesh.

She had lush black hair, small pert tits, and skin as smooth as porcelain. It struck him that she was a picture of innocence. This made him smile because she was far from innocent.

Ania Kolak – if that was her real name – was among the thousands of Eastern European sex workers who had poured into London in recent years. She was Polish and had told him that she hoped one day to embark on a career as an actress.

He’d heard it all before. Most of them believed that selling their bodies was a means to an end and that after a few years they’d have enough money saved to be able to fulfil their dreams. But in most cases that never happened. Instead they ended up as drug addicts or pathetic zombies drained of every last drop of self-respect.

Not that he gave a toss. As far as he was concerned it served them right. They didn’t deserve his or anyone else’s pity.

He did have some sympathy for those who were forced into sex slavery, though. Their plight was indeed tragic. But all the women and girls he’d been with had clearly become prostitutes out of choice. Many of them had told him they actually enjoyed being on the game. It meant they had enough cash to live well in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

It still amazed him how much some of them earned. The high-class escorts who worked the West End often raked in thousands of pounds in a single night. Ania wasn’t in that league, not yet anyway, and her fee for an entire night was five hundred pounds. Cain was just glad he didn’t have to pay her and the others out of his own pocket. He would never have been able to afford it.

As it was he was lucky. The girls and drugs were the perks he enjoyed for being on Danny Shapiro’s payroll. Danny, like his father before him, ran the biggest prostitution racket this side of the Thames. But it was only part of his empire, an empire that stretched across the whole of south London.

He was without doubt the shrewdest villain in the capital and the most feared. Even the Russians, who controlled the West End, and the Albanians, who ran most of north London, knew better than to try to muscle in on his territory. They did attempt it a couple of years ago and quickly came to regret it. Two of their top people were shot dead outside their homes in Kensington, and one of the casinos they operated up west was set on fire.

It was widely accepted that Danny was just as ruthless as his old man, Callum Shapiro, who was doing a twenty-five-year stretch for a raft of convictions including murder.

Cain’s relationship with Danny was purely professional. He didn’t actually like the man, let alone trust him. But the arrangement they had was mutually beneficial. And to be fair Danny had always treated him with a modicum of respect – unlike Frankie Bishop, Danny’s second-in-command and the gang’s most brutal enforcer.

Bishop, a career criminal, had earned his ferocious reputation on the south coast where he was groomed by a gangster named Joe Strickland. He’d managed the security arrangements at Strickland’s pubs and clubs in and around Southampton. One night he attacked a punter who ended up with a fractured skull and ruptured spleen. For that he went down for three years. While in prison he met a couple of Danny’s lads and they urged him to move to London if he wanted to see more action and more money. So after his release he dropped in on Danny and offered his services, and Danny jumped at the chance to take him on.

It was Bishop who handed Cain his monthly cash retainer and supplied the girls and drugs. But dealing with him was never a pleasant experience. In the underworld he was known as ‘The Nutter’ because it was obvious to everyone that he was a grade-A psychopath. Still, Cain reckoned it was a small price to pay to indulge his passions for drugs, gambling, and sweet young things like Ania.

She was still out cold, her chest rising and falling with every breath. It occurred to him that he ought to take one of his little blue pills so that he could make the most of her before she left. It would take at least thirty minutes to kick in so he decided to wash it down with a cup of tea.

He crushed what was left of his fag in the ashtray on the floor and rummaged in the bedside drawer for a pill.

In the kitchen he opened the blinds and reached for the kettle to fill it with water. That was when he noticed his mobile phone on the worktop next to the sink.

As soon as he picked it up he saw that he had two unopened text messages and three missed calls.

‘Shit.’

At some point last night he’d put the phone on silent and had forgotten to take it off. It had been careless of him. Downright stupid.

He checked the times of the messages and the calls. They had all come in during the past hour, which was a relief. He would say he was asleep in bed and hadn’t heard it ringing.

It wasn’t until he phoned the office that he discovered why they were anxious to reach him. It was bad news.

He wasn’t going to have a day off, after all. And there would be no time for even a morning quickie with Ania.

Cain didn’t know what to make of it. Megan Fuller had been murdered in her own home in Balham.

Jesus.

He had never met the woman but he knew all about her. She’d appeared in a soap that had aired on the BBC for about five years, playing the glamorous wife of a cantankerous factory owner. In real life she’d been married to Danny Shapiro, and by all accounts it had been a tumultuous relationship.

The word on the street was that she’d fallen on hard times since the Beeb dropped her from the soap over a year ago as part of a character shake-up. She’d been struggling to find other work ever since and had recently been threatening to write a tell-all book about her life.

Danny was among a number of people who were apparently not happy about it. He feared she might reveal a bit too much about their life together in order to secure a lucrative publishing contract.

As Cain stood under the shower, he realised that Danny would most likely be in the frame for her murder because the book thing meant that he had a motive. If so, then things could get tricky. He thought about phoning Danny to find out what he knew, if anything. But he decided against it. Maybe later when he had a better idea about what was going on.

After the shower, he towelled himself dry and had another go at waking Ania. She hadn’t responded to the first attempt, but this time her eyes flickered open and she looked up at him.

‘I said get your arse out of bed and get dressed,’ he told her. ‘Something’s come up and I have to go out.’

She licked her lips and cleared her throat. ‘Can’t you just leave me here? I’m tired and I don’t feel well.’

‘Like I give a shit,’ he said. ‘Your clothes are over there. Put them on and scram. I’ve left a thirty-quid tip on the chair.’

Suddenly he was no longer interested in her. He was in such a hurry to get going he didn’t even look at her as she got out of bed and sauntered naked into the bathroom to use the toilet.

By the time he’d put on his grey suit and a white shirt he was flustered. He didn’t bother with a tie because he hated wearing them.

He told Ania she would have to have a shower when she got home and while she put on her clothes he called her a cab.

‘Charge it to my account,’ he told the operator. ‘The name’s Cain. Detective Inspector Ethan Cain.’

After hanging up he grabbed his wallet and warrant card from the dressing table and slipped them into his pocket. Then he checked himself in the mirror one last time and decided that nobody would guess he’d been up half the night shagging a teen prostitute and snorting coke. That was a relief. It meant he was ready to report for duty.

He checked his watch. Seven forty-five. Balham was only a couple of miles away and with luck he could be at Megan Fuller’s house in less than half an hour, traffic permitting.

3

Danny Shapiro

‘We’re getting reports that the British actress Megan Fuller has been found dead at her home in south London. Police say she was stabbed late last night. Her body was discovered this morning. Scotland Yard has confirmed that Murder Squad detectives are at the scene. We’ll bring you more when we have it.’

Those words from the BBC newsreader hit Danny Shapiro like a cattle prod. His eyes snapped open and he struggled to focus on the TV screen fixed to the wall in front of his bed.

For a few seconds it was just a blur, and by the time his vision cleared the newsreader was talking about something else. But the caption scrolling across the bottom of the screen told him that he hadn’t been dreaming.

Breaking News: Soap star Megan Fuller found murdered in her home.

Danny sat bolt upright and shuddered from a fierce intake of breath. He had turned the telly on twenty minutes ago to help him shake off his slumber before getting up. Since then he’d been dozing on and off and hadn’t taken any notice of it.

Now though he was wide awake and the morning news had his full attention.

Megan Fuller. His ex-wife. Murdered. Stabbed. In her own home.

Fuck.

Surely it can’t be true, he told himself. It must be a ghastly mistake or some sick joke. After all, he was at her house last night and she had been very much alive. As spiteful and as mouthy as ever. They had argued and there’d been a shouting match. He remembered threatening her and recalled the fear on her face as she’d backed away from him in the kitchen.

She had really pissed him off with her crude ultimatum, and he’d told her that he wouldn’t allow himself to be blackmailed. But she’d laughed in his face and had said he would have to pay up or suffer the consequences.

Afterwards he’d come straight home and had drunk himself into oblivion because he’d been so angry. That was why his head was bunged up now and there were things he couldn’t remember: such as whether he’d given her a slap – or worse – before storming out. If he had then it would have been the first time. During their three years together he’d never once laid a hand on her, even though he’d come close to it on numerous occasions.

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