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

8

Beth Chambers

I was now part of a raucous media circus. TV crews with their satellite trucks had turned up and the national press had gathered en masse.

We were being corralled behind a police barrier from where we could see the cops and forensic officers working the scene. Some officers were going door-to-door canvassing neighbours, while others were standing around with their arms folded, their expressions intense and stoic.

This was now the biggest show in town. The story had everything. A mysterious murder. A celebrity victim. A crime boss ex-husband who was among the suspects. It was the sort of thing that really got my juices flowing. It would also sell newspapers and lead to a boost in The Post’s circulation.

No wonder I could feel the adrenalin searing my senses. I was in my element and hoping – like the other reporters here – that there wouldn’t be a quick resolution. It would be better for us if the story could be dragged out for at least a few days, or even weeks.

That would give us all time to dig up the dirt on Megan Fuller and her ex-husband. Once the police charged someone then reporting restrictions would kick in until the trial.

I’d already phoned over the quotes from Megan’s father, and included a note about Danny Shapiro threatening Megan. The editor would have to talk to the lawyers to decide whether or not we could include it.

I wondered if his arrest was imminent. Or was Shapiro already in custody?

One thing I did know for certain was that I needed to find out as much as I could about the man. I’d written about him in the past but not at any great length. The stories had centred on his marriage to Megan, his father’s imprisonment, and the attempt on his life when a rival Chechen gangster tried to shoot him in Bermondsey.

Since assuming control of the rackets in south London from his father he’d taken steps to lower his profile. He’d become paranoid apparently, fearful of being targeted again or of being entrapped by police surveillance. Megan’s murder had thrust him right back into the limelight, along with his nefarious business activities.

‘How’s it going, Chambers?’

The voice made me turn and I found myself facing the diminutive figure of Steve Welland, The Sun’s chief crime reporter. He was in his fifties, with craggy features and unruly grey hair. He grinned at me and I saw that his nose and cheeks were red with broken capillaries.

Welland was a throwback to the days when it was common for Fleet Street reporters to abuse their expenses on a grand scale and take three-hour liquid lunches.

‘It’s going all right,’ I said. ‘What about you?’

He shrugged. ‘I was in good spirits until just now when I heard that you’d managed to grab an interview with the victim’s father, the man who discovered the body.’

‘I had a stroke of luck,’ I said. ‘Got to him when no one was looking.’

‘So where is he now?’

I grinned back at him. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been sworn to secrecy.’

‘Very funny.’

‘Anyway he’s been told not to speak to anyone else – especially any reporters from The Sun.’

He shook his head. ‘How I long for the days when us lot used to share information.’

‘That was way before my time, Steve.’

It was the usual friendly banter and it helped pass the time while we waited for something to happen. The rivalry between reporters was healthy, and it kept us on our toes. Sometimes I did swap information, but only when I knew I would get a tasty morsel in return. This time as far as I could see Welland had nothing to offer.

He was about to continue the conversation when we were both distracted by a sudden commotion. I looked towards the house and saw why everyone was excited.

Detectives Redwood and Cain had emerged from the house, having removed their forensic overalls. Now they were heading towards the media scrum in order to provide us with the promised update.

The two detectives stood side by side, and DCI Redwood was a good four inches taller than DI Cain.

Redwood was wearing a bespoke blue suit with white shirt and red tie. He looked smart and authoritative. I knew very little about him other than that he was a career copper who was fairly new to the Met. So far our paths had never crossed.

Cain, on the other hand, I knew only too well. He was wearing the beige linen suit he’d bought to take on our honeymoon. I found out later that it was chosen for him by a woman he’d been having an affair with at the time.

It was Redwood who started the ball rolling by making a brief statement during which he ran through the basic facts.

‘Miss Megan Fuller was the victim of a savage knife attack,’ he said. ‘She was murdered last evening between ten thirty and midnight. We believe she was alone. I appeal to anyone who was in Ramsden Road at the time to come forward. It’s possible you have vital information and you don’t realise it.’

He confirmed that the killing had taken place in the kitchen and said it did not appear as though she had been a victim of robbery.

Having read the statement he invited questions and they came thick and fast.

Was Megan sexually assaulted?

Did she let her killer into the house?

Has the murder weapon been recovered?

Sweat beaded on Redwood’s upper lip as he provided the answers, none of which came as a surprise to any of us.

As soon as I got a chance I raised my arm and shouted out, ‘Is it true that Miss Fuller’s ex-husband Danny Shapiro has been questioned?’

Redwood’s head snapped towards me. The question had caught him by surprise.

He bunched his brows and said, ‘We do intend to speak to Mr Shapiro along with a number of other people, but we haven’t yet done so.’

‘Does that mean he’s a suspect?’ I said.

I was close enough to see a nerve flutter at his temple.

‘He’s not a suspect at this stage,’ he said. ‘But we are hoping that he might be able to provide us with information about Miss Fuller.’

Redwood was turning away from me as I threw another question.

‘Can you confirm that Mr Shapiro spoke to Miss Fuller by phone yesterday and that they had an argument? According to Mr Fuller, his daughter was threatened by Mr Shapiro.’

Redwood wasn’t expecting that and he wasn’t happy. His face tensed and for a moment he was lost for words.

Cain came to his rescue. He fixed me with an evaluating gaze and said, ‘May I ask who told you that, Miss Chambers?’

That was when I realised that he and Redwood weren’t aware that I’d interviewed Nigel Fuller.

‘I spoke to Miss Fuller’s father a few minutes ago,’ I said. ‘He told me about the phone call.’

‘Well, we’re still in the process of following up the information that Mr Fuller gave us,’ Cain said. ‘So I’m afraid I can’t answer your question at this time, Miss Chambers.’

Cain gave me a knowing stare and the corners of his mouth twitched, hinting at a smile. But that was for the audience. I was willing to bet that inside he was fuming.

I transferred my gaze to Redwood and found it difficult to read the expression on his face. I could tell that his mind was racing, though, and I realised that someone was going to get a severe bollocking.

Redwood answered a few more questions and then called a halt to the briefing at the first opportunity.

I moved away from the crowd, powered up the iPad, and sent some updated copy to the paper. I then took a call from Grant Scott, who said he had watched the briefing live on the TV news.

‘You sure put them on the spot, Beth,’ he said. ‘They didn’t look too pleased.’

‘They’ll get over it. So what now? I’m not sure how much more I can get from here. They’ll soon be winding things down.’

‘Then I think you should chase up Danny Shapiro. Maybe you can get a quote for the late edition. As far as I know he still hasn’t been collared. I suggest you go to his office and see if he’s there. I take it you know where it is.’

‘Of course. I’m on my way.’

9

Danny Shapiro

Danny walked out of his mews house safe in the knowledge that the police weren’t about to pounce on him. The very existence of the property was a closely guarded secret. It was his father who had advised him not to live on their south London manor.

‘Don’t make the same mistakes I did, son,’ Callum told him. ‘The Old Bill were able to follow my every move because I was careless and complacent. They bugged my home and my car, and wherever I went they had me on camera. I also made myself a target for my enemies.’

Danny took the advice on board but didn’t act on it until that Chechen scumbag tried to shoot him over a territorial dispute. It was a wake-up call and it prompted Danny to reassess his lifestyle.

As a result he stopped using his own car, started using pay-as-you-go phones and wore a baseball cap or a hoody when he took to the streets. He also bought as much as he could with cash rather than with traceable credit cards.

The most significant decision he took was to move out of his luxury flat overlooking the Thames in Bermondsey. He never felt safe there anyway after the attempt on his life, and he was convinced the filth had it under surveillance.

There was no shortage of places for him to go since the firm had for years been investing in property across London. He settled on the mews house which had been purchased through an offshore company five years earlier with the proceeds from a major drugs deal. It had remained empty ever since, gathering dust and increasing in value.

There was nothing to link it to him or his father and because it was smack in the middle of the West End he considered it the ideal location.

In explaining the decision to his father, he’d said, ‘It’s in one of the busiest spots in the capital, Dad. The area’s covered with CCTV cameras and teeming with tourists, and the streets are permanently gridlocked. I won’t just be inconspicuous – I’ll be fucking invisible.’

So far it had worked a treat. Most evenings he left the manor in a taxi or on a tube and disappeared into the bustle of the West End, making it impossible for anyone to follow him.

The house had four bedrooms, a garage that housed his rarely used BMW, and overlooked a small communal garden at the rear. It was located just off New Bond Street, within walking distance of Sotheby’s and a range of designer shops from Burberry to Jimmy Choo.

The arrangement had its disadvantages, of course. He never took women back there and he sometimes wondered if it was worth all the hassle. Still, he couldn’t deny that once he closed the door behind him he always felt safe and secure, knowing that no one knew where he was.

The flat in Bermondsey still had its uses. He stayed there occasionally and it was great for parties and meetings. It was also where he took his women, usually prossies and one-night stands. But he knew he would have to have a rethink when and if he eventually entered into another long-term relationship.

As usual the area was heaving. Traffic was snarled up in New Bond Street so he walked up to Grosvenor Street to hail a black cab.

His progress would have been monitored by a whole bunch of security cameras but it didn’t bother him because he’d be just another anonymous figure in the crowd. These days he preferred not to attract attention, which was why he dressed down and chose not to go everywhere with minders.

The years spent with Megan had turned him into the best-known villain in London. That hadn’t been so bad when his father was running the show and he’d been able to concentrate on enjoying himself.

Now things were different. The onus of responsibility had made him appreciate just how vulnerable he was.

It had also made him realise that he couldn’t trust anyone but himself.

Tamara lived in one of the residential streets bordering Vauxhall Park. As the taxi pulled up outside her house, Danny did a quick recce of the immediate area.

He couldn’t see any street cameras and this came as a relief. It would make it harder for the cops to prove that he hadn’t spent the previous evening here.

He still had to convince Tamara to provide him with an alibi, but he was hopeful because she hadn’t turned him down on the phone. It would have been easy for her to do so and he would have understood.

She’d appeared sympathetic to his plight, and had said that she did not want to see him go to prison for something he hadn’t done. But he reckoned it was probably the £50,000 bribe he offered her that had prompted her to tell him to come right over so that they could talk it through.

Hers was a modest terraced house with creeping ivy clinging to the brickwork. Danny’s stomach was churning as he rang the bell. He had no back-up plan if she decided not to help him and he had no idea what he would do.

The filth were probably thinking he’d done a runner. He’d considered calling Ethan Cain, the firm’s main man inside the Met, to find out what was going on, but had decided it should wait until after he’d sorted an alibi.

His empty stomach lurched when Tamara answered the door and ushered him quickly inside. The first thing she did when the door was closed was to give him a hug and the strong smell of her perfume made his eyes smart.

‘Come into the kitchen,’ she said. ‘The kettle has just boiled.’

She was softly spoken and there was the subtle hint of an Irish accent in her voice.

The house interior was surprisingly old-fashioned, with chintzy curtains and wallpaper, and brightly coloured rugs on the floor.

In the kitchen Tamara told him to sit at a table while she poured the teas. A portable TV stood on the worktop and it was tuned into the news. An anchor was talking about the prime minister’s latest pronouncement on welfare reform.

‘Does your father know what’s happening?’ she asked over her shoulder.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I haven’t heard from him.’

She turned and he watched her as she placed the mugs on the table. She was in her mid-forties but looked younger. Her eyes were dark, her lips full, and she had perfectly symmetrical features. There was a spray of faded freckles across the bridge of her nose, and her skin was clear and smooth with just a touch of foundation around the eyes.

She was wearing a grey sweatshirt and jeans, and her red hair hung loose about her shoulders. She sat down at the table and lit a cigarette, expelling the smoke in a long, thin stream.

‘You look like you’ve got the world on your shoulders, Danny,’ she said.

‘Right now that’s what it feels like. This has come out of the blue and I need to react to it.’

She leaned across the table and placed a hand over one of his.

‘Before we talk about this I need you to do something for me, hon. I need you to look me in the eyes and tell me you didn’t kill Megan. I’ll know if you’re lying.’

Danny straightened his back and thrust out his chin.

‘I swear on my life that I didn’t do it, Tamara. I’ve done some bad things in my time, but murdering a woman isn’t one of them. It’s not my style.’

‘But you did go to Megan’s house last night.’

‘I did, and we argued like I told you on the phone. But she was alive when I left there.’

That at least was what he wanted to believe. The truth was there were still gaps in his memory. As hard as he tried he just couldn’t remember how the argument with Megan had ended and what she’d been doing when he’d stormed out.

‘The police are not going to believe me,’ he said. ‘If no one else is in the frame and I don’t have an alibi then I’m toast.’

‘So what makes you so sure that the police will believe me?’

‘Why wouldn’t they? It’ll be hard, if not impossible, for them to prove that I wasn’t here.’

‘But I wasn’t here myself, Danny. I told you that on the phone. I got home after midnight.’

‘Did anyone see you?’

‘I doubt it. The taxi dropped me right outside. I didn’t notice anyone around. And the neighbours aren’t particularly nosey.’

‘So where had you been?’

Her face filled with colour and she flicked her head towards a calendar hanging from a hook on the wall behind her. It was too far away for Danny to see the words scrawled in the boxes.

‘I spent the evening with a new client,’ she said. ‘I went to his place in Maida Vale at nine and left after midnight.’

‘But that’s not a problem,’ Danny said. ‘He never has to know what you’ve told the police. In fact no one has to know. As soon as you tell them that I was with you that’ll be the end of the matter. And if anyone comes here asking you just stick to the story.’

She turned back to him, sucked in a breath, said, ‘I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t believe you, Danny. Even for fifty thousand pounds. But I do believe you. So it follows that I can’t stand by and let them fit you up. Your dad would never forgive me.’

‘Does that mean …?’

She nodded. ‘It means I’ll tell the Old Bill that you were with me all evening and that you’re often here. I’ll say that between ten and midnight we were watching telly and drinking wine.’

Danny felt the knot in his chest loosen. ‘I’ll owe you big time, babe. And so will Dad. I’ll make arrangements for the money to be sent wherever you want.’

‘You and your father have done a lot for me, Danny. This is my way of paying you back.’

They spent the next half an hour agreeing the details of their story. They’d say he arrived early in the evening but that he couldn’t recall the exact time because he’d been drinking. Then he stayed overnight and heard about Megan’s murder when he woke up this morning.

‘We can get around the details by saying we were on the booze the entire time,’ he said.

She gave a hesitant smile. ‘So you’re confident we can get away with it?’

‘I’m positive. Trust me. It’ll be fine.’

The TV news seized their attention suddenly. They were back to reporting on Megan’s murder. Two detectives, one of them Ethan Cain, were standing before a crowd of reporters answering questions.

Danny felt his jaw set with tension when a woman asked them whether Megan’s ex-husband had been questioned and if it was true he’d made threats against her. He recognised her straight away as Bethany Chambers, the crime reporter on The Post. She was well known on the manor, and not just because of her job. She was the stepdaughter of Tony Hunter, the blagger who was shot some years ago in Tulse Hill. How bloody ironic, he thought, that her job now was to report on such things.

He recalled meeting the cheeky cow a couple of times when she approached him for an interview. It occurred to him then, as it did now, that she was a ballsy bitch.

‘Can you confirm that Mr Shapiro spoke to Miss Fuller by phone yesterday and that they had an argument? According to Mr Fuller, his daughter was threatened by Mr Shapiro.’

Danny’s blood surged with a hot rush of anger. The fucking slag was trying to implicate him.

The anger mounted when she went on to say that Megan’s father had told her about the phone call in an interview.

‘Those fucking idiot coppers should have kept her away from him,’ he blurted.

‘Don’t let it get to you, hon,’ Tamara said. ‘It would have come out sooner or later. And besides, it’s common knowledge that you two were always arguing.’

Danny shook his head and the rage continued the burn inside him.

After a few seconds he switched on one of his three pay-as-you-go phones and tapped in a number he knew by heart. When DI Ethan Cain answered, he said, ‘It’s Danny Shapiro here, my friend. I just heard your lot are looking for me.’

10

Beth Chambers

I called up an Uber taxi and gave the driver the address of a well-known snooker club in south Bermondsey. It was from there that Danny Shapiro ran his operations, most of which were illicit.