Murder at the Stripclub by Lew Pit - HTML preview

Chapter 6

 

Sunday morning, 6 am, my phone started to ring. Who in’s heavens name wants me to wake up so early, the club was closed so I wanted to enjoy a nice lay-in together with my Julia. At first, I wanted to ignore it but it kept on ringing and ringing, and after some nudging from Julia I decided to pick it up. When an agitated voice addressed me.

“Hello, George?”

“Yes, this is George, who did you expect to pick up my phone? I said still very annoyed.

“Hi George, it’s Seiko.”

“Oh sorry Seiko, what do you want so early in the morning from me, have you found out who killed Rose and couldn’t wait any longer to tell me?”

“I’m afraid I have some very disturbing news for you George and we need to see you at the club as soon as possible.”

“Whatever for, the place is closed and sealed by your service, you don’t need a key to get in, you only need to break the seals.”

“There’s been another murder!” she almost shouted on the phone, now that woke me up completely.

“What! Where?”

“At the club, we got a call at 5 am from someone who informed us he saw something strange at the club and when we arrived we found the body of Kelly tied to the front door.”

“Kelly, who’s Kelly?”

“Oh of course you have no idea, you know Kelly as Helga or Dita Van Gall.”

“You mean the woman who had a crush on Rose?”

“Yes that woman, we found out her real name through investigating the alias Dita Van Gall she used, it was her grandmother’s name and we tracked her down.”

“Wow, wow, you mean that you tracked down a woman with the name Dita Van Gall who was the grandmother of the one we refer to as Helga and who uses the Dita name as an alias?”

“Yes, I met the real Dita yesterday in the retirement home she stays at.”

“And did she tell you then about her granddaughter?”

“No, the poor thing is completely demented, but one of the nurses told us about a granddaughter who visits her regularly and goes by the name of Kelly Fairfield, and based on the description the girls and Joe gave us we suspect it’s that Kelly Fairfield who was found dead tied to the front door of your club. We got the call at 5 am this morning from someone who went to work in the area. He was very upset as she looks rather similar to the way we found Rose in.”

“I can imagine when you see something like that on your way to work maybe even on an empty stomach you get upset. OK, I’ll be there in about a half hour, I need to get ready.”

“May I advise you to not have breakfast.”

“Why?”

“It might come out when you’ll see what I’m seeing right now.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Worse than Rose?”

“I’ll leave that to the experts.”

“OK, I’ll be there in 15.”

George told Julia that there had been another murder and that it probably was the woman who allegedly had had an affair with Rose. When he arrived on the scene, Seiko was alone, Jeff Baines was not in sight, and he wondered if the old fart had problems getting out of bed and preferred to let the young do all the dirty work. It became immediately clear Seiko had not exaggerated and he was grateful for her advice about breakfast. It was indeed worse.

Helga, Dita, or Kelly whatever her name is, was, like Rose, completely naked, tied, spread eagle fashion to the front door. To be able to do that whoever did this had hammered big nails into the door to attach the ropes to. Her mouth was stuffed with a huge dildo. On her forehead, one could make out the word “whore” burned into it not dissimilar to what they did with women of easy virtue in the Middle Ages.

The rest of her body was a bloody mess, with one thing really standing out and that was the word “Dyke” carved into her abdomen with a knife, in exactly the same way Rose had been marked. Her tits were individually tied and her nipples were cut off. She too had a big champagne bottle rammed all the way into her pussy. There were knife cuts all along the inside of her arms and thighs. Like with Rose, there was a big puddle of blood below her.

George had to turn away. There was no doubt in his mind that both murders were linked, and neither was Seiko. There were strong suspicions that Rose and this Kelly were lovers and someone didn’t like it. Seiko took George aside to bring him up to speed so he could maybe better understand what was going on, or at least what Seiko thought was going on.

“Would you mind if I use you as a sounding board George, I’m afraid my mentor Jeff didn’t think his presence was immediately required on a Sunday morning.”

“Not at all, I completely understand you want somebody else’s opinion, and who better than one of the interested parties who has a lot to lose with this?”

“Yes you have George, but I also need an older person to help me get my head around all the information I have so far. I told you how we found out the real name of this mystery woman that was visiting Rose regularly. We also found out that when she visited her grandmother she was sometimes accompanied by a man, whose description fits the description Joe gave us. The only thing is no one seems to know this man’s name, so we’ll have a hard time finding him. We know there was an argument between him and Kelly one evening, according to Joe he even slapped her, so our guess is that he is jealous and can’t accept that the woman is having an affair with another woman.”

“Yes the words burned and carved into Rose and this Kelly’s face and body make that clear.”

“Indeed, everybody describes him as Italian. Italian men are maybe great lovers but they have a tendency to be rather possessive and aggressive.”

“I wouldn’t limit that to Italian men, I rather say, men in general, especially macho men.”

“Yes you may be right there, it’s not because he looks Italian and some thought to hear him speak Italian that he is Italian.”

“I wouldn’t throw that idea away too fast, you know if it looks like a dog and barks like a dog, it’s most probably a dog.”

“OK let’s assume the man is Italian, we have no name, and we have no idea where he is or lives.”

“Hang on a second, have you checked the recordings of the cameras in the parking area, maybe he’s on there, then you may have a visual of what he looks like.”

“We’ve gone through the footage of the night Rose was killed, but we haven’t looked at what was recorded last night and there is a camera pointing at the front door isn’t there?”

“Hopefully nobody switched off the recorder after the first murder.”

“Oh my God let’s hope not, can we go and look?”

We were in luck, the recorder had continued recording, and since it has a fairly large hard drive everything was available. We could witness the complete murder of Kelly, unfortunately, the murderer’s face was never visible he or she wore a hoody and a face mask and seemed to know exactly where the camera was and how to keep from getting filmed, exactly the same as during the first murder. Seiko took the footage with her to have it checked in the police lab. They had software with which they could determine a number of features of the perpetrator, like length, and weight and they could blow up the images to look for specific markings on those parts of the body that were visible.

Based on the injuries Kelly had sustained there was little doubt that both murders were committed by the same person, which would probably be confirmed after the investigation in the lab. Turning to George, Seiko informs him she’ll have to see all the people again to check if they have an alibi. She will invite them herself, but first, she started with George himself.

“So George where were you last night?”

“I was with Julia, I still was when you so rudely woke me.”

“OK, let me call Julia to confirm.”

“Why don’t you believe me?”

“Yes I do but I have to follow the procedures – and when I call her and she confirms, she’ll be off the list of suspects at the same time.”

Seiko dialed Julia’s mobile and was immediately connected.

“Hello Julia, Seiko.”

“Yes hello Miss Seiko, is George there with you?”

“Yes he is and I would like to know if he was with you last night?”

“Of course, he was, is it true was there another murder last night?”

“I’m afraid so and I need to know if George was with you last night between midnight and 5 am?”

“Yes he was and you woke us up at 6, remember?”

“Yes, I’m sorry for that, but it was important for George to be here.”

“OK, I understand, is there anything else I can help you with?”

“No, Julia, I only needed confirmation about George’s whereabouts last night.”

“When can he come back?”

“Being the owner of the club, it may take another couple of hours before we can let him go, why do you need him?”

“With all these murders, I don’t feel very secure being alone.”

“I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about Julia, as far as we can make out you nor George are targeted by the killer.”

“So you know who committed these murders?”

“No, I’m afraid it will take a lot of digging and talking to people to get an idea of who is behind these heinous crimes.”

“If it’s going to take that long, can you please tell George I’ll be with my family, I’ll feel a lot safer that way. Ask him to call me when he’s back home please.”

“OK Julia I will, and rest assured we’ll send him back to you as soon as we can.”

“Thank you, Seiko.”

In the end, George was released about an hour after the call, shortly after the arrival of Jeff Baines. Seiko and Jeff had their work cut out with this second murder, she hoped that they wouldn’t take the investigation away from her as it now looked like she was dealing with maybe a serial killer, and her superiors might think it is too complicated for her first murder investigation. She had told Jeff about her visit to the retirement home the day before and her plans to visit Kelly that morning after she got a name from the nurse in the retirement home and managed to find an address on the system. So now her first priority was to go there and hopefully bring Kelly’s partner in for interrogation and find out if he had anything to do with the murders.

When they arrived at the address they saw a car parked in the driveway, so they guessed somebody would be home, and when they rang the doorbell, a man opened the door. He looked indeed Italian, as he had been described by the witnesses they had interviewed so far.

“Good day sir, Detectives Tashima and Baines, we would like for you to accompany us to the police station.”

“Has anything happened to my wife?” The man immediately wanted to know.

“Why do you think anything has happened to your wife mister…

“Davide, Davide Van Luca.”

“Mister Van Luca, why do you think anything has happened to your wife?”

“The bitch hasn’t come home last night and when the police comes to my door the next morning, I think she’s been up to one of her disgusting lesbian games again or had an accident after drinking again too much. Has she been at that club again and made a scene over this Rose she’s so infatuated with, that you had to put her in jail?”

“I’m afraid it’s much worse Mister Van Luca, we have found your wife dead.”

“Dead what do you mean dead? Was she in an accident?”

“No, I’m afraid we have found your wife murdered.”

“What…murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Where? How? Who killed her?”

“You see that’s why we would like you to accompany us to the police station.”

“You don’t think I killed the bitch, do you?

“That is something we would like to find out sir, so if you could please come with us, we would appreciate it. We can give you all the details when we’re at the station.”

“Do I need a lawyer?”

“Why do you have anything to hide?”

“I have nothing to hide.”

“Then you don’t need a lawyer.”

“I would like to give my lawyer a call just in case I do need him.”

“You can do that at the station.”

“OK.”

As Tashima and Baines didn’t want to frighten the man they didn’t put any handcuffs on him, he was a suspect, but nothing was proven he had anything to do with the murders. He came willingly but was very nervous and distraught though. When they came to the station they put him in an interrogation room.

“Can we get you anything to drink Mister Van Luca?”

“No, I’m fine, just tell me where my wife is and when I can see her.”

“We have found the body of your wife at the club you both seem to frequent regularly.”

“I knew it, I knew that it had something to do with this devilish club, did the bastardo at the door kill her?”

“You mean Joe, the bouncer?”

“Yes, the bastardo who almost attacked me when I told my wife I don’t want her to go there anymore.”

“According to our findings, you told your wife in a rather handsy way she was not supposed to go there anymore, and you slapped her.”

“I may have given her a small slap on the butt, you know this is very common for Italian men to do that to their wives.”

“We were told it was a hard slap and probably by the sound of it not to the butt, but to her face.”

“Maybe I got carried away a bit, but that doesn’t mean I would kill her.”

“No, but for starters, you can tell us where you were last night, between midnight and 4 am.”

“Home, I was home.”

After a short knock, the door to the interrogation room was opened and someone handed a folder to Jeff who’d been standing right next to the door, letting Seiko conduct the interrogation. He opened it, looked at it, and quickly handed it to Seiko. After perusing it she looked Davide straight in the face and addressed him.

“Can you explain to us who was driving your car at 2:45 am this morning Mister Van Luca?”

“Why?”

“Your car was photographed at 2:45 am not very far from the club by a speed camera.”

“It must have been stolen then.”

“Very friendly of the thief then to bring it back and park it in front of your garage, where we saw it when we picked you up.”

“Ok, I was out.”

“OK, and where did you go?”

“I can’t say, it’s delicate.”

“Then I’m afraid we will have to assume you have something to do with the murder of your wife.”

“No, I have nothing to do with the murder of my wife, I love my wife.”

“Yeah clearly enough to slap her in the face.”

“That was a small private dispute.”

“What’s so delicate that you can’t tell us where you were and with whom, it will help you to clear your name off our suspect’s list.”

“There is another person involved.”

“And this person can tell us where you were?”

“Yes, but I can’t tell you who she is.”

“So it’s a woman?”

“Did I say it was a woman?”

“You referred to the person as a she.”

“Listen, mister Van Luca, if you are cheating on your wife, that’s the least of our worries, we want to find who killed her and why. So what’ll it be an indiscretion or a murder charge, the choice is yours.”

“You can’t pin the murder on me, you have no proof.”

“We have your car, in the vicinity of the crime scene at the time the murder was committed. It doesn’t take much more to put you away for a spell while we dig a bit deeper.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“The person you are not willing to tell us about must be very dear to you if you want to risk a pre-meditated murder charge.”

“Pre-meditated, I thought it was a random killing?”

“Not the way we found your wife, the person who killed her came well prepared, believe me.”

“Why are you so stubborn? We can handle an extramarital affair confidentially.”

“I’m not sure you’ll be able to do that in this case.”

“Is it a famous person you’re seeing?”

“No, the problem lies somewhere else.”

“Come on Van Luca how bad can it be?”

“I’m not sure she’s allowed to have an affair.”

“What do you mean not allowed to have an affair?”

“She’s rather young.”

“Is she underaged?”

“I’m not sure I never really asked her age.”

“How did you meet her?”

“She’s a friend of Kelly’s sister’s daughter.”

“And how old is this sister’s daughter?”

“Young I think but I don’t really know.”

“So it’s very likely that this girl’s friend is the same age?”

“I don’t know.”

“Just give us her name and we can find out what her age is in no time at all.”

“What will you do with her if I tell you?”

“We’ll ask her if she was with you.”

“That’s all, you won’t ask anything more?”

“What you do with a young girl is not our problem, are you perhaps her sugar daddy?”

“If you want to put a name to it, yes, maybe?”

“Do you pay her?”

“No, I don’t pay her money, She’s not a prostitute, I give her presents or buy her the clothes her parents don’t allow her to buy or we go out to dinner like we did last night.”

“So you were with this girl from early evening till the middle of the night?”

“Yes.”

“What restaurant did you go to?”

“We had dinner at the Holiday Inn.”

“Did you have a room there?”

“Yes.”

“How did, you pay for it?”

“Credit card.”

“So we’ll find your name on the receipt at the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Ok now just tell us the name of this girl.”

“You won’t contact her parents to tell them?”

“Again Mister Van Luca, we are investigating a murder, not some idiot who finds it necessary to shag underaged girls.”

“Her name is Danielle Bats.”

Jeff left the interrogation room to figure out the exact age of this girl and the address. He returned 5 minutes later, confirming she was indeed also 15 like her friend.

“Can you call this girl Van Luca?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry I had no idea that she was that young, I thought she was 18 or 19, well that’s what she told me, and she looked it.”

“So you can tell the difference between a 15 and 18-year-old girl just by looking at her?”

“I’m sorry, I believed her when she told me, I couldn’t imagine girls of 15 were that worldly.”

“You didn’t think of asking for her ID?”

“No, as I said she did look like an 18-year-old girl.”

“I’m afraid it’s not going to help you to claim she looked like and 18 year old, we’ll have to give this information to the vice squad.”

“Oh no!”

“It may be better than being accused of premeditated murder believe me, so can you call her please, and put her on speaker?”

Very reluctantly Van Luca took out his phone and dialed the number of his underaged girlfriend. After a few rings the phone was answered.

“Hi Daddy, can’t get enough of me?”

“Hello Danielle, I’m afraid that I have some bad news.”

“You don’t want to see me anymore? What have I done wrong that you can’t forgive me by spanking me? I know that you love to do that.

Van Luca was turning redder and redder in the face clearly embarrassed by the responses the girl was giving.

”No Danielle this is a lot worse, I need you to tell the person I’m going to hand the phone to that …”

Seiko immediately stopped him.

“We will talk with the girl Mister Van Luca, please hand over the phone immediately.”

“What’s going on Daddy? What do you want me to tell this person?”

“Miss Bats, this is Detective Seiko Tashima and I want to know from you if Mister Van Luca was with you last night?”

“What is all this I don’t know a mister, Van Luca? Is this some kind of scam, how did you get a hold of my daddy’s phone?”

“I can assure you Miss Bats this is not a scam, your daddy, as you call him, sits right here and he called you on his phone and handed it to me to ask you some questions, so will you please be so kind as to cooperate, this is very important for your daddy. Were you with him last night?”

“Yes I was but I was not with this Van Luca person that you mentioned.”

“Under what name do you know your daddy?”

“Daddy Fairfield.”

“I see, so you confirm you were with him last night, can you specify from when till when?”

“Daddy Fairfield picked me up at 9 pm to take me to dinner and dropped me off at home a little before 4 am.”

“Isn’t that rather late for such a young girl like you?”

“I’m 18, I can do what I want.”

“Don’t lie to us Miss Bats, we know you’re only 15, so I repeat my question isn’t it a bit late for a girl of 15 to entertain a man of 40 until the early hours of the night?”

“40, he’s not 40, he’s 25.”

“Is that what he told you, that he’s 25?”

Van Luca lowered his head and he looked extremely guilty, so it was clear that’s what he told the girl.

“Yes.”

“And of course, you believed him, as he believed you were 18?”

“Yes.”

“So again isn’t it a bit late to entertain a man and where were your parents, as I presume you still have them?”

“My dad works nights, from 10 to 6, he leaves at 8:45 so I’m alone at home from then till he gets home around 7.”

“And what about your mother?”

“I don’t have a mother, she left us when I was 2 years old.”

“I see, Ok thank you for your cooperation. I must however warn you that this whole thing will have consequences.”

“What consequences?”

“You and your real dad will get a visit from the police and social services to find out about your nightly activities.”

“Did the bastard tell on me and now I’m in trouble?”

“The bastard, as you call him Miss Bats is in far more trouble than you, you just gave him an alibi for murder, but since you are only 15 he will be facing charges of pedophilia, which might even be worse when he ends up in jail.”

After that, Seiko hung up the phone and faced Van Luca.

Well, mister Van Luca, or shall I say daddy Fairfield, that doesn’t look too good for you, have you anything to add?”

“No, what will happen to me now?”

“You will rest in one of our cells, while we call our colleagues from Vice who, in light of what we heard will take over from us, maybe now is a good time to call your lawyer, which I urge you to do, you will most probably need him.”

After Seiko and Jeff left him, Van Luca was collected from the interrogation room by one of the officers on duty, allowed to make his call, and put in a cell, awaiting the arrival of his lawyer and the vice squad.

The problem was that for Seiko and Jeff, it meant they were back to square one. No more suspect. They quickly came to the conclusion they needed to go back to the people working at the club and ask some more questions. They thought their best option was to first talk to Joe again, he knew all the ins and outs that were going on at the club, and maybe he would remember seeing something out of the ordinary.

As before, Joe was very willing to help, he loved those girls and it felt to him like a personal failure that one of them was murdered. He would probably feel even worse when he will hear that this woman, Helga or Kelly who apparently had had an affair with his beloved Rose was murdered as well and in a very similar way.

The next morning bright and early, Joe was back at the police station, ready to be grilled again by Seiko and Jeff. They started by telling him what had happened the day before.

“So Joe, sorry to call you in again, but we still haven’t figured out who could have committed these murders, so please think back if you saw or heard anything out of the ordinary that could give us a lead about this murderer. People you haven’t seen before, people who acted suspiciously, think back, weeks or even months.”

“There was one thing, but that was at least two months ago, there was a guy I’d never seen before who parked his car and stayed in it. That is rather unusual because when punters arrive they can’t get inside any faster to ogle the girls.”

“And this one didn’t do that?”

“No, he stayed in his car mainly watching the exit door in the back.”

“Did you do anything about it?”

“Yes of course because that’s always suspicious, usually it is one of these guys that wants to meet one of the girls privately, which is something we like to discourage. So I walked over and tapped on his side window to ask him what he was doing.”

“He told me he had a date with one of the girls. I asked him which one and then he became hesitant to tell me, after insisting he gave a name, he said Mere, as you know there is no girl named Mere, so I told him, he was probably mistaken and there was no one working here going by that name. He said OK, then I will have it wrong, and apologized, after which he started the car and drove off. As I’ve got a suspicious nature I wrote down his license plate, just in case, I must have it somewhere, but I have to look for it. I don’t immediately remember where I put it.”

“That would be very helpful Joe, do you remember the brand and model of the car or anything out of the ordinary about him or his car that drew your attention and did he return at a later date?”

“I’m sure it was a dark grey BMW 3 model and yes there was some lettering on the side, but I didn’t pay much attention to it, it could be anything. What concerns him returning, I’m not very sure, sometimes on Saturday evening it can be very busy, cars driving in and out, but come to think of it, a few days later I thought I saw a car again that looked very much like his, but then I saw him drive out again about 10 minutes later.”

“Was that the only two times you saw him, do you still have footage of the parking camera for that period?”

“No not for that period, we keep the images for a maximum of 3 weeks and then tape over it, so from so long ago nothing will be left, you do have all the footage of the past 3 weeks though, maybe you can take a look at that.”

“We definitely will and if you can give us the license plate that would be extremely helpful as well.”

“I’ll get right to it when I come home and let you know.”

“Thanks for your time Joe, you have been very helpful, you know when anything else pops up in your mind, even if at first sight it seems trivial, don’t hesitate to call us.”

“I sure will Seiko, I want to know who committed these horrible crimes as much as you do.”

Three hours later Joe called, he had found the slip of paper he had jotted the license plate number on, well what was left of it. It was in one of his jeans pockets, but he had washed them so he had only found a little paper ball, impossible to do anything with it. We asked him if he could drop it off at the station for our forensics guys to have a look at it. Unfortunately, it turned out to be mission impossible, they couldn’t make out anything anymore, so again a dead end.

Also looking for a dark grey Beamer was like searching for a needle in a haystack, it seemed to be a very popular model, and there were hundreds of these things driving around. The same for going over the footage of the parking camera for the last three weeks looking for that type of car, there were a lot. They suspected it was a popular model but never knew it was that popular, but then again come to think of it, it was a preferred model as a company car, and apparently, a lot of these dudes who get a company car spend the money they save that way on strippers.

They also started looking at traffic cams in the area, to see if such type of car had been in the vicinity on the night of the second murder, but again there were so many, it was as if everybody visiting the club or driving in that area was driving a dark grey BMW 3.