Chapter 1: Death to the King

Chapter 1: Death to the King

The news came one Saturday morning from a young woman who sounded very upset and spoke with a strong foreign accent.

“Yes, hello, police? You must come. He is dead! His skin is cold and there is blood all over the floor. You must come here as soon as possible, please!”

Detective Inspector Evans had just arrived at the office and was listening to a recording of the telephone call. There was always a lot of crime in London on a Friday night, but he was not prepared for what he was about to hear.

The operator was very calm and asked for the woman’s name and location. She was calling from a mobile phone.

“My name is Helena Kowalska. I have just come to work… I am the cleaner at a nightclub called ‘Lust’ in Charing Cross. I am sorry, but my English is not very good. When will you be here?”

“We’ll send someone over as soon as we can, Mrs Kowalska,” the operator replied. “Please stay where you are and let me take some more information. Do you know who the dead person is?”

“Of course!” she exclaimed. “It is the big boss. He has shot himself. The gun is still in his hand.”

Inspector Evans could not believe his ears.

“The big boss?” he repeated after the recording had ended. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

Some people were nodding their heads in answer; others shrugged. Could Stanley Cooper really be dead?

Stanley Cooper was not only the owner of Lust, but a notorious crime lord who ran a large chain of bars and nightclubs in London’s West End. He also owned a dog track in Walthamstow. The Metropolitan Police called him the “King of the Underworld” because they believed that he and his gangsters were responsible for much of the violence in the area. Unfortunately for them, they had no solid proof.

“The call came in less than twenty minutes ago,” said a deep female voice. “The forensics team are already on their way to examine the crime scene. Evans, you should go and join them. Something tells me that Cooper didn’t kill himself, and if I’m right, this is going to be your case.”

It was Superintendent Fisher, the officer in charge of the station. She was a very powerful woman, and everything she said sounded like an order. “Yes, ma’am,” replied Inspector Evans. “I’ll take Sandra with me, if that’s okay. We’ve both been working on cases involving Cooper’s gang lately.”

“That was going to be my next suggestion, Evans,” the superintendent growled. “I want you to treat this death as suspicious from the start. Don’t leave any stone unturned when you’re down there.”

“Of course not, ma’am.”

“Where is Checchino, anyway? It’s not like her to be late. Find her and get going!”

“Right away, ma’am,” the inspector said and left the room. Detective Inspector Sandra Checchino was sitting in the staff kitchen when Inspector Evans burst into the room.

“Ah, Sandra, there you are!”

She looked up from her large cup of coffee in surprise.

“Oh, it looks like someone had a long night last night!” Evans said in a friendly tone.

Inspector Checchino smiled weakly. “Yes, you could say that, Gary. I just haven’t had time to put on any make-up.”

“Never mind, you look no worse without it,” he joked. “Anyway, you’ve just missed some important news. You’ll never believe what happened last night!”

Inspector Checchino waited for him to continue.

“We’ve got to go and see our friend Stanley Cooper!” he said.

“Oh, no, not again!” she groaned and looked back down at her coffee. “That man never cooperates. He won’t tell us anything. What have he and his thugs done this time?”

“That’s what we have to find out,” DI Evans replied mysteriously. “But you are right about one thing: Cooper definitely won’t be telling us anything today, that’s for sure. He’s been found dead in his office at Lust. It looks like suicide.”

Inspector Checchino opened her eyes wide.

“Mamma mia!” she said in a parody of her Italian relatives. “Stanley Cooper’s dead? We should get going right away.” She quickly drank what was left of her coffee, which was still rather hot, and walked out of the kitchen with Inspector Evans.

The nightclub looked like a small building from the outside. The entrance was between two bars on a narrow side street of Charing Cross Road. Large, colourful posters on the door advertised which disc jockeys were playing on which nights, and red neon lights above the door spelt out in elaborate letters the word “Lust”.

“This would be a nice place for a first date,” Inspector Evans said, smiling at Inspector Checchino. “Look, we missed DJs Mad Daddy and Divine Lickz last night!”

“You and your jokes,” she replied flatly. “I think we’re both a bit too old for places like these, don’t you?”

“I certainly am, but you’re still young, free and single, Sandra. You’d quickly find yourself a date in a place like this.”

“Don’t make me laugh. I’m thirty-five next month. And we meet enough thugs at work - I don’t want to date one as well.”

“Lust is very exclusive,” said Inspector Evans. “Well, it is if you compare it to Cooper’s other bars, at least…”

The uniformed policeman who was guarding the entrance smiled and let the pair inside. They walked down the stairs, past the cloakroom and into the bar area. The air was heavy with the smell of alcohol, and the floor was littered with empty bottles and cigarette stubs. It was quite sticky underfoot.

The large, pink leather sofas against the walls looked very out of place in the daylight that shone through the tall windows. “Nice decor,” Inspector Checchino whispered sarcastically.

A young woman wearing jeans and a jumper was sitting on one of the silver and red bar stools. She did not notice the two police officers entering the room, because she was busy talking on her mobile phone in a loud voice.

“That must be the cleaner,” said Inspector Evans, who spoke a few words of Polish. “We’ll talk to her later. Come on, let’s go and see our man.”

Although she was an experienced investigator, Inspector Checchino always felt a sense of dread before seeing dead bodies, and today was no exception. Her colleague, on the other hand, seemed to be nothing but happy about Stanley Cooper’s death.

The forensics team were busy taking photographs when Inspectors Evans and Checchino entered the office.

“It’s really true, then, the King has snuffed it?” Inspector Evans asked.

Near the back of the office, a man’s head appeared from behind the desk and grinned.

“A single shot to the brain,” he said as he stood up.

It was Vash Singh, one of the forensics experts. His thick glasses made his eyes look as large as saucers.

“There’s no sign of a struggle at all,” he said. “Just look around this room; you can see for yourselves how tidy it is.”

The office looked completely normal - apart from the two legs that were sticking out from behind the desk. Inspector Evans walked up to look at the rest of the body.

“Hmm, it’s certainly less tidy at this end of the room, that’s for sure,” he said solemnly. Stanley Cooper’s body was lying face up in a pool of blood. His mouth was open, and his arms were resting on either side of his fat chest.

The inspector’s eyes moved directly to the gun in the man’s left hand.

“So, what do you think, Vash? Is it really possible that he shot himself?”

“I’d say so, Gary,” he replied. “It does look like suicide, but we still can’t rule out murder. There’ll have to be a full ballistic analysis. We can only guess the facts until then.”

“Does it look like the body’s been moved at all?”

Vash shook his head. “There’s a lot of blood here, but it’s all in one place,” he said.

Inspector Checchino walked over from the doorway and looked at the body. The dead man had short, grey hair and a big moustache that sat above his top lip like a lazy caterpillar.

Even dead, he still has the same arrogant expression on his face, she thought.

“Do you have any idea when this happened?” she asked.

Vash pushed his glasses up his nose and explained that the body had already been a little stiff when they had arrived just after ten o’clock. They had also measured the temperature. “I’d say he died between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m.,” he concluded.

“And you’ve found nothing unusual at all?” she continued.

Vash shrugged.

“I wouldn’t expect his arms to be in that position if he shot himself,” he said, “but on the other hand, it’s not impossible.”

“Well, you’ve been trying to bring this man to justice for a long time, Sandra,” said Inspector Evans. “It looks to me like someone may have helped you out.”

“Maybe,” she said quietly, staring at the dead man’s arms. Then one of the other forensics experts said that there was something interesting about Cooper’s shirt: she had noticed a small amount of lipstick on the collar when she was taking photographs of the body.

Inspector Checchino was examining a computer monitor in the corner of the office. It showed sixteen small pictures of the main rooms in the nightclub from different angles, including the office they were standing in. It also showed two more pictures of the street outside.

“There should be a lot of evidence on this, Gary,” she said, pointing at the security camera footage.

Inspector Evans looked at the screen and scratched his head. “Hmm,” he replied slowly. “There might have been if someone hadn’t switched it off. Look, it’s not recording.”