Page 56 of Charlie
“Thanks for the offer though,” I called as he smiled and left.
“Liv.” Kit was already by the table and waving me over. “C’mere to me till I tell ye what I’ve found.” Kit searched through a pile of papers. “While you were kissing with Charles, I’ve been doin’ some serious diggin’. Look at this.”
I sat down and studied the papers in front of me.
“What is this?”
“A police report from Liverpool.”
There were four pages.
“Seven years ago, a woman named Patricia Maddox walked into a Liverpool police station and said she suspected her brother had been murdered by a man called Conor Bricks. No evidence was found and since Conor had an alibi and people vouching that he’d been in Dublin, no charges were made against him. Patricia and her brother were known by the police to be hustlers so she wasn’t a credible person to begin with.”
“Okay.”
Kit’s eyes shone with excitement as she continued. “Since Mr. Robertson has given us full carte blanche to use as many hours as needed on this case, I took a quick trip to visit Patricia and ye won’t believe the story she told me.”
My body moved to the edge of my seat. “What did you find?”
“According to her, Jim, her brother, owned a sleazy bar with a few guestrooms on the first floor. He had a little side hustle where he’d use hidden cameras to film unfaithful husbands getting’ a quickie with their mistresses and then blackmail them for cash.”
Kit looked me straight in the eye. “But one day, a black woman checked in with her wee fella. She seemed upset and desperate, so when a man showed up, Jim figured there was a story to exploit. He pushed the button in the bar that activated the cameras and went about his evening serving drinks and food in the bar. At one point, the man left with the sleepin’ fella over his shoulder and that’s when Jim turned off the cameras. The next day the woman stayed in her room all day, and when Jim watched the film, he knew why.”
“Why?” I was eager to hear more.
“She was dead. That’s why.” Kit leaned back and like the great storyteller she was, she paused for effect. “Patricia has never seen the video but Jim told her how the little fella had been sleeping while the man held a knife to his throat. The mother was pleadin’ for her son’s life.”
“Did he kill the boy too? You said Jim saw him sleeping. Did that mean he was really dead?”
“No. To save her son’s life, the mother did as the man ordered. She wrote a suicide note dictated by him, and she ate fifteen pills that he gave her.”
“Shekilledherself?” My eyes widened.
Kit shook her head. “Nah, she didna kill herself. She might have swallowed the pills, but it still counts as murder!”
“That’s awful. And the boy. Is it Nathan?”
She nodded. “Aye. I’ve confirmed that his mother’s body was found in the bar that Jim owned, but of course we have no way to prove that Nathan or Conor was there without the video, do we?”
“Wow.” I leaned back too. “If this is true, Conor Bricks is a sick and very dangerous individual.”
“Aye. He is.” Kit shuffled some papers around. “Accordin’ to Patricia, she and Jim identified the man as Conor and tried to blackmail him. Conor negotiated a smaller amount than they had first requested over the phone and agreed to meet up in person to pay the money. Only Patricia never saw Jim again.”
“Conor killed him!” My words hung in the air as the most obvious reason for Jim’s disappearance.
“Aye. I think he did.” Kit looked grave. “Ye have to be careful, Liv. This man will stop at nothing. He’s a monster.”
My thoughts went to Nathan and the pain in the boy’s eyes when he’d told me about his mom. “And now Nathan thinks he wasn’t enough for his mom to want to live when all the time it was the man whom he calls father who forced her to kill herself.” It made me sick to think about the unfairness and cruelty of it all.
“We have to find Jim’s body and the video,” Kit declared. “Once we have that, we can put Conor away for murder and then Charles and the others can see he was always a complete fraud.”
“But how? If it’s been seven years and if the police closed the case, then how will you find evidence?”
“Leave that to me. In the meantime, I need ye to help me put pressure on Conor.”
“How?”
“Keep yer hook in Charles and buzz around like a feckin’ bee that Conor can’t kill.”
