Death is the New Black

  DEATH IS THE NEW BLACK

  Dominic Piper

  © Dominic Piper 2017

  Dominic Piper has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  Second edition – published by Opium Den Publishing 2017

  Contents

  1 THE GIRL WITH THE CATWALK STROLL

  2 NEW YORK & MILAN

  3 MTA1

  4 POLICE INTERVIEW

  5 FEMME FATALE

  6 THE PERFUME RIVER

  7 PSYCHIATRIST’S COUCH

  8 BURGLARPROOF

  9 GOT YOU

  10 BREAKING AND ENTERING

  11 BLUE CRYSTAL NECKLACE

  12 A HANDS-ON PERSON

  13 PICCADILLY AT NIGHT

  14 FOOTBALLER DAD

  15 BLOND HAIR

  16 RED HAIR

  17 BAKER STREET EMBRACE

  18 A DANGEROUS DRIVER

  19 I NEVER SLEEP WITH CLIENTS

  20 VENTURE CAR HIRE

  21 DOLLY’S NIGHTCLUB

  22 BLACK SUIT

  23 LOVERS’ TIFF

  24 THE CAMPAIGN

  25 HYPODERMIC

  26 THE DARK PLACE

  27 WITHERED ARM

  28 THE WENDY HOUSE

  29 A HOT KNIFE THROUGH BUTTER

  30 HE’S NOT WITH ME

  31 CORPSE SURFING

  32 EIGHT-INCH BLADE

  33 A REALLY SMART MOVE

  34 LAST SIGH

  35 A DRIVE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

  Books by Dominic Piper

  Kiss Me When I’m Dead

  Death is the New Black

  Femme Fatale

  Dominic Piper’s Amazon page

  1

  THE GIRL WITH THE CATWALK STROLL

  I can spot a dipshit a hundred yards off and this guy certainly qualifies.

  He’s about thirty, noticeably short, wears a smart black suit, aggressively speed walks and has a black cloud hanging over his head that looks like it’s about to be spitting lightning any time now. Whatever it is he’s so pissed about, he’s taking it out on one pedestrian after another.

  He’s already jostled a middle-aged woman carrying a couple of bags of shopping and barges past a besuited businessman, almost knocking him into the traffic. The businessman says something. The dipshit stops, swears at him, and pokes him in the chest a few times before continuing on his ill-tempered way.

  By the time he’s half a dozen yards away from me, he’s had a brief, fractious interval with a construction worker whom he almost knocks to the ground and has pushed his way through two office girls that were walking and talking together, angrily gripping the upper arm of one of them to shove her out of his way.

  And now he’s coming straight towards me. Normally, I’d give someone like this a wide berth, but feel compelled to stand my ground, if only on behalf of the others whose lunchtimes he’s just polluted by his sullen, bullying existence.

  I brace myself just before his shoulder rams mine and at the last possible second yield to his force, so his own momentum makes him stagger forward a few feet and almost fall flat on his face.

  Outraged and furious, he turns to look at me. I can tell immediately that this isn’t some local worker in a sulk; this is some sort of professional psychopath who isn’t used to being fucked with. Well, that makes two of us. He looks confused, as if he doesn’t quite realise what has happened, but is going to have a go at me about it anyway.

  ‘You watch where you’re going, mate.’ This is a command, not a complaint.

  ‘Why? What are you going to do about it, shortass?’

  I’ve nothing against short people, you understand. I was short myself once. I’m just trying to rile him. It worked. He’s apoplectic – vibrating with righteous fury, rage and indignation. He bunches his fists. They’re big fists. He grimaces. He’s got bad teeth. He has some sort of serpentine tattoo up the left side of his neck.

  ‘What did you fucking say to me?’

  ‘You heard. How’s the weather down there, girlfriend?’

  Well that’s done it. He’s quicker than I thought. He grabs the lapel of my jacket to keep me in place, then pulls back his fist in readiness to administer the first of many punches to my face.

  During the one second he’s hyping himself up, I twist his other hand around so his little finger is facing upwards, push it into my chest and press downwards. The pain instantly takes him to his knees.

  While he’s down there, I change my grip on his hand to something a tad more painful, turn hard to my left, whack him on the triceps to get him prostrate and he’s soon snacking on the paving stone he’s just been forcibly slammed into.

  We’re right outside a Greek restaurant and diners are now looking out of the window. I hope no one thinks I’m mugging the poor little guy. While I’m holding him in place I wonder what to do next. The problem is solved by the hurried arrival of the two office girls that he’d bulldozed past a minute earlier. They start kicking him in the head and hitting him with their bags. Another couple of women join in for solidarity’s sake. They’re more vicious than the first two. I have to say he looks rather stunned.

  ‘Well done,’ one of them says to me. She’s pretty. Great legs. Full lips. I’m only sorry I can’t hang around and hit on her.

  ‘You little bastard. You little knob jockey,’ says the other, kicking him repeatedly in the side of the thigh. They all lay into him. I’m reminded of sharks in a feeding frenzy.

  Well, that’s London for you. I manage to disappear just as a crowd is forming around this urban fracas and continue on my way, wondering what the hell the problem was with that asshole. Ah well: I’ll probably never know.

  As Marylebone High Street morphs into Thayer Street, I start looking for the address I’ve been given and then I find it; Hinde Street, a small road with maybe a dozen or so tightly packed four-storey, eighteenth century houses, part of which leads into leafy Manchester Square.

  On one side of the road there’s a long row of hire bikes and EVs, while my side is filled with clothing shops and permit-only parking. High up, there’s a blue plaque on the wall for a writer called Rose Macaulay. I locate number 16 and press the buzzer. It’s loud. The sound drills through my head like a sonic pickaxe. My fault. Last night I had one of those evenings that are best forgotten if you could remember them in the first place. No: I don’t understand that, either.

  I’ve got an appointment to see Sara Holt. She’s the chief designer and creative director at Maccanti, an independent UK fashion house and one of the few that mean anything on the international scene.

  Although it sounds like it should be an Italian company, the founder, Terzo Maccanti, was actually born in the UK and when he died of an AIDS-related illness sometime in the 1990s, his position as chief designer was taken by a series of successors, Ms Holt being the latest.

  This wasn’t general knowledge for me. I happened to mention Sara’s name to a female acquaintance last night and she, well, shrieked.

  The upshot of the shriek was that Sara Holt was hot – her designs sexy, arty, feminine and extremely expensive. Her collections are regular hits at the big four twice-yearly fashion weeks (New York, London, Milan and Paris, if you’re interested) and any woman who could genuinely call herself a woman would crawl over broken glass to own one of her creations.

  After I’m buzzed in, I take the lift up to the third floor and wonder what the problem can be. When she rang me up a couple of days ago, she said that I’d been recommended to her by a woman called Gracie Short, who was the editor/owner of an online fashion journal.

  I remember Mrs Short well. She was having suspicions about her husband who turned out to be married to not
one, but two other women, using fake identities and financing the whole mess with a trust fund his wife didn’t even know existed. I’m pretty sure that her army of lawyers are still gouging him for everything he’s got at this very moment.

  Perhaps this is a similar thing, though you never can tell. People have many reasons for hiring a private investigator and few of them are predictable.

  Somehow, though, I already like the sound of this job without really knowing what it’s all about. It’s probably because of all the connotations that the fashion industry has for me – glamour, beauty, sex and models – though not in that order.

  I took a look at Sara Holt’s Wikipedia page before I came out this morning, but it was all work-related stuff and contained no details about her personal life or any decent photographs. All I know about her is that she’s twenty-nine and was born in Hurst Green in Surrey. I’ve never heard of Hurst Green.

  When the lift doors open, I get a little light-headed with disorientation. I don’t know what I’d expected to see, but I think I’d anticipated something a little more homely, perhaps smaller, judging from the outside of the building and the quaint wrought iron gates on the ground floor.

  But this is big, white, bright and ultra-modern, seemingly extending into the building next door and maybe further. The whole back wall is lit up with some sort of slow-moving digital mural of snow-covered trees in a white forest. In front of that are four black and white, egg-shaped Koop chairs and centre stage is a big lit-up leaf green reception desk, behind which sits a strikingly beautiful girl of, I would guess, nineteen or twenty years old.

  She’s got straight, light brown, shoulder-length hair and is wearing a dark green cotton t-shirt which looks like it’s been painted on the nothing that she’s wearing underneath and I’m jealous of whoever did the painting.

  When she sees me come in, she stands, smiles, leans over and shakes my hand. She’s petite with a lissom, athletic figure and it’s only now I notice the amber eyes. The whole effect is so spellbindingly and exotically sensual that I decide that whatever happens with Sara Holt, I’m going to…

  ‘Hello. You must be Daniel Beckett. I’m Sara Holt. I’m so pleased to meet you. Shall we go in my office?’

  My mouth opens but nothing comes out. I follow her down a long, busy, white corridor and take in the tiny waist, skinny black Levi’s and three-inch heels.

  She has a lazy, hip-swivelling walk and her arms swing loosely at her side. It’s almost a catwalk stroll and it’s making my mouth go dry. As she holds open a door for me, she turns and assaults me with another dazzling smile.

  ‘You thought I was a receptionist, didn’t you? Go on, admit it.’

  She’s caught me. I have to laugh. I should have noticed the white gold Rolex Datejust Lady 31 on her slim wrist. You couldn’t afford a watch like that on a receptionist’s salary.

  ‘You were sitting behind the reception desk. That’s usually an indicator.’

  ‘Well, some detective you are.’

  ‘I’ll have to give you a discount.’

  Her perfume is light and flowery. I can’t identify it.

  ‘The receptionist is still at lunch. I just needed to use her computer for something. I can see you’re wondering what’s going on with this place. We own the third and fourth floor for three of the houses in a row. We had them knocked through two years ago. You wouldn’t believe the hassle with the authorities. Luckily, none of them were listed buildings, so it could have been worse. My office is just down here.’

  She has a charming, cut-glass home counties accent with maybe a hint of American in there somewhere. Her voice has a soft, seductive tone that you could listen to for hours without actually hearing what was being said.

  She’s a little twitchy, though. She’s under some sort of stress and she’s trying hard to hide it. It could be work or it could be the reason she wants to see me. It could be both. It might be neither.

  ‘You lead, I’ll follow,’ I say, stupidly. Beautiful women distract me and shut down parts of my brain that should be switched on. I’ve already forgotten what year it is and who my parents were.

  I’d somehow imagined that the office of a top fashion designer would be full of clothes rails, huge swatches of expensive fabrics and perhaps a drawing board or two, but this is nothing like that at all. It’s a big room, but the walls are almost completely obliterated by bookshelves, so it looks more like a library than anything else.

  But it’s an enormous wooden table that dominates the room. It’s maybe ten by fifteen feet and is covered in books, piled three or four high in some cases. A casual glance reveals it to be mainly art books, with a smattering of photography. I spot thick tomes by Doisneau, Atget and Cartier-Bresson, among others. There’s a little area down the far end where work is maybe done, judging from the notepads and pens.

  ‘Would you like a coffee? I can stick the kettle on.’

  ‘Yes please. White with a dash of milk, No sugar.’

  I get mine in a yellow Pantone mug. We both sit and look at each other. I get the impression that she’s looking at my clothes with a critical eye, but that may be understandable paranoia on my part. She slowly rubs a hand across her collarbone and smiles. I just hope she doesn’t have some rat of a partner who’s cheating on her; I may be forced to take action. I can hear what sounds like tinny 1960s French pop music playing quietly in the background.

  ‘You don’t look like a private detective. You don’t dress like one, either. If someone told me you were a graphic designer or something in television, I’d believe them.’

  ‘Should I get a trench coat or change jobs?’

  She laughs. It’s a sexy one, as I feared it would be. ‘A deerstalker and a trench coat together would be a good look.’

  ‘I’ll look into it.’ I take a sip of my coffee. ‘What can I help you with, Ms Holt?’

  ‘Call me Sara.’ She looks downwards and fiddles with a fingernail. ‘I don’t know where to start, really.’

  A heavy-set blonde woman raps on the door as she strides in and hands Sara a big Jiffy bag with something heavy in. ‘Y-3 FW15,’ she says, mysteriously. As she leaves, another woman takes her place and starts looking for something on one of the bookshelves. She finds it and leaves. Sara smiles politely at both of them, hiding her impatience gracefully. At this rate, I don’t think she’s going to start at all.

  She takes a deep breath, but just as she’s about to start talking again, the door opens and possibly the tallest black guy I’ve ever seen in my life comes through the door. He actually has to duck to avoid hitting his head on the lintel. He’s wearing a Ren & Stimpy t-shirt and royal blue cargo shorts with fluorescent yellow trainers. I doubt whether I could get away with that look. He looks at me and grins.

  ‘Sorry. Sorry, Sara. I’ve just had Larry on the phone about the mock-ups for CR? I can’t find Isolda anywhere?’

  ‘Have you tried her mobile?’

  ‘Switched off.’

  ‘She was having lunch with her bf. Probably having a row.’

  ‘Makes a change,’ he says, rolling his eyes and raising his eyebrows.

  Sara sighs. ‘OK. Don’t worry, Gaige. Tell Larry I’ll speak to him later. Tell him I’ll call him at exactly five o’ clock. Tell him you spoke to me and I said that. I’m going out for a bit. Can I give you this?’

  She tosses her mobile phone at Gaige who catches it, slips it in a pocket, grins apologetically and walks backwards out of the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says to me. ‘I should have known we wouldn’t be able to talk here. Have you had lunch? I haven’t had a chance for anything yet today. There’s the Wallace Collection just around the corner. The restaurant will be quiet about now and they have great food. We can talk there without any risk of eavesdropping or interruption and get something to drink if you like.’ She grins briefly and her eyes widen. ‘I think I’ll need something even if you don’t.’

  The twitchiness appears once more in her voice and I wonder what’s wrong. She smiles a
t me and slips on a short orange and red fluffy jacket.

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ I say. ‘And no – I haven’t had lunch.’

  ‘Great. Sorry again.’

  We leave her office and head down a staircase I hadn’t noticed. I think she wants to avoid going through reception and being seen with me. Doesn’t bother me; I’m sure she has her reasons.

  Just as she takes the first step down the stairs, something happens and she falls forward. I grab the waist of her jeans and her upper arm and hoist her back into position. She thanks me and laughs nervously, blaming her Burberry heels. I haven’t been this close to her before and I can see now that her pupils are looking a little dilated.

  Perhaps she’s under more stress than I imagined.

  2

  NEW YORK & MILAN

  It takes us two minutes to walk to the Wallace Collection. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a world-renowned museum stuffed with Old Master paintings, suits of armour, furniture and porcelain; and that’s just for starters.

  I can’t have been here for at least a decade, but it hasn’t changed much. The courtyard restaurant has changed, though. What used to be a glorified snack bar is now a rather classy and expensive French-style brasserie with planters containing real trees, vases containing fresh flowers and friendly white-clad waiting staff.

  There are about thirty tables, but only four of them are occupied. I think you’re meant to book for lunch, but one of the waiters smiles at Sara and waves his hand to indicate she can sit wherever she wants. I suspect she’s a regular here and they know she’s important.

  We sit at the back, far from the serving area and the other diners, and stare at the menu for a few minutes. While we’re staring, Sara orders a glass of white wine and I have a Miss Saigon, just for the hell of it. The waiter looks amused at my choice.

  She takes a sip of her wine and looks up. ‘I love this place. It’s like you’re outside, but it’s still warm. It doesn’t even matter if it rains. In fact, it’s better if it does.’