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?”