When Roxy returned to the ground floor with Officer Hann, she noticed that Caroline was no longer on the sofa, and she looked around, finally spotting her just outside the front doors, dragging on a cigarette, the only indication that she was at all nervous or concerned. Roxy turned back to the officer.
“Can you give me a few minutes, please? I need to talk to my friend and prepare her.”
He looked sceptical but nodded anyway and she stepped outside and towards Caroline who was leaning against the metal banister at the top of the stairs. Beside her, on a lower step, was the petite, black-haired woman Roxy had seen earlier, talking to an officer. She was dressed completely in black and had several nose rings, multiple earrings and a small stud through one eyebrow.
“Oh, Roxy darling, this is Holly, Max’s next-door neighbour.”
Holly was dragging on a matching cigarette and waved it at Roxy. “Hey.”
Roxy nodded at her and then turned to Caroline. “So, it wasn’t Max, in case you were wondering.”
Caroline half laughed. “Of course not, darling, I knew it wouldn’t be.”
“How? How did you know?! Weren’t you at all worried?”
Caroline took another deep drag. “Oh calm down, Rox. There was no point in both of us stressing out, was there? Besides, Holly’s already filled me in. She’s the one who found the body. Says it’s the flatmate, Jake.”
Roxy glanced at Holly and back to Caroline. “So if they knew it wasn’t Max, why’d they just put me through that?! It was horrendous!”
Holly gave a kind of Elvis Presley sneer. “Cops never take my word for anything. It’s probably all the piercings.” She sighed. “Yep, that’s Jake all right. Poor git.” Her accent was pure cockney, straight from the working class suburbs of London. “I mean, he could be a right tosser when he wanted to be, but he didn’t deserve that, did he?”
“How did you find him?” Roxy asked.
“Oh, I was feeding Max’s cat.”
“Max has a cat?” both women said at the same time and she nodded.
“Pinky. It’s just a stray that took to sleeping under Max’s bed. He asked me to check his food every couple of days while he was away, since he couldn’t trust Jake to keep it topped up, could he? He’d given me his key so I let meself in this morning and ...” She shivered and wrapped her arms around her torso. “No wonder he didn’t show up at his gig last night.”
“You mean Jake?” Roxy asked and Holly nodded, dragging deeply on her cigarette again. “Do you know what happened to him?”
“Copper says he was smacked over the head with his own guitar. Poor bugger.” Holly squinted a little at Roxy. “I’ve seen your face before. Are you another sister of Max’s?”
“No, I’m just a friend.” Caroline snorted beside her but Roxy let that go and said, “So how long have you known Jake and Max?”
“Errr, let me think ... I’ve been in 3A, that’s just across the corridor, for, I don’t know, about three months? The guys are always so sweet, they helped me move in and all. Well, Max did. Jake just stood around smoking pot most of the time.” She pulled some invisible tobacco from her tongue. “You do know Max is away at the moment, right? In Austria, I think he said.”
“Wasn’t it Switzerland?”
She shrugged. “Something like that. Cold, high up, not my cup of tea. You Aussies are funny. The only place I’d go on holidays is a warm beach somewhere. Preferably Spain.”
“He could be in Brazil,” Caroline offered and Holly’s pierced eyebrow shot up.
“So Max never mentioned Brazil to you?” Roxy asked and she shook her black locks, no. “Did he tell you when he was coming back?”
Holly took a final drag on her cigarette and then dropped it to the ground, quickly stepping on it, squishing it into the cement like that was going to get rid of it. “Not really, but I assumed he’d be back yesterd’y ’cause Jake was supposed to be playing Brewsters last night, wasn’t he, and Max said he’d catch the gig so ...”
“Brewsters?”
“Yeah, divey bar a few streets back. We go most Sat’dy nights. Jake has a regular gig there with his band, the Angry Euros.” Her top lip curled again. “Crap name, hey? Anyways, we go and support him when we can. As you do. He gets paid about sixty quid a pop so I wonder why he bothers, but he says it’s better than nothing, idn’t it? A paid rehearsal, so he says, and it’s not that bad.” She gulped. “At least he used to say that ... He’s gone now, ’idn’t he?”
Caroline placed a hand on her arm. “Yeah, sorry.”
“Can’t get me head around it. Anyway, it’s a good thing Max didn’t zoom back for the gig because, as I say, Jake never showed. I stood around for an hour before I got sick of batting off sleazy Germans and left.”
Officer Hann appeared then and looked at Roxy expectantly but she shook her head. “Please, just let Caroline finish her cigarette?”
He frowned then walked down the stairs to the street and pulled out a packet of his own and lit up. Roxy turned back to Holly. She had so many questions, so little time.
“So Max was definitely expected back last night? And he never showed.”
“That’s what he said. God, he’s going to be so cut up when he finds out about Jake. I mean, they had their moments, but still.”
“Moments?”
“You know, the odd barney.”
Roxy felt her skin prickle. She hoped that Holly hadn’t mentioned these “barnies” to the police. “What did they fight about?”
“Oh, nothing, honestly, don’t worry yourself about it.”
“Did you hear them fight recently?”
“They just had a few words the last time I saw them at Brewsters, that’s all. Jake was late with the rent again, Max was livid. Threatened to kick him out, but Jake just laughed. Said Max always said that. They weren’t really fighting, were they? It was just boring, everyday flatmate stuff, you know the type.” Not really, thought Roxy. It was one of the perks of living alone. “By the end of the night they were best buds again. I told the cops all this, honestly, I wouldn’t worry.”
Roxy felt her anger rising. “They don’t really think Max had anything to do with that ...?” She glanced back into the building, towards the scene of the crime.
Holly shrugged, non-committal.
“Of course they don’t!” Caroline spat. “That’s ridiculous.” She gave Roxy another indignant glare as she finished off her cigarette.
“When did you last see Jake?” Roxy asked Holly.
“Same time as Max, at Brewsters, ’bout a week ago. Oh, but I heard him, very late Frid’y night.”
“What, the night they think he was murdered?”
“Yep, it was definitely late Frid’y night, which is why I was surprised when he didn’t show for the gig on Sund’y. Band were expecting him so they were pissed off, too, I can tell you that. Not happy campers. Bass player had to step up and sing.” She thought about this. “He wasn’t that bad actually. Anyway, I told the coppers this already.”
“Hang on, what do you mean, ‘heard’?”
“Sorry?”
“You said you heard Jake on Friday night.”
“Oh yeah, right, well, I didn’t see him as such. But I heard him, speaking Italian like. I didn’t even know he could. He’s from LA, you know.” She caught herself again. “Was ...”
“Italian?” This mollified Roxy a little. Max didn’t speak any languages. She hoped the cops knew that, too.
“Yep, heard him say the word ‘benvenuto’ which I know is Italian for ‘welcome’ ’cause I went out with an Italian once. He was a tosser.”
“Did you see who he was speaking to? Jake?”
“No such luck, but he must’ve been speaking as he came in along the corridor ’cause you can’t hear much when the apartment doors are shut. Nice thick walls these ones. Old building, that’s why. Wasn’t bombed during the war, apparently. That’s also why it ain’t got any cameras, that kinda stuff that would’ve helped the coppers. All the new buildings have that kinda shite. Me? I’m happy without the invasion of my privacy, thanks very much.”
“Come please,” Officer Hann called out from the road. “We must go now.”
Roxy sighed and turned back to Holly. “Listen, I don’t have a local SIM card yet, but can I get your number, call you later maybe? See if you’ve heard from Max or remembered anything?”
“Sure,” she said, and then held her cigarette packet out to Caroline. “You better have these. From the way those cops are talking, I think you’re gonna need them.”