Chapter One

The gossip column girls were back from their Christmas party and the noise they were making was doing O’Neill’s head in. Some rubbish celebrity rag was holding their annual bash at Café de Paris and Nikki, Helen and Dina had gone along, supposedly to see if they could garner any juicy gossip. O’Neill’s guess was that they’d got pissed on cheap champagne and would have to make up stories because everything had passed them by in an alcoholic blur.

Even with his office door shut, he could still hear their cooing and screeching and he wished they’d just shut up. He’d had a bastard of a morning, running around trying to get an interview with Tanner Heywood, the movie star suspected of being involved in a racket supplying the underworld with pirate DVDs. The guy was strictly B-list and yet his agent had treated all enquiries as though he was Brad Pitt.

All O’Neill coveted now was a fag and a chance to type up his notes. Seymour House, home of the Sunday Wire and its sister publications was strictly non-smoking. But O’Neill had managed to turn off the sprinkler above his desk and could puff away happily. The minions out on the floor would look in through the glass, frowning disapprovingly, but none of them would have the guts to challenge him, he was, after all, Crime Editor and could get any of their little asses sacked.
He was just about to light his first Marlboro since nine o’clock that morning, when he looked up to find Nikki, Showbiz Editor, heading towards his office. She was a pneumatic blonde who looked as if she had stepped straight out of FHM. At twenty-five, she was the youngest Editor on the Wire, even beating O’Neill’s twenty-nine years. He often wondered how she’d risen to the top so quickly, and now, watching her sway her hips, clutching an open bottle of champagne and pouting at him, it didn’t take much guessing.

Tucking his fags back into his pocket, he sat up ready to greet her. She wasn’t even his type, he preferred his women more cerebral. But the way she carried on, coming onto him on a weekly basis, well one of these days he would just give her one and let her get it out of her system.

“Mr O’Neill,” she cooed, entering his office, her eyes glassy through a combination of alcohol and cocaine. “Can I tempt you in a glass of Moet?”

“I’m on duty Nikki,” he replied. “You have my glass for me.”

She didn’t take the hint and squeezed her pencil skirted backside onto the end of his desk.

“So what are you doing for Christmas?” she asked. “Back to Liverpool?”

“Er no. My brother’s, probably. Marnie might be coming down in the New Year.”

“Well, just make sure you have some fun over the holidays, you’re all work and no play you are.”

The phone started to ring and O’Neill was grateful for its interruption. He raised a hand to Nikki, to let her know it was a call he had been expecting and she took the hint, smiling and walking out, leaving the champagne on his desk. In truth he had no idea who was on the other end, but anything was a relief from a vacuous showbiz reporter.

“O’Neill,” he barked into the receiver.

There was a pause and he thought for a moment the person had put it down or it was one of those stupid computer generated calls that had little to do with a human being.

“I done Scratch Brady,” a gruff, male voice suddenly announced.

“What?” O’Neill frowned. “Who is this?”

“I killed Scratch Brady. Now I’ve done Ronnie Nixon. Go to his house. He’s at the top of the stairs.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Who are you?”

The line went dead. For a moment O’Neill just sat holding onto the receiver, staring at it, not quite sure what the last twenty seconds of his life had just been about. It took him a moment to even comprehend who or what the caller had been talking about. He put the receiver down and his thoughts slotted into place. Scratch Brady was an old DJ who had died recently, crashing his car into the middle of the central reservation of the M40. The post-mortem had revealed he’d drunk enough red wine to sink a battleship and had been put down to accidental death. Ronnie Nixon? He was another has-been DJ. O’Neill remembered him presenting a Saturday morning show back when he’d been a little kid in the 1980s. There’d been some scandal about Nixon gambling and the BBC sacked him, in their own sanctimonious way, feeling he was an unsuitable role model for kids. The usual obscurity had beckoned and he now hosted a show on some out of town AM station of a Saturday morning. Why on earth would someone want to murder him?

It was most likely that the called was some nutter with nothing better to do, but O’Neill had to try and trace it somehow before giving up the ghost. Thankfully, the phone system downstairs in reception was sophisticated enough to track all calls, even ones made to a direct line. Even more fortunately, he and Sophie, the evening receptionist had had a little tryst at last year’s Christmas do and had remained good mates, which meant she wouldn’t mind dropping everything to do him a favour.

Dialling zero, he was soon greeted with her dulcet tones.

“Seymour House.”

“Hello Seymour House,” he smiled. “A call just came through to my direct line, any chance you could trace the number.”

“Give me five minutes sweet cheeks,” she replied. “I’ll call you back.”
You’re a star Soph.”

He put the phone down and sat back, putting his feet back up on the table and getting his fags back out again. He looked at his watch, it was nearly six o’clock. If he left the office within the next half an hour, he could make Oxford Street for the last two hours of trading, get Marnie her Christmas present. It was amazing, he had only been thirteen himself, sixteen years ago, and yet he’d been completely stumped as to what to get his daughter and was glad she’d told him what she wanted. Choosing the right present was vital for O’Neill. Every year there was an un-spoken battle between him and Lance, her step-father as to who could buy the best present and now she was entering her teenage years, it was going to get even harder.

Breathing in the sweet taste of Nicotine, Carbon Monoxide, Benzene and possibly Polonium, O’Neill felt ready to face the rest of the night. Maybe after spending a fortune on his little girl, he’d take himself off to a bar for a drink and some female company. While he enjoyed his fag, he thought the phone call he’d received. Being the Crime Editor for a Sunday tabloid, he’d had plenty of strange calls from people claiming that the Krays hadn’t killed Jack the Hat MacVitie, and he was actually living in the same old people’s home as their nan. There was another woman who called to say she’d been molested by the Arab man who ran her local Kebab shop and he’d tried to abduct her and force her into a life of white slavery. When O’Neill had met her, he found she was seventy-six years old and more to the point, the kebab shop she’d referred to, didn’t even exist. O’Neill had, however spotted a stack of Mills and Boon books on her coffee table with titles like ‘Desert Thief’, so this gave a pretty good idea where she’d got her idea from.

But like a good journo, he’d come to rely on gut instinct and something told him he couldn’t ignore this call. While he waited for Sophie to get back to him, he’d look on the net and see if there was anything on Ronnie Nixon that might suggest why someone would want to even claim to have killed him. O’Neill’s favourite site was Wikipedia, an on-line encyclopaedia that had facts about practically everything from celebrities to football players to prisons. He typed up Ronnie Nixon’s name and soon his profile appeared.

Ronald William Nixon b 15 August 1943, Worthing, Sussex, England. Ronnie Nixon is a radio DJ famous for his catchphrase ‘That’s Right Matey’. He was one of the first Radio One DJs, hosting a late evening show until 1977 when he became co-presenter of ‘It’s Saturday’, the seminal children’s magazine show. A family favourite, Nixon was sacked when he was exposed as a gambler in 1989. These were the days when children’s presenters were expected to have a squeaky clean image and Nixon was dismissed. In the 1990s, he tried to play on his newly tarnished image and relaunch himself as a late night show presenter, hosting a talk show on ITV1. The Nixon Experiment was axed after one series. Since then he has been presenting various radio shows around the UK. His latest being the Ronnie Nixon Jazz Show on Radio Cheam, based in Surrey.

O’Neill wondered who would want to kill off a poor old saddo who had spectacularly failed on British radio. Okay, along with gambling often went dodgy people but it had all been so long ago, and why would the same person want to kill Scratch Brady? Besides O’Neill had never brought the whole Princess Di being driven off the road gig, why should he believe it of Scratch Brady? Plus, an ageing DJ with a bad comb-over was hardly in the same league as the future King’s mother.

The phone rang and he saw it was Sophie. Efficient as ever.

“Hi babes,” he said, picking it up.

“I’ve got your number for you,” she said. “Ready?”

O’Neill grabbed the nearest pen to hand and tore off a post-it note.

“Go ahead.”

“02074418820.”

“Thanks Sophie, I’ll call it back.”

He put down the phone and looked at the number, it certainly wasn’t anyone he knew, O’Neill had a pretty good memory for phone numbers and this rung no bells. He dialled it, a bubble of excitement fizzing away in his gut, wondering what was going to happen next. It was things like this that made him love being a journalist.
It rung and rung and rung and he was about to give up when it was picked up.
“Hello,” a female voice said tentatively, there was a lot of background noise, like traffic and people shouting.

“Oh hello,” he said. “I got a phone call from this number about five minutes ago, it was a man. Do you have any idea who is was.”

“Is this Jeremy Beadle?” the woman chuckled. “Am I being filmed?”

“No, this is serious. Where are you?”

“On New Oxford Street. This is a phone box lovey.”

O’Neill groaned inwardly.

“I’m sorry. Look, did you see anyone, a man, in the phone box a little while ago?”
“No, I’ve just got off a Number nineteen bus and noticed it was ringing and picked it up.”

“Okay, well I’m a journalist working on the Sunday Wire and someone called me from this number. Can I just take your name?”

“Yes lovey, it’s Jenny Clary.”

“Thank you Jenny, do you live in the area?”

“No I live in Suffolk. I’m just here visiting my daughter.”

“Right. Thanks Jenny, sorry for giving you a shock.”

“Don’t apologise,” she chuckled. “Just a shame I ain’t gonna be on the telly.”

O’Neill hung up and pondered his next move. It was time for him to go home and he was tired, but he couldn’t just let this go, the police had to know. It would be wrong to make this a emergency call, but he had someone on the inside and even though she would probably slam the phone down on him, he just couldn’t walk away.

DI Christine Cameron was his ex-girlfriend and their split had not been exactly amicable, given that she’d found him in bed with a lap dancer. It had been while they had been ‘on a break’ but Chris hadn’t expected him to take advantage of his freedom in quite such a spectacular way. She’d requested that he never spoke to her again, but for what he had to do, it was best to keep it ‘in the family’ rather than call 999 and make himself look like a real plonker.

He dialled her direct line and pictured her at her scruffy desk in Belgravia nick, like him probably enjoying a sneaky fag, a pile of paperwork in front of her, and not much of a Christmas to look forward to.

“CID,” she snapped.

“It’s me.”

“Just fuck off O’Neill, I’ve nothing to say to you.”

“This is about work,” he said quickly before she had the chance to put down the phone.

“What is it?”

“I’ve just had a really weird phone call. This guy called and said he’d killed Scratch Brady and now he’s just done Ronnie Nixon in too and we could find him at the top of his stairs.”

“Have you been drinking?” she snapped.

“No. I swear on Marnie’s life. It’s probably a crank but I couldn’t just let it go. What if he was telling the truth?"

“And did he give a name?”

“No, but I have found out that he called from a phone box on New Oxford Street.”
“Wasn’t Scratch Brady a drunk driver?” she interrupted.

“Yeah.”

“So how could your crank caller have killed him? He’s probably just a weirdo, someone who’s a bit lonely and wanted to speak to someone. If you get any more calls like it, ring me and let me know.”

“Don’t you want the number of the phone box?”

“Go on,” she sighed. “But I can tell you now, I’m not going to do anything about it, I’ve got a stack of work here in front of me and until something happens, this is going to the bottom of the pile.”

O’Neill gave her the number and he wondered if she was even bothering to write it down.

“So,” he smiled, hoping she could hear it down the phone. “How are you?”

Not getting into a conversation with you,” she replied, the frostiness returning to her voice. “Good night O’Neill.”