a photograph he had seen hundreds of times before, one of the professional publicity shots distributed by the BBC. It showed Megan at her most stunning, before her life became a train wreck. Her long brown hair framed an oval face with soft, delicate features. Her smile was warm and engaging, and for a split second he remembered why he’d fallen in love with her in the first place.
His mind carried him back six years to the night they met. It was at a New Year’s Eve bash in a club his father had just taken over in Camberwell. She’d come along with a group of luvvie friends from television and he’d been there with Bishop and some of the crew.
Danny had introduced himself and had given them two bottles of champagne on the house.
‘It’s my way of thanking you for coming to the club,’ he’d said. ‘I do hope it’s the first of many visits.’
It was Megan who asked him to join them at their table to welcome in the New Year. And from that moment he was beguiled by her beauty and the fact that she was a celebrity.
At the stroke of midnight they kissed, and he would never forget how good it felt and how his heart raced. It was the start of a passionate relationship that most people – including his father – predicted wouldn’t last. They weren’t wrong.
Callum Shapiro never did like Megan, and he told Danny he was a moron for getting involved with someone in the public eye.
‘Are you off your fucking trolley?’ he said after Danny proposed and Megan accepted. ‘You’re a villain and you need to keep a low profile. You’ve let this celebrity thing go to your head and it’s a big mistake. On top of that you and her are from entirely different worlds. She’ll be trouble, son. You mark my words.’
But Danny didn’t listen. He loved Megan and he enjoyed the thrill of being in the limelight and going to film premieres and celebrity parties. And he lapped up the attention and the way the tabloids described him as the playboy son of the reputed gangland boss Callum Shapiro.
Four months after he met Megan they got married on Danny’s twenty-seventh birthday. Then two months after the wedding his father was arrested and the lawyers warned them he was facing a life sentence.
It fell on Danny to take the reins of the organisation, which made his life more complicated and put an enormous strain on the marriage from the start.
If Megan had conceived during that first year then maybe things would have been different. But she put her career before a family and at the same time Danny found that being the boss meant a bigger commitment than he’d been prepared for. So the odds were stacked against them from the beginning. It didn’t help that Megan found it tough coping with pressure and suffered bouts of depression, which she blamed on a difficult childhood and low self-esteem.
‘Miss Fuller was thirty-two and married for several years to Danny Shapiro, the man who has repeatedly denied any involvement in organised crime in London.’
Now his own face stared down at him from the TV screen as the newsreader relayed background information relevant to the story.
Danny’s unease mounted as he watched and listened with a hawkish intensity.
‘The couple split up three years ago and were divorced fourteen months ago. Shortly after that Miss Fuller was dropped by the BBC from the long-running soap. A close friend has told Sky News that this – coupled with mounting debts – caused her to become clinically depressed.’
Danny had known all about the state she got herself into. She’d phoned him often enough to tell him it was his fault for being a shit husband and cheating on her with a string of women. Out of guilt and pity he had given her a large sum of money as part of the divorce settlement, plus two properties – the house in Balham and the cottage in the New Forest.
But he’d refused to accept responsibility for the fact that she blew the money on high living and a business venture that went tits up. She’d been forced to remortgage the house and put the cottage on the market.
On the TV the newsreader was saying that Megan’s body was discovered by her own father when he called at the house this morning.
‘Mr Nigel Fuller apparently looked through the kitchen window when he got no response from ringing the front doorbell. He then saw his daughter’s body lying on the kitchen floor.’
Danny’s mind conjured up an image of the scene that would have confronted Nigel Fuller. It caused the muscles in his jaw to tense and brought a lump to his throat. It also made him realise that deep down he still had feelings for Megan despite the friction that had developed between them, and for that reason he was saddened by the manner of her death.
He started to go through the events leading up to last night again in his head. Megan had called him on his mobile while he was still at his office in Bermondsey. She’d wanted to give him the news that her agent had secured a publishing deal for her autobiography.
‘So here’s the thing, Danny Boy,’ she’d said. ‘If you want to stop me dishing the dirt about you and your business then you’d better sort out the money fast. Half a mil buys my silence.’
She’d severed the connection before he could respond. He’d still been fuming an hour later when he left the office with two minders and headed for a business meeting in Clapham, a short way from Balham.
The meeting was with a bunch of Turks who had opened up a new drugs supply route into the UK from Istanbul. Over a plentiful supply of booze they’d struck a good deal. The Turks had access to some high-quality coke and heroin, and they were now going to be one of the firm’s main suppliers.
But as he left the meeting above a pub his thoughts had switched back to Megan. And because he’d been tanked up he’d decided to go to her house to confront her. In hindsight it had been a mistake to have sent the minders home, but he’d wanted to go alone and to have a brisk walk to clear his head.
Clapham was about a mile away and halfway there it had started to rain, a steady drizzle rather than a downpour. Luckily he hadn’t been suited up. As usual he’d been wearing a fleece with a hood, his ‘uniform of choice’ that allowed him to take to the streets without being recognised. Even so by the time he got to Megan’s house he was wet, miserable and fit to explode …
‘A police source has just confirmed that she may have been murdered by someone she let in – someone she might have known.’
The newsreader’s words seized Danny’s attention again and pulled him back to the present. That was when alarm bells started going off inside his head, and he realised that he had a serious problem. It didn’t matter that he was convinced he didn’t kill Megan. Unless it was obvious to the cops who did then he was going to be their prime suspect.
They’d probably find out that she phoned him earlier in the day, even though he used an unregistered mobile. They would know he was worried about what she would write in her forthcoming book. They’d probably drum up CCTV footage of him walking from Clapham to Balham. And he couldn’t be sure, of course, that he hadn’t been seen entering or leaving the house.
Fuck.
His heart started booming in his ears and a hole opened up in his stomach. He told himself to stay calm, not to panic, but he had to fight back an urge to scream.
This was bad. Really bad. The cops would jump at the chance to pin Megan’s murder on him, and once they discovered he’d been to the house they’d have him bang to rights.
Fuck.
What he needed was an alibi and he didn’t have one. He also had no idea what to tell the Old Bill when they eventually turned up. He needed to think, to get his mind around the problem and see if he could find a way out.
A coffee would help, he decided, followed by a hot shower. He had to flush the booze and the sleep from his system so that he could start firing on all cylinders.
He threw back the duvet and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. At that moment