“Right!” Denver proclaimed triumphantly. “Right! You lot ready?”
“We’ve been ready a fuckin’ hour,” Grateful Dead told him.
“Not so fast,” I said. “There’s conditions.”
“Conditions?” Denver echoed.
“Jesus H fuckin’ Christ!” Grateful Dead cursed, throwing his hands in the air.
“That’s right. Conditions. First of all, it won’t be a TV show, with you doing the narration. We do it from a forensic point of view, for use in court.”
“Well, fair enough,” Denver conceded.
“And secondly,” I added, “you pay, so the tape is yours, but I’m impounding it until it can be copied. OK?”
“It’s a deal,” he said. “Let’s get on with it.”
Prendergast, who hadn’t spoken so far, decided to earn his fee. “Gentlemen,” he said. “I really do think this has gone far enough. As my client isn’t here I have to say, on his behalf, that we do not accept the entire premise upon which this allegation is based. Whatever is found on the car, it can have little bearing on what happened twenty years ago. Who knows who has tampered with things since then.”
Burgess-Jones said: “Nobody has tampered with things, as you put it, Sir. Everything is as it was or as recorded in the photograph albums.”
“Good try, Prendergast,” I told him, “but over-ruled. We’ll tell Silkstone you did your best.” I turned to the film crew. “Listen up,” I said, slipping my watch off my wrist. “This is how I want it. Can you focus down on that?” I propped the watch behind one of the windscreen wipers and stood back.
“No problem,” Grateful Dead assured me.
“Good. I want to start and finish with a shot of the watch, close up. Then I want a wide angle, to include everybody present. After that you can zoom in and out as you like. The main thing is that I want the entire thing to be seamless, with one camera and no stops and no editing. Can you do that?”
“One take, beginning to end, starting and finishing with the time?”
“That’s it.”
“You goddit, no problem.”
“Do we have sound recording?”
“Sure do.”
“Right. In that case, I’ll do the talking. Let’s go.”
I felt Burgess-Jones tug my sleeve and turned to him. “Nobody goes anywhere without some protection for their eyes,” he said, placing a pair of safety spectacles in my hand. I put them on and the film crew found their Oakleys.
“OK, gentlemen,” Grateful Dead said, taking over the role of director because he realised that it was the only way to get things done, “let’s have you all together, at the side of the car. Take one, of one.”
Burgess-Jones picked up the angle grinder and we stood there as the camera zoomed in at the watch and then encompassed us all in its impartial gaze. I introduced myself, feeling foolish, and invited the others to do so. Burgess-Jones’s assistant was called Raymond, and he said he was chief mechanic and brother-in-law of the proprietor. He’s married well, I thought.
“We will now lift the bonnet and attempt to establish its original colour, before any restoration work was done on it,” I said, and Raymond reached inside the car and released the catch.
We all stepped back to allow him to walk round to the front of the car. He poked his fingers inside the front grill for the lever and lifted the bonnet. I could see pipes and wires, a drive shaft and exhaust pipe, all pointing towards a big void where most cars have an engine.
“There’s no fuckin’ engine!” Denver gasped. He turned to Burgess-Jones. “Hey! There’s no fuckin’ engine. You never said it didn’t have an engine.”
“I told you it was a museum piece,” Burgess-Jones replied.
“Six fuckin’ grand!” he ranted. “I just gave six fuckin’ grand for a car with no fuckin’ engine.”
“Let’s have a look at the underside of the bonnet,” I said, and Raymond held it upright so the camera could zoom in. Burgess-Jones pressed the trigger on the angle grinder and applied it to the paintwork.
He moved it gently back and forth and we watched as the scarlet paint shrivelled and flew off in a spray of debris and smoke. First a grey undercoat was revealed, then a dark colour and then more primer. He stood back and the machine in his hand whined to a standstill.
“That should do it,” he declared. “BRG, I’d say. British racing green.”
Raymond stooped to look under the bonnet. “Yep, BRG,” he confirmed.
Denver and I looked and agreed that the original colour was green. Prendergast declined.
“OK,” I said. “Now lets have a look at the outside.” Raymond slammed the bonnet shut and Burgess-Jones stepped forward, brandishing the Black and Decker.
Denver restrained him with an extended arm and positioned himself in front of the MG, facing the camera. “This,” he began, “is a simple test upon which the life, the freedom, of a man depends.”
I was standing alongside Grateful Dead, who glanced sideways at me. Had I tried to stop Denver it would be captured on film, and he knew it. “Keep filming,” I told him through gritted teeth.
“Tony Silkstone,” Denver continued, “stands accused of a series of crimes — rape and murder — going back eighteen years. Some would say the police have been over-zealous in their pursuit of Silkstone, their enquiry based entirely on the suspicions of one officer. Whilst we wish our police to be diligent and thorough, there comes a point when these qualities become vindictive and mean spirited. Hounding the innocent should not be part of the police’s role.”
I thought he’d finished, and took a step forward. Denver shot me a glance then looked back at the camera. “The bonnet of this car might hold the clue to the killer who murdered and raped sixteen-year-old Caroline Poole back in 1983, and who had sexually assaulted young Eileen Kelly two years previously. Eileen says her attacker drove a Jaguar car. The police, or, more accurately, one police officer with a reputation for irresponsible action, say that the car was an MGB, similar to this one behind me…” he stepped to one side and gestured, “…that belonged to Tony Silkstone at the time in question. This officer says that Silkstone had fitted a Jaguar mascot to the bonnet of the car, thus causing Eileen to believe the car she was abducted in was of that make. Silkstone denies it. The proof, ladies and gentlemen, is awaiting discovery. If this car ever had the Jaguar mascot fitted, there will be evidence of two holes, somewhere about here.” He touched the appropriate place. “Let’s see, shall we?”
I thought about going out in a blaze of glory. They’d have put it down to post-traumatic stress, or something, and given me a full pension. And it would certainly have made good television, as I demonstrated how to reshape the front of an MG by battering it with a journalist’s head. They might even have given me my own chat show. Instead, I just turned away and took a few deep breaths. I’m growing either old or soft, or both.
Burgess-Jones stepped forward again and the grinder in his hands leapt from zero to three thousand revs per minute with a yelp like a kicked dog. “About there,” Denver instructed him, pointing to a spot just behind the MG badge. I walked forward to have a closer look.
He moved the spinning wheel across the pristine surface, barely skimming the top layer away. We smelt burning paint and saw flakes of it melt and then fly off. He gradually enlarged the patch, revealing the grey undercoat and a darker primer edging the scar, like woodgrain, or an aerial view of a coastline.
Sparks flew when he touched metal. The patch of bare metal grew as he moved the wheel across it. Silver steel, that’s all. “Back a bit,” I shouted to Burgess-Jones above the whine of the grinder, and he expanded the area he was attacking. The patch grew longer, but it was blank and inviolate.
There was one aesthetically pleasing spot where you could fix the jaguar, and we’d covered that. Anywhere else and it would have looked wrong. Too far forward and the cat would have been leaping downhill, too far back and it would cease to be a bonnet mascot. But Silkstone knew nothing about aesthetics, and I clung to that fact.
“Keep going,” I said.
Denver gestured to Grateful Dead for him to move in with the camera and get a good close-up of the metal. Burgess-Jones was nearly halfway back to the windscreen when I saw him tense and stoop more closely over the car. “There’s something here!” he cried.
There it was. A dissimilar metal, to borrow a phrase from my schooldays, peering out from under the paint and growing by the second. First one brass-coloured disc was revealed, then another an inch behind it, like twin suns blazing in the silver sky of a distant planet. Burgess-Jones enlarged the sky, gave it a neat finish, then stepped proudly back.
“You did it,” I said to him. “You did it. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“My pleasure,” he replied, a big smile across his face.
Denver looked at where the holes had been, before some craftsman had filled them with braze and made the bonnet as good as new. “Are they the right size?” he asked.
“Yes,” Burgess-Jones told him. “About a quarter inch diameter at one inch centres. Exactly right, I’d say.”
“Wow!” Denver exclaimed, recovering his equilibrium and doing a U-turn that would have overturned a Ferrari but didn’t make his conscience even wobble. “Wow! Do I have a story! Do I have a fuckin’ story!” He patted his pockets, feeling for his phone, then remembered it was in his car, being recharged.
Grateful Dead zoomed in at my watch and asked me if that would do. I nodded and he said: “Cut!” and stopped the camera.
Denver was heading towards the cars, so I followed him. When I arrived he was emptying his pockets, piling coins and mints and tissues on the roof of his Ford. Everything but keys. I unlocked mine and reached into the glove box for my mobile phone. “I’ve lost my keys,” Denver muttered. “I’ve lost my keys.”
I tapped out the Heckley nick number and pointed inside his car, asking: “Are they them?”
Denver stooped to look inside, pulling at the door handle. “Aw fuck!” he cursed. “I’ve locked them in. I’ve fuckin’ locked them in. How’d I do that? I thought it was impossible. How’d I do that?”
“It’s DI Priest,” I said into the phone. “I want you to do two things for me. First of all I want an all ports warning issuing for the arrest of Tony Silkstone, and then I want to talk to the press department. I want a story circulating to Reuters and Associated Press, as soon as possible.”
Denver had decided to enlist help. “Mr Burgess-Jones!” he called, turning and jogging back to the others. “Mr Burgess-Jones, can you help me, please?”
A voice on the phone said: “Heckley police station, how can I help you?”
“Hello George,” I replied. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been talking to myself.”
“Feeding the cat, Charlie. Where are you? That’s more to the point.”
“I’m down in Lincolnshire.”
“It’s all right for some.”
“Work, George, work. Listen, there’s two things. First of all I want an APW issuing for Tony Silkstone, and then I want to speak to the press officer.”
“Silkstone?” George replied. “You got enough on him, have you?”
“Yes, George, I think we have. I really think we have.”
After that, I got mean. I made Denver sit in my car and when Prendergast started making objections I reminded him that he represented nobody there and threatened to chuck him in the duckpond, whereupon he made an excuse and left. Burgess-Jones thought it all a hoot. I rang the local CID and eventually handed everything over to them, including Denver. The AA arrived with a set of Slim Jims, as used by the more professional car thieves, and opened Denver’s car. Inside it we found the record card for Silkstone’s MG, as made out by Smith Brothers and showing that it had been sold to Mr Burgess-Jones, so the chain was complete.
All the papers carried the story next day, but the UK News still claimed it as a world exclusive, even though we gave some of the best bits to the others. Lincolnshire police let Denver go, on their bail, and a week later he was given an official caution. No chance there of him claiming that we were heavy-handed with him.
Silkstone had made a run for it, as we thought. He panicked, and followed an elaborate plan to make it look as if he’d killed himself by driving the Audi over Bempton cliffs. Unfortunately several eye-witnesses and a few second’s video footage revealed that he’d driven his late wife’s Suzuki Vitara to York, travelled back to Heckley by train, taken the Audi to Bempton where he’d sent it over the edge, and then found his way back to York again and, he hoped, freedom. We picked him up two days later, lying low at a caravan site near Skegness. Dave and I went to fetch him — sometimes, I indulge myself.
Afterwards, in the in-between hours which are neither night nor day, I thought that perhaps it might not stick. A clever brief might cast doubts on my methodology, declare some evidence inadmissible, get him off. It would all be down to the jury, but I didn’t care. The first time DNA profiling was used in a murder case it indicated that the person under arrest was innocent, even though he had made a full confession. The local police were outraged and Alec Jeffreys, the scientist who developed the technique, must have been devastated. But he stuck to his guns, had faith in the system, and eventually the real murderer was caught.
Looking back on it, freeing that innocent man must give Sir Alec much more satisfaction than pointing the finger at a guilty one. About a fortnight after Silkstone was committed for trial I received a letter from Jean Hullah, matron of the Pentland Court Retirement Home. She said that Mrs Grace Latham, mother of Peter, had died, but she was aware that her son had been cleared of suspicion of murdering Mrs Silkstone and had wanted to write and thank me. And young Jason Lee Gelder was off the hook too. He was too dense to realise how close he’d been, but now he was free to earn his living skinning dead cows and spend his earnings on evenings of passion in the brickyard. Even if Silkstone walked, and I didn’t think he would, it was still a result.
I was sitting at my desk, feet on it, reading a report from Germany about how changing the diet of the inmates of a children’s home from cola drinks and fish fingers to organically grown sauerkraut transformed them all from rebellious louts into adorable little cherubs when there was a knock at the door and Annette came in. I let my chair flop onto all four feet and smiled at her.
“Oh, I thought you’d brought me a coffee,” I said, noticing that she was empty-handed and pushing the spare chair towards her.
“No,” she replied, without returning the smile. “I brought you this. I thought you ought to be the first to know.” It was a long white envelope, addressed to me.
I took it from her and turned it in my fingers. “Is it what I think it is?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” I told her, and she shrugged her shoulders. I placed it on my desk, propped against a box of paperclips, and looked at it. “You’ve some holiday to come,” I stated.
“Three weeks,” she confirmed.
“So you could be gone by the end of next week.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve accepted his proposal?”
“Yes.”
We only have to give a month’s notice to resign. The last thing you want hanging round a police station is a demob-happy disgruntled officer spreading doubt and disillusion about the job. A week, though. We’d been jogging along quite nicely, up to now. I’d behaved myself, Annette had done her job. We’d even had a drink together, after a particularly harrowing day, and I’d enjoyed seeing her around, half hoping that her friendship with the teacher might grow cold. It obviously hadn’t.
“There’s an alternative,” I said.
She shook her head. “No.”
“I could tear this up, drop it in the bin, and you could come to live with me.”
She hung her head, one hand on her brow. “Don’t, please, Charlie,” she mumbled. “Don’t make it more difficult than it is.”
I looked at her, seeing for the first time the worry lines in the corners of her eyes that hadn’t been there before she started seeing me. Now somebody else would have to soothe them away. I opened my mouth to tell her that she was making a mistake, then changed my mind. I’ve been through all that, before. “I’ll miss you,” I said, “and I hope it all works out for you.”
“I hope it all works out for you, too, Charlie,” she replied.
“Oh, it will,” I told her. “It will. No doubt about that.”
So the following Friday we had a “do” in the Bailiwick, with everybody there. Gilbert made a presentation and Annette said we were the best bunch of people she’d ever worked with. Embarrassing episodes in Annette’s career were recalled and David Rose did his party trick, drinking a pint of beer while standing on his head. It’s time to leave when David does his party trick.
I didn’t have the opportunity to say a private goodbye to her, thinking that maybe I’d give her a phone call the next day, but suspecting that I wouldn’t. Dave Sparkington and I shared a taxi home and I asked him if they’d heard from Sophie this week.
“Yeah, she keeps in touch,” he told me.
“Is she enjoying her lectures?”
“She says she is. It’s hard work, but she’s coping.”
“And the flat’s OK?”
“Hmm, bit of a problem, there. She says the place stinks of garlic. The previous tenant must have eaten nothing else but.”
I remembered the microwave I’d given her, and the exploding chicken Kiev. “Students,” I said, by way of explanation.
“Yeah, students.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence, apart from the hiss of the tyres on the wet road and the swish of the wipers. “I reckon you missed your way there, Chas,” Dave said as we turned into his street.
“Where?”
“With Annette.”
“Oh. No, not my type.”
Rain, carried by a wind straight off the hills, was lashing at the windows as he slammed the car door and dashed for the shelter of his house. I gave the driver new directions and he took me home.
I over-tipped him and turned up my collar as he wished me goodnight. The postman had left the gate open and the bulb had failed again in the outside light. I’m sure they don’t last as long now that we get our electricity from the gas people. I found the right key by the light of the street lamp then plunged into the shadow at the side of the house, shuddering with cold.
What was it to be, I wondered: a hot bath; some loud music; a couple of cans with my feet on the mantelpiece; or all three? Silkstone would probably be tucked up in bed in his nice centrally heated cell. Jason would be having it away with some totty he’d picked up at the Aspidistra Lounge. And what about Chilcott — the Chiller — where would he be? In a bar in a warmer clime if his luck had held. Somewhere where you can live like a lord on ten grand a year. Cuba, or Mexico.
Unless, of course, he was still out there, wondering about fulfilling his last contract. I doubted it, but it gave life a certain piquancy, knowing that somebody thought enough about you to pay money to have you killed. I was a cop, so I must be doing something right. The key found the keyhole third attempt and I turned it. I pushed the door open and reached inside for the lightswitch. No doubt Mexico’s fine, but there’s no place like home.