Four days is the magic figure. The chopper clocked the Land Rover entering the multi-storey car-park in Heckley and that was as much as they could do. It was later found neatly parked on the next-to-top floor, with the doors unlocked. It had, needless to say, been stolen two weeks earlier. From the car-park there are covered walkways leading to the shopping mall and the old town area, and other exits at street level. He could have taken any one of them. Within minutes the place was flooded with Heckley’s finest, all twelve of them, but Mr Chilcott had vanished. We suspect he had a safe house somewhere, and was holed-up in that.
Back at the farm I’d requested assistance from Heckley nick, which didn’t come because they were busy, and from the scenes of crime people, who never have anything better to do on a Saturday lunchtime. Having a fatwa on me earned a certain amount of respect from the RCS team, so when I ordered them all out of the farmhouse they did as they were told. They piled into their vehicles and hot-footed it to Heckley, desperate to salvage some credibility. I stayed behind and they kindly left a car and three men with me, just in case. We stoked the fire and made coffee.
Four days is the time a terrorist on the run is trained to stay concealed. The police employ psychologists who have worked out that a fugitive would stay underground for three days before making his bid for freedom. After that time, we assume we’ve lost him. So the terrorists enlist more expensive psychologists who tell them to hide for four days before legging it. Fortunately our anti-terrorist people have become wise to this, and they brought it to our attention. OK, Chilcott wasn’t a terrorist, but they all download the same manuals.
Nigel extended his hands towards me so that I could extricate my new pint from between his fingertips. He placed another in front of Dave and an orange juice and soda on his own beer mat.
“Cheers,” we said.
“Cheers,” he replied, taking a sip. As Chilcott was still on the run and appeared to have a reasonable working knowledge of my movements, we had forsaken the Spinners and were having our Wednesday night meeting in the Bailiwick. “So what time were you there until?” Nigel asked.
“Seven o’clock.” I said. “We were stuck at Ne’er Do Well Farm until after seven. The SOCOs had left about four.”
“We were running about like blue-arsed flies,” Dave said.
“Flashing blue-arsed flies?” I suggested.
“And them.”
“Do you think he’s still in Heckley?”
“God knows.”
“It’s four days today. SB said he’d lie low for four days.”
“Don’t remind us.”
I took a sip of beer and said: “Well it proves one thing.”
“What’s that?” they asked.
“That I’m not paranoid.”
“Just because someone is trying to kill you doesn’t mean you’re not paranoid,” Dave argued.
“Of course it does.”
“No it doesn’t. He’s only one man. It’s not a conspiracy.”
“Of course it’s a conspiracy.”
“No, it’s not. He was doing it for money. It’s not personal.”
“What difference does that make? The whole thing is one big conspiracy.”
“Against you? One big conspiracy against you?”
“Against everyone.”
“So someone’s out to kill Nigel, too. And me. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I might be.”
“You definitely are paranoid.”
“Is that what you think? Is that what you really think?”
“Yes.”
“Right,” I said. “Right. Let me tell you something. You see this place?” I gestured towards the ceiling and they nodded. “Good. And you see the names on all those labels behind the bar?” I read them off: “Tetley’s, Black Sheep, Bell’s, Guinness, Foster’s, and so on, and so on?”
“Ye-es,” they agreed.
“OK. Now let’s look at what’s outside. There’s the Halifax opposite, and Barclays, and the NatWest. Further down there’s Burger King and Pizza Hut. There are jewellers, clothes shops galore, snack bars and…oh, you name it and there’s one out there.”
“So what’s the point of all this?” Dave asked. Nigel grinned and took another sip of orange juice.
“The point is,” I told him, “that it’s all a big conspiracy. Why do all these companies exist? Go on, tell me that.”
“To do what they do,” he replied. “To make beer or whatever, to provide a service, to employ people and to make a profit for their shareholders.”
“No they don’t.”
“Well go on, then, clever clogs. You tell us why they exist.”
“They exist, every one of them, for one sole purpose.”
“Which is…?”
“Which is…to convert my money into their money. That’s what it’s all about.”
“So that’s why you’re so reluctant to go to the bar,” Nigel commented.
“Cheeky sod!” I retorted.
“You are paranoid,” Dave concluded.
Shirley came to take us home and Dave bought her a tonic water. We were finishing our drinks when a familiar warbling tone came from somewhere on Nigel’s person. “Oooh, oooh,” we groaned, expressing our disapproval. Mobile phones are verboten on walks and in the pub. Nigel blushed and retrieved it from his pocket.
“Nigel Newley,” he said. I drained my glass and Dave did the same. “Hello, Les.” Sounded like it was Les Isles, his boss. “Hey! That’s brilliant!” Good news. Lucky for some. “Where does he live?” Sounded like Nigel had some work to do. “Right. In the morning? Right. See you then. Thanks for ringing.” It would be an early alarm call for someone. He closed the phone and replaced it in his pocket, his face pink with enthusiasm.
“Guess what?” he said, “We’ve had a match. One of the donated samples matches the DNA in the semen we found on Marie-Claire Hollingbrook. We’re bringing him in first thing.”
“That was quick,” Dave said.
“It was, wasn’t it.”
“So, er, where does he live?” I asked.
“Um, Heckley. He lives in Heckley.”
“Really? In that case he’s one of ours, isn’t he?”
“Oh no he isn’t,” Nigel assured me. “Oh no he isn’t.”
I had a bodyguard, of course. It was all over the papers that we’d let Chilcott, Enemy Number One, slip through our fingers; if he still managed to complete his mission we’d really have egg on our faces. Well, they would; I’d have something else on mine. The two of them, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, sat patiently in the pub, backs to the wall, sipping soft drinks, while we tried to ignore them. I didn’t like it, but knew better than to object. Shirley took me home first and they followed. I handed my keys over and one of them entered the house, casually, without making a drama out of it. “You know where everything is,” I said when I was allowed in, waving towards the coffee ingredients, videos and sleeping bags that had accumulated in my front room. “Make yourselves at home, gentlemen, I’m off to bed.”
“I’ve brought Terminator Two,” one of them told me as he filled the kettle.
“Seen it,” I lied. “Early night for me. Keep it low.”
“Right. Tea?”
“Yes please. Will you bring it up?”
“No chance, you can wait.”
I felt like a guest in my own home. An unwelcome one at that. I took the mug of tea and trudged up the stairs to bed. Drinking doesn’t suit me, and lately it had been creeping up a bit. I’d been thinking a lot, also, and the conclusions weren’t good. I was at a funny age. From now on, it wasn’t going to get much better. The good years, or what should have been the good years, were all in the past. Friday teatime Chilcott had gone on a dummy run, Superintendent Cox had said. I disagreed. I’d been up on the moors, watching the farm. Chilcott had come to Heckley looking for me, and he could have been out of the country again by the morning. Detectives are supposed to work regular hours, and on a Friday the whole world tries to get off home on time. It was his first opportunity to do the job, but my car hadn’t been outside the nick, so he’d had to abort. A bullet through the brain, while I was sitting at the traffic lights; or here at home, sleeping, didn’t sound too bad. I could live with that. It’s all the alternatives that terrify me.
Annette took it badly. She’d sat there, white faced, when I’d announced that I was Chilcott’s intended target. Afterwards she came into my office and asked what I was going to do. She thought I’d move away, stay in the country until things blew over, but I explained that it wasn’t necessary. I had my minders, and Chilcott’s number one priority, now, was making his escape. Even if he’d been paid in advance, nailing me would be off his agenda. I tried to sound as if I knew what I was talking about, as if the inner workings of an assassin’s mind were my workaday fodder, but I don’t think she believed me. I played safe and didn’t suggest we go for a meal, that week.
Nigel and Les Isles arrested Jason Lee Gelder and charged him with the murder of Marie-Claire Hollingbrook. He’d walked into the caravan in Heckley market place, large as life, and donated six hairs and his name and address. Science did the rest. An arcane test, discovered by a professor at Leicester university as recently as 1984, reduced the DNA in Gelder’s hair roots to a pattern of parallel lines on a piece of film that exactly matched the lines produced from the semen left on Marie-Claire’s thighs. It was his, as sure as hedgehogs haven’t grasped the Green Cross Code. It made the local news on Thursday evening and the nationals the next day. The people of the East Pennine division probably slept a little more contentedly in their beds, that weekend, knowing that a sex killer was safely behind bars.
“That was quick,” I said, when I spoke to Superintendent Isles on the telephone.
“I think he wanted catching,” he admitted. “He was hanging around as they set-up the caravan. He went for a burger then came back and made a donation. Wanted to know what it was all about. It was only about the fifteenth they’d taken at that point.”
Sometimes they do it to taunt the police, or to make the stakes higher. Ted Bundy killed more than thirty women across the USA. He moved to Florida because they had the death penalty. Trying to figure out why is like asking why a flock of birds turned left at that particular place in the sky, and not right. Nobody knows. Maybe tomorrow they’ll go straight ahead. We do tests to see if these people are sane: ask them questions; show them pictures; gauge their reactions. A man kills thirty women and they show him inkblots to decide if he’s sane. Someone needs their head examining.
“So he’s coughing, is he?” I asked.
“Oh no, he’s not making it that easy for us,” Les replied. “Say’s he didn’t do it; was nowhere near where she lived and has never been there.”
“Alibi?”
“Watching videos. He’s classic material, Charlie, believe me. We’re waiting for the lab to do another test, the full DNA fingerprint job, but I haven’t cancelled my holiday.”
“I’d like a word with him, Les,” I said.
“I thought you might. Why?”
“To see if there’s anything to be learned about the way we handled the Margaret Silkstone case.”
“You mean, is this a copycat?”
“Something like that.”
“Has young Newley been talking to you? If he has, I’ll have his bollocks for a door knocker.”
“So when can I see him?” I asked. Not: “Can I see him?” but: “When can I see him?” It’s what salesmen call closing. When I went to that sales conference I’d really listened.
“Give us two or three days for the reports,” Les said, “then you can have a go at him.”
“Thanks. And he’s called Gelder?”
“That’s right. Jason Lee Gelder.”
“In olden times a gelder was a person who earned a living by cutting horse’s testicles off,” I told him.
“Yeah, I know. It’s a pity someone didn’t cut his off.”
If you really want to ingratiate yourself with someone, you let them get the punch line in. I put the phone down and wondered what to have for tea.
The Regional Crime Squad paid renewed interest in the tapes Bentley prison had recorded of the conversations that led, we believed, to Chilcott being hired. Someone was willing to pay?50,000 to have me bumped off and they wanted to know who. We had the name of the people on both ends of the line, but it wasn’t a big help. They were real nasties: professionals who’d tell you less than the Chancellor does on the eve of the budget. Except they’d do it belligerently, in language politicians only use when it slips out.
I had a passing interest myself in who was behind it all, so I made my own enquiries. I started by telephoning Gwen Rhodes, Governor of HMP Bentley. It took me all day to track her down, but she was duly shocked when she learned what it was about, and gave me the freedom of her computer terminal, plus a crash course in using it.
On the morning I was there they turned the key on eight hundred and two inmates. That’s screw-speak for the number of prisoners they had. In addition, a further one hundred and sixty-eight had passed through in the period I was interested in. Some had been released, some moved to less secure units, one or two possibly found not guilty. I printed out lists of their names and highlighted the ones that I thought I knew. One in particular leapt straight off the page at me.
“When you had Tony Silkstone,” I began, on one of the occasions when Gwen came back into the office, “I don’t suppose he could have had any contact with Paul Mann, could he?” It was Mann’s phone calls that started the whole thing.
“Not at all,” Gwen assured me. “Silkstone was on remand, Mann in A-wing, and never the twain shall meet. However,” she continued, “you know how it is in places like this. Jungle drums, telepathy, call it what you will, but word gets around.”
“Who would Silkstone meet during association?”
“Fellow remandees. That’s all.”
“What about the rehabilitation classes that Silkstone took? Who might he meet there?”
“Ah,” she sighed, and I swear she blushed slightly.
“Go on,” I said.
“Mainly cat C, with a few cat B. The ones making good progress, who we felt would benefit.”
“Is there always a warder present?”
“Yes. Always.”
“But he might have the opportunity to talk with them.”
“I doubt it, Charlie, but what might happen is this: he discusses his case with a fellow remandee, one who is about to go for trial and knows he’ll be coming back. He leaves D-wing in the morning to go to court, but has a good idea that he’ll be back in A- or B-wing by the evening. He could offer to have a word with someone he knows in there.”
I said: “Not to put too fine a point on it, Gwen, the system’s leaky.”
“Leaky!” she snorted. “Of course it’s leaky. We can’t prevent them from talking amongst themselves. What sort of a place do you think this is?”
“It wasn’t meant to be a criticism,” I replied.
I’d underlined four names, and we printed hard copies of their notes. Gwen showed me another file which showed who Silkstone had shared a cell with, and I printed their names and files, too.
Two of them were still there. Gwen used her authority and they both found they had a surprise visitor that afternoon. It cost me the price of four teas and four KitKats from the WVS stall to learn that Silkstone was a twat who never stopped complaining. He’d “done over” a nonce, they said, and that made him all right, but half the time they hadn’t known what he was talking about. He had big ideas and never stopped bragging about what he’d do when he was freed. They were both looking at a long time inside, and soon tired of him. I thanked Gwen for her assistance and went home.
One of the other names was Vince Halliwell, who I’d put in the dock eight years ago. According to Gwen’s computer he’d attended the same rehabilitation classes as Silkstone and had recently been transferred to Eboracum open prison, near York. He was nearing the end of his sentence, and considered a low risk, even though he was doing time for aggravated burglary. Halliwell was a hard case, but I remembered that there was something about him that I’d almost admired. He was tall, with wide bony shoulders and high cheeks, and blond hair swept back into a ponytail. I think it was the ponytail I envied. He had problems. All his life he’d lived in some sort of institution, and he had a record of binge drinking, paid for by thieving. The aggravated burglary — armed with a weapon — that we did him for was an escalation in his MO.
At first I hadn’t considered talking to him, but that evening I started to change my mind. He’d refused to cooperate when he was arrested, but became garrulous when interviewed for psychiatric, social enquiry and pre- sentencing reports. They made sad reading, and he had a chip the size and shape of a policeman on his shoulder. It was hard to blame him. I rang Gwen at home and asked her to oil the wheels for me at HMP Eboracum. Next morning she rang me and said the Governor there was willing to play ball.
It was the probation officer I spoke to. She wasn’t too keen on the idea, but the Governor was the boss…I assured her that Halliwell was a model prisoner, unlikely to blot his record at this late stage in his sentence, and I’d take responsibility if it all went pear-shaped. We settled for Friday morning.
When long-stay inmates are nearing the end of their sentences the prison authorities like to gradually re-introduce them to life on the outside; to give them a taste of freedom, in small doses. One way is by home visits, another is by what are called town visits. Vince Halliwell had no home to go to, so it would have to be a town visit. I knew he wouldn’t talk to me in jail — somebody always knows it’s a cop who’s called to see you — but he might if I met him on neutral territory, away from screws and inmates and the gossip of a closed community.
The probation officer gave him strict instructions and a ten-pound note. It was a tough test. He had to catch the ten o’clock bus from the prison gates into York, walk to the Tesco supermarket, buy himself a pair of socks there, have a cup of coffee in the restaurant and catch the next bus back to the jail. He’d have to walk past all those pubs, all those shelves stocked with whisky and rum and beer from places he’d never heard of, with money jangling in his pockets. Anything less than superhuman effort and he’d be back at Bentley, category A again. At eight thirty, nice and early, I started the car engine and headed towards the Minster City.
I arrived with enough time to do my shopping, which was intentional, and to have a quick breakfast in the restaurant before he arrived, which was an afterthought. Their curries were a pound cheaper than Heckley Sainsbury’s. At ten thirty I walked across the car-park towards the road he would come down.
It was a warm morning, with people strolling about in their shirt sleeves and summer dresses. Four-wheel drive vehicles with tyre treads like Centurion tanks slowly circulated, following sleek Toyota sports cars and chunky Saabs, all looking for a space near the entrance. In the afternoon they’d do the same outside the health club. The indicators flashed on a BMW like the one that met Chilcott at the station, and an elderly couple in front of me steered their trolley towards its boot. A few minutes later, out on the main road, they drove past me. The driver’s window was down and I could hear the sound of Pavarotti coming from inside it. BMW spend countless millions of pounds and thousands of hours on wind tunnel tests. They install the finest music system money can buy, with more speakers than an Academy Awards ceremony. They design a climate control — that’s air conditioning to the rest of us — better than in the finest operating theatre in the world, and what happens? People drive around with the window down; that’s what.
I hardly recognised him. Some thrive in prison, put weight on; others are consumed by it. Halliwell’s time inside had reduced him to a shambling shell. Always a gaunt figure, he was now stooped and hollow and looked well into his fifties, although he was only about thirty-six. He crossed the road at the lights, waiting until they were red and then checking that the traffic had stopped, glancing first this way, then the other, but still not moving until everybody else did. He was wearing grey trousers that had been machine-washed until they were shapeless, a blue regulation shirt that was almost fashionable, and cheap trainers. His jacket was gripped in one hand. I stood in the queue for the park- and-ride bus until he’d passed, then fell in behind him.
There were supermarkets before he went inside, but a man forgets, and the rest of us take progress, if that’s what it is, for granted. He stopped to examine the rows of parked trolleys as if they were an outlandish life-form engaged in group sex, and stared at the big revolving doors as they gobbled up and regurgitated a steady stream of shoppers. Slowly, nervously, he made his way into the store.
The security cameras were probably focused on this suspicious, shabbily dressed character who wandered about aimlessly, occasionally changing direction for no reason at all, picking up packets and jars at random only to replace them after reading the labels, but nobody challenged me. How Barry Moynihan had followed Chilcott for eight or nine hours dressed like he was, without being spotted, I couldn’t imagine. After a good look up and down the rows Halliwell selected a pair of socks and took them to the checkout. I replaced the jar of Chicken Tonight I was studying — 0.4g of protein, 7.7g of fat — and headed for the restaurant.
It was a serve-yourself coffee machine with scant instructions. Halliwell watched a couple of people use it before having a hesitant attempt himself. His first try dumped a shot of coffee essence and hot water through the grill, then a woman took over and showed him how to do it. He smiled and made an “I’m only a useless man” gesture and allowed her to pass him in the queue at the till. For a few seconds I was afraid they would sit down together, but she had two cups on her tray and joined a waiting friend at one of the tables. Halliwell headed for an empty table in a corner. I collected a tea and joined him.
“It’s Vince, isn’t it?” I said, sitting down.
He looked at me, speechless, for a long time. His eyes were frosty blue, and the ponytail had given way to a regulation crop that still, annoyingly, looked good on him. He could have been a jazz musician on his way home from a gig, or a dissolute character actor researching a part. He had, I decided, that elusive quality known as sex appeal. His jacket was draped across his knees. He fumbled in the pockets until he found a tobacco pouch, and in a few seconds he was puffing on a roll-up.
“What you want?” he asked, eventually, as a cloud of smoke bridged the gap between us. A woman who was about to sit at the next table saw it and moved away.
“I was just passing,” I lied.
“Like ’ell you were. It’s Priest, innit? Mr Priest?”
“Charlie when I’m off duty.”
“You still with the job, then?”
“’Fraid so.”
“So this is all part of it, is it?”
“Part of what?”
“The test. This is all part of the test?”
“Oh yes,” I agreed. “This is all part of it. All over York there are people from your past who are going to pop out in front of you, confront you with situations to see how you react. Then there are the markers. Women with clip boards and coloured pens, following you, giving you marks for style, difficulty and performance. So far you’re doing well.”
He grinned, saying: “They always said you were a bit of a card. Did you set all this up? If you did, you’re wasting your time.”
He stood up to leave, but I said: “Sit down, Vince, and hear what I have to say.” He sat down again. That’s what eight years inside does to a man.
The roll-up was down to his fingertips. He nipped it and looked for an ashtray but there wasn’t one, so he put the debris back in the pouch and made another.
“Could you eat a breakfast?” I asked.
“Not at your prices,” he replied.
“No charge. My treat.”
“No, thanks all the same.”
“It comes on a real plate, made of porcelain, with a knife that cuts.”
“I’ll do without.”
I said: “Listen, Vince. It’s not going to be easy for you. You’ll need all the help you can get, so if someone offers you a free breakfast, take it. That’s my advice.” “You weren’t so generous with your ’elp and advice eight years ago,” he reminded me. “You knew…well, what’s the point.” He left the statement hanging there, dangling like the rope from a swinging tree.
“I knew it wasn’t your gun. Is that what you were going to say?”
“And the rest.” He twisted around in his chair until he was half-facing away from me.
“It wasn’t my job to tell the court it wasn’t your gun,” I said. “It was your brief ’s. It was yours. You could have said whose it was.”
“And a fat lot of good it would ’ave done me.”
“It’d have got you five years instead of ten. Aggravated burglary’s a serious offence.”
“You knew it wasn’t mine. I’ve never carried a shooter, and you knew it.”
“There’s always a first time, Vince. I wanted you to get fifteen years; keep you out of my hair for as long as possible. Now you’re doing full term because you’ve refused to admit it was your gun. It’s your choice all along, Vince. Take responsibility for your actions. Now, tell me this: How do you like your sausages?”
A youth in a white shirt was hovering near us. I looked up at him and he said: “I’m sorry, Sir, but this is the no-smoking area.” Halliwell looked annoyed but nipped the tip of his cigarette.
I said to him: “Go sit over there. I’ll fetch you a breakfast,” and he carried his coffee to a table with an ashtray on it.
I kept a weather eye on him as I stood in the queue, but he sat patiently waiting, occasionally sipping the coffee, his glance following the succession of people who moved away from the pay point carrying trays and leading toddlers. I placed the plate of food in front of him and walked off towards the cigarette kiosk without waiting for a thank you. When I flipped the packet of Benson and Hedges on to the table, saying: “If you must poison me, do it with something reasonable,” he grinned and said: “Right. Cheers.”
I sipped the fresh tea I’d brought myself as he ate the first food he’d had in eight years that he could be sure nobody had dipped their dick in. When he’d half-cleared the plate he said: “You not eating, then?”
“I had mine before you came,” I replied.
He manoeuvred a piece of egg white on to a corner of toast and bit it off. “So this is all a fit-up, eh? You arranged the whole thing,” he mumbled.
“I thought you’d appreciate a day out,” I replied.
“You’re wasting your time.”
I shrugged. “It’s a day out for me, too.”
“I’m sticking to my story.”
“That you didn’t know the name of the bloke with you. You planned a burglary with him, did the job together, and never asked each other’s names.”
He took a cigarette from the packet and lit it. “Yeah, well,” he said, exhaling. “That’s how it was.”
“And you don’t grass each other.”
“That’s right.”
“He’d have grassed you. They always do.”
“Not always.”
“You were a fool, Vince. A twenty-four carat mug, believe me.”
“Yeah, well, I can sleep at nights.”
I changed the subject. “How does Eboracum compare with Bentley?” I asked.
“It’s OK,” he replied.
“Only OK? I’d have thought it would be a big improvement.”
“Oh, it is. It’s just that, at Bentley, you knew where you stood, what the rules were, if you follow me. At this place, you’re never sure. Some of the screws say one thing, then another will say summat different. ’Ere, what time is it? I’d better be getting back.”
“That’s OK,” I told him. “They know you’re with me.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” I decided to speed things up. “Did you meet Tony Silkstone while you were in there?” I asked. “He’s one of mine, on remand.”
He grinned and said: “Silko the Salesman? Yeah, I met him.”
“How come?” I asked. “I thought you’d be on separate wings.”
“We were, but we had association. Well, not proper association, but we had these classes. Silko took one of them, sometimes, and we all joined. Well, it was an hour out of your room wasn’t it? He couldn’t ’alf talk, about, you know, motivation an’ plannin’ an’ all that. We could all be millionaires, ’e told us, without breaking the law. Mind you, ’e did wink when ’e said that last bit.”
“That sounds like Tony,” I remarked.
“Yeah, well. He killed a nonce, didn’t ’e? Good riddance, we all said. Come to think of it, we talked about you, once.”
“About me?”
“Yeah. We were in the classroom, me, ’im and this screw, waiting for the others to arrive. I used to get the room ready, clean the blackboard an’ tidy up. I’d just finished when they walked in. ’E was grumbling to the screw, saying that ’e’d be out, now, if it wasn’t for this cop who was ’ounding ’im. This cop called Inspector Priest. I said that it was you that ’ad done me. That you’d…well, you know.”
“That I’d fitted you up?”
“Yeah, well, summat like that.”
“So what did he say?”
“The screw laughed. He said that you’d just done someone you were chasing for twenty-odd years. It was in the papers, he said. Summat about a fire.”
“There was a fire in Leeds,” I explained. “Back in 1975. Three women and five children were burnt to death. We just found out who started it.”
“Blimey,” he said, quietly. “You got the bastards?”
“We got them. So what happened next?”
“Yeah, well, like I was saying. The screw thought it was a right giggle. ’E said that if ’e’d done summat wrong the last person ’e’d want on the case was you. ’E said that you never forgot, an’ that ’e ’oped Silkstone was telling the truth, for ’is sake, ’cos ’e’d never be able to sleep at night if ’e wasn’t.”
“Right,” I said. “Right.” My tea was finished and Halliwell was chewing his last piece of toast. “So did Silkstone have anything else to say?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “The others came in, then, an’ we started. Come to think of it, though, he wasn’t as chipper as ’e usually was, that lesson.”
I lifted my jacket off the back of the chair and poked an arm down a sleeve. “Do you want a lift back?” I asked.
“No thanks, Mr Priest,” he replied. “I ’ave to be careful what company I keep.”
“Scared of being seen associating with the enemy?”
“Summat like that.”
“I take it you are going back?”
“Dunno.” A little smile played around his mouth, the wrinkles joining up into laughter lines. “Would it get you into trouble if I didn’t?” he asked.
“No,” I lied. “Nothing to do with me.”
“Then I might as well go back.” He stood up, uncurling from the chair and stretching to his full height with a display of effort. “Thanks for the breakfast, an’ the fags. Sorry you ’ad a wasted journey.”
“I’ll give you a lift, if you want one.”
“No, Mr Priest,” he said. “I want to walk down that road like all these other people. Past the shops, an’ all. Enjoy my freedom while I can. It’s been a long wait.”
“I hope it works out for you, Vince,” I told him. “I really do.”
We walked across the car-park together. As we emerged on to the pavement I said: “Vince.” He turned to face me, his face etched with worry, scared I was about to spring something on him. He’d already had enough excitement for this day.
“Tony Silkstone took out a contract on me,” I told him. “He offered someone fifty thousand to kill me. Did you hear anything about it?”
“To…to kill you?” he stuttered. “Fifty thousand to kill you?”
“That’s right. Who did he talk to?”
“Dunno, Mr Priest. First I’ve ’eard of it.”
“He hired a man called Chilcott. You ever heard of him?”
“Chiller? Yeah, I ’eard of ’im, but ’e wasn’t in Bentley.”
“I know. He was abroad. You didn’t hear any talk?”
“No, Mr Priest, not a word. Honest.”
“If you remember anything, get in touch.”
“Yeah, right.”
“OK. Thanks anyway. Mind the road.”
I began to turn away but I heard him say: “’Ere, Mr Priest.”
“Mmm?”
“Is this what it was all about, an’ not the other job?”
“That’s right, Vince. The other job’s history, as far as I’m concerned. We knew who was with you, just couldn’t prove it.”
“So I told you what you wanted to know?”
“You gave me the reason that Silkstone had for wanting me dead. Yes.”
“You devious bastard.”
“I’m a cop,” I said, as if that was a full explanation.
“Fifty Gs, did you say?”
“That’s right. Would you have taken the contract, if you’d known?”
“No,” he replied. “Not my scene. But I’d ’ave chipped in.”
He had the grace to smile as he said it. I flapped a hand at him and we walked our separate ways. Me back to the car and Heckley, him to his room in jail and the calendar on the wall that said that in two years he’d be let loose, with nobody to order him around, nobody to feed and clothe him.
The sun was in my eyes on the way back. I drove with the visor down, listening to a tape I’d compiled of Mark Knopfler and Pat Metheny. There’d been a shower and the roads were wet, so every lorry I passed turned the windscreen into a glaring mixture of splatters and streaks. I stayed in the slow and middle lanes, driving steadily, doing some thinking, my fingers on the wheel tapping in time with ‘Local Hero’ and ‘The Truth Will Always Be’. These days, in this job, you rarely have time to think. Something happens and you react. Time to reflect on the best way to tackle the situation is a luxury.
Halliwell said he would have contributed towards the fifty thousand if he’d known about it. If he’d guessed the truth he’d have donated the full sum. We knew who his accomplice was because we’d arrested him the day before, and he’d turned informer, gushing like a Dales stream about the Big Job he was doing the following night. Halliwell was set up by the man he refused to grass on, and we were waiting for him. The gun was a bonus; we hadn’t expected that. It was found afterwards, thrown behind a dustbin on the route Halliwell had taken as he tried to flee the scene. He denied it was his, and we admitted in court that we hadn’t found his fingerprints on it. Because he wouldn’t say who his accomplice was the judge credited him with the weapon and gave him ten years.
I’d give my right arm to be able to make music like that. Not to have to deal with all this shit. Nobody asked us about the bullets. The gun had been wiped clean but we found a fingerprint on one of the bullets. It belonged to the accomplice, who just happened to slip through our fingers. This was eight years ago, before the law changed, and like I said: nobody asked.
Gilbert had some good news for me. A British couple starting their annual holiday had been held up at gunpoint outside Calais and their car stolen. The hijacker answered Chilcott’s description. As I had grumbled to him every day about my bodyguard Gilbert reluctantly agreed that Chilcott was probably making his way across France and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum could safely return to their normal duties. I didn’t point out that it would also help his staff deployment problems and overtime budget, but I did tell him about my confrontation with Vince Halliwell. Gilbert gave one of his sighs and peered at me over his half-moon spectacles. “You’re saying that Silkstone took the contract out on you because he wanted you off his case. You have a reputation for never forgetting, and he wanted to be able to sleep at nights. Is that it?”
“In a coconut shell,” I replied.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why does he want you off the case? He’s admitted killing Latham.”
“Because he’s a worried man. He has something to hide. Everybody else is saying: ‘Well done, Tony. You rid the world of a scumbag.’ I’m the only one saying: ‘Whoa up a minute! Maybe he was there with Latham when Margaret died.’”
“You know what the papers are saying, don’t you.”
“That he’s a hero. Yes.”
“And that we’re hounding him unnecessarily.”
“I haven’t started hounding him yet.”
“You really think he was there, when she died?”
“Yes, Gilbert. I do.”
“OK, but play it carefully. Let Jeff take over the everyday stuff, and you spend what time you need on this. And for God’s sake try to keep off the front page of the UK News.”
Gilbert’s a toff. He listens to what I have to say and then lets me have my way. If I were too outlandish, way off the mark, he’d step in and keep me on track, but it doesn’t happen very often. He protects me from interference by the brass hats at HQ; I protect him from criticism by giving him our best clear-up rate. If you want to commit a murder, don’t do it in Heckley. Don’t do it on my patch. I searched in my drawer for an old diary. I needed some information, the sort they don’t print in text books, and I knew just the person to ask.
Peter Drago lives in Penrith now, but he was born in Halifax and was in the same intake as me. We attended training school together and got drunk a few times. He made sergeant when I did and inspector shortly after me, but he also made some enemies. With sexual predilections like his, that was a dangerous thing to do. He was eventually caught, in flagrante, by the husband of the bubbly WPC he was making love to in the back of her car, and they had a fist fight.
Next day Drago was busted back to PC and posted to Settle and the WPC told to report to Hooton Pagnell. That’s how things worked in those days. Step out of line and you were immediately transferred to the furthermost corner of the region. It changed when the good citizens of these far-flung outposts discovered that the handsome and attractive police officers with the city accents that kept arriving on their doorsteps were all the adulterers and philanderers that the force had to offer. I found his home number and dialled it.
“Fancy doing Great Gable tomorrow?” I asked without ceremony, when he answered.
After a hesitation he said: “That you, Charlie?” No insults, no sparkling repartee, just: “That you, Charlie?”
“The one and only,” I replied. “How are you?”
“Oh, not too bad, you know. And you?”
“The same. So how about it?”
“Great Gable? I’d love to, Charlie, but I’m afraid I won’t be climbing the Gable again for a long time.”
“Why? What’s happened?” This wasn’t the Dragon of old, by a long way. His motto was: if it moved, shag it; if it didn’t, climb it.
“I’ve just come out of hospital. Triple bypass, three weeks ago.”
“Oh, I am sorry, Pete. Which organ?”
“My heart, pillock,” he chuckled.
“What happened? Did you have an attack?”
“Yeah. Collapsed at work, woke up in the cardiac unit with all these masked figures bending over me. Thought I’d been abducted by aliens.”
“I am sorry,” I repeated. “And was it a success? Are you feeling OK now?”
“I’m a bit sore, but otherwise I feel grand. Right champion, in fact.”
“OK,” I said. “We’ll take a rain check on the Gable, but only for six months. Next Easter we’re going up there, you and me, so you’d better get some training in. Understood?”
After a silence he said: “You know, Charlie, that’s the best tonic I’ve had. Next Easter, and sod what the doctors say. It’s a date.”
We chatted for a while, reminiscing about walks we’d done, scrapes we’d shared when we were PCs together. He asked about Dave and his family, and I told him that his daughter Sophie was about to start at Cambridge. Eventually he asked why I’d rung.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” I replied. “It was a bit personal, and I don’t want to excite you.”
“Now you do have to tell me,” he insisted.
“Well,” I said, “it really is a bit personal. Are you able to, you know, talk?”
“Yeah, she’s gone for her hair doing. Tell me all about it.”
I didn’t ask who she was; Pete’s love life has more dead ends and branch lines than the London Underground. “Well, it’s like this,” I began. “There’s this bloke, and he’s having an affair with a married woman.”
“He’s shagging her?”
“Er, yes.”
“I just wanted to clarify the situation. Sorry, carry on.”
“That’s all right. He sees her every Wednesday afternoon, at her house, while her husband is at work.”
“Presumably this is a purely hypothetical case,” Pete interjected.
“Oh, definitely. Definitely.”
“Right. Go on.”
“Thanks. Now, this woman is in her early forties, and she isn’t on the Pill, so her lover has to take precautions.”
“As a matter of interest, is her lover married?”
“Er, no. As a matter of interest, he isn’t.”
“Has he ever been?”
“Um, yes, as a matter of interest, he has.”
“I think I’m getting the picture. Carry on, please.”
I carried on, loosely describing what we’d found at Mrs Silkstone’s house, speculating how things may have happened. I think — I hope — that he eventually realised that I wasn’t one of the protagonists in the whole squalid episode. He gave me the benefit of his experience in these matters, and I was grateful.
It was a long phone call. As we went through the ritual of ending it he said: “Did you ever hear what John Betjemen is supposed to have said on his death bed, Charlie?”
“Something about wishing he’d had more sex, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right, and I agree with him. Get it while you can, Charlie, you’re a long time dead.”
I reminded him about Easter and put the phone down, reflecting on the Pete Drago philosophy: get it while you can. He was a good bloke: intelligent, fair and generous; but something drove him, far harder than it drives most of us. And, God knows, that’s hard enough. Bob Dylan included rakes in ‘Chimes of Freedom’, his personal version of the Beatitudes: tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake. I’d never understood why, until now. Maybe he had it right.
We had a killing through the week. A youth was stabbed to death in the town centre, and my heart sank when I learned that he was from the Asian community. I breathed again when it was revealed that his attacker was his brother-in-law, and it was all about family honour. I’m only interested in guilty or not guilty, and was relieved not to have a race war on my hands. Family feuds I can deal with. Saturday lunchtime I tidied my desk and fled, rejoicing at my new-found freedom, eager to be out in the fresh air. I drove to Burnsall, one of the most attractive Dales villages, and donned my boots. The route I took was loop-shaped, through Thorpe and Linton to Bow Bridge, then following the Wharfe back to the village. It’s a beautiful river, sometimes rushing over boulders, sometimes carving deep languid pools and sandbanks. Dippers used to be common-place, not very long ago, and I’ve seen the kingfisher there. The morning showers had passed over, and the afternoon sun made the meadows steam.
There were lots of people about. It’s a popular place, and the last flush of summer always brings us out, determined to stock up on the beneficial rays before the dark nights close in. A group of people were vacating some rocks at the side of the water, packing their picnic remnants into Tupperware boxes and rucksacks. It was a good spot, in a patch of sunshine, with trees on the opposite side and the river gabbling noisily. Very therapeutic. I moved in after them, heading for a seat on a dry boulder, and as I sat down a dead twig, brittle as egg shells, snapped under my feet.
I’d called in Marks and Spencer’s when I left the office, for a prawn sandwich and a packet of Eccles cakes. I wolfed them down with a can of flavoured mineral water, sitting there watching the stream go by. Swallows were skimming the surface, stocking up on flies before their long journey south, and a fish made ripples, out in the middle where it flowed more slowly.
There weren’t many places that I would rather have been, but there’s more to happiness than that. I wondered if Annette were doing something similar, picnicking with another man and his children as a different river slid past them. I leaned forward and picked up a piece of the branch I’d stepped on. It was about four inches long, dead as last week’s scandal and encrusted with lichen. I tossed it, underhand, out into the stream.
It hardly made a splash and bobbed up and down, buoyant as a cork, until the current took hold and pushed it into the flow, heading towards a cleft between two rocks. I watched it accelerate towards them, turning as opposing forces caught and juggled with it. It entered the chute between the rocks, one end riding high, and plunged over the mini-waterfall.
The pressure held it down and the undertow pulled it back. There was a wrestling match between the flow of water and the buoyancy of the twig, but there could only be one result. After a few seconds it broke free of the water’s grip and burst to the surface. I watched it rotate in the current like an ice skater taking a bow and nod away towards the North Sea, eighty miles down river.
I couldn’t do it again. I broke another piece off the branch and threw it into the stream, but it was swept straight through the rocks and away. I tried bigger pieces and smaller ones, with variable quantities of lichen, but it didn’t work. It was the balance that was important. Big twigs were more buoyant, but the water had more to press down on. On the other hand, the lichen provided drag, which should have helped the water. I tossed another piece into the stream and watched it slide away.
“My, that looks good fun,” a voice said, behind me.
I turned, squinting into the sun, and saw an elderly couple standing there. They were wearing lime green and blue anoraks, and had two pale Labradors on extending leads, which they’d thoughtfully reeled in as they’d approached me.
“Hello,” I said. “I didn’t hear you. Isn’t it a nice day.”
“Wonderful,” the man said. “So what is it? Pooh sticks?”
“You need a bridge for that,” I told him. “No, I was just doing some experiments, studying elementary hydraulics.”
“Elementary hydraulics, eh. And I thought it was at least Life, Death and the Universe.”
“No, not quite. Are you going far?”
“Only to the footbridge and back. And you?”
“I walked up to Bow Bridge, and I’m heading back to Burnsall. Far enough for this afternoon.”
“Well enjoy your experiments,” he said. “Hope we didn’t disturb you.”
“Not at all. Enjoy your walk.” His wife gave me a special smile. She was attractive, had once been beautiful. Probably still was, when you knew her. I watched them stroll away, the dogs leaping about on long leads now, biting each other’s necks. It was easy to forgive them their matching anoraks.
No, I thought, as I hooked my rucksack over my shoulder. Not Life, Death and the Universe. Just Life, Death and Elementary Hydraulics.