THE DCI BLIZZARD MURDER MYSTERIES: Books 1 to 3

by John Dean

  ‘Honest, Eddie, I don’t know. Last I saw he was running out of the hall.’

  ‘Well, if he’s got any sense, he’ll keep running,’ said Eddie Gayle. ‘He just cost me a lot of money.’

  Gayle looked at Lawrie Gaines, said nothing and left, followed by his minders.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ asked Lawrie, turning to Roly Turner. ‘What does he mean about losing a lot of money?’

  Before either of them could reply, Archie Gaines moaned as he started to come round.

  ‘Will he be alright?’ asked Lawrie, rushing over and looking at the doctor.

  The doctor shrugged. The door opened again and Lawrie turned to see the figure of a track-suited Billy Guthrie watching the scene. One eye was closed and his face still bore the bloodstains from the pounding he had received at the hands of Archie Gaines. Lawrie stared balefully at him: the fighter ignored him.

  ‘Gayle gone?’ asked Guthrie, looking at Turner.

  ‘Yeah, he’s gone. Only just, mind. He ain’t happy with you.’

  ‘Don’t suppose he is.’ Guthrie nodded at Archie. ‘He be OK?’

  ‘What do you think?’ exclaimed Lawrie. ‘Look at him, just look at him – you proud of what you’ve done?’

  ‘Should have learned to fight better.’

  ‘He was murdering you!’

  Guthrie nodded at Archie, whose eyes had closed again and whose face was deathly white, the breathing shallow.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it,’ he said.

  Lawrie took a step forward, bunching his right fist.

  ‘Leave it, Lawrie,’ said Turner, moving quickly to hold out a restraining arm. ‘You’ll only get yourself into trouble. Besides, you’re the least of Billy’s worries what with Eddie Gayle after him.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Guthrie.

  ‘Said you cost him a lot of money. If I were you, I’d keep as far away from Eddie Gayle as possible.’

  Guthrie turned to go.

  ‘Archie wasn’t supposed to win, was he?’ said Lawrie slowly as Guthrie reached the door. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?’

  Guthrie turned and shook this head.

  ‘Not this time, son,’ he said. ‘All the money was on me.’

  ‘But you blew it. They disqualified you.’ Lawrie’s eyes had a glint of triumph. ‘Archie won.’

  Guthrie looked down at the prostrate young boxer.

  ‘Did he?’ he said quietly and opened the door. ‘Did he really?’

  He strode out into the corridor.

  ‘So how much did Eddie Gayle put on the fight?’ asked Blizzard.

  Turner shook his head and the officers could see the fear in his eyes.

  ‘No comment, Mr Blizzard. I’ve already said too much. And if you want me to put summat down in writing, I ain’t going to do it. You know what Eddie Gayle is like.’

  ‘Was that the reason Guthrie disappeared? I mean, Lawrie was right, wasn’t he? Guthrie did mess things up. Gayle would not have been very pleased with that. Was that it, Roly? Did he get out before Eddie could get to him?’

  ‘There were lots of reasons why Billy Guthrie skipped town.’

  ‘Like?’

  Turner took a sip from his mug of tea.

  ‘I’ve already talked too much,’ he said, ‘but if Gayle’s heavies were after him – and I ain’t saying they were – then I guess that doing a disappearing act would be the best thing to do.’

  ‘Well,’ said Blizzard, standing up, ‘until we find out what happened, Lawrie is in the frame for murdering Billy Guthrie. If you see him, you tell him that.’

  Roly Turner did not reply but his eyes strayed to the picture on the wall of the young Archie Gaines. Following the train of his gaze, Colley suddenly sat forward and pointed to one of the images showing a teenager being presented with a trophy at what looked like a formal dinner. Something about the face was familiar, less gaunt, less drawn, but unmistakable all the same.

  ‘That’s Terry Roberts, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Turner. ‘How come you know him?’

  ‘Because he died last night. Fell off the railway museum roof.’

  ‘Dear God.’ Turner looked genuinely shocked. ‘I heard on the radio that someone had fallen, but Terry? Jesus, his poor mum, like she hasn’t gone through enough.’

  ‘Was he still a boxer?’ asked Colley, walking over to examine the picture.

  ‘Na, dropped out a few years ago. If you ask me, the kid was never the same after his dad passed away. Went off the rails, started getting into trouble. I suspended him a couple of times for bad behaviour so he told me to stick it. Smashed a couple of windows as a goodbye present.’

  ‘Sounds typical,’ said Blizzard.

  ‘He weren’t a bad lad when I knew him.’ Turner glanced at Colley. ‘We do try, really we do, but we can’t save them all.’

  As the two detectives walked back into the gymnasium, Tulley detached himself from a group of boxers and ambled over.

  ‘Anything?’ asked Blizzard.

  ‘Not really. A couple of them had heard the rumours that Guthrie was back on Thursday but that’s as far as it goes. None of them had seen him for years.’

  ‘When I retire,’ said Blizzard, leading the way to the door into the street, ‘I am going to open an opticians. I reckon I would do a roaring trade because it seems that not one person in this sodding city ever sees anything.’

  He wrenched open the door and walked out into the afternoon sunshine.

  ‘David,’ he said, turning back to Colley. ‘Did you get the impression that Turner knew more than he was letting on?’

  ‘Very definitely.’

  ‘Not that he’d tell us,’ grunted Blizzard and strode across to the car. ‘Too many of the bastards around for my liking.’

  ‘It would seem,’ murmured Tulley, watching him go, ‘that we’ve seen the last of the cheery version.’

  ‘Not complaining,’ said Colley. ‘His cheeriness was really getting on my wick. And maybe now he’s got something to moan about, he’ll stop banging on about how wonderful railmen are. You’d think they were bloody saints, the way he’s been going on about them.’

  ‘My dad was on the railways,’ said Tulley.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m sure he was a nice man.’

  ‘Na, he was an old git. Talking of old gits – have you noticed how Blizzard keeps on talking about what he’s going to do when he retires?’

  ‘I had actually.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Tulley’s face assumed an appalled expression. ‘Imagine what he’ll be like as a pensioner.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Colley, wagging a finger at him. ‘Just don’t.’

  * * *

  The detectives had been gone an hour when the three men entered the gymnasium. Everyone fell silent as Eddie Gayle and his two minders walked across the floor towards Roly Turner, who had been supervising a training bout in the ring. Fat, short and perspiring in the clammy early evening heat, Gayle was aged in his mid-forties, thinning black hair covered by a poorly-fitting wig and dressed as ever in a sharp dark suit which would have looked good on anyone else. His companions were large men, barrel-chested, shaven-headed. Turner eyed them all nervously.

  ‘Eddie,’ he said, trying to sound calm. ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘I hear my good friend Mr Blizzard has been to see you. Him and his muppets.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ asked Turner, glancing accusingly at the silent boxers.

  ‘That is not relevant. What is relevant is our friend Mr Blizzard and what he was asking you about.’

  ‘I told him nothing.’

  ‘Told him nothing about what?’

  Turner hesitated.

  ‘Told him nothing about what, Roly?’ rasped Gayle as one of his heavies took a step forward.

  ‘He were asking about Archie Gaines,’ said Turner quickly. ‘He seemed to know everything.’

  ‘And how,’ said Gayle quietly, ‘would he know that?’

&n
bsp; Chapter eleven

  The summer evening shadows were starting to fall over the city when Colley edged his car out of the Abbey Road car park. Waiting to let a taxi past, he glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw the expressionless features of Megan Rees staring back at him. He gave a slight shudder: that stare again, it seemed to go right through him. Turning round, he saw that Fee Ellis, sitting in the other rear seat, was looking out of the window, wrapped up in her own thoughts. She noticed him looking at her and gave a slight smile. Megan Rees said nothing.

  Colley pulled out into the light early evening traffic and started heading west through the suburbs. It was a journey that would take him away from the areas that provided the detectives with most of their daily tasks, areas which had brought them so many times into the criminal arc of men like Eddie Gayle. However, as the division stretched towards the western fringes of the city, taking the route along which the sergeant was driving, the neighbourhoods changed dramatically. Colley steered the car through wide tree-lined roads with huge mock-Georgian houses hidden behind high walls and hedges. Some of the houses, many of which were ivy-covered and several of which had outdoor swimming pools, were owned by business executives from the aviation plant in the city, others by self-made entrepreneurs and highly-paid council executives. And some, Colley knew, were owned by villains. For the division’s detectives, such a contrast had always proved intriguing.

  Ironically, the leafy suburbs brought the officers back into Gayle’s orbit. It was into one such road that Colley now turned, taking the car between two avenues of trees, the setting sun dappling its way through the overhanging boughs. Glancing to his right, he gave a thin smile: he knew that the first house he saw, the one with the high wall and the gates with the huge ornate lions, belonged to Gayle. One day, thought the sergeant as he drove past the house and glanced at the new Jaguars parked on the drive, one day we will come for you, my lad. Maybe, he thought, as he continued along the road, that day was nearer than everyone believed. Blizzard certainly seemed to think so.

  Returning his attention to the road, the sergeant turned down a cul-de-sac where he noticed a sign which read The Oaks and was adorned with a nice drawing of a house and a spreading tree. All very idyllic, thought the sergeant, except that the small logo in the corner of the sign gave away its real purpose. NHS, it said. Colley steered the vehicle off the road to be confronted with a set of closed, wrought iron gates.

  ‘It looks like a prison,’ said Megan as the car pulled to a halt, the first time she had spoken in the journey.

  ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad,’ replied Fee.

  ‘I don’t deserve this. I didn’t kill Billy Guthrie, you know.’

  Fee did not reply and, having brought the car to a halt, Colley turned in his seat to stare at Megan.

  ‘Care to elaborate on that?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s to elaborate? I didn’t kill him. How can you elaborate on something that did not happen? Your Mr Blizzard knows I didn’t kill him. Blizzard will get me out of here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hold out much hope,’ said Colley. ‘He’s not exactly famed for his services to mental health. Do you know who did kill Billy Guthrie?’

  Megan Rees said nothing.

  ‘If you do, it might help you.’

  Again, Megan Rees said nothing and the detective turned back to wind down his window and talk into the intercom on the wall.

  ‘Detective Sergeant David Colley,’ he said. ‘Mrs Randolph is expecting us – we have a guest for you.’

  ‘Guest!’ snorted Megan Rees.

  ‘That’s what they like to call you,’ said Colley as the gates swung open and the car edged up the winding drive towards the large double-fronted house. ‘I am sure they will look after you, Megan.’

  ‘It’s still a loony bin!’ she sneered.

  ‘I believe it’s what they call an Intermediate Assessment Unit,’ said Colley, pulling up outside the house, switching off the engine and getting out of the car to open the rear door.

  ‘It’s a loony bin!’ snapped Megan, getting out. ‘No amount of fancy words can hide that. And there is no way I should be here.’

  ‘The psychiatrist believes they need to take a closer look at you,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘That man!’ exclaimed Megan. ‘He was another one who only wanted to get into my knickers. And I could smell the drink on his breath.’

  ‘I really do not…’

  ‘Have you ever been in one of these places?’ asked Megan as the three of them walked up the front steps.

  ‘No,’ said Colley. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Don’t play games, Sergeant, you know I have. Another damned fool shrink sent me to one of these places after my mother died. Before they sent me to that horrible foster home. Said I needed help expressing my grief. Is anyone feeding my dog?’

  The sudden change in subject matter caught the sergeant by surprise.

  ‘Well?’ she repeated, fixing him with a demanding stare. ‘Is anyone feeding my dog?’

  ‘Er, yes, I believe he has been taken to the pound.’

  ‘The pound?’ She looked furiously at him. ‘You let them take him to that filthy place? You’re a dog owner, would you let them take your dog there?’

  ‘How do you know that I have a dog?’ asked Colley quickly.

  Megan said nothing but allowed herself an expression of satisfaction when she saw the troubled look on both detectives’ faces. The sergeant was about to say something else when a smartly-dressed middle-aged woman appeared from an office and walked briskly towards them, her heels clicking on the tiled floor.

  ‘Sergeant Colley,’ she said extending a hand. ‘Myra Randolph. I am the manager here.’

  She turned to the two women, looking first at Fee Ellis then at Megan Rees. Confusion flitted momentarily across her face.

  ‘Yes,’ said Megan with a slight smile. ‘It can be difficult to tell the nutters apart from the rest of the world, can’t it, Mrs Randolph?’

  * * *

  Blizzard was still in his office when Colley returned. The sergeant slumped wearily into a chair.

  ‘How’s Megan?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘Can’t work her out.’

  ‘Don’t you fancy her?’

  ‘Don’t you start.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Blizzard, who was aware that Colley had been teased by fellow officers about the way Megan seemed to have taken a shine to the sergeant at the railway siding. ‘Bad phraseology. I mean do you fancy her for Guthrie?’

  Colley shook his head.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Instinct – and the fact that there’s no way a slip of a girl like that could do that to him.’

  ‘Unless she had help.’

  ‘Like who?’ asked the sergeant. ‘From what we can see, all she has are a few friends on the college art class she attends and that’s it. They’re not exactly the murdering type. Mind, there is definitely something strange about her. She knew I had a dog. How would she know that? Do you think she has been stalking me or something?’

  ‘Probably just a lucky guess.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Colley but he did not sound convinced.

  ‘So, who do we fancy then?’ asked Blizzard.

  ‘I’d love to say Eddie Gayle but he doesn’t make mistakes that easily.’

  ‘Maybe he did this time. Anyway, if we assume he didn’t, what about Lawrie Gaines?’

  ‘A better bet. Motive, opportunity and now he’s missing. Ticks all the boxes.’

  The sergeant yawned and Blizzard glanced up at the clock. 8.45.

  ‘Get yourself home,’ said the inspector. ‘See that baby of yours.’

  ‘She’ll be asleep. Always sleeps between six and midnight then gets up for a bit play.’

  ‘Then see Jay. Crack open a bottle of wine.’

  ‘Hell no!’ exclaimed Colley. ‘That’s how we got Laura!’

  Blizzard chuckled.

  ‘Besides,’ said the sergeant, ‘I’ve got those reports to fin�
�’

  ‘Go home. That’s an order.’

  Colley stood up.

  ‘Maybe I will,’ he said. ‘They have started re-running Petrocelli at midnight. Wonder if he’s finished that bungalow yet? He’s been on it longer than you were building that bleeding train.’

  ‘Locomotive.’

  Colley chuckled and headed for the door. ‘See you in the morning.’

  ‘Yeah. Good night, David.’

  The inspector listened as the sergeant’s footsteps echoed down the empty corridor. He sat in silence for a few moments then Fee put her head round the door.

  ‘You finished?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Blizzard, standing up and unhooking his jacket from the back of his chair, ‘I’ve got one more thing to do.’

  ‘Well, don’t be long. I’m going to get a nice bottle of reddo on the way home. That sound good?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Blizzard. ‘I’ve just discovered what happens when you drink it.’

  * * *

  Joe Hargreaves sat amid the deepening evening shadows of his living room and stared down at the black and white photograph of two men in overalls and railmen’s caps, smiling as they straddled a locomotive. He had been gazing at the image for the best part of an hour. It had been taken in one of the sheds at the locomotive works when he and his brother were both young men. Joe had not taken out the album for many years, but the death of Billy Guthrie had brought back so many memories and, sitting there as darkness settled silently around him, he had given in to the overwhelming tide of words, snatches of conversation, images and feelings that jostled for his attention as he let the past play like a showreel. Then came sounds, the clanging of tools, the holler of men – and a sensation, the chill of the early morning air in the great shed as the men turned up for work on winter mornings.

  Looking at the smiling faces, Joe sighed softly. Carefree days, he thought. Days with so much hope – and for what? Matty gone in such tragic circumstances; he himself a sad and lonely widower crippled by lung disease and arthritis and hardly able to leave the house. He felt the tears welling deep within. His reverie was disturbed by a knock on the front door. He glanced up at the clock. 8.45. Walking with some difficulty – sitting for long periods of times always made his joints stiffen up – he made his way down the gloomy hallway and tentatively opened the door into the street.