Deadly Virtues

by Jo Bannister

  Saturday still didn’t know if he was in for a meal or a thrashing. “I done my best, mister. I’m sorry you got hurt, but it wasn’t my fault.”

  “They were your friends.”

  “No. They weren’t. I haven’t got…”

  Hazel was making Don’t let’s go there gestures behind his head. “Gabriel, can we go inside? I don’t like you hanging around out here. Just in case someone’s watching.”

  He hesitated a moment longer, then opened the door. “Come in.” And, after the briefest pause: “Both of you.”

  The dog was waiting in the hall. Hazel—and probably also Saturday, though he was too proud to show it—experienced a moment of concern, because dogs aren’t sophisticated thinkers and if she associated the boy with the violence in the park, things could quickly get unpleasant.

  She gave no warning signals. No growling, the curtains of her lips drawn back from the scimitar teeth, no lifting of the hackles along her smooth back. She stood four square at the end of the hall, regarding the visitor steadily, both with her gold-rimmed eyes and with the constant twitching of her nose. Then she waved her tail, just once, and everyone relaxed.

  “Come into the kitchen,” said Ash. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  “Actually,” said Hazel, following him, “I could murder something to eat. If you’ve nothing in, I’ll fetch fish and chips.”

  Ash looked at her, then at the boy, then at Patience. “There’s stuff in the freezer.”

  What was in the freezer was mostly fish and chips, too. Ash cooked with immense concentration, as if even at this modest level entertaining was a forgotten skill. He’d eaten off trays for so long, he couldn’t find a tablecloth.

  Hazel found one buried in the airing cupboard, shook out the creases, and threw it cheerfully across the kitchen table. “That’s better. Plates, glasses, cutlery—have you enough for four?”

  Ash stared at her blankly, and when she realized what she’d done, she colored to the roots of her hair. It was his fault—he’d got her talking like something out of The Famous Five! The dog was only a dog and didn’t warrant a table setting.

  “Anything to drink?” Saturday asked hopefully.

  “You’re too young to drink,” said Ash disapprovingly, and unrealistically, and Hazel jerked a thumb at the kitchen tap.

  “Adam’s ale.”

  Despite the awkwardness it was—nice. Eating together. For all of them, for different reasons. For Ash, because he didn’t get much company. For Saturday, because he didn’t get much food. And for Hazel, because today she desperately needed a success of some sort, and this was better than nothing. It had been a good idea and it reassured her that her instincts had not entirely gone AWOL.

  Afterward she made Saturday help her load the dishwasher. It hadn’t been used in a while. A dog and a man with no appetite don’t produce much washing-up. As she worked she said over her shoulder, “Had Dave Gorman anything useful to suggest?”

  Ash shook his head. “He didn’t offer any suggestions. He just asked questions.”

  Hazel thought he seemed low. Whether it was the shock sinking in, or disappointment because for a moment he’d thought something good was happening to him, or even resentment that she’d brought to his house one of the gang responsible for his involvement with Jerome Cardy, she had no way of knowing. Or maybe it was none of the above. Maybe this was normal for him—not so much peaks and troughs of emotion, more troughs and deeper troughs.

  She tried to reassure him. “That’s his job. He will get to the bottom of this, you know. He’ll find out what Mickey Argyle is up to, and whether it’s anything to do with … what happened at Meadowvale. You’re in good hands.”

  Ash shrugged. “At least he listened to me. Of course, having a reporter as an eye witness couldn’t hurt.”

  “Mickey Argyle?” Saturday had abandoned the washing-up and was looking at Hazel with an air of casual curiosity totally betrayed by the sharpness of his gaze. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

  Hazel frowned. “You know Mickey Argyle?” But of course he did. Trucker’s gang and all the wasted youth hanging around the street corners of the Flying Horse were the bottomless reservoir from which he tapped the help he needed. They ran errands for him, kept watch for him; the more promising among them ended up on the staff. If Mickey Argyle was interested in Gabriel Ash, Saturday probably knew. Or, if he didn’t know, could probably find out.

  Hazel gave a somewhat disingenuous shrug. “We don’t really know. Some men wanted to talk to Mr. Ash. They were interrupted and drove off before they said very much, but someone thought they worked for Mickey.”

  “If Mickey wants to talk to him, they’ll be back,” said Saturday darkly.

  “I expect so,” said Hazel casually. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything?”

  The boy shook his head quickly. She thought it was the truth. He’d been surprised to hear Argyle’s name mentioned.

  “What about Trucker?”

  “What about Trucker?”

  “Would it be worth asking him?”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” said Saturday forcibly. “It wouldn’t be worth you asking him because he wouldn’t tell you anything. And it wouldn’t be worth me asking him because he’d rip my frigging head off!”

  “Fair enough,” said Hazel mildly. “I just thought you and Trucker must hear a lot of stuff. And you probably know these people better than I do. Mickey Argyle. Robert Barclay.”

  Somewhat mollified, Saturday sniffed. “Barking Mad Barclay. That’s what everyone calls him.”

  “That I knew. But not till after I tried to stop him head-butting the war memorial.”

  “That was you?” The boy’s eyes widened, though possibly more in astonishment than admiration. He barked a little chuckle. Hazel could hear nights on a cold street in his chest. “Jesus, you really are new in town, aren’t you?”

  “That’s me,” she agreed wryly. “Everything to learn, and only till yesterday to learn it in. Like, why would anyone want to nut ten tons of granite?”

  Across the room Ash sat still. He didn’t know much about angling, but he knew you need to keep very still when there’s a fish nosing at your bait. He’d only just realized Hazel had a line out. With luck the fish hadn’t realized it yet.

  Saturday gave the glassy grin of a child who’s coming to realize that what seemed like really good fun to him isn’t striking the adults in the same way. He turned back to the dishwasher. “Trucker’s idea of a joke,” he mumbled.

  And you don’t yank until you’re sure the hook has taken. “That was Trucker, too?” Hazel gave a light laugh. “Seems to me, if we knew where Trucker was holding his birthday party and locked the doors, we could put a stop to most of the mischief in Norbold.”

  Saturday grinned at her again, back over his shoulder, happier now.

  “Still—how?” Hazel wondered aloud. “I couldn’t make Barclay let me clean the cuts on his head. How did Trucker make him beat himself up?”

  “He told him half the names on the war memorial weren’t even English.”

  Robert Barclay, the well-known racist. Who probably thought of himself as a patriot. Who probably thought that the town’s war memorial honored men just like him, and only men who were just like him. He may have left a poppy there every year, but he’d probably never bothered to read the inscriptions until a troublemaker pointed out that there weren’t just Barclays on the list of the glorious dead; there were also Badawis, Bajramis, Balasundarams, Barzaqs, and a Bassakaropoulos as well. “So that’s what blew his tiny mind.” Hazel whistled.

  Ash said nothing, but shock deepened the hollows of his eyes. Someone’s idea of a joke had resulted in a young man’s death.

  Hazel kept her tone light, inconsequential. “Who put him up to it?”

  Saturday didn’t look around, but his shoulders stiffened. “I don’t know. Nobody.”

  Hazel shrugged. “He must have had a reason. Not even Trucker’s going to wind up Barking
Mad Barclay on a whim. It must have been for a bet.”

  The boy relaxed a fraction. “Maybe.”

  “Or else somebody paid him.”

  Hard to know if he saw the trap or if he was just naturally cautious because—living as he did—it was the safest way to get by. But Saturday clammed up tight. He echoed her shrug but refused to say any more, and soon afterward said he had to leave. He declined Hazel’s offer of a lift back into town, leaving her and Ash to consider what they’d learned.

  “You were right,” said Hazel. “Somebody found a way to use Barclay as a weapon.”

  “But why?”

  “Barclay killed Jerome,” Hazel said carefully, “because he was black and Barclay’s a racist. On Wednesday night he was primed to explode because he’d just found out his father shared the war memorial with a bunch of guys who were neither English nor white. But that’s not why Jerome was killed. He was killed because someone, possibly Mickey Argyle, arranged to have Barclay spitting tacks when he was put in the same cell.”

  Ash was struggling with the details. “I can see how he could get Barclay locked up. He paid this Trucker to wind him up so much he was bound to get arrested. But how could he make sure Jerome would be in the cells that night? Anyone could have lit Barclay’s blue touch paper, but how do you get a well-behaved law student behind bars?”

  “That would be the hard part,” agreed Hazel. “That’s why he had to be arrested first. Only once Jerome was in custody was it worth picking Barclay up.”

  Ash nodded slowly. “Jerome was arrested after a traffic accident. No”—he corrected himself—“after fleeing the scene of a traffic accident. An accident that wasn’t his fault. Why would he do that?”

  “He had something to hide?” hazarded Hazel.

  “Maybe.” Ash nodded. “Or some other reason to be afraid of policemen. Once he decided to run, everything else fell into place. The police were bound to give chase, to arrest him when they caught him, to put him in a cell. So the question is, why was he scared of a routine encounter with the police?”

  “He was a law student,” said Hazel. “He knew what was expected of him. And how very ordinary a piece of business it would have been. He must have been up to no good if he preferred to look like a criminal than do what was required of him. Maybe there was something in his car that shouldn’t have been there.”

  “Do you usually search the cars of people who’ve been involved in minor traffic accidents? The innocent parties in minor traffic accidents?”

  He was right: if Jerome had had something to hide, his best defense would have been to play the innocent party. Wait for the police, make a statement, express the hope that the other driver would get home safely, and go about his business.

  “That boy wasn’t afraid of what the police might find,” said Ash. “He was afraid of the police. We all have encounters with police officers from time to time. We think nothing of it. We know it isn’t personal—you’re just doing your job. But what if Jerome thought it was personal? That the police were looking for him, and he was going to be in danger if they found him? Wouldn’t that be enough to make him flee the scene of a traffic accident?”

  Hazel was trying to remember what she’d heard in Meadowvale. “Mrs. Wiltshire said he became agitated when she insisted on calling the police. That he tried to talk her out of it.”

  “He was scared. He knew something bad was going to happen to him. He knew the moment the other driver said she wanted to call the police.”

  Hazel was constitutionally inimical to the notion of a respectable citizen being afraid of the police. “It makes no sense. If he’d done nothing wrong, he’d nothing to be afraid of. This isn’t a police state. We aren’t allowed to intimidate people even if we want to.”

  “Two possibilities,” said Ash, brows knit in a pensive frown. “Either Jerome wasn’t the thoroughly decent young man he seemed and was up to his neck in something he knew would come out if the police ever had a reason to pull him in, or he was a thoroughly decent young man, in which case he believed—it may not have been true, but he believed it—that the police were gunning for him. That it was worth taking any risk to stay out of their grasp.”

  Hazel’s eyes were round with astonishment. He wasn’t talking about a world she recognized. She made a determined effort to follow his train of thought, expecting it to hit the buffers at any moment. “But still, why? If he’d done nothing wrong, why would he think the police were gunning for him? Even if he did, why wouldn’t he suppose there’d been a misunderstanding and go into Meadowvale to sort it out?”

  “He must have considered doing just that,” said Ash, “and obviously he dismissed it. He must have thought it would make matters worse.”

  “Worse than trying to outrun a police car?” Her tone was brittle with skepticism.

  “He believed so,” said Ash. “Hazel, I was with him. He was genuinely afraid. He didn’t tell me why, but he understood what was happening to him. And what was going to happen to him. He knew his life was in danger. So even if we don’t know why, we can assume that something had already happened to make him feel that way. Someone had threatened him. Or he’d seen or heard or done something that made him a target.”

  “And what’s the first thing you’d do in those circumstances?” demanded Hazel. “You’d go to the police and demand to be protected! Unless you’d been up to no good.”

  For a moment Ash tried to avoid her gaze. But he knew it would only make him look shifty, and no one can afford to be thought both mad and shifty. Certainly no one who has to say what Ash was about to say.

  He made himself look her in the eye. “There’s another way to explain his behavior. It may not have been Jerome who was up to no good. It may have been the police.”

  * * *

  One of the first lessons Hazel had learned at police training college was that there’s a time to exercise authority, when there’s a good chance it’ll nip trouble in the bud, and there’s a time to keep things calm and casual, when the exercise of authority will act as a red rag to a bull. But there’s never a time when matters will be improved by losing your temper.

  So she counted to ten, and thought about her pension, and didn’t do what she wanted to do, which was slap his face; and when she was sure she had her voice under control, she said quietly, “That’s a pretty poor joke, Gabriel.”

  He was watching closely for her reaction. A part of him seemed to expect the slap. But he didn’t take the easy option and back down. “It isn’t a joke.”

  Two things had knocked the wind out of Hazel’s sails. One was what he’d said. The other was—even after the week she’d had: the suspicions, the worry, the way she’d been treated—how much she resented the insult to her profession. How much it hurt that he thought the police were not to be trusted. Beneath the shabby clothes, behind the shambling and muttering, Gabriel Ash was an intelligent man with some experience in the field of law enforcement; and even he thought that a credible explanation for what had happened was that Meadowvale Police Station had gone rogue. If Ash thought that, what chance was there of convincing the ordinary man and woman in the street, the people whose rates and taxes paid her salary, that it might make good television but things like that didn’t actually happen?

  Pain affects people in different ways. Some internalize—curl up around it, seek a quiet corner, in the room or in the mind, where they can deal with it in privacy. Some run—fleeing in blind panic, conscious of nothing but the distance they may put between themselves and the cause of their pain, forgetting that an injured soul is like a broken bone and comes with you wherever you go until you get it seen to. And some fight back. The strong, the desperate, and those who think that they have something worth fighting for. Anger eclipses pain. Hazel Best felt herself growing angry.

  She didn’t shout when she got angry. She grew cold, and precise, and picked her words very carefully. “And that’s your explanation, is it? Jerome Cardy was running from the police not because of something h
e’d done but because of something they’d done? Sorry—something we’d done. I presume that this accusation includes me, too.”

  “I’m not accusing anyone,” Ash said in a low voice.

  “Of course you are. You’re saying there was a conspiracy at Meadowvale to round up Jerome Cardy on some pretext and put him in the same cell as Barclay. No one officer could have done what needed doing. First of all he’d have had to arrange for Jerome to be arrested for something. Perhaps he bribed Mrs. Wiltshire. Then he had to get Jerome past the custody officer, whose job it is to ensure that people aren’t banged up without a damn good reason. Then he had to tell Trucker to find Barclay and make sure he, too, got arrested. Oh, and he had to tinker with the CCTV so he could transfer Jerome to a vacant cell without anyone noticing. Apart,” she added sarcastically, “from you and Patience, of course.

  “Finally, when Barclay was brought in, he had to ensure that he’d end up in Jerome’s cell. And that once again no one would notice. No one would notice that a cell the size of the average bathroom was already occupied. Jerome himself, polite to the end, wouldn’t yell, ‘Hey, man, you’re not leaving me here with that! I’m going back to the nutter with the dog.’”

  They were regarding each other intently over the coffee table. Hazel’s jaw was rigid with anger. Ash’s face was pale, his breathing unsteady. He hated confrontation. The last few years he’d avoided all social intercourse, had lost any skill he’d once had for managing his own emotions or those of anyone else. Instinct told him to run from this, too, even if it was his house. He could leave and come back later.

  But human beings are not creatures only of instinct. He knew that fleeing the argument would be the wrong thing to do. It would fatally undermine any hope he might have of being taken seriously. It would be the end of the embryonic friendship between him and this earnest, graceful young woman.

  Neither of which really mattered, except a little in his head. He’d lost the right to be taken seriously when he’d struck his head of department in a London street. And he was realistic enough to know that what he thought of as friendship might be nothing more than a nicely brought-up young woman treating the local idiot with kindness.