The Picasso Scam

by Stuart Pawson

  DS Willis obtained a confession from the husband, and statements from acquaintances and the neighbours. Our man had been thumping his wife for years, usually when he came home from the pub heavily under the influence. Last night one of his drinking companions had let it slip that the wife was having an affair with a workmate. He’d drowned his sorrows, then taken his vengeance. On the wife, of course. That type has a strong opinion of where blame lies.

  ‘Did you have to twang his wires?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Tony answered, ‘I just hung my jacket on the weights.’

  ‘What about his solicitor?’

  ‘No, just my jacket.’

  I’d obtained copies of the depositions for the three youths we’d called the Mountain Bike Gang. These are the statements that are presented to court. I read the names out loud, then asked: ‘Which of them would you say was the best-looking?’

  ‘Lee Ziolkowski,’ Sparky replied. ‘He’s the fair-haired one, a bonny lad. I’ve always wanted fair hair.’ He looked wistful. ‘Or dark hair. Any sort of friggin’ hair, actually.’

  I set to work on Lee’s depositions with white paper and scissors and gum. Then, after a visit to the photocopier, I placed the results of my handiwork in the typewriter and let my imagination plummet. Sometimes I can be so mean I frighten myself.

  The Coiners is one of the oldest pubs in the area. There’s never been much mining for minerals in the southern Pennines; all the lead and stuff was to the north. But there’s supposed to be plenty of gold waiting to be found. The pub gets its name from a neat little scam that was carried out in these hills at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

  The Industrial Revolution was giving local businessmen more money than they knew what to do with, but, true to form, they were ever on the lookout for opportunities to increase that wealth. Legally or illegally.

  A gang living in the hills developed an ingenious technique for putting a gold sovereign in a mould and then bleeding off a couple of drops of the precious stuff. A fifteen percent profit, overnight, minus commission, had half of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Derbyshire beating a path to their cave. It all came to an end when they were hanged on York Knavesmire, as a prelude to the day’s racing, but legend has it that there is still a million pounds worth of gold hidden somewhere in them thar hills.

  None of this was on my mind as I drove towards the Coiners after leaving the office. My main concern was whether they served food, closely followed by wondering what my mystery caller had for me.

  Hallelujah! There was a big sign outside that read ‘Home of Peggy Watt’s Famous Yorkshire Puddings’. Wild Bill Hickok sat with his back to the door and paid for it with his life, so I sat in a corner where I could view the entire room. There was nobody else in, apart from the landlord, who seemed to resent my intrusion. I drank four orange juices with lemonade as slowly as I could, and ate one of Peggy Watt’s puddings as rapidly as I was able. Two other men, apparently regulars, came in and had a serious discourse on tupping while sipping halves. The Yorkshire pudding had the consistency of a marathon runner’s insole. Peggy would have been better employed helping their Jimmy with his steam engine; or perhaps he had to invent the steam engine to stir the bloody stuff.

  It was dark when I left. Maybe Sparky and Nigel Newley were having better luck. I’d left them watching over my house – it could all have been a ploy to get me out of the way. I was manoeuvring in the car park just as another vehicle came in, carrying a young couple. We got in each other’s way for a few seconds, then the driver wound down his window and shouted to me: ‘Watch how you go, mate, there’s some rozzers parked down the lane and you’ve a back light out.’

  I waved a thank you and parked up again. The offside rear light was deader than last night’s promises. I tapped the lens a few times in an attempt to resuscitate it, then tried to open the boot lid to have a closer look. The key jammed in the lock at first, but with some extra persuasion I managed to force it open. Once I’d figured how it was done I flicked out the offending bulb holder. Surprise, surprise, there was no bulb there; it must have fallen out into the light fitting.

  All good cops carry a flashlight with a five-hundred-foot beam. By some chance I happened to have one with me. I didn’t find the bulb, but I did discover a white package tucked in the recess where the window-washer bottle was situated. It weighed about half a pound and was neatly done-up with polythene and Sellotape. It could have been special flour for Mrs Watt’s Yorkshire puddings, or it could have been something else.

  Watching in the rear-view mirror for the blue light to come on was like waiting for the sun to rise: dazzling and inevitable. I pulled over, they got out. It was a textbook exercise in courtesy and Proper Police Procedure. Nobody had been slipping double tequilas into my orange juice, and vitamin C is non-intoxicating, so I passed the breath test as easily as a Charolais heifer passes wind.

  ‘Do you mind if we look in your boot, sir?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’ll be easier all round if you cooperate, sir.’

  ‘One of you can look; I want the other to stand well back.’

  The lock operated more easily this time. He flashed his light round inside, then asked to look in the car. I watched him like a weasel watches a rabbit, or was it like a rabbit watches a weasel?’

  ‘Everything seems to be in order, sir. You will get that light fixed, won’t you? Which station would you like to present your documents at?’

  ‘St Pancras. You’re on the wrong side of the hill, Sergeant. Who sent you over here?’ It was my turn to ask questions.

  ‘We had a tip-off, sir. Can’t say any more than that.’

  ‘Stop calling me sir. An anonymous tip-off?’

  ‘Er … I understand it was.’

  ‘Then make sure it was logged, ’cos I’ll be checking.’

  * * *

  The gate to Bentley Prison could have been the prototype for the Great Gate at Kiev. The whole edifice was constructed during Queen Victoria’s reign, in a burst of enlightenment and compassion, and an earnest desire to be constructive in the treatment of the criminal classes. Now it was overcrowded, understaffed, and held regular degree ceremonies for those who passed through its courses in advanced criminality. They don’t open the Great Gate to let visitors in – there’s a normal-sized, but metal, door just to the side of it.

  I’d arranged my visit to see Lee Ziolkowski the previous afternoon. The visiting room is like a large canteen, with formica tables and tubular chairs; none of this talking through a screen that you see in the films. Down the side there are small cubicles for special visitors, such as solicitors or policemen. I was told which cubicle to use, and someone went to fetch Lee. I bought a couple of teas and chocolate biscuits from the lady at the WRVS counter and waited. It was normal visiting hours, and the place was noisy with young women with toddlers, come to see daddy doing his bird. At the table just outside my cubicle a tattooed hero was trying to swallow his leather-clad visitor. She wore a mini-skirt and thigh boots, and the gap between displayed enough fishnet to equip a small trawler. Just the thing to raise the morale when you measure the passing of time in Christmas dinners.

  Lee appeared a lot healthier than when I last saw him. He’d lost his pallor and gained a pound or two in weight. He still looked at me nervously, though.

  ‘Hello, Lee. Remember me, Charlie Priest? I interviewed you in Heckley nick. I got you one with milk and two sugars; hope that’s how you like it.’ It’s how they always like it.

  He sat down opposite me. ‘Yeah, thanks,’ he said.

  ‘I have to tell you, Lee, that you’ve no need to talk to me if you don’t want to. You can get up and leave right now, or you can insist on your solicitor being present. I hope you won’t, though, because I think you should hear what I have to say.’

  Legally he was a man, but inside he was just a scared little boy, struggling to survive in a world he couldn’t comprehend. He would put up a tough show for my benefit, but was out of his depth
, and now had to either grab the lifeline or go under, maybe for ever. He didn’t say anything, just stayed where he was and unwrapped his biscuit.

  ‘You and your pals have been used, Lee,’ I told him, ‘by evil people who don’t care if you live or die. They feed you shit drugs and shit friendship, but all they want is for you to get hooked. Then they start bleeding you. You don’t belong in here, this place is a dustbin, it’s full of garbage. A young kid died over the weekend from a heroin overdose. The stuff he was using was too strong, he was just guessing at the dose. He’s the latest in a long line. It could have been you if you hadn’t been in here. I know it’s not the done thing, Lee, but you could help me stamp it out. You could save lives, including your own. I want you to tell me who you got your works from.’ Longest speech I ever made, and he wasn’t impressed.

  ‘You mean grass? You want me to grass?’

  Sometimes I think they absorb the prison culture with the food. ‘The rubbish in here call it grassing, Lee, I call it curing a disease. A few years ago there was a disease called smallpox; killed millions. Then they found a cure for it and thought they’d stamped it out. A couple of years later somebody in Africa said: “Hey! There’s a feller in our village still got it.” So the doctors moved in and cured him. Now he can’t give it to anyone else. The man who spoke out wasn’t grassing – he did a public service. You could do the same.’

  ‘They’d kill me.’ He looked scared.

  ‘No they wouldn’t,’ I assured him, without conviction. ‘They wouldn’t know where the information came from. Besides, I thought the younger generation wanted some excitement in their lives. They’ve wanted to kill me for years, I can live with it.’

  He could have stood up and walked out. An old lag would have done, but he still had a residue of polite behaviour in him, and I hadn’t said he could go.

  ‘What’s the grub like?’ I asked.

  He almost smiled; either with relief at the change of subject or at the thought of the next culinary extravaganza. ‘Rubbish,’ he answered.

  I small-talked with him for twenty minutes, asking him about how he was finding it inside, his family, how he’d done at school, anything I could think of. He opened up a little about playing football, but most of the time it was a questions-and-answers session. It usually is with teenagers. After a while I took a long look at my watch.

  ‘Well, I’ll have to go, Lee. It’s been nice talking to you. I have to ask you once again, though, do you want to become a crime-fighter, or would you rather play all your football against a twenty-foot wall?’

  He stared at me across the table with something like contempt in his gaze. ‘You don’t understand, do you?’ he declared.

  ‘Understand what?’ I replied, quizzically.

  ‘Drugs,’ he answered. ‘Drugs are all right. As soon as I get out I’ll start taking them again. What else is there?’

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Lee. Drugs are a one-way ride to an early grave or the mental hospital, and it’s all downhill.’

  I stood up to leave, but as I reached the door of our little cubicle I turned back to him. ‘Oh, I forgot to give you these; you have to have a copy.’ I reached into my inside pocket for the two sheets of foolscap and laid them on the table in front of him.

  He gazed at them for a few seconds, then up at me. ‘What are they?’ he demanded.

  ‘Your new deps,’ I told him.

  ‘I’ve got my deps.’

  ‘You’re not listening, Lee. I said your new deps.’

  He looked bewildered, so I spelt it out for him: ‘We’ve got you down as a nonce now, Lee, with a special liking for small boys. Should make a good-looking lad like you very popular in here. I’ll organise you some new room-mates on my way out.’

  The newly acquired colour drained from his face and he swayed in his chair. I re-took my seat opposite him.

  ‘You couldn’t do it,’ he said defiantly.

  I pointed at the papers. ‘Read ’em. Do you want to risk it?’ I placed my ball-pen across the sheets in front of him. ‘All I’m asking you to do, Lee,’ I said softly, ‘is turn the sheet over and write a name on the back. I guarantee that nobody will ever know where it came from.’ A white-knuckled fist moved a couple of inches towards the pen, hesitated, and then withdrew. His eyes were glistening with tears. He sniffed and shook his head.

  ‘No. I can’t,’ he mumbled.

  ‘A name, Lee.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘One little name, and I’ll go away and take the deps with me and no one will ever know I’ve been.’

  He shook his head. I reached across and turned the top sheet over. Across the middle it said ‘Parker’. The effect was electric.

  ‘I didn’t write that!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Thanks, Lee, that should do nicely.’ I took the fake depositions back and put them in my pocket. ‘You won’t be needing these any more,’ I explained.

  ‘I didn’t write it, I didn’t write anything.’ He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  ‘Of course you didn’t, but your face told me what I wanted to know. Don’t worry about it, Lee, we’ve had his name from several sources, I just wanted confirmation.’

  His agitation died down when he realised that we already knew the name. What he didn’t know was how useless that piece of information was to us.

  ‘This Parker …’ I tossed the question in as casually as tossing a cigarette butt into a fire, ‘is he black or white?’

  No harm in answering that; it only narrows the field down to half of the world’s population.

  ‘White,’ he said, gazing at the table like a shell-shocked survivor. The dam was cracking. Some judicious leverage could give us a torrent.

  ‘Do you fancy another tea?’

  He nodded. I fetched the same again and we sipped and munched in silence for a while. ‘Big money in dealing,’ I stated. ‘What’s he drive – BMW? Merc? Porsche?’

  ‘A Porsche.’

  ‘Fabulous. A black one, no doubt.’

  ‘Yeah, how did you know?’

  ‘Just a guess, black ones look best.’

  If it really was a black Porsche we probably had enough to pin him down; on the other hand Lee could be smarter than the average junky. Might as well go for gold. ‘Where does he hang out, Lee?’

  ‘All over. Sometimes in the Penalty Spot, sometimes in the Fireplace.’ The Penalty Spot was the pub outside the football ground, the Fireplace was a nightclub of some repute.

  ‘On match days?’ I asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You think so. Don’t you deal with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then who do you get your works from?’ He looked down at the table. He’d clammed up again.

  ‘Lee, look at me. Are you telling me that Parker is the big fish, the pusher who supplies your dealer.’ He lifted his head and nodded. ‘Any idea where he comes from?’

  ‘Manchester, I think.’

  ‘Thanks, Lee. I’ll see what I can do for you.’

  The drug network is long and tortuous. Between the hill farmers and chemists who produce the stuff and the street-corner dealers who peddle it are chains of middlemen, each raking off a percentage of the final price. What starts out measured in tons, selling for peanuts, finally lands on the streets in twists of foil selling at twenty-five pounds a go. At each transaction the quantities are divided into smaller units, and the price increases by two or three hundred percent.

  A heroin junky needs between one and two hundred pounds every day to pay for his habit. The easiest way to get this sort of money is to become a dealer. He’ll buy an ounce at a time and sell individual doses of half a gram, probably diluted with something like baking soda. He’s a victim, dealing to pay for the crocodile in his head that needs constant feeding. The people he buys from don’t touch the stuff. They haven’t got long hair; they wear blue suits, not Funky Junky T-shirts, and do their deals via mobile telephones in their upmarket cars. The more middlemen they can bypa
ss, the bigger the profit. But that makes the risks greater, too.

  Where Parker fitted in I didn’t know, but I was sure of one thing – he’d been very careless.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I was struggling to write a letter to the Crown Prosecution Service in an attempt to obtain light sentences for the Mountain Bike Gang, on the grounds that they had proffered valuable information, but I kept being interrupted. First it was Sparky.

  ‘Are there two ns in fornication?’

  ‘Only if they’re lesbian ’ens, usually it’s just one ‘en and a cockerel.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Then it was Mike Freer, at last, on the telephone. ‘Shagnasty! How y’doin’?’ he boomed in my ear. There was a ritual to be gone through before we got down to business.

  ‘Not bad, Fungus Features, how’re you?’ I replied.

  ‘Oh, fare to Midlands. Listen, Super Sleuth, I want you to know that we’re ignoring the rumours and we’re all standing by you in spite of everything.’

  ‘Gee, I’m … I’m really choked. I don’t deserve friends like you.’

  ‘Just tell me one thing,’ he went on, ‘was it a very old man?’

  ‘It wasn’t an old man,’ I replied. ‘It was an old English Sheepdog.’

  ‘Ah! Then that explains why you were in the City Square toilets.’

  ‘Precisely. Is somebody trying to sully my reputation?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. In twenty years it will be considered perfectly normal behaviour. You’re just ahead of your time.’

  He could go on for ever; I’d had enough. ‘Listen, Fungus, I need your help. When can I see you?’

  ‘Soon as you like.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Sure, where?’

  ‘My place, about seven. You know I’m back at my mother’s house now?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry about her. She was a grand lady, I thought a lot of her.’