We met where the path levelled out. ‘Afternoon! Not that it’s a very good one,’ I bellowed with enthusiasm.
They stood blocking my progress. ‘Wouldn’t go any further, if I was you,’ one of them said. If Wales really does produce fine tenors, the East Riding should be famous for its baritones. This one sounded as if he gargled with bitumen.
‘Oh, really. Why’s that?’ I asked.
‘Shooting,’ he stated. They were both wearing Barbour jackets that were pale with age, and the rain was running off their hats.
‘Oh, thanks for the warning. What are you shooting?’
‘Rabbits.’
‘Hard luck on the rabbits,’ I laughed. I stood looking around for a few moments, then pointed past them and said: ‘Will it be safe if I just look for fossils for a minute or two, down near your boats?’
They exchanged glances, and the spokesman said: ‘Aye, that should be all right.’
They followed me down. I told myself that this was England, not Beirut, but I had to admit it was a good setting for a murder. They both went back into the shelter of the hut, but kept the door open, so they could watch me. I wandered up and down and kicked a few pebbles over. Once I took out my knife and squatted on my heels, closely examining nothing in particular. A squadron of guillemots came whirring over the wave-tops, as if on a suicidal torpedo run. I pulled out the binoculars and followed them until they vanished against the blackness of the rocks. It seemed a crazy place to build a port for the exporting of bulk cargo – they’d have to lug everything down the cliffs. But then I noticed the tunnel.
The cliffs were banked with scree comprised of shale, heaped up like mining spoil. Rusty rails ran back from the pier, and pointed up the scree towards the blanked-off entrance. The iron ore wasn’t brought down the cliff; it was transported from inland by tunnel. I marvelled at the simple ingenuity of it: the tunnel would slope gently down, and the weight of the full wagons descending would pull the empty ones back to the top. Energy required, nil. I continued sweeping the binoculars, stopping here and there, but slowly drawing them towards the opening. I paused. The mouth was blocked off with a wall made of stone blocks. In the middle a stone had been left out, as if to allow some ventilation, but down at the bottom left-hand corner, partly concealed by scrub, was a bigger gap, large enough for a man to crawl through. Both openings were now sealed with breeze blocks. I continued the sweep, then put the binocs back down the front of my anorak.
The rain was even heavier than before. I stood gazing out to sea and took several long, deep breaths. Ah, wonderful! If nature had devised a better way to catch pneumonia, I’d yet to find it. I beat my fists twice against my chest, shouted ‘Good afternoon’ to the morons in the hut and set off briskly towards the cliff path. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that there was another, well-trodden path, leading up to the tunnel.
On the way down the mud had encroached up my legs until it reached my crotch. Going up, it made it to my armpits. Once I was back on the road the rain diluted it somewhat, but did little to improve my overall appearance. I couldn’t have cared less, as I swung my arms jauntily on the way back to the car.
I had a lot of time to waste. I did some exploring in the car, heater at full blast to dry me out, and even managed a nap. It was well after opening time when I parked outside the Lobster Pot in Staithes. I’d chosen well, this was the pub that the old fishermen used. There weren’t many of them, but it was a tiny place and their pipe smoke made the air so thick that the flies were hang-gliding. I leant on the corner of the bar with a half-pint and a packet of crisps. I was soon exchanging pleasantries with the landlord. Towards closing time, when most of the old-timers had stumbled away, he came to lean on my end of the bar. I bought us a Bell’s each.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve a room vacant?’ I asked. I’d seen the ‘No vacancies’ sign when I entered.
‘Afraid not, sir. We’ve two small rooms, but an American family have taken them. Never guess what they’re called.’
After a few seconds I said: ‘Cook?’
‘Correct. You could try the Cliff Hotel up the hill. Would you like me to ring them?’
‘No, it’s all right, thanks. I’ll go home. I just had a fancy for getting quietly drunk on your whisky, then crawling upstairs to bed. It’s a foul night outside.’
‘I know what you mean. Have you far to go?’
‘No, only to Malton. I’ve just had a day’s birdwatching; probably have flu in the morning.’
He busied himself drying a few glasses. When he returned I said: ‘How much fishing goes off, these days?’
‘Virtually none,’ he replied, ‘just lobster-potting and some long-lining. It’s a waste of time.’
‘What about from Port Mulgrave? I had a strange experience there today.’
He looked interested, but not excessively so. ‘What sort of experience?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing bad. I walked down the path and two blokes with shotguns warned me off. Said they were rabbiting, and I might get shot. It seemed funny weather to be rabbiting.’
He wandered round the room, collecting the ashtrays. Everybody else had left. I drained my glass.
‘One for the road?’ he enquired.
‘No thanks; if I’m driving I’d better not.’
He came to stand next to me, and in a conspiratorial whisper said: ‘The Lazenby brothers fished from Mulgrave. And their fathers. And their grandfathers. Last year they sold their boats, word has it, for ten times what they were worth. Bought a posh bungalow in Redcar and haven’t been seen since. Some divers use the port now. You know what they’re into, don’t you?’
‘Er, no.’
He lowered his voice even further, as if afraid that the walls might be listening. ‘Wrecks.’
‘Wrecks?’ It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.
‘Wrecks. War graves. There’s dozens of ’em off this coast. And who knows what other things they’re into?’
Other things; that sounded more like it. ‘What other things?’ I asked.
Just then the door burst open and Mr and Mrs Cook and their two offspring dashed in. They took off their raincoats and the landlord hung them somewhere to dry. The kids were packed off upstairs to brush their braces and go to bed, while Captain Cook and his mate settled down with a nightcap. I said my goodbyes and left. I had work to do.
I parked at the same place I had used earlier in the day, but this time I didn’t don my waterproofs – they made too much noise when I walked in them. The steady rain had given way to the fine sort that just hangs suspended in the air, managing to soak your sheltered surfaces just as thoroughly as the top ones. Instead of walking up the road, past a string of houses, I cut directly across the fields. The night was blacker than a tomcat’s soul. When I reached the clifftop I groped along the fence until I found the stile. I had my second pee, hoping that my bladder was responding to nervousness or overindulgence, and not incipient prostate trouble, and climbed over.
It was nearly impossible to keep to the path. Cattle grazed on the cliffside, and left numerous tracks that went off in different directions. I stared down at the ground, and placed my feet on the darkest patches I could see, sometimes with messy consequences. It took me a long time to reach the bottom. I did a left turn until I crossed the rails, then made another, up towards the tunnel entrance. The sheds were, thankfully, in darkness.
A hundred years of erosion had left the opening stranded several feet up. I did the last bit climbing on my hands and knees, pulling myself upwards with handfuls of grass. At last I made it on to a ledge at the entrance, and paused to regain my breath. Everything was as quiet as a tomb. The sea stretched out before me, still and lifeless, like southern beer. I took out a little torch and, cupping my hands round it, examined the opening. It was bigger than I had thought, but the breeze blocks weren’t cemented in. I put the torch away and explored the joints with my fingertips. The topmost block had no weight on it. Quarter-inch by quarter-inch I worked it
towards me until I was able to grip it and lift it out.
When I’d removed four I decided the gap was big enough. One by one I passed the loose blocks through the opening to the inside, then crawled through after them. Working by touch, I rebuilt the wall, slowly blocking off the pale patch of sky until the darkness was total. Then I switched on the torch.
It was a disappointment. The tunnel stretched away for about fifty yards, terminating in a fall of rubble that reached the roof. The first few yards were muddy, then it was firmer underfoot. The torchlight glinted on something in the mud, at the foot of the wall. It was a discarded condom, trodden into the ground after its brief moment of ecstacy. I couldn’t imagine anybody going through what I had gone through to come in here for sex.
‘Inconceivable,’ I said to myself.
The dim light cast shadows at the far end. I walked towards them to investigate. A number of pallets were laid side by side, as if to form a dry base to stand something on. Alongside, roughly folded, was a large sheet of polythene, possibly used to protect the same something from drips from the roof. Whatever it had been, it wasn’t here now. I closely examined everything, but failed to find anything incriminating. I felt certain that this was where they brought the stuff, but defence barristers usually had difficulty in accepting my word. I stood looking at the roof-fall for a minute or two, then turned and walked slowly towards the entrance.
As the torchlight swung up and down, the shiny white end of the condom winked at me. There was a machine in the pub near my house that sold flavoured ones. The banana had caught my imagination, and I’d wondered if the reason was because I liked bananas, or something more Freudian. When I reached the wall I bent down and examined the contraceptive with vicarious curiosity. I’d only ever seen the standard pink ones before. It was a different shape at the end, too …
It wasn’t a condom; it was a glove. The thin, rubber type that surgeons wear. We keep a stock of similar ones, for if we have to handle certain items of evidence or search unsavoury prisoners, and the scene-of-crime officers carry them around with them. They’re widely available, sold in DIY stores for yuppie decorators who don’t want to get eau de nil on their cuffs. I took out my knife and carefully scraped the mud away. I pulled a plastic bag inside-out over my hand and gently picked the glove up, unfolding the bag around it. Maybe my journey had not been totally in vain, after all.
I dismantled the wall, crawled through and rebuilt it behind me. My boots had been slobbing about on my feet for a while, sucked down by the glutinous mud. What I didn’t realise was that the weight of mud dragging on my bootlaces had pulled one of them undone. I dropped lightly off the ledge outside the tunnel, taking a quick step forward to regain my balance. Except that my foot didn’t move because I was standing on the lace. I fell heavily, flat on my face, did a forward roll that would have earned a string of sixes for artistic interpretation, and slid fifteen feet on my back to the foot of the scree. A dog started barking.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I lay still for a few seconds, gathering my wits and my breath, then rolled sideways into the dense shadow of some bushes. The door of one of the sheds opened and a torch beam cleaved the darkness. The dog, a terrier, stood yapping at the night. I think it was as scared as I was. The beam scanned the cliffs, then went out. Thank God I’d rebuilt the wall. A voice said something to the dog and they both went back inside, closing the door behind them. I sat on the scree, my arms round my knees, staring at the shed for ten or fifteen minutes. When they’d had time to settle I silently made my way back to the cliff path.
Following the path upwards was easier, but by the time I reached the top I was wheezing like a leaky accordion. I had an old tracksuit in the car to change into, but I didn’t bother. I carefully arranged it over the driving seat, to keep some of the mud off, and started for home. I was halfway across the North York Moors before my heart stopped trying to batter its way out of my rib cage.
The fingerprint people at city HQ work round the clock, so I went straight there. The sky was beginning to lighten as I pulled into the car park. I was dry by now, but caked in mud from head to foot, and had to show my ID to get past the front desk. The constable in Fingerprints viewed me and my evidence with scepticism.
‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ he told me, unnecessarily, ‘but we might find something. When you pull these gloves off they turn inside out, so the inside is now outside, andvcaked in mud. That’s no good. If this was the first glove he pulled off, there’ll be nothing on it. If, however, he pulled it off with his bare hand, we might be lucky.’
‘You mean those prints would have been on the outside, which is now inside?’
‘That’s it.’
‘So there’s only a fifty-fifty chance of finding anything?’
He looked at the glove with disdain. ‘Less than that, I’m afraid, Inspector. How urgent is it?’
‘It’s not desperately urgent, but it is important. I want your best efforts, we’re talking about murder.’
He made notes on a pro forma pad, recording the time, my name, et cetera. ‘Right, sir.’ He poked at the glove with the blunt end of his pencil and dislodged same of the mud. ‘I think what we’ll do is let it dry out, then give it the superglue treatment. That works best on rubber. Then we’ll have a look at it under the ultraviolet. I’ll have to wait until the fume cabinet’s available, though. As you know, we’re run off our feet – will Tuesday, possibly Wednesday, be OK?’
‘Fine. I’ve some other work here too. Could that be ready at the same time please?’
He found the reference and made a note. ‘Right, boss, will do. You look as if you’ve been run down by an avalanche, do you want a coffee?’
I smiled for what seemed the first time in ages, and said: ‘It was only a small avalanche. No thanks, I’m going home.’
I showered and went to bed. I fell asleep in minutes. An hour and a half later the doorbell rang. I staggered across to the window and peeked out. Down below, the morning sun was reflecting off the shining pate of Dr Evans. I let him in.
When he saw the dressing gown he said: ‘Sorry, Charlie, have I got you out of bed?’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘I was just about to have a shower. Want a cup of tea?’
‘No thanks. I was nearby, so I thought I’d call to see how you were.’
‘Fine, Sam, I’m fine. Wasn’t sleeping too well at first, but I dropped off OK – er – last night.’
‘Good, good. How have you been spending your time?’
‘Oh, this and that. I’ve done some painting, dug the garden. Yesterday I went to the coast, took your advice.’
The doctor stared at me, his eyelids blinking at regular, two-second intervals. After ten blinks he said, incredulously: ‘You took my advice? You actually took my advice? You had a day at the coast?’
I gave him a grin. ‘You were right, Sam,’ I declared, ‘there is life outside the police force.’ I went back to bed with a smile on my face, but sleep had fled for the day.
I declared myself fit and well and resumed work Monday morning. The latest reports were placed in the file and I found Nigel’s efforts in there. He’d discovered a comprehensive list of associated companies, and several names with records. He’d then looked up all the companies involved with these names. It was quite a tangled web. Fires and burglaries, usually just after a major delivery, were hazards that seemed to strike their warehouses with uncommon regularity. They had an awful lot of bad luck. Nigel had left a note saying he was off having a word with the insurance companies. Well done.
Mike Freer rang. Parker was now in the pen, but he wasn’t writing home. They’d picked him up on the M62, the Porsche loaded to the gunwales with boxes of wraps, each one containing a twenty-five-pound fix. Estimated street value, about fifteen thousand pounds; his profit, three and a half grand. Not bad for an evening’s work. His house and several others had been raided, too. Findings included a crack factory and the first ice seen on the patch.
‘We’ve
done our bit,’ said Mike. ‘Now you boys can stand by for the backlash.’
Drug prices are controlled strictly by supply and demand. Ready availability creates a big market. A major supplier was now out of circulation, so the prices would soar. A user who paid for it by thieving, desperate for a fix, would have to step up his work-rate. That was the backlash.
Wednesday morning Fingerprints rang. ‘It’s Sergeant Miller, Fingerprints. Your photos are ready. Do you want us to post them to you?’
‘Great, thanks. No, I’ll collect them. Did you get anything at all from the glove.’
‘Nothing spectacular, but better than it could have been. Several fragments, mainly from the thumb. All the fingers had turned inside out when the glove was removed, but the tip of the thumb hadn’t. It’d got a bit smudged, though. It matches the other one, but it wouldn’t stand up in court.’
‘Eh? Which other one?’
‘This other stuff you wanted. These contact prints. Says here they’re off a paperknife. Weren’t you expecting them to be the same?’
A sensation was welling up in my loins similar to the time I accidentally wandered into the wrong dressing room at grammar school, after being clean bowled first ball, and realised that nobody had noticed me. The sixth-form netball team were just changing for a match. It was the most wonderful hundred and twenty seconds of my entire twelve years. I stared at the phone. Had I misheard him?’
‘Sergeant Miller,’ I said. ‘Spell it out slowly. Are you saying that the prints in the glove match the ones on the knife?’
‘Yessir. As far as we can tell they’re from the same person.’
‘You mean … you’re convinced, but a jury wouldn’t be?’
The Picasso Scam Page 16