Never Die in January

by Alan Scholefield

  NEVER DIE IN JANUARY

  Alan Scholefield

  © Alan Scholefield 1992

  Alan Scholefield has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1992 by Macmillan London Ltd.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  My thanks for his help go to Detective Inspector Hugh Toomer of the Metropolitan Police (Retd.). Any mistakes are my own.

  CHAPTER I

  Knives.

  What sort of knives?

  Kitchen knives.

  What sort of kitchen knives: filleting? paring? cutting? slicing? chopping?

  He was patronizing her. She knew that.

  And they were talking too much.

  She had seen the old-fashioned ironmonger’s shop as she drove into the village a few minutes earlier. She had been looking for a place like it and there it was in the January fog, its windows stuffed with things she had never seen before and some she had never thought to see again: who used a hand- mincer these days?

  The place smelled of creosote and Stockholm tar. The man behind the counter — an old- fashioned long wooden counter backed by scores of small labelled drawers — was elderly and thin and wore a long brown shop coat.

  He stood waiting, not hiding his impatience.

  Didn’t he have a general purpose kind of knife?

  She shouldn’t be talking like this. In and out. That’s what she had planned. But if she left abruptly he might consider her rude and remember her.

  A general- purpose knife? He didn’t know about that.

  His voice had changed and so had his manner. It was no longer patronizing. For a moment, caught by her hot eyes, he seemed unsure of himself.

  He brought out three knives. They looked alike: shining blades, needle points, black wooden handles, brass rivets.

  French.

  He shouldn’t say it but they were the best. Carbon steel. People didn’t like it much these days because it stained. But there was nothing to touch it for taking an edge.

  She wanted to stop him there. To get out. To become anonymous. But he’d remember her then. She let him talk.

  The smallest of the three. Vegetable knife. For paring, boning, that sort of thing. He put it down.

  Filleting knife. Whippy. Slice anything with that.

  The third. Cook’s knife. Heavier than the others. Six- inch blade. Chopping. Cutting. Most things. General purpose, hadn’t she said? She could peel an apple — or kill a pig with this if she’d a mind to.

  She paid cash, went back to her car, and drove through the fog.

  She came to a town. No more ironmongers, no more little scenes that could be remembered.

  This time the kitchen department of a chain store. A bored young salesman.

  She asked to see some knives.

  Kitchen knives.

  Of carbon steel.

  CHAPTER II

  “Never die in January, laddie,” Macrae said to Silver. “It’s a bloody awful month.”

  They were burying Eddie Twyford south of the river in one of those bleak cemeteries that spread for miles along the Southern Railway: a landscape of marble, dead flowers, and bones.

  Silver was momentarily startled, for Macrae’s voice was loud enough for everyone at the grave side to hear.

  Everyone was six.

  There was the priest, the two men from the undertakers, Macrae, Silver — and the widow, Gladys.

  The priest, his surplice blowing up over his shoulders as the bitter east wind cut across the open spaces, looked sharply round at Macrae. He didn’t want interruptions, didn’t want anything to go wrong, he wanted the coffin in the ground, the earth on top of it, a last fast prayer for the quick and the dead, then hot soup in the presbytery.

  “Six people,” Macrae said. “Not much for a life.”

  There was bitterness and anger in his voice and Silver knew why. He himself should have been feeling much the same but wasn’t. Macrae might have known it would come to…well, not quite to this, but to something unpleasant.

  It was a day Dickens would have recognized. There was fog on the river and fog in the streets; fog amongst the gravestones and in the branches of the trees. Fog everywhere.

  Macrae hunched down in his long dark overcoat and said, “You ever read Bleak House at your university?” He always managed to invest the phrase with irony, as though pretending to believe Silver’s education was a myth.

  Silver saw the priest turn crossly from his book again and instead of replying shook his head.

  He turned away from Macrae so that he would not be receptive to more questions. The two detectives were a contrast in shapes and styles. Macrae was big, burly, dressed in a long overcoat and holding an old-fashioned brown trilby; Silver was dark, also bareheaded, wearing black not because of the funeral but because he fancied himself in black and wore it most of the time. Where Macrae had a broad, heavy face and head that was often lowered like a bull’s, Silver’s face was thin and angular, his eyes sharply intelligent, and his black hair sat closely on his skull. Macrae looked exactly what he was, a Metropolitan policeman. Silver did not.

  He looked across the open grave to Gladys Twyford. She was elderly and square and was wearing a black coat and black hat. Her face had congealed in the cold and it wore a puzzled expression as though she could not understand what was going on and that in a few moments Eddie would appear with the car and drive them off to the nearest pub for a drink.

  Eddie had always been behind the wheels of cars. He’d been Macrae’s driver for years, even after drivers had been banned — as part of a cost-cutting exercise — for middle-ranking detectives.

  And that had been the problem. That’s what had killed him.

  “We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth…”

  But the earth, the mound of soil which perched at the grave side, had been dug the day before and was frozen hard. The trowel gave a mournful clang as the priest tried to dig into it. One of the undertaker’s men kicked the surface and broke off several lumps. He placed them in the trowel and the priest sprinkled them on to the coffin. It sounded like machine-gun fire.

  “…ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life…”

  Crack…crack…crack …

  The hard lumps of earth cascaded down as Gladys Twyford, her hand trembling, took the trowel for the last time.

  A moment’s prayer from the priest, handshakes all round, a lingering one for Gladys, and then he was off down the concrete pathway, cassock billowing, hair blowing…Soup was beckoning.

  The undertakers put their hats back on their heads and folded up the coffin straps. A grave digger who had been watching with impatience in the lee of a tall gravestone hurried forward with pickaxe and shovel to entomb the coffin. Eddie Twyford, policeman, driver, and latterly records clerk in Scotland Yard, had departed this life.

  Silver took Macrae and Gladys in his Golf. She had asked
them to come back for a drink and something to eat. Neither man wanted to, neither had been able to find an excuse. They drove towards the estate in Lambeth where she lived.

  “He could have been cremated,” she said. “But he wouldn’t have it. Wanted a proper funeral. He’s been paying for that grave for years and years. Since ever I first knew him. Didn’t matter how skint, he’d rather put two bob into the burial fund than have a second pint.”

  She paused. “I wonder if he’d have liked it. The funeral, I mean. He was always a person for getting what he was paying for. Picked out his own coffin. There was a special offer once. Wouldn’t have it. Wanted his made of wood not plastic, with proper brass handles. I said, Eddie, what’s it matter? You ain’t going to be there to see it…But he wouldn’t have it otherwise…”

  The traffic was heavy and they took nearly forty minutes to reach the Green Leas Estate. Gladys talked all the way.

  “It’s not actually green, is it?” Macrae said softly. He was sitting in front with Silver — not even funerals could cause him to force his bulk into the rear of small cars. “The only green thing about it is the drawings.”

  Most of the apartment-block walls had been aerosoled. Apart from a jumble of names…of who had been there and when…there were several “paintings” done mostly in greens and purples and reds.

  The estate was huge. Ranks of buildings, all the same shape and height, disappeared into the foggy distance. In a sandpit, meant for kids to play in but long since abandoned, lay an upturned pram and an old iron-framed bed. The mattress had been slit open and coir was blowing in the wind. Derelict wheelless cars were dotted about what had once been a green lea with genuine green grass and trees with real organic leaves. Now everything looked like a stage-set for a posthumous play by Beckett.

  “I’d write my name on a wall if I lived here,” Silver said. “At least I’d know I’d existed.”

  “Famous for fifteen seconds? Don’t be bloody sentimental.”

  Just then out of the mist a group of youths crossed the road ahead of them.

  “That’s them!” Gladys said.

  “Who?” Macrae turned to her.

  “The yobs that done for Eddie.”

  “Eddie died of a heart attack, Mrs Twyford,” Silver said. Already lies were being piled on lies.

  “Well, you know what I mean. If it hadn’t been for them — ”

  “And Scales,” Macrae said. “Don’t forget Kenneth bloody Scales.”

  Silver slowed down. The youths stopped and turned to look at the car. There were eight or nine of them aged between fourteen and eighteen. They turned as though on cue and there was something deeply menacing about it, Silver thought.

  “You want me to stop, guv’nor?” he said.

  Macrae shook his head. “No, drive on.”

  Silver was relieved. It would have been just like Macrae…No, that wasn’t true. You didn’t get to be a Detective Superintendent for doing stupid things. Macrae knew his business best. Silver often had to tell himself this when it seemed, as in the case of Eddie Twyford, that Macrae was being unnecessarily obtuse. He was blaming Scales, the deputy commander at Cannon Row police station, for Eddie’s death. Gladys was blaming the yobbos. But, in Silver’s opinion, if anyone was to blame it was Macrae.

  They parked the car directly outside Gladys’s sitting-room windows on the ground floor and Silver hurried into the flat so that he would not be out of sight of the vehicle for more than a few seconds. A couple of minutes and the stereo would go. A couple more and there wouldn’t be a wheel left.

  The year before, Silver and his girl Zoe had gone on holiday to Namibia, in south-west Africa, to look at wildlife. In one of the huge game parks in that hot and sandy country they had come across the newly killed carcass of a wildebeest on which three lions were feeding”. They stopped the car and sat watching. When the lions finished it was the turn of hyenas, jackals, bat-eared foxes, vultures, marabou storks, and crows. The following morning the carcass was simply a collection of whitening bones.

  Silver hadn’t thought about the incident since then. In the Green Leas Estate it came easily to mind; the metaphor was obvious.

  Gladys said, “Now Mr Macrae, I know you like a drop of whisky, you being a Scotchman. And Sergeant Silver? Eddie had some bottles of lager — ”

  “Whisky will be fine, Mrs Twyford.”

  “It’s no trouble. He always kept a bottle or two in the cupboard…”

  She went out to the kitchen.

  “I wonder where all the plants went,” Macrae said. “It used to be a jungle in here.”

  Silver stood by the window keeping an eye on the car.

  “We were wondering about the plants,” Macrae said when Gladys returned. She was carrying a tray with bottles.

  “Eddie threw them out,” she said. “Years it took to grow them like they was. Then one day he throws them out. Says he must have a clear field.”

  “For what?” Silver was puzzled.

  “Them.” She indicated the outdoors with her thumb. “In case they ever got inside.”

  “Oh.” Silver assumed she meant the youths they had seen.

  She took doilies off two plates of sandwiches and a dish of sausage rolls. “Egg? Potted meat?”

  They each took two.

  “Would you like me to heat up the sausage rolls?”

  “No, no,” Macrae said. “They’re just fine.”

  “I should have cooked something. A man needs a hot meal. Eddie always…he always…” She began to cry, not loudly, just a soft snivelling. “I’m sorry…I’ll be all right in a moment…”

  “Let it all out,” Macrae said.

  “It’s just that I…you know it was so sudden. That’s why…I mean three days ago he was here, right in this sitting-room…and now…”

  She had opened a window on a bleak and lonely future.

  “Mr Macrae, I’m frightened. They won’t leave off now that Eddie’s gone. You’ll see. It’ll be worse. Can’t you do something?”

  “I just wish I could. But you’ve got to catch them red-handed and — ”

  “But couldn’t you talk to them? Eddie always said, “Mr Macrae’ll talk to them. He’ll fix it.””

  Silver thought of the patrol of youths they had just seen. That’s what they seemed like to him: a patrol. A group patrolling without organization but with a shared desire to find something — anything — to relieve their boredom.

  “What about moving to another part of London?” Silver said.

  “We asked the housing. We applied. They said there were waiting lists. It’s no use. When Eddie was here, well…we had each other. But now…”

  “They may not worry you again,” Macrae said. “They had it in for Eddie because he’d been in the police. But they’ve nothing against you.”

  She looked unconvinced. “You know what they did? I don’t even like to mention it. But they…they pushed a parcel through the letter box. Wrapped newspapers. And inside the newspapers…”

  Her chin began to tremble and tears came to her eyes again. “I can’t say it. I just can’t. Nobody does things like that. I mean I never even heard of such a thing before…But they did it.” She paused. Macrae chomped on his sausage roll. “I’m not young anymore,” she said. “I can’t go on like this. Mr Macrae, why is it that it’s the elderly that suffer? Why can’t the government look after us better?”

  “God knows, and that’s the truth.”

  They stayed another half an hour then went out into the cold afternoon.

  Silver said, “I don’t like leaving her, guv’nor.”

  “What the hell can we do about it?”

  They drove slowly through the estate. A single youth was walking along the middle of the road with his back to them. Silver flashed his lights. The youth didn’t take the slightest notice.

  “Come on, come on,” Silver said.

  “You sound just like Eddie. Hoot him.”

  Silver.tapped the hooter. The youth took no notice. �
�Shit!” Macrae said. “I’ve had enough of these bloody ego trips. Stop.” Silver pulled up just ahead of the youth. He was about sixteen, short, burly, with cropped hair, a single earring in his nose, and tattoos on his hands. He wore tight-fitting jeans, Doc Marten boots, a long khaki parka, and a chain round his neck.

  “Come here, sonny,” Macrae said. He stood massively in the middle of the road, his head thrust forward like a bull’s.

  “You talking to me?”

  “That’s right, sonny.”

  Silver had turned the car side-on and had kept the engine running in case the “patrol” suddenly came upon them. Near his hand was a large shifting-spanner. It lived by the driver’s seat. His “gun”, Zoe called it.

  The youth faltered. The aggression began to melt. He looked over his shoulder but he was alone. Macrae beckoned slowly with his finger.

  “Why?” the youth said.

  “Because I say so, sonny.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m a policeman.”

  His hand shot out and caught the youth by his scruffy T-shirt and pulled him closer. The other hand gripped his ear. The youth cried out.

  “Listen to me, sonny, you and your mates are annoying me. You follow? And you’re annoying people who live here, especially old people. You’ve been shoving nasty parcels through their letter boxes and making life a bloody misery for them…”

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “Stand still then! So what I’m saying is stop it! OK? Otherwise I’ll be back and I’ll pull it right out by the roots. You understand? Say it!”

  “Yeah. I understand.”

  “On your way then!”

  The youth walked off the road, stood under a tree and watched Macrae get back into the car. “Bastards!” he said. But he said it softly.

  Silver drove slowly across the river, on to the Embankment, and made for Cannon Row. Neither man spoke. It had been a rotten afternoon.

  Gladys Twyford stood alone in the middle of her sitting-room. For some seconds she seemed unwilling to move, then, with a sigh, she began to clear up. She noticed that Silver had hardly touched his whisky. Most of the food was uneaten.