Shooting Elvis

by Stuart Pawson

  ‘Was Armitage gay?’ someone wondered.

  ‘Not that we know of.’

  ‘So is Smallwood still in the frame?’

  ‘He’s all we have. One thing we haven’t looked at is the Midnight connection.’

  Some of them looked quizzical. They don’t all read each other’s reports, so it’s my job, when I have the chance, to share relevant information amongst them. ‘Apparently,’ I told them, ‘Smallwood used to call Alfred Midnight, for some reason or another. This really riled Alf and he had a solicitor’s letter sent to Smallwood, which put an end to it, but it didn’t do much to improve relations between them.’

  ‘Midnight, did you say?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Sounds like a racehorse. Maybe they had shares in a racehorse.’

  ‘Good point. Will you look into it, please?’

  ‘Will do, boss.’

  ‘And you, Brendan. Could you have a word with local solicitors and see if you can find who Alfred used to send the solicitor’s letter? They’ll plead client confidentiality, but use your Gaelic charm and if that’s not enough tell them that client confidentiality doesn’t extend to protecting murderers.’

  As they drifted away I caught John Rose’s attention and gestured for him to see me upstairs in my office when he’d finished deploying his DCs. Somebody had brought sachets of hot chocolate in, so I made one for myself and sipped it with my feet on the desk. I’d nearly finished it when John tapped on my window and came in.

  ‘There’s one thing we haven’t tried,’ I told him, after he’d refused a drink.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The Serious Crime Analysis Section.’

  ‘At Bramshill? It hasn’t been long enough for them to take an interest, has it?’

  ‘It hasn’t been twenty-eight days, but the motive is unknown and it’s a rather bizarre MO, so it qualifies on both those counts. Have a word with our nearest contact officer, please, and see if they have ever come across anything similar. It’s a long shot, but we’re grasping at shadows with this one.’

  Everybody knows Bramshill to be our training college, but it is also the headquarters of various initiatives using high-tech methods to solve crime. Amongst these is a database of violent crime going back nearly fifty years, storing details, both gruesome and mundane, that have enabled them to find obscure patterns of behaviour in hundreds of apparently unconnected offences and put the perpetrators behind bars. They also have links with similar databases all over the world. Crime really is a mug’s game, these days. If there was a mad electrocutionist on the loose we’d soon know about it.

  I’d told Dave that I was chuffed to bits when Sonia won the race, but that was a bit like saying that Moses was fairly pleased when the waters parted. My heart had stopped and I couldn’t breathe. It was as if I was in a different orbit, looking into the rings of Saturn, or swinging between Jupiter’s moons, and I couldn’t take in the wonder of it. I was as chuffed as a million rabbits in a carrot park.

  I stood back as she shook hands with the second girl and an official placed a medal around her neck. Photos were taken and people fussed around her, grabbing her hand, touching her arm, wanting to be part of the action. I stepped forward and gave her a towel. She flashed me a grin and hugged me, her body still heaving with the effort, her heart going like a machine gun. ‘Well done,’ was all I could say, so I said it again, ‘Well done.’

  A couple of minutes later the first man arrived. Sonia changed her shoes and put one of the tracksuits on. There was a presentation at half-past eleven in the town hall, with the lord mayor presenting the prizes. He bumbled his way through it, buzzes of electronic noise deafening the audience as he demonstrated his lack of microphone skills, and mispronounced several names, including the sponsor’s. We get the politicians we deserve, but what the citizens of Oldfield had done to deserve this buffoon escaped me. He probably was big in potted meat, or something like that.

  The winners were on the stage, and the third home in the men’s race was paying Sonia a great deal of attention. He had the gaunt face of a runner, now scrubbed clean and pink with oxygen as his cardiovascular system adjusted to the change in its duties. His spiky hair was brushed back and edged with blond highlights. He put his arm across her shoulders as they shared a joke. Sonia shrugged it off.

  A few minutes later she introduced him to me. He was kingpin at the local athletic club, knocking at the door of international honours but never quite making it. ‘You need some speed work,’ he told her as we said our goodbyes. ‘Perhaps we’ll see you at the track more often.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Sonia replied, and we went home. On the way she rang Dr Bones and told him of her success. I heard his squeals of delight over the noise of the car.

  ‘Ask him if they’d like to come out for dinner tonight,’ I whispered. We’d already decided that we’d have a celebration, win or lose, and had booked a table at the Wool Exchange, a posh restaurant in Heckley. She asked, but they were expecting a visit from family, so had to decline.

  I was down in the incident room, completing the log, when Brendan rang. ‘We might have a bit of a breakthrough, boss,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me about it.’ I like breakthroughs. Sometimes it’s something really useful, like a fingerprint or bloodstain; other times it may be merely a rumour about the victim’s relationships. Oh, yes, I love breakthroughs.

  ‘I’ve just been to Ross and Ross’s,’ he replied. ‘They were quite helpful. Alfred Armitage is on their files and they sent the solicitor’s letter to Eric Smallwood. I’ve seen a copy and it specifically mentions the name Midnight and says that Smallwood must cease to use it or any other name intended as demeaning when addressing Alfred.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I said, feeling slightly deflated. It wasn’t what I’d call a breakthrough.

  ‘There’s more,’ Brendan told me. ‘There were some old newspaper articles in the file, that Alfred had brought in to explain his case. They were about the trial and conviction of one Terence Paul Hutchinson, aka the Midnight Strangler, who allegedly murdered three girls back in ’91. He was given a thirty-year tariff.’

  ‘The Midnight Strangler? Hey, that is interesting,’ I said, with a little more enthusiasm than I’d shown earlier.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ Brendan replied, ‘but wait until you see his photograph.’

  Chapter Five

  ‘If he was given thirty years back in ’91 he still has…ooh, a long time to do,’ Dave told us after Brendan arrived back at the station with copies of the files.

  ‘He’ll be out in 2021,’ I said, after doing the maths.

  ‘That’s seventeen years left,’ Brendan added.

  ‘Crikey. I’d top myself.’

  ‘Check with HMP, Brendan,’ I suggested. ‘See if they still have Hutchinson. They might look similar but they are obviously not the same person. Alfred Armitage had worked at Ellis and Newbold’s since about 1951, man and boy. I think somebody would have told us if he’d broken his service for a murder trial and a long spell in the slammer.’

  ‘Mistaken identity?’ Brendan wondered.

  ‘It’s a strong possibility.’ I turned to Dave. ‘Tomorrow, Dave,’ I said, ‘will you please have a look at the files for the three murders. To start with just see if anything jumps out at you. Then get copies of the relevant stuff.’

  Eric Smallwood, it appeared, had christened Alfred Armitage Midnight because he had seen the photos of Hutchinson – the Midnight Strangler – in the papers and noticed their facial similarities. Alfred wasn’t too pleased by this and found himself a solicitor. This, in turn, displeased Smallwood, who regarded the whole thing as a bit of a hoot. It was probably the only humorous creativity he’d ever managed in his whole life, and it wasn’t appreciated, but that was hardly a motive for murder. Perhaps somebody else had noticed the resemblance and come to the wrong conclusion. Somebody with stronger reasons for wanting the Strangler dead.

  The man with shiny shoes
decided to go ahead anyway. The daughter of the dead couple said she didn’t want any involvement with retribution against the youth who had run down her parents, but he was convinced that she’d feel a little glow of satisfaction when she read of his death. His untimely and violent death. She was a middle-aged lady herself, conditioned by years of believing and doing the right thing. She was law abiding and liberal, and when put to the test had resisted the urge for revenge and accepted the way of the law. Highly commendable, but he knew, he knew, that when she saw it splashed across the papers that the man who murdered her parents had died, she would sleep easier in her bed at night. She would move on.

  It was a thirty-mile drive to the town where the driver’s namesake lived, but it was rush hour and the man with shiny shoes averaged only 27 miles per hour, at a fuel consumption of 31 miles per gallon. He checked his A to Z a couple of times and soon found the street he wanted. There was a good chance that it was the wrong man, but that didn’t matter. Not too much. Those who knew the case would assume it was the right person. They’d will it to be him, and deep inside they would find a contentment that they hadn’t known for years. And if it was the wrong person… Well, none of us is without sin, are we?

  ‘God moves in mysterious ways,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘but sometimes he appreciates a little help.’

  He parked in the next street, shrugged his arms into a poplin jacket and pulled an old cheese-cutter flat cap onto his head. He sat gathering his senses for a few minutes, watching the occasional pedestrian go by, looking for curtains twitching. Nobody was paying him any attention. He pulled the forged ID card from the glovebox, pushed it into his pocket and opened the car door.

  The houses were in long terraces with little front gardens, most of which were tidy and starting to blossom with the new season’s blooms. A man clipping his tiny lawn with shears didn’t pause in his labours as the man with shiny shoes walked by, and a woman and little boy passing in the opposite direction didn’t lift their heads to look at him. He rounded the corner into the street he wanted and started reading the house numbers.

  The photos in his scrapbook weren’t a big help in one way, but they were in another. The offender was always carefully concealed, either under a police blanket or by the hood of his sweatshirt. All you could see was his hand, pulling the hood tight across his mouth. Otherwise, he had been the typical profile for that sort of offence: white, teenage and undernourished. The man with shiny shoes would not be able to tell for certain if this was the right person, but neither would anybody else. Neither would the victim’s daughter. But the name would be the same: William John Hardcastle. It was not a rare name, but not a common one, either. He chuckled to himself: vengeance was not a precise science.

  He pulled the ID card from his pocket, checked it was the right one, and entered the little garden. This one was overgrown and the gate stood open, hanging on one hinge. Just what he expected. He knocked and heard footsteps on bare floorboards, reinforcing his feelings that this was a worthy victim. Then the door opened.

  The man with shiny shoes craned his neck backwards to look up into the face of the man who stood before him. For a few seconds he was speechless.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the man said, eventually.

  ‘Oh, er, yes, you may be able to.’ He waved the phoney ID and the words came tumbling out as he struggled to regain his composure. ‘Um, I’m Detective Inspector Smith. I’m looking for William John Hardcastle. Does he live here?’

  ‘You found him, man. How can I help you?’

  ‘You? You’re William Hardcastle?’

  ‘The one and only. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I think there’s been a mistake. The person I’m looking for is…well, he’s smaller than you. And he’s, um…’

  ‘White? Are you telling me that I’m not the one because I’m black?’

  ‘Er, yes, it looks like that.’

  ‘Hey man, that’s a first. That ought to go in the papers. I never heard anything like that before.’

  The man with shiny shoes said, ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you,’ and turned to leave.

  ‘Any time, man. Any time at all,’ the black giant called after him.

  He averaged 47 miles per hour on the journey home, but didn’t know because he forgot to check. He warmed up the lasagne that had been left for him but only picked at it and steered it around the plate, his appetite destroyed by disappointment. It hadn’t been like this the last time. He’d come home ravenous after the last time, and wolfed his dinner down. That was surely a sign that what he was doing was right. He felt so comfortable with it; so…justified. He went upstairs to study his files. There was still plenty of work left undone.

  Angie’s ex-boyfriend struck again during the night. Angie is a hairdresser in town, on the part of the main street that is slowly being taken over by charity shops since the new mall opened. She’s a typical twenty-something-year-old Heckley girl: long frizzy two-tone hair; midriff bulging over the waistband of her low-cut Farahs; nose ring and some obscure design tattooed on the small of her back. Most of the local totty sport what is known as the Heckley face-lift. They pull their hair savagely back and secure it with rubber bands, thus achieving the dual aims of making it look reasonably tidy and ironing out most of their facial wrinkles. Angie has her work cut out persuading them to park their baby buggies outside and come in for a proper hairstyle.

  When they can afford it they like to club – that’s Newspeak for getting rat-arsed over the weekend, which starts on Thursday – including Angie. Especially Angie, as she has a source of income that doesn’t involve queuing at the post office or DSS once a fortnight. Angie likes to enjoy herself. One boyfriend, she decided, wasn’t enough for a business lady on the up.

  The regular boyfriend she ditched wasn’t too pleased, so he took action. One morning about a year ago, as we came to work, some of us noticed that Angie’s Unisex Salon had suddenly become Angie’s sex Salon. Angie wasn’t pleased, either, and came to us, sobbing and calling him names that made the desk sergeant blush to his socks. We gave the ex-boyfriend a caution and reported her to the apostrophe police.

  Now he’d struck for the fourth time and according to the sign painted on her window she was offering a cut and blow job for a fiver. It wasn’t funny anymore. Well, it was, but we tried to keep it serious. I wondered if his behaviour was becoming obsessive so we fetched him in.

  Dave rang me, late in the day, from Lincoln, where he was trawling the records for information on the Midnight Strangler’s career.

  ‘We could be onto something, Charlie,’ he said. ‘The third case was a girl called Julie Bousfield that he raped and murdered. Her brother jumped up in court after sentence was passed and swore to kill Hutchinson. He’s called Brian Bousfield. The other two cases are just as bad, though. It could be family from any of them.’

  ‘Have you had a chance to run a PNC on him?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Fair enough. How do you fancy staying down there overnight and I’ll come down in the morning?’

  ‘No problem. I’ll ring Shirl and tell her. There’s a Travel Inn just off the M1. Shall I see you at the nick?’

  We talked about it and decided that he’d let me know where he was staying and I’d pick him up there, early. I rang my opposite number in Nottingham to let him know we were operating on his patch. He sounded keen to be involved and asked me to keep him informed. The murders had left some wounds in the local community that still hadn’t healed.

  Later, I drove Sonia to the golf club and we went for a run. I did my one lap and she did two. The 10K race had been a crucial test for her but she’d come through it well. Not because she won, but because the knee took all the pounding that the hard road surface could give it. She’d trained on the soft, undulating ground through the woods and over the golf course, where the varying surface gives the legs a good workout without hammering any particular part of them. On the road, it’s bam-bam-bam, bashing away at the sa
me point, twice per second, for mile after mile. She’d put the knee on the rack, and it had survived.

  The bees were gorging themselves on the new blossom, long shadows stretched across the fairways and the golfers were out in force. We stick to the edges of the course and they don’t mind the distraction, most of them giving us a friendly wave. At least, we assume it’s friendly, although they are often brandishing a number three iron at the time. Heckley is hardly St Andrews, and most of the members are just recreational golfers, not fanatics. I towelled the sweat on Sonia’s neck and shoulders for a few moments then handed her the towel.

  ‘Your name was in the Daily Express this morning,’ I told her.

  ‘Really!’ she said, looking up from changing her trainers. ‘What did it say?’

  ‘It said, “Women: S Thornton”.’

  She gave one of her little giggles. ‘Gosh, fame at last.’

  ‘It’s a start,’ I said. Our press man had done his bit, and the local paper, the Heckley Gazette, was promising quite a spread about the race, but I didn’t tell her that. I nodded over towards the golf clubhouse. ‘Don’t forget that we’re coming here on Saturday.’

  ‘Is it this week?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will Sparky and all your detectives be there?’

  ‘No, just me and the boss, and don’t let Sparky hear you call him Sparky.’

  ‘Right. I’d better start looking for a dress.’

  As we buckled our seatbelts I said, ‘How about a pint of lager shandy on the way home?’

  ‘Mmm, that sounds nice,’ she agreed. I put the car in gear and reversed out from the line of cars at the dog-walkers’ end of the car park. All the regulars were there, and at least one stranger, but it didn’t register. When I’m with Sonia my powers of observation desert me, like the swallows heading south to warmer climes, leaving the chill behind.