by James Craig
Standing on the pavement, the trio eyed the two coppers suspiciously over their bags of chips.
‘We don’t want a ruck,’ Carlyle said, sotto voce, as he got ready to flee.
‘No,’ Dom agreed, cheerily, ‘not ’til I’ve finished my tea, anyway.’
‘Cheeky sods!’
Even out of uniform, the two coppers stood out like a sore thumb. With their short-back-and-sides haircuts and healthy, well-fed glow, it was almost as if they were a different species from the anaemic, washed-out locals. It was rare to see any rozzers venturing into the village out of uniform nowadays. These two must be particularly stupid.
It would be a pleasure to give them a good kicking.
Lifting his left boot half an inch off the pavement, Ian Williamson rotated the ankle first clockwise, then counter-clockwise. It was always good to limber up before a bit of action. He looked up and down the street. He was fairly sure the duo eating chips outside the bookies were on their own. He knew from painful experience that the last thing you wanted was to pile in and then find half a dozen of their mates zooming round the corner.
‘See those two bastards over there,’ he hissed, laying on the Yorkshire accent thick, even though he came from the poshest part of Harrogate, where everyone spoke the Queen’s English and drank tea from china cups. That, and the fact that his father was a parish priest, was something that the boy had to work hard to live down.
‘Coppers,’ Arthur Jenkins nodded. ‘Definitely.’
‘This chicken pie’s good,’ Eric Kellner mumbled, oblivious to the interlopers. ‘Right tasty it is.’
Ignoring his friend’s critique of the Golden Fryer’s fare, Williamson pointed towards the officers with a limp chip. ‘What are those stupid bastards doing down here?’
Kellner wiped a piece of pie crust from the side of his mouth and looked up. ‘It looks like they’re having their tea, just like us.’
Jesus fucking Christ, where did we find this one? Williamson glanced at Jenkins, who just shrugged and carried on eating.
‘Paula said they were from London.’
How would the stupid cow in the chip shop know? Williamson wondered. It was, however, a reasonable guess.
‘Up here making lots of overtime so they can have expensive cars and fancy holidays while we bloody well starve,’ Jenkins observed, parroting the last thing they had heard at the Socialist Worker meeting in the community centre earlier in the evening. ‘They’re bloody coining it in.’
‘That’s right,’ Williamson smiled. The Socialist Worker lot were complete berks, playground revolutionaries, selling their stupid bloody paper. They had some nice birds, though. One in particular had caught his eye. Samantha — Sam — a posh girl from somewhere in the Home Counties, had a great arse and a nasty smile. Her father was a baron, or something. God knows what the old man made of his darling daughter traipsing up here to wallow in the misery of the proletariat.
Thinking about young Sam he felt a twitch in his groin. Sometime soon he was going to give her a good lesson on the indefatigable power of the working class.
Banishing thoughts of a naked, panting Samantha sprawled across his crumpled bed sheets, he returned to the matter in hand. ‘Look at them. .’ again, he gestured towards the policemen. ‘Cheeky bastards. They shouldn’t be here. ’
‘They’re taking the piss,’ Jenkins agreed.
‘Looks like we’re gonna have to teach them a fooking lesson.’ Shovelling a few more chips into his mouth, Williamson crumpled the newspaper wrapping in his hand. Forming a ball, he tossed it towards the waste bin that stood outside the shop. The rubbish hit the rim of the basket and bounced into the gutter. Ignoring it, he stepped into the road, heading towards the two coppers.
Keeping his eyes on the youths, bouncing on the balls of his feet, Carlyle was getting ready to run. The chips were already beginning to settle in his stomach and he wondered how far he might get before throwing up. He glanced at Dom, who was still leaning nonchalantly against the lamppost, slowly spearing chips and lifting them to his mouth as he watched the local yobbos begin their approach.
‘Dom. .’
‘Be cool, Johnny boy,’ Silver smiled. ‘Nothing’s gonna happen. As my old dad would say, these boys are all piss and no vinegar.’
That might be all right for your old dad to say, Carlyle thought grimly, but he’s not bloody here, is he? He watched the trio move closer. Maybe the fat boy at the back shoving the pie into his gob, will back off, but I’m not so sure about the other two. Even from a hundred yards away, he could see that they were big blokes, bigger than him anyway, no doubt well capable of handing out a good shoeing.
‘Speaking of which, I could do with some more vinegar on these chips.’
Not wanting to find out if he was right about the shoeing, Carlyle decided to leg it. If Dom wanted to stand there and play it cool, that was fine. For Carlyle, however, discretion was the greater part of valour. ‘I think it’s time go. .’
‘Be cool,’ Dom repeated.
Carlyle took a step backwards. ‘Fuck, Dom.’ He was turning to flee when a group of a dozen or so uniforms piled out of the darkness of the alley next to the Golden Fryer, screaming at the men in the leather jackets to get on the ground.
What the fuck? One minute Ian Williamson was getting ready to give those two wankers a good kicking; the next there were bloody pigs everywhere, screaming that he was under arrest and ordering him to lie down on the tarmac. At least they weren’t in riot gear. When a constable appeared in front of him, Williamson instinctively smashed his forehead into the guy’s face. There was a crunching noise and the officer went down, moaning, blood spurting from the remains of his nose. Not stopping to admire his handiwork, Williamson put his head down and started to run.
Saved by the cavalry, Carlyle thought happily as he watched the uniforms wrestle two of the men to the ground. The third guy had landed a Glasgow kiss on one of the officers and was making a break for freedom. Head down, arms pumping, he was heading straight towards them, pursued by a trio of policemen. As the man approached, it was clear that he was pulling away from the sluggish officers. Instinctively, Carlyle stepped out of the way. He didn’t have a dog in this fight and he was happy to let them all get on with it.
‘They’re not going to catch him, are they?’ Pushing himself off the lamppost, Dom tossed the remains of his dinner into a bin on the pavement. ‘Standards in the police service are terrible these days,’ he mused. ‘You’d have thought to be a policeman you’d at least have to be able to run a hundred yards. I wonder when any of that lot last passed a medical?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘And, mark my words, it’s only going to get worse.’
‘Eh?’
‘Standards of fitness in the police force,’ Dom explained. ‘We’re on the cusp of an obesity epidemic in this country. Too much crap food and not enough exercise. And the police are only a reflection of the society they serve. In thirty years’ time, it’ll be rare that coppers will be able to run at all.’
Says the man who just stuffed his face with a bag of chips, Carlyle mused. ‘This guy looks quite fast, though,’ he replied as they watched the escaping suspect lengthen his lead over his pursuers with every stride.
‘Pah.’ Waiting until the last minute, Dom skipped out into the road and stuck out a leg. Unable to change course in time, the fleeing man went straight over his foot, bouncing down the tarmac in a cursing, crumpled heap.
Ouch, Carlyle thought cheerily, that’s got to hurt. He watched as the puffing coppers descended on the prostrate man and pulled him roughly to his feet. Clearly dazed, he was bleeding from a nasty gash to his forehead. As they dragged the suspect back to a waiting van, one of the officers, red-faced and sweating profusely, gave Dom a thumbs up. ‘Thanks mate!’
‘No problem,’ Dom grinned, returning the gesture.
‘I think we were catching him, though,’ the cop grinned.
‘Without a doubt,’ Dom agreed.
Carlyle let his gaz
e slip back down the street. From behind the van appeared a familiar figure in a green quilted jacket — the inspector who had turned up in the woods. What was his name? Holt. He watched him say something to the driver of the van and then look down the road, towards them. Whether he recognized Charlie Ross’s two minions was impossible to say, given the distance, but Carlyle was fairly sure that now was not the time to be renewing acquaintances. He put a hand on Dom’s shoulder. ‘I think that’s enough excitement for one night,’ he said firmly. ‘Now we really should get going.’
SEVEN
Propped up on a couple of pillows, Fran Mullin fired up her second post-coital Embassy Regal, placed it between her lips and took a drag. ‘It all sounds very thin to me,’ she said, folding her arms as she exhaled a stream of smoke towards the ceiling.
‘Mm.’ Rob Holt listened to his stomach rumbling. He was starving. He also needed a piss. Getting up, however, was just too much of a chore for him to be able to manage it immediately. Edging away from the wet patch in the middle of the bed, he tried to slip out a modest fart without his lover noticing.
‘I’m serious, Rob.’ Mullin took another drag on her cigarette. ‘If this doesn’t hold up, you are going to end up looking stupid. Really stupid. It could be the end of your career.’
‘Ha!’ he laughed. ‘What career? My so-called career came to an abrupt end the day I left London and bowled up in this hell hole.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ she pouted.
‘You know what I mean.’ Sticking his head under the covers, he planted a kiss between her legs, breathing in deeply as he did so.
‘Get off!’ Stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table, she pushed him away.
‘C’mon,’ he protested, coming up for air. ‘You are the only reason this place is bearable. If it wasn’t for. .’
She shot him a look that said: Be careful what you say right now.
He stuck a big smile on his face. ‘If it wasn’t for you being so totally wonderful, I don’t know what I would have done.’
‘Don’t try and butter me up, Rob,’ she said sternly, trying to beat down a smile.
‘Would I?’ he grinned, knowing that he had done exactly that.
‘Yes you would. Anyway, all I am saying is that it is very convenient for the police to have found someone to take the rap for Beatrice Slater’s murder so quickly.’
Take the rap? Holt frowned. It sounded like Fran had been overdosing on Hill Street Blues again.
‘After all,’ she continued, ‘this is the biggest crime there’s been here, on your patch, for God knows how long.’
‘By miles,’ he agreed. ‘It’s the first murder in the district for more than a decade.’
‘Quite. . and you’ve managed to make an arrest in less than forty-eight hours.’
‘Well,’ he pouted, ‘it’s not like I’m some inexperienced village bobby. I did come up here from the throbbing metropolis, remember.’
‘Still, this is the first murder case that you’ve had since you’ve been here.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And you’ve solved it almost immediately, even though the whole place is a war zone at the moment and all of your officers are stretched to the limit.’
‘It’s not that surprising,’ Holt shrugged. ‘If you’re going to catch the bloke who did it, you’re usually going to get him in the first day or so.’ He remembered reading an article about it in the Police Review.
‘Only when they are caught red-handed,’ Mullin protested, trying to resist the craving for another cigarette.
‘So, what are you saying?’ he snapped.
‘Who fingered Ian Williamson?’ she shot back. ‘Was it that gormless boy from MI5?’
‘Who says he’s from MI5?’ Holt stuck an exploratory foot over the side of the bed. He really did need that piss.
Mullin let her gaze drift to a point near the window where the brown, orange and yellow Apollo wallpaper had started peeling off. ‘C’mon Rob,’ she said wearily, ‘it’s a bit late to be tight lipped.’
‘Mm.’
‘Anyway, the junior spook showed me his ID. He was very proud of it. It was quite sweet really.’
Holt slumped back on the bed. ‘Christ! What a berk!’
‘It’s good to know our security is in the hands of people like that,’ Mullin laughed. ‘Just as well they’re only up against poor old Arthur Scargill.’
‘You cannot write any of this,’ Holt groaned. ‘Never, ever.’
‘I don’t want to write any of this,’ she replied, exasperated with her boyfriend’s total lack of faith in her powers of discretion. ‘However, there will be plenty of people writing the story when Ian Williamson is paraded in court tomorrow. And more than a few of them will ask the same questions as me.’
‘He did it,’ Holt said sullenly.
‘Uh-huh. Isn’t the idea that you’re supposed to prove that he did it?’
‘He did it.’
Mullin raised her eyebrows. ‘Did he confess?’
‘We have two witnesses who saw him near Slater’s house.’
‘That’s very convenient. Who are they?’
‘C’mon,’ he frowned, ‘I’m not going to tell you that.’
‘Do they really exist?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Have you spoken to them?’
Holt hesitated.
‘Rob?’
‘Not yet,’ he admitted quietly.
‘And yet you’ve nicked this guy?’
‘I’ve seen the statements.’
‘How did you find them, the witnesses?’
‘They came forward.’
‘Very handy.’
‘They were concerned citizens.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘They did,’ he protested. ‘They independently say that they saw Williamson entering. . and leaving Slater’s house around the time that she was killed.’
Unconsciously, Mullin eased into full-on journalist mode as she changed tack. ‘Beatrice was found in the woods. Are you saying that she was killed in her home?’
‘We think so.’
‘And your witnesses saw him leave with the body?’
Holt grimaced. ‘I need a piss.’
But her mind was in overdrive now and she kept pressing. ‘If he went to the trouble of moving the body, why didn’t he make more of an effort to hide it? It wasn’t going to take people long to find her in those woods. They’re small and there are kids crawling all over them all the time. Presumably, if he had left her in her house, it would have taken a lot longer for the body to be discovered.’
‘People do stupid things,’ was all Holt could offer. He’d read that in Police Review too.
‘So, what are you saying? Williamson went to the house to rob her? There was a scuffle and he tried to hide the body in the woods?’
‘He diddled her too, remember.’
‘So what is he, a robber or a rapist?’
‘Looks like both.’ Unable to face any more questions, Holt slipped out of bed. ‘Sorry, but I really, really need to take a piss.’
She followed him into the bathroom, watching dispassionately as he sent a stream of golden urine into the bowl. ‘I’m sorry Rob, but you really haven’t thought this thing through, have you?’
Shaking himself, Holt flushed the toilet. ‘That’s the great thing about you, Fran,’ he said, hands on hips, ‘you’re always at least one step ahead of us poor old public servants.’
It’s not that hard, Mullin thought glumly. She gestured at his cock with her chin. ‘Are you going to wash that?’
‘For God’s sake, Fran!’ he hissed, grabbing a towel and stomping out of the bathroom.
‘It doesn’t take a genius to see how this could play out,’ she replied, following him down the hall. ‘Local activist murdered. MI5 snooping around, busy telling the local police what to do. A well-known NUM supporter nicked almost immediately. The conspiracy theorists will have a field day.’
/> ‘Fuck off,’ he grumbled, running a hand through his unruly hair. ‘Can’t we have a simple shag without it turning into the bloody Spanish Inquisition? I need some food.’
The kitchen in Holt’s flat was devoid of any decoration, save for a huge poster advertising Led Zeppelin and the other acts headlining the 1979 Knebworth music festival which covered almost the entire far wall. Having borrowed one of her boyfriend’s fetching green and red Shetland sweaters, Mullin sat at the small round table that had been squeezed into the middle of the room, munching on a slice of toast smeared with strawberry jam.
‘Sorry,’ Holt said through a mouthful of toast, ‘couldn’t find any butter.’
‘It’s fine,’ Mullin grinned.
‘I need to do some shopping.’
‘As always.’ They had been going out for almost a year now. In that time, as far as she was aware, inspector Rob Holt had never once set foot inside the local Co-op. Despite not technically living here, Mullin seemed to buy all of the groceries. She washed down the toast with some tea from the chipped Bay City Rollers mug that a previous tenant had left in the cupboard and gestured to the remains of the Wonderloaf by the sink. ‘Want some more?’
Holt shook his head. ‘No, it’s okay. I’m fine.’ Getting to his feet, he shuffled round the table and squeezed behind her chair. ‘I’m sorry I got so grumpy,’ he mumbled, reaching forward and planting a kiss on the crown of her head. ‘I was just hungry.’
‘If sex takes that much out of you,’ she grinned, ‘maybe we’ll have to start rationing it.’
‘Hardly,’ he laughed. Reaching for the outsized red pot, he refilled his mug with tea, before adding a splash of milk from a carton in the fridge. ‘The job is really quite. . challenging right now.’
‘I know.’
‘I understand what you’re saying about Williamson,’ he continued, ‘and I know we’re skating on thin ice.’