[Inspector Peach 05] - The Lancashire Leopard

by J M Gregson

  “I don’t know: I’ve never tried it on him. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t — you’ve got lots of alternatives. There’s enough to feed at least six.”

  Lucy was glad when they could stop whispering and go back into the lounge, donning their smiles at the door like air hostesses coming out of the galley. Percy put his smile on to greet them, the passenger who was trying hard not to be a difficult traveller.

  But now that Lucy had warned him off the easy compliments with that earlier look, he did not know what to say. He wanted to say something nice about her daughter to this pleasant lady who was obviously so proud of her, but he couldn’t think of the right thing. Because the mind was the wayward instrument that it is, all he could think of was the vision of Lucy before the full-length mirror in her new green scanties. The fact that he’d rather give her a good seeing to than do anything else in this world hardly seemed the kind of light conversational gambit to offer to her mother. It didn’t mean that he didn’t love and cherish her for all kinds of other reasons, of course, but that might be difficult to convey if he started from the bedroom image on which his imagination seemed to have jammed. “The...the snowdrops. Very nice,” he stuttered.

  “Harbingers of spring,” said Lucy, and he realised that she was enjoying his discomfort.

  When they began the meal, he could only think of the formidable mother-in-law he had been so happy to discard years earlier. He had not thought of her for a long time now, yet here she was vividly before him, imprisoning his tongue as her long-gone criticisms echoed in his ears and her one-piece bosom loomed in his mind’s eye. Agnes Blake could hardly have been more different, and yet he found himself watching his table manners, not looking at either of the women at the table when he spoke, picking his way through the conversation as carefully as if he were conducting it with chopsticks.

  Lucy was amused at his predicament. She had not seen him like this before: to watch the formidable flood-tide of Percy Peach’s word-flow stemmed at source was a new experience. It made her fonder of him, as a lover’s vulnerability will, but she enjoyed it too much to end it.

  And Agnes Blake was almost as stilted as he was, blushing at his compliments to her food, spilling scones on to the tablecloth as she urged him to take another.

  The solution came from an unexpected quarter. When they left the table with their final cups of tea and went to sit in comfort in the parlour, Agnes said rather desperately, “Lucy says that your real name isn’t Percy. That she’s seen your initials on things but can’t remember—”

  “D. C. S. That’s right, Mrs Blake. I was christened Denis Charles Scott Peach. Not after a saint, I’m afraid. But after—”

  “After Denis Charles Scott Compton! I’m right, aren’t I?” Agnes clapped her hands together in spontaneous delight.

  “Well, yes, you are. My Dad was a cricket fan, you see, and the great Denis Compton was his favourite cricketer. But you’re the first woman I’ve ever known who recognised the initials.”

  “Your parents couldn’t have chosen a better model! Always played his cricket with a smile, Denis, never forgot that it was a game to be enjoyed. Three thousand eight hundred and sixteen runs he made, you know, in one season! Eighteen centuries. And every one a gem. He couldn’t have bored you if he’d tried, couldn’t Denis! Did you ever see him play?”

  Percy smiled. “No, he’d stopped playing well before I was born, I’m afraid, Mrs Blake.”

  Agnes nodded. “That damned knee! Stopped him early, you know, when he could have gone on giving pleasure for years. And of course he lost the best years of his career to the war.”

  And so these two northern people who had so wanted to be relaxed and friendly with each other were brought together by a dead southern cricketer who had danced down the wicket half a century before, who lived on brightly in the sharp memory of a woman who had queued outside Old Trafford to see him when she was fifteen, and in the names chosen for a baby born long after he had ceased to play.

  Agnes brought him the picture of her dead husband in his whites, a big man, tired but happy, staring at the camera with a shy smile and his sweater over his shoulder. “That’s Bill when he’d taken six for forty-four against Blackpool. The paper said that even Rohan Kanhai had to treat him with respect.”

  She showed him her long row of cricket books, and was delighted to find that Percy had most of them on his shelves; she insisted on lending him a Neville Cardus and a John Arlott to take away with him. “Those are the two who paint a real picture. The two who are able to show you how cricket is a part of life, not something on its own,” she said.

  Lucy had not seen her mother so animated for years — not since before Dad died, she thought sadly. When she tried to get into the conversation, she was banished by Agnes as a pretentious non-expert. “You never did understand, our Lucy, so don’t get in our way now. Stick to your netball, you were good at that!”

  And she pushed back the chairs to demonstrate Denis Compton’s unique leg-glance, played when the ball was almost past him, relying for its execution on dazzling footwork and timing. Percy tried to imitate it, and she corrected his posture, making him hit the invisible ball impossibly late, so that he lost his balance and they fell laughing together on to the sofa.

  Agnes’s cup ran over when she found that Percy had played in the Lancashire League, the greatest of all the leagues, in her view. “You’re never that Peach?” she gasped happily. “I used to check your scores in the Evening Dispatch.” She looked at him shyly. “It was your initials, you see, the D. C. S. And then the way they described you dancing down the wicket to the slow bowlers, that made me think of Denis too, you see. So I used to follow your scores each week.”

  Then he had to tell her about fielding against the magnificent Vivien Richards, who had played as professional for Rishton and made him see what greatness was. And Agnes told them about the “three Ws” of West Indian cricket — Weekes, Walcott and Worrell, who had all played league cricket in Lancashire in the fifties, the first two in her favourite Lancashire League. And showed them pictures, and distinguished each from each by her enthusiastic descriptions of how they looked and how they batted.

  At nine o’clock, she was still telling them just how good Ray Lindwall had been when he’d pro’d for Nelson. Lucy, who had been a delighted spectator for over two hours, brought in a pot of tea to top the gins and tonics she’d been dispatched to make earlier. “You’ll have to let him get off, Mum. We’ve an early start tomorrow and a busy week ahead of us.”

  It was the first time that evening that either of them had thought about the Leopard.

  She saw him off with a chaste kiss on the doorstep. “She’s all right, your mum,” Percy whispered in her ear.

  The mother in question was putting her photographs away when Lucy went back into the house. She set the big one of her dead Bill carefully back on the sideboard and looked at it for a couple of seconds before she turned round to her daughter. “You’re not such a bad picker, after all, our Lucy,” she said with a smile. “He’s all right, your Percy Peach.”

  Seventeen

  Monday, February 4th

  Superintendent Tucker wanted to hold Peach personally responsible for the Leopard’s fourth murder and give him a severe dressing down. At the same time, he wished to dangle the carrot of promotion before him and claim credit for fostering his case. Tucker thought this would be a very difficult combination. A better man would have realised it was impossible.

  “A fourth innocent woman dead. It’s not good enough, Peach! I’ve got you double the resources a murder inquiry normally carries, and yet you appear to be quite baffled.”

  Peach was seized by an urge to scream at this hypocritical windbag; to tell him exactly how much he cared about these murders; how he lay awake at night, the innocence of the victims and the suffering among those left behind revolving in his mind; how he was determined above all else, above anything he had wanted in his whole professional life, to put away this man
who was sneering at the efforts of his team, and planning more deaths among those whom the police were there to protect.

  Instead he said, “Yes, sir. ‘Baffled’ is what the Mail says this morning, so it must be true.” Tucker peered at him suspiciously. “Actually, sir, it mentions you by name, so I wondered if you’d actually told them you were baffled. Just here, sir, underneath the bit about outbursts of hot air and flatulent excuses.” He thrust the most offensive of the morning’s Leopard articles across the desk at his chief, pinpointing the offending passage with an immaculately groomed nail.

  Tucker was almost seduced into reading the copy. Then he waved it angrily away and said, “I don’t care what the gutter press is saying about our activities. What do they know about it, anyway?”

  “What, indeed, sir? I agree with you absolutely about the gutter press. I prefer the broadsheets myself...though I have to say they are scarcely more complimentary this morning. “‘Will no man rid us of this Turbulent Tucker?’ is the Guardian’s line. I suppose it’s nice for you to be compared to Thomas à Becket, but it doesn’t really seem to be your saintliness the writer’s dwelling upon. Of course, he won’t know you as well as we do.”

  “I told you, I’m not interested in the tittle-tattle of the fourth estate. I’m interested in arresting this wretched Leopard fellow. Nothing more and nothing less. And quickly. We live and die by our results, Peach.” He jutted his jaw in his most Napoleonic pose.

  Silly sod’s got constipation again, Peach thought. It was better to ridicule him than to indulge in outbursts of fruitless temper. “Been out to the scene of the latest crime, have you, sir?”

  Tucker’s gaze into the brighter future of his vision became a glare at his inspector. “You know I don’t interfere with my team. My job is to secure the resources, to keep the overview of the situation, to keep the public apprised of our efforts.”

  And as a result, the public is told that the police are baffled and the man in charge of the case is a wanker, thought Peach. Even the British press chances upon the truth sometimes. He said, “I called at the site yesterday, on my way to Manchester. She was a respectable married woman with two kids, on her way home from work. Sally Cartwright. Died just before midnight, by the Leopard’s usual method. He seems to have left no more of himself behind than he did at the scenes of the three previous killings.”

  He was curious to know what Tucker would say to this. Even a pillock like this must have some view. But all his superintendent said was “Manchester? On a Sunday? What were you going to Manchester for?”

  “I went for a chat with Dr Wishart, sir.”

  “Wishart? Dr Wishart?”

  Perhaps Alzheimer’s was claiming the old fool for her own at last, Peach mused. “Of Manchester University, sir. The forensic psychologist who came over to speak to us on Thursday.”

  “Oh, him! I didn’t think you’d be wasting any more time on him. I certainly wasn’t very impressed with your Dr Wishart. Bit of a charlatan, if you ask me! I’m surprised you thought it worthwhile to ask him over here in the first place. Waste of the team’s valuable time.”

  “I thought you believed it was a good idea at the time, sir,” said Peach, with as much mildness as he could muster.

  “Oh, I think your memory’s letting you down there, Peach. I think you’ll find I was sceptical about the idea from the start.”

  “I see, sir. I apologise for the misapprehension. It was just that the Chief Constable was pretty enthusiastic about it and I naturally thought that you were part of his thinking. But I should have known you well enough to know that you’d take an independent line! If I get the chance, I’ll let the CC know that you think forensic psychology’s a right load of old codswallop. I’m sure he’ll be most interested to know that such independence of mind is a feature of—”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort, Peach! That would be overstating my view completely. I have an open mind on these things.”

  “Yes, sir. I see, sir. I often tell the lads and lasses on the team what an open mind you have.” That’s if “open” is synonymous with “vacant”, thought Peach, with firmly crossed fingers.

  “Anyway, what did this so-called professor have to tell those of us at the cutting edge of investigation from his ivory tower?” sneered Tucker. That was putting the fellow in his place, he thought. He was not sure at that moment whether he meant Wishart or Peach.

  “Some interesting things, sir, I thought. But I won’t waste your time with them, now I know your views.”

  “What did he say, Peach?”

  The clenched teeth and the forced delivery were danger signs, Peach observed. Unless the constipation was worse than usual. “Well, sir, he thought the killer was probably a Brunton man, operating outwards from a Brunton base.”

  “Well, I’m with him there. That seems fair enough.” Tucker had begun the process of reversal. He did not even look embarrassed.

  “That the Leopard is killing not from any perverted sense of justice, like those men who seek out prostitutes and drug addicts. All his victims are respectable women.”

  “That might be helpful, I suppose.”

  “That he’s a planner, who enjoys plotting and researching his crimes. That he’s probably driven by a sense of power. The ultimate power, over life and death, that’s what fascinates him about his killing.”

  Tucker’s look of puzzlement increased. These were deep waters, too deep for him. Deprived of a reaction, Peach prepared to drop in his ace of trumps. “Hamish Wishart thought our killer might well be a professional man, rather than someone from the underworld of crime. Interesting idea, that. I thought perhaps you should keep a wary eye on your colleagues in the Lodge, sir, just in case it should prove that—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Peach! And I’ll thank you to keep your wild theories out of my personal—”

  “Not mine, sir. The theories of the man brought in to help us with his professional analysis of the situation.”

  “Well, it’s ridiculous to suggest the Leopard could be a member of the Masons.”

  “I see, sir. Dr Wishart just thought it might be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a schoolteacher. Or even a policeman.”

  “A policeman?”

  “A possibility, sir, that was all he said. Because this is someone used to discipline in his working life, we thought. Someone organised, who brings the planning he is used to in his daily work to bear on his murders.”

  Tucker was still shaken by Peach’s mischievous image of his lodge members as serial killers. “You’re speculating much too far. Your killer will be found among the lower classes, I’m sure.”

  “The lower classes, sir. I see.” Peach savoured that faintly old-fashioned phrase for a moment.

  “Yes. You and I know from the wealth of our experience that most serious crime comes from people who already have a record. My advice is to scrutinise your files again. I shouldn’t be surprised if you’ve already interviewed a candidate who would conform to the pattern I’ve outlined for you.”

  Pattern? thought Peach. More an assembly of vague prejudices than any pattern. “Well, there is one man, sir, I suppose. Fellow who’s done time for GBH and came out last September, just over a month before the Leopard killings began. Who used to beat his wife and had started to hit his daughter before he went inside, but never laid a finger on his son. Unsavoury character by the name of Terry Plant. He’d fit your pattern, I suppose.”

  “Well, then. Has he been interviewed? Has he been questioned in connection with the Leopard killings?”

  “Yes, sir. Matter of fact, he was even found threatening a woman with a baseball bat, only last week.” And all this has been reported fully to you, in a file you’ve never bothered to read, you lazy wanker. You’ve asked for what’s coming in a minute, you idle bugger.

  “Well then. Why aren’t you questioning him at this very minute about the murder of Sally Cartwright, instead of annoying me?”

  “Because he was safely under lock and key in Prest
on Prison at the time, sir. Awaiting trial on a charge of armed robbery.”

  *

  No one who worked with him would have suspected it, and he himself would certainly never have admitted it, but Percy Peach sometimes felt quite lonely. Not in his private life: the little leisure that the Leopard had left him at the moment was amply filled by the lively mind and livelier curves of Lucy Blake.

  But sometimes DI Peach, outwardly so supreme in his confidence, felt a professional loneliness. He missed the exchanges about a case that he should have had with his superintendent, in which two experienced professionals exchanged views openly and productively about their current cases. The Leopard was stretching Peach’s resilience and energies, his whole professional existence, further than they had ever been stretched in his career, and he felt the need of a sympathetic senior colleague off whom he might bounce ideas, and even gain a little of the reassurance he could never admit he needed.

  He talked to DI Parkinson, his opposite number in the Serious Crime Squad, whose resources were being used to bolster the Brunton CID team, but the two men had never worked together before. Although they exchanged information freely and usefully as the list of possible killers grew ever longer, there were limits to what each would confide to the other of his thoughts and his increasing desperation. Neither wanted to voice his more outlandish speculations, when he knew they might eventually be made to look ridiculous. For example, when Peach passed on Hamish Wishart’s idea that the killer might be a professional man, possibly even a policeman, he did so with studious neutrality, without any comment from himself on what he thought of the idea.

  In the afternoon after his fruitless exchange with Tucker, Peach called together three of the officers who had worked most closely with him on the Leopard case for an exchange of views. He could not admit, even to himself, that it was an attempt to clarify his own thinking on the plethora of information that was pouring into the ever-open maws of the computers, a substitute for the kind of informal exchange he should really be having with an older officer who had seen it all before.