[Inspector Peach 05] - The Lancashire Leopard

by J M Gregson

  Lucy Blake eyed him with distaste. “I’m glad to hear it. I hear you’ve already said enough to ensure the right verdict is reached. We’re here about something more important altogether.”

  Dutton glanced nervously at the door on his left, as if to reassure himself that it was shut. “This is harassment, this is. It’s about this bloody Leopard, isn’t it? I told the uniformed pig, I was at a Front meeting on Friday night.” He dropped fewer aitches and was generally better-spoken here at work than he had been at the station when Peach and Pickard saw him, so that the words like “wog” and “pig” fell oddly from his lips.

  Brendan Murphy said, “You weren’t at a National Front meeting at the time in question, Mr Dutton, and you know that as well as we do. If I were you, I’d be desperately trying to come up with someone to confirm my whereabouts between ten and twelve p.m.”

  “Boozing, wasn’t I? After we’d spent two hours planning to bring the country to its senses in our meeting, we were entitled to a drink.”

  “Where?”

  “The Bull’s Head on Northgate. Six of us, there were. Landlord will vouch for us, we always end up there.” He smiled triumphantly at the eager faces in front of him.

  Lucy said quietly, “And why didn’t you say this before, Mr Dutton?”

  “Didn’t feel like it, did I? Don’t take kindly to pigs, do I? Especially Irish pigs. Thickest of all, the Micks are!” He stared truculently at Murphy, challenging him to react.

  Brendan was on his feet in an instant, leaning forward to pluck away the ham-like hands as they clasped protectively over the head of the sitting man.

  “Easy, DC Murphy!” said Lucy sharply. Then as the DC’s lean body eased slowly back on to his chair beside her, she hissed, “This man’s not worth it, and you know it.”

  Paul Dutton dropped his arms from their protective posture, grinned his triumph at the heavily breathing Murphy. Then he turned to DS Blake, his face twisting into a leer. “Don’t like being fucked about by Gaelic thickos, do I? Bloody Sunday was a good idea, if you ask me. Now with you, my dear, I might be altogether more co-operative. It would be a different thing entirely. I might even let you take down my particulars, if you allowed me to handle yours.”

  Lucy Blake stared back into his face for a moment, to show that she was in no danger of losing control, as her companion almost had. Then she said dryly, “I can see why you don’t have a girlfriend, Mr Dutton. And why you must be a suspect for the Leopard killings.”

  “Not any longer, lady. You’ll find I can prove that I was nowhere near this bloody barmaid last Friday night.”

  Lucy had an uneasy feeling he could do just that. She ought to have been glad to have another man eliminated from the list. In this case, she thought she would make an exception.

  Brendan Murphy leaned across the table until he could see the apprehension on the coarse, meaty features. His brown eyes bored into the widening grey ones of his adversary from no more than a foot. “We’ll check this out, Dutton. It had better be right, or we’ll be straight back here, without the kid gloves, without any cover-up for your employers.”

  Lucy Blake said coolly, “What time did you leave the Bull’s Head, Mr Dutton?”

  He pulled his shirt back down over the tattoos on his huge forearms, signifying his belief that this was almost over. “About half past eleven, I should think. Check it with the landlord. If he can’t remember, I’ve five mates who can. And just in case you’re planning on more harassment, I didn’t drive. I walked home. Always do, when I’ve had a skinful.”

  Lucy was glad to get out into the open air. She sat in the driver’s seat of the police car, making no attempt to start it. “You almost hit that man in there,” she said eventually.

  “Well, the bugger was taking us for a ride. He was taunting us, when he might be the Leopard, for all we know!”

  “If you’re going to risk your career, don’t do it for trash like that. You know damn well you’ll have to resist far more provocation than that; must have already done so, to be in CID at all.”

  “Yes. I…I don’t know how he got to me like that. You probably don’t believe me, but I’ve never been as close to hitting anyone as that. Not while I’ve been in the police.”

  “I should hope not.” She started the engine. “It won’t go any further, so long as there’s no repetition. But let it be a warning to you, Brendan. We’re all under strain, with this Leopard on the prowl and the public baying for blood. But you can’t afford to have a short fuse, especially with scum like that, who’ll be delighted to play it for all it’s worth.”

  “It won’t happen again.” Brendan Murphy gazed straight ahead through the windscreen, watching the pedestrians in the town centre, resolutely refusing to look at the young woman alongside him.

  Percy would have handled Paul Dutton better than either of them, thought Lucy, as they drove the short distance back to the Murder Room at CID. Even when Dutton had in effect set them up, Percy would have put him on the back foot, somehow — even if he’d had to fall back on the old standby of wasting police time, he’d have made it seem serious, made it seem as if Dutton was making the mistakes.

  And like all great artists, Percy would have made it seem effortless.

  *

  Peach took one of the local DCs into the interview room with him at Wolverhampton, with instructions not to interfere. He found Michael Devaney a predictably pathetic figure.

  The Brunton Community Liaison Officer looked as if he had been crying at some time during the morning. His face had the grey marks of old tears and his thick lips shuddered with the uneven intakes of his breath. When he was brought into the room and Peach ordered him brusquely to sit down, he cowered away from them on the upright chair, as if he feared physical violence. His appearance and his movements proclaimed that this was a man at the end of his resources.

  It could all be an act, Peach supposed. Or it could be perfectly genuine. Perhaps this pathetic creature was a Jekyll and Hyde, finding himself a different identity when he walked alone by night and imposed himself upon defenceless women. He wouldn’t be the first multiple killer to seem inadequate for the demands of the everyday world, unable to cope with mankind in the mass.

  “You should be at work in Brunton, not rotting in Wolverhampton nick. How come, Mr Devaney?”

  “The Lancashire Leopard. You think it’s me, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t. I’m more inclined to think it might be, now. Innocent men don’t need to run away.”

  The mobile features twitched the pain behind them. “I couldn’t stand it any more.” The words took Peach back to his first days as a copper, when one of his duties had been the finding and return of runaway children. They had often spoken these words, often looked as helpless as this. But this man was twenty-nine.

  “Why did you run away, Michael?”

  “I read in my Sunday newspaper about the woman the Leopard killed on Friday night. And someone pushed another paper through my letter box, the News of the World. That had a more lurid account, and a big picture of the place where the woman was found. There was a gate into a field. And someone had drawn a figure of a man into the picture, just in outline, and put my name on it. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I went to my mother’s house. She moved down here to be nearer to my sister.”

  The words were delivered in a monotone, with the speaker staring fixedly at the desk, as if he feared that any eye contact would halt the explanation he wanted to spit out. Peach said, “Been on at you before about the Leopard, have they, your neighbours?”

  “Yes. I see them whispering behind my back. The women. It was them who brought your people in to me last week, the girl with red hair and the man with the fierce eyes.”

  “We’d have been round to see you, anyway, Michael. We’ve been checking on any men who live alone. You’re one of hundreds.”

  He looked into the inspector’s round, impassive face for the first time. Peach saw in the watery blue eyes a desperate desire to
please him, succeeded swiftly by the doubt that told Devaney to beware of anything men like this said to him. He said, “They shout things after me, the worst of them.”

  Peach sighed. “It happens, in cases like this. Some people get frightened. Others just see a chance to hound someone in a worse position than themselves. You won’t be the only one who’s suffering.”

  Devaney saw the logic of this. He nodded slowly for a moment. Then his pliant features shuddered, like the surface of water under a wind. “I can’t stand it. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  And I can’t offer you any protection, thought Peach. I can’t spare men to protect a pathetic creature like this from bullying, not with the Leopard prowling about and choosing his next prey. He said gently, “You make it worse if you react to it, Michael. Try to treat them with contempt.” But he knew that this man wasn’t capable of doing that. He said, “I have to ask you, for our records. Where were you last Friday night, Mr Devaney?”

  “I was at home. I am most nights. I don’t go out much — especially since, you know…”

  “Since the Leopard. I know. But you must have realised that the quickest way to excite suspicion was to make a sudden exit from Brunton, without telling anyone where you were going?”

  “I see that now, when you put it like that. I didn’t think, at the time. I just wanted to get out.” He looked up: another thought had hit him for the first time with full force. “Will I lose my job?”

  “That’s not in my hands. I shouldn’t think so.”

  “I left a message on the answer-machine at the town hall.”

  “I see. Well, I don’t think you should go back, just yet. Take a week off and stay at your mother’s. I’ll get someone to ring from the station and say you’re ill, when I get back to Brunton. Go to a doctor down here, and get something to calm your nerves.”

  Peach paused at the desk of the Custody Sergeant on his way out. “No charge. Sorry you’ve been bothered. Let sonny boy out and send him home to his mother, will you, please?”

  These Midlanders had only seen Percy Peach for twenty minutes. They must think he was a soft touch, he thought, as he climbed back sadly into his car.

  *

  Clyde Northcott had been pulled off his work at the bench at the electrical manufacturing factory to meet two officers from Brunton CID. The news excited much curiosity and not a little excitement as it ran round his fellow-workers.

  For the powerful young six-footer was a loner and by common consent “a mad bastard”. He was also very black, and, deep within the psyche of Brunton men and women who would have vehemently denied that they had even a hint of racial prejudice, that added a little frisson of the strange. And strange quickly became sinister, when the town was agog for sightings of the Leopard.

  Neither DS Blake nor DC Pickard had talked to Northcott before. Having seen the opponent who had attacked him with a knife earlier in the day, Lucy Blake found the contrast between the two men interesting. Northcott was as still and watchful as Dutton had been active and aggressive. At the station, Percy Peach had caught him on the back foot, fearing charges of drug supply and actual bodily harm, and had characteristically kept him there even when no charges materialised. Now Northcott had recovered his poise; his stillness combined with his handsome ebony face gave him a certain dignity as they sat together in the room that had been assigned to them in the office section of the works for this meeting. Lucy Blake found it also made him seem impenetrable.

  She introduced herself and Tony Pickard and said, “Your information about the cocaine supplier was accurate. An arrest has been made.”

  “I know. At the Ugly Heifer on Tuesday.”

  “Your name will not be connected with that arrest. There is no way anyone involved in the supply is going to find out where the information came from.”

  He nodded a curt acknowledgement. “I’ve told you all I know about that. What else do you want?”

  Tony Pickard said, “We want to know where were you last Friday night.”

  Northcott eyed him coolly. “Still on about the Lancashire Leopard? I haven’t killed any women.”

  “Where were you?”

  “You’re not going to do me any good at work, are you? Coming here and pulling me off the bench to answer questions I’ve already dealt with.”

  Lucy Blake said, “We can’t choose our times. Answer the question, please.”

  “I was with my friends. I usually am on a Friday night.”

  Pickard said, “Then we’ll have a few names. A few details about times and places. Then we’ll be on our way, quiet as mice. We’ll do some checking, of course.”

  Northcott eyed them evenly, looking for a moment as if he might refuse to answer. Lucy was glad she had not Brendan Murphy but Tony Pickard beside her, as calm as the man on the other side of the table, not likely to lose his cool even if the subject refused his co-operation. The silence seemed to stretch abnormally before the lips above the small rectangle of trimmed beard said abruptly, “Darren Green, Martin Attwood, Jason Murray. They’re all Yamaha owners. And they’re all white. You might believe them!”

  Lucy said, “We believed you, when you told us about the fight you were involved in, didn’t we? We believed your tale about the drugs, when the evidence was against you. No one’s saying we don’t believe you now. But we have to check. You’re right, it is the Leopard who’s brought us here. There are checks like this being carried out all over Brunton, all over a larger area outside the town. If you were a woman, you’d want us to check.”

  Clyde looked for a moment into the flushed, animated face, with its greenish eyes under the nimbus of red-brown hair, which was such a contrast to his own resolutely impassive features. “All right. So long as it isn’t just me. I can give you other names, if you want them.”

  Tony Pickard grinned, trying to ease away the tension. “Three should be quite sufficient. Where did this meeting take place?”

  Northcott gave no answering smile. “At Darren Green’s house. His parents were out. We had a few cans of lager and a bit of a laugh. We were planning where to go on Sunday. They let me do an initial plan, because I enjoy it. Then we all discuss it.”

  “And where did you decide to go?”

  “Up to Ingleton. Then on to the Lake District, and over the Kirkstone Pass. We always set off early, about seven o’clock, to avoid the crowds. And come back early. It’s great up there, on a frosty winter’s day.” For the first time, against his will, enthusiasm forced its way into the previously studiously neutral voice.

  So they had ridden directly away from Bolton, where the fourth murder had been committed some thirty-one hours earlier. But there might be nothing significant in that. Lucy Blake said as casually as she could, “What time did your meeting break up on Friday?”

  He switched his dark eyes back to her. “Half past ten. Darren’s parents were due home from the cinema. We broke up and went off to the pub for a last couple of drinks.”

  “And you were in the pub until what time?”

  If he was tempted to lie, his stone-like calm did not reveal it. He said, “I wasn’t. I don’t drink much. I didn’t go with the others to the pub. I’d had a couple of cans while we were talking in the house, and that was all I wanted.”

  “So you went straight home?”

  His dark brown eyes looked directly into her green ones as he said slowly, “No. I went for a ride on the Yamaha. I often do, late at night. I like it when the roads are quiet. It was after midnight when I got home.”

  “And where did you go?”

  “Along the M65 to Nelson. Then north, along the A682, picking up the A59 near Gisburn, and back home along that, by-passing Clitheroe.” He paused, as if waiting for a reaction. “I was home at about twelve thirty.”

  Tony Pickard said, “And is there anyone who can confirm either the route or the time for us?”

  “No. But you wouldn’t expect that. I’m a bit of a loner, as you might have gathered.”

  “So is the
Leopard, in all probability.”

  If Tony Pickard hoped to nettle him, he didn’t succeed. Clyde Northcott looked from one to the other of the two intense, observant faces, then permitted himself his first, mirthless smile. “I expect he is. But then you believe my story, don’t you? Just the same as if I was white.”

  Nineteen

  St Paul’s revelation came to him on the road to Damascus. Percy Peach’s was altogether more prosaic. It came to him in a crowded service station car park beside the northbound carriageway of the M6.

  When the Detective Inspector joined the motorway at Junction 11, he found the notoriously overcrowded lanes as busy as he might have expected. He had thought that having dismissed Michael Devaney as a possibility for the Leopard, he might spend the hours of his drive back north in a review of other possibilities. In the event, he found that the driving, even with the power and automatic gearbox of his Scorpio, was taxing enough to require all his attention and concentration.

  In an indirect way, it was the driving which was in the end his salvation. As they moved past Stafford and the traffic thinned a little, he settled back and prepared to enjoy a better cruising speed. Only ten miles above the legal limit, he reflected: even senior policemen had to maintain a steady eighty if they were not to be confined to the inside lane among the pantechnicons. But in a few minutes, he found himself struggling to keep awake, and realised that he had now been driving in crowded conditions for over four hours, with only the scarcely relaxing forty minutes he had spent at Wolverhampton nick as a break.

  Cup of black coffee, strong as possible, then twenty minutes’ rest. That was the formula. That way you began driving again just as the caffeine kicked into your system.

  He concentrated grimly until he reached the welcome haven of Keele Services. Peach queued for his coffee, resisted a doughnut and found the beverage considerably more drinkable than the Brunton nick version of coffee. They should have an Egon Ronay guide to police station coffee, he thought; Brunton might make one star on a good day. Might as well put that down to Tommy Bloody Tucker, as he blamed him for everything else.