“What’s happened, sir?” Rutter asked.
“Never mind that,” the chief inspector said. “Just get on the bloody phone to that prat Hopgood.” He glanced across at the bar. Steve Walker was still there, nursing a half-pint of bitter.
Thank God!
“Steve! Do you know where Terry Garner lives?” the chief inspector shouted.
Walker turned round. “Yeah. I’ve been round to his place a few times. We done a couple of jam sessions, an’—”
“I’m not interested in your bloody social life,” Woodend interrupted. “Take me round to Terry’s now – before the poor lad ends up like Eddie Barnes.”
Nineteen
The black Liverpool taxi hurtled down the road – its headlights flashing, its horn blaring. It wove its way dangerously between Austin Cambridges and Ford Anglias, leaving their drivers pale and shaking. It narrowly missed buses and came perilously close to scraping against the sides of high lorries. And still, wedged as he was against the back door of the vehicle, Woodend fretted that they weren’t going fast enough and would arrive too late.
If only we had a proper siren! the chief inspector thought. If only this was a proper police car!
But there just hadn’t been the time to wait for one of them to turn up outside the Grapes.
The taxi shot tightly round a sharp corner, and the tyres screamed out in protest.
“We’re hardly movin’,” Woodend yelled through the glass partition at the cabbie. “You’re drivin’ like an old woman. Get your bloody clog down, man!”
“You’re sure that Terry Garner’s in real danger, are you, sir?” Bob Rutter asked, as the taxi swung again, and he was cannoned into his boss.
“Of course I’m bloody sure,” Woodend said. “I wouldn’t be riskin’ life an’ limb if I wasn’t!”
“If anything’s happened to Terry, I’ll never forgive myself,” Steve Walked moaned from the other side of Rutter.
“It’s not your fault,” Woodend told him. “Always remember that. Whatever happens, it’s not your fault!”
But in a way, it was. It was Steve Walker’s fault because he was Steve Walker – the cool kid who everybody wanted to get close to.
The taxi turned on to a side street lined with dilapidated three-storey terraced houses.
“Fifth door down!” Steve Walker shouted to the cabbie.
The taxi screeched to a halt, but even before it had finally finished moving, Woodend had his door open. “Wait here,” he ordered the driver. “We might be needin’ you again.”
The chief inspector dashed across the pavement to the front door, with Steve Walker close on his heels.
“The place is all bedsits,” Walker explained. “Terry lives up on the top floor.”
Woodend stabbed the two top bells, and, without waiting for a response, punched all the others for good measure. There was the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Then the door swung open to reveal a youngish woman with her hair already in night-time curlers and a Park Drive hanging lethargically from the corner of her mouth.
“Police! Emergency!” Woodend said, barging straight past her and heading for the stairs.
He took the steep stairs three at time. Behind him he could hear the pounding feet of the others. Even from only half-way up the last flight, Woodend could smell the gas which had managed to insinuate its way under Terry Garner’s door.
He reached the top floor. There were two doors on the landing. “Which one is it?” he called down the stairs. “The left or right?”
“The right!” Steve Walker gasped.
Woodend hammered furiously on the right-hand door, then immediately turned the handle. The door was locked – but he was prepared to wager that they would find no key inside.
The chief inspector stepped back, braced himself against the wall, and lashed out with his right leg. His foot made contact with the lock, but though the door groaned, it did not give. He swung his leg again, and this time the door splintered, and swung open.
Woodend rushed into the room, the other two men now close behind him. The smell inside was almost overpowering, and its source was easily identified. The fire set into the far wall was hissing like an angry snake, but there was no flame to burn off the gas.
Terry Garner, the young man the chief inspector would have considered suitable dating material for his own daughter, was lying directly in front of the fire, his head resting on a pillow – as if all this had really been his own choice.
“Open the bloody window!” Woodend shouted over his shoulder to Rutter. “And turn the bloody gas off.”
Garner was lying on his stomach. Woodend turned him over and placed his index finger against the young guitarist’s neck, hoping against hope that he would find some evidence of a pulse.
It was drizzling slightly as Woodend walked down the cobbled street towards the Grapes. On the other side of the road, in front of the Cellar Club, stood a muscular man sheltering under an umbrella – Rick Johnson, newly released from the cells and already attending to his mother’s business.
Woodend crossed the street. “I wouldn’t have thought a hard man like you would be bothered by a bit of rain,” he said, looking first at Johnson and then up at his brolley.
“I’ve given up bein’ hard,” Johnson told him, and though his tone could not have been called exactly friendly, perhaps some of his customary aggressiveness was missing.
“Good for you,” Woodend said. “Any particular reason?”
“I don’t want the kids me an’ Lucy plan to have only seein’ me on visitin’ day. I don’t want them to grow up thinkin’ I belong behind bars.”
An’ maybe you just can’t allow yourself to value hardness any more, Woodend thought – not after you’ve been beaten up by your runt of a brother-in-law.
“I’m goin’ into the club,” he said. “Is that all right with you?”
Johnson shrugged. “I can’t stop you, can I? You’re the law.” As he opened the door, he bit his lower lip. “I’d still have been in the nick if it hadn’t been for you. Thanks.”
He’d been thanked twice in the same day, Woodend told himself. That had to be some kind of record. If this went on, he’d probably start thinking he was the bloody Lone Ranger.
He made his way down the narrow stairs, the noise level increasing with every step he took. He didn’t recognise the group who were performing on the stage, but it certainly wasn’t one of those which had been playing in the club the night before Eddie Barnes died.
The chief inspector took what he knew would be his last look round the Cellar Club – at the hard chairs which faced the stage, at the girls dancing in the far tunnel – and wondered why he always found it so hard to leave the scene of the crime behind him.
He crossed the tunnel, stopping at the edge of it so he was still some distance from the snack bar, and found himself looking across at some faces which had become all too familiar. There was Alice Pollard, her brassy hair having regained some of its springiness now that Rick had been released. There was Ron Clarke, the mild, unassuming man who could be so powerful when he was just a disembodied voice coming through the tannoy system.
Two of the Seagulls were by the bar, too. Pete Foster, who was following his mother’s dream while trying to tell himself that it was his own, was talking to a girl he might later persuade to go behind the curtain with him. And Billie Simmons, who seemed to have reduced all life’s complexities into the single act of banging the drum skins, was smoking a cigarette and waving occasionally to girls who had waved to him first.
The fifth familiar face belonged to Jack Towers, who was standing just as he must have been when Steve Walker first noticed him – watching the stage yet totally unmoved by the music.
Though the music was too loud for Woodend to hear their words, he could not fail to notice the sudden reaction of the teenagers closest to the entrance. With surprised – or perhaps apprehensive – expressions on their faces, they were looking up the stairs at the two pairs of legs, c
lad in blue serge, which had just appeared there.
The legs continued their downward path, blue tunics became visible, and now there could be no doubt that two uniformed policemen were entering the club. Word of their arrival was travelling rapidly up the tunnels. Girls stopped dancing, boys stopped trying to chat them up, and finally the group playing on stage fell silent.
An eerie silence followed, in which no one said a word, yet the music continued to ring in everyone’s ears.
The two constables made their way over to where Woodend was standing. The one who was leading saluted. “Inspector Hopgood told us that you had a job for us, sir,” he said.
Woodend nodded. “That’s right,” he agreed.
It was only a few steps to the snack bar, but as he took them Woodend was aware of five pairs of eyes which were looking at him so intently that they were almost burning holes in him.
He came to halt in front of the Seagulls’ manager. “It’s all over, Mr Towers,” he said.
Twenty
After a brief pause, it had started to rain again. Woodend stood by the window of the brown and cream interview room, watching as the drops of water spattered against the pane, then slid slowly down to the sill. They made the same sort of noise on impact as might be made by a small timid animal which was begging to let in out of the cold, he thought fancifully.
He turned from the window to face the man who had been out in the cold for most of his life. Jack Towers was sitting at the table, his head in his hands. He no longer looked like the tall, gangly clown who had nervously tried to talk Steve Walker into seeing things his way. Now, even through his despair, it was possible to gain some sense of the ruthlessness which had led him to cast away human life without a second’s thought.
“You’d probably been planning to get rid of Eddie Barnes for quite some time, but it was the audition with the record company in London which really spurred you into immediate action,” Woodend said.
Towers looked up, peering through his outstretched fingers as if he were already in gaol. “Eddie would have let the Seagulls down,” he said. “He just wasn’t good enough to play with them.”
“So why didn’t you, as their manager – as the guidin’ force in their career – simply say that to the rest of the group?” the chief inspector asked.
Towers closed his fingers again, as if, by doing so, he could shut out the world.
“I’ll tell you why, shall I?” Woodend said – but it was a rhetorical question, and he expected no response. “You weren’t just afraid that Steve would ignore your suggestion – you were terrified that if you criticised his mate, he’d get rid of you. In other words, if he had to choose between you an’ Eddie, he would have picked Eddie every time.”
Even though Towers’ hands still covered his face, it was obvious from the way his body slumped even more that the barb had hit home – just as Woodend had intended it to. The chief inspector lit up a Capstan Full Strength, and felt the harsh smoke rasp against the back of his throat. He was getting old, he thought, and the years of heavy drinking, smoking and fried food were starting to catch up on him. Maybe it was time he switched to the kind of poncy cigarettes his sergeant smoked.
“So you decided that the only way out was to kill Eddie,” he continued. “An’ you had to kill him quickly, because you thought that his replacement needed to get plenty of practice in with the group before you went down to London for the audition.” He took another drag on the cigarette. It still irritated his throat. “I don’t know exactly what method of murderin’ him you were workin’ on,” he continued, “but when the fight broke out between Mike Finn and Steve Walker, it seemed like fate had dropped the perfect opportunity right into your lap, didn’t it?”
The manager sighed, but said nothing.
“Only it didn’t quite work out like that, did it, Mr Towers? Because Steve’s the sort of feller who needs to have his mates around him, an’ so he brought in Terry Garner, who was a far worse guitarist all the time than Eddie was even on his worst day. But again, you didn’t dare complain, so you soon realised you were goin’ to have to kill for a second time. It was almost too easy, wasn’t it? Terry would have been frightened to let most people into his flat, but he trusted you. An’ you took advantage of that trust to feed him doped whisky an’ fake a suicide attempt. That should add another ten or fifteen years to your sentence.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Towers mumbled from behind his hands. “Nothing matters now that Steve knows I killed Eddie.”
“You lied about what happened to you down at the docks, didn’t you?” Woodend said.
“I was beaten up.”
“Of course you were. But there was no mysterious phone call from a man who claimed to know something about Eddie’s death. You were down there on the pick-up, lookin’ for a bit of rough trade. Only you picked the wrong sailor, an’ instead of him givin’ you what you wanted, he worked you over.”
“It could have been worse,” Jack Towers said. “I’ve got friends who’ve had bones broken.”
“Geoff Platt over at the Mersey Sound will be one of those friends of yours, will he?” Woodend asked.
“Yes.”
“An’ Doctor Atkinson from the Royal Liverpool University Hospital?”
“Yes.” Towers spread his fingers a little, as if he wanted to see Woodend’s reaction to what he had to say next. “You must be delighted the killer’s turned out to be a raving queer,” he continued.
“I’m not one of those fellers who goes around thinkin’ homosexuals should be strung up by their thumbs,” Woodend said, and anyone who knew him would have been able to detect an edge of anger slipping into his voice.
“Of course you’re not,” Towers said cynically. “At least, you’re not one of those fellers who’d ever say so in public.”
Woodend slammed his fist down hard on the table, his anger almost full-blown by now. “Listen, one of my best mates in the army was a homo,” he said. “He was a brave soldier, an’ a good comrade. He was killed just outside El Alamein, an’ I still miss him, even now. So you see, as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t really matter who you end up in bed with – it’s how you live your life that counts. An’ neither me nor the homo lad I served with have ever been cold-blooded killers.”
Woodend’s head was pounding. If he stayed in the same room with this man much longer, he’d beat him to a pulp.
“Eddie Barnes didn’t deserve to die,” he said. “You had no right to take his life away from him.” He stubbed his cigarette viciously in the ashtray. “Is there anythin’ else you’d like to say before we draw up your statement?”
Towers lifted his hands away from his face, and looked Woodend squarely in the eyes. “The only thing I’d care to add is that I love Steve Walker,” he said defiantly.
“What do you think that is?” Woodend demanded. “Some kind of mitigatin’ circumstance?”
“I love him, but I’ve never touched him,” Towers said dreamily, as if he hadn’t heard Woodend’s words at all. “And never would have touched him. He doesn’t feel the same towards his own sex as I do. I’ve always known that. But sometimes you just can’t help who you fall in love with, can you?”
“I don’t need to hear all this crap,” Woodend said harshly.
But once again, Towers acted as if he hadn’t heard him. “All I ever wanted was for the Seagulls to be successful, because I knew that that was what Steve wanted more than anything else in the world. And I was prepared to do whatever was necessary to see that he achieved his ambition.”
Woodend put both his big hands flat on the table, and leant forward towards Towers. He had only one ambition at that moment – to hurt the other man as much as he could.
“So you took one young life, an’ nearly took another,” he said. “An’ what have you got out of it?”
“Nothing,” Towers said.
“Less than nothin’,” Woodend told him. “Steve Walker never loved you like you love him, but at least he was very fond
of you.” He paused, to make sure the effect of his final words really sank in. “I’m willin’ to bet that now, if they were goin’ to hang you for this, he’d be elbowin’ his way to the front of the queue for the chance to put the rope around your neck.”
It was almost closing time in the Grapes, but in Woodend’s book, until the towels were actually over the pumps, there was time for one last pint.
The chief inspector took a sip of best bitter and smacked his lips contentedly. “I’m doin’ my best to wash the taste of this case out of my mouth,” he explained to his sergeant.
“How long have you known that Towers is a homosexual?” Rutter asked.
“A while,” Woodend replied. “I’d have mentioned it to you before, but it didn’t seem relevant.”
“What put you on to him? Was it just a gut feeling?”
The chief inspector shook his head. “Not at all. I’ve never been one of those fellers who think that just because a man’s a bit effeminate he has to be queer. An’ by the same token, I don’t assume that because he’s built like a brick shithouse, he must automatically chase every bit of skirt he sees. Like you heard me say to Towers, I fought in the army with homos.”
“So what did tip you off?”
“Doctor Atkinson gave Jack Towers special treatment when he was admitted to the hospital after the attack at the docks. A private room, his own telly – the works. Now why should he have done that? I asked Atkinson that very question, an’ he claimed it was because Towers was the Seagulls’ manager, and he himself was a big fan. Which was, of course, a complete bloody lie.”
“How do you know that?”
“I told him I thought that ‘Lime Street Rock’ was one of the best songs Steve Walker had ever written, an’ he agreed with me.”
“So what?”
“Think back to the auditions, lad,” Woodend said. “One of the young hopefuls wanted to play ‘Lime Street Rock’, an’ Steve Walker absolutely hit the roof because he said he wasn’t goin’ to have anybody else playin’ one of the songs that Eddie Barnes wrote. Now if Atkinson had really been a fan of the group, as he claimed he was, he’d have known it was Eddie’s song.”
Death of a Cave Dweller Page 21