Deathly Suspense

by John Paxton Sheriff

  It would never happen.

  I sat down.

  ‘Time for a council of war.’

  ‘Which suggests,’ Calum said, ‘that this attack on your person has convinced you we are right, the police wrong?’

  ‘Yes. Either I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was set upon by thieves, or it was a planned attack. That first bit’s rubbish. The intention was to remove me. Someone doesn’t want me to find out what really happened to Lorraine Creeney.’

  ‘Lorraine Creeney,’ Sian said, ‘could have been murdered by a stranger.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘The murder was planned – witness the weird routine with ladder and rope, the locked doors. The plan was to incriminate Joe Creeney, and I’m sure it was set in motion long before Joe got out of gaol.’

  ‘So there was this fiendishly clever plan to send Joe back to prison for life, it would have worked perfectly if he hadn’t died instead, and now the real murderer realizes we’re on his trail?’ Sian said. ‘Who arranged today’s attack? Caroline Spackman?’

  ‘Doesn’t make sense. I can’t see someone hiring me to find out who killed Lorraine Creeney then hiring someone else to stop me. That suggests that if the information did come from her, Caroline unwittingly talked to the wrong people.’

  ‘Max, or Declan Creeney,’ Sian said.

  I nodded. ‘They’re the obvious ones, but what if they’re innocent? They too could have passed on the information without intent, and that gives us suspects by the score.’

  ‘Aye, but think closed circle,’ Calum said. ‘The classic detective story always deals with a finite number of suspects with motive and opportunity. That happens in real life, too. Unless we’re talking random murder, why should this be any different?’

  ‘I agree,’ Sian said. ‘This murder screams of family connections, and I believe we should be looking at the Tullys. One way or another, Joe Creeney caused the death of Wayne Tully. His brothers swore they’d get him. If they were impatient but couldn’t get him because he was in prison, his wife was an obvious target.’

  The coffee had been bubbling for some time. I went through to the kitchen, came back with three filled mugs and placed them delicately on the table. When we’d tasted and savoured fine coffee by Mr Taylor of Harrogate – I’d added soft Demerara sugar and a dash of Bailey’s Irish Cream – I returned to the puzzle.

  ‘Let’s deal with Caroline first. We know she was the only person I told about the trip to Wales. If she told others, we can easily find out by asking her. Moving on, the other possibility is that the trip to Wales was discovered in some other way.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Calum said. ‘Are you saying Declan or Max or whoever the hell is guilty could have stuck a tail on you, and had you followed?’

  ‘Yes. And, as Sian said, that does point squarely at the Tullys. Yes, I could have been followed from Liverpool, but I spoke to Karl Tully in Colwyn Bay. I told him I wanted to talk to his two sons. He agreed – but he could easily have set somebody on to me to prevent that happening.’

  For a few minutes we were silent, sipping hot, sweet, creamy coffee as we mulled over what we’d discussed. Satan uncurled, dropped to the floor and padded into the kitchen. Sian followed, and I heard the sound of a tin-opener, the rattle of a feeding bowl on the floor.

  When she returned and sat down I could see by the glint in her eyes that my Soldier Blue was her old self, looking forward to a life packed with adventure but also totally absorbed in my intriguing puzzle.

  ‘I was thinking about what you said, about this murder being planned some time before Joe got out of gaol,’ she said. ‘And I’m trying to make sense of it. Joe was already in gaol. If someone wanted to keep him there, a murder could have been planned inside the prison.’

  ‘That’s a bloody good point,’ Calum said. ‘Why engineer a gaol break to frame a man for murder, when there’d always be the risk of him scarpering?’

  ‘Not so strange, if you think about it,’ Sian said. ‘Someone wanted Joe Creeney back in gaol, but they also wanted Lorraine Creeney out of the way.’

  NINE

  DAY THREE – WEDNESDAY 2 NOVEMBER

  ‘She’s good,’ Calum said.

  ‘At complicating a simple investigation, she’s the best.’

  The Scot chuckled. ‘Bad enough working out how Joe Creeney could be framed for murder inside his locked house. Then along comes this clever wee lass with a spring in her step and suddenly we’re looking at not one problem, but three. Why was Joe Creeney sprung? Who wanted him framed? Who murdered Lorraine Creeney, and why was she in the way?’

  ‘That’s four.’

  ‘Aye, maybe – but I’ve still got a terrible fear that complicating the motive for a multi-faceted crime has made getting to the finishing line much more difficult.’

  We were finishing breakfast. Sian had left Calum’s just before midnight, heading for the spare room in DS Morgan’s Calderstones’ flat. Meg Morgan was Alun Morgan’s sister. She had for some time lived with Joe Leary, a taciturn detective with an abrasive personality whose rank changed in inverse proportion to the seniority of the inflated egos he’d pricked. The last I’d heard he was down from inspector to sergeant and treading gingerly on eggshells.

  I slotted two more pieces of wholemeal bread into the toaster, poured coffee and returned to the table.

  ‘According to the Mike Haggard,’ I said, ‘Lorraine Creeney was murdered some time after one on Sunday night. Max Spackman is pretty sure Declan Creeney had become much more than Lorraine Creeney’s minder, but whatever was going on had turned sour and he was trying to ditch her. Max’s wife, Caroline, rubbished the idea. But if Max is right, and if Lorraine wouldn’t go quietly, attempts at dumping her might have led Declan to murder. Could he have done it, that night, given the timing? Well, we know he walked into the Copacobana in West Derby Village just after eleven, because Max Spackman saw him. But we don’t know how long Declan stayed because Max himself was on his way out – and we don’t know where he went.’

  The toast popped up. Calum brought it across to the table and busied himself with knife and butter. He slid my plate across, his eyes thoughtful.

  ‘Lorraine was murdered at around one o’clock Sunday night. Two hours after that magic eleven. We can assume both had the opportunity. We know both knew where the ladder was stored. But according to Sian, shouldn’t we be ignoring them and concentrating on the Tullys?’

  ‘Already done. Karl Tully gave me his sons’ phone numbers and addresses: Frank and Len, both of them living off Princes Road. I phoned Frank after you’d gone to bed. He told me to call at his place off High Park Street any time this morning. Friendly enough, but his voice got tight when I told him what was going on – and if it was Karl who changed his mind and tried to stop me seeing them, that suggests they’ve got secrets he’d like to stay hidden and I’m already wasting time.’

  Calum nodded. ‘I checked with Stan last night. He’s meeting a laddie he hopes will tell him something about Joe’s cell mate. The other names on your list were Joe’s father—’

  ‘Alec.’

  ‘— and Fiona Lake, Lorraine’s sister.’

  ‘Mm. I’ll talk to Fiona later and take along the tender, understanding member of our team.’

  Calum grinned. ‘Leaving me to…?’

  ‘Pack the Black Watch figures and send them winging to Nova Scotia. Then wander down town and have a word with Manny Yates.’

  ‘The sage of Lime Street, the private eye’s private eye with a brilliant mind concealed under a gelled comb-over. As you well know, talking to Manny of the bursting red waistcoat will lead to a liquid lunch in the American Bar. Will you be joining us?’

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘depends on whether I emerge unscathed from my confrontation with the Frank and Len Tully. Somebody clobbered me. If it was them, I could be gone for some time.’

  My mobile chirped as I climbed into the Quattro and, as I took the call, in my mind I was transported to a
back-street night-club where not too long ago a crazed taxidermist had used his Sinatra impersonation to croon his loopy valedictory.

  It was Frank Tully. He’d changed the plan, and laid bare inexplicable impatience. Had Frank been the would-be assassin who leaped out of the woods wielding an oaken club? Were he and his brother that anxious to finish me off? I would soon find out, for they were both on their way to the King of Clubs in Pelham Grove off Lark Lane. Frank politely asked how long I’d be and what I would be drinking. I looked at my watch, told him ten minutes and Holsten Pils and he said he’d have an ice-cold bottle on the table.

  At midnight on any Saturday a vivid imagination could turn George Kingman’s sleazy night-club into the run-down business venture of an underworld king whose crown had slipped. Nailed to dirty brick walls that had been pointed during World War l, the neon crown that would paint those Saturday night skies red was reduced by a grey November day to a tangle of wonky glass tubes. The entrance was covered by the grubby curtain I remembered well, and when I parked with my nearside wheels crunching greasy discarded takeaway trays in the littered gutter and pushed my way through into a passageway with cerise-emulsioned walls illuminated by a single bulb in a four-sided shade of glass playing cards – all kings of clubs – my shoes squeaked on cracked brown linoleum, and warm air larded with the fumes of stale beer and fresh cigarette smoke threatened to slice off the top of my head.

  Two terraced houses had been knocked into one. An RSJ supported a load-bearing wall through which a wide opening had been hacked to give access to a main room carpeted in cigarette-burned green cord. At the far end, away from George Kingman’s glittering bar but close to the small platform where a knife-thrower had committed murder and the ghost of taxidermist Oliver Dakin would forever cling languorously to the chrome-plated microphone, two men in jeans and rugby shirts sat smoking at one of the round tables.

  ‘Best behaviour, lads,’ George Kingman called. ‘Private dick on the premises.’

  He was sitting on a high stool on the customer side of the bar reading the back pages of the Sun. Running to fat, he wore his grey hair in a grade-one cut and his white shirt was opened all the way to the wide leather belt holding up his black trousers. Heavy gold necklaces nestled in crisp body hair. A bottle of Vat 69 stood close to a thick wrist encircled by more clunking gold. His face was shiny with sweat.

  George grinned at me as I walked by. ‘How’s it goin’, Shamus? I hear you’ve opened a taxi service for escaped cons,’ and behind the bar the black-suited heavy I knew as Solly growled a dirty laugh that set the optics tinkling.

  I dragged out a chair and sat at the Tullys’ table. As promised, condensation was misting a bottle of Holsten Pils. No sign of a glass. I took a long swig, felt the ice-cold lager hit my forehead and awaken the painful lumps on my skull, and smiled bravely.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ I said, and looked from one to the other. ‘Which is which?’

  ‘Frank, Len.’

  The man who’d spoken jabbed his own striped blue shirt then jerked a thumb sideways. Both men were dark, and as tall as their father. These were night-club men, as was Max Spackman, but there the similarities ended. Spackman was a posing bouncer who would hide behind wrap-around shades as he sent a drunk tumbling down a night-club’s stairs with blows from bony fists protected by black leather gloves. Both of these men would leave gloves to the sissies. They’d club you to the ground with bare fists but without warning, then stamp on your face. Something in the blankness of their gaze warned me they’d do it from behind and by stealth, if necessary, and again I remembered the girl leaning on the bonnet of a white car and a man who had crept silently out of the dark woods.

  ‘What I’m trying to do,’ I said, ‘is learn more about the night twelve months ago when your brother died.’

  ‘Why?’

  That was Frank.

  ‘Caroline Spackman has asked me to look into Lorraine Creeney’s murder. The police are out of it: Joe Creeney was caught in flagrante delicto – red handed – Joe is now dead, case closed. I’m hunting the real killer.

  ‘That murder was last Sunday, so why go back to Wayne?’

  ‘They say your brother’s death was probably Joe’s fault. He went to see him thinking Wayne was knocking off Lorraine, but that he didn’t intentionally kill him.’

  ‘If the intention was there to scare Wayne to bloody death,’ Len Tully said, ‘then when he dies hasn’t the intention been fulfilled? And isn’t the man who goes there with intent guilty of murder?’

  Well spoken, and knowledgeable. A barrack-room lawyer?

  ‘Apparently Joe’s legal advisers didn’t think so,’ I said. ‘He pleaded guilty to manslaughter.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Frank said, ‘but if your investigatin’ the death of Lorraine Creeney we still don’t know why you’re going back to Wayne’s murder – so what’s goin’ on?’

  They were drinking Jack Daniels with Red Bull chasers, or maybe the other way round. This was ten o’clock in the morning and they’d probably been awake all night, the bourbon was a downer, the Red Bull an upper, but far from going cross eyed they were making me feel tired with the sheer weight of their energy. I watched them toss back a couple of drinks, light two more cigarettes and pin me to my chair with baleful, brooding glances beneath which malevolence lurked, and suddenly realized I didn’t really know what I wanted from them. Concentrating on the Tullys was Sian’s idea (unanimously accepted) because she thought they were the men most likely to have murdered Lorraine Creeney, but short of asking Frank and Len outright if they had done it I couldn’t see how I could find out if we were on the right track.

  Besides, I thought, sipping my warming lager, Karl Tully had as good as ruled out an eye for an eye killing. So why had they agreed to talk to me? Why had Frank Tully been unable to hide the tension in his voice on the phone, and changed the venue so his brother could come along for the ride?

  They were still staring. I looked at Frank and raised an enquiring eyebrow.

  ‘That’s such a good question,’ I said, ‘I’ll pretend I asked it. You tell me what’s going on. Tell me why you agreed to talk to me.’

  ‘Because you’re working for us,’ Len Tully said. ‘We’re checking on progress, the state of play.’

  I pursed my lips and raised both eyebrows. No mean feat, and a testament to my astonishment.

  ‘Care to explain?’

  ‘You’re trying to find out who murdered Lorraine Creeney. We figure the person who murdered her is the same person who murdered Wayne. You find Lorraine’s killer, we’ve got our man.’

  ‘That brings us back to Joe Creeney,’ I said, now frowning. ‘He killed your brother because he thought she was knocking off his wife. It was a bizarre accident, but he was to blame. Joe’s dead, your man is dead.’

  Len shook his head with what looked like the edge of impatience. ‘Joe wasn’t even there when Wayne died. Wayne lived in Fazakerley. Joe was miles away when he died.’

  I took a deep breath, expelled it. ‘Hang on a minute. The story I got is that Joe went to confront Wayne, there was an argument, a blow was struck, and Wayne fell and fractured his skull.’

  ‘Wayne was found, and pronounced dead by the attending doctor, at eleven that night. There was a tip off, anonymous, and the police picked up Joe Creeney in his brother’s club, the Sleepy Pussy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We know for sure Joe had been drinking there since six.’

  ‘Makes no difference, surely? All it means is that the argument happened before six, turned violent, and Wayne had been lying on the floor unconscious for five hours.’

  ‘No.’ Frank’s voice was hard. ‘Wayne was at the local chip shop at half past nine. With me. So he was definitely alive and kickin’ three hours after Joe downed his first pint.’

  I shook my head. ‘If you’re right, then all this – and especially the alibi – would have come out when the police questioned Joe. A couple of phone calls would have given them the proof
. Joe would have been released that same night.’

  ‘It didn’t come out, for a very good reason,’ Len said. ‘The police got a tip off, arrested Joe Creeney, and he called a solicitor. And then it was the other way round, out of police hands, out of the solicitor’s hands. Because the solicitor didn’t advise Joe, it was Joe who gave her instructions. He told her he was there when Wayne died, he was to blame, and he was pleading guilty to manslaughter.’

  ‘Christ!’ I said softly. ‘Why the hell would he do that?’

  ‘What policeman’s going to go looking at alibis,’ Frank said, ignoring my question, ‘when Joe Creeney’s fingerprints were all over the crime scene, and they’d got a confession?

  ‘And you’ve got an answer for the fingerprints?’

  Len shrugged. ‘Maybe Joe had been at Wayne’s place before, some other time. Who knows when? Who cares? He went down, and a killer walked. We didn’t find out about the timing being wrong, about Joe being in the Sleepy Pussy—’ ‘Until six months later when someone spoke up,’ Frank said.