Deathly Suspense

by John Paxton Sheriff

  ‘Dodgy. Isn’t he likely to be … unreliable?’

  ‘Maybe not. His mental condition might rule out deviousness.’

  ‘So is that a plan?’

  ‘Part of one. Like, steering clear of Haggard and Vine. Finding Len.’

  ‘I thought you said chasing him in the hope that he has a name could be time wasted,’ Sian said. ‘And that this session was to look for anything we might have missed—’ She broke off, head cocked. ‘Jack … Hello …’

  I nodded. Smiled. But she knew I hadn’t been listening. I’d been distracted. My attention had been caught by movement on the other side of the room, and now I was watching intently as my mind raced out of control. An elderly couple had finished their meal and left. A waitress had arrived to clear away their dishes. Now she was cleaning the table. Ordinarily she might have used a damp cloth. But these were small refectory tables, and they seemed to be genuine timber – possibly elm. So she was using polish. Pledge. Applying the spray with bright yellow duster.

  And suddenly bits and pieces of what I had seen, heard and experienced in the past few days began to come together. Somewhat hazily, but becoming clearer with each second that passed, I was beginning to see how a fiendishly clever killer might have worked a locked room mystery.

  I had the answer – almost. Not close enough for me to start crowing. Not even close enough to share my thoughts with Sian and Calum because my mind resembled a flat table on which the pieces of a complicated multi-coloured jigsaw had been scattered by a careless hand. One edge was forming, and a couple of corners, but those are always the easy bits.

  Before I could fill in the centre and complete the picture, I had to turn theory into fact.

  FIFTEEN

  It was still raining when we left The Gallant Trooper and splashed to the cars, pushing ten o’clock when Sian’s Shogun was skimming along the A561 leading us back to Liverpool. Behind her I cruised with a feigned air of nonchalance, tootling – as Calum would say – down Speke Boulevard with sodium lighting splashing metronomically on the Quattro’s rain-wet bonnet and windscreen and my passenger blinking nervous yellow eyes as he kept a watch for prowling police cars.

  We had committed no crime – well, nothing serious – because Calum had confirmed that he did indeed anonymously report the death of Frank Tully. Nevertheless I had watched Alun Morgan’s face as he took the call from Haggard, and I didn’t trust the Liverpool DI or his eloquent, elegant sergeant, didn’t need their harassment when I had ingenious theories to prove. So, working on the principle that one person could more easily evade the deadly duo than three, two bolt holes had been arranged and two-thirds of the team were going to ground.

  Before leaving The Gallant Trooper, I had phoned my mother. She is a white-haired, graceful widow who insists her sons and everybody she encounters call her Eleanor. When, towards the end of the Sam Bone case, I had trailed a suspect all the way to one of Gibraltar’s marinas, Eleanor had been there on The Rock in a sun-drenched house hung with purple bougainvillaea being wined, dined and probably bedded by a diplomat turned lotus-eater called Reg.

  I had tried to phone her, but she’d been out then (she told me later she and Reg had been in Tangier) and I’d not seen her since, but now she was back home in her Calderstones flat and, with Calum sneaking off to meet Stan Jones and thereafter to abscond in the scally’s rusty white van to places wisely unspecified, I had booked a bed for Sian. She would enjoy a nightcap with Eleanor – gin and tonic or Horlicks – then snuggle down on a bleached wood futon in a room of low bookcases and soft carpets where she could watch wide-screen TV as she drowsed or be lulled to a deeper sleep by soft light from the red table lamp glowing in a warm atmosphere tastefully scented with Chanel Number 5.

  That cast me as Lone Ranger, and I had work to do.

  On wet nights the neon lighting above The King of Clubs transforms glistening pavements and gutters into rivers of blood. I parked directly beneath the glowing coils of the hideous crown, shivered as the November air coiled its icy fingers about my neck then crossed the cracked paving stones and pushed through the greasy curtain and on into the main room. It was as if I had waded through blood to be thrust like a knife into a hot and throbbing heart. Strobe lights pulsed green and red, turning lazily dancing couples into twitching marionettes. On the platform a stereo system balanced on two chairs near the dead mike boomed like a headache. The effect of sound and light was to make the walk to the bar at once weightless and an effort, like trying to catch butterflies in an underwater dream.

  Solly was behind the bar, dark suit shiny and crumpled, lumpy white face glistening. He looked up when I’d floated halfway across the tatty green carpet. I mouthed, ‘George?’, and he jerked a stubby thumb towards the ceiling. I turned, made my way back to the linoleumed passage then climbed the stairs and clumped along the passageway to the front office.

  George Kingman was slumped behind his enormous desk, glass in hand, an unlit bulb dangling from dusty black flex directly above his head. It was his habit to leave all the lights off and sit bathed in the glow from the huge crown that was nailed to the brick wall outside the uncurtained window. It was like gazing at the scene through red cellophane and I could see no change, no improvement, from my first and only other visit. The stained office table was still littered with papers, ashtrays overflowed, sepia prints of racehorses in dark frames still hung at crazy angles from rusty nails, the Playboy centrefolds from lumps of Blu-Tack stuck to the grey wallpaper.

  ‘I was expectin’ you,’ George said wearily. ‘Or maybe dreadin’ seein’ you. Christ, every time you walk in here, someone snuffs it. Next thing is Cassidy and Sundance waltz in and threaten to close me down, then that blows over and before I can draw breath we’re off again, musical fuckin’ chairs with the one left standin’ gettin’ the chop.’

  ‘I hate to spoil your day, but the blind piano player’s just struck a chord.’

  I picked an old Liverpool Echo off a chair, looked for a space to put it when there were no spaces, then dropped it on the floor and sat down. George was watching me warily.

  ‘What blind piano player? What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I can’t locate Len Tully.’

  ‘Try the undertakers. He lost his kid brother, so now he’s arrangin’ a funeral.’

  ‘If he’s not careful it could be his own.’

  ‘Then you know something I don’t.’

  ‘No, Frank knew something. Somehow he’d got hold of a murderer’s name, and it got him killed. If he passed that name to his brother, Len could be in danger.’

  Kingman drained his glass, heaved himself out of the swivel chair like the incredible hulk suffused with blood. His huge shadow fell across the filing cabinet as he reached for the bottle of Vat 69 I knew was standing in the half-open drawer. He held it up by the neck and waggled it at me, the black bottle glinting like red wine. I shook my head. He bent to splash whisky into his glass, took a cigar out of the packet lying on the desk and lit it with a paper match from a book bearing the club’s name. When he sat down sweat was filming his brow and glistening like watery ketchup in the close cropped grey hair. He puffed smoke. His gold ring clinked against the glass.

  ‘After you left,’ he said, ‘Frank and Len sat there drinkin’ and talkin’.’

  ‘Just the two of them – or was there someone else?’

  He frowned, shook his head. ‘The place was empty. Solly was outside takin’ a delivery from the brewery. Jimmy Beggs was somewhere around….’

  ‘So Frank and Len were over there getting smashed on JD and Red Bull, talking – and what?’

  ‘An’ nothing. That’s it.’

  ‘And nobody spoke to them?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘Yes, but I want that confirming: the whole time they were here, nobody spoke to them, nobody approached them?’

  ‘They ordered drinks.’ Kingman sneered. ‘Len lifted a finger, Solly took ‘em to the table.’

  ‘But no talk
?’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Kingman said. ‘How many fuckin’ times—’

  The thump of music from downstairs was vibrating the floorboards. There was the sudden sharp crash of breaking glass. A woman screamed shrilly, then began to laugh.

  ‘So they talked, brother to brother. What kind of talk was it? Where they cracking jokes, planning a week in Majorca – arguing?’

  ‘They were always fuckin’ arguin’.’

  ‘What was this one about?’

  ‘Who knows? I caught snatches. One’d say they should’ve, the other’d say they shouldn’t, stuff like that, like, you know, then they were on about so what do we do now, up to you, blah, blah, fuckin’ blah.’

  ‘And then Frank got up, didn’t he? The pay phone’s by the bar. He went over there and used it – maybe got change from Solly.’

  ‘Christ,’ Kingman said, ‘was he callin’ you?’

  ‘Cagily. Telling me one thing, but meaning something entirely different.’ I let Kingman take that in, then said, ‘Someone was watching him.’

  ‘I told you,’ Kingman said. ‘The place was empty.’

  ‘How about Solly? When I was here he was using a vacuum cleaner, sucking cigarette burns off that green stuff you call carpet. He was also behind the bar. That’s why you put the phone close by; you like to know what’s going on, listen to private conversations.’

  ‘Bollocks. And I told you where Solly was.’

  ‘Taking a delivery.’ I nodded. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘When Frank phoned you? I was up on the platform fixin’ the mike, only I couldn’t, which is why tonight there’s music but no singer.’

  ‘But you saw Frank go to the phone?’

  ‘The rogues I get in here it pays me to know what’s goin’ on.’

  ‘So who was listening to him?’

  He puffed on the cigar; touched the glowing tip to an ashtray that was like a landfill site; tossed back an ounce or two of Vat 69.

  ‘Yeah, well, the place was empty an’ then your boss walked in.’

  ‘My boss?’

  ‘Employer.’

  ‘What – Caroline?’

  ‘Steph.’

  ‘Steph?’

  Kingman grinned. ‘As a shamus,’ he said, ‘you’d make a fuckin’ good echo.’

  ‘You don’t mean Stephanie Grey, the solicitor?’

  ‘Why not? She pops in now and then. Ear to the ground, finger on the pulse. Probably picks up a lot of stuff she can use in court, stuff people tell her, stuff they let slip….’

  ‘And she was listening to Frank was saying? She could hear what he was saying?’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘No,’ I said wearily, ‘you didn’t.’

  ‘What I was about to say was, it was Len trying to hear what Frank was sayin’.’

  ‘Len?’ I said, then held up a hand as the echo rang in my ears and Kingman shook his head and grinned.

  ‘He was fumin’,’ Kingman said. ‘He tried to get close, grabbed Frank’s shoulder. Frank pulled away, turned his back.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Finished the call. The two of them walked out.’

  ‘Did they say where they were going?’

  ‘We know where Frank was going,’ Kingman said.

  ‘To his death.’ I nodded. ‘And now his brother’s missing.’

  Kingman grinned, and winked. ‘Maybe you should talk to your friendly solicitor.’

  SIXTEEN

  Len Tully’s parting shot when I left the brothers that afternoon had been to warn me that when I found the killer, that man was as good as dead. If Frank had been telling the truth on the phone, they had beaten me to it. He and Len had come up with a name, but it was Frank who had died – so what had gone wrong?

  According to George Kingman, they had started arguing when I walked out. They were alone in the club. Nobody had spoken to them. Yet soon afterwards, Frank had used Kingman’s pay phone to tell me he had the name of the killer.

  If he had the name then, he had it earlier when I was talking to them. The only conclusion to be drawn was that it had been the intention of at least one of them to give that name to me when I walked into the King of Clubs but, between phoning me and my arrival on the scene, something had changed.

  I got there, talked to them, nothing useful came out of it and I left. Some time after I drove away it had been Frank who picked up Kingman’s phone. According to Kingman, Len had been desperate to find out who his brother was calling, what he was saying; Frank had been just as determined to keep his brother at bay. Again, there were only a couple of possible reasons for the disagreement: Frank was scared, he wanted out, and was desperate to give me the name and wash his hands of the whole affair. Len had bowed to Frank’s wishes and spoken to me, but what came out of that meeting had done nothing to change his mind. He wanted revenge: he had the name, and he was going after the killer.

  There was one other terrible possibility. Len Tully had not only hanged Lorraine Creeney, but he had also, twelve months ago, murdered his own brother. If he had done that, he had also murdered Frank. And if I was right on any of those counts – perhaps even on more than one – where was Len now?

  DAY FIVE – FRIDAY 4 NOVEMBER

  It was twenty past midnight when I turned the Quattro off High Park Street, the pitted tarmac drying in a freshening breeze and Len Tully’s house in darkness when I pulled up with the tyres whispering against the kerb. I switched off the engine, sat in warmth and darkness studying windows like blind dead eyes. Weak light from the street lamp immediately outside the gate crawled gamely along the short path towards the front door. Beyond curtains drawn back from window panes stained with the dust of passing traffic, I caught the shine of furniture and what might have been light reflecting in a wall-mounted mirror. When I wound down my window I heard the whine of a car racing along High Park Street, the soft singing of the wind in overhead cables.

  I climbed out reluctantly, opened the creaking gate and walked up the path. When I tried the bell, there was no response. Several loud knocks threatened only to alert the neighbours. I turned my back to the door, looked up and down the street – a number of lighted windows, all upstairs – bathrooms or bedrooms. As I watched, one light went out.

  Len’s front door was the kind with big frosted glass panels divided by a deep wooden crosspiece. On the doorstep there was a heavy rounded stone up against the wall. In days gone by residents would have used it to secure a note for the milkman, or to hide a spare key.

  I found another use for it. One swift blow shattered the glass panel close to the lock. I dropped the stone, slipped my hand through the jagged hole and let myself in.

  My feet crunched on broken glass. I stood listening to my heart thumping and my pulse hissing in my ears; reached behind me to click the door shut; leaned back against it with a feeling of despondency I could not explain.

  Light filtered through the frosted glass, throwing my faint shadow across a tiled floor. The front-room door was on my right, half open, and I could see the corner of a desk. A flight of stairs to my left climbed into deeper shadows, and the passageway in front of me would lead to a back room and kitchen. Len could be anywhere, but he had not shown himself and my straining ears could detect no sound.

  I opened my mouth to call out, then hesitated, biting my lip. I had rung the bell several times, hammered on the front door, used a stone to shatter a panel of glass. If Len was in the house, why hadn’t he answered the door, or come pounding through to investigate as broken glass tinkled? What was he doing? Was he standing behind the front room door with a shiny number nine iron clutched in both hands, waiting to crack the skull of the mindless scally who had broken into his house? Was he even now whispering into the telephone, calling the police?

  Or was he doing none of those things because, too late yet again, I was trailing with painful slowness in the footsteps of a killer?

  My skin prickled at the thought. I felt my nostrils flare, instinctively sniffi
ng the still air for the odours of death. I closed my eyes, saw Frank Tully in rugby shirt and jeans, a grotesque grimace on his white dead face and his body jerking and jumping as he hung from his own bedroom light fitting.

  I thought briefly and enviously of Calum, up to Christ knew what capers with Jones the Van, of Sian snuggled down with a gin and tonic in Eleanor’s cosy flat. Then I took a deep breath, let it out in an explosion of self-disgust, and commenced the search.

  In the next few minutes, feeling like a timid and fearful child forced to play hide and seek with all the lights switched off, I opened doors, looked into shadowy rooms, peered under beds and behind limp shower curtains, cast sidelong glances filled with trepidation at light fittings, and confirmed what I had expected: I was alone in the house. The gallant PI had ventured forth, and got nowhere.

  Downstairs again, in the front room where weak street lighting glinted on polished furniture and a desk-top computer monitor, I thought for a moment then sat down in a swivel chair in front of the pine desk and once again tried to reach Len on his mobile. It rang … rang … and then it was answered.

  ‘Yes?’

  A woman. Voice indistinct. She must have been standing in the open air, for the wind was whipping across the phone’s mouthpiece to roar like distant surf in my ear. Through it I thought I heard a car engine start, a door slam, the snap of what could have been dry twigs and a man cough, spit, then hoarsely ask a question.

  ‘If that’s Len coughing, tell him it’s Jack Scott. I need to talk to him.’

  ‘Not now.’

  And the phone went dead.

  I tried again. It was switched off.

  I stared at it, nonplussed.

  As I did so, I was conscious of an eerie light at my shoulder. I swivelled the chair. The computer monitor had come to life. It must have been in suspend mode. If you’ve got a computer, you’ll know the routine. You leave the room to make coffee, and when you come back the screen’s blank.