Deathly Suspense

by John Paxton Sheriff

  I shook my head in amazement, at her skill and the news.

  ‘So all we have to do now,’ I said softly, ‘is find that someone.’

  ‘If we can believe Damon.’

  ‘Joe Creeney didn’t murder his wife, so he had to have another reason for going home. The one given to you by Knight is the only one that makes sense. Once he went over the wall, Joe was on the run. Men on the run need to disappear, and the best way of doing that is to leave the country.’ I tilted my head. ‘Did Damon have ideas on this mysterious someone, the person who was doing the planning?’

  ‘He simply repeated what he told Stan Jones: the only visitors Joe had in a year were Lorraine, Declan, Caroline and—’

  ‘Stephanie Grey.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So now we’re getting somewhere. Joe got out of jail with help. When he was driven home he expected to find Lorraine with their bags packed, his mysterious benefactor holding two one-way tickets to the Cayman Islands. Instead he walked into a trap, and one of the people pulling the strings was our bent solicitor, Stephanie Grey—’

  ‘Why?’

  I blinked and looked at my mother.

  ‘You mean what was her motive?’ I shrugged. ‘She’s well paid, so profit’s out. Hiding the truth about something that might incriminate her or someone important to her, is one possibility. Another is that she’s besotted, willing to do anything for our mystery someone.’

  Sian was also looking at Eleanor. ‘Does it matter? If we have enough to arrest Stephanie, the police can take it from there.’

  ‘Ah, but hold on a minute,’ I said. ‘Who said anything about arrest?’

  ‘That’s what they do,’ Eleanor said, ‘with murderers.’

  ‘Yes, and no doubt that will happen.’

  ‘You left out a word,’ Sian said sweetly.

  ‘He did, didn’t he?’ Eleanor said. ‘What he meant to say was, it will happen eventually – but before that he’s got a locked room mystery to solve. Which means there’s a lot more work to do, because if Joe Creeney walked into a trap it was one devised by a fiendishly cunning mind. Stephanie’s a solicitor, which suggests she’s clever, possibly devious. You believe she was there when Len Tully was being … disposed of. And you heard a man in the background. You know a high percentage of murder’s are family affairs, so why aren’t you looking at Declan?’

  I nodded. ‘Declan’s always been a possible, even a probable. But Max Spackman pointed the finger at him by suggesting he was in a flagging relationship with Lorraine. That smells fishy. And I believe I saw Max in what could have been the white Fiat Punto I stopped to help. If he bopped me on the head, then he’s got some explaining to do, and a possible drifts more towards a probable.’

  ‘Max never visited Joe in prison,’ Sian objected. ‘If he thought up this cunning plan to murder Lorraine and implicate Joe, how did he get it to Joe?’

  I thought for a moment, then gently snapped my fingers.

  ‘Nobody,’ I said, ‘thought of checking on Damon Knight’s visitors.’

  ‘Oh, that’s really clever,’ Eleanor said drily, ‘because if you go down that road you’d need to look at every visitor to every prisoner who had the opportunity to talk to Joe Creeney.’

  ‘Keep it simple,’ Sian said. ‘Damon was Joe’s cell mate, he likes me, I’ll talk to him again.’

  ‘Which leaves us,’ Eleanor said, ‘speculating on where Frank and Len Tully come into it.’

  ‘My instinct is to believe everything they said. Someone murdered their brother. Six months ago they learned that Joe Creeney had an alibi. Then I came into it, they discovered the name of the killer, and paid with their lives. The rope and camera were planted in Len’s car.’

  Sian nodded. ‘And the photographs were loaded into his computer by the real killer, who broke into his house with more finesse than you showed?’

  ‘Everyone,’ I said, ‘has an off night.’

  Sian grinned. ‘I think we should stick with that. With the Tullys resting in peace we can concentrate on the other suspects. The one clear connection to murder – two murders: Lorraine and Rose Lane – is Stephanie Grey. What do we do about her? Confront her, leave her alone and go after the man?‘

  ‘I know where you two go,’ Eleanor said.

  I looked at Sian. Then at my mother. ‘Us?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Jack. Sian’s been spilling the beans. Telling me all about her return to that adventure training boys-own-paper stuff she loves, how the status quo’s been restored, you two together but doing your own thing and sometimes those own things coincide….’

  ‘So … where are we going?’

  ‘Home. Bryn Aur.’

  ‘We’ve been drinking.’

  ‘Sian’s had less than you. She’ll take you in the Shogun.’

  Sian’s chuckle was lecherous.

  ‘That’s not quite what I meant,’ Eleanor said, ‘but if that’s what floats your boat….’

  ‘Time off,’ I said loftily, ‘is time wasted.’

  ‘Don’t try to blind me with aphorisms,’ Eleanor said scornfully. ‘One bloody night won’t make a scrap of difference, and I’m sure you’ve got better things to do in the hours of darkness, in or out of the Shogun.’ She winked at Sian. ‘I certainly have.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Eleanor, you don’t mean…?’

  ‘But I do. Reg is arriving tonight.’ Her smile was kittenish. ‘When you’ve been led up one garden path, the prospect of another one becomes positively irresistible.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Of course Eleanor was right, as she usually is. After a promise from Sian that she would return soon to spend more time with my mother, we did take Sian’s Shogun to Bryn Aur, my Soldier Blue chased the halogen headlights’ probing beams with speed and safety along sweeping country roads where flat lakes shone like silver, and in the stillness of my old stone house beneath the Glyders we sat on cool leather and drank laced coffee while listening to the clock chime midnight and a distant fox bark from tangled undergrowth already glistening with dew under a cold autumn moon. Some time later we walked upstairs to the bedroom, and there in silky nakedness found something to do that transformed those hours of darkness into endless moments of intense pleasure and, with our valiant efforts, earned ourselves the reward of a long lie in. The movement alongside me of a body that was at once soft and firm, warm and cool, brought me sluggishly awake at a little after nine, the window’s grey rectangle told me that the light of a November day was filtering through a hanging river mist and, with Sian’s arm heavy across my naked chest and her steady breathing softly warming my ear, I lay in luxurious lassitude and tried to make sense of what lay ahead.

  There comes a point in every investigation when instinct warns that the end is drawing near. Usually I’m confident enough to expect a successful outcome, yet always that optimism is tempered by dread, the dread engendered by the revulsion I feel for all violence.

  That probably sounds like a contradiction coming from an ex-soldier, but my military career’s watershed came when, in a rapid in-and-out action in Beirut, I killed an innocent man with my bare hands and his sightless eyes and the black blood seeping from his ears – the only sign of violence – had, for the next twelve months, gone with me each night to my bed.

  Sensibly I ditched a fatally stalled vocation and moved on, trying half-a-dozen jobs in Australia, various scams when back in the UK, surviving a bruising brush with the bottle and eventually arriving at toy soldiers and the investigation of, yes, violent crimes – a tale oft recounted, all of it by now old hat, but the outcome nevertheless one that in reflective moments raises an obvious question.

  Why? Why go back to engage closely with what I had rejected?

  Manny Yates is the obvious answer: the Lime Street dick was my saviour, my teacher; he investigates crimes and he is my mentor still. Sian Laidlaw is another – but her involvement in my cause serves only to add to the paradox for under the appearance and demeanour of a strong, immense
ly capable and even aggressive person there hides a nature that is both caring and gentle.

  But now we begin to build paradox upon paradox for ultimately it is that lurking inner softness that impels both of us to fight the violence without. We left military careers behind, but are driven to anger and tears by reports of kidnapping and murder and so we act. You can take the soldier out of the army but you can’t …

  Well, you know the way that ends and, as a valedictory bugle note to which every ex-soldier will raise a glass, it offers the least complicated reasons for why I do what I do: restlessness; the inability to settle; in Kiplings words: Me that ‘ave followed my trade in the place where the Lightnin’s are made; ‘twixt the Rains and the Sun and the Moon … Me that ‘ave watched ‘arf a world ‘eave up all shiny with dew …

  What it boils down to is my subconscious telling me that if I worked only with toy soldiers it would be as interesting and fulfilling as rolling the lawns for the squire – which may not be accurate, nor quite how Kipling wrote that bit, but by God when he did write it he hit the nail of a soldier’s yearning smack on the head!

  Sian mumbled, and rolled onto her back. The duvet slipped. I grinned in the grey half light, reached out to fix it and she caught my wrist, took my hand to her mouth and breathily kissed my palm.

  I said softly, ‘How well did you like Lorraine Creeney?’

  ‘Mm? It was too soon to tell. She was a new friend. But nice. And now she’ll never be anything more.’

  ‘And somewhere out there is the man who hanged her by the neck.’ I could hear her breathing; the subtle change in its rhythm as my words hit home; the sudden tightening of her grip.

  ‘I’ve been cogitating, trying to work out why we do what we do. I think I arrived at an answer of sorts – I’ve got us down as gentle people, knights errant – but that could be codswallop. You see, I know what you’re capable of, Soldier Blue – and I’m scared. I’m going after your nice new friend’s killer. When I find him, I want you to stay away.’ I rolled towards her, placed my palm on her forehead and with finger and thumb gently lifted her eyelids. Her eyes looked at me, a smoky blue.

  I said, ‘Will you do that?’

  ‘What I’ll do,’ she said, ‘is make your breakfast.’

  DAY SIX – SATURDAY 5 NOVEMBER

  DI Alun Morgan rolled in when we were finishing off in the kitchen, his battered Volvo’s engine rattling like dried peas in a tin can as the car bounced over the stone bridge and emerged like a rusting frigate from the morning mist. The dishes were cleared, but half a pot of coffee was still perking gently on a low light and we welcomed him with a full mug and, for a change, went through to sit in the office.

  ‘How the hell,’ I said, ‘did you know I was here?’

  ‘Prescient,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes, more dark forces and mystic powers?’

  ‘That’s always possible, but this time something perhaps a bit more prosaic.’ His grey eyes were amused. ‘I called your mobile phone, got the answer I needed and here I am.’

  ‘No you didn’t.’

  ‘Phone Eleanor. Ask her.’

  ‘Wha …?’ I smacked my forehead. ‘Damn. I left it there. Then you tried to phone me, and she answered.’

  ‘Now that is prescient,’ he said, ‘but it ruins the next bit. Because if I now tell you I know all about the woman in a pink blouse, you’ll realize exactly how I found out and my reputation is shot.’

  ‘Not all about her,’ I said. ‘The one thing Eleanor wouldn’t give you is the name.’

  ‘So who is she?’

  I shook my head. ‘You’ll know when I’ve got proof of what she’s done.’

  ‘More fuel to feed Haggard’s anger. He won’t like what you’re doing.’

  ‘It’s not him that’s here, it’s you, and it’s you that’s interested in someone who committed murder in Wales.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, but if you can link it to more than one murder in Liverpool that brings in the Merseyside police—’

  ‘Who at present consider the case closed.’

  ‘Impasse,’ the Welsh detective said. He sipped his coffee, thought for a moment and shook his head. ‘And in my estimation more like a wild leap of the imagination or I’d be taking this much more seriously. Look at it with logic: how many women have pink blouses and dark hair, I wonder?’

  ‘Not all that many,’ I said, ‘who very early yesterday morning answered my call to a man’s mobile when, as far as I could gather, he was being murdered by her accomplice.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘You can prove any of this?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m pretty sure I recognized the voice. I know I could hear a man in the background. I was at Heswall when the phone was found in the car’s glove compartment. Now, brilliant sleuths that we are, we will go out into the mean streets and gather evidence.’

  ‘Gather evidence in the mean streets?’ Sian echoed, her face a picture.

  ‘No stone unturned,’ I said.

  ‘No gutter untrod,’ Alun Morgan said drily.

  ‘It could come to that,’ I said.

  ‘Another thought does occur.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Were you circumspect? You questioned this woman, I’m sure, and I’m sure you did it with cleverness so as to hide what you were after. But were you careless? Did you inadvertently make your suspicions obvious? Because if she is a killer in a pink blouse, with a male accomplice—’

  ‘I got that wrong. She’d be the accomplice.’

  ‘Whatever. But if you’ve alerted them, they’ll either disappear—’

  ‘Or come after us,’ Sian said. ‘I think you’re right.’ She looked at me. ‘Jack?’

  ‘I told her Calum saw her in Conwy very early Sunday morning.’

  She smiled ruefully. ‘Not circumspect, nor careless, but reckless.’

  ‘I have a plan.’

  ‘So did General Custer.’

  ‘And I’ve heard enough,’ Alun Morgan said, ‘so I want you to listen carefully. I’m investigating a brutal murder. DI Haggard has looked into two murders and a suicide, and considers all three cases closed. My advice to you is this: keep out of my way, because I don’t believe one word of this pink blouse nonsense—’

  ‘Even though Grace Williams in Deganwy is pretty sure from a photograph that I’ve found the right woman?’

  ‘—and make sure you dig up proof before you talk to Haggard about mysterious women answering dead-men’s phones.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘If proof is what you’re after that’s what you’ll get: the next time you hear from us, all cases will be solved.’

  ‘That’s not a clever man with a plan,’ Alun Morgan said, swinging smoothly out of his chair, ‘it’s a boastful PI blowing hot air full of empty promises.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Our morning lie in, followed by a late greasy breakfast, Alun’s visit and heavy rain and thick spray slowing traffic on the M56, meant that it was early afternoon before Sian brushed the Shogun up against the kerb outside Calum’s flat in Grassendale. Fine rain was still sweeping like mist across the flat surface of the Mersey. We ran across the road, pounded up the stairs and walked into an empty room.

  Of the lanky bearded Scot there was no sign. I hadn’t spoken to him since my suggestion, in The Gallant Trooper, that he should lie low, but as the American Civil War soldiers were still standing in patient ranks in my Bryn Aur workshop awaiting the arrival of their Sharps rifles, I didn’t waste time trying to reach him on the phone.

  Sian still had more shop talking to do with her ex-army chums, her rugged men of few words. She had arranged to meet them in a bar in Southport, but promised to talk to Damon Knight as soon as possible. I pointed out that the journey back would take her close to the prison. She rolled her eyes and thanked me politely for the information.

  Me? Well, I was going to see a man about a dog.

  I already knew that Rose Lane’s house in Ash Crescent backed onto the lane where I had
dropped Joe Creeney. What I didn’t know was the reaction to expect from her husband, ex-boxer Rocky Lane. The man was elderly and losing his faculties. He must have leaned heavily on his wife, and now she was gone.

  Two minutes waiting for a ring on the doorbell to be answered can feel like a long time. I waited twice that long, rang again and waited another long minute before I heard footsteps and saw a bulky shadow fall against the glazed door. A brisk wind was driving rain against the back of my neck and and causing my pants to stick to the back of my legs. When the door was opened by a man in T-shirt and jeans who looked like a 1950s’ Russian weightlifter on his day off, I forced a smile, expected to wait another minute before he realized he should invite me in, but was pleasantly surprised.

  ‘Jack Scott,’ he said in a rasping voice. ‘Christ, come in, you’re gettin’ soaked.’

  He shambled off with a boxer’s rolling gait, leading me into a gloomy hallway that looked and smelt like a warm, damp florist’s shop when the the stock of heady blooms is going over. He must have brought all the wreaths and bouquets home from the recent funeral and stacked them on telephone table and a fancy brocade chair, hung two from the lime-green light fitting and propped the rest around the base of the grandfather clock, along the deep skirting boards and all the way up the stairs. A stairway to heaven I thought, with the late Rose in mind, then berated myself for my tasteless thoughts and followed the old pugilist into the rear sitting room. A room, I realized, that overlooked the conifer-flanked sloping lawn that led down to the narrow lane and the back of Joe’s house.

  Rocky indicated a vast easy chair close to a living-flame gas fire set in a marble recess in the wall, dropped his bulk into the one opposite me as I sat down, and looked at me steadily with sharp blue eyes.

  ‘Yeah, right, so you are…?’

  His accent was broad scouse. I guessed the huskiness came from strong drink and cigars, and more than one straight left-hand jab to the throat.