‘Jack Scott. I rang you earlier.’
‘Did you?’ He frowned. ‘Yeah, that’s right, I remember a call….’ He smiled. ‘OK, and you are…?’
‘Jack—’
He stopped me quickly by raising a hand as big as a shovel blade.
‘I’ve already asked that, haven’ I?’
‘Yes, you have. But it’s OK, I do understand.’
‘I wish I fuckin’ did,’ he said, and the tone was so ineffably sad I was relieved Sian wasn’t with me.
‘It’s all comin’ back though,’ he said. ‘It’s about Cocky, right?’
‘Cocky?’
‘Cocky the cocker spaniel. My dog.’
‘Mm. But not so much about the dog as what was seen when he got out on the night your wife died.’ I smiled apologetically. ‘By you or your wife. Whoever went out looking for him.’
‘I know what I saw,’ he said. ‘I saw your car.’
‘That’s right – but how’d you know…?’
‘Because it’s outside now. I saw you arrive, saw you gettin’ out.’
‘Right.’ I shook my head and smiled ruefully. ‘Obvious isn’t it – and I’m supposed to be a private investigator.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s what I saw, your car – but Cocky got out a couple of times that night. He always does.’
‘What I’d like to know is if you’re sure he got out earlier on that particular night.’
‘Definitely.’
‘Any idea what time?’
‘Nineish.’
‘And who went looking for him?’
‘Rose.’
‘Did she tell you where she found him?’
‘He’d strayed into a neighbour’s garden. Across the back lane….’
He trailed off, his eyes distant. Death added to death. His ageing brain was fumbling as it tried to separate one from the other.
‘Joe Creeney’s house,’ I prompted.
‘Yeah. It’s got a white gate. Rose shut it after her an’ Cocky.’
That sounded right. The gate was shut when Joe got out of my car.
‘Did she see anything while she was in Joe’s garden? When she was near it, maybe when she was coming out, shutting the gate?’
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I haven’t even offered you a cup of tea.’
‘Don’t worry about it, it’s getting late and I’ve not long had coffee.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ll have to hurry you because I’m expectin’ a visitor, see, I had a phone call….’
‘That was me,’ I said gently.
‘Was it?’ He frowned. ‘What did you want?’
‘I wanted to know if your wife saw anything when she went looking for your dog on Saturday night. No, sorry, I’m not being precise. What I mean is, did she see anyone in Joe Creeney’s garden?’
‘She saw Creeney.’
‘What – in the garden?’
He nodded. ‘Crossin’ the garden. Well, walkin’ down the path from the shed. Towards the house. Carryin’ a ladder. I think they were decoratin’….’
He looked at me, puzzled.
‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Scott. Jack Scott.’
‘Right. Jack. So, Rose didn’t say nothin’ to Creeney because, well, it was late, and Cocky had got in his garden. Rose didn’t like tresspassin’. But she told me she saw him. Creeney.’
‘And you’re sure of the time? Nine o’clock?’
‘It was wet, wasn’ it? Rainin’. And the clock had just chimed, the big one, the grandfather clock. It’s in the hall.’
‘Yes, it is. I saw it.’
I saw that, but what I couldn’t see was how Rose Lane had watched Joe Creeney carry a ladder out of his garden shed at around nine o’clock on Saturday night, a week ago, when at that time he was still locked up in Walton gaol.
I rang Willie Vine from the car and asked him if he could confirm the time Joe Creeney had gone over the wall of Walton prison, or whatever he had done to get out. Around ten o’clock, Vine said. Could have been later, not a chance it was as early as eight or nine because he’d been spoken to several times by prison officers.
While he was on I also asked him for the results of the DNA analysis of the blood found on Lorraine Creeney’s elbow. Definitely Joe’s, Vine said. A positive match. I asked how that fitted in with the idea of Len Tully as the accomplice who had set the whole thing up and then walked out. Easy, Vine said. The photograph showed Lorraine still alive. She was alive when I dropped Joe off, she was alive when Joe walked into the house. Something happened in there, and Joe got elbowed in the face.
Then Joe Creeney murdered his wife.
Case closed.
TWENTY-FOUR
A chill dusk was darkening the eastern skies when I put away the phone and started up, and when a black car that had been parked a little way behind me switched on its headlights and pulled silently away from the kerb as I moved down Ash Crescent, I was reminded that my careless talk to Stephanie Grey had made me a target, and I was vulnerable. Uneasy, I kept my eye on the following car. It tucked in behind me along Menlove Avenue – dual carriageway, one way system so it had no choice – but at the lights it drew level and showered the Quattro with spray as it turned left into Beaconsfield. I turned right into Yew Tree Road, and breathed a sigh of relief.
I was mildly jittery all the way to Grassendale, the unease not helped by the constant rattle of Bonfire Night fireworks that sounded uncomfortably like gunshots. I kept telling myself that my fears had little justification. What was I expecting? A bullet from a high-powered rifle to come smashing through the windscreen? A car to accelerate out of a side road and turn the Quattro into mangled metal, me into a blob of strawberry jam? I suspected Stephanie Grey of complicity in murder because she was dark-haired, liked pink blouses and I’d recognized her voice, and so I was anticipating a move to silence me. But, despite Grace Williams’s positive identification, time was making the pink blouse idea look silly and, if pushed, I could probably think up a dozen plausible reasons for what I had listened to on the mobile phone – top of the list being the possibility, recognized earlier, that I’d dialled the wrong number.
All right, so Stephanie’s mentioning that Len Tully’s death was suicide looked like a slip. But why should it? Mike Haggard couldn’t be the busy solicitor’s only source of information. If I’d queried her she would have come up with a logical explanation, I would have looked foolish – and as I pulled up outside Calum’s flat on the banks of the Mersey, that was exactly the way I was feeling.
The big first-floor room with its familiar odours of enamel paint and cigar smoke was empty. I threw my coat on a chair, wandered aimlessly around from window to work table to the picture wall where Calum’s Blu-Tacked cuttings had grown into a unique personal history of life in Liverpool. Switched on the table lamp. Looked for Post-it notes. Sniffed the air for familiar perfume. Detected nothing.
The story of my week.
It was close to five. I wandered into the kitchen and put the coffee on the stove to perk, looked in the fridge, found an open pack of smoked bacon, located tomatoes in the vegetable rack and got the lot sizzling in a frying pan filmed with lard and slid the result – crisp bacon, slightly blackened tomatoes – out of the pan onto granary toast thick with butter.
While eating I noticed that both the black moggie and its feeding bowl were missing. Had Calum been back, or had they been missing when Sian and I called in earlier? I couldn’t remember. And it didn’t matter. Calum and cat would be residing with Jones the Van. Sian was either chewing the fat with the army types, or already in Walton prison squeezing information from Damon Knight. When she did finish those chores I thought she might again be spending the night at Eleanor’s flat.
Whatever I had to do could be done by one clever investigator.
Trouble was I wasn’t feeling clever, and I hadn’t a clue what I was supposed to do next. I chuckled. I hadn’t a clue about anything.
Should I visit the o
riginal crime scene again to see if my theories on the trap to ensnare Joe held water? Call in on Max Spackman and ask him if he’d followed me to Wales and bopped me on the head? Confront Declan, find out if Max was right and he really had got tired of Lorraine? Or go back and put my suspicions to a solicitor who would be flabbergasted, then outraged enough to toss me bodily down the stairs?
The decision, as often happens, was taken out of my hands. A couple of hours later, seven or thereabouts, I was dozing fitfully on the leather settee when footsteps pattered on the stairs and Sian walked in shaking the rain from her coat.
‘He had a lot of visitors, our Damon,’ she said. ‘Named a lot of names, too, but only one I recognized. Care to make a guess?’
‘We’ve got Declan, Caroline and Stephanie visiting Joe Creeney. So it has to be Max.’
‘Bingo.’
‘Did Damon say how he knew Max, what they talked about?’
‘No to the first, and when I asked him if he passed messages between Max and Joe Creeney, I got a second no.’
‘Double negative.’
‘Still means no.’
The small table lamp was bathing the room in a warm, intimate glow. We were sprawled on separate leather chairs knocking back coffee with a liquid additive that was working the same magic on the drinkers. Blonde hair snatched back into a pony-tail was a lustrous beacon attracting my attention, which then tended to slip without restraint in a southerly direction. Blue eyes watched me with amused affection.
‘Are you thinking Max Spackman and Stephanie Grey?’
‘With reluctance.’
‘Why?’
‘Their involvement in murder is … incomprehensible.’
‘What, even for Max the bouncer?’
‘He’s nothing but a big show off. That’s the way I saw him.’
‘You’ve been wrong before.’
‘That’s why I’m sitting on the fence.’
‘But it’s all there, isn’t it? Max tried to point the finger at Declan, then lured you into the Welsh woods and whacked you on the head. Stephanie’s been identified by Grace Williams, and you heard her voice on Len Tully’s mobile. That links her to two murders.’ She paused. ‘When she answered the mobile, that must have been Max you heard thrashing around in the background. They were both there on Heswall Dales, murdering that poor man.’
‘Mm.’
‘Christ,’ Sian said, ‘how enthusiastic can you get. I tell you what, if we’re right and it is them, I’m so angry at what they did to Lorraine I’ll hang them myself.’
I sighed deeply. ‘Trouble is, it’s not all there, it doesn’t all fit. Think of all the scheming involved. Joe Creeney was trapped by a cunning plan, but Max is nothing more than a stylish thug of limited intelligence.’
‘Enter Stephanie,’ Sian said, ‘stage left.’
‘Woman in pink blouse playing the master criminal? And … what? There’s something going on between her and the leading man?’
‘You said it last night: she’s besotted.’
‘I might go along with her brains and the relationship, because women like Stephanie are often attracted to men like Max, but then we have to take another gigantic leap into the unimaginable and believe she could physically plunge a knife into Rose Lane’s throat. I can’t see how she could do it.’
‘We could go and ask her.’
‘Better still, I’ll go and talk to Max. The evidence that he bopped me on the head is stronger than the evidence against Stephanie.’
‘When?’
‘Now’s a good time. If he’s at work he’ll be mellow, and I’ll be safer in a crowd. I’ll find out from Caroline where he is.’
I took my phone out my pocket, prepared to dial – and it vibrated in my hand. I pulled a face and pressed receive.
‘Jack?’
‘Yes?’
I looked at Sian, put my thumb over the microphone and said, ‘It’s Stephanie.’
‘Jack, there’s something I didn’t tell you.’
‘It’s never too late.’
‘You’re sweet, but in a murder case you know that can be risky.’
‘We both know the murder cases we’ve been interested in are all wrapped up, closed.’
‘They could be reopened,’ she said, ‘if new evidence is uncovered.’
‘Then that would depend,’ I said, ‘on what you didn’t tell me.’
‘Well, it wasn’t you exactly. It was Sian.’
‘I didn’t know you two had met.’
‘Of course you do. She came to see me. Asked all sorts of questions.’ She laughed. ‘And I suppose she told you she sprayed perfume and I had a terrible asthma attack.’
I frowned, spread my free hand palm up on the arm of the chair and looked wide-eyed at Sian. ‘I’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion, haven’t I?’ I said. ‘You’re Fiona – Fiona Lake.’
‘Of course. Lorraine’s sister.’
‘You sound,’ I said, ‘just like Stephanie Grey,’ and in the other chair Sian put her hand to her mouth.
‘I know,’ Fiona said. ‘She was Joe’s solicitor and I met her at the trial. People who know both of us often make that mistake.’
‘Well, with that all cleared up, what was it you were going to tell me?’
‘It’s … it’s about a possible clue. I know Caroline asked you to look into Lorraine’s murder because she couldn’t believe Joe had done it. This … clue … could lead you to the man who murdered Lorraine.’
‘If you know that,’ I said, ‘you must know his name.’
‘I didn’t say that – and anyway, I’m terrified. Several people have been murdered; just talking to you like this is dangerous.’
‘You’re very brave, and you’re doing the right thing. Just tell me as much as you can – as much as I need to know to take the next step.’
‘This … bloke’s been talking. He was … somewhere … and while he was there he lost something….’
‘Really,’ I said softly, my mind racing backwards as lights flashed and bells rang. ‘Do you know what he lost?’
‘No!’
She blurted the word. Her breathing was coming in short, irregular gasps. I could almost taste the fear, almost feel the phone tremble in her hand as she shivered.
‘All right. Do you know where he lost it?’
‘In the shed.’
‘Whose shed?’
More rapid breathing. Something that might have been a strangled sob.
‘Fiona,’ I said, ‘why didn’t you go to the police?’
‘Because this is going to incriminate a member of the family and’ – another sob, swiftly suppressed, a gulp as she swallowed hard – ‘and I don’t want the police I want you to deal with it and—’
The phone went dead. She’d ended the call. Or someone had ended it for her. Sian was watching me.
‘It’s a trap.’
‘You don’t know what she said.’
‘But if she sounds like Stephanie….’
‘Yes, I know.’ I stood up, paced to the window, walked back and stood with my hands braced on the back of the chair.
‘Between a rock and a hard place again,’ I said. ‘If I didn’t dial a wrong number when I was sitting in front of Len Tully’s computer then one of these women was on the Heswall Dales when she answered my call. But which one? If it was Stephanie out there in Heswall, then this call from Fiona could be genuine. If it was Fiona, then, yes—’
‘It’s a trap.’ She smiled. ‘Follow me, Super Sleuth.’
We went into the kitchen. She poured more coffee, strong, no booze. We sat at the table.
‘Drink that,’ she said, ‘while we plan the next move.’
‘The next move is a phone call.’
‘To who?’
‘Whom.’ I winked. ‘Just listen.’
I took a sip of scalding coffee, found my mobile, keyed in the number.
‘Caroline? Hello, it’s Jack Scott. Yes, I’m fine thanks, but I want to talk to Max. Is he there
?’
I listened, shook my head slowly at Sian.
‘No, it doesn’t matter, because you can probably help. Remember when I called to see you? When Max had on his spare gloves because he’d lost one. He said he had it when he left Lorraine on Saturday, thought he might have dropped it when he was getting into his car….’ I waited, then closed my eyes, opened them and nodded at Sian. ‘He hasn’t found it?’ I listened some more, nodded once or twice, then smiled. ‘Thanks Caroline, you’ve been a big help.’
I ended the call.
‘Max lost one of his monogrammed leather gloves. He had it Saturday night when he went to see Lorraine, had it when he left – he says – certainly didn’t have it after that. And, as you heard, he still hasn’t found it.’
‘And presumably this is the clue Fiona was talking about?’
‘We don’t know. She was vague. Like, someone went somewhere and lost something. Now the someone’s panicking. As they should be. Fiona heard this someone talking to another someone. The first someone thinks he lost whatever it was he lost – in Joe Creeney’s garden shed.’
‘Fiona actually said that?’
‘She said “the shed”. I’m a sleuth. I worked out the rest.’
‘But why is it important? No, why is it a clue? If half of Liverpool knows Max went to see Lorraine, it’s not exactly a secret. If he lost a glove there, or left it there – so what?’
‘Because on Monday night I asked Max if he had gone anywhere near Joe’s shed. He laughed at the idea, because the police had searched the area. But the police thought the ladder had come from the garage, and they were concentrating their search for signs of someone entering or leaving the house by the back gate.’
‘And you know the shed is reached by a path on the other side of the garden because you and Calum have been to the scene,’ Sian said. ‘And that’s where the glove is: in the shed.’
‘Yes. Bearing Max’s initials.’
‘It’s a trap. You are being lured to a terrible fate by the two killers, one of whom is Fiona.’
‘That’s one possibility.’
‘What’s the other?’
Deathly Suspense Page 17