Sheila shook her head. “Spain in October? Which bit of Spain?”
“She flew into Malaga, hired a Peugeot, and stayed at a hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.”
“I thought that was in America.” She shook her head again.
“No, South East Spain, over Granada way. Why do you keep shaking your head?”
“Alice went to Benidorm when she was eighteen or nineteen. She hated it. Said it was awful unless you like Scouser comics. She swore never to go to Spain again. The other thing is that she usually takes a city break in October, though she always avoided the school holidays like. She usually went to Prague, Paris, places like that.”
“I have assumed Alice would not travel to Spain alone. Is that a fair assumption?”
“I would have thought so. I’ve never known her to travel abroad without a man in tow. Mind, she could have met someone there.”
“Yes she could have.” Unlikely though, he thought. Why would Alice book the hotel if the unknown man who shared her room was already out there? “Let me run a name past you.” Collins paused and watched again. “Aisha.”
“Ah, now that I can help you with. Aisha is like a work friend, but she works at the Foreign Office. I know they have,” she paused, “sorry, had working lunches together.”
“Do you have a second name for Aisha?”
“No, sorry I don’t.”
“Not to worry, perhaps our friends at the embassy will be able to tell me when I’m back there tomorrow. Okay, I think I’m done. I will bid you good night.” He stood up and made for the hallway. “No don’t get up Ms Evans, finish your tea, we can see ourselves out.”
After they had gone Sheila looked at the two hardly touched mugs of tea and the footprints all round her room.
“Should I drive you home sir?” asked WPC Armstrong.
“Yes please, it looks like an early start tomorrow.”
“Would that be breakfast at the café on Denholme Street followed by a meeting at the embassy?”
“Followed by a chat with the pathologist, followed by messing up Doyle’s love life, followed by who knows what.”
“Can I just say thank you for asking me to accompany you, Chief Inspector.” She turned the key in the ignition and glanced his way. “That was the first time I’ve sat in on a serious crime interview in someone’s house like that.”
“Was it? Sorry I forget you’re new to the force, appearances can be…”
“What you really want to say is; it is unusual for a PC in her forties to be so wet behind the ears.”
“Well, you are a bit older than most women of your rank.”
“I have a positive discrimination recruitment campaign to thank for that. More women and more wisdom seemed to be what they were looking for when I responded to the ad in the paper.”
“You did your job well tonight, just get me home safely and I might recommend you for Commissioner,” grinned Collins.
“Leave it a week or two would you?” laughed Armstrong, as she turned out onto the main road.
“I have to say sir; I didn’t feel comfortable leaving her on her own.”
Collins chuckled as he rummaged for a biscuit in his pocket. “She wasn’t alone, her girlfriend was up on the landing the entire time. I saw her feet when we arrived, and they were still poking out under the banister when we left, sparkly red nail varnish on every toe. So unless that half of the Evans Sisters has worse taste in men than the other one, Sheila has a soft chest to cry on once she gets upstairs. Or maybe that soft chest is already in the sitting room.”
“Blimey. Are you saying you knew she liked women before she uttered a word, before she dropped all those hints?”
“I had a good idea, yes.” Collins bit into a shortbread finger.
“What did you make of her other than that?” asked Armstrong.
“She was cute, as in sharp, that is. I was tempted to ask what she did to pay for her flat-pack furniture.”
“Human Resources Manager is her title. She works for Mapletons, the car showroom chain.”
“Help her make tea, change the subject, get her to talk about herself. Did you make that up as you went along or is that part of a WPC’s training?”
“Just the feminine touch, you should try it sometime.”
“Oh I like the feminine touch, but Mrs Collins is not too keen on that sort of thing nowadays.” Collins chuckled and poked the remainder of the biscuit into his mouth. “If you see a chippy, could you stop, I could do with picking up a bit of supper.” Two fragments of biscuit dropped out of the corner of his mouth.
“I guess you’re too old for me to lecture you on healthy eating?”
“It’s your age that is the problem, not mine. Only women older than me are allowed to tread down that particular path.”
“Was that some sort of compliment?”
“Find me a chippy and I might tell you. Whoa, stop the car.”
Armstrong checked her rear view mirror and slammed on the brakes.
“What’s the matter?”
“Reverse us back to that alley, where the railing is.”
She let a car go around them and then started reversing.
“I thought so.”
“What did you think?”
Collins unfastened his seatbelt and pointed down the alley. “If I’m not mistaken, that shadow is moving.”
“You’re right, it is. Shall we take a look?”
“That’s the general idea, yes.” He opened the car door. “Let me go first.”
He zigzagged round the two railings at the end of the alley and made his way towards the dark shadow. He was now close enough to be sure it was a person lying on the ground.
“What’s happened to you then?” said Collins when he was only a few feet away.
“Fuck off,” groaned the man.
“Fuck off. I can’t fuck off when someone looks likes he needs help, I’m a police officer.”
“Oh, fucking hell.”
He crouched down and gently took hold of the man’s chin. His right cheek was grazed and his left eye was starting to close. Collins judged him to be in his early twenties.
“How is he sir?” Armstrong asked.
“He’s taken a bit of a kicking by the looks of it, but he’ll live.”
The man’s short leather jacket was undone. Collins pulled it open so he could assess the damage to his upper body. The man’s white shirt had blood marks down the left side of his chest. Collins placed two fingers flat onto the mark and pushed inwards.
“Aaagh... Fuck the duck.”
“Fuck the duck indeed. You have at least one broken rib.” He looked up at Armstrong. “Call it in would you? Get both an ambulance and a couple of local coppers over here.”
“Okay sir.” Armstrong turned and headed back to the squad car.
“No, don’t try to sit up sir,” said Collins. “Just stay where you are and try not to move. Do you have sharp pains anywhere other than in your ribs?”
“No.”
“What’s your name?”
“Pete.”
“Okay Pete; how many fingers?” He held up a single finger in front Pete’s face.
“One.”
“Good.” He moved his finger slowly to the left and watched Pete’s right eye track it. “Who did this to you?”
“Fucking bastards.”
“And do these fucking bastards have names?”
The man did not answer.
Collins looked around the scene and was not surprised to see what he saw. It was lying on the dark-grey tarmac, inches from the far wall.
“Whose knife is that?”
Again, Pete did not answer.
“It’s yours, isn’t it Pete?”
“Fuck you.”
“I’ll put the abusive language down to alcohol. Judging by your stinking breath, you’ve had quite a few tonight. Tell me if I’ve got this wrong. The knife is yours and whoever gave you this beating kicked it out of your hand or somehow made you dr
op it.”
“None of your fucking business.”
“Well Peter, you are one lucky man. Nine times out of ten the sharp end of a knife ends up in the owner’s body somewhere.” He heard Armstrong’s feet and looked up as she approached.
“On their way sir.”
Collins rose to his feet and pulled out his mobile phone. Punch your number in there for me, would you?”
“Of course sir. But why?” She took his phone and started tapping in her mobile’s number.
“Just a precaution. I’m going for a little walk.” Collins took his phone back. “Should I store it under Armstrong? Or do you have a first name?”
“Armstrong sir. Put it under Armstrong.”
“If he starts to move, make sure he doesn’t go for that knife over there. Kick him in the nuts if you have to.”
At the end of the alley, Collins looked right and then left. Left looked more promising. He started to walk towards a lit up area a few hundred metres down the road.
A few minutes later he was standing outside The Duke of York public house. Before going inside he looked along the high street. His eyes struggled to focus on a green sign further down on the other side of the road. He walked on.
Finally he was close enough to read the pub sign: Duck and Kangaroo.
“Fuck the duck. Fuck the duck indeed.”
There was a pelican crossing a little further down. Collins did not use it. Halfway across the road he stood on the white line to allow a police car with its blue lights flashing to go by. The driver blew his horn four times and briefly glared at him as it passed.
The pub was still busy and the noise level suggested many of the customers had been there quite some time. Two barmaids in tight white T-shirts with Duck and Kangaroo printed across their chests were working the main bar. On their stomachs was a cartoon of a kangaroo coming up behind a duck. Collins walked towards a much older man serving drinks at the far end where the bar curved round. His black polo-shirt was much more subtle. The name of the pub was embroidered in copper-plate writing onto the breast pocket.
Collins waited patiently for him to finish serving a pint to an old man with a cane walking stick.
“What can I get you?”
“I’m not drinking. Have you had a spot of bother tonight?”
“Filth?”
“Would you like to rephrase that?”
“I take it you’re a copper.”
“Well done. You’ve just successfully passed the powers of reasoning test. Now the next stage of the recruitment procedure is that you answer the question.”
“No. No bother whatsoever.”
“Tell me, those two girls over there, the ones keeping out of the way in the far corner. How old do you reckon they are? Sixteen, maybe seventeen at a push?”
“They said they were eighteen.”
“And a few pots of fresh honey are better for business than asking for proof of age is?”
“I’ll ask them to leave.”
“And you are sure you haven’t had any little incidents tonight?”
“Look, this pub is just inside the red part of North London. A crew of four Tottenham supporters have started coming in lately. It’s caused a few arguments around the pool table, but no more than that. Nothing we can’t handle ourselves.”
“And exactly how far from your pub do you handle things? Where does your jurisdiction end?”
“Has something happened out on the pavement?”
“A little further from your door than that.”
The barman sighed and leant forward. “The guy you’re interested in has a cockerel tattooed on his forearm. But I didn’t tell you that.”
“No, quite right, you didn’t. I will have a drink after all; a pint of Diet Coke please.”
“I’ll be with you in a minute John.” The barman looked over to a youngish man in an Arsenal football shirt. He had three empty pint glasses hanging from the fingers of each hand. “Pepsi Light okay?”
“Aye, that’ll do nicely.”
While waiting for his drink, Collins leant with his back to the bar and surveyed the clientele. Old and young, not many in the middle, he thought.
“There you go. On the Duck.”
“Thank you. Now can you point me in the right direction?”
“Follow the bar round and carry on past the gents. Down a couple of steps and you’ll see the pool table over to the right. You’ll find him there.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem. Come back for a proper drink sometime.”
“Not until you change breweries, I shan’t.”
The barman shot him an understanding smile with a small nod attached to it.
It came as a bit of a surprise to Collins when he saw Richard Morgan standing at the end of the pool table with a cue held between his right hand and the floor. His left forearm had the cockerel tattoo on it. His right fist was wrapped round the cue. Collins noticed that his knuckles were redder than knuckles usually are.
He leant against the wall and took a gulp of his drink.
Morgan turned to him and said: “Fuck off mate, this is a young man’s game.”
“Oh, I don’t want to play, it’s too easy. I prefer snooker, that’s a real man’s game.”
“A pony on five frames of snooker any day you fucking like.”
“You still play then?”
Morgan moved closer. “Do I know you?”
“You know James Madison better.”
“Fucking hell, if it isn’t copper Collins?”
“They let you out early?”
“As it happens, they did. Robbie and Stan are still banged up but I never did what they did, did I? And I’m going straight now. So what are you doing sniffing around these parts?”
“I was on my way home and felt like wetting my whistle.”
“No offence Inspector, but could you sling your hook? There’s a monkey on this and it’s down to this final frame.”
“And you can’t play in front of an audience.”
“I can, but with you standing there it’s like having a screw watching you.”
“Prisons, eh? Televisions, pool tables, fluffy pillows, not like the old days.”
Morgan positioned himself face-to-face with Collins. “Isn’t it about time you retired? You’re too old to arrest anyone. Even my sister’s lad would give you the slip.”
Collins lifted the front of his foot onto the toe of Morgan’s left shoe, and pushed down. He avoided the right toe, that might well have some forensics on it. Morgan did not even notice. The steel toecaps prevented him from feeling a thing. “You’re probably right. I’ll go and play the fruit machine, shall I?”
“You do that.”
Collins waited until he was back up the two carpeted steps before he pulled out his mobile phone. He carried on walking towards the door as he waited for Armstrong to answer.
“Hello, is that you sir?”
“It is. I take it the local bobbies are with you, or did they sail on by?”
“They’re here sir. So is the ambulance, they’re putting the victim in the back of it now.”
“Tell them there is someone in the Duck and Kangaroo they need to arrest on a GBH charge. I would do it myself, but I don’t want all the paperwork and the court appearances that go with it.”
“Someone, sir? Someone is a bit vague.”
“Richard Morgan. He has a record as long as his arm, an arm with a Tottenham cockerel tattooed on it. Tell them they will find him playing pool in a room at the back of the pub and that there will be forensic evidence on his right toecap.”
“Will do sir. Will you be back soon?”
“No, I’m keeping out of it now, and so are you. Pick me up outside the Tasty Burger in five minutes. It looks like a burger with skinny chips will have to do me. Do you want me to get you something?”
“No thank you sir. I want to look good in a pair of jeans sometime soon.”
“Some men are attracted to big bot… Forget
I said that will you?”
“I’ll not forget. But I shan’t tell anyone else,” she chuckled. “Five minutes you say?”
“Five minutes. It’s on the left just past the Duck and Kangaroo.”
After closing the door behind him Collins turned the sign hanging on a white string so the open side was facing inwards.
“Excuse me. What do you think you’re doing?” shouted the young woman on the other side of the serving counter.
For a moment Collins was put off his stride by the heavy cleavage protruding above the scooped neck of the tight black T-shirt she was wearing. He then held up his warrant card. “I was told I could find Jeff Tapper here. Is that correct?”
“Who wants to know?” barked a male voice from the other side of the serving hatch.
“It’s the police Jeff,” said the girl wiping her hands on a tea towel. “Is it okay for me to serve the customers?” She looked hesitant.
“Go ahead,” replied Collins.
Tapper stepped out through an archway that led to a passageway separating the kitchen and the toilet. “What’s this all about then?”
“The death of Miss Evans.”
“Crikey, I had no idea.” He pulled out a chair from under the table closest to him and sat down.
Collins judged his surprise to be genuine. “ We need to talk. So why don’t I pop down the road and buy a paper or two while you make me a couple of bacon baps? Hopefully your customers will be on their way by then.”
“Sure, if that is what you want. Mel, make the officer a couple of bacon rolls would you.”
Mel headed for the archway, and Collins headed for the door.
Having deliberately taken his time by indulging his habit of checking house prices in estate agent windows, Collins returned almost twenty minutes later. All the customers had left, and Tapper was still sitting in the same chair. A plate with two bacon rolls on it was waiting on the other side of the table.
“That’s coffee and that’s tea. I didn’t know which you preferred, so I had Mel pour you one of each.” Tapper slid a bottle of tomato ketchup across the table as Collins sat down opposite him. “Tell me, how did she die?”
“She fell from a building.”
“Do I take it you think I might have something to do with it?”
The Spanish Hotel Page 3