‘An outfit called PortPlus. Probably American, although I’m not certain.’
Henry’s face screwed up with thought. ‘I wish you could still smoke in here,’ he said.
‘We could go outside?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll manage.’
I was relieved about that. No way did I want to go through the embarrassing smokers’ ritual of standing outside the door, racing through a cigarette fast in order to get back inside before the beer went flat or somebody nicked it.
‘I’ve not heard of them,’ Henry said. ‘Can you give me any names?’
I mentioned Rogers and McCardle. Henry hadn’t heard of them either.
‘I’ll do some checking when I get back to the office,’ he said, ‘but I can tell you now I’m puzzled.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Usually you hear things when a takeover is being mooted, or an offer being prepared, but I’ve heard nothing about this one. I do some work for the Teesport people, and I haven’t heard anything from them either. They’re certainly not running scared.’
He looked at me. ‘How far do you want me to go with this, Frank? I can give you a couple of hours gratis. After that I’ll have to start charging.’
‘Of course. Don’t go to the ends of the earth, Henry, but I need to know what’s going on. I’m not asking you to do it for nothing.’
‘Fair enough.’ He nodded. ‘Come on, then. Drink up! The sooner we get back, the sooner I can get started.’
Chapter Eighteen
After leaving Henry, I drove home slowly. I needed to clear my head of all the rubbish I’d collected over the past few days. I wasn’t thinking straight. Things were happening that I couldn’t get my head round.
Could PortPlus really be behind what had happened to James Campbell? Bill Peart and I had managed to persuade ourselves that they might be. They certainly had the motive. Campbell had been about to launch a campaign against them, and big bucks were at stake. Very big. I had no idea what a takeover of Teesport would cost, but you had to be talking hundreds of millions. Sterling, too, not dollars.
I had begun to wonder as well, if the threats I had experienced had come from PortPlus. The job offer could have been an attempt to get me onside, and stop me making trouble. Perhaps that had been the carrot, and the various warnings, the stick?
That made sense, of a kind. The problem with it was that it made PortPlus out to be more of an organized crime syndicate than a straightforward investment vehicle. Perhaps that was what they were?
I needed to do more research on them. I couldn’t leave it all to Henry.
I got to work on the computer, but I didn’t get very far. Heavy knocking on the door interrupted me after half an hour or so. Jimmy Mack again, I thought with a weary smile. No doubt wanting more liquid refreshment, and to download more gloom and doom.
But when I opened the door I had a brief moment to register surprise before a hand grabbed my shirt front and pulled me down the steps. I sprawled face-down and tried to curl up as the kicking began. I was soon in agony and retching for breath. Caught cold, there was nothing I could do but endure and hope to survive.
Eventually it stopped. Someone spoke to me. A deep, hard voice, with words I couldn’t decipher until someone threw ice-cold water over my head.
‘You were warned,’ the voice said. ‘But clever bugger that you are, you thought you knew better!’
I opened one eye cautiously and saw a blurred image of someone leaning over me. The voice seemed vaguely familiar. I tried to focus, but it was no good. I blacked out.
More cold water. I gagged and vomited, and gasped for air. Then my insides caught fire. The pain dragged me back closer to the surface.
I identified the voice of my tormentor. Geordie-speak. He was still there, towering above me. I sensed others were there too, looking on, but they were indistinct shapes. I concentrated on the voice
‘D’you hear me, Doy?’
I raised my face slightly from the ground and vomited a mess of blood and mucus. My head felt split open. I let it fall back to the ground again.
‘You were told! Stay away from the cops, we told you. And stop poking around in things that don’t concern you. Then what do you do? You get all cosy with that cop mate of yours!’
I stayed still and kept my eyes shut.
‘For the moment,’ he went on in a calmer tone, sounding almost reasonable, ‘you’ve got protection. But it won’t always be like that. If we have to come back here again, you’ll not live to tell the tale, sunshine. You’ll be over that fucking cliff!’
It wasn’t a good time to be arguing. In fact, it wasn’t a good time to be doing anything. Even lying still hurt like hell.
Later, I wondered who it was that was supposed to be affording me protection. Whoever it was, they hadn’t done much of a job. I was damned lucky I hadn’t ended up the same way as James Campbell.
Eventually I realized that no-one had spoken for a while. I certainly hadn’t, and when I thought about it I didn’t believe anyone else had either. I opened an eye again and cautiously raised my head an inch or two. The pain was intense. I grimaced and ground my teeth together. But, so far as I could see, I was alone.
All I wanted to do was lie there until the hurting stopped but some residue of sense persuaded me that wouldn’t be a good idea. The night was coming on and it was getting colder. I started gearing up mentally, and then I started moving. Slowly. In time, I got to my knees, and finally on to my feet. Then began the long struggle to get back inside the house.
I managed. Somehow. Later, a lot later, a hot shower helped, as did a glass of the whisky I kept mostly for Jimmy Mack’s benefit.
I avoided mirrors but I started reluctantly making an inventory of the damage sustained. Probable concussion. Probable cracked ribs. But otherwise mostly bruises, cuts, scrapes, strains and tears. And damaged pride, and plenty of self-loathing for allowing myself to get suckered like that.
These people were serious, I had to admit. I had taken them too lightly. I held myself together and counted the cost of my mistake. It could have been worse, I told myself. I could easily have been dead.
Most things would heal themselves in time. The cuts and bruises. The concussion would go, with rest. If the ribs were cracked there was nothing to be done but endure the pain, with the help of whatever medication I could find – more whisky, probably. As for the rest of it – the hurt pride and mounting anger – well, I would look forward to a return engagement. And I would make damn sure there was one.
The only other thought that came to me was that people who went in for this sort of thing were not likely to be the same ones who had tip-toed through my house trying not to leave a trace. That must have been somebody else.
I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. Waves of pain kept me awake. There was plenty of time to mull things over and dream dreams of revenge. Sometime in the long, dark hours, I acknowledged that some sort of protection really must have been thrown over me. Otherwise I wouldn’t have survived.
The Geordies were worried about me, and what I had seen at the South Gare. They had made that plain enough several times. So something had held them back from giving me a bullet in the head.
I wondered if that protection would still apply now that I had turned down PortPlus. I couldn’t think of anyone else who might have told the Geordies to hold back. The restraining order might well be lifted now. It was a sobering thought.
Metaphorically, I shook my head, while careful to minimize actual movement. It seemed too fanciful. All I could really be sure of was that I was able to identify the men who had probably murdered James Campbell. It all came back to that, and that alone.
To get anywhere, I knew I still needed to know more about the dead man, as well as about PortPlus. Easier said than done, but I did know one place where I might learn more. As soon as I could move and see properly again I would go there. That was the plan; it wasn’t much of one, but it helped me get through the night.
Chapter Nineteen
There were about fifty fishermen’s huts at the South Gare, all of them painted green, as required initially by Lord Zetland and now by custom and tradition. They weren’t actually identical, but they were all out of the same toy box: sloping or pitched roof, shuttered windows, tin smoke stack – and green. I picked one with wood smoke coming from the flue to make my first inquiry.
A couple of elderly gents were occupying condemned armchairs just inside the open door, a pot-bellied stove going like a blast furnace behind them. I made sure my Canadian logger’s hat was in place before I approached them. With the big peak and the ear-flaps, I hoped it would at least partially hide my battle scars.
‘The Peters hut?’ the one with glasses said, peering hard at me.
I nodded.
‘Never heard of it. Have you, Jack?’
‘Heard of what?’
‘He’s looking for a bloke called Peters,’ Glasses said in a louder voice.
‘Nobody here with that name,’ Jack said, shaking his head.
By then, I was beginning to wonder if fishermen can get Alzheimer’s, like the rest of us. Maybe even earlier, despite all the oily fish they eat.
‘A young woman,’ I said a little desperately. ‘Called Nancy.’
‘Nancy? Oh, aye!’ Glasses said. ‘You should have said that was who you wanted. Nancy. End of the back row, there. I think she’s in just now.
‘Been in a car crash, have you?’ he added with a chuckle.
So the disguise wasn’t all that good.
‘I fell out of my pram when I was a baby,’ I said through gritted teeth.
At least it made him laugh.
As I turned away, I heard his mate say, ‘Looking for somebody, was he?’
‘A woman.’
‘A woman? Here? He’ll be lucky!’
I grinned and kept going.
Only one cabin in the back row had smoke puffing from the chimney. Hoping that was the one, I tapped on the door.
Chair legs scraped on a wooden floor. The door handle squeaked. Then the door began to ease open. It stopped and I heard a woman’s voice cursing as she dealt with some problem or other. An obstruction, it seemed. I gave a wry smile, recognizing the voice. It was the right hut.
The door finally swung open to reveal Nancy Peters.
‘Oh!’ she said with alarm. ‘It’s you.’
Overcoming her initial shock, she peered closer and winced. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s a long story,’ I said with a grimace.
‘Well, what do you want?’ she demanded, no doubt still sour about my connection to PortPlus.
‘I’d like to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘James Campbell. Something’s come up.’
She hesitated and then said, ‘You’d better come in.’
She stepped back and I moved forward.
The hut was small, no more than a single room about ten or twelve feet square, plus a built-on, cupboard-size extension that probably contained a portable loo of some sort. Within its strict limitations, it was surprisingly comfortable and homely. I gazed around with interest at the pine-clad walls, taking in the bric-a-brac on little shelves and the flowery curtains at the only window. The feminine touch. It wasn’t much in evidence in Jimmy Mack’s hut on the beach below Risky Point.
‘I’ve never been in one of these before, Nancy. It’s very nice. Are they all the same?’
‘Pretty much. You’d better sit down. You’re using up too much valuable space.’
I sat down awkwardly on one of the two chairs around the kitchen table, trying not to breathe or place pressure on any part of me.
‘You live here full-time?’ I asked, concentrating on conducting myself as if I wasn’t coming apart at the seams.
She shrugged. ‘Put it this way. I don’t have any other place to live.’
‘I thought women. . . .’
‘We’re not,’ she said quickly. ‘Women aren’t even allowed here overnight, which is an anachronistic male legacy from feudal times.’
‘So?’
‘Most of them knew my grandad. So they turn a blind eye.’
‘An eye like mine,’ I said, closing my good eye and squinting at her through the other one.
‘Who did that to you? Let me guess,’ she added with sudden inspiration. ‘PortPlus – or their agents?’
I nodded, and immediately regretted the movement as pain shot across my face and down my neck.
‘I think so,’ I admitted. ‘The people who probably killed James anyway.’
‘That why you wanted to talk to me again? It was PortPlus, wasn’t it?’
This time I didn’t nod. I didn’t say anything either. She knew the answer to her question as well as I did. PortPlus. It had to be something to do with them.
‘We both want the same thing,’ I said instead. ‘James Campbell’s killers. Right?’
Now it was her turn to nod agreement.
‘Then let’s work together,’ I suggested.
Nancy made a pot of tea, boiling the kettle on an ancient cast-iron stove that was throwing out a gentle heat.
‘I see you’re burning driftwood?’
‘Oh, yes!’ she said with a smile. ‘There’s nothing better.’
‘And sea coal?’
‘That, too. I like free stuff.’
I nodded with approval. ‘I do the same,’ I told her.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Risky Point, on the coast just south of Boulby.’
‘Really? Does it get cold down there?’
‘Just a bit. Windy, mostly.’
She nodded. ‘Like here, then. I need the heat. I spent too many years in Africa.’
I had wondered about her accent, without being able to place it.
‘What were you doing there?’
She poured two mugs of tea before she answered. Handing one to me, she said, ‘I was born there. Zimbabwe. They used to call it Southern Rhodesia.’
‘A long time ago.’
‘That’s right. It was.’ She nodded. ‘James was from Africa, too.’
‘Born there?’
She nodded again.
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Well, he didn’t advertise the fact.’ She shrugged and added, ‘I suppose we were both refugees, of a sort.’
The information volunteered encouraged me to probe for more.
‘You said you believed James had been murdered, even before I told you he was. What made you so sure?’
‘He was a serious nuisance to certain people – PortPlus, in particular. Your employers,’ she added for emphasis.
‘Because he was campaigning against what they wanted to do?’
‘Exactly.’
She held her mug up to her face and sipped her tea thoughtfully.
I wondered if it could really be that simple. You don’t usually murder someone just because they don’t agree with you. But maybe these people were different? And there was big money involved, I reminded myself yet again. That always makes a difference.
‘They never were my employers,’ I corrected her. ‘I’m a freelance consultant. I was considering an offer they had made to me.’
‘Whatever,’ she said with a shrug.
‘Not that it matters now anyway. I’ve turned their offer down.’
She looked at me with fresh interest. But I steered the conversation away from me.
‘Murdering James seems a bit drastic, don’t you think? He was an MP doing his job, after all. Why didn’t they just hire an expensive PR firm to argue their case in public with him?’
She laughed scornfully. ‘You’ll have to ask them that!’ Then she looked at me with a frown. ‘What made you turn them down?’
‘The job was beginning to seem very uncongenial,’ I said with a rueful smile, ‘something to steer clear of. I didn’t know anything about PortPlus, and I was having difficulty finding anything. Where does their money come from,
for instance? Do they actually have any, if it comes to that? And what experience do they have of running port operations? Besides, I like this place – and the rest of the riverside. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see another nuclear power station built here – or the fishermen moved off either.’
Nancy laughed. ‘You told them all that? You’re lucky you didn’t get a bullet in the back of the head!’
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve thought that myself. Instead, this happened,’ I added, raising my hands to my face.
She got up and leaned towards me. ‘Let me have a look at those cuts on your . . .’
I jerked away. She pulled back from whatever she was about to do.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Sorry.’ I grimaced and pointed to my side, where she had brushed against me. ‘There’s some damage there, as well.’
‘Your ribs? How bad is it?’
‘I’ve had worse.’
‘Really? Some life you lead!’
She held back a moment longer. Then she shook her head and got on with it.
She brought a bowl of warm water to the table and added some drops of disinfectant. Careful to avoid pressing against my side, she began dabbing gently at my face with a pad of cotton wool.
‘What are you – a nurse?’
She just grunted, and continued dabbing.
‘I’ve already done that,’ I told her between gritted teeth.
‘There’s still some bleeding.’
I let her continue. I could do with some tlc. Besides, I liked her being near. Her scent was warm and pleasant, her body soft and promising. Without the eminently sensible duffel coat, she was a major attraction.
Just then, though, my injuries were of greater concern. Healing would have to take its course, but I was ready to accept any help on offer to speed the process. Making my face more presentable would be a good start. After that, I would have to hope the ribs were bruised rather than cracked. I would find that out in the next couple of days. Either the pain would ease off or it would stay the same, and quite possibly get worse.
‘I don’t suppose you would consider going to a hospital and having an X-ray?’
‘No. I haven’t got time.’
She chuckled. ‘Tough guy, huh?’
‘That’s me.’
‘Let’s hope it lasts.’
A Death at South Gare Page 7