A Death at South Gare

by A Death at South Gare (retail) (epub)

  Distracted as I was, I walked right into it.

  It’s a very basic old pub, the Lord Zetland. A narrow corridor runs from the front door through to the toilets at the back. To the right is a staircase to the unused, upper part of the building. To the left are the doors to the bar, the snug and the lounge.

  I was halfway along the corridor when the door to the Gents opened and out came one of the three Geordies. I saw him before he saw me. I spun round, and was just in time to come face to face with the main man emerging from the bar. He was a few feet from me, and even more surprised than I was.

  I made use of my micro-second advantage. Before he had registered who I was, I slammed a punch to his belly that doubled him up. Then I caught him by the collar and ran with him to slam his head into the opposite wall. He went down like a popped crisp bag.

  The guy from the Gents was on me by then. I dropped low to evade his fist, seized him round the thighs and straightened up to heave him over my shoulder. He landed awkwardly with a scream, and stayed down.

  I went back to work then on the leader, giving him a hammering that was revenge for all the threats and all the damage he’d done to me. Sheer blood lust. It took three men to pull me off him. By then he was no longer moving much, and his face was a bloody mess.

  ‘Hold him!’ a man I knew to be the landlord shouted. ‘I’ve called the police.’

  I began to calm down. The landlord had done exactly what I would have wanted him to do.

  ‘Where’s the other one?’ I panted at the big, burly bloke who had me in a headlock. ‘There were three of them. They were together.’

  ‘You’ve done enough damage!’ he growled. ‘You don’t need no more.’

  ‘You can let go of me,’ I said. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘It soon will be,’ he said. ‘The cops will be here any minute.’

  ‘That’s fine, exactly what I want. The police want the three of them.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah!’

  But they chuckled and let go of me. Then they started raising the leader of the pack from the floor. He was coming round by then, but he wasn’t in great shape.

  I got my phone out and called Bill Peart to tell him who I had found. I said I was being held, and was worried the Geordies would get away.

  ‘Put the landlord on,’ Bill snapped.

  I handed over the phone. ‘Detective Inspector Peart wants to speak to you,’ I said. ‘And I’ve just made a citizen’s arrest.’

  He gaped at me as if he thought I was crazy. Perhaps I was still. But he talked to Bill. After that, things got easier for me. The landlord and his mates turned their attention to the two men I had beaten up. I had no idea where the third one was.

  Afterwards, Bill took me away in his vehicle. He parked on the sea front and debriefed me.

  ‘We’ve got the two of them,’ he said. ‘We know now who they are. Just some Geordie low-life from the east end of Newcastle.’

  I nodded.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he added, giving me a cautious glance.

  ‘Never better,’ I assured him.

  ‘It didn’t occur to you to give me a call, and stay out of it yourself?’

  I shook my head. ‘There was no time, Bill! We just bumped into each other in that passage in the pub. Then it was them or me, whoever reacted first. You’ve seen what it’s like in there!’

  ‘Yeah.’ He yawned and stretched. ‘It’s been a long day. You did well,’ he added, ‘but I still might have to arrest you at some point.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I said with a shrug. ‘I’m just happy they’re off the street at last. Two of them, anyway.’

  ‘We’ll find the other one. He’ll not get far on his own.’

  There wasn’t a lot more to talk about. I had him run me back to where I’d parked my car.

  ‘It’s not over,’ he said as a parting shot. ‘Those three are not the ones you need to worry about. You do know that?’

  I grinned at him and said, ‘I already dealt with the real hit man, remember?’

  I shut the door and he drove off, worrying again, like he always did.

  Me? I felt light as a feather. My aching hands told me I’d given a good account of myself, and I had a bit less to worry about now. If only PortPlus could be dealt with so satisfactorily.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Save-our-Seals people had a hut on the edge of what was left of the marshes around Seal Sands. When I visited them, I met a man and a woman who were doing their best to field phone calls, send out appeals for funds, provide anyone who showed up with information, and keep the kettle boiling for tea.

  Brian Smith was an early-retired teacher who introduced himself as the chair of Save Our Seals. Alison Reddy, a friendly middle-aged activist, was the treasurer. I accepted a mug of tea from her gratefully.

  Brian asked me what my interest was, and I decided not to beat around the bush.

  ‘I want to do everything I can to stop PortPlus,’ I told him. ‘I think they’re a bunch of cowboys who will do Teesside no good, whatever the politicians and the people desperate for jobs might think. They’re here to make a fast buck, and then clear out. Besides,’ I added, ‘I like seals.’

  Alison hooted with delight and Brian said, ‘You’re our kind of person, Frank!’

  I had arranged to visit them because so far I had gathered very little information about the ecological side of things. They were eager to talk to me.

  ‘It would be a disaster if we lost the seals, not that that’s going to happen,’ Brian said. ‘Before industrialization the native colony of Common Seals had been here since time immemorial. It did die out in the nineteenth century, but twenty years ago it restarted and now it’s thriving again.’

  ‘We have Grey Seals from the Farne Islands as well, now,’ Alison added.

  I sipped my coffee. It was even worse than what I make, but I tried not to show it.

  ‘What’s to stop PortPlus getting rid of them all?’ I asked.

  Brian chuckled. ‘How could they do that?’

  ‘Well, by deterring them from coming, for example? Or by introducing a virus to kill them off?’

  ‘We would be onto them like a ton of bricks,’ Alison said.

  Brian shook his head. ‘It’s too far-fetched. It’s not going to happen.’

  On reflection, Alison was a bit less adamant. ‘I suppose, theoretically, they could make life so uncomfortable for them that it stopped them breeding and made them leave.’

  ‘But how could they do that?’ Brian asked again.

  ‘By using low-level sound, for example?’ She shrugged. ‘It is possible, isn’t it?’

  Brian was unhappy now and restless. He got up from the table and walked over to the window. He leaned against the sill and stared out at the marsh grass, and the petro-chemical complex not far beyond.

  ‘I’m uncomfortable with this,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I know you mean well, Frank, but I don’t believe any reputable company would resort to anything like that in this day and age.’

  ‘Reputable company?’ I mused. ‘Is that what PortPlus is? I can’t find anything about them.’

  I didn’t get much further with Brian and Alison. They were decent people spending time and money on something they believed to be important. They were concerned about the rumours flying around, but not seriously worried. Nor was I by then, not in relation to the seals. The general air of uncertainty PortPlus had created was more worrying.

  More pressing than the seals were questions to do with money. It was time I saw Henry again.

  I asked him outright how PortPlus were going to make serious money out of the takeover, if it went ahead.

  ‘It’s not rocket science,’ Henry said with a shrug. ‘There’s no big mystery.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘The actual port operation is profitable right now, and a change of ownership won’t affect that. New owners could keep most of the top management, and just tell them to keep on doing what they’ve been doing.’


  ‘No change there, then?’

  ‘None at all, unless they want to make some.’

  ‘So what will they do that is different? Build this nuclear power station I keep hearing about?’

  Henry shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Come on, Henry! I’m busy.’

  ‘Think about it. How have most big fortunes been made in the last few decades?’

  ‘If I knew, Henry, I’d be doing it myself! How? Shopping malls?’

  ‘Housing. New houses. Sure, developers build shopping malls and recreation centres, industrial estates and sports centres, but new houses are the big profit makers. It’s one area of the economy where growth in demand is relentless. With sustained immigration and population growth, as well as people wanting ever bigger homes, that’s unlikely to change as far ahead as I can see. My guess is PortPlus will build a lot of executive-style, waterfront houses all around the estuary. Then they’ll sell them and move on. Once they’ve made their money out of the houses, they’ll flog the port. That’s just a means to an end.’

  It was the same picture Nancy had painted, and perhaps it was what James Campbell had feared. But was it a true picture? I still couldn’t see it somehow.

  ‘Are you sure, Henry? I mean, what about the newly reopened steelworks? Won’t that be a spanner in the works? You can’t build houses near a blast furnace. Not any more!’

  Henry chuckled. ‘The one blast furnace left on Teesside? How long do you think that’s going to last, Frank? Teesside is no longer a viable location for steel making.’

  ‘The new owners must think it is. They’ve spent a lot on the Redcar plant.’

  ‘Foreign owners, though. Some Chinese or Indian steel company will come along and make them an offer they can’t refuse. They’ll buy it, and then shut it down for good to reduce the competition. It’s happened often enough before, in different industries. Then the way will be clear to build a new waterfront town for people who like messing about in boats.’

  It was a depressing scenario. Local people had believed their future was secure when foreign owners took over and reopened Teesside’s last steelworks, but the picture Henry had sketched was pretty plausible. We had seen it before. He was right.

  Mind you, building a new town on the edge of the sea was not an altogether unattractive idea. Get rid of all the clutter and dereliction, and make better use of the location? What was wrong with that?

  Well, Nancy and the other fishermen would lose their huts at the South Gare, for one. And then McCardle and his cronies would walk away with a pile of money, for another – and murder would go unpunished. I didn’t want any of that. I couldn’t save the world but I wasn’t about to give up on the things I could do something about.

  Arriving back at Risky Point, I was suddenly uneasy. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something felt wrong. I stood beside the car and looked around. Nothing. I could hear and see nothing out of the ordinary. Not even any of the rabbits that Jimmy Mack and I were forever chasing away from our feeble attempts to grow vegetables. It was quiet, too. Even the sea seemed unusually quiet.

  I felt watched. I had that prickly feeling I’d had before, more than once, lately. I gave a mental shrug and went inside. I didn’t find signs of an intruder this time, but that didn’t mean no-one had been here. I wasn’t reassured. I still felt watched – and threatened.

  I wasn’t always pleased to see Bill Peart arriving at my door, but that day it was different. I needed a familiar, friendly face and someone to talk to about ordinary things, like whether the fish would be running.

  ‘I’m glad I caught you in,’ he said, as if he had been calling every day for a month and never yet managed to find me at home.

  ‘There’s still no coffee,’ I said flatly. ‘You’ll have to have tea again.’

  ‘Still no coffee? What happened to your latest woman?’

  ‘Nancy, you mean? I’ve got news for you, Bill. Modern young women don’t do the shopping any more. So men like me have to do it ourselves.’

  ‘Oh? Like that, is it? Tea, then. Two sugars.’

  We took our mugs outside and sat in the sun around a driftwood table I had made from tree stumps that had washed up on the beach. It rocked a bit, but it did the job.

  ‘This is something you could do,’ Bill said, gently testing the table.

  ‘To make an honest living, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly. Make a few more of these, and you’ll soon get the hang of it.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  He grinned. ‘It’s not a bad day, is it?’ he said, raising his face to the sky. ‘Is that the sun up there?’

  ‘I believe it is. Make the most of it.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘OK. Why?’

  ‘Well, things have been happening to you,’ he said with a shrug. ‘First here, and then that business in the Lord Zetland. Sometimes the stress doesn’t appear for a while.’

  Bill in counsellor mode. In some ways it was worse than Bill in critical mode.

  ‘I’m really OK, Bill. But thanks for the concern.’

  He nodded and inspected his mug. I realized then that there was more to come. He just wasn’t finding it easy to get round to it, whatever it was.

  ‘What about the Geordies?’ I asked. ‘Did you find the third man?’

  ‘We did. He wasn’t far away. We picked him up on the sea front. He was lost without Jack Morgan to tell him what to do.’

  ‘Morgan is leader of the pack?’

  Bill nodded. ‘By the way, he’s confirmed what I suspected. It wasn’t them that shot Campbell. They were just told to get rid of the body.’

  ‘Who told them to do that?’

  ‘He’s not saying yet, but he will. There’s no way he’s going to accept a murder rap.’

  ‘So when they came looking for me, they just wanted to slap me about a bit to frighten me? They weren’t going to kill me, or do anything really nasty?’

  ‘Who knows how far it would have gone? What they wanted was to stop you identifying them, and putting them in the frame for the murder.’

  That sounded about right to me. But, as Bill said, who could say how far they would have gone?

  ‘Did they tell you who did kill Campbell?’

  Bill nodded. ‘It seems to have been the guy you took care of on the cliff. They didn’t have a name for him, but that’s what it looks like. He was a professional hitman.’

  No surprise there. The man had come for me with a gun.

  ‘Hired by PortPlus?’

  ‘You can’t say that, Frank! You know you can’t. And neither can I.’

  His heart wasn’t in it, though. I could tell. He did his best to stay within the rules and procedures, not to mention the law itself, but at times it was hard for him.

  ‘We found the body,’ he added. ‘Eventually.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘A couple of miles down the coast, near Port Holland. Two blokes digging for bait saw it washing around in the shallows. After they’d got it out, and stopped vomiting, they gave us a call.’

  ‘Any ID?’

  He shook his head. ‘But we know now who it was. The FBI told us.’

  ‘Really? So he was American?’

  Bill nodded and looked up at me. ‘He was a top man, apparently, with a string of hits to his name. The FBI had got close to him, which is why he’d started operating overseas.’

  ‘Lucky us!’

  ‘Quite.’ Bill paused and then added, ‘He was good, Frank, really good. You did well to handle him.’

  I shrugged. ‘He made mistakes, and I got lucky.’

  Bill nodded and took a swig of tea. Then we discussed the recent weather and what it might mean for fishing down this coast. I told him Jimmy Mack reckoned it would be good in a week or two’s time, when the seas settled down again.

  ‘I’ll grab a bit of leave, and we can see if he’s right?’ Bill suggested.

  ‘Good idea.’


  A big gull landed nearby on the garden wall. I fed him a chunk of bread. He took it, but seemed unimpressed by the meagre offering.

  ‘They like fish and chips best,’ Bill said. ‘I’ve seen them in Whitby, hanging around on the pavement outside the chip shops.’

  ‘He’d better hurry back there, then. There’s nothing like that here.’

  Bill nodded. He seemed subdued, still something more on his mind.

  ‘It’s not over,’ he said suddenly. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘What isn’t? The business with PortPlus?’

  ‘I’m not thinking of that. This hit man, name of Ronnie Garcia. He always works with a partner, or he did.’

  That brought my head round.

  ‘Even overseas?’

  Bill nodded. ‘So they say, the FBI. Guy called Sal.’

  ‘Italian?’

  ‘Possibly. I don’t know.’

  I chewed my lip for a moment. This was unexpected. Yet it sounded right. It could explain the feeling of being watched I’d had so much lately. One or two other little mysteries, as well.

  ‘And you think he’s still around?’

  ‘I do. So do the FBI. They say this Sal will come looking for you, especially now.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere. I can deal with it better here than anywhere else.’

  ‘I thought you’d say something stupid like that,’ Bill said bitterly. He pushed his chair back. ‘Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be around.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘Couldn’t avoid it,’ he said. ‘There’s no-one else for me to go fishing with.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Jac Picknett rang, wanting to know where I had seen the pictures I had emailed her about.

  ‘At this stage, Jac, I can’t tell you.’

  She had backed out of my life – for reasons I could understand and agreed with – and I didn’t want her coming back in, not inadvertently anyway. There was enough going on without me having to worry about her safety.