by Danny Miller
‘I’m a policeman, it’s sort of my job to put up a fight.’ Frost ran a thumbnail across his throbbing cheekbone that prickled with heat. ‘Although in fairness, I don’t actually remember putting up much of a fight. I think they just cracked me over the back of the head and I was out like a light. But some good did come out of it. It opened up other lines of inquiry into George’s shooting.’
‘Robbery, you mean? Punters as well as bookies getting done over? I thought you were looking for Terry Langdon?’
‘Oh, we are. We need to question him so we can formally eliminate him from our inquiries.’
‘But I thought you said Terry was …’
‘Innocent until proven otherwise, I think is what we say.’
‘Well, nice as it is to see you, I’m not sure how I can help. I’ve told you all I can.’
‘That’s interesting. But we believe your relationship with Terry Langdon went a bit further than just an infatuation on his part.’
‘What are you insinuating?’
‘I’m saying, quite openly, that you and Terry Langdon consummated the relationship, had an affair.’
Frost watched as she palpably consumed this information with a noisy swallow of her coffee. She straightened up in her chair, bristling, eyes full of hot indignation, mouth snarling like it could spit venom. ‘How dare you! I’m a happily married woman, my beloved husband is in hospital, I am the injured party here—’
‘We have it on good authority.’
‘Who from?’
Frost matched her high-octane outrage with a blank-eyed indifference. ‘When we find Langdon, and we will, no doubt he’ll tell us himself all about it. Bound to. So why don’t you give us your side of the story first.’
Melody dropped her act as quickly as she’d taken it up. ‘It was a drunken fumble, nothing more. A mistake on my part. George was away for a few days. Terry had been pestering me. I went out with some friends, to Blazes nightclub in Rimmington, and he turned up. Now I think about it, I think he must have been following me. I’d had too much to drink, he kept saying he worshipped me, and one thing led to another.’
‘Did George know about it?’
‘He suspected it.’
‘What was his reaction?’
‘Not best pleased. But I denied it, and kept on denying it.’
‘Do you think Terry might have told George?’
‘I told Terry that if he did, I’d never forgive him. And anyway, it was his word against mine. I had nothing to worry about, or to hide. I’m an open book, as they say.’
‘We all have our little secrets, Melody.’
Mrs Price gestured towards the top shelf of the glass-and-steel unit. Both Waters and Frost gladly took the opportunity to have yet another look at her in various stages of undress, posed artfully, and not so artfully, against a studio backdrop, or draped across a Harley-Davidson.
She proceeded to explain herself: ‘I’ve been a glamour model. Done some Page Threes back in the day. If Terry said to George, I know your wife has three moles on her bum, he’d just look like he knew about as much as the average Sun reader, because there’s very little of me that hasn’t been on public display at one time or another.’
DS Waters couldn’t help but smirk. And Frost probably would have joined him, but his swollen lip was prohibiting anything remotely expressive; every time he spoke he felt like a ventriloquist without his dummy.
Melody Price placed her cup and saucer on the coffee table, and drew the meeting to a close by rising to her feet and saying, ‘Now, gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me. I have a lot of things to do today, including visiting my husband in the hospital again this afternoon.’
On that cue, Waters and Frost also stood up. Frost then suddenly barked out, ‘Socks and Winston!’
Mrs Price, who had been heading towards the lounge door, came to an abrupt standstill, took a moment, and then spun round in a perfectly executed catwalk turn. ‘Sex … and winking?’
‘Socks and Winston,’ Frost repeated slowly.
Her usually lineless forehead crinkled in a frown of confusion at this.
The DI put her out of her misery: ‘Those were the only two full names in a black notebook that we found on George. There were also lists of initials in there with numbers beside them. Bets, we assume. But just two names, Socks and Winston, and they were in capitals and underlined. They had the biggest numbers beside them. Jimmy told us—’
‘Jimmy, Jimmy Drake?’
‘Yes, Jimmy Drake, your clerk, I spoke to him at the races yesterday after I spoke to you.’
‘Oh yes, Jimmy said he’d given you some tips.’ Melody smiled and then pursed her lips and made a little tutting sound. ‘You were right, Jack, betting’s not your game. Even when you do win you manage to lose it in the car park.’
Cut lip permitting, Frost attempted to return the smile. ‘He told us about George’s betting service for special customers.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you, I don’t know anything about this. I don’t know about a black notebook. Even so, why is it important?’
‘Because I don’t think whoever coshed me in the car park was after my money, they were after the book. And I think the same person who shot George was after it, too.’
‘They didn’t get it then. How about now?’
‘They did this time. With George dead the book would become irrelevant – all bets would be off, as they say. And maybe that was their intention all along, to kill him.’
‘But they failed. Thank God.’
‘But with him in a coma, and the possibility of him yet making a recovery, the book still holds a lethal power. Don’t you think?’ Frost asked pointedly.
Melody stalked over to the living-room door, swung it open and announced in glacial tones, ‘I think next time you need to speak to me, it will have to be with my lawyer present.’ She then bellowed out into the hallway, ‘Keith!’
Frost was about to ask who ‘Keith’ was, when he appeared in the doorway. Frost recognized him immediately. He was one of Harry Baskin’s bouncers from the Coconut Grove. He wasn’t one of Harry’s biggest bouncers, but togged up in a black Puma tracksuit and white boxing boots, he looked like a capable and fast middleweight.
‘Keith will see you out.’
‘I hope he’s not going to try and lift us up by the collar and sling us out like he does at the strip club.’
Keith swivelled his heavily muscled neck and rolled his bulked-out shoulders like he was limbering up for round one.
‘Harry is a great friend of George’s, as you know, and whilst Terry Langdon remains at large, and you’re here harassing me when you should be out looking for him, Harry thought I might need a man about the house.’ She must have seen something akin to amusement in the two detectives’ eyes, as she emphasized angrily, ‘Protection – for my protection!’
‘Come on, don’t be a wuss, it’s brilliant,’ said Gavin Ross to his best mate, Dean Bartlett. Dean was unsure, but Gavin was an old hand at it by now, he’d done it three or four times. It was the latest thing; all the lads on the estate were trying it. The first time he did it, he didn’t feel so brilliant. In fact, he puked all over his new Fred Perry shirt. The second time was OK, the last couple of times were just as promised. And it definitely felt better than sniffing glue or smoking hash. Not that he did those things much, but this was different. It opened up a whole new world – Gavin felt enveloped in this warm glow of ease and comfort where everything just felt good.
When Gavin asked Tommy Wilkins if he’d get addicted to it, Tommy and his mates laughed in his face. They said he’d watched too many films. Only idiots got addicted to it. They told him to think about it: if it was so bad why would so many people be doing it, why would the biggest rock and roll stars in the world do it? Tommy said that all the bad stuff you heard and read about it was government propaganda, what the police wanted you to think, because they didn’t want people having a good time. Plus the fact they weren’t making money fr
om it, and anything they couldn’t make money from they didn’t want people to do. Gavin couldn’t argue with that, it all made perfect sense. And his experiences with his teachers and occasional run-ins with the police would pretty much back up what Tommy said. There was fuck all to do on the Southern Housing Estate, so why not?
Gavin took the tin foil and folded it over to form a gully to sprinkle the brown powder in. He’d upped the dose this time. After all, the last two had been brilliant, but even now, whilst hardly a seasoned user, and certainly not hooked on the stuff – he was sure of that – he suspected the roller-coaster ride could be better with more stuff. And it was so cheap, cheaper than the hash they’d been smoking, so why not take advantage?
Dean did as he was instructed and took out the ink tube of the clear plastic biro. Gavin then took the silver foil and lit up the underside with his Bic lighter, and sucked up the heavy smoke through the empty biro like a milkshake through a straw. This little ritual had a name, and the name sounded exciting to Gavin. It sounded dangerous to Dean. And maybe this was the difference between the two sixteen-year-old lads. They’d grown up together on the SHE, had known each other as long as they could remember. But Gavin had always led the way. Gavin had been the first to dive off the high board at the local swimming baths; the first to get vertical on the ramp they’d built when the skateboarding craze hit; the first to do what he did with Sally Webber; the first to drink, smoke, sniff all sorts: and now the first to Chase the Dragon. That was what they called it, and it sounded exciting or dangerous, depending on whether you were Gavin or Dean. But Dean knew that he’d follow his mate. He always had.
Sunday (3)
‘Jesus wept!’ cried out PC David Simms, after taking his first tentative sip of scalding coffee from the machine in the corridor of Denton General. The burning liquid had blistered his top lip and turned his mouth nuclear, or that’s how it felt. He thought he must look like one of the Ready Brek kids, with a disturbing orange glow around him.
‘Are you OK?’
Simms spun round to see a pretty nurse with big blue eyes and a little upturned nose. He’d seen her before, the last time Frost had put him on duty to watch over George Price. She’d made hanging around the place bearable, with him hoping she would stop on her way past so he could engage her in conversation. But she never did, she was probably too busy.
He felt a hot wave of embarrassment come over him, almost as hot as the coffee – she must have seen him puffing away and furiously fanning his mouth with his hand whilst doing a little jig on the spot. Simms tried to recover some poise before saying, ‘Your coffee machine is a major health hazard.’
‘I know. I keep telling the management they should put it by the Burns unit.’
Simms laughed, she laughed. The PC introduced himself and said he was on duty, watching over George Price, the shooting victim on C-Ward.
‘I’m sure I can make you a cuppa next time I’m passing.’
He was about to thank her and was trying to muster the courage to ask her out for a drink after work when she queried, ‘Are you expecting trouble?’
‘In this job you always expect trouble, and if there is any I’m ready!’ Even he cringed at this. What the hell was he thinking? I’m ready? I’m a bloody Ready Brek kid! The nurse just gave a polite smile, the standard one she probably gave to all babbling and incoherent patients just before they went under the anaesthetic, he reckoned.
‘Well, it’s nice to know we’re in safe hands,’ she said, turning her back on him and sashaying down the gleaming tiled hallway.
Simms concluded that he was already probably hopelessly in love with her. He made his way to C-Ward, pondering how he could extricate himself from the status of complete dickhead. He was determined to ask her out by the end of the day, but he now had his work cut out to make that happen. Maybe some flowers, chocolates?
What took his mind off the task at hand was the rapidly approaching man. He was around six foot six in height, and probably that again in width. He had a bald head that was as smooth and shiny as the just-polished tiles of the corridor. The man was wearing a sheepskin coat that looked way too small for his seam-popping frame. His big fists were bunched up and he was making his way directly to George Price’s private room.
‘Just a minute, sir. Where are you going?’
The big bald bruiser spun round to face his challenger, faster than a man of that bulk has any right to do, thought Simms. The Neanderthal then slipped his right hand into his coat – which was bulging alarmingly with something.
The young PC could swear he saw a glint of metal under the bruiser’s coat and repeated with more urgency this time, ‘Where are you going?’
‘To sort George out,’ came the gruff reply.
‘Excuse me?’
Simms turned in the direction of the woman’s voice he’d instantly recognized: it was the nurse, the nurse he was pretty sure he was in love with. Maybe this was his chance to redeem himself in her eyes by being a real-life hero. He quickly swung back towards the bruiser, who was now just feet away from George Price’s door. The PC ran at him and rugby-tackled him, which sent them both crashing through the door. Simms heard a gasp and a faint ‘Oh no!’ from the nurse behind him, and then a very loud ‘Oh yeah!’ from the huge assassin he was now in fact straddling. With his left arm he pressed down on the bruiser’s neck, an area that seemed pretty indistinguishable from his head and shoulders, while reaching down with his right hand to retrieve his truncheon. But before he could, he felt himself rise up involuntarily. It was like he’d been lying on top of a large pachyderm that had just stirred and was about to shake him off like a pesky oxpecker. Simms soon realized that he wasn’t actually pinioning anyone, and the big man proved it with a swinging arm that sent him crashing into the wall.
Simms groaned, but not for long, as he was prevented from doing even this by the thick fingers tightening around his throat. A moment later his whole body was lifted off the floor and he was dangling in the air, whilst his feet desperately sought terra firma like those of a man at the scaffold. The young PC was now face to face with his would-be killer, and as his eyes widened and bulged in terror, the killer’s own narrowed to black soulless slits.
‘Wherever he is, he can’t have got very far.’
DC Clarke turned slowly; the white-wine hangover she was suffering from made taking things nice and slow a necessity today. Arthur Hanlon was holding up a passport. Sue, accompanied by Hanlon, had entered the home of Terry Langdon at ten thirty that morning, armed with a search warrant that they’d had to present to Peter Billings, his landlord. Since last year’s fiasco, when Frost had been reprimanded for entering a property without a search warrant (even though everyone agreed it had been justified), almost jeopardizing a case, all procedures had to be followed to the letter and all evidence gathered had to be properly documented. Frost blamed the ruthless efficiency of the newfangled Eagle Lane computer system. But the DI was blaming everything on the new computers these days – to him, 1984 really did feel like 1984.
Still, Clarke could have done without Arthur Hanlon this morning. He’d picked her up at the Prince Albert Hotel where she’d crashed last night, after sharing a bottle too many with her new best friend, Eve Hayward. Hanlon seemed intrigued by the scenario. He, like every male who had attended her presentation on the evils of counterfeit goods, had fallen for the DI from West End Central. As he pumped her for information, Clarke, instead of providing a simple explanation, first toyed with him and then tetchily told him to mind his own business; it would now be left to Hanlon’s fevered imagination.
As they went through the sparse little bungalow, bagging up anything they thought could be of interest, something familiar caught Sue Clarke’s eye. On the kitchen table, under a pile of the Sporting Life and Racing News, was a glossy brochure for some new developments on the edge of town. The cover showed a triptych of modern apartment blocks that went by the unlikely names of Eden Gardens, Utopia Tower and Paradise Lodge. Wasn�
�t that where Frost was considering buying a place? Sue had to smile: if things had turned out differently, Frost and Terry Langdon could have been neighbours.
It was clear to Clarke that Langdon had grabbed whatever he could and made his escape as quickly as possible without much forethought or planning. The bungalow was littered with incriminating evidence. There were two gun publications under the bed, and Sue had searched enough bachelor pads in her time to know that literature kept under the bed was usually of the porn variety. But for the obsessed Terry Langdon, it was publications on how to use handguns properly that were his reading of choice at night, not fantasizing about centrefolds and grappling with unfortunately placed staples. He’d been learning all about pulling the trigger and ending George Price’s life so he could be with his own real-life pin-up – Melody, presumably.
As Clarke sat on the corner of the single bed, flicking through the pages, she saw there was one revolver in particular that had been circled in both magazines. It was the Webley Mk IV .38/200 Service Revolver. The article about the popular handgun told her that the Webley had been widely in service during the last war and could be picked up second-hand very easily. Decommissioned guns could readily be put back into use with just a few tweaks and were changing hands for as little as sixty pounds.
‘I’ve found something!’ came a muffled cry from outside.
Clarke put down the magazines and went out to Arthur Hanlon, who was searching the grounds. Past the overgrown garden and further out towards the wooded area that abutted the fields, Hanlon was standing by a pile of logs on top of which perched a collection of empty bottles. There were beer bottles, wine bottles, vodka bottles, and lots more in reserve on the ground. Clarke could hear broken glass crunching underfoot as she made her way over. It was clear that someone had been doing target practice out here. She remembered that Peter Billings had said that Langdon was a lousy shot. At the time she’d wondered if Billings had been lying to protect his friend, but she was now certain he hadn’t – any proficient marksman wouldn’t have had to put in this much practice, surely. And maybe George Price would be dead by now if he’d had more of it.