by Danny Miller
‘Yes, of course. I wondered when you were going to get around to that.’
‘I just have to say that I had nothing to do with George getting shot.’
Melody raised her teacup to her mouth and took little sips, using the cup as a prop to cover her doubt, her anger, her fear.
‘I swear on my children’s eyes, I had nothing to do with it,’ insisted Hogan. ‘Why would I? From a business point of view, we had George right where we wanted him, and he was playing along just fine. He’d do anything for you, you said so yourself. Killing him would just bring unwanted attention. I just thank God he’s still alive, and I know he’ll pull through. Of that I’m sure. He’s a fighter, you told me so yourself and I believe you. Do you believe me when I say I had nothing to do with his shooting?’
Melody blew little short bursts of breath on her tea and took some more bird-like sips as she considered all he’d said. Then she lowered her cup. She’d seen something in his eyes that told her maybe he was telling the truth, and it certainly made sense that Eamon wasn’t responsible for the shooting. And, of course, Eamon was right, George would do anything for her, without question. Price was a pragmatist, and if races were indeed going to be fixed, he didn’t want to be the bookie who was going to get stung. There was nothing he could do about it, so why not go along with it? It made good business sense.
And the more she thought about it, the more sense it made that Eamon wouldn’t try to kill George. She knew Hogan was ruthless: if it was the competition stepping on his turf, or someone ripping him off in a drugs shipment, he’d wipe them out – and whoever was in the room with them – without batting an eyelid. But not a ‘civilian’ like George, not if he could help it.
Eamon knew that Melody had developed feelings for George beyond her own pragmatism. But there was another reason that trumped all the others as to why she believed Hogan hadn’t tried to kill her husband – because he would most definitely be dead if he had.
‘I believe you.’
‘Good. What have the police said?’
‘The officer in charge, Inspector Frost, suspects a bookmaker called Terry Langdon.’
Eamon asked why, and Melody gave a brief history of her extra-marital liaison with the younger bookmaker. She said it was nothing to her, but the silly sod had gone and fallen in love with her. She always thought he was a bit soft in the head. Hogan grinned at this news, and said, ‘It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, men fighting over you, doll.’
The Irishman then reached into the pocket of his suede blouson, which looked Italian and expensive, pulled out a brown envelope and handed it to Melody. She felt the weight of it and heard the tinkle of something delicate and precious. When she dared to peek inside, there it was, sparkling away, a diamond and emerald necklace, set in platinum.
‘Ooh, emeralds, my favourite.’
‘Mine too.’
‘A gift from the Emerald Isle?’
Eamon shifted in his seat. ‘You might not want to wear it around that Frost fella if he comes calling again, if you get my drift.’
Melody had, of course, heard about the jewellery-shop robbery in Rimmington, as it had made the local news. She smiled at Hogan the way you would at an incorrigible schoolboy caught with chocolate sauce around his mouth after licking the bowl. She always thought it would be his downfall: despite all his other wheeling and dealing, he was a thief at heart. Eamon Hogan simply loved thieving. He always said that if you offered him fifty million quid to never steal again, he wouldn’t take it. But he would work out a way to steal it from you. The thrill of it, the buzz of it, the adrenalin rush of pulling off an audacious job provided a high like no other. Pulling off ‘jobs’ appealed to some romantic Robin Hood notion he held on to; dealing heroin was just the new reality of the crime business.
Melody considered the gift. ‘There’s no strings attached, are there?’
‘I want you, Melody. You know that, I want you more than any other woman I’ve ever known. We had real magic between us. And when I think about the time we had together, it makes me feel young again. Makes me feel—’
‘Stop, Eamon.’
‘OK. Just let me say this: you know how I feel about you, but I want you to feel the same way. Like in the old days. So no, there’s no strings attached. It’s a way of saying thank you for what you’ve done. And it’s important to me that you believe me, about George.’
‘I said I believe you, and I do.’
Eamon gave her a loving smile. He then reached across the table and gently took her hands in his. ‘Thank God for that. It would break my heart if you didn’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if you didn’t believe me, I’d have to kill you.’
His grip tightened around her hands, as he proved once again his ability to go from munificence to malevolence in the blink of a cold-blue sociopathic eye.
Wednesday (2)
Gerald Drysdale, County’s chief pathologist, always said he knew more about dead people than living ones. When Frost first heard Drysdale announce this in his deep and sonorous voice, Frost just thought he was being philosophical and rather macabre. But their association over the years had proved his point.
‘The great Chekhov said he couldn’t understand the character of a man fully until he knew the contents of their stomach. He was a doctor too, you know.’
‘Don’t you mean Bones?’
‘What?’
‘The doctor in Star Trek?’
‘No, Frost, I mean the Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov.’
‘Oh.’
Frost laughed. Drysdale’s long, gaunt and pale face gathered up all its privately educated disdain and dumped it on Frost.
The detective stopped laughing and turned his attention back to the dead man on the slab. The toe tag said ‘James Lewis Drake’. It was plain to see there was no need to check the contents of Jimmy’s stomach; what had killed him was obvious, a length of orange nylon twine wrapped around his neck with such force that some of the fibres were embedded in the torn flesh.
‘Looks simple enough: he was having a drink with the perpetrator, turned away to pour another drink, and the killer sprang at him with the rope. From the angle of the wound, and the sheer force, I would estimate the killer is a man.’
Frost raised an eyebrow at this. ‘You only estimate he was a man?’
‘Never take these things for granted, Frost.’
‘If he was poisoned, shot, stabbed, hit over the head with a blunt object in the proverbial library, I wouldn’t, but garrotted?’
‘The Frinton strangler?’
‘Wasn’t she an East German circus performer who was built like a brick—’
‘Still a gal, though, Frost!’
The DI conceded the point.
Drysdale continued, ‘He’s at least six feet tall, athletic and powerfully built. Not much from the Forensics chaps, I’m afraid, as far as prints are concerned. I would suggest the killer wasn’t an amateur, may well be familiar with this type of murder. He was wearing leather gloves; you would need to when exerting such force on this type of rope, to get the leverage you needed. We may be able to extract some leather fragments, but I doubt they’ll tell us much, unless his gloves were made of human skin.’
Drysdale unfurled a smile at the thought. He then held up a board featuring five types of nylon rope of varying thickness, like a sampler you would find in a hardware store. He pointed to the second finest.
‘This is the one. Worth finding out who sells it locally, you never know.’
Frost took out his notebook and made a note of the gauge of the nylon rope.
‘We’ll expect to find lots of variant hairs, fibres, shoe prints, as it was a public place, after all.’
‘What was?’
‘The Winchester Club.’
‘It was a shed.’
‘A private members bar.’
‘In a shed.’
‘No imagination, Frost.’
‘You’ve been watch
ing too much TV, Gerald.’
Frost’s pager bleeped into action. John Waters. Urgent.
Angelo wore a permanent five o’clock shadow; he had the kind of face that looked like it needed shaving three times a day. He was a tall but stooped man in his fifties, with a distended belly that was covered by an apron advertising Cinzano Bianco. He delivered the two frothy cappuccinos to the detectives with his usual smiling and incomprehensible bonhomie, something along the lines of: ‘Enjoy, long life, be happy, come back again …’
John Waters had wanted to meet in private, and as far as Frost was concerned, the Pellerocco Café was becoming his go-to place for privacy. When the sergeant showed Frost the pictures, Frost understood why.
They were photos of Billy ‘Bomber’ Harris and Tommy Wilkins. They were the result of Waters’ impromptu use of his trusty Polaroid. Whilst no substitute for an official surveillance camera with a serious zoom lens – many were grainy and out of focus – the images still did the job of showing the two miscreants advertising their newly acquired wealth.
Waters explained: ‘So, as we’ve established, Harris and Wilkins are not only not grassing each other up, but now they’re best mates, knocking around with each other in flash cars and expensive clothes. So where are they getting the money? They seem to be doing what they always do, right?’
Frost agreed. Waters laid out pictures of Harris and Wilkins entering the pool hall, the amusement arcade, the burger bar, the video store and various pubs. But he’d saved the best till last.
‘And this: look who’s going into the Bricklayer’s. Recognize this blonde bombshell?’
Frost picked up the snapshot. ‘That’s not …? It bloody well is!’
It was Eve Hayward, resplendent in a blonde wig and looking every inch the brassy wheeler-dealer barrow girl. Waters produced more pictures of Hayward with Wilkins and two of his ‘firm’ getting into their white Peugeot 205 and speeding off. Frost had seen enough.
‘So what happened?’
‘Hayward arrived in a Transit van, parked up and went inside the Bricklayer’s.’
‘Bold move if you’re not from the estate.’
‘My point exactly. Ten minutes later she comes out with Tommy and two of his lads and drives off. She comes back an hour later, now with Tommy and Bomber Harris, shakes their hands, and drives off in the van.’
Frost considered this and came up with a sly smile. ‘She told me she could make a link between the heroin and the counterfeit goods. I said prove it, and she just might well have done.’
‘You also said you didn’t trust her. Didn’t believe she’s with counterfeit-goods intelligence …? Whatever it is.’
‘They’re always coming up with poncey names to call themselves. And anyway, aren’t they connected to Customs and Excise?’
‘I’ve still got plenty of contacts in the Met, you want me to make some calls?’
‘No, let me think on it.’
Through the steamed-up windows Frost could just about see DC Sue Clarke making her way across the road towards them. Frost scooped up the photos on the table.
‘May I?’
Waters gestured be my guest, and Frost slipped the snaps into the inside pocket of his leather bomber jacket. Waters looked poised to ask Frost what he was going to do about Eve Hayward when Clarke came in. The DS shifted up in the booth to make room for her.
‘How was she?’ asked Frost.
Sue had just returned from visiting Jimmy Drake’s widow, Maureen, who was staying at her daughter’s.
‘In shock – she had the doctor with her when I arrived. But once she knew I was there, she wanted to answer whatever she could.’
‘And the big question: why wasn’t Jimmy at the races yesterday?’
‘She was surprised herself. It was marked on the calendar that he’d be at Radleigh Park that day. After forty years, she knew all the race meetings that he worked at. He insisted it was his day off, apparently. Maureen said she didn’t think anything of it. But she suspected that he’d had a row with Melody Price. Jimmy didn’t like the way she was running the business in George’s absence. But one thing was very clear: Maureen didn’t like Melody Price either. She said that Jimmy thought Melody was a bad influence on George, and going to get him into trouble one day.’
‘How so?’
‘That he was taking too many risks. She didn’t really know any more. Jimmy seldom talked about work when he got home, but Maureen could tell that he was worried about George.’
‘I’m not surprised at that,’ Frost said.
John Waters hoisted up his cuff and checked his watch, then finished off his cappuccino. ‘I need to go, check if there’s any news on Gavin Ross.’
Clarke got up to let him out. Before Waters left, Frost said to him, ‘That other thing we talked about?’
Waters gave a nod of understanding.
‘Leave it with me, John.’
Waters nodded again and then left.
‘What was that about?’ asked Clarke.
‘Nothing. How about our friend, Eve Hayward, have you seen her today?’
‘No. Why?’
Frost smiled and shook his head. He then released a Rothmans from the packet on the table and sparked it up. He did a little drum roll with his knuckles on the Formica table and announced: ‘I’ve put in for a warrant to search George and Melody Price’s house and business premises, see if there’s any other records for Socks and Winston. And I want to reassign a uniform outside George Price’s door again, twenty-four/seven.’
‘You’d better run that by Mullett first, apparently every available copper is working the Dean Bartlett case.’
‘Mullett won’t mind, now there’s been an actual murder.’
‘What about Harry Baskin’s man?’
‘Bad Manners Bob can stay there too if he likes, the more the merrier. But whoever killed Jimmy Drake, according to our very own Dr Death, is a formidable foe. And anyway, since when have Harry Baskin and his bouncers been working for us? We need a proper police presence on it.’
‘David Simms? He’s seeing the nurse who saved his bacon, apparently.’
‘Is he? Definitely not Simms then – when love is in the air it’s a distraction. We can talk to Harry Baskin whilst we’re at it, too. So far he’s been banking on George Price pulling through, so he sees no real reason to talk to us. Now Jimmy’s been murdered, he might think again.’
Clarke agreed and they got up to leave.
‘I’ve got a question, Jack. Why didn’t you tell John he had cappuccino froth around his gob?’
‘Why didn’t you?’
She shrugged. ‘I thought it looked funny?’
‘Me too. Laughs are hard to come by in this job.’
Frost paid the bill, and they headed out into the cold light of a Denton day with Angelo’s lilting Italian accent ringing in their ears as he championed the wonders and beauty of life.
Wednesday (3)
The bird swooped round and round as if circling some prey that it was about to dive down on. Then came the terrifying sound of screeching, accompanied by manic laughter that seemed to embolden the bird to squawk some more. It was a sight that filled Jason Kingly with horror and doom.
Terry Langdon was in his Y-fronts, vest and socks, swinging what appeared to be a clothes line above his head like a lasso, with some bread Sellotaped to the end of it.
Jason’s head swung violently around to see if anyone else was witnessing this crazy act – no one was. Of course, Paradise, Eden and Utopia were still empty, but Jason’s paranoia was justified and he really didn’t need a petrol-blue parrot lighting up the skies, with a wanted felon acting as its ringmaster. Was Terry, his cousin and one-time hero, well and truly off his nut?
Jason waved his arms and tried to get his cousin’s attention with a cough-inducing stage whisper. When that didn’t work, Kingly yelled out his name and told him to get off the fucking roof immediately. Terry responded with a wild-eyed grin and a thumbs-up.
The young estate agent then let himself into the flat. It was even more of a mess today. As well as the empty cans, bottles and takeaway cartons, there were now signs that the parrot had been flying around in the flat and depositing bird shit on the expensive carpet and three-piece suite, and just about everywhere else – including what resembled some early Jackson Pollocks on the walls.
Langdon came through the door with the parrot on his shoulder; all he needed was an eyepatch and a wooden leg to look like a shipwrecked Long John Silver. But the ship he’d wrecked was this showpiece apartment that Jason was responsible for. A cleaning crew would have to be put to work, maybe even a painter and decorator; and Terry would have to pay for it all.
‘He came back yesterday. I saw him outside on the wall, so I put some bread on the windowsill and he came straight in.’
‘Terry, you can’t have him in here, he’s shitting all over the place.’
Langdon went over to his trousers, which lay crumpled on the floor, and as he bent down to pick them up, the parrot took off.
‘Jesus!’ cried out Jason, alarmed at the bird’s mad flapping. After some screeching turns around the living room the parrot eventually perched on the open-plan kitchen counter, where there was a saucer of water laid out for him.
Terry stuffed a wad of money into Jason’s hand, and fixed him with the wild-eyed stare that he hadn’t, as Jason hoped, left up on the roof.
‘Listen, Jace, we need to get Simon a—’
‘Simon?’
‘Yeah, Simon. Simon the parrot.’
‘Why Simon?’
‘Because it’s his name.’
‘But it’s not.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because … no one calls a parrot Simon … Doesn’t make sense.’
‘What should I call him?’
‘Frost called him Monty.’
‘Who’s Frost?’
Jason wanted to bury his head in his hands and cry. ‘Detective Inspector Jack Frost.’
‘Silly bloody name for a copper.’
‘Almost as silly as Simon for a parrot.’
‘Don’t get cocky, doesn’t suit you, mate.’