by Bud Craig
The police would say the murderer was not hard to catch at all. He had already been caught. The sheet of paper, with its handful of words sketched in symbolised starkly and effectively the emptiness of my case. Even the list of names was incomplete. Well, of course it was. Askey’s name wasn’t on it.
What about Liam? His baby had been taken away; he had been around Ordsall Tower at the time; he could have barged in just like Askey and confronted Bill. It was a spontaneous attack, not a planned assassination. Death was by chance really; Bill could easily have survived.
A lot of people could have killed Copelaw. I was left looking for a lucky break as I so often had been in my sporting career. You make your own luck was a mantra amongst sportsmen. In rugby you had to have a mixture of individual brilliance and good support play. This coupled with a touch of the unexpected would usually win the day. Do something your opponent hadn’t thought about. So if someone helped me to see something I had not even considered, would that help me find the killer? I broke off at the sound of my mobile phone.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi, Gus.”
“Louise, where are you?”
“I’m staying with Yvonne until I find somewhere more permanent.”
“You OK?”
“Fine. I wondered if you fancied meeting up.”
“OK.”
“We need to catch up properly.”
What was she on about? Before I had a chance she asked me out to lunch. I accepted.
Louise sipped her mineral water and smiled at me. In Tony and Dino’s in Salford Quays smells of steam, coffee and baking mingled in the air. I looked around. It was as good a place as any to meet my wife, I thought. Quite why we were here, I could only guess. There would be a reason, you could bet on that. Still, we had to meet sometime. We had kids for God’s sake; soon we’d have a grandchild. It was difficult to concentrate with the intermittent sound of coffee machines, waiters bustling around and the opening and closing of the door. Or maybe it was just difficult to concentrate.
“Tell me about your trip,” I said in a fairly obvious attempt to get some sort of conversation going.
Up to that point we had managed with ‘you’re looking well’ and ‘how’s the jet lag’. Now she enthused for ten minutes about Thailand, Vietnam and Australia and I made suitable noises of interest.
“I think you would have preferred New Zealand though,” she said.
“Yeah?”
She nodded. She was looking fantastic, I thought, remembering why I’d fancied her in the first place. Tanned and blonde (though her hair needed some help these days), she still had a glamour that a lot of women would pay good money for.
“It’s not too hot for a start,” she explained. “Stunning scenery. It’s a very outdoor sort of country.”
“Sounds good.”
“You should go some time if you can get insurance. It’s time you branched out a bit.”
Louise had just summed up what I didn’t like about her. She’d always tried to bully me into going abroad when there were so many lovely places in this country. Why did I have to branch out? What did it have to do with her? That was the trouble with being married: whatever you did, said and even thought was assumed to have something to do with the other person. But it didn’t matter now, I realised with profound relief.
“I’m not sure I fancy a long haul flight,” I said.
Not to mention not wanting to be away from home for too long. A short break somewhere not too far away, that would do me. That seemed to bring an end to that part of the conversation. There followed a pause while we ordered from the waitress who approached us at that moment.
“Anyway, I’ve got something to tell you,” said Louise when the waitress had gone.
She smiled like a little girl about to unleash a secret on an unsuspecting world.
“Go on.”
“Well,” she said, dragging it out so I wanted to tell her to get on with it, “I’m getting married again.”
The urge to laugh or say ‘you must be bloody mad’ was so strong I could feel myself holding my breath.
“We’re still married,” I said instead, though that wasn’t really the point.
Then I wondered who the lucky man was as she struggled on with her news.
“I know, but…well, Brad and I see no reason to wait any longer than absolutely necessary.”
“Brad?”
“Yes,” she said, “I spent some time with him in New Zealand.”
I couldn’t help wondering whether that was a good basis for marriage. Apparently it was.
“And?”
“Well, we hit it off, like you do.”
Like who does, I was tempted to ask.
“So he’s a Kiwi?” I asked.
“Well, no. He’s from Knutsford. He’s head of HR in Cheshire.”
The plot thickens, I said to myself, as she explained the practicalities of ending our marriage. Like she was my lawyer or something. I, however, was thinking about Brad. She knew him before she took her career break and went travelling. I could just picture them meeting at a diversity conference in Warrington or somewhere. She didn’t leave me because she needed her own space. She had plenty of space: we led practically separate lives. She was the one with the high powered career. Not that I was bitter. I just didn’t fancy the label ‘divorced’ hanging over me. Add the fact she had been shagging another bloke while I’d been faithful all those years. Another thing I didn’t like about her. I tried to examine my feelings about her infidelity. Partly pissed off, partly philosophical, about summed it up. I was surprised I wasn’t more angry. I had been making a conscious effort not to get angry. The beta blockers the doctor had given me helped. And I knew getting mad was bad for me.
“So you want to get divorced?”
“Well, I thought it would be best for both of us… I know you have someone so…”
I knew she’d say something about Marti but had no idea how to respond. Saying, ‘yes, but I’m not planning to bloody marry her, I’ve only know her five bloody minutes’ would come out wrong. I considered this for a while before realising I didn’t want to marry anyone. Nor did I want to move in with anyone, even someone as nice as Marti. Maybe it was a question of ‘been there, done that’.
I shook my head. It was more than that. If I said I was happy with just having a girlfriend it would sound immature and shallow to some people. It was to do with living with someone for the rest of your life and being happy with that. Suddenly that was what seemed unrealistic. My thinking was also coloured by Louise’s deceit. And what about Marti’s two husbands; Karen’s affair with Copelaw and his constant womanising? When I thought about all that, marriage didn’t sound such a good bet. Why was everything bringing me back to Bill’s murder? And why did I think something Louise had said, a passing remark, was significant? Needless to say I had forgotten what it was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I wandered round Salford Quays the following Monday after a weekend spent with Marti. She’d gone off to work first thing, leaving me to have a lie-in. The sun was shining and I had finally managed to have a Monday off. The next day I would be back at Ordsall Tower but I wouldn’t worry about that for now. Soon I’d be meeting Marti for lunch at Cafe Rouge. I fancied a nice steak, a glass of wine or even two. Why not? As I strolled aimlessly about I thought on and off about my meeting with Louise. Divorce was a big word. The sort of thing that happened to other people. Now, it’s happening to you, Gus.
Not just to me. How would Rachel and Danny take to this Brad? They weren’t kids any more, but this was bound to affect them. At the back of my mind, the thought that something Louise had said had a different kind of significance just wouldn’t go away. What was it? Something she’d said in passing, nothing heavy, but the idea that it might make all the difference wouldn’t go away. Nor would it come back to me, no matter how much I tried to remember. Or was I trying to avoid thinking about yet another change in my life? How many more would there
be? Plenty, Gus, I said to myself.
I looked at my watch: ten past twelve. As I passed a cash machine I wondered if I had enough money. I took out my wallet and saw just one measly, creased fiver. I went through the usual ritual of putting in my PIN, telling this inanimate object how much money I wanted and waited for something to happen. Money from a machine, when did that start? How easily we had all managed to get used to it. As I took the notes from the slot, and put them into my wallet, something clicked and I stopped musing about the history of banking. It was as if a light went on in my head.
The wallet. That was it. That was the inconsistency I’d been trying to identify. The difference between what I saw when I went into Bill’s office the first time and the second visit when I found Bill’s body. Why was it different? How had it become different? Where did that get me, I wondered. It showed I had been right about there being an inconsistency. Big deal, I was tempted to say. What was its significance? Was it even relevant? It gave me something else to think about; something that may lead to the answer. And then again...
I walked away, still mulling it over. There was a lot more to do if I was ever going to solve this. I may never solve it. Maybe the bleeding obvious - that Askey had murdered Bill Copelaw - was the answer. I got to Cafe Rouge just as Marti arrived and we managed to find a corner table. I ordered a glass of house red and a mineral water from a passing waiter, noticing Marti’s harassed look.
“I can’t stay long,” she said, taking my hand. “Sorry.”
She complained about how much she had to do, there not being enough hours in the day and how stupid her clients were. I nodded sympathetically, resisting the temptation to tell her what time I had finally crawled out of bed.
About half an hour later she dashed off with an apology and a kiss. I hadn’t quite finished my steak, but had ordered a second glass of wine. It all felt a bit self-indulgent. I rarely drank at all during the day. I looked round the restaurant. It was less crowded than I’d feared. Monday was probably a quiet day and a lot of people were now short of money. This thought took me back to the money in the wallet and how it got there. How should I know? A waiter brought my wine. I started to think about my lunch with Pam, the last time I had really spoken to her before she died.
I tried to think of something else but the arrival of a young woman with her arm in a sling put paid to that. She scanned the room as if looking for someone. Then, turning in my direction, Ania recognised me and waved with her right hand.
“Ania,” I said as she approached my table, “nice to see you.”
She was casually dressed in jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt.
“Hi, Gus,” she said. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“She had to rush back to work. I’ve got a day off.”
“I’m meeting a friend. She’s not here yet.”
I asked her to join me and have a drink while she was waiting. I could almost see the cogs turning in her brain. Did she want to be seen sitting with this old guy? Maybe sitting on her own would be worse. And a free drink was not to be sniffed at. She sat opposite me. I ordered her a white wine.
“How’s the arm,” I asked.
“Improving,” she replied. “I can take the sling off now and again.”
I drank more wine and thought about the shooting.
“Are the police any nearer finding out who did that to you?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t think so. I haven’t heard from them for a while.”
I wondered again about Pam’s death. Would anybody be caught for that? Or would it join the list of unsolved crimes? Ania’s wine arrived.
“Cheers,” she said, raising her glass.
“Cheers.”
We chatted for a while until Ania’s friend arrived and she went to join her. It wasn’t until I’d paid my bill and gone outside that I remembered I had something to ask Ania.
I left the restaurant feeling mellow. I’d enjoyed my lunch and the two glasses of wine had had the desired effect. I passed a travel agents as I walked home, noticing a poster of New Zealand in the window. I stopped to admire it. Louise was right, it certainly looked beautiful. The bit of conversation I’d had with Louise popped into my head again. She had used a word that reminded me of ‘certainty’. What the hell was it? I looked at the other posters in the window as though searching for inspiration. Shrugging my shoulders, I walked away.
My mind went back to the question of the wallet. Bill had no money the first time I had seen him on the day of his death; when I found his body he had a full wallet. He had far more money than he would have got from a cash machine. In any case he hadn’t been to the cash machine. So how did the money get there? That needed explaining. It couldn’t have been from Jean. Why would she get so much cash for a night out? And why would she come back to the office to give it to Bill? And I still hadn’t recalled the significant word, I reminded myself.
At ten past seven that night I was watching Channel 4 News. The first advert break started. As the Go Compare ad came on, I muted the sound. People get paid for dreaming up that rubbish, I thought, and as for that meerkat thing... I stopped and looked at the remote control. “You dozy sod,” I said out loud. It had been staring me in the face all this time. I now knew what the word was that had been plaguing me all this time. I hadn’t quite worked out its significance but, perhaps wrongly, I felt now as if I were on a roll. The meaning of it all, how everything fitted together, was just out of reach. Would I be able to pull the strands together?
Thinking about Bill’s murder brought a picture of my finding his body to mind. Not what I wanted but inevitable. The part that always featured heavily was finding the condoms. From farce to tragedy within a few seconds. Not that a Durex Fetherlite packet would tell me much. Or would it? It came from that hotel in York. Was that relevant? I closed my eyes and events flashed through my mind. It might just make sense. Was I almost there? I realised I still hadn’t asked Ania about leather jacket man. Would it be worth ringing her? Before I could think about it too much, I got out my mobile and found Ania’s number. Once I had got through to her I came to the point.
“A while ago you were going to tell me about a man you saw near the office on the day Bill Copelaw was killed.”
“Was I?”
She sounded puzzled. I wasn’t surprised. It must seem a long time ago to her and she would hardly have been thinking about it too much since then. I gave her a bit more information to jog her memory.
“Oh, I remember,” she said eventually. “It’s funny because I should have recognised him straight away. He’s one of the guys who came out to me.”
This added a new twist, I thought.
“Came out? You mean he’s gay?”
And why should whoever it was tell Ania?
“No, not gay.”
She giggled.
“Not ‘come out’. He came on to me.”
I smiled.
“He tried to...?”
“Chat me up. What is it about married men? Are they trying to prove themselves or...”
“This guy, who...”
“Do they think I’m stupid, that I won’t realise they are married?”
“But who...”
“Or do they think I am immoral. I am a good Catholic...”
“Ania if you could just...”
“He begged me not to tell his wife. Pathetic.”
I reminded her she had not yet told me who this man was. Then she told me his name.
“Somebody’s lying,” I said to myself as I ended the call. Surely Ania couldn’t be...? Get a grip, Gus, it’s really getting to you if you’re starting to suspect her.
* * *
The next morning I went to Ordsall Tower at 9.00. By then I thought I had it all worked out. More or less. I had a cup of tea and a chat with Don about Rebecca’s progress. Just as it started to rain, I left my desk, telling Karen I was going to sort out my insurance. I went down the corridor to Reliable.com, knocked on the door and went
in.
“Gus, hi. What can I do for you?” asked Rob.
He sat back in his chair, adjusting the knot on his red tie. I sat in a chair on the opposite side of his desk, watching the rain fall on the windows.
“I’ve been thinking about Bill Copelaw’s murder,” I said.
That was a start at least.
“I think you might be able to help.”
“Terrible business, especially for you, Gus. It takes a bit of getting over, but I’m not sure I can...”
I nodded as his words petered out. Rob uncrossed his legs and sat forward. He cocked his head slightly. I too sat forward. I looked round the room. Someone had been putting shelves on the wall to my right and had left the job half-finished. I noticed one of the unused shelves on the desk. Concentrate, I told myself.
“A few things have puzzled me about this whole affair,” I said. “There was an inconsistency about what I saw when I found Bill’s body.”
“You been doing some amateur sleuthing, mate?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
I couldn’t be bothered to explain about my investigation. It would only get in the way. So I carried on.
“A short time before his death Copelaw had no cash and asked his wife to get some.”
“Oh?”
“Yet when his body was found his wallet was bursting with money.”
“So?”
“Well, somebody must have given him the money.”
He shook his head.
“Sorry, Gus, you’re losing me.”
“We’ll come back to that,” I said. “Let’s think about Bill’s health, shall we?”
“His health? What about it?”
“Copelaw suffered from angina. Had done for years apparently. He made no secret of it. He would often talk about his first attack on holiday in France. Yet just a short time before he died he took out a life insurance policy.”