SALFORD MURDERS: The Private Investigator Gus Keane Trilogy

by Bud Craig

That was always a possibility, I thought.

  “You’ve been asking about some clothes I gave him.”

  Keep him talking, Gus, keep him talking, I said to myself.

  “Yeah, I hear you washed and ironed them for him.”

  He gritted his teeth.

  “What of it?”

  He knew the answer to that, but I carried on the pretence.

  “I just thought it was nice of you, that’s all. I don’t see why me knowing about it should worry you.”

  “You’ve been sniffing around things that aren’t your business.”

  I thought for a moment but got no inspiration.

  “I’ll just switch the kettle off,” I said.

  I wanted to be doing something.

  “Oh, no,” said Simon, “you don’t catch me like that. It’ll switch itself off.”

  I pulled a chair away from the table and sat down.

  “You’ve called the police, haven’t you,” he said. “Well, you can just uncall them.”

  He tightened his grip on Natalie. The knife was perilously close to her throat. I had sharpened it that lunch time. Her eyes flickered round the room and back to me. She didn’t look any less scared. Who could blame her? Come on, Gus, I urged myself, think, you dozy bugger.

  “How do you mean, Simon?”

  I recalled what Larry Finch had said about Natchow. I could picture Josie’s brother explaining it in his flat in Whitefield. This was Simon’s impulsive stage; let’s hope he gets onto the planning stage soon, I said to myself, and realises he’s doing himself no good.

  “I want you to call the cops, Keane, tell them you’ve made a mistake. Or your tart gets it.”

  Too late, Simon, I thought. Couldn’t he see it didn’t work like that? Why did he have to be so stupid? Natalie hadn’t reacted to being described as my tart. It hardly mattered, did it? I detected a slight tremor in her hands. She licked her lips and stared straight ahead.

  “OK,” I said, taking out my phone.

  I took the phone out of my jeans pocket and found the number I wanted in my contacts.

  “How do I know who you were talking to?”

  I trained my eyes on the knife and Simon’s not very steady hand. I’d have to try and save Natalie. But how? I showed Simon the phone with DI Ellerton’s name on the screen.

  “Inspector,” I said “sorry to bother you again.”

  “Gus, we’re at Ian Jamieson’s bungalow, I haven’t got time to talk.”

  “I just wanted to say that the call I made earlier. It was a mistake. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not making any sense. We’ve found the stick and...”

  “The wrong end of the stick, that’s right...”

  “What the hell are you on about? Is everything OK?”

  “No, not at all....”

  “Right. Are you at home?”

  “Yes. Well, sorry again. Take care. Thanks again. Bye.”

  As I ended the call Natchow looked at me. The tense silence was broken only by the steam rising in the kettle.

  “He’s done what you asked,” said Natalie in a shaky voice. “You can...”

  “Shut up, bitch,” snapped Simon, “I’m thinking.”

  A high pitched sound could be heard in the background. When it became a full blown whistle, Natchow pulled back in alarm. That was enough for Natalie, who drove her elbow into his stomach and sprang up. Turning round, she gave Simon a half-hearted push, but it was enough to knock him over. She stood there shaking, looking to me for guidance. Natchow stretched out his hand towards the knife.

  He grabbed the knife and struggled to his feet, moving towards Natalie again. She backed away in alarm. By then I had grabbed the kettle from the hob and removed the whistle. Thank goodness I’d given up on electric kettles when the last one packed up. Two strides took me within inches of Natchow. I poured boiling water on his hand. He screamed in agony and dropped the knife. I kicked it wildly, watching it slide to the other side of the room. Natalie kicked Natchow in the knee, making him to stagger slightly. Not content with this, she kicked out more fiercely, catching him in the knackers. He crumpled with a groan. He lay on the kitchen floor, one hand clutching his balls.

  “Don’t move,” ordered Natalie, her voice trembling.

  She began to sob quietly.

  “I’ll kill you for this, Keane,” grunted Simon.

  “Like you killed Josie,” I said.

  “What if I did? She...”

  He stopped talking as Danny opened the door. He must have taken in the man on the floor and his father holding a kettle for some unexplained reason, but he only had eyes for Natalie. He rushed over to her and held her in his arms.

  “Oh, Danny, Danny, thank God you’re here.”

  Danny glared at me.

  “What the hell’s been going on,” he snarled. “I might have known...”

  He left the sentence unfinished and concentrated on comforting his girlfriend. Whatever he might have known, I might have known it would be my fault. There was no opportunity to hammer out the rights and wrongs, however, as DI Ellerton arrived with back up. We then got caught up with Simon Natchow’s arrest, making statements and trying to get over the shock.

  It was nearly nine o’clock by the time we sat down to lamb curry, rice and spicy peppers and mushrooms. Not the night we’d planned. I tried to explain to my son and his girlfriend what Simon’s behaviour was all about. Natalie persuaded Danny I wasn’t to blame for her nearly being killed. I had the feeling he wasn’t convinced.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The next morning Sarita called round as I was getting my breakfast. Natalie and Danny were still in bed. After asking how Natalie was – difficult to say, I replied – the DI joined me for tea and porridge. It was a casual clothes day for her and in keeping with her jeans and leather jacket, she appeared relaxed.

  “If we could deal with the Josie Finch case first,” she said as she sipped her tea, “I have something else to tell you later.”

  Though intrigued, I didn’t say anything.

  “We’ve sent the walking stick and the clothes away for forensic examination,” she explained. “What do you reckon happened then, Gus?”

  I took a spoonful of porridge, delicately flavoured with black treacle.

  “On the night of the quiz, when Arthur chucked Simon out,” I began, “he went home. His clothes were covered with mud.”

  I remembered Arthur telling us Simon had landed in a puddle.

  “Right.”

  “So he changed into something clean and warm and decided to go out again.”

  I tried to picture what Natchow did next.

  “As he walked back to the pub,” I said, “I reckon anger was mounting with every step.”

  Sarita dug into her porridge – she preferred honey on hers. I was glad to see she had a good appetite.

  “He blamed Josie for his humiliation,” I went on.

  “It’s always someone else’s fault with men like him,” said Sarita.

  “He got to the Park Hotel,” I went on, “and when he saw Josie waiting for her brother in the car park he must have snapped.”

  I paused for another mouthful of tea. I pictured Natchow’s face contorted with rage.

  “He grabbed her walking stick and hit her. I don’t know whether he knew Josie was dead; maybe he was just hoping she hadn’t seen him.”

  I pictured Natchow making his escape, stick in hand.

  “I think he must have sobered up quickly and started worrying about forensic evidence.”

  “He doesn’t strike me as a thinker,” said Sarita.

  “But according to Josie’s brother, that’s just what he is. When he’s sober, he plans everything very carefully.”

  “Right. Carry on.”

  “When he passed Ian’s bungalow next door to where he lived, he saw a way out.”

  Sarita nodded, eating away steadily, while I thought out the next stage of my narrative.

  “He had a key to the bungalow
while Ian was away and he let himself in.”

  I remembered the chain smoking neighbour saying Simon always kept an eye on the bungalow while he was away.

  “Once inside he took his clothes off and put them in the washing machine.”

  “What next?”

  “He had a shower then stopped to think again.”

  “And what did he come up with?”

  “I reckon he had been planning to come back for the clothes the next day, but he decided to give them to his friend, Ian instead. That way the police may never know they were his. He still had to think what to do with his trainers and the stick.”

  Sarita finished her porridge.

  “Delicious,” she said.

  “He couldn’t be seen with the stick,” I went on, “and wouldn’t be able to clean up the trainers enough to remove all evidence. So he dumped them in Ian’s utility room behind the washing machine. He just had to hope the police would never look in the bungalow.”

  “Which we didn’t until yesterday,” Sarita put in.

  “He still had to get home, so he crept out the back in the nude.”

  “Did that really happen,” asked Sarita?

  I explained what Hannah had told me.

  “Clever sod.”

  “Then he sneaked into Deadbeat Mansions. When the police came to do tests on his clothes, he gave them what he’d worn at the Park Hotel earlier.”

  Sarita looked at me.

  “And of course,” she said, “there was no forensic evidence to be found.”

  She explained the rain had washed away any tiny traces Natchow might have left on the way to Deadbeat Mansions. Still wondering what the ‘something else’ was she wanted to talk about, I asked her what had happened to Simon Natchow.

  “In custody overnight,” she explained, “we can hold him for the attack on Natalie, while we get a case together for Josie’s murder.”

  We went silent for a while. I wondered if the solution to Josie’s murder passed the ‘bleeding obvious’ test. Having gone through the complicated explanation, I was tempted to answer, ‘hardly’. But the identity of the killer was indeed obvious.

  “Now, the other matter,” said Inspector Ellerton.

  She cleared her throat.

  “I thought you might like to know Baz Prince has been arrested,” she said,

  “Yeah?”

  She smiled as if pleased with herself.

  “Picked up by the Met in the early hours of this morning. Thanks to the invaluable assistance of the Manchester force.”

  I sipped my tea, wondering why she was telling me.

  “He was running a gang who stole cars to order...”

  “Steve told me about that,” I put in, “and I know about Tony Murphy’s connection.”

  She looked at me, raising her eyebrows.

  “Do you now?”

  I nodded.

  “I know everything.”

  She grinned at me.

  “Then maybe you won’t be surprised to learn Yarla Chester has decided to co-operate with us.”

  “To save her own skin?”

  She finished her tea.

  “Precisely. She dropped Prince and Murphy right in it.”

  That second name did surprise me. I had begun to think Tony was untouchable and was hoping I’d seen and heard the last of him.

  “The only snag is,” Sarita went on, “we have no idea where Tony Murphy is.”

  I shrugged, anticipating her next question.

  “Join the club.”

  * * *

  A month went by, taking us well into April. The nights got lighter; the cricket season started, it rained. Lancashire, having won the county championship the previous year for the first time for sixty years, lost their first two matches. Salford City Reds continued to lose more games than they won. I moved out of private eye mode after Natchow’s arrest. Local authorities in greater Manchester had got busy and, cuts or no cuts, had to employ me. This, added to the nice bonus the Finches had given me for finding Josie’s murderer, meant things were looking up financially.

  On a rare sunny day in early May I had just parked myself at an empty desk in Ordsall Tower when Karen came up to me.

  “Hiya, Gus,” she said, “Imogen Attwell is here, asking to see you.”

  I looked up from the file I was reading.

  “Imogen?”

  “Yeah. I asked if I could help but she insisted in talking to you.”

  “OK.”

  “I hardly recognized her,” she added. “She’s had a complete makeover.”

  “Really?”

  I looked at my watch.

  “Tell you what, Karen, I’ve just got to make a quick phone call. Could you park her in an interview room and tell her I’ll be with her in a couple of minutes? I’ll do the same for you one day.”

  Karen smiled sweetly.

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  When I saw Imogen in the interview room I realized what Karen meant about the change in appearance. Her hair was cut in a sort of bob similar to the way Louise had had hers done. My ex-wife was always up with the latest fashion so that made Imogen trendy. The purple top and skinny jeans looked new.

  “Hiya, Gus,” she said like I was her best mate, “you all right?”

  Telling her I was fine and having ascertained she was never better, I asked what she wanted.

  “Well, I’ve met this feller and... I wondered if you could check him out.”

  She explained she didn’t want to repeat the nightmare she had with Tattersall. I agreed to look into it and get back to her. She still seemed reluctant to leave so I asked what she was doing now.

  “I’m on this course in Walkden about setting up your own business.”

  “Great.”

  She was as keen to tell me this as she was to get the boyfriend checked out.

  “That’s where I met Ryan,” she explained. “He’s really supportive about what I’m doing. Unlike some I could mention.”

  “Who might that be?” I asked.

  “Someone who never thought I could do anything.”

  A bit cryptic, I thought, but I knew who she meant.

  “What sort of business is it?”

  “I make, like, greeting cards, wedding invitations and that. Kind of customised you know. Here.”

  She delved into her bag and gave me a business card for Immy’s Invites.

  “Very professional,” I said.

  After urging me to tell all my friends, she left.

  * * *

  I went back to the social work room as Karen was on her way out.

  “What did you make of Imogen, Gus?” she asked.

  “She certainly looked different,” I said.

  “I got the impression she’s happier too. I told her the council had re-let Tattersall’s flat at last.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She said I only hope they fumigate the fucking place and replace the loose floorboard. I laughed my head off.”

  With that Karen went out on a visit. Little did she know it, but she’d given me something to think about.

  The full significance of what Imogen had said to Karen didn’t really hit me until the next day when I was off on my morning walk. I said good morning to the postman, who was still in his shorts. Half an hour later everything had more or less slotted into place. An hour after that, I was sitting in Imogen’s front room. Luckily the results of the checks into her new boyfriend had come in so I had a legitimate reason to see her. She was delighted to hear he was clear, but I had more to talk about.

  “Do you remember those leaflets that got delivered about Edward.”

  She folded her arms in that defensive way she had.

  “As if I could forget.”

  I waited a few more seconds then explained.

  “People in children’s services have been wondering how confidential information got out.”

  She folded her arms tighter.

  “Yea
h?”

  Feigned indifference.

  “We want to be sure we can keep that sort of stuff secure,” I explained.

  She sighed with impatience.

  “Look, Gus, it’s nice of you to call round and thanks for the information, but I haven’t really got time to chat, know what I mean?”

  “This isn’t chatting, Imogen.”

  We looked at one another.

  “Anyone with access to a laptop could have produced those leaflets. Me, you...anybody at all.”

  “And?”

  “Somebody who could produce business cards as good as yours would find those leaflets easy.”

  She shrugged.

  “Suppose so.”

  “Here’s what I think happened, Imogen.”

  She sat back.

  “I can’t wait.”

  I went through everything in my mind, then started.

  “Let me explain first that the person who found Edward’s body nearly tripped over a loose floorboard.”

  “Did they?”

  She looked away, apparently fascinated by the fireplace to her right, then faced me again.

  “The day before Edward was killed, you cleaned his flat. I reckon you noticed the loose floorboard.”

  Once more she averted her eyes.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “When you came to see me yesterday,” I said, “Karen showed you to an interview room.”

  “Yeah. And?”

  “She mentioned that the council had just re-let Edward’s flat.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You said something like: ‘I only hope they’ve fumigated the effing place and replaced the loose floorboard’.”

  She shrugged.

  “‘Fumigate’, is a word you’d use about vermin.”

  She tutted.

  “How the heck,” said Imogen, “am I expected to know every word I said yesterday?”

  “Let me finish.”

  She groaned.

  “Go on then, Hercule bloody Poirot, let’s hear the rest of it.”

  “I reckon when you were replacing the floorboard you found some memory sticks,” I went on. “You knew straight away what was on them. He’d hardly need to hide his holiday snaps or his music collection, would he?”

  She looked round the room as if bored by what I was saying.

  “Get to the point.”

  “OK. Had Tattersall been there you might have killed him. Luckily you had a bit of time to think. You didn’t want to end up in the nick, leaving your kids motherless.”