by Bud Craig
I was still star-struck in Ellen’s presence. I would forever think of her on Top of The Pops in 1967, singing with The Leaders, her black hair flowing down to her waist. Despite her fame she managed to get on with everybody she met. There was ‘no side to her’ as my mam admitted when Ellen first made it big. High praise from a woman who rarely had a good word for anybody. Now though it was all Ellen could do to say hello. There was a sadness around her normally vivid blue eyes. She sat silent, almost motionless, casting occasional glances at Marti. I asked the obvious question.
“What’s up?”
I had only met Jimmy’s sister at Gallagher family parties before, but this was no social gathering. An even less observant person than me would have worked that out. I pulled up a chair and sat down.
“Jimmy’s been arrested,” said Ellen.
Her flat, Mancunian vowels collided with the kind of Californian accent which makes every sentence sound like a question.
“What?”
It was more of an exclamation than a question.
“For the murder of Tim Greenhoff,” added Marti.
“What?”
Stop saying ‘what’, I told myself.
“That’s mad,” I protested, “Jimmy hardly knew Tim Greenhoff.”
“But Caitlin did.”
Ellen’s voice had a bitter edge. Was she really saying what I thought she was? She couldn’t be, could she? Then I remembered Louise’s frequently expressed view of Caitlin: too good to be true.
“You mean Caitlin and Tim were...”
Ellen and Marti both nodded.
“Fucking little bitch,” snarled Ellen. “Butter wouldn’t fucking melt...”
Marti interrupted.
“Ellen, please...”
“You can bet your bottom dollar this Greenhoff guy wasn’t the first she’d...”
“Ellen,” put in Marti. “Later, OK? Things to do, you know?”
Ellen sat back.
“Sure. Sorry.”
“As far as I could understand,” said Marti, “Caitlin had a fling with Greenhoff last year.”
That explained Jimmy’s attitude towards Tim.
“Somebody must have told the police about it,” Marti went on. “It all kicked off over the weekend. And Jimmy was arrested last night.”
I was still confused.
“How do we get from Caitlin having an affair with Tim,” I asked, still unable to believe what I was saying, “to Jimmy being on a murder charge?”
“Well, I’m guessing a bit here, but I do know Jimmy found out about it last year. Caitlin said it was all over.”
“And?”
“Well, I reckon the police will say Jimmy must have suspected it had started up again, went looking for Greenhoff at Mangall Court and killed him.”
“Jimmy Gallagher kill someone? Impossible,” I said.
We looked at one another for a moment, at a loss for words.
“Right. Down to business,” said Marti.
That’s a relief, I said to myself, somebody taking control. Who better than Marti?
“Jimmy was kept in police custody last night, having waived his right to a solicitor...”
“Silly bastard was worried about the expense,” said Ellen. “He must have known I’d cover all the costs.”
I knew only too well that in practice legal representation was only affordable to the very poor and those with a rock star in the family.
“He appeared before magistrates this morning,” Marti went on. “Remanded in custody. Luckily Ellen managed to reach me in time so I could represent Jimmy in court.”
“He can’t have done it,” I insisted. “There’s been a mistake.”
“I agree,” said Marti. “The mistake is the allegation of murder. What makes it more difficult is the affair between Caitlin and the murdered man.”
That must have been what Caitlin was talking about on Friday night when she said they’d had problems. I wasn’t surprised Tim had tried it on with her. But for her to be seduced by his dubious charms, that was a different matter. Still, what did I know about it?
“So in the police’s eyes, that gives him a motive,” I suggested.
“Yeah. We don’t know what else the police have got, but I aim to find out.”
I nodded.
“I only had time for a hurried discussion with Jimmy this morning,” Marti added, “but I’ve arranged for you and me to see him at eight tomorrow morning, Gus.”
I made a mental note of the time, groaning inwardly at the early start.
“Where do I come in?” I asked.
“Easy. You find out who really did it.”
I sighed. Why wasn’t I surprised?
“Nothing too difficult then?”
Marti smiled at me and handed me a typed sheet. It was a list of names and addresses of people I might need to see.
“I see Tim lived in Doveleys Road,” I said.
“And?”
“That leads into Cholmondeley road, where Vicky Monroe lived. Could be significant.”
Marti shrugged, obviously not interested in where people lived. She got back to the point.
“In the meantime you can go and see Caitlin. She’s expecting you at 11.30 this morning.”
“Right.”
“Oh, before I forget, you’d better go through everything you told me the other day, you know, what the cleaner said about finding the body, Tim’s sexual carryings on, the lot.”
“I’ll write it all down for you later, but here’s a summary.”
Marti waited with her pen poised while I told her what she wanted to know.
“Oh, my God,” said Ellen when I had finished, “anybody could have killed him.”
* * *
I went home and telephoned Steve.
“I need to tell you something before you hear about it on the news,” I said.
“What’s that?”
I told him about Jimmy’s arrest and what led up to it.
“I had my doubts about that marriage from the start,” he said.
Neither of us could claim to be an expert on the married state – I was divorced; he was on his second marriage – but that didn’t stop Steve pontificating.
“That Caitlin’s Cheshire Set through and through,” he added.
He meant she thought she was a cut above and I had to admit there was something in that. Brought up in Wilmslow, footballers’ wives territory these days, she had always led a privileged life.
“I reckon Jimmy was her bit of rough.”
A bit of rough? I was less sure of that. Jimmy was, like me, from a working class background but he was hardly macho man.
“I take it you’ll help me in my inquiries if necessary,” I asked, remembering how invaluable Steve’s police experience had been in the past.
“For the usual fee,” he said, “or a pint in the Park Hotel next time I’m over.”
“Done.”
“That reminds me. I’m playing golf in Buxton early May. I’ll call in on the way if you’re around.”
I was glad to have Steve on my side again. I was gonna need all the help I could get.
* * *
Later, as the Peugeot rattled its way towards Worsley en route to see Caitlin, I tried to make sense of what I knew. What could Caitlin tell me that would actually help the investigation? She could talk about the affair with Tim but where would that get me? Maybe I should ask her about Greenhoff himself, see if she had any relevant insights into his life.
That might be more productive in my search for the real killer. Should I be thinking about an unknown ‘real killer’? I at least had to consider the possibility that Jimmy murdered the bloke who was shagging his wife. It was a classic scenario. I couldn’t imagine my friend being violent, but didn’t they say anyone is capable of murder given the right circumstances?
Caitlin tried to smile as she opened the door to me and led me inside. As she sat on an armchair in her lounge she smoothed down her blue jeans. She twiddled a tasteful s
ilver necklace between her fingers as I prepared to question her.
“As I explained on the phone,” I said, “Marti has asked me to look into Tim’s murder.”
She said nothing and joined her hands together.
“I guess you know this whole thing happened because of me and Tim?”
“Yes. It must be tough for you.”
“Maybe it is, but I’m pretty self-sufficient.”
Caitlin rarely talked about her friends and family. I knew she was childless and had a sister somewhere.
“Have your family been to see you to...”
“What, rally round poor old Caitlin in her hour of need? Hardly. I wouldn’t want them to.”
Her words were dismissive with more than a hint of ‘nothing to do with you’ about them. I took the hint.
“Anyway we need to talk about Tim.”
This was the trigger for Caitlin to launch into an account of how she met Tim at his leaving do, having gone along with Jimmy as a sort of duty. They had their first assignation two days later. From then on they met regularly at Mangall Court and the hotels Caitlin stayed in when away for work. She spoke with relish about the affair, betraying no evidence of that Catholic guilt people go on about. The way she waxed lyrical about the complete physical and mental union she and Tim had achieved was almost embarrassing.
“It wasn’t just a shag, Gus,” she said.
Oh, wasn’t it, Caitlin? I wondered if Tim would have said the same, bearing in mind all his other women.
“I’ve always believed in embracing new experiences,” she added. “Jimmy didn’t understand that.”
A neat reversal of the ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’ cliché, I thought.
“Jimmy found out from someone at work, I think. He reacted so badly I had to end it with Tim,” she added regretfully.
“Caitlin,” I said, determined to move on, “Jimmy didn’t kill Tim. We need to find out who did. Did Tim say anything that might give us the slightest clue?”
She shrugged.
“Nothing strikes me.”
“What did you and he talk about?”
“He went on about how much he hated social work, didn’t know why he’d got into it. He was short of money as well; said one day he’d be rich.”
“How was he going to manage that?
“I don’t know.”
She didn’t say ‘and I don’t care’ but she may as well have.
“When he was with you did he mention anyone called Vicky?”
She looked at me as if I were stupid.
“What, talk about other women when he was with me? How well do you think that would have gone down?”
Fair point, I thought. I was getting nowhere, but that was what I had expected. Though Caitlin had an affair with Tim and had achieved complete spiritual union or whatever she called it, she hadn’t got to know him very well. Still, there must be something I could ask her that would elicit useful information.
“Did he get any phone calls while you were with him?”
What I expected to get from that I had no idea. I had to say something.
“Oh, God,” she said. “Unless I told him to turn his phone off it would never stop ringing.”
“Did anyone in particular ring him?”
“Someone called...Bill, I think it was...”
“Will?”
“That’s it.”
“Can you remember any of the conversation?”
She shook her head.
“No, Tim always said he’d call him back.”
“Who else did he speak to?”
“There was a time I caught him talking to his grandmother.”
Not quite what I had been expecting.
“Grandmother?”
She smiled.
“I was at a conference in Glasgow and Tim had arranged to meet me at the Ibis. When I got to the bedroom he was on the phone.”
So what, I asked myself?
“When he saw me he said, something like ‘I’d better go, see you, gran’.”
What the hell was I supposed to make of that?
CHAPTER SIX
The next morning during the journey I told Marti about my meeting with Caitlin. Marti asked a couple of questions but admitted that, like me, she didn’t really know what to make of what Jimmy’s wife had said.
Twenty minutes later we had arrived at Haddon House Remand Centre in Sale, a prime candidate for the gloomiest place in the world inside and out. After several security checks that made us feel like criminals ourselves we finally got to see Jimmy in the visiting room. He sat in a hardback chair, arms folded, avoiding eye contact. In his ironed shirt, neatly pressed trousers and polished, black shoes he looked as if he were going to the office. After greetings and some explanatory words from Marti we got on with it.
“Right, Jimmy,” she said, “I want you to tell me in your own words why the police think you might have killed Tim Greenhoff.”
His reply was incoherent and inaudible.
“Say that again.”
“Cos he was a scumbag, a waste of space,” said Jimmy a bit louder. “The world’s better off without him.”
Nice one, Jimmy, I said to myself. It was a good job they didn’t still have hanging; he would have been tightening the noose round his neck.
“OK, let me ask you a simple question,” said Marti. “Did you kill Tim Greenhoff?”
He looked at us with a frown.
“Course I didn’t. I wish I had though.”
“Jimmy...”
“I bet there was a queue of us waiting to do him in.”
Marti sighed impatiently.
“That’s irrelevant. Let me have some evidence, that’s what I deal in. On the morning of Greenhoff’s death, where were you? Where did you go and why?”
Sitting back in his chair and facing us, he took a deep breath and talked. I just listened and took notes.
“Caitlin had an affair with him last year...”
“I’m aware of that.”
Jimmy looked at her with a scowl.
“So’s everybody it seems. But I want you to understand. Until I met Caitlin I was a bit of a joke, nobody took me seriously. Boring Jimmy, good at his job but too nerdy.”
I wanted to tell him he was exaggerating, but that hardly mattered now.
“No people skills. Goes home to his beer mat collection.”
I remembered being strangely fascinated by Jimmy’s hobby when I was a kid. In junior school he used to show me his collection at playtime and explained all the subtleties in great detail. I always got a warm glow from the thought that I would go to my grave knowing the technical term for beer mat collecting – tegestology.
“My Dad died when I was two. I lived with my mother until I was in my thirties,” he went on. “Everybody assumed I was gay.”
“Jimmy,” said Marti gently.
She was obviously worried about time passing.
“I want you to understand,” he repeated. “I was working in the Civic Centre in Swinton when I met her. She was a fostering officer.”
He almost smiled as he thought of those days.
“She would always make a point of chatting to me. She brought me out of myself I suppose you’d say.”
Marti and I looked at one another, wondering whether to break into his reminiscences.
“At first I thought she was married, but her husband had died. We started going for lunch together. I thought she was just being friendly; I never dreamed she could be interested in me.”
“But she was?”
“Seemingly. When the deputy manager’s job came up Caitlin encouraged me to apply. She advised me about what to wear, what to say at the interview. I got the job and she invited me out to dinner to celebrate. It went on from there.”
It was significant, I thought, that Caitlin made the running.
“I felt alive for the first time. So when this thing happened with Greenhoff, it was...”
The energy seemed to drain out of him.<
br />
“What happened after the affair, Jimmy?” asked Marti.
“She said it was all over and gradually things improved. We had counselling – Caitlin’s idea – and we got back to normal. More or less.”
His face crumpled slightly as if he were about to burst into tears. Somehow he managed to hold it together.
“She said I wasn’t paying her enough attention, that she wanted to feel loved. Loved? It had nothing to do with love.”
He scratched his head as if trying to work out a puzzle.
“Sex, that’s what it was about. Oh, I dare say she was flattered to be pursued by a younger man. It was him who should have been bloody flattered.”
He clenched his fists and flexed his fingers.
“The point is she did it because she wanted to do it. What’s to say she wouldn’t do it again? I just...If I’m really honest, I couldn’t trust her again.”
He was silent for a moment, his eyes blinking rapidly.
“You want to know about the day it happened? Well, the previous day Caitlin rang me at work...”
He looked at me.
“You were there, Gus...”
I nodded.
“She said she was going out after work for a meal with a friend in Blackburn. She was gonna stay the night so she could have a drink.”
Maybe, I thought, if his trust in his wife had not been eroded, he would not have reacted as he did.
“That was one of the excuses she had used when she was, you know... I knew she’d been to see him at Mangall Court a few times when he was working for the EDT.”
I wrote down the details extra carefully – we were coming to the crunch.
“I met Gus by chance on my way home. He told me Greenhoff was on duty with him. I couldn’t sleep that night, I was imagining all sorts. I got the early bus to work. Then I walked over to Mangall Court before I went to the office, got there about seven. I thought I might catch them together.”
“How did you get into Mangall Court?” asked Marti.
“I’m a key holder. I get called out when there’s a problem with the building. When I got inside, everything was quiet. Nobody was about downstairs so I went in one of the bedrooms. There was nobody there.”
I could see why Jimmy was the number one suspect.
“I picked up a United scarf from the floor – God knows why – and put it on the duvet,” he continued. “I went over and touched some white rope tied to the bedposts, imagining Caitlin and him having kinky sex.”