by Bud Craig
“Go on.”
I explained again about Jimmy’s wife staying the night with a friend and ringing Jimmy on her mobile on the morning of the murder.
“The question is,” I added, “where was she when she made that call?”
“Have you asked her?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t trust her,” I said, realising for the first time what my problem was with Caitlin. “I need something more objective.”
Steve thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers.
“Sarita will know, won’t she?”
I looked askance at him.
“I can hardly ask her.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I don’t see why not. She’ll have worked out by now you’re investigating the Greenhoff case.”
“Yeah?”
“Course she will. She’s bound to have checked Caitlin’s whereabouts. And you helped her with Francine Ingleby, didn’t you?”
While I considered this, Steve took out his phone.
“I’ll give her a call.”
I let him get on with it. I knew he was right: the police wouldn’t take Caitlin’s word without making inquiries. It was their job to be suspicious. Anyway, Steve always said Inspector Ellerton was one of his protégées and would do anything for him.
“DI Ellerton? It’s your old friend and colleague, Steve Yarnitzky here...don’t be like that, Sarita, you know you’re always pleased to hear from me...I’ve got your boyfriend with me...Gus, who else?”
He looked over and winked at me.
“You remember how helpful he was in the matter of Francine Ingleby...he’s after a quid pro quo...that’s your actual Latin...unfortunately you youngsters haven’t had the benefit of a classical education like what Gus and me have had...he wants to know where Caitlin Gallagher was at the time of Tim Greenhoff’s murder...come on, it’s not much to ask...”
He picked up his cup, listening carefully, and drank before responding.
“Thanks, Sarita...I shall let you get on...”
I signalled to him to hang on.
“No, just a minute, Sarita...” said Steve.
I told him to ask her if she had found out anything about the car I saw speeding out of the Mangall Court car park on the morning of Tim’s death. Steve passed on the question.
“Right,” he said when he’d ended the call.
“What did she say?”
“Caitlin was definitely in Blackburn when Tim was killed. They checked with her friend, Lavinia something. They had breakfast together that morning. She remembered Caitlin making the call to Jimmy.”
Well, that got me precisely bloody nowhere, I said to myself.
“And the car belonged to someone who had parked while she went shopping. A bad driver obviously. There’s plenty of them about.”
“So I can cross Caitlin off the list,” I sighed. “I reckon I’ve now got to the point where I feel as if I have missed something.”
“Something being?”
“If I knew that I wouldn’t have missed it, would I? Whatever it is will provide the answer.”
He smiled and looked at me quizzically.
“And with one bound Jimmy will be free?”
“Something like that.”
* * *
Two days later as I strolled along Salford Quays the sun was out, a scattering of people milled about with smiles on their faces and at least momentarily life felt good. I hadn’t gone far when, swerving to avoid a pushchair, I heard a voice.
“Gus! Over here, mate.”
I turned to my left. A man in a dark blue jacket was waving at me. It took a few seconds to recognise him.
“Will,” I said as I approached him.
He held out his hand, I shook it and sat next to him on a metal bench.
“What are you doing round here?” I asked.
“This and that, you know.”
I detected a slight slurring in his speech. Looking at him more closely I noticed his jacket was crumpled and he had not ironed his pink shirt with his usual care. He rubbed at the few days’ worth of stubble on his chin.
“Drowning my sorrows,” he added, making his meaning only marginally clearer.
“Sorrows?”
“Let me buy you a drink,” he said, “tell you all about it. I usually pop in to the Holiday Inn around lunchtime.”
For the second time in a few days, in fact for the second time in my life, I went to the bar of the Holiday Inn.
“Women, eh,” said Will Trader as we sat at a table. “Why do we bother with ‘em?”
He poured red wine into two glasses
“It beats me,” I said, humouring him.
I drank and wondered what he would say next. Would I finally hear something useful?
“They’re so...” he began before stumbling to a halt and raising his glass. “Your very good health.”
“Cheers.”
He sat back and surveyed the room.
“Where was I? Women...”
I had no idea what on earth he was on about, so let him witter on in the hope he would give me a clue or two. A resigned frown crept across his face.
“It’s all gone tits up again, mate,” he added.
He lowered his head, swigging more wine.
“I thought I had it all worked out,” he went on. “I came into a bit of money a few weeks back. Can’t tell you how, not that it matters. So I thought with that and what I had from selling my house, I could settle down with the girl of my dreams. Live happily after.”
He shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment. I wondered about the woman who had turned him down. He’d given nothing away about his private life and it didn’t look as if he was about to start now.
“Or possibly not,” he added.
“What went wrong?” I asked.
His response was a cynical laugh.
“I spent a load of money on her, Gus. And I mean a load of money. I thought that was what she wanted.”
He made an expansive hand gesture that nearly knocked his glass over.
“And was she grateful? Rhetor...rrr...rhetorical question. Oh, the words ‘thank’ and ‘you’ may have passed her lips, can’t remember. But she wasn’t grateful in a deeper, more meaningful sense, you know.”
The wine was sliding down quite nicely and though the surroundings weren’t to my taste, I told myself I could happily sit here getting gradually pissed. I rarely drank during the day, but when I did I enjoyed it. Not that I was doing it for pleasure, far from it: the consumption of cabernet sauvignon was essential for my work.
“This is what gets me about women,” said Will, returning to his theme for the day. The spotty youth from behind the bar brought two cheese and ham toasties, spending far too long placing the plates on the table and arranging the cutlery. After the last ‘no problem’ he left us to it. Will picked up from where he’d left off.
“She reckoned if she couldn’t...she didn’t...you know. At any rate, ‘So long, Will, it’s been good to know you’ is what it amounted to.”
He took off his jacket and flung it onto the chair next to him.
“I dunno,” he said, “you try to help people and where does it get you?”
“It’s no good expecting anything from people, Will,” I said, playing the part of the wise, older man.
He waved his glass in my direction.
“You said a mouthful there, mate. Well, I’ll tell you something, I’ll get my own back one day, you see if I don’t.”
He poured more wine for us both before continuing to harangue me.
“Why do I never have any luck, Gus? In any bloody thing that’s really important, that’s what I mean. What’s that saying? Lucky in cards, unlucky in love. Well that’s true of me. I’ve made enough to scrape a living with what I’ve won in that casino.”
Blinking his eyes slowly, he pursed his lips, allowing his shoulders to slump.
“Anyway, that’s enough about me, as the saying goes,” he
said. “What about you, Gus, what you up to these days? You still investigating Tim’s murder, are you?”
He was approaching the ‘you’re my best mate’ stage of drunkenness.
“Yeah, I...”
“You getting anywhere?”
Tempted to tell him I was on the verge of a breakthrough, I thought again.
“I’m on the verge of a breakthrough,” I said anyway.
The strange thing was I did think I was nearly there. That was why I had told Steve I was missing something that would lead me to the solution.
“Well, the answer’s obvious to me, Gus,” he said, topping up our glasses. “James Gallagher, guilty as charged.”
“He didn’t do it,” I insisted.
Maybe if I said it often enough it would turn out to be right. Will smiled patronisingly.
“Yeah, whatever. The important thing is, Tim’s dead. He was my best friend.”
With the awful feeling he was getting maudlin, I drank my wine. I’d make this my last glass. He could drink the rest of the bottle himself.
* * *
“I thought I’d look for a new car,” I said to Marti in her office the following day.
We’d spent several fruitless minutes discussing the investigation and she had asked me what I was doing for the rest of the day. Small talk, I said to myself, it’s come to that.
“There’s no need to do that,” she said, “you can use mine when I go on tour.”
She found it difficult to repress a smile when she said ‘on tour’.
“Are you sure?”
“I won’t need it. I was going to ask you to keep an eye on the house while I’m away, so you may as well look after the car as well.”
“OK.”
I should have protested, at least half-heartedly, but I couldn’t afford to. Marti smiled and took my hand, while I tried to imagine myself driving a Mercedes and failing. Still, didn’t they say you could get used to anything?
“And I want to make sure I see you again when I get back in spite of...you know.”
I smiled back.
“Oh, we’ll see one another, I’ll make sure about that.”
“Great. Listen, Gus I want to explain.”
“Explain?”
She rolled a pen between her fingers, before saying any more.
“Remember when I proposed to you?”
I thought back to that day and Marti’s anger when I said no. At the time I had thought that was it, but for a while she’d behaved as if nothing had happened.
“Well, when I had got over the shock of rejection, I took stock. I thought I’d handled it all wrong, so decided to bide my time.”
“Hence the hints about us moving in together.”
She nodded.
“Yes, you see, I was sure you would change your mind in the end.”
Was that arrogance or logical thinking? Most people in a relationship ended up living together, didn’t they?
“When mum died it made me realise nothing stays the same. And now I’ve got other opportunities, I guess I have taken stock. The idea of having a relationship isn’t so...?”
“Important?”
“Maybe.”
A silence developed. I had no idea what to say. As things threatened to get awkward, Marti spoke.
“In the meantime you’ve got to get Jimmy out of prison.”
It was a relief that the discussion about me and Marti had come to an end. We couldn’t change anything whatever we said, and there was no point in talking round the subject.
* * *
I opened the door of my flat the following afternoon just before one.
“Hi, Gus,” smiled Louise.
I looked her over as she strolled in as if she owned the place. She was looking good, it had to be said, in a red top and check trousers. Certainly more lively than the day she’d come to tell me about Brad. What did she want? Not more problems, I hoped, I wasn’t in the mood. We sat at the kitchen table, me wary, her apparently at ease and happy.
“I just thought I’d come and see you,” she said, pushing her sunglasses up onto her head. “I’m staying with Rachel, but she’s at work so...”
She picked up a CD from the table and examined it.
“What’s this?”
I was tempted to say, ‘what does it look like?’ or something equally churlish, but decided to rise above such things.
“It’s an Elvis compilation my sister sent me.”
“Oh, she made me an identical one when I was staying with her that time.”
I’d forgotten that Louise had spent some time with Terri when she was on her round the world trip. How long ago was that? Must be four or five years. God.
“Can we put it on?” she asked.
“Sure.”
I went over to the CD player.
“I must send Terri something to thank her for helping me out over the Brad crisis,” she added. “What do you think she might like?”
I shrugged.
“I’ll have a think.”
“Right. How is Terri?”
“Fine, I haven’t seen her for too long. I’m trying to save up to fly out and see her one day.”
“I hope you manage it.”
She looked round the room for a while as if inspecting it. Luckily she had once again come calling on the day Polly had been to clean.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a drink, is there. Red wine if you’ve got it,” she said as The Girl of My Best Friend started.
“Sure,” I said, getting up.
“Oh, I love this one, so haunting.”
I came back with a bottle and two glasses and poured Chilean Merlot for us both.
“Cheers,” we said.
More daytime drinking, I thought. I was developing bad habits.
“You know,” said Louise, “Terri was telling me there’s a line in this song, ‘the way they kiss, their happiness’ and she thought it said ‘they hardly miss’.”
While we talked about other misheard lyrics, Louise reached into her bag, pulled out a white envelope and handed it to me.
“That’s to show my appreciation, you know, for all your help. I feel safe for the first time in ages.”
I pulled out a thank you card and a twenty pound HMV voucher.
“Thanks, that’s great,” I said.
“I wasn’t sure what to get, so...”
This was the ideal gift for me, allowing me to choose what I wanted. It was so unexpected that I was lost for words for a moment.
“This is fine.” I said eventually. “We could have lunch if you like. I’ve got some lasagne in the fridge. Home made. It only needs heating up.
Her face lit up.
“Lovely.”
I had long suspected she only stayed with me as long as she did because I could cook.
“Gus,” she asked as I prepared the food, “we are friends now, aren’t we?”
I looked over to her and smiled. The first sensible thing she’d said for a while, I thought.
“Sure.”
Over lunch and more wine we gradually relaxed, serenaded by the king of rock’n’roll. She referred briefly to Marti and me – she’d heard from Rachel we’d split up – but I had no wish to talk about it. Then we chatted inconsequentially about her job before we got onto my investigation.
“Sounds dangerous. You will be careful, won’t you,” she said as I told her all about it.
For the first time since we ceased to be married we weren’t restrained by hidden agendas and stuff from the past that could never be resolved.
“Course I will.”
She took another mouthful of wine, as did I. I reckoned we had both reached the optimum level of intoxication. Louise smiled at me.
“Because I’m still very fond of you, you know that, don’t you?”
I didn’t know any such thing, I was tempted to say, but this wasn’t the time for bitterness.
“It’s mutual,” I said.
Two things struck me: I
still fancied Louise something rotten – I couldn’t see that changing any time soon – and it was nice having somebody telling me they were ‘very fond’ of me, warning me to be careful. The album moved on to a song called Treat Me Nice.
“I like this one as well,” said Louise. “It’s very...what can I say?”
She began to sing along, something I remembered her doing whenever she’d had a drink. Then she reached out and took my hand.
“Do you ever want someone to treat you nice, Gus?” she whispered, leaning forward slightly.
“All the time.”
She smiled at me.
“I haven’t been very nice to you, have I?”
“No, you haven’t, you bugger.”
After the slightest of hesitations, she kissed me. Or I kissed her. We kissed one another.
Quite some time later, Louise got out of bed, took my dressing gown from the back of the bedroom door and put it on. Turning to look at me, she gave me a wink.
“We’ve still got it, haven’t we?”
I smiled back, nodding in agreement. A sensible, mature man would have agonized over the significance of what had happened. However, one thing I had discovered in life was that sensible, mature men didn’t have much fun.
“Certainly have,” I said.
She waltzed out of the room, singing Treat Me Nice. When she returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses, she had moved onto another song. Would she go through every Elvis song? It was only after she had left that I got the strong feeling she had said or done something that would help in the investigation. Once I had worked out what it was, I’d be laughing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The next morning I got up early, determined to sort out the murder once and for all. I sat at my desk and typed out a list of suspects. This time I got to the end.
Andrea Greenhoff
Motives: money and jealousy. She couldn’t have killed Tim because she was on her way to work at the time Tim probably died. Jimmy went to Mangall Court at seven o’clock and stayed for, what, fifteen minutes. I was there at quarter to nine for five minutes. Polly found the body at ten. So Tim was probably murdered between eight o’clock and nine thirty.
Francine Ingleby
She had been to Mangall Court a few hours before Tim died there. She could easily have gone back. The question is, why would she kill Tim? Maybe her affair with Tim was serious in her eyes. Was he going to finish with her? With Francine, money was more likely to be the motive. Tim had no money though. Where was the jewellery she had stolen and given to Tim? Wherever it was, what did it have to do with anything? Nothing probably. She was helping Tim to make money; he was helping her to make money too. No motive there.