Brass in Pocket

by Stephen Puleston

  ‘My client would like to cooperate.’

  Chapter 39

  Tuesday 29th June

  ‘What did you make of that?’ Caren asked.

  Drake had succumbed to the coffee from the canteen and he was stirring three sugars into a blue mug and listening at the same time. Good coffee could wait – now he needed sugar and he needed to think.

  ‘At least he coughed to the assault.’

  They finished the last of the coffee and returned to the custody suite.

  Don Hart was the local solicitor who specialised in criminal cases and he’d been waiting most of the morning, just as Drake had planned. Hart carried his weight badly and his paunch hung over the belt of his trousers. The shirt was two inches too big and his face was a lather of sweat.

  ‘It’s hot in here,’ he said, pulling a handkerchief from a pocket.

  ‘You’re looking well, Don,’ Drake said.

  ‘Piss off.’

  Drake signed for the tapes, found an empty interview room and waved them to the chairs.

  ‘You’ve kept us waiting all morning, Ian,’ Hart began. The jowls under his chin shook when he spoke. Drake mumbled a reply about operational reasons.

  ‘You’re accustomed to this procedure,’ Drake said to Harrod as he loaded the tapes. He saw the contempt in Harrod’s face. Drake was pleased with himself – good mind games, off-tape and Hart couldn’t complain. He clicked the machine on. Once he dealt with the preliminaries, Drake looked at Harrod. This was the man. He had the motive, the opportunity and all the connections to kill four men.

  ‘Do you know why you’re here?’

  Harrod sat back and gave Drake a blank stare.

  He repeated the question.

  No reply.

  Block out the emotions, Drake said to himself.

  ‘For the purposes of the tape, the prisoner makes no reply.’ He raised his voice as he said prisoner. Hart sat impassively.

  ‘Can you account for your movements on the night of the 31st May, early hours 1st June?’

  Harrod turned his head towards Hart who nodded.

  ‘I was at a dinner in Chester. Expensive do.’

  ‘What time did you arrive?’

  ‘Five-ish.’

  ‘And what time did you leave?’

  ‘The following morning.’

  ‘What did you do all night?’

  ‘It was at a dinner. What do you think? I had a meal and got pissed.’

  ‘What time did you leave in the morning?’

  ‘Nine. After breakfast.’

  ‘Did you check out in the morning?’

  ‘No. I settled the account the night before.’

  From the files Drake found the statement he needed. He read it aloud and afterwards sat back watching the nervous twitch under Harrod’s right eye.

  ‘The witness from the hotel says you left early. What do you say to that?’

  ‘He’s lying.’

  ‘The witness arrives at eight, and you’re leaving.’

  ‘It’s a mistake.’ Harrod tried to hide a nervous swallow and Drake kept eye contact.

  ‘You’re lying, James,’ Drake said. ‘You left the hotel early. Where did you go?’

  Harrod leant back, folded his arms and clenched his jaw.

  ‘How well do you know Stevie Dixon?’

  Harrod tightened the fold of his arms and pushed them into his chest.

  Drake persevered. ‘Do you know Stevie Dixon?’ He paused and looked at Harrod, who had defiance and contempt burning in his eyes.

  ‘The records from HMP Chokes Lane state that you were on the same wing as him for three months.’

  Again, he looked at Harrod but there was no reply.

  Drake tried to sound informative, ‘Did you share a cell with him for a month?’

  Harrod narrowed his eyes and stared at Drake.

  ‘You see, the information I have is that you did. That would have given you a lot of time to get to know him well.’

  There was still no reply from Harrod, and Drake ran through the previous convictions on his record. Hart moved awkwardly – the solicitor’s bulk clearly made the narrow plastic chair uncomfortable.

  ‘Stevie Dixon and you go back a long way.’

  Harrod grunted and drew a hand over his head and then pummelled his eyes with both hands.

  ‘That’s a load of bollocks and you know it,’ he said, spitting out the words.

  ‘Tell me about Stevie Dixon.’

  ‘Not much to say. I shared a cell with him. He told me about his girlfriends and grandkids. Who stitched him up. That he wasn’t guilty and that his case was a miscarriage.’

  All the usual crap, thought Drake. He knew from dozens of interviews that every murderer believed they should have been convicted of manslaughter and every manslaughter charge should have been grievous bodily harm. He had no time for the world of self-delusion that criminals chose to construct.

  ‘When did you see him last?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  At least he was answering the questions. Drake sensed the confidence building in Harrod. Drake looked at his notes again. It was a list of when both men had met: dates, times and places. Once Dixon had realised that an indeterminate sentence meant just that, he had coughed every detail of the assault on Fisher. Drake knew that the murders of Mathews and Farrell would come.

  Only a matter of time.

  Drake asked about the night of the assault. Harrod blanked him. He opened an envelope and pulled out a photograph of the Range Rover, which he pushed across the table.

  ‘Perhaps this will help. That is you I take it?’ he asked.

  Silence.

  ‘And the person with you is Stevie Dixon. Would you like to see a photograph of him getting out of your car?’

  Hart was writing furiously – the tie discarded, jowls swaying, mopping his brow from the heat.

  ‘Are you going to answer any questions?’

  Harrod turned his head to one side. Drake drummed his fingers on the table. He paused as his temper rose. He read again his interview notes.

  ‘The man you assaulted. You do remember his name, don’t you.’ It wasn’t a question, so Drake continued. ‘Attended hospital with three broken ribs, a broken nose ,a dislocated shoulder and severe bruising.’

  ‘Don’t know anything about it,’ Harrod said, leaning forward over the table to within inches of Drake. He could smell Harrod’s breath; see the mole on his neck and the chip on a front tooth. Drake saw Harrod standing in Megan’s bedroom with the bottle.

  ‘Let’s come back to that,’ Drake said abruptly. Caren cast an eye over the interview notes and shot him a glance. He stared at Harrod.

  He turned to the events on the Crimea.

  ‘Did you know Police Constable Paul Mathews?’

  ‘No,’

  ‘And what about Danny Farrell?’

  ‘Only by reputation.’

  ‘And what reputation was that?

  ‘As a crooked cop and wife-beater. Otherwise he was an all-round great guy.’

  Drake’s chest tightened and the fingers of his hand involuntarily formed a fist. Harrod blanked the next dozen questions as Drake asked about Farrell and Mathews. He smirked and snorted until Drake could almost hear his pulse beating in his neck.

  ‘How well do you know Roderick Jones?’

  Harrod leered at Drake, defying him to ask any more questions.

  ‘I want to go through your financial affairs.’

  Harrod guffawed. ‘What next. Have you got nothing else?’

  Drake counted to ten, twice. Then he picked up the interview notes, gripped them tightly and looked at Caren. He looked through the worried expression on her face and started asking Harrod about his company.

  ‘What can you tell me about the beachfront development?’

  Harrod pulled himself up in the chair.

  ‘You don’t know jack shit, Inspector Drake.’

  ‘Is it true that your company has invested in the d
evelopment?’

  ‘Everyone knows that.’

  ‘And your company has massive loans on the back of the project?’

  Harrod hummed a non-committal answer and swayed his head.

  ‘Would it be true to say that if the development doesn’t go ahead the company would be bankrupt?’

  Harrod gave Drake a tired disinterested look and then glanced at his watch. Drake blinked away another stab of anger. He carried on, his voice rising; he had given up on expecting a reply.

  ‘In fact, if you don’t get the planning consent, your company is finished – you’re ruined. That would give you a strong motive to kill Roderick Jones.’

  Harrod let out a long breath.

  ‘Where were you on Wednesday 9th June?’

  ‘On the top of Snowdon murdering Roderick Jones of course – in front of hundreds of people. What do you bloody think?’

  Drake’s fingers tightened around the papers. For a split second, he thought he was listening to a confession. There had to be a confession. The murders had to stop. He wanted to ask who the next victim was going to be.

  Suddenly the face of Megan came flooding into his mind and he was back in the kitchen defending his family, comforting Sian and picking up the remains of the glass. He felt Harrod’s gaze on his face – that self-satisfied grin. He jerked his head up and looked at Harrod.

  ‘Where were you on the morning of Thursday 26th June?’

  Harrod screwed up his face and shrugged. ‘Who fucking cares?’

  Drake stood up, pushed the table towards Harrod and shouted.

  ‘I care, you bastard, and when I prove it was you …’

  Drake sat on Megan’s bed and leant back against the wall. She sat alongside him and smiled at him when he opened the book and read. He turned the pages without thinking, stopping occasionally when she corrected him.

  ‘You’ve missed a bit,’ she said.

  He repeated the section, before finding the flow of the narrative again. He put an arm round her and balanced the book in the other hand. She looked up and he continued.

  It seemed like a lifetime since Saturday morning when he saw the shattered glass on the floor of the kitchen. He had wanted to hold his family close, until nobody could threaten them.

  That afternoon a grain of doubt had entered his mind about Dixon. He was a thug and he deserved to be punished for the Fisher assault, but the doubts were beginning to dominate his thoughts.

  ‘Dad,’ Megan said, pushing him with her elbow.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘You’ve stopped.’

  ‘Have I …? Sorry.’

  He cleared his mind and restarted.

  Once he had finished with Megan, it was Helen’s turn. Her bed was pushed into a corner so Drake sat on the edge.

  ‘What did you read to Megan?’

  Drake told her and she nodded knowingly.

  ‘What do you want me to read to you?’

  There were three books on her bed and she hesitated before deciding. Helen complained that he was reading too slowly. Then it struck him how infrequently he had read to her and how he had forgotten the simple pleasure it gave him. After he finished he kissed her and went downstairs.

  He slumped on a chair in the kitchen and looked down at the floor, recalling the shards of glass – it had been Harrod’s work; he was convinced of it. Proving it was going to be another matter. For now, he was out of harm’s way. Tomorrow would mean a meeting with Price and Thorsen. He could hear their comments – irregular interview techniques, inappropriate language and embarrassing consequences – but he had enough to charge Harrod for the Fisher assault.

  Since Saturday, time had passed in a blur of activity, but the absence of his family had been painful, reinforcing a helpless feeling that he’d been unable to protect them. The images of the red car through the tunnels and the baseball cap and ponytail on Snowdon came flickering into his thoughts like the images from a bad movie. Every time he got close to the killer, he had pulled away.

  He punished himself by thinking that if he had spent less time at headquarters and more time with the family he might have thought more clearly. Work-life balance, Sian would say.

  Sian still had the long blond hair that he had found so attractive when he first met her. She wore an expensive turtleneck sweater that clung to her figure and emphasised the roundness of her breasts. She caught his gaze and puckered her eyes as he half smiled at her.

  Sian reached into the fridge and pulled out the ingredients for a salad. He opened a bottle of wine and drank a large mouthful.

  ‘The armed officer will be here soon,’ he said.

  ‘Do we have to have this person in the house?’

  ‘Super insists.’

  ‘For how long?’

  Drake shrugged and yawned at the same time.

  Once they’d eaten, they watched television until Drake could feel his eyes closing. He tried not to think of the morning and his meetings.

  Chapter 40

  Wednesday 30th June

  Drake sipped the first mug of coffee of the day, finding things to distract his mind from dwelling on the interviews from the day before.

  ‘Moxie came round on Saturday,’ Drake said.

  ‘How is he?’ Sian said.

  ‘Woke me up.’

  ‘Shame about him and Beverley.’ Sian was clearing the dishes away onto the worktop near the sink. ‘He was never the same. They should have had marriage guidance after she had that affair. Never thought going to that club suited them.’

  The doorbell rang and Megan and Helen shouted that their lift had arrived. The girls hurried into the kitchen, kissed Drake and left. Drake helped Sian stack the dishwasher but his mind kept darting from worrying about his parents to the scene with the bottles in the bedrooms and then to the face of Price asking if he was coping. Drake wanted to solve the case more that anything but he could see the investigation slipping out of his hands unless he made a breakthrough. Maybe Sian was right and he should get counselling: it might help, but solving the sudoku puzzle helped, as all his rituals did.

  In the hall mirror he checked his tie before leaning forward, his skin looked pale and there were even more grey hairs than he remembered. He stepped outside into the summer sunshine. A warm haze gathered over the town as he drove past the charity shops and cafés. A middle-aged man riding a bicycle reminded him of his father and his thoughts returned to his father’s treatment. He had sounded weak when he spoke to him the previous night. The treatment left him with little appetite and Sian had warned him that he would look ill for a long time.

  He switched on the CD player and flicked through the multi-changer before deciding to listen to the radio. He ignored a telephone phone-in where the audience members were complaining about the latest fuel price increases and settled on Radio Two. He smiled as the DJ introduced ‘Won’t get fooled again’ by The Who and, knowing it was the theme tune for CSI Miami, saw the image of Horatio Caine, standing – hands on hips, badge displayed, gun protruding – against the sultry warm background of the Florida skyline.

  He had been fooled by the killer: he knew it. Caren had to be right about the numbers. They sounded different when she’d said each one in turn. Not like the year at all. Like a number, an ordinary number.

  His office was muggy so he pushed open one of the windows and felt a cooling draught on his face. Scrolling through his inbox, he stopped at a message from Price. It was formal, started Dear Ian and asked him to attend later that afternoon for a meeting with the superintendent and Thorsen. It meant one thing. He was off the case. It annoyed him so much to realise that Harrod would have the better of him. Until then it was his case and he tried to put to one side the disciplinary problems he was facing.

  Reading an email from Thorsen quoting an obscure protocol about officers with an emotional interest in a case only made him feel worse. Finally, he read the email from Vera Frost. After downloading the attachment and storing it into the appropriate folder, he started
reading the list of patients. When he saw his father’s name, he stopped and drew breath. Looking at the simple details – surname, Christian name, address, referring GP – reminded him that his father was gravely ill. He stared out of the window and thought about his mother. How would she cope? He could remember the time when he realised for the first time that he would not live forever. He supposed that his parents would have discussed such things. His mother would deal with the loss, resolve her grief and move on with her life. Perhaps she would come and visit more often. She might sell the smallholding.

  The names were listed alphabetically, by surname. By the end of the ‘O’s he knew he’d missed something: a name he had skimmed over – they’d become a blur.

  He went back and restarted from the ‘K’s. He stopped at the name Beverley Moxon. He knew that she had been ill, but he tried to dispel the uneasy feeling gathering in his stomach. She had died of cancer. Moxon had been distraught after her death. His spirit had been crushed and Drake had seen it in his face, as though the will to live had ebbed away. He rationalised his thoughts, dismissing the notion of Moxon’s involvement.

  Suddenly, from a dark corner a jagged edge of memory came into his mind.

  He walked over to the coat stand, retrieved his warrant card before firmly closing the door. He sat and stared at his police service number.

  … that the killer might be a police officer or a retired police officer …

  He had to check.

  He found the statements and read them again, hoping for the one piece of information he lacked.

  … have you thought about the number …

  An hour passed as he read the various bundles of paperwork. Occasionally, he saw the movement of the officers in the Incident Room and sometimes a face appeared at the door, but he paid no attention. The information he needed was absent. He drummed his biro on the desk and wondered if this was another of his obsessions. What if he was wrong? He had to find the number. An idea formed and he cleared the papers into a neat pile.

  Despite the warmth, he pulled on his jacket, fastened one button and checked his tie. It would look more formal that way. He walked over to human resources and talked to one of the civilians.