“Heckley,” I said.
“He’s on his feet, heading for the door. Looks like this is it.”
“Understood. Out.”
I needed a pee. It’s always the same: the least bit of excitement and I remember that I haven’t been to the loo for four hours. “This could be it,” I told her, and clicked the send button on the RT. “Charlie to the Young Turks,” I said into it, “it’s looking good for us.” Three cars down in the facing row Dave raised a finger off the steering wheel in acknowledgement, and a face in a window to my left raised an eyebrow. I wish I could do that. Smoke puffed from the exhaust of the car in front as he started the engine. I reached forward to kill Scott Walker and we both pulled our seatbelts on.
It all went off like a dream, exactly as planned, but you’d never have believed it. The Regional Crime Squad DCI was called Barry Moynihan, and he was one of the grumpiest little piggies I’ve ever come across. Now he was slumped in a chair in the corner of Mr Wood’s office, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. He’d ranted and raved all the way to the station and plenty more when he was inside, but it’s hard to take a bollocking from somebody wearing three-quarter length Burberry check shorts and a Desperate Dan T-shirt. Gilbert was lounging back in his executive chair, staring at the blank wall opposite. I was on a hard seat, left ankle on right knee, wondering if breaking the silence would be polite. I picked up my coffee cup and took a long loud slurp. Gilbert glared eloquently at me, but didn’t attempt to put his feelings into words. I shrank into my jacket and placed my mug back on his desk as if it might explode.
Moynihan leapt to his feet and paced across the office. “She might be in Le Havre now, for all I know,” he declared. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his shorts, then took them out again. “God knows where she and the kids are.”
“Try ringing her again,” Gilbert suggested.
“How can I?” he snapped. “How can I? The daft cow’s got the friggin’ mobile switched off.” He was back at his chair. He spun it round and crashed down on it, back to front, resting his chin on his forearms. “She’s never driven the Frontera before,” he informed us.
“You should be able to join her tomorrow,” Gilbert ventured.
“Where?” he demanded. “Portsmouth? France? I only popped across to arrivals to see if my parents were there.” He banged a palm against the side of his head, saying: “And my friggin’ passport’s in the glove box.”
I had to admit it; he was in a predicament. No money, no credit cards, stranded in Yorkshire without a passport, in clothes like that. I must have smirked or sniggered, because suddenly he was on his feet again, pointing at me. “You’re history,” he snarled. “You’re fuckin’ history.”
“That’s enough,” Gilbert told him. “I’ll not have you talk to one of my senior officers like that.”
“He deliberately didn’t arrest him,” Moynihan ranted. “A target criminal, and he let him go.”
“He had his reasons,” Gilbert said.
“He deliberately disobeyed instructions.”
“Listen,” I said, looking at Moynihan. “We had less than forty minutes notice that he was on a train that stopped at Heckley. Two minutes notice that he was getting off. RCS had taken all our firepower. We’d had no time to evacuate the station and I wasn’t going to risk the lives of my officers and any civilians on your say-so. We contained the situation and have isolated the target. We have also identified his accomplices. I’d call that good work.”
“God!” Moynihan cursed, “What a friggin’ hole.”
There was a knock at the door and Mr Wood snapped: “Come in!” so loudly my ankle slipped off my knee and my foot slammed down. The door opened and DS Jeff Caton emerged, leather jacket flapping, hair plastered down with sweat, grinning like a new dawn. He had a red line over his bloodshot eyes and down his cheeks, where the helmet had pressed.
“Good,” Mr Wood said. “So what’s the position, Jeff?”
“Pretty hunky-dory,” he replied, flexing the fingers of his right hand. “We followed him over the tops and he turned off on to the old Oldfield Road, then down a narrow lane that goes right over towards Dolly Foss, past the dam. You know where I mean, Boss?” he asked, turning to me.
“I think so,” I replied.
“By the way, this is DCI Moynihan from the Met RCS,” Gilbert told Jeff.
“Pleased to meet you,” Jeff said, extending a hand. Moynihan ignored it and Jeff said: “Suit yourself.”
Gilbert had acquired the appropriate OS map and we leaned over his desk as Jeff traced the route they’d taken. “That’s the house,” Jeff said, laying a finger on the map. “It looks to have a name.”
“Ne’er Do Well Farm,” Gilbert read out, because the map was the right way up for him.
“Ne’er Do Well?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Sounds appropriate.”
“What’s the layout like,” Gilbert asked.
“Couldn’t be better, I’d say,” he replied. “It’s an old farmhouse, with signs of some restoration work, so it’s in reasonable condition. There’s a dry gill behind it and about five hundred yards away, on the other side of the gill, there’s a rock outcrop, not far from a track. It’s a perfect place for an OP.”
“We won’t need an observation post,” Moynihan asserted. “As soon as we’ve enough bodies we’re lifting him. Where can I use a phone?”
He spent half an hour on the telephone in the secretary’s office and Gilbert used the time to ring the Deputy Chief Constable. His advice was to let them get on with it. Give any assistance they might ask for, but otherwise leave it to them. Jeff told us about tailing Chilcott and I made some more coffee. He’d alternated with the Fiesta, hanging about a quarter of a mile behind, and was certain they hadn’t been spotted.
“You did well,” I told him.
“He did bloody well,” Gilbert told us, nodding towards the adjoining office where Moynihan was brewing something. “All that way, without being rumbled.”
“Dressed like that,” I added.
Moynihan came back in and we fell silent. “Right,” he said. “From now on it’s an RCS shout. A team from the Met are coming up to lift him, probably on Saturday morning. In the meantime — tonight and tomorrow — number three district RCS will keep an eye on the farm. Thank you for your help, gentlemen, but we won’t require any more assistance from you. If you don’t like it, contact Chief Superintendent Matlock.”
With them it’s personal. Chilcott was as good as a cop killer, one of their target criminals, and someone at the Met wanted the pleasure of feeling his collar. It would look bad if a bunch of hicks from Heckley did the job for them.
“Good,” Gilbert said. “Good. That takes the pressure off us. All the same, we will keep a weather eye on things, if you don’t mind. Just in case. We do like to know exactly what’s going off in our little neck of the woods.”
Annette had vanished but didn’t answer the phone when I rang her flat. I’d stayed behind to brief our local RCS boys, and it must have been after eight when I left the station. I drove straight to a pub up on the moors and had the landlady’s steak and kidney pie. Friday morning I apologised to Annette and said I’d tried to ring her.
“I thought you’d be here until late,” she replied, “so I went to the Curtain.”
“Aw, I am sorry. I wish I’d known. Did Mr Ho entertain you?”
“Yes. He was sweet. I said you might be along later, and when you didn’t turn up he was all apologetic and filled with concern. He said you must have had a good reason for not being there.”
“Mmm, stupidity,” I replied.
I told her all about the RCS take-over and she said she’d enjoyed the shout. Her adrenaline was high and it had kept her awake all night.
“Maybe that was the monosodium glutamate,” I suggested.
“Yes, perhaps it was,” she agreed, but there was just a tinge of pink on her cheeks as she said it.
“This we
ekend…” I began. “Are you going away?”
“Yes, unless…”
“Unless?”
“Unless you want me to work.”
“Er, no. No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Right. Thanks”
I spent the rest of the morning on the word processor, typing a full account of the Heckley station caper in graphic detail. I even slipped in a few semi-colons, because I suspected it would be read in high places. I laid it on thick, saying that I thought it unsafe to approach Chilcott, a suspected killer, in a public place when we were ill-prepared. In fact, I made such a good job of it I decided that any other course of action would have been downright irresponsible. Ah, the power of the pen.
It gave me a headache. I found some aspirin in my drawers and washed a couple down with cold tea. I was rubbing my eyes with my forefingers when there was a knock at the door and it opened. I blinked and looked at my visitor. It was Nigel Newley, my one-time whizz-kid protege.
“Hiya, Nigel,” I gushed. “Sit down. Do you want a tea?”
“No thanks, Charlie. I was in the building, so I thought I’d call in.”
“You did right. So where’s the famous moustache?”
“Ah.” He rubbed his top lip. “You heard about that, did you? I decided it wasn’t quite the part. Looked too frivolous.”
“For a detective on a murder case? Sounds a nasty job. How are you getting on with it?”
“Pretty good. We found semen samples on her, so we’re going straight for mass testing, no messing about. That’s why I’m here.”
“Nothing on the data base?”
“No, unfortunately. She was gorgeous, Charlie. Beautiful and intelligent. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody wasn’t stalking her, but we haven’t turned anything up yet.”
“Boyfriend? Ex-boyfriends?”
“Married last Easter to a childhood sweetheart who has a cast-iron alibi. He was building a bridge in Sunderland at the time. We haven’t cleared him with the DNA yet, but we will.”
“And what does Les say about it all?” Les Isles was Nigel’s new superintendent, and an old pal of mine.
“Oh, he’s OK. A bit different from you, but he’s OK. He wants to go ahead with the mass testing, soon as possible. Says there’s no point in hanging about.”
“That sounds like Les.” I moved the computer mouse to cancel the screen saver, and clicked the save icon. I was playing for time, organising my thoughts. “Tell me this,” I said. “This girl…”
“Marie-Claire Hollingbrook.”
“…Marie-Claire. The reports say she was sexually assaulted. What exactly did that mean?”
“She was raped. Strangled and raped.”
“Post-mortem?”
“Possibly.”
“Was she assaulted anally?”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
“You want to know if there’s any comparison with your case. Margaret Silkstone.”
“Yes.”
“I thought that was cleared up.”
“It is, but maybe this is a copycat.”
“Mr Isles has considered that. Yes, she was raped vaginally and anally, but I didn’t tell you. We’re not releasing that information.”
“We didn’t release it for Mrs Silkstone, but the UK News got hold of it.”
“Maybe they were kite flying.”
“No, they knew about it. Someone spoke out of turn.”
“So,” he said, pointing to the little bottle on my desk and changing the subject. “What’s with the pills.”
I picked it up and placed it back in the drawer. “It’s nothing,” I said. “I’ve just been staring at that thing for two hours. It’s a bit bright for me. Do you know how to change it?”
“Just alter the contrast,” Nigel replied.
“How?”
“With the contrast control.”
I looked at the blank strip of plastic under the screen. “There isn’t a contrast control.”
“It’s on the keyboard. You alter it on the keyboard.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the contrast on the keyboard,” I argued. “It’s the display that’s too bright. It’s giving me spots before my eyes.”
“What sort of spots?”
“Just, little spots.”
“Do they go away when you stop looking at the monitor?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see them all the time.”
Nigel said: “Turn towards the window and close your eyes.” I did as I was told. “Can you see them now?” He asked.
“Yes.”
“Right. Cover one eye with your hand.” I did. “Can you see them now?”
“I can just see two of the little buggers, close together near the middle.”
“Do they move when you look up?”
“Um, yes. Not straight away. They follow, quite slowly.”
“OK. Now the other eye.”
I swapped hands and the two spots vanished, but now I could see three others, spread about. “I can see three now,” I told him.
“They’re floaters,” Nigel informed me.
“Floaters? What are they?”
“Dead cells, floating about in the fluid of your eyeball.”
“Oh. What causes them?”
“Age. It’s your age.”
“Well how come I have three in one eye and only two in the other? They’re both the same age.”
“It’s not that specific.”
The door burst open and Dave Sparkington was standing there. “What do you want?” he demanded, looking at Nigel.
Nigel faced up to him, saying: “I came to have a conversation with the Big Issue seller, not his mongrel.”
“We were talking about floaters,” I said to Dave.
“Floaters?” he queried.
“Yeah. Do you ever get them?
“Floaters?”
“Mmm.”
“Well, now and again. Especially if I’ve been eating chicken chow mein.”
We agreed to meet on Wednesday evening and Nigel drifted off to organise a caravan in the market place where all the males of the town would have six hairs plucked from their heads, or would donate some other body sample, if they so preferred. It would be voluntary, but a close eye would be kept on those who didn’t attend. Superintendent Isles would have prepared a list of the usual suspects, and they’d be encouraged along. I told Dave what Nigel was doing.
He said: “Les Isles will have his balls for a paperweight if he finds out that Nigel’s been talking to you about it.”
I said: “There are certain similarities with our Mrs Silkstone job.”
“Copycat,” he replied. “All the gory details were in the paper.”
“That’s what I said.”
In the afternoon a superintendent from the Met RCS came in and introduced himself. He was obviously on a damage limitation exercise, shaking my hand, calling me Charlie, saying what a good job we’d done. I showed him Ne’er Do Well Farm on the map, then took him there, via the lane at the other side of the gill where the rock outcrop was.
Barry Moynihan was in charge, wearing a shell suit that somebody two sizes smaller had loaned him, with a decent growth of stubble on his face. Three others, from number three district, were also there; two of them permanently watching the farm. I had a look through their binoculars, but the place was as still and silent as a fog-bound airport.
Two more arrived, bringing flasks of soup, blankets and waterproofs. As they lifted them from their boot I glimpsed the dull metal of a Heckler and Koch rifle barrel. I had no doubt they had a whole armoury of weapons in their cars: H amp; K A2s for general purpose killing; Glock PT17s for close range killing; and perhaps a Heckler 93 sniper rifle, for long-range killing. I had an uneasy feeling that Kevin Chilcott would not be walking away from this one.
They were reluctant to discuss tactics in front of me and I began to feel like a rogue sausage roll at a bar mitzvah, so I glanced at my watch a
nd said I’d better be off. It was just after half-past four when I left, and ten to five when I walked into the office, quietly whistling to myself: The hills are alive, with the sound of gunfire. At twenty-six minutes past five the phone rang. It was Superintendent Cox, the RCS super that I’d just taken up on to the moors.
“Did a motorcycle pass you, Charlie, on the way back to Heckley?” he asked.
“A motorbike? Not that I remember,” I replied.
“Shit! A bike left the house, about one minute after you. We clocked him heading that way, but lost him soon afterwards. He was probably in front of you.”
“You think it was Chilcott?”
“Yeah, didn’t you know? A bike’s his chosen mode of transport when he’s on a job. He can handle one. Used to race at Brands Hatch in his younger days.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Christ, Charlie, I hope this is a dummy run and not the real thing. If it is the shit’ll hit the fan.”
And I bet I knew who’d catch it all. “Do you have a number for the bike?” I asked.
“No. Just those of ones stolen locally in the last couple of weeks.”
“You have done your homework. What make did he race?”
“What did he race? No idea, why?”
“Because bikers are often loyal to one make, that’s why.”
“Christ, that’s a thought, Charlie. That’d narrow it down. Well done.”
He was telling me that they’d asked traffic to look out for him when someone at that end attracted his attention. “Wait a minute, Charlie,” he said. “Wait a minute…he’s back. Thank fuck for that. We can see him, riding towards the house.”
I hung about for another hour, but no reports of gunshots or dead bodies came in, so it must have been a training spin. Cox didn’t bother to ring me back so I went home via Sainsbury’s and did a major shop. My favourite check-out girl wasn’t on duty, which meant that the ciabatta bread and feta cheese were pointless purchases.
I had them for supper, toasted under the grill with lots of Branston pickle until they were bubbling. Welsh rarebit, Italian style, but it wasn’t a good idea. I lay awake for most of the night, thinking about a man who was loose in society with the intention of killing someone. Thinking about Annette. Thinking about her friend.
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