Brothers ip-17

by J M Gregson

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Peach. What is the connection between the killing of these two brothers?’

  ‘There may not be one, sir.’

  ‘May not be one? But surely. .’ Tucker passed appealingly into goldfish mode.

  ‘Or on the other hand, there might.’ Percy nodded gnomically, as if the weight of philosophy involved in this observation pressed heavy upon his noble brow.

  ‘Now look here, Peach! We need facts, not speculation.’

  ‘Enquiries are proceeding, sir. I’ve already had the local Catholic priest who claims to be their pastor in here and given him a thorough grilling.’

  He forbore to smile at the thought of earnest Father Brice and his genuine desire to help. Tommy Bloody Tucker’s reaction was as predictable as he had expected. ‘You must tread very carefully whenever religion is involved, Peach. How many times do I have to tell you that?’

  ‘You don’t, sir. The man came here himself. Presented himself for our inspection. A bold move, I think you’ll agree. I wondered if I should give him a bit of the third degree treatment over sexual assaults on minors, in view of his church’s deplorable record over the last few years.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing, Peach! I expressly forbid it!’

  Peach’s face fell as he abandoned his enthusiasm. ‘Very well, sir. I hear you. Perhaps that line of questioning would be better left to you. I’m sure your overview will enable you to put any local clerical assaults in the context of a more national picture.’

  ‘Who killed Dominic O’Connor, Peach?’

  Percy’s eyes widened as his eyebrows rose impossibly high beneath the bald pate. Then he allowed a slow chuckle to spread through his torso. ‘You don’t lose your sense of humour, do you, sir? Enquiries are proceeding, as you would no doubt tell the media. No stone is being left unturned. That is the official line. In private police parlance, I haven’t a fucking clue, sir. Not as yet.’

  Percy didn’t swear anything like as often as most modern police officers, male or female. But he found as he descended the stairs that this particular lapse had given him disproportionate pleasure.

  What DCI Peach had said to his chief was quite true: he didn’t yet know whether the deaths of the two O’Connor brothers were connected. It seemed an almost impossible coincidence that they wouldn’t be, but what he had heard from Dominic O’Connor’s PA and from Father Brice suggested that the second death might be a more complex mystery than the first one had proved.

  Clyde Northcott still hoped the same man might have dispatched both brothers. He voiced that thought as they journeyed to Strangeways to interview Peter Coleman, who had been remanded in custody after being charged with the murder of James O’Connor. ‘Let’s hope it’s him. Be nice and simple, that would. Help our clear-up rates. It would even please Tommy Bloody Tucker.’

  ‘There’s no pleasing Tommy Bloody Tucker,’ said Peach gloomily. ‘You might as well try to please a camel with indigestion. But I know what you mean. It would make life a lot simpler if we could get Coleman to admit this one as well and save us chasing our tails around.’

  Peter Coleman looked a different proposition from the truculent hard man they had seen when they’d interviewed him three days earlier. He’d been confident then, defying them to arrest him; now he looked every inch the criminal he was. The warder set him in his chair and stood impassively behind his man, but there seemed little chance now of this powerfully built man offering any physical aggression. His hair was cut close, emphasising the size of his head and his neck, but the anonymous prison garb made him look smaller and less formidable than when they had confronted him in the hut on the building site.

  When Peach did not speak but merely stared at him and assessed him, Coleman could not withstand the silence. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you, Peach. I’ll deal with you when I get out of here.’

  ‘We could both be old men by then. DS Northcott might still enjoy knocking you about, though. He might still be a hard bastard, if he keeps himself in trim.’ He glanced appreciatively at the formidable black presence beside him.

  ‘I’ve got a good lawyer, Peach. We’ll see you in the Crown Court.’

  Peach’s grin suffused his whole countenance, a frightening sight for any criminal, let alone one accused of the most serious crime of all. ‘I shall look forward to it. Especially as we have witnesses and evidence that are proof against even the best defence counsel. When he sees the prosecution case, he’ll be telling you to plead guilty and scratch together some sort of mitigating circumstance — though what that might be, I can’t imagine.’ He hit Coleman with the confident smile of a man with three aces in his hand and a spare one up his sleeve.

  ‘It’s circumstantial. It won’t stand up. Not when Patterson gets to work on it.’ He threw in the name of the man who had conducted numerous complex and lucrative defence cases over the last ten years. Then he tried to trump Peach’s smile with one of his own. In that contest, he failed abjectly, as many had done before him.

  Percy said abruptly. ‘You were seen parking your car and slipping over the wall of Claughton Towers twenty minutes before the killing. You were seen scrambling into it and driving away five minutes after it. You were in charge of Lennon’s muscle and you’re known to have killed before. We’ll produce people who worked for you to send you down. Rats desert sinking ships very fast, Pete. You’ll go down on the vermin vote.’

  ‘We’ll bloody see about that,’ said Coleman. But it was a ritual defiance. His voice carried no conviction and his coarse face was pale.

  Peach judged that he’d done enough softening up to move now to the reason for their visit. ‘We’re here about your second murder. When we add the death of Dominic O’Connor to that of James, they’ll be able to throw away the key.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Dominic. You’re not pinning that one on me.’

  ‘Be easy to do that, I should think, after they’ve nailed you for Jim. Jury’s going to be well set to have you for Dominic as well, after they’ve heard about Jim.’

  ‘But I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it. Your lot arrested me on Saturday. Burst in on me whilst I was still in bed with Linda, the way you pigs like to do. Your boss was telling anyone who’d listen that you’d arrested me for murder by Saturday lunch time.’

  ‘Heard about that, have you? He does a good line in boasting, our boss does.’ Peach’s voice hardened. ‘But it doesn’t get you off the hook, Pete boy. Dominic O’Connor was murdered on Friday night, when you were still at large and obeying your latest orders.’

  ‘But I didn’t do it. What happened to innocent until proved guilty, Peach?’

  ‘Nothing at all, Pete boy. It remains a basic principle of the English law. And an admirable one, no doubt about that, despite what frustrated coppers might say. But it doesn’t always operate in practice. I’m no lawyer, thank God, but my guess is that when we’ve got you banged to rights for one murder, the jury and everyone else in court will be more inclined to think you guilty of another. Especially when they’re looking at a man who’s made his living by violence for years, like you.’ Percy nodded two or three times, then let a smile steal slowly over his round face at his happiness in that thought.

  ‘I was with my wife on Friday night.’

  ‘Ah, the old wife alibi. Suspicious but difficult to disprove.’

  ‘You ask Linda. She’ll tell you.’

  ‘She might. Unfortunately for you, she might be in clink herself by the time your case comes to court. We know all about her involvement in the procurement of minors for prostitution and worse. We’ll be delighted to put her away. That won’t make her a very reliable witness for you, though, will it?’

  ‘I didn’t kill Dominic O’Connor. I’m not worried what you do.’

  ‘Ah, the joys of a clear conscience! But it must be a long time since you knew anything about that, Mr Coleman. Best thing you could do about this second murder is admit it and put in a plea for mercy, I should think. The court might appreciate yo
ur honesty if you did that, but I wouldn’t rely on it. We’ll leave you to think about it. Lot of time for thought in here, I expect.’

  It was a relief to move through the old prison entrance and out into the bright sunlight of the May day. They were well on the way back to Brunton when Clyde Northcott, who was driving, said, ‘You gave him a fair going over in there.’

  ‘Yes. Quite enjoyed it. I don’t feel any obligations towards scum like Coleman. Or his wife, for that matter; you can’t get lower than pushing kids from care homes into prostitution and making them victims of gang rape.’

  ‘Peter Coleman won’t come out for a long time. We’ve got a safe case on the murder of James O’Connor.’

  ‘Yes.’ Peach looked away thoughtfully over the moors as they slid by on his left. ‘He didn’t kill Dominic O’Connor, though, did he? We’ve got a whole new can of worms to deal with there.’

  ELEVEN

  The widow of the elder O’Connor brother was coping well with his death. It was a week now since James had died. Sarah had coped with the pressures of sympathy from those around her and those at a distance. She had composed a standard letter of thanks for the messages of condolence which had poured in from England and Ireland — Jim’s death at Claughton Towers had been too dramatic and well-publicised for people to miss it.

  The most difficult thing for her to handle had been her daughter’s grief. Clare had been the person in the world hit hardest by Jim’s killing. She had been close to her father as she grew up, in the way that daughters are. He had been away from home a lot when she was young, but he had been able to indulge her when he appeared, in the manner which was customary for doting dads.

  Clare had taken Jim’s death hard and the fact that she was an intelligent girl had made it more difficult for her mother. Her daughter had seen through Sarah’s conventional protestations of grief, been sceptical about the prayers and the trappings of religion behind which she had tried to retreat. ‘You didn’t feel like I did about Dad. I’m sure you had your reasons. But, Mum, don’t pretend you’re devastated by this when you aren’t. That would make it much worse for me to bear.’

  They’d had an uneasy weekend, but Clare had gone back to university now. No doubt she would find her consolation with the thin and pimply youth who had been with her at Claughton Towers on that fatal Monday night. Jim had been baffled by what his daughter saw in that tongue-tied youth who was in so many ways still a boy; he’d been unable to divine what it was that attracted Clare. Probably the lad was good in bed; Sarah certainly hoped he was. She hoped he would provide consolation and diversion for Clare, rather than allowing her thoughts to dwell on the mother who seemed so little affected by her husband’s death.

  No one knew the full story of their marriage and she had every intention of keeping it that way. These things were private and it was much better for all concerned if they stayed private. It was the same with grief. Sarah had a greater grief than Clare thought she had for Jim. But her mourning for him was for times long gone and what might have been, not for the man he had been at his death. Her task now was to keep control of herself until the world resumed its normal rhythms.

  She decided on Tuesday morning that she would tidy the bathroom and remove all Jim’s stuff from it. It had to be done and she needed a task to occupy her. She took the waste bin with her and began to pitch male toiletries into it. She had scarcely begun when the phone rang. For the last few days, she’d been letting it ring and waiting until the evening to listen to whatever messages people left. But normal service must be resumed at some time. She went into the bedroom and picked up the receiver there.

  An impassive female voice told her that Detective Chief Inspector Peach would like to speak to her as soon as possible. She told the woman that he should come to the house now. Best get it over with, she told herself as she put the phone down. But she could feel the pulse in her temple beginning to race.

  The post-mortem and forensics reports on Dominic O’Connor didn’t offer the CID team anything they hadn’t expected.

  He had died quickly, throttled within seconds by means of a cable thrown round his neck, almost certainly from behind him as he sat at his desk. The victim had lifted his hands in an attempt to drag the cable from his neck, but had not reached as far as his attacker, for there was nothing useful found on his hands or beneath his fingernails. The death weapon was available but uninformative. Forensics had already examined the cable which had been embedded in the corpse’s neck and found it to be the sort of electrical cable attached to millions of household machines around the country. The assailant had probably brought it with him, but even if he hadn’t the five-feet length applied would have been readily available on appliances within the house.

  The report pointed out that the criminal could possibly have been a woman; the victim appeared to have been taken by surprise, in which case no great physical strength would have been required. The ends of the cable bore signs of being twisted hard and fast between someone’s hands, but there was nothing useful in the way of fingerprints: the attacker had almost certainly worn gloves.

  In the hours after O’Connor’s death, the door of the room which had been his office had been shut, as had the large, south-facing window. The room temperature had varied from near-freezing overnight to almost ninety degrees Fahrenheit as the sun had poured through that window before the body was discovered on Saturday afternoon. Therefore any deductions from the progress of rigor mortis must necessarily be highly tentative, which made the establishment of a time of death very difficult.

  However, analysis of stomach contents indicated that a substantial cold meal of sandwiches, fruit and fruit cake had been consumed some two hours before death. An almost empty flask of coffee had been found in the bottom drawer of the desk. O’Connor had died more than twenty — and anything up to thirty — hours before he was discovered at 16.07 by DCI Peach and DS Northcott. Establishing the time when he had last eaten would pinpoint the time of death.

  Forensics had found fibres on the corpse’s person which were from someone else’s clothing, as well as hairs which were quite certainly from someone else’s head. These might of course have no connection with the murder. A locked drawer contained personal letters which had been fingerprinted by forensics and had now been passed to the man in charge of the investigation.

  Peach and Northcott immediately found one of these very relevant.

  Peach thought Sarah O’Connor looked rather more upset than she’d been six days earlier, when they’d interviewed her about the murder of her husband. Her face was composed but very white beneath the shining black hair; her dark eyes glittered deep in their sockets. She looked as if she had not slept well. There was nothing necessarily significant in that. Shock can be delayed as well as immediate.

  James’s widow remembered not only Clyde Northcott’s name, but his detective sergeant rank, which was unusual.

  The CID men looked round the big comfortable room with its luxurious furnishings and fittings. As if she read their thoughts, she said quickly, ‘This place is far too big for me. Clare’s off at university and I’m rattling around in this mansion. I shan’t stay here, once Jim is buried and I can feel closure.’

  Peach nodded. ‘We should be able to release his body quite soon now. You will have heard that we’ve made an arrest for his murder.’

  ‘Yes. A man called Peter Coleman, they said on the radio this morning. Not a name I know. But I kept well clear of Jim’s business deals.’ She sounded as if she was deliberately distancing herself from both her husband and his death.

  ‘You’ve missed nothing by not knowing Coleman. He’s a violent man who’s committed other crimes. We shall get him for this one. He’s going to go down for a long time.’

  ‘That’s good. You’re used to hearing threats of violence, when you’re married to a prominent Irishman, but you somehow don’t think it will ever happen to anyone close to you.’

  ‘And now your brother-in-law has been killed as well
. Only a day after you’d met him in the Grouse Inn on the side of Pendle Hill. That must have been another terrible shock for you.’

  ‘It was. A woman officer called Peach interviewed me on Saturday about Dominic. Would she be any relation to you, DCI Peach?’

  He smiled. ‘Detective Sergeant Peach is my wife, Mrs O’Connor. We used to work together, but police procedure dictates that partners cannot work together as a pairing. Lucy was excellent at distracting susceptible males, among other things. DS Northcott doesn’t do that; he is able to offer a more physical presence, whenever it is needed.’

  Sarah smiled at the big black man, who inclined his head an inch forward in acknowledgement. Then she said, ‘Your wife is quite a looker, DCI Peach.’ She waited unsuccessfully for a reaction. ‘Still, you might be better with your new partner in a crisis.’

  ‘Yes. It seemed rather a strange time for you to be meeting alone with your brother-in-law.’

  She thought of saying that she’d already told his wife her reasons for that. But she decided that it was better for her to be as cooperative as she could be. ‘There were some nasty people around Jim, at times. Dominic thought he knew who had killed him. That’s why we met.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He wanted to check a few things out with me. Whether certain people who were at Claughton Towers last Monday night were there at Jim’s invitation or mine, for instance. He thought he’d glimpsed the man you mentioned, Peter Coleman, just before Jim was killed. He knew the people Coleman worked for and he wanted to check on one or two of the invitees for that reason.’ She had been so composed that it was a surprise when her voice broke suddenly on her next words. ‘He. . he knew far more about the people Jim worked with and the people who were his business rivals than I did. Dominic steered clear, but he knew a lot of things about Jim.’

  ‘Do you think that is what cost Dominic his life?’

  She was shaken by the question. ‘I don’t know, do I? I don’t see why — Dominic didn’t fish in the same murky pools as Jim.’