[Inspector Peach 13] - Wild Justice

by J M Gregson

  Peach gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Let’s have it then, Ron. Stop trying to make it more than it is. I’ll decide what it’s worth when I hear it. So spit it out!’

  Ron Peggs poured his knowledge out, gave everything he knew all at once, when he had planned to release it in crafty gobbets and maximize its price.

  Peach’s face was a mask of concentration now: this was the real business of his visit, and it was information CID had not had previously. He rapped out the occasional terse question, but otherwise listened intently for three, perhaps four, minutes. At the end of this time, he lifted his hand from the notes and slid them across the table to his informant.

  Ron Peggs pocketed his fee eagerly, glancing automatically towards the closed door and the invisible female presence beyond it. His voice rasped with a chesty excitement as he said, ‘There’s more to come, Mr Peach. I’ll get you more.’

  ‘But carefully, Ron.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Mr Peach! I can look after myself.’ A small, absurd pride crept for a moment into the battered face.

  ‘I’m not worried about your miserable skin, Peggs. I’m worried about these people realizing that we’re on to them. If that happens, you’ll be dead meat and they’ll cover their tracks.’ He might be exaggerating the threat, but there was no harm in that, with men like this.

  The narrow, volatile eyes glinted as they recognized a rare opportunity. ‘It’s dangerous, like you say, Mr Peach. Because of the risks, this stuff’s got to be worth plenty.’

  Peach nodded. He’d used the stick quite enough. Best to depart with a juicy carrot left dangling. He leaned forward, ignoring the breath which had grown more noxious with the man’s excitement. ‘It could be worth as much as a monkey, this, Ron, if you come up with everything you’re promising.’

  ‘I’ll deliver, Mr Peach. You can rely on me.’ The man’s eagerness was almost touching. This was far more money than he had dared to hope for.

  ‘We’re going to need a lot of detail for a monkey.’

  ‘I can get detail.’

  ‘It will be the usual terms, mind. Half when we have enough to bring charges. Half when we have a successful prosecution and men go down.’

  ‘I can get it, Mr Peach. Ron Peggs won’t let you down!’ He was pathetically anxious to convince. Five hundred pounds was more than he had ever seen in cash.

  ‘Discreetly, mind. We don’t want him to know that we’re on to him or the evidence will disappear. And you don’t want him to know you’re feeding us or you’ll disappear.’

  ‘I know that, Mr Peach. I’ll be discreet.’ He pronounced this strange word he had never used before carefully, as though handling a strange new concept, then tapped the side of his twisted nose three times. ‘Let me show you out the back way. More discreet, like.’

  Peach went down stone steps from the back door, down a sloping flagged yard, through a wooden door which Peggs struggled to unbar, and out onto a cobbled back entry which ran between the rear elevations of two terrace rows. He was back at his car and starting the engine within one minute.

  * * *

  As Peach drove thoughtfully back into Brunton, Jane Martin was ringing her boyfriend. ‘You’re probably busy, but I have to speak to you. I’m sorry.’

  Leroy Moore knew immediately that something was wrong. Jane wasn’t a girl who made a fuss over small things: that had been one of the things which had attracted him to her. ‘What is it, Jane?’

  ‘It’s something that happened last night. I don’t want to speak about it on the phone. I’m sorry.’ She couldn’t stop apologizing, couldn’t cast off this blanket of guilt.

  ‘Last night? Did one of the punters at the casino turn nasty?’

  ‘No. Nothing like that. I told you, I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.’ She choked back a sob.

  ‘I’ll come round.’

  ‘It’s my day off. There’s no need to hurry. Just come when you can.’ This time she could not control herself: she burst suddenly and violently into tears, surprising herself as much as her listener.

  ‘I’ll be round as soon as I can, but that might not be until late this afternoon. Don’t let anyone else in.’

  Leroy Moore put down the phone and stared at it wonderingly for a moment before he moved. If anyone had hurt his Jane, they’d have him to answer to.

  * * *

  Friday afternoon would be the best time, Tim Hayes decided. Get it over with quickly, give her the weekend to come to terms with it. With any luck, he and Clare Thompson would be able to resume a normal professional relationship as boss and personal assistant when the new working week came round.

  By three o’clock the day’s business was done. He pictured the girls in the small factory behind the offices watching the clock and waiting impatiently for their weekend to begin. POETS day, they’d called it when he started work in there with just two other people, and they probably still did: ‘Piss off early, tomorrow’s Saturday.’ They’d been happy days, in many ways, with the business building rapidly and the sky the limit. Happier than now, he sometimes thought, when business here was slack and Hayes Electronics operated merely as a respectable front for more dubious and infinitely more profitable enterprises.

  Had he really been happier when there had been all kinds of restraints upon him, rules defining what he could and could not do? Had he needed the disciplines of the law and the normal practices of industry to give him the satisfaction in his success which he nowadays he found so elusive? That was surely a ridiculous notion, wasn’t it? He’d built up a big and varied company; he had everything he wanted, nowadays. He could behave exactly as he wished without having to answer to anyone. If he seemed to be perpetually running after something just out of reach, to find happiness always transitory, to see real content perpetually just round the corner, that was surely just some personal flaw which he could remedy with a minor adjustment.

  It was time to set aside reflection, melancholy or otherwise, and move into action. Action would dissipate gloom. He buzzed the intercom and asked Clare Thompson to come into his room.

  Clare had taken considerable pains to look her best today. They hadn’t seen each other on Thursday night, so she wanted to make him as regretful as she was about the omission. She wore a neat grey skirt which was absolutely conventional office wear; it was provocative only in that it was just a little too tight for her, accentuating the neat, rather abrupt curve of what Tim called her derriere, when he was in the right mood. A good bra was always a sound investment; raising and rounding her small breasts beneath the cream of her simple linen blouse, it gave her confidence.

  Clare Thompson brought her shorthand notepad and her ballpen with her: she was as conscious as her employer was that it was the contrast between her neat business appearance and her abandoned private behaviour which contributed to the excitement she aroused in him. She was proud of her shorthand; fewer and fewer secretarial staff were proficient in it nowadays.

  ‘Sit down, Clare.’ He waved expansively at the armchairs, waited until she was seated with her pad at the ready, and then came round the big desk and sat down opposite her. ‘It’s been a quiet week for business.’

  ‘Yes. We seem to have been quiet for months now. Is everything going all right?’

  ‘Well enough, well enough. There’s a lot of competition, nowadays, but we’ll survive.’

  ‘I do hope so. Some of the girls are feeling a little anxious, I think. Frankly, there isn’t enough work to go round, sometimes. I hope we aren’t going to have to face redundancies.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’ Tim made a vague, impatient gesture of dismissal with his right hand. She tried not to think of the passion that right hand could arouse when it caressed her; they were much closer today than they usually allowed themselves to be at work. ‘This isn’t about business, Clare. Except that I hope what I’m going to say won’t affect our working relationship.’

  It came like an attack on the very core of her being. Those dull, formal, conven
tional phrases hit her like blows to the solar plexus. She could not breathe, could not respond with words of her own. And her brain was affected too; it would not work properly to form any sentences of her own which would fend off this assault, would stop him from going any further with this.

  He wasn’t even looking at her - not seeing her, anyway, however accurately his eyes were trained upon her. He went on calmly, ‘I’ve decided it’s time to end our affair, Clare. It’s run its course, I think. In my experience, a quick break is much the best, in the long run. We’ll both have our regrets, of course we will, but believe me, you can’t let these things die a lingering death. We’ve had our fun. Let’s remember the good times!’

  ‘Fun!’ The word came from deep within her, in a voice she had never heard before. It was the cry of a wild animal in the most vicious of traps. ‘I was never in this for fun! I was in it for the long term. You said you were too, when I tried to fend you off in the early days.’

  ‘I don’t do long term, Clare. You must have deceived yourself.’

  He was perfectly calm. Worse than that, he was cold as ice. She wanted to fling herself upon him, to wrap herself around him in passion, to remind him of what they were like together, what they could still be like. She wanted to hold him, to transfer some of her own desperate need through the physical contact, in some childish miracle of transferred feeling. Instead, she said sullenly, ‘I gave myself to you as I’ve never given myself to anyone. Does that mean nothing?’

  He noted exultantly that she was already speaking in the past tense. The break-up was always embarrassing, but it would be over soon now. ‘I’m sorry you feel like this, Clare. It was good, but it was never for ever. I thought you understood that as clearly as I did. I want to remember it as being good. You will always be a little special for me.’

  She knew as clearly as if she had names before her that he had used that last sentence to other women. That is what it was, in the other sense of the word: a sentence. ‘You’ll be saying next that you want us to remain friends. That you’d like to feel we could consult each other when times are bad.’

  He hadn’t been going to go as far as that. He had no intention of remaining close to her, and he certainly didn’t want her bringing her troubles to him. But he gave her an urbane smile and said, ‘Is friendship such a bad thing? Isn’t it the civilized way to conduct one’s life?’

  Clare knew again in that moment that this was a conversation he had conducted before. ‘Civilized?’ All her outrage came out as she shouted the word across the six feet which separated them. ‘You weren’t so damned civilized when we were in bed together, were you? You weren’t talking about short-term attraction and remaining friends then, were you? Since when did we decide to be civ-il-ized?’ She mouthed each syllable of the repeated word individually, hissing out her contempt for him and all he now stood for.

  Tim Hayes stood up. ‘I’m sorry you feel like this, Clare. I’m sure that when you’ve had a little time to think about it, you’ll agree that my way is best. As I said at the outset, I hope that we can go on working together. There is in my opinion no reason why we should not do that. I hope to see you in the office on Monday. If you find it impossible to work here in the future, I shall of course give you every assistance I can in finding a suitable post elsewhere.’

  She said nothing. He had prepared all this before she set foot in the room. He was no doubt ready to move on now to someone else. Someone younger and prettier and even more naive than she had been, no doubt. She would not look at him as he stood above her, would not give him the satisfaction of seeing the agony in her face. Instead, she stared downwards, noting how the grey skirt which was a little too tight had ridden up, exposing the thigh she no longer wanted him to see.

  Tim Hayes stood motionless above her, seeing the turmoil in her but not wanting to acknowledge it. He had given her the signal to go and to end this when he stood, but she had not heeded it. After a moment, he said quietly, ‘I’m going to leave you now, Clare. Take as long as you need to compose yourself and then take what’s left of the day off. There is no more business today.’

  Clare Thompson sat for a long time in the chair when he had gone. She listened to the factory closing down around her, to the laughing, happy voices of the women workers, first in the cloakrooms, and then in the car park beyond the unlit windows of the boss’s office.

  It was quite dark when she slipped out of the room, through her own deserted office, and out to her car.

  Chapter Eight

  At the very moment when Tim Hayes was terminating his affair with Clare Thompson, Chief Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker was contemplating an early departure to the bosom of his family. That anodyne phrase masked a harsher reality, as clichés often do.

  Tucker had no children: the bosom in this case was the formidable one of the wife whom Percy Peach always thought of as Brünnhilde Barbara. Mrs Tucker was a woman of Wagnerian physique and temperament. The lady detested Peach as fiercely as her husband did, though for different reasons. Never having applied her formidable will and energies to police work, Barbara Tucker did not have Peach’s comprehensive knowledge of T. B. Tucker’s disabilities.

  Mrs Tucker thought that her husband allowed his DCI to take far too many liberties, that Tucker as head of Brunton CID should put Peach firmly and permanently ‘in his place’. Tucker, though he dared not confess such things to Barbara, knew exactly why he could not take such bold action. Peach brought him results: the results which drove the complex machine of police reputations and promotions. Without Peach, he would never have become a chief superintendent. He had had to accept Peach’s promotion to detective chief inspector at the same time, but that had been a small price to pay for the boost to his prestige and forthcoming pension, both of which were steady beacons in Tucker’s murky world.

  Now, just as Tucker was taking a last look at the view over the town from his penthouse office and sidling towards an early weekend departure, Peach arrived to frustrate his plan and complicate his world. And as usual, Percy divined from Tommy Bloody Tucker’s guilty demeanour exactly what his chief had been contemplating.

  ‘On your way out, were you, sir?’ He stared at the vast empty spaces on the surface of Tucker’s executive desk.

  ‘By no means, Percy.’ Tucker’s face lightened suddenly as inspiration seized it. ‘I was just about to check on our overtime budget, as a matter of fact.’ It was the nearest thing to a threat that he could muster.

  ‘Very wise, sir, that. We may need to draw upon it extensively in the coming months, if I’m any judge.’

  Tucker was drawn unwillingly towards this expertly cast fly. ‘And why would that be? As I understand it, things have been relatively quiet recently.’

  ‘As you understand it. Yes, sir.’ Percy paused, as if to contemplate for a moment this interesting aspect of his chief’s expertise. ‘They may not be so quiet in the coming months, sir. My information suggests that we may be attempting to net a very big fish, sir. A very big fish indeed.’ He smiled knowingly, as if both the idea and the metaphor gave him great pleasure.

  ‘And why should this involve overtime? I’ve warned you before that—’

  ‘Surveillance, sir. You and I may know a man is a villain.’ He paused to smile conspiratorially at Tucker, whose knowledge of villains and of crime was sketchy at the best of times. ‘But the men and women in the Crown Prosecution Service want evidence. Detailed evidence.’

  ‘Bastards.’ Tucker nodded fiercely, Peach smiled his approbation of the sentiment, and for just an instant the two men were once more united in their contempt for pusillanimous lawyers, who would not even contemplate a case unless it was presented to them with a watertight guarantee of success.

  ‘He won’t be easy to pin down, sir, this big fish. We’ll have to go carefully. We’ll have to be even cleverer than he is.’ He looked at his chief and shook his head sadly at the odds stacked against him.

  Tucker sighed. ‘And who is this pantomime villain
you're presenting to me? This Moriarty of crime?’

  Peach laughed, suddenly and without warning: it was a startling sound. ‘That’s very good, sir, Moriarty. That would make you the Sherlock Holmes of Brunton, pitting your wits against the Napoleon of crime! I like that idea very much indeed, sir. We need a little light relief in this job, don’t we, sir?’

  Tucker glanced surreptitiously at his watch and glowered. ‘The name, Peach!’

  Peach glanced around him before he leaned forward, implying that even in this inner temple of security, walls might have ears. ‘It’s Hayes, sir.’

  Tucker’s face looked blank for a moment, then filled with horror. It was a process which Percy had often observed before, but it gave him as much pleasure as ever. ‘Tim Hayes, of Hayes Electronics?’

  ‘That’s the chap, sir.’

  ‘Now look here, Peach, you need to be very sure of your ground here. Mr Hayes is a very prominent local businessman. I would remind you that he has provided much employment in the town over the years.’

  ‘And is now providing it for the Brunton criminal fraternity, sir. In increasing numbers.’

  ‘Tim Hayes is very highly respected by important people in this area. By the people who exercise much influence in our affairs.’

  Peach’s eyebrows lifted impossibly high beneath the shining bald pate as his face shone with delight. ‘Mason, is he, sir?’

  ‘Whether Mr Hayes is a member of the Brotherhood or not is entirely irrelevant. Peach! I’ve told you that before.’

  ‘Indeed you have, sir. Well, I’m afraid it looks like I have another Masonic villain to add to my ongoing research into the connections between crime and Freemasonry. As I think I’ve previously demonstrated to you, the connection between membership of a Lodge and serious crime seems statistically very high in our area. This looks like making the sample even more convincing, but we mustn’t count our chickens before they are securely in the coop, must we?’