[Inspector Peach 13] - Wild Justice

by J M Gregson

  Hayes was at ease now. The man was going to take this job - it was a lucrative offer and he’d be silly if he didn’t. ‘Not a lot that you aren’t doing at the moment. You’ll be around on public occasions, discreetly in the background but acting as my personal bodyguard. For the rest, it’s largely regularizing what you do already. Leaning a little on people who don’t come forward with their payments on time, like Simpson. And taking care of people who trespass on our patch, who try to muscle in on our activities.’

  It was rather the reverse of that, as Moore knew. Gambling and prostitution are lucrative fields, and Hayes was pushing out onto other people’s patches, shoving aside small-time pimps and individual betting-shop owners. He wanted to let such people know that whatever offers he made to them were to be accepted if more violent persuasion was to be avoided.

  This was exactly the sort of murky work Leroy had been planning to abandon. But it would get him close to Hayes, would present him in due course with the opportunity he wanted. He said tersely, ‘I’ll take it.’

  ‘That’s good. I’ll see that you are formally added to our permanent staff, with that title. You’ll have the details of your salary within the next few days. Consider yourself part of the official crew as we sail the ship forward.’ Hayes stood up and beamed at the inarticulate man on the other side of his desk. He had more sense than to offer to shake his hand.

  Leroy Moore nodded, stood up and turned his back on the man he wanted to kill. He looked back from the doorway, but he still could not force the answering smile which he knew would have been the correct response.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was one of the new conference hotels that housed the annual dinner of Hayes Electronics and Allied Industries.

  Only such places had the large dining room and spacious bar area necessary to accommodate the number of people who were attending this year’s function. The numbers now involved, as the carefully prepared handout to the local press pointed out, were evidence of the steadily growing success of the business. This company was of course, as the columns dutifully pointed out each year, founded and led by Timothy Hayes, a Brunton man born and bred (the influence of seven years of boarding school was always conveniently ignored). This was a businessman who knew the area intimately and who had brought employment and prosperity to so many of its residents.

  When this hotel was built in the early years of the new century, it was opposed by some as a scarring of the Ribble Valley, one of the prettiest and least spoiled areas of the country. It is true that the complex is large and sprawling, but the planners argued that it would provide much-needed jobs for the area. The hotel faces west, looking across the valley towards the Trough of Bowland and the coast thirty miles away. It has to be large, to contain over a hundred bedrooms and conference facilities to match, and beside it there is the acreage of tarmac mandatory for car parking for residents and day visitors.

  But the hotel is set as discreetly as possible into the lower slopes of the fell, and the rawness of its orange-red bricks will no doubt mellow with the passing years. It fulfils the twin requirements of such a place, in being both spacious and accessible, for it is within half a mile of the modernized A59, which now bypasses the ancient old towns of Whalley and Clitheroe and snakes away over the northern Pennines into the Yorkshire Dales.

  Because there were no other buildings within half a mile of the hotel, it stood out like some fairy palace as the people invited to attend this annual function drove through the darkness towards it on the evening of Friday, the second of March. It was brilliantly lit along the whole of its long, low facade, and the harsher elevations and newness of the design were invisible in the late-winter darkness. The outside temperature was not much above freezing, but the thickly carpeted reception and bar areas were warm and welcoming, and trays of free drinks ensured that the guests soon felt a pleasant inner warmth.

  With the men in evening dress and the women sparkling with jewellery, it was a glittering assembly. The senior staff of all the respectable sections of Hayes Electronics were complemented by a discreet seasoning of the town’s great and good. These comprised three or four of Brunton’s councillors who needed to be cultivated or kept sweet, the most respectable and blameless of the town’s solicitors, who had been with Hayes Electronics since its early days, the chairman of the Brunton Cricket Club and a couple of other prominent local industrialists.

  Tim Hayes’s membership of his local Masonic Lodge had enabled him to complete this collection of local luminaries by the addition this year of the head of Brunton’s CID. Chief Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker, with well-trimmed silvering hair and handsome, experienced face, was an impressive figure for anyone wishing to add gravitas to a gathering. The woman at his side was impressive in a rather different way. Barbara Tucker sailed like a lurid galleon into the low-ceilinged room, her ample proportions emphasized rather than disguised by an orange off-the-shoulder dress, which displayed her Wagnerian physique in awesome detail. But in her own thankfully individual way, Brünnhilde Barbara completed the aura of propriety. It would have taken a braver person that any in that sparkling assembly to question the respectability of Barbara Tucker.

  Beneath the modern chandeliers of the main dining room, the glasses and cutlery sparkled on white linen, the food was good, and the wine was plentiful. The sound of conversation at the tables rose from a polite murmuring, as people felt their way with new acquaintances, through a pleasant hubbub, as relaxation took over, to an eventually tumultuous cacophony, as voices occasionally rose to a shout and frequent laughter punctuated the exchanges.

  When Tim Hayes rose to his feet at the top table, the moment necessitated considerable rapping of glasses and shushing of neighbours before enough silence could be established for him to speak. He won early applause by announcing that the general idea was to keep things as informal as possible and that this short address would be the only speech of the evening. There were, however, a few observations and a few thanks he would like to make.

  He would be brief and to the point, not least because this was the biggest audience he had ever addressed. With eighty-eight people present, this was the largest attendance so far at the firm’s annual dinner. That in itself was tangible evidence of how far the company had advanced from the modest little electronics enterprise he had initiated some quarter of a century earlier. (Ragged applause, a little table tapping, and a few slightly inebriated ‘Hear! Hears!’)

  He wanted to thank the distinguished guests who had honoured him and the firm with their presence tonight. The councillors looked at the table in front of them and smiled modestly. Over the heads of the people sitting opposite him, Chief Superintendent Tucker beamed a congratulatory smile at the speaker. The impressive exposed shoulders of Barbara Tucker seemed to turn an even deeper pink with pleasure.

  For the rest, his thanks were entirely due to the people who had driven the success of the firm, the employees who were sitting here tonight as a physical recognition of that success. They came in all shapes and sizes (outbursts of laughter, an attempt at applause for this witty sally). And they had been with him on this exciting journey for varying lengths of time.

  He hoped that later and very welcome arrivals would understand that he felt a special affection for those who had been with him since the beginning of this odyssey. He glanced down at his wife beside him. Tamsin Hayes was staring at her coffee cup with a strange, abstracted smile, which had not altered since her husband stood up and did not do so now. Probably she was a little embarrassed at this unaccustomed exposure to the public gaze, thought those around her, who did not know her and had mostly never seen her before.

  Tim Hayes was glad to see Matt Ballack here tonight, a man who had been with him from the start, who had supported him through thick and thin and through the ups and downs of his own private life. Matthew’s smile three tables away was more calculated, a mask consciously adopted to reveal nothing to those around him. He noted that Hayes had drawn attention to hi
s private troubles to diminish him, that he had spoken throughout of this enterprise as being wholly his own. He had been shocked to hear his name mentioned, had thought at first that it was no more than a taunt. Now he realized that it was part of the carapace Hayes was developing around him, the shell of respectability designed to protect him from any gossip about those darker areas of his prosperity, such as the one in which Matthew himself was now involved.

  Hayes now went on to speak about one of the new areas he could safely publicize. The new casino and allied areas were going well, he reported. It seemed that the present government had a rather ambivalent view of gambling, at one moment encouraging its entirely legal development in the country, at the next drawing in its horns a little and seeming to have doubts. But it seemed that was the way of modem governments. (Derisive laughter, an enthusiastic ‘Hear! Hear!’ from an Opposition supporter on one of the lower tables.) It was his view that governments of whatever persuasion were going to see the revenue from gambling as highly important in the next few years, as they strove to replace the income they were going to lose from cigarettes as smoking declined.

  Hayes Electronics was in a prime position to exploit future developments in this field. The new casino enterprise, which some people had opposed - he beamed benevolently over the heads of his council guests, all of whom were in fact here tonight because they had supported him - was now an asset not only of the company but of the town itself. It was bringing people from other Lancashire towns into Brunton to spend their money and enjoy their evenings. The casino was well run and without any of the seediness which the dismal Jimmies had predicted when it was opened. That was due in very large measure to the staff who operated it. He nodded gratefully at the table where the casino manager and its senior staff sat. Jane Martin, the youngest person in the room, sat beside Leroy Moore and noted that, whilst her fellow croupiers were pleased to have this recognition, he like her was staring stonily ahead of him.

  Tim Hayes assured his receptive audience that he was almost finished now, bringing forth a couple of groans from dedicated sycophants. But it would not be right to conclude this little review without expressing his gratitude to those unseen and unpaid but nevertheless essential props of all this success and development. He referred, of course, to the wives and partners of his dedicated workforce. In the early days, money had been tight and what profit had been made had been ploughed back into new developments. There had been no more than a dozen people at the first of these dinners, in Brunton’s White Bull Hotel, and they had all been colleagues.

  It was clear proof of how far the company ship had sailed since then that there was this glittering array of talent and beauty here tonight, and that these vital other halves of his employees were here to share in the success and in the hopes for the future. He glanced down fondly at the head of his own wife beside him, fastened his eye for a moment on Clare Thompson and the scrubbed boyish face and bright red hair of Jason beside her, and asked the company to raise its glasses to the toast of ‘Spouses and partners!’

  There was a shuffling of feet, a ragged and irregular repetition of the toast down the tables, a clinking of glasses. Then people sat down rapidly as they saw their leader happily subsiding into his chair. The applause for his speech began at his own table and spread rapidly around the large, brilliantly lit room, with people remarking to their neighbours upon its excellence, and a few of the more inebriated men beginning to thump their tables to spread the rumble of approval.

  There was a general exodus to the cloakrooms as the formal part of the evening was thus concluded. It was now half past ten and over half of the attendance took this opportunity to depart. But a substantial number repaired to the big bar where the evening had begun. Husbands drank brandies or liqueurs, wives detailed to drive them home stared glumly at glasses of tonic or bitter lemon; Brunton was as conservative as any other town when it came to the allocation of such duties.

  There was a little loudness, a ritual repeating of well-worn anecdotes, surprisingly little outright drunkenness. Those guests who had no direct connection with the company had public personae to preserve. Employees and their spouses or partners had more sense and experience than to disgrace themselves in the presence of their affable but ruthless leader. People melted away from the concourse around the bar either when they thought they could or when they thought they should, according to their own inclinations. By midnight, the last revellers were taking their leave of the man who had hosted the evening.

  Tim Hayes, after making his final gracious acknowledgements and bidding his last polite farewells, was troubled by the feelings of anticlimax and isolation which often beset him after the euphoria of evenings like this one. He sat for a reflective moment on his own at the bar, revolving his cognac in the bulbous glass, savouring its aroma and its warmth as he sipped it, as he had not been able to savour things earlier in this evening of public exposure.

  The evening had gone well, better than he had ever expected. It had been costly, but it would go down as expenses on the entertainment budget. From the public-relations point of view, it was surely a success: he had impressed some important people, whilst diverting attention away from those newer areas of his activities which were risky but highly profitable. He had taken good care to ensure that the official photographs would see him smiling confidently with some important and highly influential people.

  On a more personal note, he had been glad to see Clare Thompson sitting with that rather absurd husband of hers. It seemed to him an assurance that she had finally accepted that their affair was over and settled down to be no more than a highly efficient personal assistant. The presence for the first time in years of his own wife at his side must surely have reinforced that judgement for Clare, however abstracted Tamsin had seemed tonight. And he had given that loser Matt Ballack a mention, whilst keeping him firmly in his place in the more obscure part of the empire. He wasn’t stupid, Matt. He’d have picked up the message behind the kind words: think yourself lucky to have what you’ve got and get on with it without complaint. Some time in the next year or two, when he’d served his purpose and it was safe to do so, he would get rid of Ballack altogether.

  That girl he had picked up in the casino, Jane Martin, had been the centre of a lot of male attention tonight. With her youth and her dazzling eyes, she was certainly a stunner. There was no doubting his own good taste in women! Nevertheless, if he had known that she had a connection with a member of his staff, and a violent member at that, he would never have selected her. No unnecessary complications was one of his watchword phrases when he was looking to get his leg over. But it seemed to have passed over all right. It had been quite fortuitous that he had decided to promote Leroy Moore before he even knew about their relationship, but it had worked well. The pair had looked quite relaxed together tonight. They had each come up the hard way, and they obviously realized which side their bread was buttered on, those two.

  Once everyone but the staff of the hotel had gone, Tim Hayes felt suddenly very tired. They were a strain, these occasions. Whilst you were on show, the tension of the moment and the elation of carrying it off kept you going, but these things took their toll, he supposed. At a quarter past midnight, Tim Hayes said good night to the uniformed man behind the bar. He heard the shutters coming down before he was out of the big room.

  The mercy of not being able to drink was that you could drive yourself home; he did not feel in the mood for any taxi-driver’s banalities tonight. He had not drunk at all between the glass of white wine he had sipped in welcoming his guests and the double brandy he had just allowed himself at the end of proceedings. When you were making an important speech, you needed to have all your wits about you, whereas it was a positive advantage if your audience was mellowed and uncritical through alcohol. He would drive himself home slowly and enjoy the journey.

  His head swam for a few seconds as he moved abruptly from the warmth of the hotel into the freezing night air. He was glad he had brought the th
ick car coat he had almost left at home. He paused for a moment to look up at the stars, assuring himself as his head cleared that after a heavy meal and so little drink, he was indeed within breathalyser limits if the police should stop him. He pulled out his car keys and pressed the tag: the orange lights of the BMW winked appealingly at him from thirty yards away.

  The big blue car was isolated now, where an hour before it had been one in the serried rows of a hundred or so carefully parked cars. He took a last look up at the sky and the bright, unwinking stars and slid himself onto the leather driving seat.

  There was frost on both the windscreen and rear window, but that was no problem to a man who was not in a hurry. He started the engine, pressed the switches which heated the windscreen and rear window, shivered for a second as the powerful fan blew air that was initially cold into the interior. It wouldn’t be long before it was transformed into a comforting warmth. He watched the frost at the base of the windscreen ahead of him begin to melt, telling himself that tonight he would not drive away until the vision fore and aft was perfect. In a moment, when the noise of the fan abated, he would put on the radio, then ease the big machine out of the hotel car park and back onto the road for the short journey home.

  It was then that he felt the mouth of the pistol at his temple. That was Tim Hayes’s last mortal sensation. He was mercifully unaware of the explosion which blew away half of his well-groomed head.

  Chapter Twelve

  Percy Peach was looking forward to his weekend. Crime, one of the guaranteed growth industries of the twenty-first century, was flourishing in Lancashire as elsewhere, but at the moment it was reassuringly low-key in Brunton. There was plenty of it, but little that the press or even the police service would nowadays deem ‘serious’.