by John Barlow
Baron, on a whim, decides to go with the thought.
“There’s only one person I can remember looking as calm as you in a situation like this.”
“Really?” Bride says.
His pale yellow pullover is neat, the shirt collar beneath it showing little trace of having been worn all night in a cell. And he’s wearing glasses, sensible, square ones. He looks like a primary school teacher. And yet.
“Tony Ray.”
“Ha! Tony.”
Bride smiles to himself, turns his head to his right, where Henry Moran sits passively in a mid-blue suit, looking far too well-groomed for a fifty-nine-year-old. Moran had been Tony Ray’s lawyer for quarter of a century, and now he’s working for Lanny. The symbolism could hardly be any clearer.
“Never got him for anything either, did you?” Lanny says, as if Baron has just made his first mistake.
Which is true.
“Still based at the Park Lane, Mr Bride?” he counters, not exactly trying to wrong-foot Lanny, but a quick left-of-fielder never goes amiss.
“Me?” He seems surprised. “I haven’t been there in over a year. Don’t own the place any more.”
“And you sold it to whom?”
“The late Roberto Swales.”
“When was this?”
Moran leans forward and places a sheet of paper on the table.
“This,” he says, a finger resting in the middle of the paper, “is a summary of the sale of the premises to Mr Swales.”
Baron reads the paper quickly without touching it.
“Fifty thousand,” he says. “Market price?”
“Below,” Lanny says. “Way below.”
“Reason?”
Lanny sits back, smiles.
“You remember the Gaiety? It was a pub just out of town on Roundhay Road?”
Baron nods. Ripper: second victim. Every copper in Leeds knows about the Gaiety.
“They used to have demonstrations outside,” says Lanny. “Moral majority lot, Christians handing out leaflets, making a fuss. Not just there. Lots of places.”
“Len Holt,” Baron says. “My dad used to know him. Your point?”
“They haven’t gone away, the God-botherers. Meanwhile, I’ve got a legitimate business now. I don’t want any problems down the line.”
“So you sold up quickly to Mr Swales.”
“Correct.”
“And the people who drink there? Still in your employ?”
Lanny shakes his head. “I’ve been based in Malta for three years. Left all that behind. Don’t have any contact with that world. Zero.”
“Don’t want to be tainted by your own past?”
“It’s about perception, officer, the way other folk see me. I owned a bar, that’s all. And now I don’t.”
“Funny, our perception is that you met at least two known members of the criminal fraternity yesterday.”
“Is that so?”
“John Ray and Denis Reid.”
Lanny laughs, knows the coppers had been there at the golf club all day watching who was going in and out. He didn’t expect them to have recognised Reid, but it’s all legit, through the company books. In any case, Reid went out the back way. They never brought him in.
“John Ray came uninvited, and I told him to clear off. Denis Reid is a security consultant with a chequered past. He was handling things for me. Brought him down from Scotland for the day, to make sure things went smoothly. He’s been paid off, as far as I know.”
“No reliable men in Leeds anymore?”
“Just can’t get the staff, Inspector.”
“What about burying bodies?” Steele chips in. “Someone screwed up with Roberto Swales. New boys were they?”
Baron doesn’t wait for an answer, which is just as well, because Lanny has ignored the question and is now cleaning one of the lenses of his glasses.
“You have a contact for Mr Reid, do you?” Baron continues, keeping it civilised, letting Lanny maintain his act.
Lanny passes Baron his phone. “He’s under R.”
Baron passes Steele the phone, who notes the number then scrolls through the others, not that Lanny seems to mind.
“So you sell the bar two weeks ago,” continues Baron, “almost giving it away, and before you know it Roberto Swales is dead.”
Lanny shakes his head. “Not mine anymore, is it? I don’t know what goes on there.”
“Apart from murder.”
“Perhaps he got mixed up with the wrong kind of people.”
This isn’t working. Baron changes tack.
“Do you know a woman called Jeanette Cormac?”
“Should I?”
“Investigative journalist. Red hair. Striking appearance.”
“In the last few weeks I’ve met so many people, what with the takeover and everything.”
“Yesterday. Stamforth Golf Club.”
“I did more than meet her,” he says, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a white business card. “I got her number. Said I’d ring her. Meet for coffee.”
“Will you?”
“Na.”
“She was murdered seven hours ago.”
“Well fuck me.”
“We will,” Steele mutters to himself.
Moran sighs. “My client was at the golf club until you brought him in last night.”
Baron nods.
“And,” Moran continues, “regarding the death of Roberto Swales, my client was in London between Thursday and Saturday morning of last week.” He retrieves another sheet of paper from the file on his lap. “A list of the meetings he had, and his precise location for the duration of his stay, including hotels and restaurant reservations. I have added the names of those he was with, chiefly lawyers for Yorkwright Holdings and area managers of Gear Depot. I was also present at all those meetings.”
Baron ignores the sheet, which Moran places at the centre of the table on top of the other. Steele reaches for it, but something in his boss’s body language tells him to leave it where it is.
“June 22nd 1990, Mr Bride,” Baron says. “Ring a bell?”
No one in the room is surprised at the date.
“It does, actually. A very painful one.”
Baron shifts in his seat, tries not to indulge Lanny. But he knows there’s something coming, and it’s not going to be good news for him.
“Kidney stones. Friday, it was. The 22nd, right? They took me in mid-morning.”
“Good memory you’ve got.”
“Think I don’t read the papers? Bernard Sheenan’s dead.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Someone brought the explosives into the country that weekend. But Sheenan would never give up their names. Like I said, I read the papers.”
“Friday 22nd. Where were you?”
“Leeds General Infirmary. My GP sent me straight there. I’d had stones before. Horrible pain. Like childbirth, they say. Kept me there a couple of days, x-rays, the lot.”
Moran places a third sheet of paper on the table. “Details. His GP at the time.”
Baron nods, lets the alibis stack up.
“They didn’t find anything,” Lanny adds. “Bladder infection, apparently.”
“I thought that was a women’s thing?” Steele says.
“I’ll take your word for that.”
Steele shakes his head, looks down. He can’t make Lanny out. There are two, possibly three murders in play, plus a shipment of Semtex and a terrorist bombing. What’s Bride’s game?
Baron already knows the game. He’s seen it before, years ago as a young DC, sitting in on an interview with Tony Ray. Henry Moran was at that one too, as the old Spanish crook went through his familiar routine of polite, almost deferential silence. Men like that don’t need to worry. They’re not involved. Not in deed, and not by name. Twenty-odd years ago a gang from Leeds brought Semtex into the country. If Lanny had been thorough enough to get himself into hospital on the night the shipment came in, h
e wouldn’t have left anything else to chance.
Whatever his role in all this, the chances of linking him to the Semtex are close to nil. This is exactly what amuses Mr Bride, his ability to think ahead, two decades ahead. It’s what sets him apart, just like it set Tony Ray apart. And Baron knows it.
They dance around the topic for a while. Moran is patient. He knows the Inspector well enough, and he can sense the tension rising in him, a mixture of frustration and acceptance, the two emotions pulling his questions this way and that, until with each word he seems to lead himself further towards defeat.
Finally, it’s Lanny himself who puts a stop to the whole act.
“In the last few days,” he says, looking at his watch, “ I’ve bought a company for fifty million pounds. I now have over three hundred employees to take care of, including this month’s payroll.” He’s brushing the creases from his clothes as he speaks, but refrains from standing, which has the effect of making it look like he has impeccable manners. “Would you please tell me if I am going to be charged with anything.”
Steele, incandescent with rage, balls his fists beneath the table. If he were out on the rugby field now, he’d wait for the first tackle to come his way and pummel the shit out of whoever had the misfortune to be playing opposite him.
Baron, though, simply takes the sheets of paper from the table, slipping them into his file, and concludes the interview.
“Henry”, he says, nodding to Moran, before standing and moving quickly to the door.
Once outside he grabs a random uniform, tells him to escort Lanny and his lawyer off the premises. Just a precaution, but it has been a pretty frustrating interview, and he’s seen what John Steele is capable of on a rugby pitch.
“One more thing,” Baron says, poking his head back into the interview room. “What the hell was behind the bar at the Park Lane?”
Lanny, already on his feet, stops.
“The bar?” he says, his back to Baron.
“Yes. I was in there a couple of times. Something impressive, really took your attention, something behind the bar?”
Lanny’s not having any of it. He shakes his head, makes as if to leave.
“Champagne, wasn’t it?” Baron says.
“Not my place any more, is it, Mr Baron?” Lanny says, checking his pockets, his eyes darting to his brief.
A moment later Baron is bouncing down the corridor.
Mr Baron? He’s just got a rise out of Lanny Bride.
Chapter Forty-four
He sees her standing there, next to the pile of his clothes.
There’s no one else in the pool, and as he moves slowly through the water towards her the rasp of his breath is clearly audible. Only twenty yards to go, but his body is giving out. New sites of pain are opening up down his back, one for each vertebra, and the numbness in his forearms and hands is getting worse. He hardly feels the water now as he eases himself slowly through it.
“Washing away the evidence?” she says.
He throws both arms onto the edge of the pool, her white trainers just inches from his face. Then he ducks down, wheezing heavily as he resurfaces, scraping his hair back from his forehead with a quivering hand.
His face is puffy and bloated. There’s an open cut just above his nose. A watery pink line snakes down his face and disappears into his mouth. He pushes the ball of his hand hard into the cut, grimacing, shaking his head as if to dispel the sudden pain.
Then he hoists himself up out of the pool, his boxer shorts sagging at the front, his hairy gut trickling with water. What with his slow, hunched gait, it looks like he’s pissing himself.
“I thought you might be here,” she says, realising that there’s no towel for him. “You want my coat?”
He shakes his head, still averting his eyes, and sits down on a plastic sunbed, shivering hard but seeming not to notice.
“Been hugging a bottle, eh?”
“Yep.”
“Where?”
“Does it matter?”
“Nope.”
His black suit lies on the ground, shiny with stains and creased like an old bin liner. Tangled up within it is a white shirt. He tugs the shirt out and begins wiping himself down. The cuffs are stained brown with dried blood, more down the front.
The wind picks up, sweeping the water’s surface with big arcing gusts, turning it into a shimmering mosaic of fast-moving ripples, beautifully poetic but thoroughly uninviting; no wonder he’s had the place to himself.
Den pulls her leather jacket tight. “Bloke fitting your description, covered in blood, racing away from a murder scene in a silver Porsche.”
“Baron sent you looking for me, then?”
“Something like that.”
“She was dead when I got there.”
“You’ve got to go in, John.”
“You don’t understand.”
“It’s Baron that needs to understand, not me. Nobody’s got you down as a murderer. But I’m betting your prints are all over that cottage.”
“Will you listen to me?”
“No. You’ve got to take this to Steve, make him listen. You found her, you panicked.”
“They’re after me.”
“Course they bloody are!”
He wipes his face with the shirt.
“Not the police.”
“Who then?”
He presses the shirt into his face. Holds it there a few seconds.
“Sheenan’s dead,” he says. “And Roberto. Joe was already dead. Jeanette? I dunno about her. Knew too much, I guess. Thing is, I’m next. It’s me they’re after.”
Now he looks up at her. And for the first time in her life she sees fear in his eyes.
“Tell it to Steve.”
He rummages in the pocket of his jacket.
“Here,” he says, showing her the cork.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was on the floor next to Rob, where they killed him.”
“You took it from a crime scene…”
“Fuck the crime scene. There was another one next to Jeanette. It was a message.”
“What message?”
“Roberto’s head was mashed in with Veuve Clicquot bottles. Champagne.”
“And?”
“It’s too much of a coincidence. I know that now. Knew it yesterday, only I tried to ignore it.”
“Whatever this is, tell it to Steve.”
An old man appears from the changing rooms, yellow swimming cap, trunks half way up to his armpits. He nods, moves some way off, and lowers himself into the water.
“Champagne bottles?” she says, watching the old man push tentatively off from the side and swim away from them like a turtle.
“I brought it in,” he tells her.
Now she’s confused. She gives him a while, watching the old man make it out to the middle. Waits for John to go on. He doesn’t.
“The Leeds bombing?” she say. “Is that what you mean?”
“When the Semtex came into the country. It must have been in champagne crates. That explains it, you see?”
“You were on the other side of the world, John,” she says. “You told me…”
Then it hits her: he doesn’t know the full story.
“They tend not to release much about the MO on a terrorist case,” she says. “It was never made public. The Semtex was packed in a champagne bottle in the supermarket.”
He raises his head to look at her, and only now does she see the true depths of his horror.
“I read the case file this morning,” she adds. “That baby boy died because his mum was buying champagne for his christening. Whatever you know, go tell Steve. Do you hear me?”
Tears are streaming down his face, which has turned unnatural, grotesque.
“Will you let me talk? Please.”
So she let’s him talk.
Chapter Forty-five
Kings College, Cambridge
Thursday June 21st, 1990
John Ra
y had a finger pushed into one ear and the telephone receiver held to the other. He still couldn’t hear. Around him on the stairwell girls in ball gowns and young men in black suits and bow ties were talking in ridiculously loud voices, bouncing on their toes, the best night of their lives suddenly upon them, their faces aglow, beaming, joyous.
From the Main Hall down the corridor came the sound of the James Taylor Quartet, lugubrious and massively cool, the Hammond organ moaning and warbling until every speaker growled with distortion. From the telephone booth, the echoing noise of the band was slightly surreal; it made John laugh at the awesome, ridiculous fun of just being there.
“Joe? When? Joe, I can’t hear you!”
He huddled further into the booth, trying to get his arm around his head, as if this might improve things. Joe had left a message with the porters earlier in the day. The day of the college ball: the worst day to contact anyone at Cambridge. The place had been in upheaval since dawn, an endless stream of caterers, technicians, florists, musicians and security officers; and amid all this, hundreds of students darted about the courts, girls with voluminous dresses in their arms, young men in search of shoe polish, or someone with a needle and thread.
Out behind the enormous chapel, on the lawn by the river Cam, fairground rides were being erected, plus coconut shies and food stalls and Pimms tents. Meanwhile, steel bands and string quartets and harpists were dragging their instruments in through the main gates, looking confused, being pointed here and there by grinning college porters who’d seen it all before.
For a dizzying twelve hours Kings College would be transformed from a seat of learning into the grandest of private parties. Live music, endless food and drink, every vista a magical fairytale… If you were to stop and take it all in, you might think you’d landed in Versailles on the night of the King’s birthday. It was an experience that dropped you into another world, a world of dreams, one that few people would ever see.
And that, of course, is the point.
“Tomorrow? But I’m at a ball, Joe!”
“It’s five grand,” came his brother’s voice down the receiver. “I thought you needed some cash.”