Rat Poison

by Margaret Duffy

  The dark, long shape and the irregular roof of the building loomed before us. There was a gated yard at the rear where deliveries by brewery vehicles were made and which also provided access to the public bar and kitchen. As we got closer I was able to make out that the heavy wooden gates to the yard were open. Patrick did not hesitate and we ghosted through them and made our way over to one side where, if anything, it was darker.

  I expected security lights to blaze down on us but we remained in darkness. Two cars were parked there: one the large Japanese four-by-four that I knew belonged to Andrews, the other a small hatchback of some kind. I quickly made a note of its registration number. A single light was switched on in an upstairs room of the building, the window of which was open, the curtains wafted outwards by an inner draught. Sounds were emerging through the open window as well, quite unmistakably those made by people engaged in very vigorous sexual intercourse.

  Patrick nudged me and we made our way over towards one of the rear doors, which eventually led into the public bar. It was unlocked. All within was in utter darkness but for tiny red and green indicator lights probably on fridges and freezers in what I seemed to remember was a utility room off to our left. Closing the door behind us Patrick then risked switching on his tiny torch, its pencil-like beam at least preventing us from walking headlong into solid objects.

  I drew him around to a passageway off to the right in case he did not know where the office was situated. Events upstairs were getting even more exciting, the cries of pleasure the woman was uttering reaching us down the narrow winding staircase that led up from the junction of corridors. I reckoned there was not much time before they hit a resounding jackpot and then possibly, after getting their breath back, someone would come downstairs for refreshments.

  The office door was locked but the lock was old-fashioned and soon yielded to Patrick’s skeleton keys. He went in; I stayed just outside on watch.

  Ye gods, you could even hear the floorboards creaking as the bed bounced up and down.

  By the illumination provided by the tiny torch Patrick was going through what appeared to be files and folders so perhaps there was no computer for records. If so this was odd for someone running a business – unless there was one and it was kept upstairs for added security.

  Upstairs, The Moment arrived, the female shrieking like a banshee: bed, floorboards and presumably the rest of the furniture, curtains and wallpaper uniting in one long reverberating clamour that moaned down slowly into silence but for exhausted panting.

  I went into the room and hissed, ‘I think we ought to go now.’

  Patrick appeared to be half inside the deep bottom drawer of a wooden desk, on which there was his pen and note pad, and did not react.

  ‘They might hear us now,’ I fretted.

  ‘Five minutes,’ he murmured. ‘Close the door.’

  At the end of what seemed like a good quarter of an hour I heard creaks as someone came down the wooden staircase. A downstairs light was switched on, the door of the office suddenly framed by a thin band of brightness. We stood by the wall close to it so that we would be out of sight if it was opened.

  Nothing happened and then came the sound of a kettle being filled. After another pause crockery rattled.

  ‘Right,’ Patrick whispered in my ear. ‘It’s coming up the boil so she won’t hear us.’

  I was nearest so opened the door a cranny and peeped through it into the empty passageway. All we had to do was go the few yards to where it joined the main corridor and then make for the exit.

  ‘D’you want something to eat?’ a woman’s voice yelled close by. I couldn’t decide whether it sounded vaguely familiar or not.

  No reply.

  ‘He’s asleep, you silly cow,’ Patrick whispered.

  ‘Colin, d’you want something to eat?’ she bawled, even closer.

  There was a loud snoring kind of grunt from upstairs. Then, ‘Yeah, I’ll have a burger.’

  ‘Well, you can do it then. I’m not in the mood for cooking anything complicated.’

  The woman then returned to the kitchen. Crockery clattered as though she was slamming around mugs in a temper.

  We left as silently and as quickly as possible and did not pause until we reached the gate into the churchyard.

  ‘Wow!’ Patrick exclaimed, short of breath, locking up again. ‘That was interesting.’

  I had one thing on my mind. ‘How did you know it was a woman who had come downstairs?’

  ‘Women always make the tea afterwards.’

  ‘We never have tea afterwards.’

  ‘No, but I nearly always go to sleep, don’t I? The practicalities of sex, my dear Watson. Did you get the registration of the second car?’

  ‘I did. What did you find out?’

  ‘Names of various suppliers. Also customers.’

  ‘What kind of customers?’

  ‘It would appear the pub has clients in the service industries – does the catering for corporate bashes, weddings and so forth.’

  ‘I find that a little hard to believe.’

  ‘So do I.’

  We returned the way we had come.

  Matthew was in the kitchen, huddled around a glass of milk on the table before him and looked very surprised to see us.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said, obviously feeling that his explanation might be the more pressing of the two.

  ‘Are you worried about your interview with the Youth Offending Team?’ Patrick asked him.

  ‘It’s only a short time away.’

  Patrick sat at the table with him.

  I said, ‘Would you like that turned into hot chocolate?’

  Matthew’s face lit up. ‘Oh, yes, please.’

  ‘As I’ve already said, we’ll both be there with you,’ Patrick assured him. ‘All you have to do is tell the truth.’

  ‘Katie said she’d seen you pretending to be a crook of some kind. In the village.’

  ‘She did. It was unfortunate.’

  ‘And you’ve been somewhere tonight.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m not going to lie to you by saying we couldn’t sleep either and went for a walk. Sometimes you have to let people get on with things and not ask questions.’

  There had been a hint of steel in this last remark and Matthew dropped his gaze. He found a smile for me when I gave him his hot drink and went off back to his bedroom.

  ‘He needs something to be happy about to take his mind off it,’ I said.

  ‘OK, we’ll start the self-defence lessons tomorrow.’

  I was aware that Carrick had been restrained by the stringent rules of police interrogation when he had broken off from questioning Derek Jessop, who had looked as though he was genuinely feeling faint. It was to be hoped that a short time on remand and being put on a course of antibiotics had not strengthened him sufficiently to make him clam up altogether when required to search his memory on certain matters. My fears appeared to be realized when I first entered the interview room at ten a.m. a couple of days later with James Carrick and the man’s face displayed a defiant smirk.

  ‘You’re permitted to have a solicitor present,’ the DCI pointed out.

  Jessop mouthed something obscene at him which is not worth repeating.

  ‘As you wish.’ Carrick then went on to open the interview formally and started the recording machine.

  ‘So, from what you said last time we spoke to you we know you were in Bath the night of the mass shootings and were part of a gang run by a London mobster who got his female sidekick to recruit men local to here to swell his numbers,’ Carrick began. ‘You and your brother Billy were both shot and injured whereupon—’

  There was an urgent-sounding rap on the door and DS Frank Keen put his head around it. ‘Phone call for you, sir.’

  ‘Can’t you take it?’ Carrick asked, frowning.

  ‘It’s a private call.’

  Carrick stopped the interview, asked Keen to stay with me and left the room. Jessop gave me a di
rty leer.

  ‘Shoulder better?’ I enquired breezily. Actually I was experiencing a pang of guilt: the man was still using a stick following the flesh wound I had caused him.

  Moments later Carrick called to me from the doorway. When we were outside, he said, ‘It was Joanna. Her waters have broken and she’s called an ambulance in case I can’t get home in time to take her to the hospital. I must go.’

  ‘Go,’ I urged. ‘She needs you. Give her our love.’

  ‘I’ll have to postpone this again.’

  ‘It’s not really fair on Jessop. Patrick’s working on something in the main office. Can’t he do it?’

  For once Carrick did not pause to ponder. ‘Yes, you’re quite right. I’ll get him to come in.’

  EIGHT

  Jessop had cheered up visibly when told that there was to be a different interviewer and the smirk had returned. I saw no reason to spoil things for him. In fact, when the substitute entered the room he was met with a sneer. This might have been because earlier my husband had been out in the city centre walking the route of the gang war, endeavouring to re-enact what had happened in his mind and, judging by the state of the old T-shirt and jeans worn specially for the job, had crawled into various nooks and crannies in case scenes of crime personnel had missed anything.

  Patrick, carrying the case file, dropped it on the table, introduced himself to our suspect, thanked the departing DS Keen and switched on the tape machine to listen to what had taken place in the past few minutes.

  ‘Any problems with that?’ he asked the man before him.

  ‘Yes, I didn’t say any of it.’

  ‘You did,’ I told him. ‘I was there and wrote it down.’

  ‘Well, yer must have made it up then.’

  ‘Look, DCI Carrick will swear in court that’s what you said.’

  ‘Then it just goes to show how corrupt you lot are, doesn’t it?’

  ‘So you and Billy were ambushed by Afghan insurgents as you returned from Tesco’s?’ Patrick asked, opening the file and flipping through it. This was play-acting, he could probably quote large chunks of it from memory.

  ‘You’re a real stupid arse, aren’t you?’ Jessop shouted.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am. You’re having to put up with a new boy, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We were on our way home after a few beers and got caught in crossfire.’

  ‘And all this stuff in the file about having your wallets stolen by the woman who hired you together with Billy’s gun is also cobblers, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jessop answered grimly.

  ‘But you did have a gun. You tried to kill DCI Carrick with it when he came to talk to you.’

  ‘I panicked. I found it on the pavement when we was shot and used it to defend the pair of us.’

  ‘Completely innocent people don’t normally hightail it away when they’re hurt. They keep their heads down and pray for an ambulance.’

  ‘I thought they was going to kill us. I half-carried Billy and we got a taxi.’

  No taxi drivers had come forward to report that they had transported anyone injured that night.

  Patrick said, ‘And yet there’s a witness who’s identified both of you from mugshots as taking an active part in the war. Would you care to explain that?’

  ‘Who, the bloke in the shop doorway? He was only a down-and-out. A meths drinker. Stoned out of his skull most likely.’

  ‘He did mention running away and climbing over a wall into the car park of a university facility to get away from the murderous bunch going on the rampage. Not all that drunk then.’ Patrick closed the file gently. ‘You know perfectly well the account accurately records what you said.’

  ‘OK, I made it up.’

  ‘Why concoct such a wild story if it wasn’t true?’

  ‘Because they was leaning on me.’ Jessop jerked his head in my direction. ‘Her and Carrick. Making threats if I didn’t talk. I was feeling terrible so I said anything to get rid of ’em.’

  Patrick leaned back in his seat and regarded Jessop narrowly. ‘Well, no, actually,’ he said quietly. ‘Also in the room with you were three elderly patients who were watching television. Since you went to the remand centre Detective Sergeant Keen, who you saw just now, has been to the hospital to talk to male patients with whom you might have come into contact to see if you’d said anything that might be of interest to us. Two of those in question were still in hospital and they both said how you’d shouted and raved at the police who had come to interview you in the patients’ lounge. They heard almost every word of what was said, mostly on account of turning the sound down on the TV as what was going on right there in the room was much more interesting. No threats were made; in fact, DCI Carrick stopped the interview when it was obvious you were feeling unwell.’

  There was a longish silence.

  ‘Shall we begin again?’ Patrick asked. Then, when nothing appeared to be forthcoming, he added, ‘I don’t like it when people waste my time.’

  Jessop, who had had his gaze stonily focused on the table top, glanced up and discovered that when his interrogator did not like something events could get rather . . . unpleasant.

  I was sitting next to Patrick but did not have to look at him to know what was going on and as intimated before I have never been able to discover how this sense of menace is achieved. It is just that, all at once, without his facial expression changing, it is there. I am Patrick’s wife, have known him for almost always and love him to bits but when he is like this he is too big, too close, too damned dangerous.

  ‘You said you were a new boy,’ Jessop muttered.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he was told. ‘I’m fairly new to the Serious Organized Crime Agency. Before that I worked for MI5.’ He smiled humourlessly. ‘No restrictions there.’

  Although nothing was actually said it was at this point that Jessop decided to cooperate. For the moment.

  ‘Charlie Gill’s dead, by the way,’ Patrick said in offhand fashion.

  ‘He was nothing to me,’ Jessop said in an undertone. ‘Just a local villain who tried to look like some kind of Mr Big.’

  ‘Of course he was and I know you weren’t working for him directly. I just mentioned it because I’m sure it was Uncle who had him savagely beaten and then killed with a single shot to the head. It gives you a better idea of what will happen if this crook and his murderous minder get a hold in Bath.’

  ‘Uncle?’

  ‘Yes, the London mobster. That’s what people call him after he murdered his nephew. The woman who hired you and then stole your wallets was almost certainly Joy Murphy. She’s probably a psychopath.’

  ‘Billy nearly died,’ Jessop brooded. ‘They took me to see him and he didn’t even know me.’

  ‘So they need banging up for just about for ever. What of Gilly Darke and her boyfriend, the one with ginger hair?’

  ‘They were Gill’s people.’

  ‘Chums of yours?’

  ‘No, of course not! She’s just a sozzled tart!’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘God knows. He was just known as Red. Always seemed to be whispering in corners with the bosses and treated the rest of us like dirt. I didn’t see him at all after the second meeting.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Short, thin, eyes like a ferret I once used to have. Shifty-like.’

  ‘What were his and Darke’s roles then?’

  ‘Kind of organizing things. It was him what did it all, though. He insisted he brought her along so perhaps he had a quick screw with her when he felt like it. When there was a meeting . . .’

  ‘Just keep talking,’ he was urged when he stopped speaking. ‘I take it the meetings were between Gill’s lot and the London gang to arrange the war.’

  Jessop nodded.

  ‘Where were they held?’

  ‘In the back rooms of pubs.’

  ‘And Mick the Kick?’

  ‘He was tricked into coming into Bath that night. I
don’t know how.’

  ‘Does the name Adam Trelonic mean anything to you?’

  ‘I’ve been asked that before. No.’

  To me, Patrick said, ‘Do we know the name Trelonic used for his social security scam?’

  ‘No, but it’ll be in the records,’ I replied.

  ‘I’ll look later.’ And then to Jessop, ‘Did you ever actually see this Uncle character?’

  ‘Yes, he was there once, with her. When she’s not all smiles she’s like something crazy in a Batman film.’

  ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘He’s a square sort of bloke, short and broad. But he’s not fat, it’s all muscle. Blond – out of a bottle, mind. Little blue eyes – pig’s eyes, now I come to think of it. Gave us all this crap about how soon we’d be rich men like him as long as we did as we was told.’

  ‘Has it crossed your mind since that he was hoping all the local opposition would shoot each other, leaving him with a nicely cleared-out manor?’

  ‘No, but . . .’ Jessop brooded some more and I could almost read his mind. That theory seemed all too likely now.

  Patrick said, ‘Shall we start the story right from the beginning when Murphy was in a pub somewhere quietly asking drinkers if they fancied a job with lots of money, travel and excitement?’

  The man stirred restlessly in his seat. ‘It was Billy what got spoke to and took the job. I just went along that night to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘That’s the truth.’

  ‘According to Carlton Huggins’s wife it was Derek someone her husband told her was in the pub.’

  ‘Huggins! That load of thievin’ tinkers!’

  ‘She’s lying then?’

  ‘None of them have spoken a true word in their lives!’

  ‘Why would she lie?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’

  ‘The woman has no reason to lie; she doesn’t even know who you are.’

  Jessop’s right fist came flying but the hand was caught and smashed down on to the table.