Deadly Friends dcp-5

by Stuart Pawson

  "In which case," Gilbert said, with that self-satisfied expression on his face that means he's found an easy way to break bad news, 'you should have some time on your hands."

  "I wouldn't go that far. What is it?"

  "Your friend Chief Superintendent Isles has been on the phone.

  Apparently DCI Makinson has broken his leg while attempting a double-back flip-flop, with pike, and is now lying in Invercock-a-leekie hospital, tucking into copious supplies of grapes and chocolates sent to him by concerned colleagues. Isles wants you to take over the murder enquiry."

  "Oh no!" I gasped, burying my head in my hands.

  "I'm sorry, Charlie," Gilbert said, reaching across the desk and placing a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. "I didn't realise you and Makinson were so close."

  "It should have been his bloody neck!" I hissed.

  "Now now, Charlie. That's not a nice thing to say."

  I sat back and blew my nose. "I don't need this, Gilbert," I said.

  "And I definitely don't want it."

  "Why not? You're my murder specialist. I'd have thought a nice little society killing like this would be a welcome change to an up-and-coming detective like you."

  "I was up-and-coming when you were, Gilbert. About the same time as the Wright brothers. The trail's gone cold. We were up a gum tree with Skinner. I'd probably have come to the same conclusions as Makinson, but I like to think I'd have kept an open mind."

  "And you wouldn't have gone gallivanting off on holiday in the middle of an enquiry."

  "No? Well, maybe all that's changing. From now on I'm going to be a bit more like him."

  "But not yet, eh?"

  I scowled at him. "Can I use your phone?" Nigel was still in the office. I told him the news and asked him to organise a big meeting at City HQ for the following morning, with everybody there who'd been on the original enquiry. The first step towards becoming like Makinson was delegation.

  "Great!" Nigel said. "Great! But it's a bit short notice, isn't it?"

  "They've all got telephones, haven't they?" "Er, yes."

  "Right, then."

  Mr. Wood and I walked out of the building together At his car I said:

  "Listen, Gilbert. This Darryl Buxton character might get away with this rape, but it's only a matter of time before he does something really bad. I want his prints and DNA on record. He does a lot of drinking around town I'dike to target him, if you've no objections." In theory, we can take DNA samples from anyone convicted of a reportable offence, but because of the cost we generally limit it to sex otienders, crimes of violence and maybe burglary If we could do Buxton for drink-driving we'd splash out for him Gilbert slammed the door and wound down the window What will you suggest next, Charlie?" he said "OK but make it swift and subtle. Don't forget he has some clever allies.

  "Swift and subtle. I like that. Goodnight."

  "Goodnight."

  I was unlocking my car door as Gilbert drew alongside. "I fOrgOt to mention," he said through the Pen "Mmm."

  "Makinson's leg. Apparently it's his fib ia and tibia. Just thought you'd like to know."

  "I don't think it's amusing," I told him, but I couldn't help smiling as I said it.

  Before driving off, I tried Annabelle's number, but she wasn't at home.

  I knew that trains from London arrived at Leeds at about twenty to seven and twenty past; if I dashed straight over there I had a sporting chance of meeting her.

  I missed the station turning and had to go on a city tour round the one-way system before I approached it again. This time I made it. The parking arrangements were obscure, but I eventually deduced that the first thirty minutes were free. I bought a platform ticket and ran down the steps. The 1839 had arrived, but Annabelle wasn't waiting for the Huddersfield connection. I rang her at home again, but she still wasn't there.

  When my half hour was up I went out of the concourse and moved the car to a different space, to fool the attendant, if there was one.

  Annabelle wasn't on the 1918, either. I rang her number and after two rings she picked up the phone.

  "Ah, you're home," I said.

  "Hello, Charles. This is a pleasant surprise. Yes, I came up on the ten to four from Kings Cross."

  "Was it a good trip?"

  "No problems. Where are you?"

  "I'm, erin Leeds. Had to come, on business. I was thinking of going to the station, see if I could catch you."

  The tannoy immediately burst into life, warning passengers not to leave luggage unattended and ruining my story.

  "It sounds as if you are already there," Annabelle observed.

  "Yes. Just arrived. Can I pop round to see you?"

  "Of course you can. Have you eaten?"

  "I'm OK. See you in about forty-five minutes."

  I did it in thirty-eight.

  As soon as I saw her any gloom that was lingering around me evaporated like desert dew. We hugged and kissed and I told her I'd missed her.

  "I made you a sandwich," she said as we broke free.

  "That's not what I've missed," I said.

  Annabelle brought me up to date with Rachel and George. They thought I was 'very amusing' but otherwise were not quite sure what to make of me.

  "That's probably the best I could expect," I said, tucking into a huge salad sandwich in home-made bread. Don't ask me how she does it.

  "So," I said, when I'd finished. "How did you get on with Zorba the Greek?"

  Her cheeks flushed slightly and she frowned. For a moment I thought it was from an unpleasant memory, but I quickly realised I was wrong.

  "He's called Xav," she told me. "Short for Xavier Audish, and he's Iranian, not Greek."

  "Oops, sorry," I said. "I didn't realise you were on such good terms.

  Did he show you his… design sT I lingered over the final word.

  "Yes. We spent quite a bit of time together, and with the architect.

  One day we went to a fabric supplier. It was wonderful. I never imagined you could buy such exotic materials. It looks as if they might use my ideas, which is very exciting, don't you think?" Her face was animated as she spoke.

  "Wonderful," I agreed. "I'm really pleased for you. Tell me about Xav. I'm a little worried that I may have a rival."

  A little smile flickered across her eyes. I hoped it was mischievous, but I wasn't sure. "Well," she began, 'he's tall, and handsome…"

  "Taller than me?"

  "Umm, as tall as you. Well, nearly."

  "Handsomer than me?"

  "He's older than I thought he'd be."

  "And rich?"

  "He's a very charming man, Charles. He was very proper and appeared to value my opinions. If you must know, I like him. He has offered to pay me a consultancy fee and I am grateful, but that is as far as it goes."

  After a silence I said: "I was only teasing you."

  "I'm sorry, Charles," she said, taking my hand. "It has been a long day and I'm tired. Xav is very nice, but for all I know he has four wives and twenty children. I think you are safe."

  Somehow, I didn't find her words reassuring. We played a CD and I told her about the rape and how I'd been lumbered with the murder. I try to involve her as much as possible, so she might understand when I'm late for our appointment or fall asleep over dinner.

  At eleven thirty I said: "Are you sending me home to my cold and lonely house?"

  She nodded. "If you don't mind, Charles. I just want to curl up in my own bed and sleep for ten hours."

  "I mind like hell," I said.

  "You will get over it."

  As we said our good nights I put my arms around her. "I missed having you to myself over Christmas," I told her.

  "Me too."

  "Friday night," I said. "How about if I book a table at the Wool Exchange? And then let's spend all weekend together, just the two of us. How does that sound?"

  "What about the enquiries?"

  "Nigel can handle them."

  She snuggled closer and said it soun
ded very nice.

  The incident room at City HQ had been taken over by a fraud enquiry, so we held our meeting in their small lecture theatre. Nigel had rallied the original team and the room slowly filled with uniformed and plain clothes officers wondering what the fuss was about.

  At dead on nine I told them the news about Makinson and introduced myself as the new officer in charge of the murder enquiry. '"What about Ged Skinner?" you are all wondering," I said. "Sadly for us, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Skinner's alibi is as watertight as a coot's rectum. More importantly, he convinced me that he didn't do it, which leaves us with an unsolved murder and twelve wasted days." I made it pretty plain that I wasn't impressed. "I know that you have all been reassigned to other duties, and I have your reports, but I want you all to give some more thought to what you saw and heard while making your enquiries. If you have anything at all to offer please see me or DS Newley."

  I told them that operations would be conducted from Heckley and dismissed them all except the ones who'd had special tasks.

  "Tell me about the gun," I said to a DS who'd taken the bullet to our firearms people at Huntingdon.

  "It was very interesting," he began. "According to them the bullet was a thirty-eight, fired from a revolver with seven right-handed grooves.

  That made it a service issue Webley, or an Enfield, probably a relic from World War Two."

  "Mmm. Anything else?"

  "Yes sir. The bullet was lead, and not jacketed."

  "So what can we deduce from that?"

  "It was pre-war vintage. We started making them jacketed in about 1938, but they were only gradually introduced."

  "Somebody must have decided that shooting Germans with un jacketed bullets wasn't very sporting."

  "Probably. The doctor was shot in the side of the head, at very close range. According to the powder marks the barrel must have been in contact with his head. Analysis of the residue confirms that the bullet was pre-war, with the original powder in it."

  "So now we're looking for an old soldier who kept his ammunition dry."

  "Unless he got rid of it or it was stolen."

  "Don't make it difficult," I sighed. People rarely report losing an illegally held gun.

  The SOCO had a full catalogue of prints and fibres, but nothing to match them to. The best the only piece of information we had was that the doctor almost certainly knew his killer. There were security doors on the block of apartments where he lived, with a speaker system for visitors to ask admittance. He must have let him, or he ring There aren't too many blocks of flats like that in Heckley. I said:

  "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Where exactly did the doctor live?"

  "Canalside Mews," the SOCO replied. "Number eight, top floor."

  "Really!" I said, sitting back with a jolt. Darryl Buxton lived at number one, ground floor.

  There were two messages on my desk when I arrived back at Heckley. The first one read:

  Boss,

  The towels are white. Buxton saw Janet wrapped in one when he went into the bathroom. The street lamp is right outside the house. The number is marked on the door but it would still be difficult to read after dark.

  Sorry. Maggie.

  The next one was slightly briefer:

  Dear Inspector,

  Will you please stop leaving used tea bags in your wastepaper bin.

  And oblige, the Cleaners.

  I screwed one up and threw it into the aforementioned bin and put the other in my drawer just as Sparky and Nigel wandered in, carrying a cardboard box each.

  "More reports," Sparky explained, placing his box on the end of my desk.

  "Associated property," Nigel told me.

  "Why," I began, 'did nobody think it worthwhile to bring to my notice the fact that our dead doctor and our serial rapist lived in the same block of flats?"

  "Do they?" Nigel answered, wide-eyed.

  "We didn't know," Sparky replied, on the defensive.

  "I thought Mr. Makinson kept you fully informed," I told them. "I thought he was very professional."

  "Oh, we knew where the doctor lived," Nigel countered. "It was where your rapist lived that we had no idea."

  I felt my cheeks pull back into my sickly grin. "Love — forty," I conceded, deciding to change the subject. "What's in here?"

  Nigel flicked open the lid of his box and read from the inventory that was inside. "Not much worth talking about: contents of his pockets; his mail, diary, address book; one bullet, used; and his door keys."

  I turned to Sparky. "Any photographs of the body?" I asked. "We might as well start again, from the beginning."

  He spread the ten-by-eights on my desk. The doctor was laid more or less in the recovery position, with a halo of blood around his head, soaking into the pale carpet. I pulled a close-up towards me.

  "He was a good looking so-and-so," I said, quietly. With a good brain, too, until someone drilled a hole through it. I pushed the pictures around, re-arranging them, absorbing their message.

  "There's the SOCO's video of the flat here," Sparky said. "Do you want to watch it?"

  "Umm, no, I don't think so. Did you mention the keys to the flat, Nigel?"

  "Yes, they're here."

  "I think I'll have a look for myself, then. Have you two seen it?"

  They both shook their heads.

  "OK. Well, let's not move about in a pack. I'll have a ride over there now while you two have another look through this lot. Draw up a table. You know the score: motive, opportunity, evidence; that sort of thing. Sort out a list of acquaintances for us to interview. Then maybe you can have a look at the scene later, if you think it worthwhile. We've been lumbered with this, good and proper, so let's show them how a murder enquiry should be conducted, eh?"

  "Right, Boss," they replied in unison. They looked pleased.

  Mews is agent-speak for up market There was no central courtyard, no alley where horse-drawn delivery carts used to clatter over the cobbles. The Canalside development was a rectangular block of a building, in newly-cleaned Yorkshire stone that had been carved and crafted when skills were cheap and the best materials could be dug straight out of the ground. It backed on to the canal, with the old lifting beam still jutting out like a witch's nose The building was preserved for posterity and earning a bob or two for the owners. That was fair enough. For once the word pretentious didn't spring to mind.

  Most of the parking places were empty, apart from a couple of small but ne wish cars and a Suzuki four-wheel drive with silly coloured splashes on the sides. The front door of the flats was made of wood but free from the jemmy marks and metal plates screwed next to the lock that you always see on the council-owned blocks. To one side was the communications system, with a button for each of the eight apartments and a digital display; to the other was a bank of mail boxes. I put the appropriate key in the lock and turned it.

  The central hallway reached the full height of the building. Once, bales of wool or finished cloth would have been swung and raised and lowered here. Labourers would have manhandled them, clerks in stiff collars registered them and bowler-hatted buyers cast knowledgeable eyes over them. This had been Heckley's gateway to the world Now it housed the staircase and the lift shaft. The floor was quarry-tiled and there were framed prints by a failed impressionist on the walls. In the middle of the floor was a water feature whose photograph had probably graced the cover of the brochure, with a small fountain but no fish.

  The first door on the left was number one. I'd half expected it to bear a plaque saying "D. Buxton, Branch Manager, Homes 4U but it didn't. He had the good sense to realise that anonymity is sometimes preferable to advertising. It all depends on the line of work you are in. I ignored the open lift door and attacked the stairs.

  The rooms must have had high ceilings, for I was puffing by the second floor. There was one flat amp;n each side of the stairwell, eight in all.

  The doctor had what the agent no doubt called the penthouse. I gathered my breath as I examin
ed his door. It told me nothing, so I went in.

  It was love at first sight. The doc had furnished the place from scratch with a generous budget, whereas I'd inherited my house and its contents from my parents. His tastes were not exactly mine, but his mark, his stamp, had been on it from day one. My house is slowly evolving to something more my style. Meanwhile, it looks as if it were furnished by a committee.

  I'd have gone for something more up-to-date. This was strictly art deco, which looked dated, in my opinion, and conflicted with the building as a whole, but he'd done a good job. The kitchen was custom made with neatly integrated New appliances and the carpets were off-white throughout. In his sitting room I flicked a row of switches just inside the door and several wrought iron standard lamps came on but did little to dispel the gloom. Romantic but impractical. A thin coating of aluminium powder on everything, left by the SO COs reminded me that this was a murder scene. The pool of congealed blood, defiling the centre of the carpet like a stigmata, confirmed it.

  All his Christmas cards had been gathered up and left in a pile. I read through them although I'd seen a list of the senders in the reports. He'd received about five times as many as me. From patients, I told myself. Our clients rarely send us greetings cards. It was a small consolation.

  The pictures on his walls were black and white prints of film stars.

  Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, squinting through wreaths of smoke.

  Greta Garbo. Dorothy Lamour. Not my taste at all. I love the cinema, but not the people in it. Bogie is held up as an icon of the twentieth century. For what? About ten hours' work and an ability to talk without moving his lips while blowing smoke down his nose.

  I didn't stay long. I knew before I came that there was nothing useful for me to see it was just a starting point. To find the person who killed him I first needed to know the man. I studied the view from his windows, across the town with the hills looming up like a wall across the valley, and wondered how much the flat would sell for. Probably more than I'd want to pay, unless they had to bring the price down because of its recent history. Then I remembered the neighbours and decided that it wasn't for me, after all. Who wants to live next door to someone who drives a Suzuki with red and yellow splatters on the sides?