Deadly Friends dcp-5

by Stuart Pawson

  "I thought you were busy."

  "I can get away, if I know in advance."

  "I'd rather not, if you don't mind, Charlie."

  "Oh. Some other time, then? Or just out for a drink, over the weekend?"

  "Er, no, but thanks all the same."

  "You mean… you'd rather not see me again? Is that what you're saying?" I catch on fast, these days.

  "No. It was very pleasant, Charlie, and I enjoyed myself, but I'd rather leave it at that, if you don't mind. I don't want any involvement."

  "Fair enough," I said, 'but I might see you if I have to call in the clinic, sometime."

  "That's all right. We can still be friends. It's not you, Charlie, it's me. You were… well, you were… magnificent, believe me. I don't want you to think otherwise. It's just that… I'd wondered what I'd been missing, all these years. I decided that it was very nice, but not worth all the complications. Does that make sense?"

  Bloody good sense, I told her; and damned sporting of her, too. We said polite goodbyes and rang off. Perfect, I thought, replacing the handset. I couldn't have managed it better if I'd written the script.

  No tears, no regrets, no recriminations, no guilty consciences.

  Except. Except… It would have been nice to have had a say in it.

  The mini-bin was on page twenty-two and cost 6.99. Janet Saunders was right: you could buy a jar of coffee for that and use the jar. There was a nearly empty one on the table where Gilbert makes his brews. I jumped up and tipped the dregs into his new jar, which I had to open, and dropped the pile of drying tea bags into the now-empty jar. I stuck a label on it reading: 'used tea bags There's a penny on the community charge for me to make decisions like that.

  I sat down again and resumed my perusing. The only thing they didn't make was a device for recycling useless devices, but it was only a matter of time. I turned the final page and read the ordering instructions on the back. I felt uneasy. There was a space for the agent to place his or her name and address. Mine had come straight from head office, so it was blank. I tossed it on to Gilbert's shiny desk top, drummed my fingers several times, and reached for the squash club membership list.

  I'd started at the end and worked forward, but couldn't remember where I'd reached. The best thing, I decided, was to start again, at the beginning this time, and stop when I knew I'd gone far enough. Abbott, John, I read. Never heard of him. Next…

  Five minutes later Gilbert's chair was neatly in place with my feet under the desk and firmly on the floor as I thumped numbers into the phone.

  "Heckley Squash Club," said a male voice.

  "It's DI Charlie Priest," I told him. "I got the membership list.

  Thank you. This girl that the doctor played the mixed doubles with I don't suppose you've remembered her name?"

  "Oh, hello, Mr. Priest. No, sorry. I've tried to remember, but my mind's a blank."

  "Never mind. You also told me that they played the first round of the mixed doubles competition with one of your regular members and his wife. Have you asked them if they can remember her name?"

  "No, sorry," he replied. "Paul and Tricia, we're talking about. They go away for Christmas, every year. Have a place in Spain. I'd forgotten. They're back now, I'm told, so I'll ask Paul when I see him. He'll be in tomorrow, probably."

  "Don't bother. Just tell me his second name and I'll ring him."

  "It's Duffy. Paul Duffy."

  I found him on the list and rang his number. I was rewarded with a long buzzing noise his phone had been cut off. I rang the control room on the internal and asked them to do a person check on Paul Duffy. He was on our files, with a conviction for receiving, dated 1987, and was currently banned from driving for being OPL. Tricia Duffy had been cautioned for perjury, again in 1987. The loving wife sticking up for her bent hubby. I decided that the personal approach was called for.

  "You're in charge," I told the sergeant at the front desk. "Give me a ring if you need me."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Door to door."

  "It's hissing down outside," he replied.

  "Oh. Can I borrow a coat, then?"

  He found a waterproof jacket for me and handed it across the counter. I ran to the car with it over my head.

  It was a smart house, built from local stone on a hillside. The drive was steep and the gates were closed, so I had to park on the road. I pulled the coat on and slogged up the drive, feet squelching. Mrs.

  Duffy answered the door.

  She was average height and comfortably plump. She wore a lilac jogging suit adorned with sequins, and several gold chains, worn on top to remind her of what she'd achieved every time she looked in a mirror.

  Nouveau riche or market trader; I wasn't sure which. She had the best tan I'd seen in ages. I showed her my ID and she tilted her head back as she inspected it, looking through the bottoms of her spectacles, where the tint was lighter. It said Police on the breast of the waterproof I was wearing, just to confirm my origins.

  "Is Mr. Duffy in?" I asked, after introducing myself.

  The man himself appeared almost immediately, as if he'd been waiting.

  Maybe they saw me approach.

  "I'm Duffy," he said. "How can I help you?" He was big and bronzed, with a huge gut and a respectable handlebar moustache.

  "I'd like to ask you a few questions," I replied, 'about Heckley Squash Club. Do you think I could come in?"

  "Of course. Come in, Inspector," he gushed. And why not? He'd nothing to worry about. He'd been out of the country for a month, hadn't he? "Let's have you out of this stinking weather. Bloody rotten climate. Take your coat off."

  "Your phone doesn't work," I explained as Tricia Duffy took the dripping coat from me. A large bag of Ping golf clubs stood in the hallway.

  "Bloody thing's cut off!" he exclaimed. "I don't know what this country's coming to. We've been to our place in Portugal for a month and that's what you find when you come home. Going to the dogs, we are. Saturday at the airport every face you saw was one of our Commonwealth cousins. Why do we let them in, eh? Bloody taking over, that's what they're doing. I'm telling you, Inspector, as soon as I sort out a few things I'm moving over there, for good. You can keep this place. Have a seat."

  And then you'll be an immigrant, too, just like them, I thought.

  They hadn't heard about the doctor's murder, and were suitably saddened. "How well did you know him?" I asked.

  Duffy shrugged. "Reasonably well, I'd say, but just to have a drink and a laugh, in the bar. He was a good sort. Everybody liked him." He considered this last remark, then added: "Well, somebody didn't."

  "Any thoughts who?"

  "No. No idea." He pondered for a few seconds. "I know it's the done thing to say kind words about somebody after they've died," he continued, 'but I'm not bullshitting when I say that the doc was one of the nicest people I've ever met. Not that I knew him all that well, of course, but I always thought of him as a gentleman. A good old old-fashioned gentleman."

  "You're not the first to tell us that. If you don't mind me saying," I went on, 'you look rather, er, large for a squash player."

  He laughed and patted his belly. "They can't get round me. But you're right. I only do it for some exercise. Golfs my game."

  "And you, Mrs. Duffy?"

  He answered for her. "Golfs her game, too. Isn't it, darling? She's the ladies' captain next year."

  "Really. Well done. And how did you find the doctor, Mrs. Duffy?"

  She smiled at the memory of him. "He was dishy," she said. "I only met him twice, but he could have taken my pulse, anytime."

  "I'll tell you what he was like," Duffy informed us, emphasising his point with a raised hand. "This was bloody typical of the man. When we played him and that girl. You remember, don't you, Trish?"

  "I'll say. I completely went to pieces."

  "This girl," Duffy explained. "Her partner didn't show up. She was upset. The doc started chatting to her, ended up partnering her, agai
nst us. He'd no need to do that, had he? Bloody beat us, too."

  "That's what I've come to ask you about," I admitted. "The manager told me about it. I don't suppose you remember the girl's name, do you?"

  They both looked blank. She shook her head. He said: "No. Sorry.

  Ought to do, but it won't come."

  "It was… just… an ordinary name," she said.

  "Did you have a drink with them in the bar, afterwards?"

  "Yes, we did."

  "And how did he and the girl get on?"

  "Very chatty," Mrs. Duffy replied. "Very chatty. But when I was alone with her we went to the ladies' — I said: "You've done all right there," and she said he wasn't her type. I expected her to be over the moon, I would have been, but her feet were well and truly on the ground."

  "Would you have said that she was his type?"

  "No, not at all. She was a plain Jane, and he was going out with her off the telly. Do you know about her?"

  "Yes, I've talked to her." I suppressed the smile that the memory generated. "I assume the doc and the girl would have to meet again to play in the next round?" I said.

  "That's right," Mr. Duffy confirmed. "They swapped phone numbers, and he told her what times he was most likely to be available. It was awkward for him, being a doctor and on call."

  "I know the feeling," I said.

  "We went to watch them," he went on. "Bugger me if they didn't win again. Got knocked out in the semi-final, though. She was thrilled to bits, I remember. Got a little trophy. I think that meant more to her than going out with the doctor would have done." He turned to his wife. "You missed that, didn't you, darling?"

  "Yes," she confirmed. "I had one of my heads."

  I nodded sympathetically. It must be terrible to have heads. "But you still can't remember the girl's name?"

  They couldn't.

  "OK," I said, 'in that case, we'll have a little identity parade." They looked worried. I'd taken the membership list with me. I unfolded it on the arm of the easy chair and pulled my notebook from my inside pocket. "I'm going to write four names down," I explained, 'from the list of members. If you recognise her name amongst them, I want you to point to it. Understand?"

  I found three women's names and added them to the one I was interested in. "Just point, if you think you see her name," I told Duffy.

  "That's her," he said, without hesitation, placing a fingertip on the second name down. "At least, it was something like that."

  "Thanks. Now you, Mrs. Duffy."

  I moved across to her and a wave of perfume hit the back of my throat like a karate chop. I swallowed and blinked away the tears.

  "That's her," she said, touching the page with the tip of a nail extension that gave me a pain in my teeth. Writing on blackboards would have been hell for her.

  "Are you sure?" I asked. She'd picked the same name as her spouse.

  "Yes, definitely. That's her. Susan Crabtree."

  Chapter Fourteen

  The door closed behind me and I could almost hear the collective sigh they emitted on the other side of it. No doubt they'd celebrate my leaving with a little snifter or two. I pulled the coat together across my throat and walked down the drive towards the car. The rain was falling straight out of the sky, too morose to slant either one way or the other.

  I could have strode away from it. I could have written that letter of resignation, saying I wanted out, and that would have been that. In two weeks, I'd be a civilian. But I didn't. I had a job to do. I didn't make the rules that's what we pay politicians for. I just applied them.

  And every guard in every concentration camp used exactly the same excuse.

  I drove to the Canalside Mews, home of the late doctor and also of Darryl Buxton. Eight flats, two definitely empty, a weekday. I'd be lucky to find anyone in.

  I got an answer first try. "My name's Detective Inspector Priest," I shouted into the hole in the wall. "I'm making enquiries about the late doctor who lived upstairs. Do you mind if I come in?"

  "I'll open the door for you," the woman replied, as the catch buzzed.

  I pushed it open and walked across the lobby to flat number two. My luck held. Two others were in and answered my questions, not that I had many. "We're investigating various callers or salesmen who've been seen in the area," I told them all. "Have you ever had anyone leave a catalogue for a company called Magic Plastic?"

  Heads were shaken. Noses were looked down. Magic Plastic salesmen didn't call at prestigious developments such as Canalside Mews.

  Perhaps, I thought, they knew that the residents weren't as generous with their money or as sympathetic as the likes of Janet Saunders. The young man in number five wearing a cookery apron offered me a coffee and the lady in number seven showed me her husband's tropical fish.

  "Your sergeant was ever so interested in them," she said.

  "I know. He told me all about them."

  I saw a lot of gold velvet and tassels and G-Plan furniture and was definitely unimpressed. I was left with the big question: if the Magic Plastic salesman had never called at Canalside Mews, where did the doctor obtain the mini-bin I'd seen in his apartment? I climbed into the car and wiped the rain off my neck. I couldn't put it off any longer. I started the engine and drove across town to where Susan Crabtree's parents lived.

  It was a street of post-war semis with bay windows, similar to the one I lived in. The type of house that middle-class people aspired to, in those far-off days before inflation set the market alight and home-owning became a hedge against it and not a millstone around the pay packet. These had become seedy a few years ago, then regained respectability as the double-glazing salesmen moved in to give the place a face-lift. Now the cycle was being repeated with patio doors and conservatories. As I cruised slowly past their house I saw a woman at an upstairs window, polishing the glass like she'd done every day since her daughter hurled herself off a graceless concrete car park, two Christmases ago. She wore a yellow smock that made her the brightest thing in the street. I parked about six doors away and turned up my collar.

  I knocked at the door of the house I'd parked outside and a dog started barking. A woman told it to be quiet and somewhere inside another door slammed, muffling the dog's yelps. A bolt slid back, the latch clicked, and the door swung open.

  She was about eighty years old and four foot eleven high. "Yes," she demanded.

  "Police," I said, offering my ID. "I'm DI Priest. Could I have a word, please?"

  "Come in," she ordered.

  We stood in the kitchen. "First of all," I told her, "I want to give you a ticking off."

  "A ticking off?" she echoed. "I'm too old to take a ticking off from you, young man, police or no."

  "You should be more careful who you let in. Don't you have a spy hole, or a chain on the door?"

  "I'm eighty-three years old next birthday," she responded. "If anything was going to happen to me it would have happened by now, don't you think?"

  At what age do you start adding one on instead of taking a few off? How do you argue with someone who believes the Earth is flat? You don't.

  "I'm enquiring about people salesmen who come round knocking at doors,"

  I told her. "Have you ever had anyone call from a firm called Magic Plastic?"

  "Magic Plastic? Yes, of course I have. He calls regularly.

  Never buy anything, though. Far too dear. He's a nice man, always polite. What's he done?"

  "Nothing. Do you know his name?"

  "Why do you want to know his name if he hasn't done anything?"

  "Because he might have seen something. We don't only talk to criminals, you know. We talk to witnesses, too." I could give it as good as she could.

  "What sort of something?"

  "That's what we want to ask. Do you know him?"

  "No."

  "Do you still have a catalogue?"

  "No, he collected it."

  "When?"

  "Weeks ago. Months, in fact."

  I thank
ed her for her trouble and told her to keep the door chain on, but she wasn't listening.

  The next two houses were unoccupied. A middle-aged woman with a headscarf over her rollers saw me knocking and told me that her neighbours had gone to Tenerife for a fortnight. Who'd have a job in crime prevention? Yes, the Magic Plastic man did call, although he hadn't been for a few weeks. No, she never bought anything off him, and no, she didn't have a catalogue.

  The woman with the two toddlers who lived directly opposite the Crabtrees bought some stuff for cleaning moss off her patio when he first called, but it didn't work and she hadn't bought anything since.

  Her labrador insisted on jumping up at me, leaving big muddy paw-prints on the East Pennine Police waterproof. "He's just being friendly," she assured me.

  And that was that. I'd arrived. It couldn't be postponed a moment longer. I crossed the road, looking up at Mrs.

  Crabtree, her chamois leather moving round in circles, slowly progressing across the pane of glass like a glider in a crosswind. She paused as my hand fell on their gate and we stared at each other for a moment. I lifted the catch, she reached into a corner for an invisible speck of dirt.

  William, her husband, answered the door. As I waited I noticed that the drain next to the bay window was covered with a plastic lid, to prevent the ingress of leaves. A snip at 8.99 from Magic Plastic.

  "Hello, Mr. Crabtree," I said. "I'm Inspector Priest, from Heckley CID. Do you remember me?"

  He looked confused and mumbled something.

  "I'd like a word with you both," I told him, stepping forward. "Do you mind if I come in?"

  He moved to one side to allow me past, and when he'd reclosed the door we went into their front room. I took the heavy coat off and suggested he call Mrs. Crabtree. He shouted up the stairs to her, saying they had a visitor. He called her Mother. I placed the coat in the angle between a sideboard and the wall, half on the floor, half leaning against the wall.

  William hadn't changed much, but his wife had. She'd taken the house coat off and had lost at least a couple of stones since I'd last seen her. Her face was lined and her hair unkempt. We all sat down.

  "How are you both?" I began.