by Gregson, J M
‘You’re not suggesting that I should manufacture evidence, sir?’
‘No, no, Peach, of course I wouldn’t suggest that. But there is nothing wrong with showing an appropriate zeal, is there?’
Peach allowed his puzzled frown to evaporate slowly. ‘You’re suggesting a bit of third degree, sir? The old light in the subject’s face during the interview, the injury as he falls down the stairs to the cell! Right, sir, say no more. I didn’t think we could get away with these things in the twenty-first century, but it’s good to have a man at the helm who knows the way to get results and is prepared to take responsibility for it! Just wait till I tell the lads you’ve given the okay for —’
‘Peach! I am suggesting no such thing. Put it out of your mind altogether. I’m simply suggesting that there are ways of interviewing young thugs to get what we want from them. Now, has this man got previous convictions?’
Peach sighed. Alzheimer’s was a terrible thing in someone as young as Tucker. ‘He smashed up old Harry Alston’s corner shop only last week, sir, if you remember. And got away with a caution, on the condition that he make full retribution to the owner of the premises. Harry wouldn’t bring charges, or we might have had the man behind bars. Except that some bloody JP would have told him to wash his hands and be a good boy.’ A surge of genuine irritation broke through Peach’s Tucker façade.
‘Anything else against him?’
‘He’s been passing drugs, sir. The lad he tried to persuade to lie for him has had drugs from him. Only soft, as far as we can tell, but we could probably make a case against him as a pusher.’
‘Then get out there and pressurize him. Lean on him. Get a confession of murder out of him, and we can wrap this up.’
‘Yes, sir. Of course, we’re not sure he actually killed Eric Walsh, as yet.’
‘He’s just the type of young thug who would do a thing like that. Probably over no more than a few quid or a petty argument. He shouldn’t have been allowed to get away with that assault on old Harry Alston last week. What’s this man’s name again, by the way?’
Peach sighed. He’d seen sharper memories in homes for the elderly. ‘Afzaal, sir.’
Consternation replaced confidence on Tucker’s face with the speed of light. ‘Afzaal?’
‘Wasim Afzaal, sir. And if you remember, sir, you were most anxious last week that we should not bring a prosecution over the damage to Mr Alston and his shop.’
‘This is a prominent Asian family, Peach. Public relations are most important at this time. I thought you said the man concerned was a member of the staff of the White Bull.’
‘Yes, sir. Wasim Afzaal is currently working there as part of a three-month university industrial placement. I understand he’s reading for a degree in hotel and catering, sir.’
‘This man’s father is a prominent member of our local community, Peach. We mustn’t offend him. Any hint of racial prejudice will cause immense harm.’
Most of the prejudice in this bloody nick is right at the top, thought Percy. He said, ‘I see, sir. Does that mean that I drop the investigation of young Wasim Afzaal as a murder suspect? Is he no longer in the frame?’
‘No, of course I don't mean that. I never interfere, as you should know by now. But go easy. Tread the path with kid gloves.’
Peach wrinkled his brow with the effort of assimilating this. He said nothing for a moment, then shook his head violently, as if clearing it of some harmful gas. ‘That’s it, as far as major suspects go, sir. Five in the frame at the moment. Four Masons and a university student. I think we could regard Mrs Whiteman as a Mason for this purpose.’ His face lightened with a sudden thought. ‘This rather neatly bears out my theory that a Freemason in this area is four times as likely to commit a serious crime as an ordinary citizen, doesn’t it, sir?’
‘Get about your business, Peach. I have things to do.’ Tucker picked up the single sheet of paper on his desk and waved it vaguely through the air.
Glancing through the window on his way back down the stairs, Percy Peach noted that another pigeon had crapped copiously on Tucker’s new BMW. It must surely be a happy omen for the rest of the day.
Eighteen
Jack Chadwick was waiting patiently in Peach’s small office.
He studied the inspector carefully when he returned: sometimes Peach’s temper was not at its best after a session with Tucker.
Today was not one of those days. Peach began with a short diversion on whether it might be possible to train pigeons to defecate in patterns on particular vehicles, then said, ‘You must have something for me, Jack, or you wouldn’t be here. You’re not one for wasting time on social chit-chat.’
‘The computer buffs have been busy. They’ve managed to get into the files on Eric Walsh’s computer.’
'I thought it had been wrecked by whoever broke into the house on the night of his murder.’
Chadwick gave the superior smile of those who recognize technological illiteracy. ‘It was just the monitor that was smashed, Percy. The computer itself seemed more or less intact. I told you the boffins would probably get into it, eventually. But you can’t just access what you want: you need passwords to get into the files. Don’t ask me how they do it, but the lads who know seem able to get into anything, given enough time.’
‘And what have they found?’
‘Some distinctly interesting material. Some stuff about Loyalist groups in Northern Ireland, which is probably out of date, but we’ll pass on the names to the right people. A short file on Adrian O’Connor and his associates: doesn’t tell us much, I’m afraid, but it shows that Walsh was scared of him. It looks as if he wanted to make up some sort of dossier on him, perhaps to hand over to us. But there’s nothing very damaging on it. The other interesting file contains some ladies’ names which you and I would know. Strictly in a professional capacity, of course.’
‘Local Toms?’
‘Many of them are known prostitutes, yes. But there are some others who may sell it from time to time but haven’t got convictions. Ladies who don’t walk the streets but are available for sex discreetly — at the right price, of course. The top end of the market.’
‘Eric Walsh was pimping?’
Chadwick shrugged. ‘It’d be difficult to prove that now, as well as pointless. There’s no evidence he took a cut from the women. Maybe he just charged the men for putting them in touch. Maybe he sold them the list. Or perhaps he just expected favours in return for access to his list of available totty. One thing’s pretty certain: the information would be expensive. There are some highly middle-class ladies on his list, who certainly wouldn’t sell themselves cheaply.’
Chadwick smiled happily, as he always did when he unearthed corruption among the bourgeoisie of East Lancashire.
Peach grinned at his colleague. ‘It’s no use trying to sell the names to me, Jack. I can’t afford it and I’m not interested. It’s an interesting sidelight on Eric the randy nightingale, but hardly relevant to his death.’
‘It could be.’ Sergeant Chadwick, whose virtues were thorough exploration of the mundane and meticulous attention to detail, enjoyed being enigmatic when the opportunity arose.
Peach played along with him and grinned. ‘All right, Jack. Tell me how it’s going to help.’
‘There’s another list. A list of men’s names. Cross-referenced with the list of women. Some interesting local dignitaries are on it. There are one or two of Walsh’s Masonic friends. And a name that I knew would interest you because it’s already come into your investigation.’
Peach knew his line in this little cameo. ‘And who would that be?’
‘A certain Wasim Afzaal.’
*
Whilst Peach reviewed the situation with Tucker and gathered new snippets from Chadwick, John Whiteman, respected East Lancashire solicitor and Master of the North Brunton Masonic Lodge, was getting increasingly restless in the imposing Victorian building where he worked.
Conveyancing property was
boring work at the best of times, and when you had become involved in a murder investigation, you had other and more important things pounding at your mind. At eleven o’clock, John gave up the unequal struggle and left the office.
He had no clear idea where he was going when he eased the big Jaguar on to Preston New Road and drove out of the town. He thought of going for an early drink in one of the big, soulless main-road pubs. But he was too well known a figure in the area; he was almost sure to meet someone he knew, and he knew now that casual conversation was not the diversion he sought.
Almost before he realized that he had decided on this course, he found himself driving into the familiar curving drive of his own large house.
At first, he thought that Ros was out. He wandered through the downstairs rooms of the house, calling her name uncertainly, wondering whether he was pleased with the solitude that her absence afforded him or disappointed that she was not here. Then he thought he heard a sound on the terrace behind the house, and when he went into the conservatory they had added two years earlier, she stood in the doorway, easing off the short Wellington boots she wore for gardening. There was mud on her thick blue denims, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, a tiny twig caught in her tousled dark hair. She looked at once healthy, competent and vulnerable.
A wheelbarrow full of autumn refuse was behind her. He saw in curious, useless detail the yellowing tops of perennials which had finished flowering, the sodden stalks and blackened flowers of dahlias finished by last night’s frost, a few early rose prunings. He smiled weakly at her. And then he heard himself saying ridiculously, ‘You’ve been working hard in the garden, then.’
Ros said, ‘Yes. It was a nice day for it, after the frost. There’s still a bit of warmth in the sun.’
They were two polite strangers, greasing the wheels of an unexpected meeting with safe small talk. Both of them wondered if it would be like this forever. Whether forever would even include the other. She had told him last night about her affair with Eric Walsh, in acrid, staccato phrases. And he had told her that he had known about it, had known for a full week before Walsh’s death.
She said, ‘Do you want coffee?’ She looked at the garden refuse piled high on the wheelbarrow, as though registering it for the first time, and said, ‘I think I’ve earned a break.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ He was glad of the release from her presence, of the relief offered by the small, mundane physical activity of taking the electric jug to the tap, of putting teaspoonfuls of instant coffee into the familiar china mugs which seemed suddenly alien. He knew for the first time what that expression about being a stranger in one’s own house meant.
He realized when he took the tray into the sitting room that she had been watching his movements through the open door of the kitchen, sitting on the edge of an armchair like a visitor who had called on a charity collection and been invited into a situation where she did not feel comfortable. She took the coffee, refused the biscuit, as both of them had known she would, and eased herself back into the chair with an awkward movement which both of them noticed.
They sipped coffee in a tense silence, neither of them looking at each other, both of them staring through the wide window at the borders where she had been working. She said eventually, ‘We’re not the first couple to have to contend with something like this. It’s common enough, nowadays. One of the factors in modern marriages.’
He said, ‘Yes. I didn’t believe it would ever happen to me, that’s all.’ He thought of the increasing divorce business which passed through the office nowadays, of the way it had emerged from a few exceptional instances to a feature which was perhaps the most important and lucrative aspect of their work in the thirty years he had worked in the family practice.
She said, ‘It was the one and only time, you know.’
‘So you say.’ He let the bitterness hang in the simple phrase, the monosyllables sour in his mouth as he spoke them. He believed her, but to acknowledge that he did would have seemed like weakness. When she said nothing more in mitigation, he eventually heard himself saying, ‘Anyway, he’s dead now.’
Still they did not look at each other, but from the corner of his eye he was watching to see if she winced, if he could hurt her with the iteration of her lover’s death. Instead, she turned upon him suddenly and said viciously, ‘You’re glad about that, aren’t you? Well, let me tell you, so am I! I told you, it was all over between the two of us. I was just an easy lay for him.’
He was shaken by the vehemence of this sudden directness. Eventually he said lamely, ‘I’m sorry.'
‘You shouldn’t be. It should be music in your ears. Stupid middle-aged woman gets out of her emotional depth. Thinks she can still find love but ends up with a quick fuck!’
She spat the obscenity that he had never heard from her before, and it cut into him more than all the frantic shouting of the night before. He caught something of the passion she had felt for the dead man, and with it he saw the dead embers of their own passion, of the love which had grown cold and died with the years of dullness. But he couldn’t help himself or her, couldn’t stretch out his arms to try to bring them together. He said flatly, ‘I accept that you’re glad he’s dead. You sound as bitter as I did when I found out. But I had two people to loathe. I hated you as well as Eric.’
She knew she should ask him if he still felt that hatred for her, should allow him to put down the lirst stones of the bridge which might eventually bring them back together. But she didn’t know whether she wanted that, even if it should be offered. So she said nothing.
Eventually John produced the small lie which would end this and get him out of the house. He said, ‘I must go. I’ve people to see back at the office.’
Ros nodded bleakly, happy to accept that he would depart with no progress made, that he would regret that he had broken his normal habit by coming here at this time of the day.
John Whiteman drove down a country lane and parked in a spot by a quiet reach of the River Hodder, where he knew that his dead father had fished for trout sixty years ago as a young man. His wife at home had not moved from the chair where he had left her, staring at the familiar garden which had seemed a source of therapy but which was now a foreign tract.
Each was thinking not of the affair but of what had followed. Each was wondering at that moment whether the other had murdered the third party in this triangle, Eric Walsh.
*
Inspector Peach seated himself comfortably beside DS Blake on the sofa in Wasim Afzaal’s flat. He looked round at the expensively framed prints of Constable and Turner, at the very English wallpaper and furnishings. It would have been rudeness in an ordinary visitor; in a detective it was no more than careful, professional observation. He savoured the young man’s discomfort without acknowledging it and then said unhurriedly, ‘Nice place you've got here.’
Wasim acknowledged the cliché with a wan smile. ‘You didn’t come here to inspect the decor, Inspector Peach.’
‘No. We’re here because you’ve been a bad lad again, young Wasim. Exactly how bad remains to be seen.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. If you’re still on about that bloody murder, I’ve nothing more to tell you.’
Peach had long since ceased to be surprised by a Lancashire accent coming from a Pakistani face. This accent seemed stronger now than previously; perhaps that came with the young man’s vehemence. Or perhaps he found it useful at his university to be one of the boys; sometimes it was the ostensibly liberal institutions which carried unconscious prejudice. The inspector studied Afzaal unhurriedly. The young man was in casual dress, but it was not standard university gear. He wore not jeans but trousers, immaculately creased. The shoes were Gucci, the dark green sweater had the Pringle logo. Peach said evenly, ‘You’re in trouble lad. We can do this at the station if you don’t want to do it here.’
Wasim glanced from Peach’s round, implacable face to the softer one beside him, betraying his uncertainty in the movement. He
tried to sound truculent as he said, ‘And what if I refuse to go?’
‘Would look very bad from our point of view, wouldn’t it, DS Blake? And we could arrest you on suspicion, if you forced us into it. Hold you for twenty-four hours for questioning. Of course, we’d like to avoid that, if possible, because word gets round about these things and starts all sorts of unwarranted rumours, but if you’re telling us that’s the only way you’re going to —’
‘All right. I’ll be as helpful as I can. Though I can’t see what I can possibly add to what I’ve already volunteered.’
Peach smiled. ‘Funny word, that. “Volunteered”. And in this case wholly inaccurate. Everything we’ve so far had from you we’ve had to drag out of you, lad. Told us a pack of lies to start with. Tried to pressurize another witness into lying on your behalf.’ He stopped and blew a silent whistle through rounded lips while shaking his head sadly. ‘Only hope all that doesn’t have to come out in court. It wouldn’t sound good for you, would it? Might give the jury in a murder trial an unfavourable initial impression of you.’
‘I didn’t kill Eric Walsh.’
Peach looked at Lucy Blake and grinned wickedly. She said to the increasingly uneasy young man in front of her, ‘You’ll need to convince us of that, Wasim. Especially in view of what DI Peach has just pointed out about your previous conduct with us.’
‘I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have tried to deceive you. I was worried about my university course. And about my father. Fathers from our culture tend to have unrealistic expectations of their children. Mine is worse than most. He thinks the eldest son in the family should be a paragon of virtue.’
‘Which this one ain’t!’ said Peach, who came back in delightedly, despite the fact that Wasim had been addressing his appeal to Lucy Blake. ‘This is the third time I’ve seen you in just over a week, Mr Afzaal. On the first occasion, you and your companions had terrorized an elderly local shopkeeper and done serious damage to his premises and his stock. You got off with a caution and with making retribution for the damage you had caused.’