Annie was also more than happy to let Gerry drive her to Wytherton later that day, where they found Paul Warner’s flat on the second floor of an old detached house on the north-western edge of the estate. She understood it wasn’t a part of the estate, wasn’t a council house, but was privately owned and rented.
Paul Warner answered the ring and led them up the carpeted staircase. The hall and stairs seemed recently renovated, and Annie fancied she could even smell fresh paint. At first glance, he wasn’t what Annie had expected. Here was no tattooed skinhead, but a tall, slim, handsome young man with spiky blond hair, casually dressed in a red polo shirt and ice-blue jeans. The living room was a surprise, too: uncluttered, light and airy, walls painted in ivory and cool shades of blue-grey. The ubiquitous flat-screen TV dominated one wall, opposite the three-piece suite, and the window looked out on the main road below. On the other wall was a large bookcase. Banks would probably examine every title, DVDs and CDs too, but Annie just cast a swift eye over them, enough to see that Warner favoured books on history, war and politics, along with a bit of DIY, that he liked action and superhero films and had a box set of Beethoven’s symphonies and Schubert lieder. No metal or grunge. She walked over to the window. Over the road was a row of shops – the usual newsagent, minimart, chippie and betting shop – and the pub, the Hope and Anchor, which had seen better days, stood on the corner. Beyond lay the industrial sprawl of south Teesside. If you looked to the far left, Annie noticed, you could see the start of the open countryside, green fields and rolling hills. The sky had turned a bit threatening, she thought.
‘Nice,’ she said, turning around. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘Thank you. I like it,’ said Warner. ‘Please, sit down, both of you. Is this is about Albert’s sister? It’s terrible what happened to her. I really feel for him.’
‘When did you hear?’
‘Last night. Albert told me. He came around in a hell of a state.’
Gerry and Annie sat on the broad sofa. It was as comfortable as it looked. Gerry took out her notebook.
‘I must say this is a cut above the usual bachelor pad we see in our line of work,’ said Annie. ‘I assume it is a bachelor pad?’
‘I’m not married, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Warner cast Gerry a sidelong glance and Annie noticed her blush a little. Well, she was about his age, she guessed. Mid-twenties or thereabouts. Significantly older than Albert Moffat. She wondered if Moffat looked up to Paul as some sort of older brother figure. There wasn’t much for him to look up to in Lenny and Johnny at home.
‘I’m not sure I can be of any help, but I’ll try,’ Warner said as he leaned back in one of the armchairs. ‘I’m not averse to helping the boys in blue.’
‘We’re girls, Paul,’ said Annie, ‘in case you haven’t noticed. And as far as I can see, neither of us is wearing blue today.’
Warner laughed. ‘Sorry. Just a common saying, that’s all. My apologies. I can see I’ll have to be on my toes with you two.’
‘Only if you’ve got something to hide.’
‘Well, that remains to be seen, doesn’t it? I’ll try to be as open with you as I can, but first you have to tell me what you want to know.’
‘We want to talk about your pal Albert Moffat,’ Annie said.
‘OK.’
‘How long have you known him?’
‘About two years.’
‘Where did you meet?’
‘Pub.’
‘Which pub?’
‘The Hope and Anchor, the one on the corner there.’ He pointed towards the window. ‘I’d just moved into the area, and we got talking.’
‘Where did you move from?’ Annie asked.
‘Birmingham.’
‘May I ask why?’
Warner shifted in his armchair. ‘Why does anybody move anywhere?’ he said. ‘For a change, I suppose. And to get away from Birmingham.’
‘You and Albert Moffat became friends right away?’
‘Yes. I suppose we did.’
‘What do you have in common? I must say you seem strange bedfellows.’
‘It’s true that Albert doesn’t always make a great first impression on people, but he’s not as stupid as most people think he is. He’s a bit shy, lacking in confidence, maybe. He’s also a laugh, especially after a few jars. And he has a good heart. He could probably have done a lot better for himself, given the chance, but you have to understand, Albert didn’t have the advantages, his upbringing and everything.’
‘And you did?’
‘I went to a decent school, yes. Pure luck. And I found it easy to do well there, pass exams and stuff.’
‘University?’
‘I tried it for a year. Warwick. Politics and history. I do find the subjects interesting, but I’m afraid I’m not much of an academic.’
‘What about Albert’s racism?’
‘Racism?’
‘Well, he seemed anti-Asian when we talked to him.’
‘Oh, that. You get that a lot around here. People get scared when they see too many dark faces around, don’t you think? Although sometimes I think Albert has a point, however crudely he makes it.’
‘Oh?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised. I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool fascist. I don’t worship Hitler and go around beating up Pakis or anything like that. I do happen to have some strong opinions about Europe, immigration policy, migrants, the economy and so on. All Albert lacks is subtlety and intellectual depth in his opinions. I’ve done a bit of background reading in politics, even though I didn’t continue with it. Albert’s even less of an academic than I am.’
‘Yet you still spend time with him. An educated and well-read young man like yourself. How did the relationship develop?’ Annie asked.
‘I don’t know. How does anything develop, really? I lent him a few books. Albert can read, you know, and he’s not too proud to ask questions about things he doesn’t understand. We’d usually end up in the Hope and Anchor or the Coach and Horses, maybe with a few other locals, talking politics or whatever, whether we should stay in Europe or get out, how we should deal with the migrant camps in Calais, curbing immigration quotas, whatever, then sometimes we’d come back here with a six-pack or two and talk and watch DVDs. It’s a lot cheaper to drink at home.’
‘You were moulding his character? Sort of like Pygmalion?’
Warner smiled. ‘Well I’m hardly Henry Higgins, and I can’t see Albert as Eliza Doolittle, but I suppose in a way I might have been moulding him, yes. But not in a really overt way. I mean, I never forced any of my values or opinions on him, just tried to get him to think more deeply about the ones he had, about what he felt. I had a mentor once, when I was about his age, one of my tutors at university, and I learned the value of having someone to look up to. That’s all, really. I don’t think he’s got a lot going for him at home.’
‘Is that what you did last Tuesday?’ Annie went on. ‘Go to the pub then come back here?’
‘Yes.’
‘What time?’
‘We met up in the Hope and Anchor about eight.’
‘Until when?’
‘About ten, maybe a little later.’
‘Was anyone else with you?’
‘Only in the pub. There were about five or six of us.’
‘Did you all leave around ten?’
‘I don’t know. People sort of went their own ways. Albert and I came up here for a few more bevvies, a couple of the lads drifted home, others stayed in the pub.’
‘Right. So how long did you stay here drinking? I assume you were drinking?’
‘Yes. I suppose we stopped up talking and watching DVDs until about two or three in the morning, maybe later, then we crashed out.’
‘What did you watch?’
‘That night? A Bridge Too Far. Oldie but goodie. Albert can’t watch anything he wants at home because they have the TV permanently locked on Sky Sports. Albert’s not a big golf fan.’
‘So Albert
Moffat was with you all Tuesday night?’
‘Well, not exactly with me. I don’t swing in that direction, and neither does Albert. But here, yes. He slept on the sofa, like he usually does if he stops over.’
‘He stays here often?’
‘Whenever he wants.’
‘And in the morning?’
‘Lazy sod didn’t wake up until nearly eleven.’
‘Would you say you and Albert were both drunk by the time you crashed out?’
‘Probably. Almost certainly. I had a hell of a headache the next morning.’
Annie felt like saying she knew what he felt like, but that was pushing the empathy with a witness too far. ‘Too drunk to drive?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Do you own a car?’
‘I’ve got a little Citroën van. For work, like.’
‘Where do you keep it?’
‘Outside on the street.’
‘Were you with Albert in Manchester over the weekend?’
‘No, we don’t live in each other’s pockets. And I’m not a great fan of clubbing. The music drives me crazy, that pounding beat and monotonous repetition.’
Annie gestured towards the bookcase. ‘Yes, I noticed you have more refined tastes.’
Warner narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t miss much, do you? It was something I picked up from my mentor a while back. Not that I don’t like pop stuff. I do. I just gained an appreciation of finer things. I’d never listened to classical music before, and when I did I found I liked it.’
‘Did you know Mimosa, Albert’s sister?’ Annie asked.
‘Of course. I’ve been round to Albert’s place a few times. Sometimes she was there. But she was Albert’s kid sister. I wouldn’t say I really knew her well.’
‘Were they close?’
‘I think so. He was protective towards her. I mean, it was a difficult family, so I would imagine they relied on one another a lot. They were separated by the age difference, of course, as well as gender. But she could be quite mature for her age.’
‘So you’ve talked to her?’
‘On occasion, yes. She helped us with jobs once or twice. Just little things like passing a can of paint up a stepladder or something. She seemed to appreciate having somewhere to hang out other than home. I can’t say I blame her, having met the family.’
‘Was this recently?’
‘No, not for a while now.’
‘What was she like?’
‘Mimsy? Probably not much different from most girls her age, though I can’t say I have much experience to go on. I don’t have any siblings. I suppose she spent most of her time thinking about make-up and dreaming about pop stars and the like. But she was always pleasant enough when I saw her. She seemed bright. More so than Albert, I’d say.’
‘In what way?’
‘She was quick to grasp your meaning, even when you were being ironic. She was naive though, I think, in some ways. Not very well read. But talented. A good sketch artist. At least to my untutored eye.’
‘Would you say she was easily manipulated?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I never saw anyone try to manipulate her. I imagine she would be keen to please. She lacked confidence and made it up by being a bit mouthy, but I got the feeling that she’d been let down a lot in her life and she wanted to make a good impression.’
‘Albert said she didn’t suffer fools gladly.’
‘I doubt she did. I can’t say I saw any evidence of it, but if she felt slighted or put down she could certainly let you have a mouthful.’
‘Did Albert tell you about Mimosa hanging out with a Pakistani bloke down on the Strip?’
‘What? No. Why would he tell me something like that? Even if it was true. Was this recently?’
‘Maybe he thought you’d help him do something about it? You wouldn’t approve, would you? Didn’t you say you agreed with him about immigrants?’
‘Not exactly. And my approval doesn’t come into it. I don’t approve of mixed marriages, as a matter of fact, but they were hardly about to get married, were they?’
‘Who?’
‘Mimsy and this person you’re talking about.’
‘Have you heard of grooming?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s hard not to these days, isn’t it?’
‘Would it surprise you to hear that we think it might have been going on along the Strip, and that Mimosa, and perhaps even some of her friends, had been groomed?’
‘Good God, that’s awful. And the police haven’t done anything?’
‘We’ve only just found about it,’ Annie said, feeling as if she were apologising. ‘We’re not even certain we’re right yet.’
‘It’s an appalling thought. I had absolutely no idea that anything like that could have been going on. I suppose it wasn’t something I thought could happen here, not practically on my own doorstep. I saw the news about Rochdale and all the rest, of course. But they all seemed so far away from Wytherton in so many ways.’
‘Unfortunately not,’ said Annie. She glanced at Gerry, who put away her notebook, and they got up to leave. ‘I think that’s all for now,’ Annie said, holding her hand out to shake. ‘Thanks for your time, Paul.’
Warner shook. ‘Of course. If there’s anything else . . .’
‘Naturally. We’ll be in touch.’
When they got outside, Gerry noted down the licence number of the white Citroën Nemo. paul warner, painting and decorating was written on the side above a phone number, which Gerry also copied down. ‘He’s certainly an odd one, isn’t he?’ she said.
‘Indeed he is,’ said Annie. ‘A real fish out of water. But I think he’s given Albert Moffat a convincing alibi.’
‘Any particular reason you remember the Tony Monaghan murder?’ Banks asked.
‘It was my first body, for a start, and a nasty one at that.’ Bradley screwed up his face with the effort of memory. ‘I won’t forget it in a hurry. The smelly toilets, being cooped up in that tiny space with the body and all. It made me gag. Hard to believe it’s an Indian restaurant now. It was still early days for me, remember, and it took me a good few times before I could approach a murder scene with a settled stomach. A queer murder. They were usually easy enough to solve, too, but we got nowhere with that one. Not that we didn’t work hard at it, whatever you might think. At least at first.’
‘I don’t think anything. Tell me about it.’
Bradley looked up at the clouds, as if for inspiration, then said, ‘We got a call to the public conveniences in Hyde Park. Very public and very convenient, if you know what I mean. The new act may have made homosexuality legal, but you still got a lot of rent boys and the like trawling for trade in these sort of places.’ He glanced at Winsome. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not homophobic, any more than I’m racist. I was all for making it legal, but some of the creatures that crept out of the gutter, or from under stones, were enough to make your skin crawl.’
‘This victim wasn’t a rent boy,’ said Banks.
‘No. He wasn’t. Not in this case. He was in his late twenties, as far as we could tell, nicely dressed, wearing a wedding ring. Stabbed, as you say. Eight or nine times, as I remember. We thought maybe he was a prospective customer who’d tried it on with the wrong person. I mean, some people did just go there for a piss, you know, if they didn’t know any better. And he was a stranger to the area, up from London, so I remember.’
‘Was robbery a motive?’
‘We certainly considered it. Pockets emptied. Maybe even a drug deal gone wrong. There was plenty of that around, too.’
‘So you couldn’t identify him at first?’
‘No. Only later, when we asked around. He had a card from a hotel in his top pocket – something the killer must have missed. That led us to the Queen’s Hotel in City Square, and then to his room. We found out he was from London. His name was Tony Monaghan. He worked for an advertising agency.’
‘Philby, Leyland and Associates,’ said Banks. ‘How far di
d you get with that investigation?’
‘Not far at all, beyond identifying the body and noting the cause of death. We interviewed a few people we knew were habitués of that particular public toilet, but we didn’t get anywhere with them. We talked to a few people at the hotel, but nobody knew anything about him. He hadn’t been staying there long and he was on his own. We even canvassed some of the students who lived nearby. One lad told me he was on his way home from a party late on the night in question, and he saw two men carrying a third slumped between them, as if he was drunk, like. He said he thought it seemed funny because the two men didn’t look like students – you get plenty of drunkenness and that sort of thing around the university – but they were like thugs, like boxers or all-in wrestlers. “Two burly bald blokes without necks”, was how he put it, if I remember correctly. He didn’t like the looks of them, so he got out of the way sharpish, like, before they saw him. The timing matched, but we couldn’t get any further with it. There was no CCTV back then like there is these days. And it was a filthy night, raining and all, so the lad could have been mistaken. We did our best to carry out a thorough search of the park for a murder weapon or any other trace evidence, but we found nothing, and if there had been any trace evidence the rain would have washed it away.’
‘But the two men could have been carrying Tony Monaghan’s body towards the toilets?’
‘They could have been.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I took the student’s statement. That was it. We had a twelve-year-old kid stabbed and dumped on some wasteland near Leeds Parish Church, so we gave all our attention to that. It was a nasty one. Kid, and all.’
‘Did you solve that?’
‘Oh, aye. Eventually. Stepfather confessed early in 1968. He’d been abusing the boy and he’d threatened to tell. It was a busy time. There was plenty of other stuff we worked on. Robberies, drugs, assaults, prostitution rings and so on, but these are the ones that stick in your mind over time.’
When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery Page 29