Haggard Hawk: A Nathan Hawk Crime Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Crtime Mysteries)

by Douglas Watkinson

  “You obviously know.”

  “From her side, not yours.”

  Greene chipped in. “I think this is...”

  I flapped a hand and she backed off but I could sense the cogs turning, working out her options. One was the baton over the back of the head and I didn't fancy the headlines as a result of that. Hard nosed ex-copper felled by tap from probationer. Female.

  Gizzy said: “It was about Tom running the place for two fucking years. Jim came home for a few days and told him he'd done it all wrong.”

  I turned to Tom. “Well, you haven't. Julie wouldn't have let you.” He was nodding. “Where were you last night?”

  He looked at Gizzy as if memory had failed him.

  “He was up here watching the telly.”

  “Up here,” said Tom, “watching the telly. England v Ireland. D'you see it?”

  “Sir, I don't think you should ask any more...”

  “Who was in the bar last night, Gizzy? Anyone I know?”

  “Well, Jack was there,” she said. “Stefan too, and Uncle Elvis.”

  “What about sober people who might've seen something?”

  “Martin Falconer and his wife, table seven. Forty other covers, early on, regulars mostly but not from the village.”

  An average sort of night, then, for a Friday and for the setting. Busy but not heaving so any strangers might well have stood out.

  “You don't know if Jim had any problems, do you? People, giving him grief?”

  Gizzy looked at Tom for signs of life. His eyelids were drooping. “I'm not sure what you mean,” he mumbled, eventually. “People complain about the food occasionally but they do that...”

  “Had he mentioned people at Grendon?”

  I was trying to pack in the questions before whatever the quack had given him kicked in for a second time. Grendon seemed to be a place he'd never heard of. He closed his eyes, back went his head on the cushion and sleep overtook him.

  

  A colleague of mine used to say that when you talk to someone for five minutes you learn fifty things about them and a couple of things about yourself. It may be stuff you don't realise till later, sometimes years later, but it goes in and sits there till you need it. I'd learned a few things about Tom and Gizzy that night, sure, and something about myself that I wasn't too keen to know.

  Retirement's a bastard of a thing, makes a real monkey out of the people it's forced upon. When I'd woken in the armchair, earlier that morning, I wasn't just counting murders, I was thrilling to the latest one that had come my way. It was all systems go, heartbeat thumping, breathing sharp and shallow and the rush I'd felt on hearing that first gunshot had barely subsided. It doesn't take a genius to work it out. The life I'd loved, the life I'd buried six months ago when I put in my papers, had been exhumed up on The Ridge Road. I could've sworn I'd put it all behind me. That's what boozers say. They stay on the wagon for six months and a single drink can throw them off again.

  But to think of myself in that light, surely that was pushing it? So why had I woken from a sleep I badly needed, having been at The Radcliffe most of the night while Laura Peterson helped to save Julie's life? Why was my mind now racing with the next phase of an inquiry I'd nothing to do with? Get a team together, argue the toss with the guvnor, get the very best, the smartest. Old coppers who'd plod down a hundred streets, bang on a thousand doors and at the thousand and first sniff out something which pointed the way. Bring it back to the young kids fresh from their computer courses who'd put it all together. Find nothing. Start again. Until one day, as a team, we find something...

  I stopped. This was bloody mad. This was lack of sleep stuff. I hauled myself back to the simple truth of the matter, the one word I could get a grip on. Habit. I was the victim of pure habit and one I had to break or forever keep wandering off into the past, like a fully paid up old codger. Until one day I'd lose my return ticket.

  And God knows, you could hardly call my life at the moment dull! In fact some people would have given their eye teeth for a life like mine, I was always being told. With so many offers lined up, all I had to do was pick one and buckle down to it ... like Head of Security at McSweeney's Spice Factory. Most people don't realise it but in the world of culinary spice there's all manner of villainy: people pinching your recipes, workforce doctoring the products, unscrupulous foreign suppliers pulling a fast one. They really did need a good man to sort it out, preferably one who could stand the smell.

  Then there was lecturing at Bramshill, giving young officers the benefit of my experience, handing down the secrets of how it should be done. Knowing they weren't listening. Had I listened, all those years ago?

  Then there was The Book. Before he took off round the world with his beautiful redhead my eldest boy, Con, introduced me to a book editor he'd been at Cambridge with. Twenty two years old, going on twelve, a guy with real clout, I thought cynically, especially when it comes to the nitty-gritty of money. A month later a contract landed on the doormat, two months after that an advance for: “The History of the Hamford Crime Squad: a Memoir”. Catchy title, don't you think?

  Con had phoned a couple of weeks ago from Queenstown, New Zealand, at the top of a ski-slope, asking if I'd made a start yet. I said yes. The very next day, Fee called from an onsen in Japan and, in a voice her mother would have used, told me I shouldn't lie to Con. A day or so later, Jaikie phoned from L.A. with a variation on the theme. He recalled that together last Spring we'd bonded, in a spiritual sense, as we built the log writing cabin. Were the disagreements we'd shared over its construction all to be for nothing? Good heavens no, I'd told him.

  Then, hard on the heels of Jaikie, Ellie had called from Paris. Youngest of the tribe at eighteen she had a short, superior manner and an eye for the truth.

  “Book,” she'd said. “You've no intention of writing it, have you.”

  I said of course I had, it was just a matter of harnessing creative forces.

  “Bollocks, dad!”

  I reminded her that she wasn't in Paris to hurl telephonic abuse at me but to practise her French.

  “Eh, bien. Testicules, papa. Tu n'as pas d'intention d'ecriture, n'est ce pas?”

  I missed her. I shouldn’t say this, and I certainly shouldn’t commit it to paper, but of all of them, I missed Ellie the most.

  I'd offered many excuses for not having started The Book but best among them was Hideki. Hideki Takahashi was a seventeen year old Japanese boy who'd come to stay for three days and a month later showed no signs of moving on. He'd been one of Fee's pupils at the English Language School in Asahikawa, a right sod, according to his parents, though I detected Fee’s translation in the remark, with as much grasp of English as I had of Kanji. He'd set off on his travels with little more than a note in Fee's handwriting. It said: “In case of emergencies please direct this person to Mr. Nathan Hawk, Beech Tree Cottage, Winchendon, Bucks HP27 9JH. Telephone 01296 968954”. Hideki duly arrived on the doorstep greeting me with a bow and the words:

  “Harrow, Mister Woolof”.

  He turned out to be a most independent young man, polite and unobtrusive, with a twenty fags a day habit and a routine of going into London, or Rondon as he preferred to call it, most days except Sundays when, like every teenager I've ever known, he stayed in bed till lunch time.

  So that's the story of how McSweeney's were still looking for a Head of Security, Bramshill was one lecturer short and The Book still hadn't been written.

  -2-

  Next morning, Hideki knocked on my bedroom door at some ungodly hour and said:

  “Nathan, there are gentlemen to speak of you.”

  “To me, Hideki,” I corrected, without opening my eyes. “There are gentlemen to speak to me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I tell them to go?”

  “No, tell them I'll be down in ten minutes, whoever they are.”

  “Policemen,” he said.

  When I struggled into the kitchen at half six, Hideki was talking to D.
I. Ralph Charnley whom I'd met on Saturday night at the hospital and hadn't liked. Heavy accents did for Hideki and Charnley's was right up there with George Formby's so D.S. Faraday was translating from broad Lancashire to standard English. Hideki was explaining where Hokkaido was, untroubled that both men thought Japan consisted of just two islands - called Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

  Charnley rose to greet me. He was in his early forties, six feet tall and powerful. A rugby player, no doubt, given the long, off-centre nose and misshapen ears. No sign of the occupational beer gut, though. The dark hair was close cut, but from choice, not necessity.

  “I know we took most of the details, guvnor, but there's one or two bits and pieces. Okay to have a word now?”

  I nodded. “Hideki, stick the kettle on.” Hideki looked at me, both of us with fleeting images of a kettle glued to something. “Sorry, put the kettle on. Put.”

  He filled it at the sink and started making coffee.

  “I like the cottage,” said Charnley, strolling the room like a potential buyer. “Plenty of land, nobody breathing down your neck, but help within reach if you need it.”

  “It looks especially good this time of night,” I said.

  He smiled. “Yeah, sorry for the early call. Long day ahead.”

  He went to the window and looked across the green to the tree cottages.

  “What's that thing, like half a bloody melon, stuck on your neighbour’s wall?”

  He was referring to the CCTV high up on the front of the Watermans' cottage. Will had had it installed that summer to the consternation of most of his neighbours. It could both see and hear into our gardens and that, according to the law, was just fine.

  “You're kidding,” said John Faraday. “You mean it's legal?”

  “Unless he sells the tapes of me cutting the grass and doesn't pay me a royalty. Data Protection Act.”

  “I wouldn't stand for it,” said Faraday, bristling with youthful indignation. “I'd have it down one dark night.”

  “Aye, and his balls up there in place of it,” his boss agreed.

  I told them I was working on it.

  John Faraday was a neat sort of bloke, twenty six or seven, wearing a pricey jacket and chinos. His aftershave blotted out the smell of damp plaster and warm dog which characterised Beech Tree Cottage. He was tall and athletic, fair haired with a handsome face, his feelings easily read in the gentle features. Right now he was apprehensive about something. Just how far Charnley would go, I imagined, when he got round to scolding me for talking out of turn to Tom and Gizzy.

  “Who's in the middle one, then, next to Cecil B de Mille?” asked Charnley, still at the window.

  “He's Stefan Merriman, local window cleaner, she's Italian, Annabella Castellone, works for the council. Nice couple. Far end it's a young divorcee, Kate Whitely.”

  “How nice is she?”

  “Well, she's Giselle Whitely's sister so she's tarred with the same brush. Uppity, but I like her.”

  “And the apple tree in her front garden,” said Charnley, “is a Blenheim Orange, in case you're interested.”

  Put all the coppers in Britain together you could compile an encyclopaedia of utterly useless crap. Charnley's contribution, by the sound of it, would be fruit trees.

  “Julie Ryder,” he said. “I reckon you saved that poor bitch's life.”

  “Not me. Dr. Peterson.”

  “Oh, aye, nice woman,” said Charnley. “I forgot to ask you both Saturday. What were you doing out at that time of night? Just for the record.”

  When he spoke, his bottom lip spooned out as if to sip a possible reply before swallowing it.

  “Not that it’s any of your business but we’d been to supper with mutual friends. The Mitchells. We didn't know each other before but we do now, by God.”

  “Yeah, blood and guts break down the old barriers, eh! She's available, I'm told, should the fancy take you. She's just broken up with this ear, nose and throat wallah at Stoke Mandeville. Caught him pumping up one of the interns.” He flexed his eyebrows to indicate a move from small talk to serious business. “The shots you heard, take us through 'em again, will you.”

  “The first one must've been eleven thirty-five or six. We were about a mile away. I knew something was up - gunshot, late at night...” I heard myself thrilling to the idea of it much as I'd done at the time. I jumped on it. “Four, five seconds later a second shot.”

  Faraday made notes, saying:

  “That will have been Julie. Jim first, poor bastard, then his missus. She tried to get away, we think.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Then maybe thirty seconds later two more shots, one after the other. Car boot?”

  “We found the keys,” said Faraday. “Ten yards into the woods. Either Jim or Julie's chucked 'em there sooner than hand 'em over. Matey-boy's tried the boot with a tyre lever first, no prints of course, he's worn gloves but...”

  Charnley cut him off. “Yes, well, don't let's carve it all in stone, Johnny.”

  He turned a chair round, sat down at the table and leaned forward over the back of it.

  “Just so you know, we've set up camp at Penman Manor, some old stables there. Phones are in, hardware's there, troops are assembled...”

  “Two guns, right?” I said.

  Charnley nodded. “No sign of 'em yet but that's no problem. Car they used, we think it was nicked from Wheatley, tea-time.”

  “Motive?” I asked.

  “Money.”

  He looked up at Hideki who had set a mug of coffee down on the table in front of him, saying discreetly:

  “Table move. Coffee slop.”

  Charnley smiled at him, showing capped incisors, the originals having been kicked out in a collapsed scrum, I imagine. Or in the line of duty. “We got Pearl Harbour out, the other night, me and the wife. Ben Affliction and that girl whose Dad was in Porridge. There's a bloke in it looks just like you.”

  It was half joke, half jibe, but Charnley's thick accent had made it whistle over Hideki's head. He looked at me for the simplified version.

  “It's okay, Hideki,” I said. “Two dogs pissing up trees, seeing who takes the territory. By getting at you he gets at me.”

  Hideki blinked. I'm not sure Faraday understood what was really being said either.

  “It's just that my father was in one of the camps,” said Charnley. “Place called Matsushima. Six and a half stone and ribs like a washboard.” He paused and turned back to me with the flexed eyebrows. “There's no mystery to it. Jim Ryder's been in prison for eighteen months. You meet shite there even at a holiday camp like Grendon, so that's the way I'm heading. Doesn't it make you laugh, guvnor? A prison without gates?” He turned to Hideki. “How much do you weigh?”

  “Leave him alone,” I said.

  Charnley drummed his fingers on the table for a moment or two, a dull sound. Bitten fingernails. Then he said:

  “There were two blokes in the pub, night of the shooting. Strangers.”

  Faraday flicked back a page in his notebook and read from it:

  “Mid-twenties, five eight, built like a brick wotsit with dark hair, the other taller, six feet, curly fair hair. Not much to go on, is it...”

  “Any ideas, though?” asked Charnley.

  I shook my head. “Who reported them?”

  “Mrs. Sharon Falconer, J.P,” said Faraday. “She was having dinner there with her husband, saw them on her way out. Rang to tell us first thing.”

  I grunted. “Forget what Sharon Falconer told you. She may have her nose in everyone's trough but she invariably gets it wrong.”

  Faraday chuckled.

  “Typical magistrate, then.” said Charnley. “Even so, some bugger took a chance the other night and it paid off handsomely. They came away with nigh on twenty grand, weekly take at The Plough.”

  “Well, I say forget the Grendon idea, look closer to home, someone who knew Julie's routine...”

  I broke off, hearing my voice rise in pitch and tempo. Charnley'
s had remained calm, blunt and Up North.

  “Early days,” he said, eventually. “By the way, did you know any of Jim's friends? I'm talking lady friends, I reckon.”

  “No. Why?”

  From his pocket he took an envelope inside which was a small sheet of blue notepaper.

  “This was in his mail this morning, we've just picked it up. Post mark Thame, no address and just about as short and sweet as you can get. 'Jim, ring me. S.' D'you know an S in his life?”

  “I only know a J and that's his wife.”

  He folded away the note and put it back in his pocket. He turned to Faraday.

  “Right, well, we'll need a proper statement from you, guvnor, to put through the mangle. John here'll take that, 'less you fancy coming down to the stables. Boys'd like to meet you, I'm sure.” He rose, returning his chair to its position at the table. “There aren't many big names in our trade for the kids to look up to but yours is definitely one. Melanie Pike kidnapping, The Canal Barge Murders, Stephanie Black shooting...?”

  Faraday was looking apprehensive again. I was also aware that not many details had been checked, the pretext of his visit.

  “...all big stuff, in its day, and fair play to you. But they're history. Not current affairs. Leave this one to us, eh, guvnor?”

  “Cocking your leg again?” I said. “You should get that looked at, could be prostate.”

  Suggest to a man that his dick's in trouble and nine times out of ten he'll turn nasty. Just as Charnley did.

  “A little bird by the name of WPC Greene says you flew into her nest, bright and early yesterday morning and started asking questions of two witnesses.” He placed his hands firmly on the edge of the table and leaned in. It rocked once, the coffee slopped and he fixed me down the barrel of his crooked nose. “I've met old coppers before, all too anxious to be one man crime squads. They get in the way, so keep your fucking nose out of my business.”

  I looked at him for a moment. His head was perfectly placed for grabbing, pulling down on the table, nose and teeth first... Perhaps this was a good time to call on the services of The Map.