He stood up and held out his hand.
Gladmann took it and held it a little longer than convention required. Not all the spots on his bow tie were in the original pattern, Pascoe noticed. He got a sense that the man was rather lonely and glad of the contact involved in helping the police with their enquiries.
‘Which part of the world are you from, Mr Gladmann?’ he heard himself asking. It was not the most diplomatic of questions even to a duller mind than the linguist’s.
‘Surrey,’ he answered with a half smile. ‘Good solid bourgeois background. Old grammar school, nice class of kid. And I got my first degree in Eng. Lit., Renaissance drama a speciality. Good day to you, now, Inspector. Don’t forget. Call on me at any time.’
Pascoe sat and ruminated on what Gladmann had told him for a few minutes, but then he put the report and the tapes away in a filing cabinet and got down to some overdue paperwork. Tomorrow, Saturday, should be his day off and he wanted to be as up to date as possible.
After half an hour he was interrupted by the return of DC Preece.
No 73 Danby Row, he reported, was the property of one Hubert Valentine, who worked in the Rates and Valuation department of the local council and who was presently on holiday in Minorca with his wife. His seventeen-year-old daughter, Andrea, was alone in the house.
‘Very tasty,’ said Preece, grinning salaciously. ‘I told her I was on a consumer research survey for a big record company. What did she buy, what did her parents buy? It all came out. Very friendly girl.’
What had also come out was that Andrea was a sixth-form pupil at the Bishop Crump Comprehensive School. Preece’s description fitted the girl Pascoe had seen leaving Wildgoose’s flat that morning.
He dismissed Preece and got back to work, but a few minutes later, Dalziel burst in.
‘Bloody lab,’ he said. ‘A few residuals, nothing. The watch is one of them digital things, new. Waterproof so they can’t say if it’s been in the water or not. No way of tracing where it was bought. The ring’s nine carat gold. There’s an inscription inside. All my love all my life. And there’s a monogram on the signet. Too fancy to be clear with all them curlicues and things but it could be MLA or WTA. Neither of the things has been reported missing.’
Pascoe rose and went to his filing cabinet.
‘What about TAM?’ he said.
‘What about it?’
‘Tommy Maggs’s middle name is Arthur.’
He passed on Wield’s thought about the holiday-making jeweller.
‘That’s possible. That’d explain a lot,’ said Dalziel. ‘There’s a brain behind that ugly mask. When’s this jeweller expected back?’
‘Tomorrow, the notice on his door said, according to Wield.’
‘Right. We’ll be waiting for him. Meanwhile, let’s assume that he did provide the ring and the watch. So, Brenda draws out the cash, spends some of it on the watch and the ring – which must have been ordered in advance, obviously, to get the inscription done. And somehow the whole bloody lot ends up in Lee’s caravan. That bugger’s got some explaining to do!’
‘Not for a while yet,’ said Pascoe, telling him about the operation.
‘At least we know where he is. Do you know what time it is, lad?’
‘Late,’ said Pascoe.
‘Nigh on opening time. Let’s wash the day away.’
Pascoe demurred, but Dalziel was not in a mood to be denied.
‘It’s your day off tomorrow, isn’t it? Ellie will see quite enough of you then. It’s being scarce that makes a thing valuable.’
‘A quick one, then,’ conceded Pascoe.
As he tidied up his desk, he told the fat man about Gladmann’s findings. Dalziel was unimpressed.
‘Linguists, psychiatrists, crap-merchants the lot of them.’
‘Maybe,’ said Pascoe. ‘But Dave Lee doesn’t fit into this phone-call pattern at all.’
‘So mebbe it means nothing.’
‘And Pottle’s reading of the Choker doesn’t fit Lee either.’
‘Pottle! What’s he know?’
‘He’s been right before.’
‘So had Pontius Pilate. Are you going to be all night?’
He clattered down the stairs ahead of Pascoe, but pulled up sharp at the swing-doors which opened into the main foyer of the station and peered cautiously through the central crack. When Pascoe joined him the fat man put a huge finger cautiously to his lips and motioned his subordinate to peep through.
At the desk a youngish woman in a grey dress was talking to the sergeant.
‘If I am not to be allowed access to Mr and Mrs Lee wherever they are, then I insist on talking to the officer in charge of the case,’ she said in a clear, angry voice.
‘I’m not sure if he’s in, Miss Pritchard,’ said the sergeant.
‘Then you’d better find out,’ insisted the woman.
Reluctantly the sergeant picked up his telephone.
‘Lacewing’s solicitor?’ whispered Pascoe.
‘Aye. Come on, lad, before she starts searching the building.’
And chortling gleefully, Dalziel led the way to the rear exit.
Chapter 18
Shortly before seven P.M. Dave Lee was wheeled off to the operating theatre. Only the fact that it was Friday evening and the consultant treasured his Saturday morning golf prevented the gypsy from being put into storage overnight, or so the ward sister assured Wield. The sergeant was pleased to have the man anaesthetized so that he could relax his vigilance. He went down to the hospital canteen but changed his mind when he spotted Mrs Lee with her attendant WPC, both tucking into healthy portions of pie, peas and chips. Instead he went for a stroll outside to get the smell of medicine and illness out of his nostrils.
His perambulations took him past the entrance to CASUALTY as an ambulance drew up. He paused and watched with professional interest the unhurried efficiency with which the attendants got the incoming patient out of the vehicle and on to the trolley. As the man was wheeled by him, the sergeant looked down. There had been considerable violence here, he saw with a small shock. One eye was closed by a huge and purple swelling, the lips were cracked and bleeding, the nose looked as if it might be broken and the open mouth through which bloody spittle bubbled revealed at least two broken teeth.
The still-functioning eye touched Wield’s face in passing and for a second registered something other than pain. The reaction suddenly brought the damaged individual features into a single focus and Wield felt a second shock, stronger than the first.
It was Ron Ludlam.
He followed the trolley through the automatic doors. One of the ambulance men was talking to the girl on reception.
‘Excuse me,’ interrupted Wield. ‘What happened to him?’
When he reinforced his question with his warrant card, the ambulance man said, ‘Fell down stairs.’
‘Eh?’
‘That’s what he says, mate. And that’s what his sister says. I just bring ’em in.’
‘His sister. That’d be Mrs Pickersgill, right? Where’s she?’
‘Coming on later, she said. It was her that rang us. She was very upset.’
‘Not upset enough to come with you, though?’ said Wield.
‘Mebbe she had things to do, baby to feed, old mother to look after. Like I said, I just bring ’em in.’
Wield now went after the trolley which, after a bit of trial and error, he found in one of the examination cubicles.
A nurse was talking to the second ambulance man and taking down details. It struck Wield that they seemed to spend rather a lot of time taking down details but he supposed it was necessary for them to know what they were dealing with.
Again his warrant card worked and he leaned over the recumbent figure.
‘Ron,’ he said.
The eye flickered recognition if not welcome.
‘What happened, Ron?’
The tongue moved like a blind animal in the ruined mouth. He caught the word stairs.
‘Ho ho. Come on, Ron, Frankie did this, didn’t he?’
There was a vigorous shaking of the head which must have caused considerable pain and Ludlam even managed to raise himself up on his elbow and say with a hard-won clarity. ‘I fell down stairs.’
‘All right, take it easy. Let’s have a look at you.’
The doctor had arrived. Wield found himself eased out into the corridor. Not that he resisted much. If Ron in this state was determined not to put the finger on his brother-in-law, his mind must have been very firmly made up. Presumably Janey had passed on the information Wield had left with her that morning. Presumably Frankie had blown his gasket. Presumably it was fear of more of the same that was keeping Ludlam’s mouth shut.
Presumably … presumably …
He didn’t like the feel of it, Wield realized. If Ron had shot his mouth off in his present state, then recanted like mad when wiser counsel returned with health, that might have made sense. This way, there had to be something else, some extra pressure. Something.
He thought of ringing George Headingley and suggesting he should send a man round to see Pickersgill. It was after all the Spinks’s warehouse case that was likely to be involved here.
Instead, knowing he was ripe for an excuse to get away from the hospital but unable to resist the temptation, he checked Dave Lee’s status, which was alive and well but unconscious, and headed for the car park. As he drove out, a taxi came in. There was a woman alone in the back and he thought he recognized Janey Pickersgill. That cleared the ground nicely, he thought.
It took a lot of ringing at the doorbell to get any reply. Finally Pickersgill’s face scowled out through a span about six inches wide.
‘What do you want?’ he demanded.
‘You,’ said Wield promptly. ‘Better let me in, Frankie.’
Grudgingly he was admitted. Peckersgill was a long wiry man with a narrow face and restless eyes. He was wearing his working clothes – jeans and a white sweat shirt. Wield guessed that he had arrived home just as Janey was confronting her brother with the accusation that he’d fingered Frankie for the whisky job. Given time, she might have decided not to tell her husband, but she’d have been unable to miss lashing out at her brother first. Once Frankie picked up what was going on, he would have been unstoppable.
‘I’ve just been talking to Ron,’ said Wield. ‘Oh yes. No need to look surprised. They called us right away when they heard what had happened to him.’
‘Heard? Heard what?’
‘That’s right, Frankie. I said heard. He’s been chatting away as fast as he can through the broken teeth.’
‘What’s he say, then?’ asked Pickersgill defiantly.
For answer Wield grabbed his wrists, turned the hands over and struck the bruised and swelling knuckles together.
‘You’ll find it hard to hold a steering-wheel,’ he said. ‘Still, you probably won’t have to for a while.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’ demanded Pickersgill. ‘What’s all this about Ron, anyway? I’ve just got home this minute. I had a bit of an accident with my hands, that’s all.’
‘Fell down stairs as well, did you? It doesn’t matter anyway, Frankie. Assault and battery’s the least of your troubles, son.’
Pickersgill tried to pull his hands away but Wield’s grip was unbreakable.
‘That’s right, Frankie. Ron’s gone all the way. You didn’t think he wouldn’t, did you? I mean, he’s done it once, hasn’t he, so why not again? So now there’s just our Janey to alibi you and you know what her word’s worth after last time.’
Pickersgill’s reaction was not what he’d expected. Incredulity first, then simple bewilderment, then something not far off amusement.
‘You’re telling me he says it was me that got into Spinks’s warehouse?’ he said. ‘You want me to believe he’s got the nerve to try that? You’ll have to do a lot better than that, Mr Wield!’
I shall indeed, thought Wield, trying desperately to interpret this unforeseen turn. I shall indeed.
And he did. It was stupidly simple.
‘It’s the other way round, isn’t it, Frankie?’ he said softly. ‘It’s not been him alibi-ing you, but you alibi-ing him.’
He let go of the hands. He had no need of contact now. He had a stronger, better kind of grip on Pickersgill, the grip of a charge he could make stick.
‘You lied about him being here that night. That’s obstruction, Frankie. At the very least, we’ve got you for obstruction.’
The long thin face was sullen and uncertain.
‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ he said.
It’s Janey, thought Wield. Janey’s told him the beating was enough. But it’s a long way from being enough in Frankie’s eyes.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’d better come down to the nick with me, Frankie.’
‘What the hell for?’
‘Just to keep you out of the way, mainly,’ said Wield. ‘Though we’ll think of something better for your brief. You’ll need a brief, Frankie. You see, after I’ve shut you up, I’m going back to the hospital where I’ll tell Ron you’ve shopped him for the Spinks job. Now, I reckon he’s going to tell me you were the other man on that job.’
‘Me! Do a job with that cowboy? You know that’s not on, Mr Wield!’
‘Mebbe I do, mebbe I don’t. Who was the second man then, Frankie? Come on, lad. You know the watchman’s dead. You don’t want to be mixed up in this any more than you have to. Who was he?’
Again the unexpected reaction. A sort of triumphant amusement emerging in a raucous rush of laughter which almost drowned the noise of a door opening.
Almost.
Wield spun round and darted into the long narrow entrance hall. The front door was shut but at the other end the door which led into the kitchen was wide open and through it Wield could see a figure fumbling at the exit to the back yard.
It must have been locked. It was only half open when Wield reached him, hands flat and stiff like butcher’s cleavers. The figure turned, his hands raised also. But one look at the pale and frightened face told Wield that the only intention here was a terrified defence.
Lowering his own arms, he smiled, the smile playing round his pitted face like a butterfly on a slag heap.
In response the other relaxed also and let his hands fall slowly from before his youthful anxious features.
‘Hello, Tommy,’ said Wield.
Chapter 19
Statement of Thomas Arthur Maggs made at Mid-Yorkshire Police HQ in the presence of Detective-Sergeant V. K. Wield.
‘I’m sorry about all the trouble I’ve caused. I didn’t mean it but there didn’t seem much else to do. It was all on top of me and Ron said I’d be dropping him in the shit if I told the truth but likely I would have done if the watchman hadn’t died. I want whoever killed Brenda to get caught even though whatever they do to him won’t be enough. But I didn’t want to go to prison myself not for murder which is what I knew I’d get done for even though I never touched the man. That was Ron. I know it doesn’t make any difference because I was there anyway, but it was Ron not me that hit him.
‘It was all Ron’s idea really. Brenda should have met me in the Bay Tree at eight o’clock that night only she didn’t turn up. I wasn’t all that surprised because we’d had a big row the previous night. It was about how far we should go now we’d got engaged. We’d just got engaged and I thought we could do it, I mean, go all the way now that it was fixed we were going to marry, but she wouldn’t. Not inside her. Everything else, but not inside her and I got a bit annoyed and so did she. So when she didn’t turn up, I thought she was just carrying on the row.
‘Ron was there and we drank together till nearly nine. It was very crowded by then and I was a bit pissed off with being stood up so we went off to have a drive around and see what we could find to do. Ron had a bottle of whisky and we thought we might find some spare and go for a drive. We looked in a couple of places but there wasn’
t much on and we ended up parked alongside Spinks’s warehouse having a drink when Ron said why shouldn’t we do it? So we did. It was just a bit of fun till the watchman came. It was dead easy getting in and we’d found a box full of pocket transistors when this old fellow comes through the door, waving a torch. Ron hit him and pushed him over and we ran. We only had a couple of transistors apiece but it didn’t matter because like I say it still seemed just a bit of fun.
‘But when the car broke down on the way home, we got worried. So Ron stuffed all the transistors up his bomber jacket and he took off with them in case anyone should come along asking questions. The coppers rolled up just a few minutes later so I told them I’d been out with my girl-friend and she’d set off home by herself when the car broke down. Then they tested me and took me in for a blood test so I had to keep on lying especially as I heard they’d found out about the break-in while I was there and the watchman was badly hurt.
‘Next morning I tried to ring Brenda at the bank to square things with her, but she wasn’t there. And when the police came round to the garage later on and told me she’d disappeared, I was worried sick. Ron said I’d better stick to my story. It’d be daft to say something that incriminated us, then find that Brenda had just gone off somewhere in the huff. I didn’t think she had, though. She wasn’t that sort of girl. When they came round and told me they’d found her, I was so sick I thought I’d die. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I wasn’t thinking at all. I just wanted to curl up. Ron said to keep quiet still because by now the watchman was critical. But it wasn’t just that. I just couldn’t think of doing anything because all I could think of was Brenda.
‘Then the watchman died and I was a bit better by then and wondering what I should do. But when he died it was as bad as ever, so I took off in the car. It got me as far as Watford Gap, then it broke down. I sat around for a bit drinking tea and thinking of hitching a ride to London. But in the end I just crossed the motorway and got a lift back north. I’ve been living with Ron round at his sister’s house since then. I didn’t know what to do after the fight but Janey said it would be all right, Ron had had it coming to him, but it was over now and nothing more would happen. Then Mr Wield, Sergeant Wield that is, came round and I listened and I could see that he was on to us and I decided I’d better get away again.
A Killing Kindness Page 17