Boiling Point

by Frank Lean

  Joyriders infest the Meadows but they usually come on scramble bikes or old bangers. I decided the incident wasn’t worth reporting to the police. I was alive and I still had my life to get on with.

  Full rush hour was getting under way when I jogged out of the Meadows and reached Edge Lane. Back at the flat I had another shower, grabbed a bowl of Corn Flakes and put on my grey suit, then joined all the other grey men heading towards the inner city. There was no sign of Janine and her little brood.

  When I got to the office Celeste was waiting on the doorstep.

  ‘What’s this?’ I joked. ‘Are you after promotion?’

  ‘How did you guess?’ she asked in all seriousness. ‘I’ve enrolled for a course at college. I want to be a legal executive.’

  ‘Does that mean Pimpernel Investigations will be losing you soon?’ I asked, carefully keeping any suspicion of eagerness out of my voice.

  ‘Oh no, Mr Cunane, I’ll have to qualify first, but don’t worry, I won’t need much time off. Just when there are exams and things.’

  ‘Anything I can do to help, just give me a shout,’ I said pleasantly. ‘You know I need you here.’

  My feeling of benevolence towards the world didn’t last for long. I sat at my desk and flicked through the morning mail that Celeste brought in. It was the usual stuff except for a begging letter from a psychic in Barrow-in-Furness who offered to solve any case I was involved in.

  ‘File this under “Nutters”,’ I told Celeste.

  Then I sat back. I had an appointment at one-thirty with the claims office of a major insurance company to collect the fee for a fraudulent claim I’d exposed, then the day was my own. I put my feet up on the desk and folded my hands behind my head. By rights this should be an easy, carefree day. Physical stress had been eased by the run along the Mersey, but like the proverbial small cloud on the horizon I couldn’t lay aside my unease about Vince King as easily as Janine had suggested. The evidence against him was just too complete. Here was a man who had pulled many spectacular jobs, always without violence, and never leaving a clue. Then it all goes to pot. He kills his accomplice, Musgrave, who wouldn’t have been suspected, and a copper; and then he’s found unconscious and smothered in forensic evidence linking him to the murder.

  Solicitor Devereaux-Almond’s letter mentioned procedural errors at the trial, but that didn’t take me very far.

  There was only one person I could ask whether the whole thing was a set-up: my own father, Paddy. My stomach started tying itself in knots again.

  I picked up the phone and informed Paddy that I would be paying a visit.

  ‘Get in touch with me on the mobile if you need me,’ I told Celeste. ‘I’ll be in Bolton.’

  ‘Shall I start timing you for expenses?’ she asked, taking out the large diary we used to work my hours on various cases.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say no, but then I remembered what Janine had said about Marti’s expensive clothes, and of course Devereaux-Almond and McMahon had all received their fees for the King case long ago. Why shouldn’t I? It would make it easier to explain to Janine.

  ‘Yeah, normal out-of-office expenses,’ I said.

  They used to say that the fastest way out of Manchester is through the pub door but the road to Bolton is pretty quick. My route took me along the same multi-lane motorway that had recently taken me to Leeds and I thought of Marti and her little deception as I drove over the Barton Bridge with the green Egyptian-Greco-Roman-Byzantine-Michelangelo-Wren, no-influence-spared domes of the Trafford Centre on my right.

  Leaving the scented breezes of Trafford behind, I turned off the orbital motorway for the Bolton intersection. There was a gradient all the way, reminding me that, once upon a time, this was the place where the mills met the hills.

  I drove past close-packed pie shops and chip shops, curry houses and chapels converted into mosques. Red brick buildings gave way to grey stone ones and then I was out on the empty country road that cuts through a spur of the West Pennine Moors. This route weaves its way across ravaged fells, ancient sites of manufacturing, now reclaimed for reservoirs and farms. The hillsides are pocked with old coal workings and there are clumps of cottages that once housed weavers.

  The fold my parents share with a dozen other romantically minded townies consists of six or so cottages strewn along a rutted track which loops steeply down the hillside, meanders for a mile or so, and then rejoins the main road.

  The individual who ‘farms’ this land, Jake Carless, offered me a mixture of grunts and scowls as I crawled past him.

  Paddy was at his door. He was rigged out in ‘country clothing’ of such profound authenticity that it made the two-hundred-year-old stone doorway that framed him look like a cheap stage set. Immensely strong Timberland shoes, massively thick moleskin trousers, a leather jacket and pullover whose combined chunkiness would have made a mediaeval archer wonder whether he needed sharper arrows; the whole ensemble was intimidating. I felt that if the man within was annihilated, the clothes would go marching right on.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ he thundered as I got out of the car.

  ‘Vince King. I went to Leeds to see him.’

  ‘Meddling again!’ Paddy exploded. His face turned an ominous shade of purple. My mother appeared and looked at him nervously.

  ‘Calm yourself, dear. I’m sure our David has a good reason,’ she said soothingly.

  ‘Good reason! Our David be damned! King should rot till he dies. That young copper was only twenty-six.’

  ‘So there wasn’t any doubt about the conviction?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘Doubt? There’s always doubt about a conviction. Fifty per cent of the time at any trial is spent by highly paid know-all lawyers kicking up the dust and trying to raise doubts.’

  ‘His solicitor, Morton Devereaux-Almond, has written to Marti. He reckons that King’s brief, James McMahon, was incompetent . . .’

  ‘Marti? Oh, it’s Marti now, is it? Daughter of a bloody murderer, last in a line of criminals going back to God knows when? When we had you baptised we should have given you the middle name of “Fickle”.’

  ‘And your parents should have called you Blockhead,’ I shouted back angrily. I could feel the heat rising to my face like steam from a kettle. ‘I’m not allowed to mention a woman’s name without you assuming I’m bedding her.’

  ‘And aren’t you?’ Paddy demanded with a cynical leer.

  ‘David, we’re only worried about Janine. We wouldn’t like you to split up. You know how fond we are of the children,’ my mother interjected with a placatory smile.

  ‘How many times must I tell you that Janine isn’t interested in any kind of relationship that you’d recognise as normal,’ I spluttered. ‘I’ve offered her marriage, I’ve offered her cohabitation on any terms she cares to choose, I’ve even offered to become a human doormat and let her wipe her feet on me every time she comes in the house if that’s what pleases her.’

  ‘You must have done something to upset her,’ Paddy persisted. ‘This time last year she was ready to settle down with you.’

  ‘She was at a low ebb then, but she’s riding high now. She doesn’t want to be permanently involved with a sleazy private eye. In fact, I doubt if there’s a man anywhere who could fill her exacting requirements.’

  ‘Feeling sorry for yourself, are you? Is that why you’re consoling yourself with this Marti?’

  ‘I’m not consoling myself with anyone. How many times do I have to tell you? I only got involved because she asked me to check out her father’s case. I do have to work for a living, you know.’

  This was greeted with withering scorn from the man in the rustic rig. My mother gave me a more sympathetic hearing. ‘It is true that some of Janine’s articles do seem to be a bit one-sided,’ she said tentatively.

  ‘What do you mean, woman?’ Paddy grated, unwilling to be argued out of his determined stand.

  I laughed in his face. Janine would have eaten him for b
reakfast but my mother belonged to an older, much more patient breed of females. Nevertheless, I knew there was steel in her backbone. There must have been for her to have put up with Paddy for so long.

  ‘I mean, Paddy Blockhead Cunane,’ Eileen said coldly, ‘that Janine takes a militant position in the sex war and that perhaps what our David is telling us is the truth.’

  Paddy looked at Eileen and then he looked at me. He shook his head. ‘What the hell!’ he muttered. ‘I’m going to repair the garage roof.’ Eileen tugged his armoured sleeve.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she said firmly. ‘You’re going to stay here and help our David. If he wants to work for Marti King she’s as much entitled to his help as anyone. The poor girl’s had a hard life, and anyway, you did the garage roof last week.’

  Paddy sat down heavily and let out a long sigh.

  ‘Let’s hear it,’ he said finally.

  I must have been doing a spot of heavy breathing myself because Eileen darted out into her kitchen and returned with cups of coffee in the time it took my blood pressure to return to normal.

  ‘You were on the Manchester force when King was convicted,’ I said, struggling to keep my voice even. ‘Did you hear the faintest whisper that there was anything iffy about it?’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe these days,’ Paddy said sadly, shaking his head. ‘Every time I open the paper there’s some case at the Court of Appeal. In those days before PACE a lot depended on the integrity of the officers taking statements, doing interviews. We were trusted then . . . What was it the Lord Chief Justice said when he threw out the Birmingham Six appeal – “wholly incredible” that the police had conspired to make a case against them? I’d have agreed with him. We thought the system was basically straight – but now, who knows?’

  ‘Dad, did Jones fit King up and kill the other copper?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said, with his chin stuck out like a chest of drawers. ‘Mick Jones was more interested in keeping villains out of jail than sending them there.’

  ‘But he must have wanted to get some convictions if only to boost his own credibility. Is there any chance that he, and not King, might have shot those two men?’

  ‘A few years ago anyone suggesting that English coppers went round shooting people would have been certified, but these days? Your guess is as good as mine. I’d have thought it was unlikely, and even now you’d have a job getting the Appeal Court to believe it. This goes a bit further than firming up “verbals”. Though, God knows, they’ll believe more or less anything else about police corruption.’

  ‘OK,’ I agreed. ‘Forget that. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that some person or persons unknown did the killings.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Paddy said sceptically, ‘they’ve done a hell of a lot of crimes recently.’

  ‘It was up to the Crown to prove King guilty, not up to him to prove he was innocent, and King’s solicitor seems to be suggesting that they didn’t play by the rules at his trial.’

  ‘I see,’ Paddy said with a grin, ‘the old incompetent defence plea. You do know that they’ve widened the grounds for appeal against conviction? The verdict’s got to be unsafe, and if you can persuade them that King’s trial lawyer didn’t get the court to look at some piece of evidence they might . . .’

  ‘It’s not just that. Devereaux-Almond says an incident occurred in the trial.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘During a lunch break towards the end of the trial one of the jurors, a woman, was in a pub near Preston Crown Court. As she was waiting at the bar she overheard McMahon talking to Devereaux-Almond. He was saying that King’s only chance was to plead guilty and try to cop a manslaughter sentence because his military training made him act instinctively when attacked. Devereaux-Almond was telling him that there was no chance that King would ever agree to that.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘The juror reported what she’d heard to a court usher. The judge called in McMahon and the Crown prosecutor. Devereaux-Almond expected McMahon to come out saying that the judge had ordered a retrial but he didn’t. He said he’d agreed with the judge and the prosecutor that his remarks weren’t material and the woman would be instructed to disregard them. The trial went ahead. Devereaux-Almond feels that McMahon was certain King was guilty and that he didn’t press the police or the forensic scientist hard enough.’

  Paddy pulled a wry face. ‘Hmmm . . . nice one, that. Interesting that McMahon went onto become Home Secretary.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So, although you don’t any longer have to prove that the lawyer was “flagrantly incompetent” you’d have a hard job convincing them McMahon was no good in view of his present job.’

  ‘What about evidence? Devereaux-Almond felt that the forensic scientist, Dr Sameem, was let off very lightly by McMahon.’

  ‘All that means is that McMahon must have felt that Sameem had some other damning evidence that it was better not to draw the jury’s attention to. Listen, David, you’re on a hiding to nothing digging into a twenty-year-old case. Whatever she’s paying you, it isn’t enough.’

  I must have smiled.

  ‘She’s not paying you! So forget it, you daft bugger! Anyone who’ll do owt for nowt will steal, that’s what they used to say round here. Let King get the Criminal Cases Review Commission interested. They’re supposed to check up on these hopeless cases.’

  ‘He won’t ask them.’

  ‘So why should you bother? Just being contrary and awkward again, aren’t you?’

  ‘No I’m not!’

  ‘Oh, yes! You’ll do anything to put the police in a bad light.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘What is it then? You want to succeed with Mick Jones where I failed, is that it?’

  I shrugged my shoulders and started to leave. The truth was I didn’t exactly know why I was getting myself involved with King. The old man might even be right and my motive might be to put one over on him. All I knew was that I’d been asked to help and I couldn’t come up with a convincing reason why I shouldn’t.

  I kissed my mother, made an excuse and left.

  13

  ‘OWT FOR NOWT’ was how my father put it. ‘In for a penny in for a pound’ was my own reaction. Once out of the parental cottage and back on the old rambling track I pulled out Morton V. E. Devereaux-Almond’s letter. His address was in Rochdale, so I decided to pay him a visit as I was already in the Pennine margins.

  I took the long way round the lane to the main road back into Bolton. When I neared the town centre I veered off towards Bury. My journey lay through Fairfield and Jericho and onto Norden, a newish suburb on the northern side of Rochdale.

  There was a shiny new top-of-the-range Daimler saloon parked outside the double garage at Devereaux-Almond’s detached neo-Georgian red brick house. The house was set in a substantial garden, looking across fields towards a reservoir and the hills beyond. Nice, though my inclinations tend towards the flatter and greener perspectives of North Cheshire. It can be hell in winter up here in the hills, not that climate seemed to bother Almond. His garden was like a lush green oasis, with well-tended lawns and flower beds at the front and a mass of shrubbery and more lawns at the back.

  I approached the front door and rang the bell. The porch was flanked by two small brass cannon of the type they use to start yacht races, and I wondered if they were legal under the new fire-arms law. They gave the house a colonial flavour. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the door had been opened by a turbaned Indian soldier rather than the faded, bitter-faced elderly woman who did open it.

  ‘Can I see Mr Devereaux-Almond about a matter affecting one of his former clients?’ I enquired, enunciating the many vowels in the solicitor’s name with particular care. She scowled as if my request was an invitation to become a Jehovah’s Witness. I quickly passed her one of my embossed business cards. The doubtful expression didn’t lessen as she squinted at it. When she raised the card to her eyes I noted that
she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and didn’t seem to be quite as richly clad as one might have expected the chatelaine of such a villa to be. She was wearing a white housecoat, more like an overall really, over a faded floral dress.

  ‘Are you police?’ she asked with an aggrieved air. ‘He’s finished with all that now.’

  So much for business cards, I thought.

  ‘No, it’s about a letter Mr Devereaux-Almond recently wrote to a client of mine. Her name is King but Mr Devereaux-Almond might know her better as Mrs Marti Carlyle.’

  The Carlyle name produced a reaction. Her eyes went up into her head and then she studied my card again with a deepening frown on her face. Her hand had never left the door handle and she still appeared to be considering the possibility of slamming the door in my face. Eventually she made her decision.

  ‘I’ll see if he’s at home,’ she said reluctantly. ‘You wait here.’

  ‘Outside?’

  ‘You’d better come in,’ she muttered, waving me to a chair in the hall with a gesture of such economy that further verbal expression was unnecessary.

  The hallway didn’t appear to get much use. The furniture was all new, laid out like a showroom. My eye was taken by the one incongruous feature – a large picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in a massive dark frame by the entrance of one of the reception rooms. Mandatory for a nineteenth-century nunnery, it was as out of place here as a swear-box in a Royal Marines barracks. I mulled over the incongruity. The other pictures were prints of Lakeland scenes in light-coloured frames. Possibly Mr Devereaux-Almond was a man with a tender concern for his spiritual roots. The Sacred Heart was definitely making a statement about something.

  The door through which the grim-looking skivvy/drudge/wife/partner had vanished opened and she popped her head round it. Her washed-out blue eyes studied me appraisingly. I was sure she missed nothing of my thoughts about the religious icon.

  ‘He’s transplanting.’