by Frank Lean
‘I only want to speak to you,’ I shouted. ‘I’m not here to do you any harm.’
‘I’m going to end it all,’ Perriss wailed. ‘I’ve had enough.’
The door was locked but it yielded to my shoulder. Perriss was behind his desk. As I burst in he snapped a double-barrelled shotgun shut. There was an open box of cartridges on the desk. Perriss was sweating and crying and his hair was all over the place. There was something phoney about it all, though. To me it looked like ham acting, a part he’d played before. He levelled the gun at me. I kicked the door shut behind me.
‘Good!’ I shouted. ‘You might as well shoot me as well as yourself because I don’t know what you were on about at my office.’
This seemed to take him by surprise.
‘You’ve got a cheek,’ he sobbed, lowering the gun. ‘If Carlyle’s sent you for money you can tell him he’s squeezed me dry. There’s no more money or anything else. It’s all I can do to keep the firm from the receivers.’
‘Why the hell should I want money, and what’s that got to do with Carlyle?’
‘You’re in with him, aren’t you? I saw him patting you as if you were his favourite lap-dog.’
‘I don’t work for him,’ I said indignantly.
‘You soon will do, I’ve seen it before. He sucks people in. I made one mistake years ago and he’s used it to bleed me ever since. You’ve given him copies of that stuff, haven’t you?’
Perriss was drowning in a sea of self-pity. He kept toying with the shotgun. I began to wonder if his sense of drama needed a violent conclusion to the proceedings. Behind me I could hear noises as people pounded up to the office. I turned and pulled a cupboard against the door.
‘No one’s coming in here until you tell me just what’s been going on,’ I announced. ‘Either use that gun or put it down.’
He lowered the gun.
It took thirty minutes to calm Perriss down. Brandon Carlyle had been blackmailing him for money and information off and on for twenty years. Seeing me with Carlyle at the New Year’s party had tipped him over the edge. By the time I left, the factory nurse had him stretched out on a couch with his shirt off. He accepted that I wasn’t a blackmailer. At least I think he did. When I reached the foot of the stairs, a buzz of whispered conversation came from the office area, and I could have sworn that I heard the word ‘paedophile’ more than once. No one stopped me leaving but I got some curious looks. Perriss’s vice probably wasn’t as big a secret as he believed.
I drove back to the office by a different route. That isn’t difficult in Trafford Park where there are so many roundabouts and all the roads look the same. By the time I’d threaded my way out of the giant industrial estate my mood hadn’t become calmer. If anything it was worse. My feelings against Marti and Brandon Carlyle were similar to those of Insull Perriss against me. When I got to the office I summoned Michael Coe and Peter Snyder to my desk.
‘But Dave, er, Mr Cunane, they’re on other enquiries,’ Celeste protested when I told her.
‘Page them now, Celeste,’ I ordered.
‘This means you’ll have to find other people to cover the work they’re supposed to be doing,’ she argued.
‘Fine, you do that,’ I said.
Celeste began rummaging noisily in the papers on her desk. I found the sound extremely irritating. ‘And when you’ve finished that you can phone the estate agent and see if there are any first-floor offices available in this street. I can’t go on working down here, people get the impression that I’m your assistant.’
‘Yes, Mr Cunane,’ she said, with a smile.
‘It doesn’t need to be anything grandiose, just private.’
‘Right.’
There must be some people who enjoy being manipulated by the likes of Brandon Carlyle and Marti King. The problem is, I’m not one of them. OK, I’d let things slide. Apart from the letter to the Home Secretary I hadn’t made any moves in the Vince King case. I was busy, I was recovering from the ‘accident’ and there were no obvious leads to follow apart from Devereaux-Almond – and he was no longer on the scene.
That letter, though, was like a stone thrown into a still pond. It had produced ripples. If the Manchester police knew about it then it was safe to assume that Brandon Carlyle also knew. Hence the invitation to the New Year party where the patriarch did his best to show me that he had tender feelings for me while Marti tried blackmail. Brandon was offering the carrot and Marti was offering the stick.
As far as I was concerned they’d over-reached themselves. One or other might have been amusing, but both were too much. The sheer nerve of the pair was enough to convince me that, even if not innocent, Vince King deserved to have his case reconsidered. There must be something they were desperate to hide, and I’d never be safe until it was out in the open. The family obviously needed copper-riveted guarantees from me; guarantees that I couldn’t give without becoming their tame spaniel. Insull Perriss had already wrongly guessed that I was hand-in-glove with Brandon. How long would it be before I was faced with that as my only alternative? How long before Brandon decided that I was a detail that needed tidying up just as Lou Olley and Sam Levy had been tidied up?
I could either reopen the investigation and get the Vince King case finally sorted before it was too late or I could knuckle under. My decision had already been made when I told Janine that I wasn’t going to phone Marti. James McMahon surveying matters from his lofty position had decided, no doubt correctly, and under advice from his civil servants, that evidence that King’s solicitor was involved in some kind of chicanery wasn’t enough to reopen the case. So I’d have to find evidence that was sufficient to convince. The thing was in official channels now. It would be awkward for McMahon to ignore new evidence if I could find some.
With Devereaux-Almond out of the picture, dead or fled, that left Dr Sterling Sameem and the bent copper, Mick Jones, as the only possible sources of new information about the case. I had to get to them before they disappeared like the Rochdale solicitor.
I decided to put Snyder on to finding Dr Sameem and Coe on to ex-Detective Inspector Jones. It was better that way. Coe was a single man, so it would be easier for him to fly out to Spain than Snyder whose wife in Cheadle Hulme expected regular hours. I briefed them when they turned up and neither thought there was anything unusual about the jobs. When I’d seen them on their way I took myself off to Bolton to confer with Paddy. Celeste asked me who was to be billed for Coe and Snyder’s time.
‘Me,’ I said, ‘and while you’re at it, Celeste, I’d like you to give your solicitor cousin Marvin a ring. I want him to write an official letter to the Home Secretary for me.’
My father wasn’t looking particularly well when I arrived. He was stretched out on a sofa, which was very unusual for him, and he was wearing his dressing gown. Normally by mid-morning he’d have been at work on some project for hours.
‘Talk to him,’ my mother said, ‘he’s in a funny mood.’
Paddy tossed the Daily Telegraph to one side when I walked into the room. ‘Load of bloody rubbish!’ he said.
‘What, the Telegraph? I thought it was your bible?’
‘I can’t bear to read newspapers these days. Some of these journalists just have no idea how this country’s really run.’
‘I’m taking up the case of Vince King again,’ I said. ‘I’m certain he was fitted up and the only question is by whom, the Carlyles or your lot.’
This announcement didn’t produce the explosion of anger that I’d been expecting.
‘I expect he was,’ Paddy said wearily. ‘I expect Carlyle and Jones both had a hand in it, but that’s not why King’s still inside.’
‘Why then?’
‘I’ve already told you. I can’t tell you things that are covered by the Official Secrets Act.’
‘I don’t see how that applies. We’re talking about a criminal case here.’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Even though someone’s out t
o kill me? They’ve already had a damn good try.’
‘David, you brought this on yourself, and others besides you would be in danger if I told you. It isn’t as if you aren’t used to people getting rough with you.’
‘Getting rough! They tried to run me into a motorway bridge.’
Paddy shook his head but he didn’t speak.
‘Great! So my own father won’t help.’
‘David, no one’s forcing you to take up the cause of Vince King. If he didn’t kill a copper he’s done plenty of other things.’
‘Enough to serve more than twenty years for?’
‘Plenty of safe-crackers got that and more in my young day.’
‘That may ease your conscience but it doesn’t do anything for me,’ I snapped.
I walked out. My mother came out with me to the car and I told her what had happened. Perhaps I was expecting sympathy, but I didn’t get any.
‘And what does Janine think of all this?’ was her reply.
‘Janine? She agrees with the former detective chief superintendent. She wants me to drop the whole thing.’
‘There you are,’ Eileen said. ‘You’re just like your father. Peas from the same pod! You’re both stubborn to the point of stupidity and always ready to pursue a principle no matter who gets hurt. I always knew you were too like each other ever to get on. That’s why I was glad you didn’t join the police. I think you’d have quarrelled even more than you have done.’
‘Huh!’ I muttered.
‘That’s right!’ she said. ‘Proof of the pudding. You don’t like the truth about yourself any more than your father does.’
‘Thanks.’
Later that afternoon I got a message from Michael Coe. He’d had a lucky break. He’d found the address in Marbella where ex-DI Mick Jones was living only to discover that Jones was no longer among the living. Just two months previously the ex-copper had been killed by a hit and run driver while crossing a street he used every day when he went for his morning papers. The car, which was stolen, was found burnt out in a side street six blocks away. The Guardia Civil didn’t hold out much hope of finding the culprit and had it listed as an accident.
It was one of those days. When I reached my flat that evening I found a pile of junk heaped up against the door. I recognised all the objects belonging to me that had somehow ended up in Janine’s flat: cups, plates, and odd bits of underwear. She’d even dumped the kids’ cycling kit.
I went to her door. There was no reply so I tried my key. She’d changed the locks. I tried shouting through the letter box but the only answer was an echoing silence. It wasn’t until I went down to look up at her windows that I noticed the For Sale sign.
Janine had finally moved out.
48
I SPENT THE next two days at home feeling sorry for myself. The business ran itself. I was coming to the conclusion that things went better when I wasn’t around. Janine, as usual, had done a thorough job when it came to distancing herself from me. Phone calls to her office met with guarded replies and no information about her current whereabouts and it was similar, but worse, at the children’s school. There, the woman who answered gave me the distinct impression that she thought Janine was on the lam from a bout of domestic violence. My blood boiled and I longed to go and sort her out as I’d done with Insull Perriss, but there are limits. Schools are harder to get into than factories these days – anyway, what could I say? I was discarded but I wasn’t the children’s father. I had fewer rights than Henry Talbot.
I could have put someone on to tracing her but pride prevented me.
It was Celeste who brought me back to earth.
‘Are you coming into work today?’ she drawled over the phone on Thursday morning. ‘I mean, if you’re ill don’t bother, but Peter Snyder found that man you sent him to look for and he’d like to know what you want done next.’
‘So would I,’ I replied. ‘Tell him I’ll be in by ten.’
Dr Sterling Sameem was now a resident of an old people’s home in West Cheshire.
I decided that a hands-off approach was best. I sent Peter Snyder down to see the old man after briefing him for the best part of an hour. Then I did my best to get back into the groove. Somehow, it all seemed artificial. I found it hard to summon up the interest to talk to clients about their problems, but I forced myself, and by Friday afternoon it was getting easier. I was in no rush to hurry home – the prospect of an empty weekend yawned in front of me like a dark crevasse.
Peter had spent the best part of Thursday trying to persuade the staff at the nursing home to allow him in. On Friday, I sent him back for another attempt.
‘I can’t believe those people in West Cheshire,’ he said when he returned just after five. ‘It’s like you’re back in the Middle Ages. Half a mile away from the motorway and you’re in the bush.’
‘Come on, Peter.’
‘No, I mean it! Dense hedges and trees everywhere, and the natives! Wow! I don’t think some of them have ever seen a black guy. Talk about suspicious! This nursing home, Chalfont Hall? I think they thought I was casing the joint for a robbery, though what they’d have worth taking I don’t know. It’s a weird old Victorian building with everything in the wrong place, you know? Like somebody got the plans and read them upside down. The stairs lead up from a pantry next to the kitchen and the old folks get out into the garden through a window.’
‘French windows have been around a long time, Peter.’
‘No, that’s what I mean. It isn’t a French window. It’s an ordinary window in the dining room that they’ve got wooden steps up to and steps outside.’
‘What about Sameem?’
‘Right, sorry! It’s just that I’m not used to dealing with these natives. I saw Sameem. Funny thing is, with him it helped that I’m black . . . He’s actually an Irishman, funnily enough.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, sorry. I mean . . . anyway . . . he’s not one of these Cheshire bushmen – you know, the inbred ones with the single eye on their foreheads? He had a Lebanese father and Irish mother, was born and brought up in Ireland and worked in England all his life. The sister in charge reckons he has something she calls selective Alzheimer’s, meaning that he turns it on and off as it suits. Last month two guys came to see him and he cracked on that he couldn’t speak at all – didn’t know his own name, soiled himself while they were with him.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Very anxious to see him about a legal matter, something to do with his pension, the sister said . . . Anyway, Sameem turned on such a performance, crapping himself and gibbering and drooling, that they left after half an hour and haven’t been back. Very polite they were, she said.’
‘So he’s no use to us, then?’
‘Yes, he is! I told you . . . First he wanted to know if I was connected to the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, or the Carlyle Organisation. Very cagey he was, only opened up when I told him that I was representing the interests of Vince King. He was reassured because I’m black.’
‘You already said that.’
‘Sorry, boss, but it’s true. He wanted to talk about the King Case, especially about the carpet fibres which are supposed to prove that King was in the room where Musgrave and Fullalove got shot. It turns out that there was a bit of fiddling with the forensics.’
‘How come?’
‘Sameem testified that the fibres on King’s trainers were unique to a carpet in the room where the bodies were found – same dye, same weave, same shape and composition, etcetera, thus placing King at the murder scene, right?’
‘Right,’ I agreed.
‘Wrong!’ Snyder gasped excitedly. ‘That was only the first, provisional finding. DI Jones managed to lose the later finding, in which Sameem said that the first evidence was useless because A, the carpet wasn’t unique to the Post Office as first thought and B, King had a matching piece of carpet on the floor of his van!’
‘So why didn’t this come out at the tr
ial?’
‘Undue influence, guv!’
‘I’d rather you didn’t call me guv, we aren’t a police soap opera,’ I said snootily and regretted it as soon as I spoke. I sounded like a real stuffed shirt.
‘Only my joke, guv . . . er, Mr Cunane.’
‘Get on with it,’ I growled, to hide my embarrassment.
‘Sameem went to Salford all ready for the biggest fucking row of the century. He was going to get Jones fired for deliberately suppressing evidence. Instead Jones showed him some photographs in which Sameem was having a little kiss and a cuddle with a fifteen-year-old lad at a gay cruising area in Worsley. Jones threatened to do him for it unless he kept silent about the second finding.’
‘So he did?’
‘He did. Like you say, this wasn’t a police soap opera where everything comes right in the end. Sameem feels guilty now, claims he was the only support of a widowed mother and that he was ready to tell the truth at the trial if he’d been asked.’
‘But you’re not saying that the present Home Secretary, James McMahon, knew about this?’
‘Of course not, no more did the prosecution. All they knew was that fibres had been found on King’s shoes which matched those in the murder room. Sameem went into that witness box convinced he was going to be crucified. When the prosecution asked him if the fibres were identical he saved himself from perjury by saying they were similar. That was true, they were similar. Only they were from a roll of carpet that, far from being unique to the GPO, had been sold to thousands of customers. Sameem expected that McMahon would come down on him like a ton of bricks for using the word similar but he didn’t. He just said he had no further questions for the witness. Sameem says it’s all there in the transcript. McMahon must have thought attempting to shake Sameem would only strengthen the prosecution case.’
I leaned over to the filing cabinet where I had put the trial transcript and fished it out. It only took a moment to confirm what Peter Snyder had said.