by J M Gregson
Tucker couldn’t remember anyone calling him percipient before, but he supposed it was a compliment. ‘Don’t try to bullshit me, Peach! I handed this investigation over to you with a brisk start made and house-to-house enquiries already under way. I want to know what progress you’ve made.’
‘A brisk start? I see, sir. Well, I’m afraid the house-to-house has produced nothing. There aren’t too many houses around Claughton Towers and their occupants tend to be safely indoors during the hours of darkness.’
Tommy Bloody Tucker ignored this, as he ignored most things which made unpleasant hearing. ‘You have a huge team on this, Peach. I expect results. Jim O’Connor was a well-known and popular figure because of his rugby past. He was also a successful local businessman. This is a high-profile case. I’m having to hold radio and television at bay, as well as the press. I need something to feed to them.’
‘You could tell them that O’Connor was under investigation by the Inland Revenue for tax evasion and by the Drug Squad for supplying and selling illegal substances, sir.’
‘I can’t go saying things like that about a murder victim. It wouldn’t be good PR. You don’t understand the importance of our image among the public, Peach.’
‘No, sir. I’m more concerned with putting villains behind bars, sir.’
‘Don’t take that line with me, Peach. It won’t work.’
Percy reflected that putting away criminals was hardly a controversial line, save in the strange world of Tommy Bloody Tucker. ‘The wife wasn’t able to provide us with anything useful, sir. It’s my view that Sarah O’Connor isn’t grief-stricken by this death, but I could be wrong.’
‘Ah! You may have stumbled upon something vital here, Peach. A woman could have done this, you know. It takes no great strength to pull the trigger on a pistol.’
‘Yes, sir. That thought had occurred to me. I think DS Northcott is aware of it, also.’
‘Bear it in mind, that’s all. You can’t trust women, you know.’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve become aware of that, during my twenty years of service. However, not many of them possess Smith & Wesson revolvers which can blow a man’s head to bits. Nevertheless, it seems there were several such weapons around O’Connor and his henchmen. It wouldn’t have been too difficult for his wife to get her hands on one, if she had a mind to murder her man. So far, we have no evidence that she had.’
‘The press are beginning to moan about our failure to protect the public. You know the kind of stuff – anarchy is stalking our streets unchecked, that sort of thing.’
‘I do sir, yes.’ For a tiny moment, these two very different men were united in the face of an unfeeling media. Then Peach said, ‘O’Connor employed his own muscle. It didn’t protect him very well, did it?’
‘His own muscle?’ Tucker did his goldfish impression, but on this occasion it merely irritated Percy.
‘I interviewed a man called Steve Tracey this morning, sir. He’s been in charge of Jim O’Connor’s security for the last four years.’
‘Security?’
‘It’s the current euphemism for enforcers, sir. Tracey and his men beat up people who tried to obstruct O’Connor’s activities.’
‘That’s illegal, Peach.’
‘Your grasp of technicalities is as accurate as ever, sir. The problem is that we can never get witnesses to speak up in court, sir. There have been some bad beatings, but the victims aren’t prepared to stand in the witness box and point out the people who put them in hospital.’
‘This man Tracey sounds like a dangerous man, Peach. You should regard him as a serious candidate for this crime.’
‘Thank you, sir. Your overview of the crime scene in our area is as useful as it ever was.’
Tucker looked at him suspiciously over his rimless glasses. ‘There were a lot of people at that dinner, Peach.’
‘Sixty-two, sir. No doubt you considered that, before you decided to dismiss them to their homes on Monday night.’
Tucker decided to ignore this; he had long ago developed a deaf ear to turn towards unpleasant facts. ‘There must be other possibilities as well as the two you’ve mentioned. I learned long ago that one mustn’t jump to conclusions when engaged on a murder investigation.’
‘Another penetrating finding for your juniors, sir. We haven’t ruled out the idea that this may still be a domestic.’
Tucker stroked his chin judiciously. It was a gesture he’d worked on over the last couple of years. He felt it gave him gravitas when speaking to television presenters. ‘That seems unlikely to me, Peach. But I suppose you know your own business best.’
‘Very gracious of you, sir, I’m sure. The victim has a younger brother – six years younger. His name is Dominic O’Connor and he didn’t approve of the victim’s lifestyle. He called his brother a “chancer”, which he undoubtedly was. That and much more. I think Dominic had a much clearer idea of James’s businesses and the way he ran them than he cares to admit. That doesn’t mean he had anything to do with his death, of course.’
‘Indeed it doesn’t. Dominic O’Connor is also a successful local businessman. He could do us a lot of damage if we offend him.’
‘Even if he should turn out to be a serious criminal, sir?’
‘No, of course not. But you’d better be damned sure he’s broken the law before you move against him, or you’ll have me to deal with.’ Tucker jutted the chin which he had lately stroked in what he had decided from ancient photographs was his Churchillian mode.
‘Very well, sir. Just for the record, I have no reason to think at this point that Dominic O’Connor is anything other than the most upright of citizens.’
Peach thought as he descended the stairs from Tommy Bloody Tucker’s penthouse office that life dealt the cards in a very random fashion. Simply because of the insufferable T.B. Tucker, he would now be delighted if he could dig some dirt on the unsuspecting Dominic O’Connor.
SEVEN
You wore plain clothes when you joined the exalted ranks of the CID. It was supposed to make you less conspicuous. In some cases the idea didn’t work. One of these cases was Detective Sergeant Clyde Northcott.
When you were a lean six feet three inches and very black, people tended to remember you, whatever you wore. Most of the time Clyde didn’t mind that. His formidable physical presence made him feared. Clyde had grown used to that and secretly rather enjoyed it. He’d learned to survive in a harsh world before he became a policeman and it pleased him that people were nervous about what he might do to them. The police rules were strict and Clyde observed them. But people didn’t always know that, did they? There was nothing wrong with a little bluff, if it produced the right results. The fact that DCI Peach referred to his sidekick as a ‘hard bastard’ whenever the opportunity arose also pleased Clyde, who played up to the image whenever he felt it useful to him.
But you couldn’t be at once a hard bastard and unnoticeable, as the job sometimes demanded you should be. When Clyde Northcott spotted something which interested him on that Thursday evening, he slid swiftly behind the wheel of his car. You weren’t as obvious in a car, especially when it was a routine silver Ford Focus. You might need to slide the driver’s seat as far back as it would go, but six and a quarter feet of muscle and bone was still less noticeable in a vehicle than on the street.
Clyde hesitated about what to do next, because he’d had a hard and boring day which hadn’t produced anything significant. Days like that were always the worst; he didn’t notice the time passing or count the hours he was putting in when there was progress. But when you spent long hours getting nowhere, you always ended up fatigued as well as frustrated. He wondered for a moment whether he should follow the woman or not, then decided with a sigh that he would need to postpone his takeaway and his tin of lager.
He was trained to observe. He saw things which other people would have missed without any conscious effort. In truth, that was not all police training. He had been a drug dealer, even a suspect i
n a murder case, before Percy Peach had rescued him, persuaded him to become a copper, and then recruited him into CID a couple of years later. Northcott had learned early in life to watch his back and keep his eyes and ears open. It was a quality very useful to him, even now that he had joined the right side of the law.
The woman might be going somewhere entirely innocent – statistically she probably was. But he’d been lucky to spot her as she turned onto the main road at the T-junction and he was pretty sure she hadn’t seen him. He hesitated for but a moment, then eased the Focus out into the traffic, two cars behind the blue BMW, and kept it in view as they moved out of Brunton and into the countryside.
This might be a wild goose chase, but it would be interesting to see where the widow of James O’Connor was heading.
She was alone in the sports car and he was confident she hadn’t spotted him. She drove north, out along the A59, accelerating as the traffic thinned, so that at one stage he was afraid of losing her. But he saw her indicating a left turn and followed her at a safe distance as she eased the sleek blue car on to a much narrower lane. Clyde knew this road; he’d roared over it many times on the Yamaha 350 motorcycle which was his preferred mode of transport. The lane climbed upwards over the flank of Pendle Hill, the height which rose towards two thousand feet and dominated the softer country of the Ribble Valley beneath it.
It was past nine o’clock now and the cars all had their lights on. Clyde kept a discreet distance behind the BMW, watching the red of its rear lights appearing and disappearing as it climbed the hill ahead of him. He thought he knew where it was heading. There was a pub on the side of the hill, busy at weekends but dependent on people who drove out on summer evenings for much trade beyond that. It was still spring and still quite cool up here by this time of night. Clyde guessed correctly that the pub would not have much custom tonight, despite the handwritten notice advertising food at the bar. As Sarah O’Connor turned the blue BMW into the car park, there were only two other cars parked there. Clyde waited until she had hurried into the pub before he eased the Focus gently into the car park. He chose the opposite end of the parking area and reversed the Ford in so as to be ready for a swift exit.
The other two vehicles were a battered Ford Transit van and a green Honda Civic. Clyde wondered whether Sarah O’Connor was meeting the driver of one of these or someone yet to arrive. He would wait ten minutes and then decide whether to venture into the hostelry. He couldn’t hope to preserve his anonymity if he did that.
It was very quiet on the hillside as the sky darkened above him. Because of the silence, he heard the car when it was still a long way away. He watched its headlights appearing and disappearing as it wound its way along the lane and climbed closer, felt a thrill of anticipation as it indicated and then swung swiftly into the car park and drew up next to the blue BMW Z4. Clyde slid down in his seat, but the man who emerged from the red Jaguar did not even glance towards him in the semi-darkness.
Dominic O’Connor strode swiftly into the pub and his meeting with his brother’s widow.
Northcott reported his Thursday-night journey to Peach as they rode out on the following morning to their next interview in this sprawling case. ‘Interesting,’ said Percy. ‘You’re sure neither of them saw you?’
‘Absolutely sure. I decided there wasn’t much point in hanging around in the pub car park, so I don’t know how long they were in there. It could have been a completely innocent social meeting, of course.’
‘And Tommy Bloody Tucker could win the final of Mastermind. Meetings like that are suspicious until proved otherwise, to cynical fuzz like us. You showed initiative surprising in a man recruited to be a hard bastard.’
‘I’ve told you before: I’m not just a pretty face.’
Peach appeared to think this even more amusing than Clyde had expected. But there was no time for further discussion. They were outside the high electronic gates of the house they were visiting. Much to Percy’s disgust, they had to announce themselves into the speaker in the tall brick gatepost. The gates swung silently open thirty seconds later.
It was a modern house, but a large one and set in extensive grounds. Between two and three million pounds, Peach estimated; you got a feeling for prices when you moved around the area. The maid led them into a huge lounge, where the woman who waited for them was as well-groomed as the lawns and gardens around her house. She was a phenomenon which was still rare in north-east Lancashire: a rich and powerful woman who had made her money almost entirely by her own efforts. It was even rarer to find a woman who reputedly had used criminal activities to underpin her success.
Linda Coleman seated them on the sofa opposite her armchair, with the light directly into their faces. Then she ordered that coffee should be served, without asking them whether they wanted it. Mrs Coleman had the air of a woman who was used to being obeyed; no doubt that was exactly the impression she wished to convey. She said, ‘I shall give you all the help I can in the matter of James O’Connor’s death. It will be very little.’
She was a woman at ease with herself and her surroundings. Her dark green dress was in a smooth fabric which neither of the men could identify. ‘Expensive’ was as accurate as Clyde Northcott could get. He wondered how much she had paid to get soft leather shoes which exactly matched the shade of her dress. They knew from research before they came here that the face beneath the golden, short-cut hair was forty-four years old, otherwise they would have assessed it as younger. The clear blue eyes looked these two contrasting men up and down as they sat awkwardly on the deep-seated sofa. Those cold eyes announced that she was in charge here and that they would do well to remember that.
Peach was not a man who took kindly to such subordination. He said without preamble, ‘Why do you think you were invited to Monday night’s celebration at Claughton Towers, Mrs Coleman?’
‘That is surely a question you should ask of the man who invited me. As he is no longer here to answer it, perhaps his PA or his wife could provide your answer.’
‘But I am asking you. It is surely a question you must have asked yourself when you received the invitation.’
She stared at him for a moment before deciding to answer the question after all. ‘We were business rivals who had become business partners. Jim was recognising that by asking me to sit with the people who’d been working for him for years.’ The answer came clearly and without hesitation, as if she had dispensed with the idea of deceit.
‘James O’Connor had taken over some of your enterprises.’
‘If you care to put it like that, yes. I prefer to regard it as a profitable merging of mutual interests. I’d hardly have been placed on the table immediately below his if Jim hadn’t regarded me as an important player.’
Peach gave her a sour smile. ‘An important player in what particular game, Mrs Coleman?’
‘Retail interests, principally. I own a town-centre woollens shop, one of the few independent traders left outside the big chains. We also have a men’s outfitters, which supplies most of the school uniforms in the town.’
‘And makes surprising profits.’
‘We do all right.’
‘Profits which are out of all proportion to the turnover in these shops.’
‘I didn’t realise you claimed to be an expert in retail merchandising. The modern police service must be amazingly tolerant, if you are encouraged to develop such interests.’
‘Did James O’Connor also take over the prostitution rings for which these shops are a front?’
She looked at him steadily. It seemed she had expected what he had planned to drop as a bombshell. ‘Highly imaginative. But also rather dangerous for you, Detective Chief Inspector Peach. I’m sure my lawyers would be interested to hear you repeat these views in a more formal context.’
Peach’s smile contrived to express distaste rather than amusement. ‘Lawyers, eh? A single legal expert not enough for you, when all that is involved is two or three dull and successful shops?’ His fi
erce revulsion burst out suddenly against the wall of her calmness. ‘All the lawyers in England won’t help you, when we finally expose the rape and prostitution of minors which has been happening in this town.’
Both he and his unlikely looking adversary in the armchair knew what he referred to. Young white girls in the area, many of them still children and most of them from care homes, were being lured into prostitution by Asian men, who selected them carefully and set up rings they could control. The money to initiate this and the ultimate control of the rings came from sources further up the hierarchy. Money from drugs was being used to finance this lucrative colony in a growing criminal empire.
Linda Coleman weighed Peach’s words carefully before she chose to reply. ‘I know nothing of this. It is ludicrous that you should try to connect me with such things.’ The coffee arrived, served with biscuits on a wide metal tray by a slim and elegant Asian girl. Not a word was spoken whilst she was in the room. Their hostess watched the door close behind her before she picked up the coffee pot and poured. ‘I did hear that your wife had been questioning some of our Asian friends about these allegations. I doubt if there is anything in them, but I should hate it if DS Peach came to grief. I’m told she’s a pretty and enthusiastic officer. It would be a pity if anything changed that.’
Percy felt his pulses racing. This wasn’t right for him; this was the kind of apprehension he had intended that Coleman should feel. He had not known that this woman was even aware that Lucy was an officer, let alone that she knew his wife was involved in the prostitution enquiries. He spoke as steadily as he could. ‘That sounded very like a threat to me, Mrs Coleman. Note it down, please, DS Northcott.’
She glanced at Northcott, whose notebook looked tiny in his very large hands. ‘It was nothing of the sort, DCI Peach. It was no more than well-meant concern for a police officer who might move out of her depth and into dangerous waters.’
‘Who killed James O’Connor?’
She appeared not at all shaken by his abrupt switch. ‘I’ve no idea. I should have come forward with the information as a good citizen if I had.’