Over the Edge

by Stuart Pawson

  ‘Well done, kid!’ I said. ‘Blinking well done!’

  We’d had a good day. We were taking three overcoats back for forensic examination, plus photographs showing that Wallenberg’s parents had owned two ice axes similar to the ones in question, plus the actual blade of one of them. Wallenberg had a motive for killing Krabbe, his alibi was shot to pieces and Duggie was incriminated, which meant I’d be able to play one off against the other. And then there was Selina. She’d signed Krabbe’s death warrant to save her boyfriend and herself, but that wasn’t against the law.

  First thing I did when we were back at the nick was put out an APW for the arrest of Peter Wallenberg. If he tried to leave the country we’d have him. Then we had a debriefing.

  The Customs and Excise people took the shahtoosh. They’d send samples to the Textile Technology group to confirm that they were what we thought and raise their own prosecution of Wallenberg. The overcoats went to our lab for examination.

  One team had looked in the triple garages at the house. Mrs W’s Mazda was in there but not her husband’s Range Rover. The garages were well-equipped with tools, they reported, and we wondered if this was where they prepared the cars used in the races. I asked for details of the Range Rover to be circulated and arranged for Mrs Wallenberg to be given protection.

  The prison service likes to flex its muscles occasionally and let us know that it is an independent entity, beholden to no one. They shelter their charges jealously. If we need to see one of them we have to go through their visits office and take our turn with the wives and mothers and girlfriends that most of them attract like carpets attract the side of your toast with butter on. There is another way, of course. I rang Bentley prison and asked to speak to the governor. It helps when you’re old friends, and everybody is susceptible to a bit of flirting. She’s no fool – you don’t get to be governor of one of the toughest jails in the country by falling for smooth talk – but when I explained that Duggie Jones was facing a murder charge and his co-conspirator was still on the loose, she agreed to cut a few corners for me. I thanked her and said I’d arrange transport to bring him to Heckley in the morning.

  I filled in the diary and started to think about a submission to the CPS, but before that we had to find Wallenberg. When I felt myself nodding off seated at my desk I decided to call it a day and went home. I collected a rogan josh from the Last Viceroy and after a shower I fell asleep in bed and dreamt about log fires – which was understandable – and those traffic cones that have a flashing yellow light on top, which was weird. I had to count them, but they were moving around all the time and if one flashed I had to start again and my hat kept falling over my eyes. I only thought about Rosie after the alarm insisted another day had begun.

  * * *

  They found Wallenberg’s Range Rover Vogue in Heckley multi-storey car park. I was in Gilbert’s office, giving him a positive update for once, when the message came through. I asked for it to be handed over to Forensics for a thorough examination, and told them to let me know if they came across an electric cattle prod. One hadn’t surfaced during the search of his house.

  That meant that Wallenberg was either still in Heckley or had an accomplice who had spirited him away.

  ‘Or he’s travelling by public transport,’ Gilbert suggested.

  I pulled a face at him.

  ‘Taxi to the airport?’ he explained.

  ‘Possible,’ I conceded.

  There was a message on my desk when I returned to my office. A woman called Lorraine rang, it said. She wouldn’t leave a surname but she’d try again later.

  The convoy bearing Duggie Jones arrived and he was ushered into the station. I grabbed a mug of tea, two sausage rolls and a Kit Kat while he familiarised himself with his solicitor and his story. When we were good and ready Dave and I joined them in interview room number one.

  It was laid out ready with notepads and pens for each of us, and four new tapes still in their cellophane wrappings sat in the middle of the Formica table. Dave fumbled with them until he found a loose corner and set the recorder going. I did the introductions.

  ‘We’re talking about fresh charges, Duggie,’ I said, ‘so I have to caution you again and remind you of your rights under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Have you had some breakfast?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘A full English?’ I couldn’t resist asking.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’ I recited the caution and went through the procedure, reminding him of his rights. It always sticks in the craw that we have a criminal justice service and not a victim justice service. He nodded to say he understood and the solicitor stifled a yawn.

  ‘You are currently on remand charged with being an accessory to the murder of Joe Crozier,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  The brief sat forward. ‘We will be petitioning for the charge to be reduced to assisting in the disposal of a dead body,’ he stated. ‘My client was under the belief that the victim was already dead.’

  Don’t bother, I thought. That was only for starters. I said: ‘Tell us about the car racing, Duggie.’

  ‘I don’t know noffing about it,’ he replied.

  ‘You knew Dale was involved, though, didn’t you.’

  ‘Yeah, I told you that before.’

  ‘So you did, but you didn’t say that he was working for Peter Wallenberg.’

  ‘Didn’t know, did I?’

  ‘Or that you’d taken over Dale’s job after he died.’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘Yeah, well…’

  ‘Is that what the Jaguars were stolen for? Another race?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Organised by Wallenberg? Mr Wallenberg enjoys sport, he says. Even bought himself a football club. You knew he gambled heavily on the races, didn’t you.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Did you know he had a little side bet on the last race? £10,000 that said one of the drivers would be killed. Did you know that?’ I sensed Dave looking across at me. Sometimes, I improvise.

  He didn’t answer. It was all too much for him, overloading his puny brain with information. The top of a tattoo was visible poking out from the neck of his prison shirt and I wondered how close to the carotid artery the needle went when you had a tattoo like that. Not close enough. We’d named Wallenberg, but now Duggie was desperately trying to remember if he’d ever acknowledged knowing him. Being a liar is difficult when your brain cells are outnumbered by your fingers and toes.

  Dave said: ‘Who did you prefer working for: Crozier or Wallenberg?’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ the brief protested. ‘Mr Jones has never said that he worked for this Mr Wallenberg, whoever he might be.’

  He’s the person who’s picking up your bill, I thought.

  ‘Do you know Wallenberg?’ Dave persisted.

  ‘Yer, a bit,’ Duggie admitted.

  ‘You know him a bit?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you work for him?’

  ‘No, not proper. Just a bit.’

  ‘You drive him, now and again?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Run errands for him?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do odd jobs for him?’

  ‘Yeah. Sort of.’

  ‘Like rolling bodies into rivers?’

  ‘No. I didn’t know about that. I did that for Dale. It was noffing to do wiv Mr Wallenberg.’

  ‘Where were you on the night Tony Krabbe was murdered?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘It was Saturday, the eighth of November. Five weeks ago.’

  ‘I dunno.’

  I leant forward. ‘Let me jog your memory, Duggie,’ I said. ‘You picked up Mr Wallenberg at his house at about half-past nine, and you returned him home about half-past ten or eleven o’clock. Does that help?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We have a witness who will swear
to that.’

  The brief said: ‘Can I ask who your witness is?’

  ‘All in good time,’ I said. ‘Duggie?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘I think you do, Duggie. I think you’ll probably remember that night for as long as you live. The night you took Mr Wallenberg to kill Tony Krabbe.’

  ‘I must object to the degree of supposition you are inserting into this interview, Inspector,’ his brief said.

  ‘Then it’s up to Duggie to remove the supposition,’ I replied. ‘Tell us how Krabbe died, Duggie. He was killed by someone who knew him, and there were most likely two people present: one to walk alongside him, engaging him in conversation; one to deliver the blow from directly behind him.’

  ‘I dunno, do I?’

  ‘Wallenberg thought his wife was having an affair with Krabbe, didn’t he? But it was Dale she’d been having an affair with. Did you know that? Did it make you smile when you learnt that Krabbe was taking the blame. Did you think: Good old Dale, even when he’s dead he manages to wriggle out of trouble. Is that what you thought?’

  ‘No.’

  The brief said he’d like to consult his client and Dave stopped the tape.

  We went up to the office for a quick coffee. Duggie’s solicitor had a conflict of interests: he could hardly defend Duggie by laying the blame on Wallenberg, his paymaster; but if he sacrificed Duggie, then Duggie might sing like a love-sick tomcat. The CPS had recently opened an office in the nick, so we went down to see them. I outlined the evidence pointing to Wallenberg, but added that the most likely scenario was that Wallenberg walked alongside Krabbe while Duggie hit him from behind. The CPS lawyer agreed to Duggie being charged with murder.

  We reconvened in the interview room and Duggie’s brief said that they would strenuously deny any involvement with the murder of Tony Krabbe.

  I said: ‘OK, Duggie, so tell us about the foreign girl.’

  ‘What foreign girl?’

  ‘The one you raped. The one that you introduced all your friends to. The one that’s just dying to point you out in a line-up.’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean,’ he replied, but his body language said otherwise. It was all too much for him. Murder, murder again, and now rape. Where had it all started to go wrong? Things had been looking good. He’d had a sweet little number: plenty of sex; money; fast cars and booze. What more could your average neighbourhood hoodlum ask for? But now it had all gone pear-shaped. He buried his head in his arms and sobbed. He was sorry. Sorrier than he’d ever felt in his life. If the truth were known it was the first time in that life that he’d ever experienced the emotion. But his tears of grief were reserved for one person, and one person only: himself.

  The solicitor looked at him and his lip curled back in disgust. I nodded at Dave and he stood up.

  ‘Douglas Jones,’ he said, ‘I’m arresting you for the murder of Anthony Turnbull Krabbe.

  He appeared before a magistrate the following morning and was remanded in custody. We issued a press release saying that a 28-year-old man had been arrested for Krabbe’s murder and I started the paperwork. When I returned to my office after the morning prayer meeting there was an envelope with an Oxford postmark waiting for me. I sliced it open with my paperknife and retrieved the contents: three photographs and a letter. They were the reconstructions of the skull found on Bleak Tor. Body One, as we’d unimaginatively called her.

  It was a good face. It looked like someone; someone you thought you’d seen somewhere. When an amateur artist draws a face it always has the right components – two eyes, nose, mouth, etcetera – in all the right places, but it doesn’t necessarily look like anyone. This one did. I don’t know why I was surprised but I was. There was, I had to remind myself, a real skull under all that plasticine. A skull that had once belonged to a real live girl. She’d had her hardships, life hadn’t been kind to her, but the face that gazed blankly at me could have been anyone that I’d seen window shopping in the mall or waiting at the checkout in Sainsbury’s. Except that if we’d ever met, if I’d collided with her and she’d dropped her groceries, I’d have apologised to her but wouldn’t have recognised the language she spoke back to me in. I placed the profile pictures behind the frontal one and leant them against the wall, facing me.

  Lorraine rang shortly after. ‘I was just thinking about you,’ I said.

  ‘In what context?’

  ‘What you told me. Wondering where we were with it.’

  ‘She said she’ll talk to you. She didn’t want to, but we’ve persuaded her.’

  ‘Will she be free from the tranquillisers?’

  ‘Yes, she’s managing without them. She’s a remarkable girl.’

  ‘OK, when can I see her, and where?’

  ‘It’s not that easy.’

  ‘It is to me. You arrange something and I’ll be there.’

  ‘She’s in a safe house. It wouldn’t be safe any more if the police knew about it.’

  ‘So choose a neutral venue.’

  ‘How do we know you wouldn’t alert your colleagues and have her arrested?’

  I said: ‘Perhaps you don’t know, but there’s something called trust, Lorraine. It would be a bleak world if we didn’t have any trust in anyone. I thought that was why you chose to ring me.’

  ‘The people we deal with, Inspector, have had all the trust knocked out of them. I can take you to meet her but you’ll have to be blindfolded.’

  ‘Blindfolded,’ I echoed. ‘That sounds drastic. How far away is she?’

  ‘A fair way.’

  ‘And you want me to sit in a car with a blindfold around my head? Or do I have to lie in the boot?’

  ‘We’ve made some spectacles for you to wear. Sunglasses. We’ve painted them so you can’t see through them.’

  ‘How do you know I won’t take them off when we get there?’

  ‘If you do we’ll come straight back.’

  I didn’t want to go for it, but I looked at the plasticine face staring at me from the photo, I thought of the two bodies up on Bleak Tor, and I remembered the story Lorraine had told me. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll do it your way. You don’t trust me but I’ll trust you. When do we do it?’

  ‘Monday,’ she replied. ‘I’ll ring you Monday morning.’

  We had a celebration beverage in the Bailiwick after work. It was Friday, so I stood the troops down for the weekend. When we’d had a couple of drinks, talk moved round to starting the walking club again. It always does. We all have fond memories of the walking club and the exploits we endured. The passage of time enhances the good memories, exaggerates our exploits, and dulls the recollection of the days when the sun never shone and we swished, slopped and dripped round the route in full waterproofs like North Sea fishermen washed up on an alien landscape.

  ‘We haven’t done Ingleborough for a long time,’ Dave said. Ingleborough isn’t the highest peak in Yorkshire, but it ought to be. It broods like a sleeping lion between the Ribble and the Greta, and is the nearest place we have to a spiritual home. There are the remnants of settlements on top which we like to believe were unconquered by the Romans.

  ‘We always do Ingleborough,’ Jeff protested. ‘It’s nearly worn out. There are duckboards all the way up it. They’ll be installing an escalator next. Let’s go down into Derbyshire.’

  So on Sunday nine of us in three cars drove south and parked in Edale. Approaching Ladybower reservoir Dave began to quietly whistle the Dambusters’ theme, and, dead on cue, Jeff reminded us for the seven hundredth time that they’d practised there.

  We walked to Blackden Edge via Ringing Roger, then past Madwoman’s Stones and down Jaggers Clough. For much of the way we were on peat like that on Bleak Tor, and I wondered how many bodies we walked over. None, probably, but it was easy to imagine they were there. We made it to the Strines Inn before closing time and were back in Heckley for tea. Dave had arranged that I eat with them, so it was a good day out.

  Lorraine rang at ten o’c
lock, Monday morning. ‘Can you be at the corner of the High Street and Westland Road at half-past?’ she said.

  ‘No problem,’ I replied. It was a five-minute stroll away.

  ‘And don’t be followed,’ she stressed.

  ‘I won’t be.’

  I made a few notes about what I needed to know, left instructions for the troops and made neat piles of everything on my desk. The photo of the face of Body One was still staring at me. I placed all three pictures in an envelope with a couple of others and my notebook and thought about taking a tape recorder. I decided that it might be intimidating, so I abandoned the idea. I looked at my watch. I could have used a coffee but didn’t know how long I’d be cooped up in the car. Stopping for a pee, whilst blindfolded, didn’t appeal to me, so I abandoned the coffee idea, too. I placed three fibre-tipped pens in the envelope and pulled my jacket on.

  It’s a woman’s privilege to be late, so they took advantage of it. Five minutes isn’t too bad, I suppose. They were probably having me watched or drove by several times. A Ford Fiesta with a noisy exhaust pulled up alongside me and Lorraine jumped out of the passenger’s door. She pulled the seat forward and manoeuvred herself into the back, indicating for me to sit in the front. I was looking for my seatbelt when we moved off.

  The driver had a stud in her nose and spiky hair. Lorraine said: ‘This is Charlie Priest, this is Magda,’ and I said: ‘Hello, Magda.’

  Magda pulled into a lay-by at 40 miles per hour and hit the brakes. ‘There’s some glasses in there,’ she said, pointing to the glovebox. ‘Put them on.’

  They were those big wrap-around ones you see advertised in the Sunday supplements, that can be worn over a pair of spectacles. They were originally designed for welders on the oilrigs, but due to an administrative cock-up too many were manufactured. They’d painted the inside with black paint to make them totally opaque. I put them on and it was almost like having my eyes closed. I turned to the driver, saying: ‘There we go,’ and she dropped the clutch and we were on our way.