by Frank Lean
‘Not quite Dave,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m still the only one who has the full story about the attempts to kill you … there’ve been suggestions that you faked all that stuff at Topfield Farm.’
‘What stuff?’
‘The burn marks in the farmyard, the bullet hole in the window frame, the cartridge cases in the field.’
‘What sort of mind …’
‘Dave, they don’t know about the men who attacked you and probably wouldn’t believe it if you had it on DVD.’
‘But why would I do that to myself?’
‘Criminal mastermind, that’s you. They don’t know what a romantic knight‑errant you are. They think that if they eventually charge you for Sir Lew … and they’re still looking for the slightest piece of evidence that puts you at his house … you’d come up with some cock and bull story about being attacked.’
I jerked back suddenly at this and narrowly avoided kicking over the coffee table.
‘I only said they think it’s a cock and bull story. I believe you,’ Bren said quickly as he jerked his arms out to steady the table.
‘Oh yes, I’m sure you do.’
‘Don’t be like that. Anyway you’ve still got Sir Lew’s notebook. There’s no way you could have faked that.’
My expression told its own story.
‘You haven’t got the notebook?’
I nodded.
‘Tell me you opened it and found out the name.’
I shook my head.
‘Christ, man, you’re in lumber now … I’m in lumber … they’ll want to know why I didn’t march you straight round to your safe when you told me about the bloody notebook this morning. I thought … I don’t know what I thought.’
‘You thought I was imagining it or making up the story about the mysterious traitor to cover my tracks.’
‘No, I always believed you … well maybe I was a bit suspicious. I am a copper after all. It grinds you down over the years, listening to convincing lie after convincing lie. You get so that you don’t believe anything. Ask your Dad about that.’
‘I believe you Bren.’
‘I never thought you could have killed your uncle, grant me that Dave.’
‘Yes.’
‘I think I thought you were being a bit economical with the truth and that a better story would come out when you’d got your wits together. I did come at you a bit sudden like.’
‘Yeah, you jumped me and got me by the throat.’
He gulped his latte down. I could see he was thinking furiously.
‘What happened to the notebook?’
I gave him the bare facts as I knew them about the phony Fothergill. For some reason of pride or shame I didn’t mention Tony Nolan’s name.
‘OK then Dave, panic over; it’s not all’s well that ends well yet but all is not yet lost. No one apart from you and me knows about this notebook, right?’
I told him about Fothergill’s bug.
‘Who the f**k is this bitch? I’ll tell you one thing; she has nothing to do with MI5 or the police. There’s not been a whisper to us about any of this. I bet she’s a blackmailer. That’s what this is about. Some bastard in the criminal fraternity wants all that money you got in damages and figures this is a good way to get it. You’d pay anything for that notebook, wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t see how it can be blackmail. I haven’t done anything criminal and when Lew dumped the notebook in the safe it was a total surprise to me. Now I’m the intended victim of a conspiracy to murder.’
‘But you’d pay to have the notebook back.’
‘True, except I haven’t got much to pay them with.’
‘You have now, or have you completely forgotten that you’re now a multi‑millionaire? That’s vintage Dave Cunane and it’s what your friends love about you but I can’t bring your phony blackmailing receptionist into the murder enquiry. It would raise all sorts of questions about what we should or shouldn’t have done. You should have reported Sir Lew when he propositioned you to be his hitman. I should have reported that it was you who got your old man to ask me to send a copper round to his house.’
‘We both did what …’
‘… What seemed best at the time? Yes, but that won’t stop them sacking me without a pension and banging you up for obstructing an enquiry or worse.’
I let out a long sigh.
It was as if the intensely focused encounter with Bren had suddenly switched off as when Lloyd or Jenny flicked over the programmes on television. I stared out of the window. The sun was trying to peep out from behind the clouds. People were walking around, some casually window shopping, some in a hurry. Clint was still across the square with his head stuck in a magazine. People were talking normally in the cafe. Several had their heads down over laptops and ipads.
No one was looking at us.
‘I’m thinking maybe I should do these interviews.’
‘No,’ he said flatly, shaking his head, ‘f**k the bastards or should I say f**k us bastards?’
‘Really?’
‘The most you should do is to ask when Sir Lew’s body’s being released to you for burial. Press them on that but get your lawyer to do the pressing. Us coppers hate having our elbows jogged like that. Otherwise KBO, Dave, that’s all you can do. Forget about finding this bitch. I think you should keep your head down, keep off the streets and stay away from cameras. The killing of your uncle was a desperate, reckless act. If you’d seen the unbelievable rage that went into it … ugh, it was bizarre. Whoever did it is coming to the boil. They won’t be able to hide for long. I don’t want their next stroke to be the butchery of my old mate.’
He leaned over the table and squeezed my arm.
‘And another thing, lose the big fellow. He’s an absolute giveaway.’
‘He’ll make anyone think twice about grabbing me.’
Bren got up to go and looking down at me shook his head pityingly.
‘You have absolutely no idea of what these people are capable of, have you Dave? Keep safe!’
He left.
I finished my latte and nibbled the biscotti.
They were trying to get me in front of cameras and into the news media. I scratched my head. Was I intended to be the tethered goat? That was how they caught tigers. Was I a victim staked out and waiting for the killers of Sir Lew to creep out of the undergrowth?
Could that be it?
Or was I one of those men the police encourage to appear on TV appeals shortly before they arrest them with a chorus of ten million couch potatoes chanting ‘I knew it was him all along.’
I did know one thing. Bren’s theory that the bogus Fothergill was a blackmailer was crap. Whoever heard of a blackmailer who’d leave twenty grand in notes in her victim’s safe? I had to find her. She was my only lead.
I trundled out into St Ann’s Square and collected Clint. There was a handy call box so I phoned Marvin Desailles at DQW and asked him to come round to the office.
18
Tuesday: 1.20 p.m.
I took my time walking back. For some inexplicable reason I felt good. The rain had stopped. There were chinks of blue showing behind the perpetual cloud cover. We sauntered past Kendall’s and then turned the corner into King Street West and took the turn at the Korean restaurant (curried dog a speciality — that’s a joke but it is a Korean restaurant) into Butter Lane where my office is situated next to an Indian take away.
I suppose surviving firebombs, bullets and high explosives does something for the metabolism. I don’t know what, but I felt good.
Tony Nolan spotted us on the street from his receptionist’s desk and opened the door for us. He looked woebegone, a little frayed at the edges but I put that down to his early start of the day.
‘OK, Tony it’s your lunch break,’ I announced genially. ‘I want you to go and get a good lunch somewhere and then I’d like you to go to M & S and get yourself a nice dark suit, with shirts and ties and shoes to match.’
�
�What?’ he croaked, his lips pursed in a frown.
‘You heard, Tony. We offer a high class service at Pimpernel and I want the employees to look as if they’re capable of delivering it.’
‘Who’s paying for this?’
‘I am Tony, bring back the till receipts and I’ll refund you. You’ve got money. Look on this as an upgrade to match the reconditioned brain.’
He showed me his teeth in what I took for a smile.
‘Have you come into money, Boss?’
‘You could say that Tony but even if I hadn’t we have standards here at Pimpernel so you need a suit.’
‘Yeah, a suit: it might work for me but I don’t think you’ll ever get Lee into one.’
‘Maybe not,’ I agreed. ‘We’ll regard him as our undercover operative, our link with the mean streets.’
‘Yeah, that’s Lee all right. Three blokes came and shoved stuff in your safe. They didn’t even look at me.’
‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’
‘Good, I suppose. Two of them were ex-coppers.’
‘Anyway, it’s your lunch break. Take Clint with you, he looks as if he’s getting hungry again.’
‘Yes, Tony,’ Clint said eagerly, ‘I found this sandwich place that does bin lids.’
‘Bin lids?’
‘These great sandwiches Tony. All you can eat on a giant barm cake.’
‘Tony, since when am I Tony to you?’
‘It’s not right to call you bad names,’ Clint said piously.
The mention of food roused him from the sofa where he’d sprawled as soon as he got in the office. Being so large is a handicap for Clint just as much as if he was severely disabled. Too big for a normal room, he tends to drape himself over whatever seating’s available to lessen the impact of his presence. He now bounded up, laid an arm on Tony’s shoulder and guided him towards the door.
‘I can take you,’ Clint continued. ‘It’s a really good place and there’s seats and everything.’
‘OK, lead on,’ Tony muttered, raising his eyebrows to me as he was hurried out of the office.
I locked the door behind them and put the ‘closed’ sign up.
I grabbed the phone. ‘Real’ April Fothergill’s number was inoperative. The same with the address as I knew without checking, there was no ’21 Sunnyside Villas, Paradise Lane, Moss Side East’. I checked anyway. Zilch! The woman was as much a fraudster as Gonzi and Big Hair. Who’d have thought it? I saved myself the chore of looking up her references. I didn’t recognise the name of a single firm she claimed to have worked for. She was as phony as a nine pound note.
I had heavier problems to worry about.
I didn’t have long to brood about Brendan Cullen’s warning words before rattling at the door told me that Marvin Desailles had arrived.
A tall black man with a thin face, a beaky hatchet-like nose and long, well-tended locks dangling from under a black and gold Rasta tam over a well cut dark suit; he couldn’t be taken for anything other than a member of Manchester’s burgeoning black middle class. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t routinely stopped by the police. The locks and the tam saw to that. Admittedly it was usually young green-horns who stopped him but nevertheless he was stopped even close to the law courts where he plied his trade.
Marvin clings to other island customs in addition to his religion and his headgear. He likes to have a leisurely chat before getting down to practicalities. I owed him the courtesy of listening. Marvin had stuck by me through thick and thin even though his cousin Celeste was one of the main traitors during the attempt to oust me from my detective business.
‘Hey, Dave, my bwoy,’ he drawled, he likes to come on heavy with the accent and the patois from time to time. It’s an affectation. He has a degree in law from Leeds University and he didn’t get that by doing Lenny Henry impressions.
‘Dave, you goin’ to put some work this poor bwoy’s way?’
‘I am.’
‘Jah Bless. It can’t come too soon for I-an-I.’
I relayed an edited version of recent events and of Lew’s death. I told him that I’d been tipped off that the police would be asking me to put my face on TV to appeal for information.
‘An you don’ wanna do that?’
‘Listen, Lew was a relative, OK, but I only saw him once in a blue moon and he didn’t exactly approve of me.’
‘Oh, I got lots of relatives like that, mon.’
‘Yeah, he died horribly and I’m upset about it but I can’t look like someone who’s just lost his nearest and dearest. I’ll come across as too cool and a million people will decide I killed the poor guy. I think that’s what the police want. They’d love to see my face on a wanted poster.’
‘You soundin’ a teeny bit OTT, there mon.’
‘No I’m not. Some of them hate my guts.’
‘You know best. So you want me to deal with the Beasts?’
‘Beasts Marvin? Don’t forget that my old man has been a copper for most of his life.’
‘De Babylon, de bacon, de dibbles, call them what you like, mon, but they all smell of frying pig,’ he drawled.
‘OK,’ I said.
‘Don’t you worry Dave, my mon. The good old firm of DQW will keep them rascals off your back.’
The title DQW which he has engraved on the cards he distributes liberally is a satire against a big Manchester firm with a three letter acronym which had turned him down for a job. He said it stood for ‘Drinkwater, Quick and Whittle’ which always got a laugh in Manchester pubs. There’d been a complaint to the Law Society so he quickly employed two recent graduates Mark Quinn, and Clarice Woods which enabled him to claim that DQW stood for Desailles, Quinn and Woods although the two partners quickly departed when their brief internships were over.
Marvin is strictly a one man firm and the police detest him because he plays by his rules, not theirs.
It turned out that I hadn’t called Marvin a moment too soon because our heart to heart was interrupted by rattling at the door.
It was caused by two uniformed male coppers and two others, a man and a woman. The non-uniform pair were both very well dressed and to my eyes obviously not CID. The sandy haired man wore a dark well-cut suit with a club tie and the woman a navy skirt and matching jacket. She had a thin gold chain round her neck with a crumpled up piece of metal dangling from it. The necklace-wearer was a lot younger than her companion.
The higher ranked uniformed man introduced himself as Chief Superintendent Thornton of the Cheshire police. His partner was Inspector Stott.
‘Condolences Mr Cunane, we’re sorry for your loss. I understand that regrettably you’ve already been informed of the circumstances of your relative’s murder, quite against procedure that is, but as you’re his next of kin we’re legally required to notify you officially.’
It was Stott who spoke and he sounded peeved.
The young woman coloured up and started to say something but the older man laid his hand on her sleeve and she subsided.
I was grateful that Stott didn’t suggest that Lew was my uncle. ‘Relative’ was as far as I wanted to go and I could have quibbled about the reference to ‘next of kin’ but I held my tongue.
I waited for him to introduce the suited couple and Stott followed my glance.
‘These are two colleagues from another service here to observe,’ he said.
‘MI5,’ I said in a whisper.
He gave a barely detectable nod and curled his lip. I didn’t know whether his resentment was because he didn’t like spooks or that he regretted missing the chance to grill me himself. I guessed it was the latter.
‘Yes, you’ve answered questions to their satisfaction and there’s no forensic evidence to link you to the scene so unless further enquiries reveal something else you’re in the clear as far as the Cheshire Constabulary is concerned. However, as the deceased’s next of kin we were wondering if you could help us in our enquiries.’
Nice that. A copper practically
accuses me and then asks for my help but thanks to Bren I knew that they didn’t really want my help.
I was careful to keep my face expressionless and to remain silent.
‘Frankly, Mr Cunane, our enquiries are hitting a blank wall at the moment and we wonder if you could assist us by making a televised appeal for information. I can help you with what to say … basically that as the victim’s relative you want justice for him.’
I cleared my throat but Marvin swooped before I could speak.
‘Whoa mon!’ he said, gripping my elbow and pulling me to one side.
‘Who’re you?’ the Chief Super rasped, possibly as a Cheshire cop he was unfamiliar with Marvin Desailles.
‘I is this bwoy’s mouthpiece. I is telling him not to go on no television.’
The Caribbean accent was laid on with a trowel.
‘It would be very helpful …’ Stott suggested. ‘You could appeal to the public for help.’
‘No, Mr Cunane wasn’t close to de deceased.’
‘But he’s Sir Lew Greene’s next of kin. People will assume he doesn’t care about the murder.’
‘Gwan! He care plenty, mon! But, he only seen de dead judge three times in de las’ fifteen years. He be t’inking he seem cold and unfeeling on de telly. You askin’ he to put himself in de frame as de killer. So no telly.’
Marvin began to steer me towards the inner office but Chief Superintendent Thornton wanted to have the last word … ‘Hmmmph …your client may be unwilling to help us but I don’t expect he’ll be so unwilling to spend the late Sir Lew’s millions. To my mind there’s something not right here.’
He favoured me with a resentful scowl.
Marvin was in his face in an instant.
‘You be out of order, Mr Babylon. I be reporting you to the PCC for intimidatin’ Mr Dave. An another t’ing, Mr Superintendent, when do you be releasing de deadman’s body to my client? He be wantin’ to arrange de funeral right away. It be his religion.’
Marvin’s final comment was news to me and it didn’t impress Thornton. ‘Not for some time,’ he responded dully, ‘there are more tests.’
‘I be phonin’ you every day an if I gets any attitude from you I be reportin’ you.’