It had been a long time. He inhaled deeply, wrapping his tongue around the smoke like a grazing cow, and felt it fill his lungs, inflating every little bronchiole and alveolus, finding its way into corners where oxygen had never ventured. Distillations of nicotine were absorbed into his bloodstream and transported to the brain, where receptors, lying redundant for millions of years until Sir Walter Raleigh brought tobacco from the New World, eagerly latched on to them and converted them into an electro-chemical signal. A signal that said: “Ah! That’s good.”
Yes sir, it had been a long time. But the urge never left you. Once tasted, you were hooked. He remembered the date and did a quick calculation. Fifteen years and six months, almost to the day, since the last time. It hadn’t been easy, for the yearning, the hunger, was always there, waiting to catch you out. And lately it was stronger than ever. He’d allowed the genie out of its bottle, and once on the loose he knew it had to be obeyed. The thought scared and excited him. He flicked the smouldering stub on to the carpark and started the engine.
Home was a four-bedroomed detached house built with just six others on a spare patch of land between a farm and the canal. The service road was block-paved, with speed humps, and the gardens were open plan. There was a paddock to the rear, but his neighbour had jumped in first and bought that, much to his annoyance. Each house had a double garage but they all left their vehicles outside. It’s not conspicuous consumption if you hide it away. On a Sunday morning, when everyone was at home, the development resembled a four-wheel-drive regatta, just before the judging of the concourse d’elegance.
His wife’s Suzuki Vitara was on the drive, with a Citroën Xantia behind it. “What’s he doing here?” he wondered, parking in the street and swinging his legs wearily out. He collected his jacket from the Armani hanger behind the driving seat and his briefcase from the boot.
The wind chimes welcomed him as if he were entering a Buddhist monastery, but he broke the illusion by shouting: “I’m here. Cut it out, whatever you’re doing,” as he moved through the kitchen and hallway, towards the parlour.
His wife was sitting on the settee and the visitor in an easy chair, an empty cup and saucer perched demurely on his knees. A compilation CD of music from television adverts was playing in the background, very softly. The track was Bailero, from the Songs of the Auvergne, but he only knew it as the Kenco coffee tune.
“Hello, darling,” his wife said. “You’re home early.”
He stooped to give her a peck on the cheek and turned to the visitor. “So this is what you get up to while the boss is working his butt off, eh?”
“Oh, not every week,” the visitor replied with a grin.
He placed his briefcase on the floor and draped his jacket over it. “Will you excuse me,” he asked them, moving back towards the door he’d just entered through, “but I’m bursting for a piss.”
They listened to his footsteps climb the stairs, looking at each other. She with an expression of relief, he guiltily. The bathroom door closed and he opened his mouth to speak, but she silenced him by putting a finger to her lips. It was possible, she knew, that her husband had closed the door but remained outside it. It wasn’t until she heard the sound of flushing that she dared to whisper: “Phew! That was close.”
“What are we going to do?” he hissed.
“I’ll ring you,” she replied.
He placed the cup and saucer on a low table and rose to his feet as footfalls sounded on the stairs again. The husband went straight into the kitchen and was looking in the refrigerator as the visitor passed through. “I’m off,” he said.
“Why not stay and eat with us, Peter,” the husband offered.
“Thanks all the same, but no,” he replied. “I’ve things to do. I was in the vicinity so I thought I’d come and have a cuppa with the little woman.”
“OK. See you tomorrow, then.”
“God willing. Bye Margaret,” he called. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“You’re welcome,” she called back.
When he’d gone the husband poured himself an orange juice and rejoined his wife. “What did he want?” he asked.
“You’ve been smoking,” she accused, ignoring the question.
“Just the one,” he replied. “A client…you know how it is.”
“Good God, you’re pathetic,” she told him.
“I asked you what he wanted.”
“Nothing,” she replied. “Like he said, he was just passing.”
“Does he make a habit of just passing?”
“That’s about the second time this year, but Peter’s welcome any time. He’s a good friend.”
“He’s a bloody awful salesman. What time’s supper?”
“I haven’t thought about it. I wasn’t expecting you for another two hours.”
He resisted the temptation to say: “Evidently.” Scoring meaningless points wasn’t his style. “Let’s eat out, then,” he suggested.
“We can’t afford it.”
“It’s two for one at the Anglers before six.”
“The Anglers!” she sniffed.
“Well bloody-well cook something. I’m starving.”
“Oh, very well,” she said, standing up. “Let’s go to the Anglers.”
Chapter Three
Nine o’clock Wednesday morning somebody mugged a Big Issue seller in Heckley town centre. He’d never get rich that way but he made four pounds – enough for a heroin wrap or a few tueys; or some bush, bute, bhang, boy, blow, Bolivian or B-bombs to see him through the day. I ticked the report and slid it into my You’ll be Lucky tray.
I was reading the list of overnight car thefts when there was a knock at the door of my partitioned-off domain in the corner of the CID office and big Dave “Sparky” Sparkington walked in. He’s a DC and my best pal.
“It looks lovely out,” he announced.
“Well leave it out, then,” I told him. We’d lost a Fiesta XR3 and an elderly Montego to enemy action. Both crashed and burned, both somebody’s pride and joy. Two more people would be braving the rigors of public transport this morning, or arranging for neighbours to take the kids to school and grandma to her appointment at the hospital, while they sorted the insurance.
“Somebody mugged a Big Issue seller,” he said.
“I know. I’ve seen the report from downstairs. Any ideas?”
“No, but I could borrow a couple of bags and a dog, and we could have a day in the field, undercover, while the weather’s nice.”
I looked down at my jeans and check shirt. I dress the same nowadays as I did when I was an art student, before the Flood. “I wouldn’t have to borrow any clothes,” I said, before he could.
“That’s true,” he confirmed, adding: “or have a haircut.”
I changed the subject. “Where’s young Jamie Walker these days?”
“Ah,” Dave began. “You’ve noticed the small blip in the stolen vehicles chart, with the emphasis on older cars with low-tech ignition systems.”
“So where is he?”
“He finished his youth custody yesterday. Jeff and Annette have gone round to his mam’s to see if he’s there.”
“The little bastard,” I hissed. “We could do without him ballsing up all our figures and budgets.”
Jamie Walker was fourteen years old and weighed seven stones. Our file on him was so thick he couldn’t see over it. He’d spent nearly all his short life in care and his disregard for the law was total. We couldn’t touch him, couldn’t hurt him. He’d never had anything so he didn’t know what loss was. His mother was a slag who only remembered his dad as an obligatory but unsatisfactory tumble with a lorry driver in his cab on the way back from a Garry Glitter concert.
Jamie was bright and cocky. The uniformed boys would slip him a fag while he was in the cells, and have a chat with him. They talked about cars and football, man to man, and invited him to the youth club for a game. He said he’d come, but he never did. Table tennis and five-a-side can’t compete with
handbrake turns and police chases. Milky coffee doesn’t give you the same buzz as Evostick.
I hated him. Dave and the others saw the victims as they sat in their homes, shell-shocked, and asked: “Why?” Why was he so mindlessly destructive? Why did he have to torch their car? Why did magistrates allow him out on the streets to commit offence upon offence? It was nothing for Jamie to be arrested while on bail, while on probation, while awaiting to appear before the youth court, for a string of separate offences. More than once his hearing had ground to a halt because the prosecution thought they were in court for a stolen car, the defence were all wound up about a burglary and the child psychiatrist had spent most of her weekend analysing why a fourteen-year-old brought up by his grandma would steal her pension book. We had a computer programme dedicated solely to sorting his progress through the system because it was too complicated for the human mind. He was on first-name terms with all the duty solicitors and they loved him.
I didn’t. He made a mockery of my overtime budgets, ruined my clearup statistics and wasted resources that could have been used to solve proper crime. Or what I thought of as proper crime. I hated him, but not for that. Not for any of that. I had other reasons to hate him.
“Fancy going for a pint tonight?” Dave was asking.
“Oh, er, yeah. Good idea,” I replied. We went for a pint nearly every Wednesday night.
“We could go to the Spinners Arms,” he suggested.
“That’ll make a nice change,” I said, because we always went to the Spinners Arms. “Ring Nigel and tell him we’ll see him there,” I added. Nigel Newley was one of my hotshot proteges who’d recently moved on to HQ in the quest for fame and glory.
“I’ve tried, but he’s on holiday. Shirley said she might come.” Shirley was Dave’s wife, who didn’t usually come out with us but it was all right by me.
“OK,” I said.
“And Sophie might, too.”
“Good,” I said, trying not to sound too pleased. Sophie was his daughter, my goddaughter, who I regard as my nearest family. She would be going to university in October and she is tall, graceful and beautiful. When God smiles on some people he really gives them the works. Sophie coming along was definitely all right by me, but I didn’t let it show. Dads can be touchy about their daughters. I shuffled the remaining papers on my desk into a neat bundle and shoved them back into the in-tray. “Tell you what,” I began, “let’s do some proper policing for the rest of the day.”
But I didn’t get a chance. The phone rang and I spent the next hour talking to a Prosecution Service solicitor about some evidence we had on a serial thief who specialised in stealing underwear from washing lines. It doesn’t sound great crime, but it unnerves the victims, and can lead to other things. We’d marked some stuff and left it hanging out in his usual area of operations and he’d risen to the bait. Trouble was, the underwear we used was bought from the back room at the Oxfam shop, and it was hot stuff. Open crotches, black and red frills, suspender belts. Phew! Now the CPS solicitor was saying that unnecessary temptation might be a good defence. He wasn’t keen, but I persuaded him to let it run. We might not get a conviction, but we’d be sending out the right messages.
Five o’clock the War Cabinet was having a cup of proper coffee in the super’s office when the phone rang. He listened, looked at me, said: “He’s here,” and grunted a few times. The word ominous flashed through my mind as he replaced the phone.
The War Cabinet comprises of Gilbert Wood, the superintendent and overall boss at Heckley nick; Gareth Adey, my uniformed counterpart; and me; plus any sergeant or other rank who didn’t escape quickly enough at the end of his shift. We try to meet at the end of the day for a relaxing cuppa, a general chinwag and to discuss the state of play with the villains and population in general on our corner of God’s Own Country. Today we discussed Jamie Walker, our one-small-person crime wave, and regretted not having the power to drive him to a remote corner of the country and push him out of the car. Cape Wrath would do nicely. Sometimes, in the absence of possible avenues of action, we descend to fantasy.
“Go on,” I invited Gilbert. “Tell me the worst.”
“Right up your street,” he replied. “Chap rung in to say he’s done a murder. They’re making it easy for you, these days.”
Gareth rose to his feet asking: “Is somebody on their way?”
“It’s Marborough Close, on the West Woods,” Gilbert told him, “and there’s a car handy.”
The West Wood estate was the first flush of post-war private housing to hit Heckley, back in the Sixties. They were mainly semis, bought by young couples who believed that marriage came before children, even though this was supposed to be the permissive age. The real revolution in morality came twenty years later, but nobody sang about it. They all had kids at the same time and for a while the place became one giant playground. But youngsters have this habit of growing into teenagers, and the West Woods featured more and more in our statistics, until they all eventually matured, like the leylandii trees in their gardens, moved on and had kids of their own. Things evened out, and now the estate is a pleasant backwater, with a good mix of ages and races.
“I’ll go down to control,” Gareth announced, finishing his coffee in a gulp and leaving us. He likes to create an aura of efficiency and bustle, but mostly he just makes splashes.
“Get the biscuits out, please, Gilbert,” I said. “The chocolate digestives you keep in the bottom drawer. I’ve a feeling that I might not be eating for a while.”
Eight minutes and four biscuits later the phone rang again. Gilbert listened for a while then told them that we were on our way. “It’s genuine,” he told me. “Grab your coat.” Going down the stairs I learned that there was one dead male at the house on Marlborough Close, with another male, alive, sitting in a chair saying he did it.
We went in separate cars with me leading the way, and were there in less than fifteen minutes. One of our Escorts was parked outside number 15, the corner house at the end of a cul-de-sac with a PC standing in the gateway. He stepped forward and opened my door as I coasted to a standstill.
“Hi, Jim,” I said, climbing out. “What’ve we got?”
“Hello, Mr Priest,” he replied. “We’ve got a murder. One bloke dead, in the kitchen, and a guy in the front room saying he did it.”
Gilbert had joined us. “Hello, er, John,” he said. “What have we got?”
“Hello, Mr Wood,” Jim said, and repeated what he’d told me.
“Let’s go have a look then, shall we?” Gilbert suggested, moving towards the house. A woman was standing in next door’s garden, watching us, and another woman from further along came out to join her.
“You’re sure he’s dead, Jim?” I asked.
“Yeah, they don’t come any deader,” he replied, “but not for very long.”
“A wild guess at how long?” I invited.
“One or two hours. No rigor, and the blood’s hardly dry.”
“Great,” I said to him. “It’s nearly six o’clock. If this body lived here his family might be coming home any time now. Have a word with those two,” I nodded towards the neighbours, “and see what you can find out.”
“Right, Boss,” he replied, then hesitated. “Er, how much can I tell them?” I’d known Jim a long time. First in Halifax, and now at Heckley. He had about twenty years in and was solid and dependable, but unimaginative. This wasn’t the first dead body he’d attended.
“Say it’s a suspicious death,” I told him. “Find out who lives here, what they look like. Then radio in and see who’s on the electoral roll for this address.”
“Right,” he repeated, and headed towards the women.
The house looked sad and seedy, with unwashed windows and weeds growing in the borders. The lawn had been mown recently, but the grass cuttings were still lying on it, as if the owner felt that clearing them up was a task too far. I wondered if mine looked like this to a casual visitor and vowed to have a crash clean
-up, when I had the time. The two cars parked on the drive didn’t look neglected. There was a Citroën Xantia tight up against the garage door and an Audi A8 behind it, at a slight angle, with the driver’s door not fully closed. The front door of the house was wide open. I stepped over the threshold and that old feeling hit me, like the smell of a bacon sandwich on a frosty morning. Some primordial instinct was being tapped: the thrill of the chase, and all that. At times like these, when news of a murder is breaking, I wouldn’t change my job for any in the world. At others, when there are names and faces to fill in the blank spaces, and I’ve lived with the grief that people cause each other, I could walk out of it at a moment’s notice. Except that someone else would have to do it. There’s always an except that.
I was in a hallway that faced straight on to a staircase, with a grubby biscuit-coloured carpet on the floor, nice but impractical, and Victorian bird prints on the walls. One of the first things I look at in someone else’s home is their pictures. It’s usually depressing and today was no exception.
Gilbert was in the front room, to my left, and I heard him say: “Do you live here, sir?” I peeked in and saw a man slumped in an easy chair, head down, his elbows on his knees. Gilbert was sitting facing him, his back to me, and another PC was standing nearby. The PC saw me and I winked at him. There was a glass door, slightly ajar, at the end of the hall. I placed the knuckle of my forefinger against it and eased it open.
I was in a kitchen of the type they grandly call a galley, which is probably one of the finer examples of the estate agent’s art. Cooking might be the rock ‘n’ roll of the Nineties, but back when these houses were built they had the real thing and food was something you grabbed between living. Somebody had been preparing dinner. A pan was on the worktop, lid alongside it, and a spaghetti jar was standing nearby. One gas ring was burning at full blast, and it was hotter than Hades in there. The floor was done in brown and cream carpet tiles, and spread-eagled across them was the body of a man. A turkey carver was sticking out of his chest, in the approximate vicinity of the heart. That’s the way to do it, I thought. He was wearing a white shirt, before someone ruined it, with the sleeves loosely rolled halfway up his forearms. That’s how middle class people turn them up. Workers, proper workers, take them right over the elbow. The man in the parlour, talking to Gilbert, was wearing a blue suit.
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