“Because he’s a worried man. He has something to hide. Everybody else is saying: ‘Well done, Tony. You rid the world of a scumbag.’ I’m the only one saying: ‘Whoa up a minute! Maybe he was there with Latham when Margaret died.’”
“You know what the papers are saying, don’t you.”
“That he’s a hero. Yes.”
“And that we’re hounding him unnecessarily.”
“I haven’t started hounding him yet.”
“You really think he was there, when she died?”
“Yes, Gilbert. I do.”
“OK, but play it carefully. Let Jeff take over the everyday stuff, and you spend what time you need on this. And for God’s sake try to keep off the front page of the UK News.”
Gilbert’s a toff. He listens to what I have to say and then lets me have my way. If I were too outlandish, way off the mark, he’d step in and keep me on track, but it doesn’t happen very often. He protects me from interference by the brass hats at HQ; I protect him from criticism by giving him our best clearup rate. If you want to commit a murder, don’t do it in Heckley. Don’t do it on my patch. I searched in my drawer for an old diary. I needed some information, the sort they don’t print in text books, and I knew just the person to ask.
Peter Drago lives in Penrith now, but he was born in Halifax and was in the same intake as me. We attended training school together and got drunk a few times. He made sergeant when I did and inspector shortly after me, but he also made some enemies. With sexual predilections like his, that was a dangerous thing to do. He was eventually caught, in flagrante, by the husband of the bubbly WPC he was making love to in the back of her car, and they had a fist fight.
Next day Drago was busted back to PC and posted to Settle and the WPC told to report to Hooton Pagnell. That’s how things worked in those days. Step out of line and you were immediately transferred to the furthermost corner of the region. It changed when the good citizens of these far-flung outposts discovered that the handsome and attractive police officers with the city accents that kept arriving on their doorsteps were all the adulterers and philanderers that the force had to offer. I found his home number and dialled it.
“Fancy doing Great Gable tomorrow?” I asked without ceremony, when he answered.
After a hesitation he said: “That you, Charlie?” No insults, no sparkling repartee, just: “That you, Charlie?”
“The one and only,” I replied. “How are you?”
“Oh, not too bad, you know. And you?”
“The same. So how about it?”
“Great Gable? I’d love to, Charlie, but I’m afraid I won’t be climbing the Gable again for a long time.”
“Why? What’s happened?” This wasn’t the Dragon of old, by a long way. His motto was: if it moved, shag it; if it didn’t, climb it.
“I’ve just come out of hospital. Triple bypass, three weeks ago.”
“Oh, I am sorry, Pete. Which organ?”
“My heart, pillock,” he chuckled.
“What happened? Did you have an attack?”
“Yeah. Collapsed at work, woke up in the cardiac unit with all these masked figures bending over me. Thought I’d been abducted by aliens.”
“I am sorry,” I repeated. “And was it a success? Are you feeling OK now?”
“I’m a bit sore, but otherwise I feel grand. Right champion, in fact.”
“OK,” I said. “We’ll take a rain check on the Gable, but only for six months. Next Easter we’re going up there, you and me, so you’d better get some training in. Understood?”
After a silence he said: “You know, Charlie, that’s the best tonic I’ve had. Next Easter, and sod what the doctors say. It’s a date.”
We chatted for a while, reminiscing about walks we’d done, scrapes we’d shared when we were PCs together. He asked about Dave and his family, and I told him that his daughter Sophie was about to start at Cambridge. Eventually he asked why I’d rung.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” I replied. “It was a bit personal, and I don’t want to excite you.”
“Now you do have to tell me,” he insisted.
“Well,” I said, “it really is a bit personal. Are you able to, you know, talk?”
“Yeah, she’s gone for her hair doing. Tell me all about it.”
I didn’t ask who she was; Pete’s love life has more dead ends and branch lines than the London Underground. “Well, it’s like this,” I began. “There’s this bloke, and he’s having an affair with a married woman.”
“He’s shagging her?”
“Er, yes.”
“I just wanted to clarify the situation. Sorry, carry on.”
“That’s all right. He sees her every Wednesday afternoon, at her house, while her husband is at work.”
“Presumably this is a purely hypothetical case,” Pete interjected.
“Oh, definitely. Definitely.”
“Right. Go on.”
“Thanks. Now, this woman is in her early forties, and she isn’t on the Pill, so her lover has to take precautions.”
“As a matter of interest, is her lover married?”
“Er, no. As a matter of interest, he isn’t.”
“Has he ever been?”
“Um, yes, as a matter of interest, he has.”
“I think I’m getting the picture. Carry on, please.”
I carried on, loosely describing what we’d found at Mrs Silkstone’s house, speculating how things may have happened. I think – I hope – that he eventually realised that I wasn’t one of the protagonists in the whole squalid episode. He gave me the benefit of his experience in these matters, and I was grateful.
It was a long phone call. As we went through the ritual of ending it he said: “Did you ever hear what John Betjemen is supposed to have said on his death bed, Charlie?”
“Something about wishing he’d had more sex, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right, and I agree with him. Get it while you can, Charlie, you’re a long time dead.”
I reminded him about Easter and put the phone down, reflecting on the Pete Drago philosophy: get it while you can. He was a good bloke: intelligent, fair and generous; but something drove him, far harder than it drives most of us. And, God knows, that’s hard enough. Bob Dylan included rakes in ‘Chimes of Freedom’, his personal version of the Beatitudes: tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake. I’d never understood why, until now. Maybe he had it right.
We had a killing through the week. A youth was stabbed to death in the town centre, and my heart sank when I learned that he was from the Asian community. I breathed again when it was revealed that his attacker was his brother-in-law, and it was all about family honour. I’m only interested in guilty or not guilty, and was relieved not to have a race war on my hands. Family feuds I can deal with. Saturday lunchtime I tidied my desk and fled, rejoicing at my new-found freedom, eager to be out in the fresh air. I drove to Burnsall, one of the most attractive Dales villages, and donned my boots. The route I took was loop-shaped, through Thorpe and Linton to Bow Bridge, then following the Wharfe back to the village. It’s a beautiful river, sometimes rushing over boulders, sometimes carving deep languid pools and sandbanks. Dippers used to be common-place, not very long ago, and I’ve seen the kingfisher there. The morning showers had passed over, and the afternoon sun made the meadows steam.
There were lots of people about. It’s a popular place, and the last flush of summer always brings us out, determined to stock up on the beneficial rays before the dark nights close in. A group of people were vacating some rocks at the side of the water, packing their picnic remnants into Tupperware boxes and rucksacks. It was a good spot, in a patch of sunshine, with trees on the opposite side and the river gabbling noisily. Very therapeutic. I moved in after them, heading for a seat on a dry boulder, and as I sat down a dead twig, brittle as egg shells, snapped under my feet.
I’d called in Marks and Spencer’s when I left the office, for a prawn sandwich and a packet of Ec
cles cakes. I wolfed them down with a can of flavoured mineral water, sitting there watching the stream go by. Swallows were skimming the surface, stocking up on flies before their long journey south, and a fish made ripples, out in the middle where it flowed more slowly.
There weren’t many places that I would rather have been, but there’s more to happiness than that. I wondered if Annette were doing something similar, picnicking with another man and his children as a different river slid past them. I leaned forward and picked up a piece of the branch I’d stepped on. It was about four inches long, dead as last week’s scandal and encrusted with lichen. I tossed it, underhand, out into the stream.
It hardly made a splash and bobbed up and down, buoyant as a cork, until the current took hold and pushed it into the flow, heading towards a cleft between two rocks. I watched it accelerate towards them, turning as opposing forces caught and juggled with it. It entered the chute between the rocks, one end riding high, and plunged over the mini-waterfall.
The pressure held it down and the undertow pulled it back. There was a wrestling match between the flow of water and the buoyancy of the twig, but there could only be one result. After a few seconds it broke free of the water’s grip and burst to the surface. I watched it rotate in the current like an ice skater taking a bow and nod away towards the North Sea, eighty miles down river.
I couldn’t do it again. I broke another piece off the branch and threw it into the stream, but it was swept straight through the rocks and away. I tried bigger pieces and smaller ones, with variable quantities of lichen, but it didn’t work. It was the balance that was important. Big twigs were more buoyant, but the water had more to press down on. On the other hand, the lichen provided drag, which should have helped the water. I tossed another piece into the stream and watched it slide away.
“My, that looks good fun,” a voice said, behind me.
I turned, squinting into the sun, and saw an elderly couple standing there. They were wearing lime green and blue anoraks, and had two pale Labradors on extending leads, which they’d thoughtfully reeled in as they’d approached me.
“Hello,” I said. “I didn’t hear you. Isn’t it a nice day.”
“Wonderful,” the man said. “So what is it? Pooh sticks?”
“You need a bridge for that,” I told him. “No, I was just doing some experiments, studying elementary hydraulics.”
“Elementary hydraulics, eh. And I thought it was at least Life, Death and the Universe.”
“No, not quite. Are you going far?”
“Only to the footbridge and back. And you?”
“I walked up to Bow Bridge, and I’m heading back to Burnsall. Far enough for this afternoon.”
“Well enjoy your experiments,” he said. “Hope we didn’t disturb you.”
“Not at all. Enjoy your walk.” His wife gave me a special smile. She was attractive, had once been beautiful. Probably still was, when you knew her. I watched them stroll away, the dogs leaping about on long leads now, biting each other’s necks. It was easy to forgive them their matching anoraks.
No, I thought, as I hooked my rucksack over my shoulder. Not Life, Death and the Universe. Just Life, Death and Elementary Hydraulics.
Chapter Ten
Monday morning Superintendent Isles gave me permission to interview Jason Lee Gelder at HQ, where he was being held. I cleared my diary and reallocated a few tasks to accommodate him. Dave had driven to Cambridge over the weekend, to look at Sophie’s room in the students’ quarters. He was a lot happier now that he knew where she’d be staying, and told us all what a smashing place it was. Expecting displays of enthusiasm from him is normally like expecting impartial advice from your bank manager, but today he was full of it. I decided to attempt to harness the quality.
“And I’ve a special little job for you, Sunshine,” I told him.
“Like what?” he asked. From him, that’s eager.
“One I wouldn’t trust to anybody else.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Good. I want you to go to Boots and buy one hundred condoms.”
“A hundred condoms!”
“That’s right. You can put them on your expenses.”
“You want me to buy a hundred French letters and put them on my expenses?”
“That’s what I said.”
“You can cocoa!”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I! Go buy them yourself.”
I found a notebook with empty pages and put it in my pocket with a couple of fibre-tipped pens. “You just can’t get the staff,” I said standing up and sliding my chair under the desk.
Sparky had his cheeky grin on. “So, er, things are looking up, are they?” he asked.
“No, they’re not,” I snapped, adding: “If you want a job doing properly, do it yourself.”
“Why a hundred?” he asked. “With your luck a packet of three would last you until the use-before date.”
“You can be very hurtful,” I told him, opening the door and switching the light off.
“Yeah, it was a bit. Sorry.”
“That’s OK. How much are they, these days?”
“Johnnies? A pound for two from the machine in the Spinners’ bog.”
“Is that plain or flavoured?”
“Plain. The flavoured are two quid for three.”
“You seem to know all about them.”
“I read the machine while I’m having a pee. What do you do?”
“Try to drown a fly. That’d be fifty quid, and I’d have to go to the bank for coins. And then the machine would run out and I’d have to ask the barman for my money back. It’ll have to be a chemist’s.”
“Are you serious?” he demanded.
“Never more. Want to change your mind?”
“No.”
“Fair enough, but I’ll have to put it on your record. I’m off to HQ, to talk to young Mr Gelder. Try not to breach too many guidelines while I’m gone.”
I parked in town and went to Boots. The condoms were on the self-service shelves but there was a small queue at the pay counter, so I wandered around for a few minutes until it had gone. Fetherlites came in packs of a dozen, costing £8.85, so I’d have to buy…I did the mental arithmetic…six twelves are seventy-two, seven twelves are eighty-four, eight twelves are ninety-six…nine, I’d have to buy nine packs, which would leave eight condoms over. Ah well, they might come in handy, some day.
The queue had gone so I gathered up a handful of packets. Dammit! There were only eight on display. Ninety-six. That meant I needed two packets of three to make up the shortfall. I added them to my collection and headed towards the counter.
A woman got there before me, but that was OK. I fell in behind her, my purchases clutched to my body, as she handed over a brown bottle of tablets and a ten pound note. The grey-haired assistant looked at the bottle and turned towards the glassed-off enclave where the pharmacist was busy counting pills.
“Paracetamol!” she shouted, and he raised his head and nodded his consent to the sale.
A wave of panic swept through me. Was she about to yell “Condoms!” to all and sundry when she saw what I was buying? “You know that they contain paracetamol, don’t you?” she told the customer, who said that she did. Personally, I’d have thought that that was why she was buying them. And as it said Paracetamol in large letters across the label, it seemed not unreasonable to assume that she knew the chief ingredient.
“Can I, er, take those, please,” I mumbled, when it was my turn, half expecting her to warn me that I’d never make a baby if I wore one of these, on the off-chance that I was a lapsing Catholic. I passed the bundle two-handed across the glass-topped counter, followed by my credit card. She was counting them when the phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said, placing my goods in a neat pile and turning to answer it. Unfortunately Durex packs are shiny and rounded, and don’t stack up well. They slid over and spread-eagled themselves across the counter, fanning out like a hand of card
s. I turned and smiled guiltily at the baby in the arms of the young girl who headed the queue that was forming behind me. The girl smiled back at me.
Seventy-six flippin’ quid they cost. And thirty pence. I grabbed the bag that the assistant handed over and turned to flee, only glancing at the five women and two men in the queue behind me enough to notice that the last man looked suspiciously like my window cleaner. As I passed him he touched my sleeve. I turned to say hello, but he just said “Receipt.”
“Pardon?”
“You forgot your receipt.”
“Oh, thanks.” I went back to the counter and the grey-haired assistant passed it to me. I felt as if I ought to make a witty remark, but she was already listening to her next customer.
Jason Lee Gelder wasn’t what I’d expected. I try not to be fooled by first impressions, but he took me for a ride. I shook hands with his brief, the duty solicitor, when he introduced himself, although we meet nearly as often as the swing doors down at the Job Centre, and sat down opposite them.
“Is it Jason or Lee?” I asked.
“Er, Jason,” he replied. He had the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen, short fair hair in a sensible style, a high forehead and a full mouth and jaw-line. When it came to looks, he was a heart-breaker, and I could imagine the girls falling for him like lemmings off a cliff. But nature gives with one hand and takes away with the other.
“Right, Jason,” I began. “Are they looking after you well?”
“Er, yeah.”
“I see they’ve given you your own clothes back.”
“Er, yeah.”
“We were allowed to collect some from his home,” the solicitor explained, “but most of his clothes are with your forensic people.”
“For tests,” I told Jason. “We do tests on them.” Before either of them could speak again I said: “This is an informal interview, to clear up a few things about this and another case. We are not recording or taking notes, but I have to tell you, Jason, that you are still under caution and anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence. Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” he said, which meant that he was probably the only one of us who did.
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