‘These are Duncan Roberts’s classmates,’ I told him, ‘with their parents’ addresses. It might be easier to see if mum and dad still live in the same place and ask them. Otherwise…’
‘…otherwise, consult the oracle,’ Dave finished for me.
‘That’s it, sunshine. And these…’ I passed him another sheet, ‘…are names I extracted from the file yesterday. The three with the asterisks are the boyfriends of the women who died in the fire. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that one of them might have started it. And then there are the names on the report that Crosby gave us. It wouldn’t hurt to have a word with that lot. I’ll sort them out. If all else fails with the students, there’s a department at the university called the alumni relations’ office. Old boys’ club to you. They might be able to help.’ His hangdog expression gave me a pain in the left ventricle that I couldn’t ignore. I said: ‘You could, of course, give Annette a crash course in the system and leave her to it.’ Annette Brown was a DC who’d been with us for a fortnight and had already fallen under Nigel’s protective arm.
‘I was going to ask you,’ he replied, ‘but it’ll upset Goldenballs.’
‘He’ll recover. Anything else?’
‘No. Where will you be if I need you?’
‘Chemist’s, to start with.’
‘Chemist’s? What for?’
‘Something for bloody midge bites.’
It cost four quid and didn’t work, and now I smelt like an apothecary’s pinny. I came out of the toilets and went back upstairs to my office. Dave was busy on the phone, pencil poised over a half-filled page. I reread the list of Fox’s shady dealings that Crosby had given us and extracted any relevant names. If they were really on Fox’s payroll we’d need a jemmy to prise it from them, but it was worth a try. They’d be relaxed, not expecting a call from us. When they say they’ll only talk in front of a solicitor you know you’ve struck paydirt.
Dave knocked and came in. He sniffed and said: ‘Cor, have you been using fly spray? I’ve found a couple of locals, if you want to be getting on with it.’
‘Who are they?’ I asked, leaning back.
‘Terence John Alderdice read chemistry at Leeds Uni with Duncan Roberts. He lives in Leeds and will be home after about six, according to his wife. And, wait for it, Watson Pretty, who was the ex-boyfriend of Daphne Turnbull, Jasmine’s mother, now lives in Huddersfield, right on our doorstep. He’s out on licence after serving five years for the manslaughter of one of his subsequent girlfriends. They had a quarrel and she fell down the cellar steps and broke her neck. Oh, and she had a ten-year-old daughter.’
‘He sounds a right charmer,’ I said. ‘What do they see in them?’
Dave shrugged his shoulders. ‘Want me to see Alderdice tonight?’ he asked, but my phone rang before I could answer.
I listened, raising a finger to Dave to signify that this was interesting. ‘Grab your coat,’ I told him as I put the phone down and unhooked mine from behind the door.
‘What is it?’ he shouted after me as we ran down the stairs.
‘Halifax Central have just arrested someone for using Joe McLelland’s Visa card in Tesco. He’ll be in their cells by the time we get there.’
If my geometry was any good he wasn’t the one in the video. He had the build, but was only about five feet six. They brought him from the cell to an interview room and sat him down with his packet of fags before him. He was about twenty, wearing torn jeans and a T-shirt from the Pigeon Pie English Pub on Tenerife. They served Tetley’s bitter and Yorkshire puddings and I could hardly wait to go.
‘So where did you get the card?’ Sparky demanded. I’ve told him before about being too circumspect.
‘I found it.’
‘Where?’
‘In t’car park.’
‘Which car park?’
‘Tesco’s.’
‘When did you find it?’
‘Just then.’
‘Before you went shopping?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What were you doing in the car park?’
‘Goin’ shoppin’! What do you think I were doin’?’
‘You had no money on you.’
‘I’d left me wallet at ‘ome. I didn’t realise until I was in t’shop. I was goin’ to ‘and t’card in, but I’d filled me trolley by then and I din’t know what to do, so I used t’card.’ He whined his well-rehearsed story as if it were the most self-evident explanation in the world.
‘You fell to temptation,’ I said.
He swivelled to face me and jumped on my words as if they were a life raft. ‘That’s it! I fell to temptation!’
‘Does your weekly shop normally run to four bottles of Glenfiddich?’ Dave wondered.
‘We’s ‘aving a party,’ he replied, lamely.
‘And six hundred cigs?’
‘I’m a ‘eavy smoker.’
‘And two packs of fillet steak?’
‘You’ve gotta eat.’
Dave was silent for a few seconds, then he asked him if he had form. He had.
‘What for?’ Dave asked.
‘Thieving.’
‘Have you done time?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How was it?’
‘’Orrible. I’ated it.’
‘You could go back in for this.’
‘It was a mistake! ‘Onest! I din’t mean to use it, it just ‘appened. Things just ‘appen to me. Like ‘e said, I was tempted.’
I clunked my chair back on all four legs. ‘You made a good job of Mr McLelland’s signature,’ I said.
‘I just copied it.’
‘Whoever stole this card from Joe McLelland left him tied in his chair, and his wife, for ten hours,’ I told him. They are both elderly. It’s a miracle they were found. This was nearly a murder case. Now I’m prepared to believe that it wasn’t you who tied them up. I’m prepared to believe that someone sold you the card. That’s what I think, so if I’m right you’d better tell me a name, or we’ll just have to assume you took it off them yourself. What do you say?’
His elbows were on the table, his fingers interlocked and both thumb-nails between his teeth. He chewed away for nearly a minute, then looked straight at me and said: ‘I found it. If I’m lying may my little lad be dead when I go ‘ome.’
It’s always someone else they want dead. ‘He might be,’ I replied. ‘Of old age.’
I pulled into the nick car park and suggested we have a fairly early night. Dave said: ‘I could do another window frame round at the mother-in-law’s, or I could cut the grass.’
‘You’re spoilt for choices,’ I commented.
‘Or…’ he began, ‘…or I could nip into Leeds after tea and talk to Mr Alderdice, former student at Leeds University and erstwhile friend of Duncan Roberts.’
‘Uh-uh,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t want your Shirley blaming me for you never being there.’
‘I can handle her. I’d like to find out about this punk bird, fast as poss. It’s niggling me.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I replied. ‘Fair enough, you see Alderdice and I’ll have a word with Mr Pretty. That’ll be two names fewer to investigate. Do you want to meet in a pub afterwards and compare notes?’
‘Er, no, if you don’t mind. I know I said I could handle her, but there are limits.’
When he’d driven away I locked the car and walked into the town centre and had a teatime special in the Chinese restaurant. I enjoyed it, all by myself, with no one to entertain or worry about. Maybe this was my natural state, I thought.
But I didn’t really believe it. Back in the car I rang Jacquie and told her I was on my way to a meeting. We could grab a quick drink later, if she wanted. I moaned about my midge bites and she said: ‘Lavender oil.’
‘Lavender oil,’ I repeated. ‘What will that do?’
‘It’s aromatherapy. Lavender oil will cool you down and de-stress you, then you ne
ed aloe vera to soothe the damaged tissue. I’ll show you, when you come round.’
‘Ooh! I can hardly wait,’ I said.
Watson Pretty lived on the edge of Huddersfield town centre, not far from where I did my probationary training. Not much had changed. The main difference was that now both sides of every street were lined with cars; some worth much more than the houses they stood outside, some rusting wrecks standing on bricks, awaiting the invention of the wheel. The doctor’s surgery was in the same place, but with wire mesh over the windows, and the greengrocer’s was now a mini-market. I smiled at the memories and checked the street names.
He invited me in, speaking very softly, and told me to sit down. He was wearing pantaloons, a T-shirt with a meaningless message emblazoned across it and modest dreadlocks. He must have been fifty, but was refusing to grow up. The room was overfurnished with stuffed cushions and frills, and primitive paintings of Caribbean scenes on the walls. At a guess, it had belonged to his mother. He was out on licence, so I knew he’d be no trouble. One word out of place and he could be back inside to serve the rest of his sentence. Well, that’s what we tell them.
‘I’m looking for a girl,’ I began. ‘A white girl with purple hair.’
‘I know no such girl,’ he replied.
‘How about back in 1975? Did you know her then?’
‘No, I not know her.’
‘You had a girlfriend called Daphne Turnbull.’
‘Yes.’
‘She died in a fire.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t know a girl with purple hair?’
‘Who is she, this girl?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. You remember the fire?’
‘I hear about the fire, but I live in Halifax at the time.’
He was a founder member of the Campaign for Simplified English. The first rule is that you only speak in the present tense. ‘With Daphne?’ I asked.
‘We live together for a while, but she leave me.’
‘Why did she leave you?’
He shrugged and half-smiled. ‘Women?’
‘Was her daughter, Jasmine, yours?’
‘No.’
I’d read the interviews with him and knew he had a good alibi, but he could have hired someone to start the blaze. At the time he’d been my definite number-one suspect, although I’d never met him. Now I wanted to eliminate him, but I still wasn’t sure. I rarely have hunches and don’t trust my feelings about people. Evidence is what counts. I quizzed him about his relationship with Daphne and kept returning to the girl with purple hair, but he was adamant that he didn’t know her. Talking about the fire didn’t disturb him at all. It was just history to him.
I thanked him for his help and left. I’d parked at the top of his street and as I neared the car a woman came round the corner. There are some women you see and you think: Cor! She’s beautiful; and there are others who deprive you of even that simple ability. You gawp, slack-jawed, and realise you are flatlining, but don’t care, because this would be as good a time and place as any to drop down dead. Her hair shone like spun anthracite and she wore a white dress with buttons down the front. It was short, above her knees, and the seamstress had been very economical with the buttons. She turned to wait and a little girl with braided hair and a matching dress followed her round the corner, gravely avoiding the cracks between the flagstones.
I mumbled something original and amusing, like: ‘Lovely morning,’ and was rewarded with a smile that kicked my cardiac system back into action. In the car I gazed at the digital clock and wondered if there was any hope for me. It was seven forty-three in the evening. I sat for a few seconds, deciding whether to go through the town centre or do a detour, and started the engine. Neither. I did a left down the street parallel to the one Pretty lived in and a left and another left at the bottom of the hill. I pulled across the road and parked.
The woman and her little girl were now coming down towards me. Mum was tiring of the slow progress so she took her daughter’s hand and led her for a while. They passed a few gateways then turned into one and mounted the steps. She knocked, the door opened almost immediately and mother and daughter disappeared inside. I stared at the door for a couple of minutes, long enough for a welcoming kiss and for her to settle in the easy chair I’d just left, and pointed the car homewards. Oh dear, I thought. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
What would I do without Jacquie to come back to? She smiled and kissed me in a mirror-image of the scene I’d imagined forty minutes earlier. We had coffee and shop-bought cake and talked about our days. One of her assistants was causing trouble and the rents in the mall were going up. I rambled meaninglessly about what went off behind closed doors, in this wicked world we lived in.
‘You’re stressed out,’ she told me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not very good company.’
‘How are the midge bites?’
‘Agonising.’ I smiled as I said it.
She went away for a while and returned carrying a box filled with coloured bottles, like a paintbox. She placed it on the coffee table alongside me and drew a chair up directly in front of mine. ‘Prince Charles swears by lavender oil,’ she said.
‘Right,’ I replied. ‘Right.’ If it was good enough for him it was good enough for Charlie Priest.
She lit three small porcelain burners about the room and turned the lights low. I relaxed. I had a feeling I was in for a treat. Jacquie sat facing me and took my hand. ‘First the lavender, to absorb all your stresses,’ she whispered. I watched her long fingers caress my wrists, her scarlet nails skimming my skin but not touching it. She did my fingers, one by one, and I discovered things about myself that I’d never imagined.
‘And now the aloe vera,’ she said.
I breathed deeply and closed my eyes, and wished this could go on forever. She removed my shoes and socks and stroked my feet, fingertips and exotic oils mingling together so I couldn’t tell touch from smell, pleasure from torture, arousal from relaxation. I stopped trying.
‘This is where the problem is,’ Jacquie told me. She was massaging my neck now, harder than before, her thumbs probing muscle, searching for knots. ‘You’re tight here.’ I let my head loll up and down in agreement. It could have been the most magical evening of my life, but it wasn’t. She cured the itching and the stress; all I had now was confusion and frustration.
It was the hottest night of the year, which didn’t help. I lay on my bed with just a sheet over me and the window open. When the blackbird on the roof started singing at about three thirty I got up and read a book. I don’t mind him singing, but he will insist on tapping time with his foot, and he has no sense of rhythm. At seven I went to work.
Terence John Alderdice, Dave told me, remembered Duncan Roberts but was mystified about the girl. ‘He reckoned Duncan was a right plonker,’ Dave said. ‘He was quite friendly with him the first year. They became mates on day one and were in the same tutorial group, whatever that means, then drifted apart as they found more kindred spirits, as you do. He said Duncan developed some repulsive habits. They were in a hall of residence, and Duncan took great pleasure in never washing his plate or coffee mug. He just used them over and over again.’
‘Sounds delightful,’ I said.
‘In the second year,’ he continued, ‘Alderdice said Duncan just gave up studying. He lost interest and moved into a squat with a bunch of other dead-beats. Alderdice didn’t see much of him again and never saw him with a girl and doesn’t remember ever seeing one with purple hair. So there. How did you go on?’
‘Similar. Waste of time. Except that the cycle is repeating itself. I saw Pretty’s girlfriend come to visit, just as I left. Black girl, early twenties, with a little daughter, ‘bout five.’
Dave said: ‘Number three lining up for the chop. What can we do about it?’
‘Not much. I’ll have a word with his probation officer, see if he’s any suggestions. She was gorgeous.’
&
nbsp; ‘The little girl?’
‘No, turnip brain, the mother. The little girl was… little.’
CHAPTER SIX
The high pressure moved around a bit, bringing breezes from the north. The nights were clear and cold and early-morning mists rolled off the hills, causing havoc on the roads. Two people were killed in a fifteen-vehicle pile-up on the M62 and a golfer was struck by lightning in Brighouse. We made ten more contacts, some by telephone. It’s all right having carte blanche with expenses, but driving a hundred miles for an interview takes a big chunk out of the working day. And although Nigel was running the big show there were some jobs I had to attend to myself and some I wanted to. Arresting Peter Mark Handley was one of the latter.
Handley was forty-four years old and taught physical development at Heckley High School, the local comprehensive. When I was a pupil there it was called the Grammar School and we learnt PT. Because of financial constraints there was no games mistress as such for the girls, just a reluctant succession of uninterested teachers seconded to take a lesson when they could. The netball and hockey teams suffered, as did a group of girls who showed promise as swimmers. To prevent a further slide in the school’s fortunes Handley had volunteered to take over as their coach, too.
We’d heard via an older girl who spent a week with us on a job awareness programme that he subscribed to the touchy-feely training method. We held off while the school was in session to avoid rumours spreading, but as soon as the summer holiday came we put him under observation and started interviewing specially selected pupils. Another girl, called Grace and wise beyond her years, said he would give them group talks before a match, extolling the virtues of the East German training methods. He showed them videos of the 1936 Berlin Olympics and modern ones of powerful Teutonic maidens out-sprinting, out-throwing and out-swimming their mortal competitors. Winning was all, he exhorted. Any means of achieving victory was acceptable, and ‘Simply the Best’ became the unofficial team song.
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