Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery)

by Watkinson, Douglas

  “In other words you’ve dumped him,” I said. “Why, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Is it mean to say that he’s too short?”

  I turned to her and smiled. “Well, he is Japanese.”

  As a girl she’d had masses of dark brown hair which she had cut short at sixteen, and there it had stayed. People could see her face better that way, she maintained. She was enviably tall, though never as tall in the flesh as she was in her e-mails. Whenever she wrote to me she projected the height that goes with a terse verbal style, the extrovert efficiency that marks out a violet who never shrinks.

  “His height can’t be the only reason,” I suggested.

  She said there were cultural differences which hadn’t been apparent when they’d first met in Tokyo’s Electric City, just after the earthquakes, when Yukito was trying to establish his electronic gadgets business. She’d set up the marketing side of the company, selling stuff to Australia, New Zealand, America, Britain. However, she’d come to believe that flogging torches which shone brighter or duller at the verbal request of the person holding them wasn’t really her life’s ambition.

  “I mean how many murderers had you caught by the time you were my age, Dad?”

  “Four, though I’d had help. Correction, at your age I was the help.”

  She smiled and looked over at the house. “Now you’re the fount of all wisdom, the one they come to when they’ve got a problem?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Laura. Anyway, isn’t it what you do these days? Sort people out? Even unwashed cavemen?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Don’t go all coy, Dad. Doesn’t suit.”

  Rather than defend myself against the coyness charge I explained that I’d had the situation dropped on me by an old acquaintance, Tom Blackwell.

  “I remember him,” she said, and she proceeded to give me a younger, over-flattering description of the man.

  I told her about the pending murder trial and how Kinsella was the star witness who had turned against his associates.

  “Why was he chained to a radiator?”

  “He tried to make a run for it this morning.”

  She wanted chapter and verse on that as well and wouldn’t rest until I’d given it, then stood up and went close to the spot where I’d brought Kinsella down. She stooped and examined it, like a girl guide.

  “Here’s where you caught up with him?”

  I nodded and she looked over at the house again, specifically at the extension roof.

  “Where were you when he jumped?”

  “By then I was out of the door, hot pursuit...”

  I thought she was going to ask how a man more than twenty years my junior hadn’t managed to outrun me. She must have read my mind.

  “That makes sense. You’re a fit guy; why wouldn’t you catch him? And he is out of condition.”

  “Faint praise,” I muttered.

  She cautioned me to be serious.

  “Where was he going, Dad? To a rendezvous, a car, a push-bike? What were his plans?”

  I stared at her for a moment, then turned and hurried back to the house.

  All three of my unwanted guests were in the kitchen and something about my demeanour when I entered must’ve put them en garde. Kinsella was handcuffed into Maggie’s dad’s rocker, reading a magazine. The greasy hair didn’t move as he looked up at me; only the beard parted as he smiled at Fee. The teeth still hadn’t been cleaned. Fairchild was seated at the table, working on her laptop. She closed it. Grogan was descaling the coffee maker. It felt like a fair exchange, given that I was taking over his job. I stood in front of Kinsella at a reasonable distance from the smell.

  “Uncuff him,” I said to Grogan.

  “Hang on a second...”

  “Do it!”

  He went over to the rocker and unlocked the handcuffs.

  “Empty your pockets,” I said to Kinsella. “Whatever’s in them, place on the table.”

  Kinsella smiled again. “You mean loose change, hanky, the good luck charm...”

  “I mean the keys to their car.”

  He stopped trying to be smart, smiled at Fairchild and then reached into his back pocket for the keys to the Ford Focus. He tossed them onto the table and raised his arms in a bang-to-rights gesture. I glanced at Grogan. His eyes were roaming the room, trying not to settle on anything he might grab and break, but eventually he gave way to anger and swooped on Kinsella, who backed away. I stepped between the two of them and pointed at Grogan, who all but took his clenched fist in his free hand and moved it to a place of safety. I turned back to Kinsella.

  “Take your shoes off.”

  He gave me the smile. “Denying me footwear? That’s surely a human rights issue...”

  “Take them off,” said Fairchild.

  Delighted to be the centre of attention, he pulled off the tattered trainers and handed them to Fairchild, who held them at a distance.

  “Bin ’em,” I said.

  Fee toed the pedal bin, the lid yawned open and Fairchild dropped them in.

  “Socks?” Kinsella asked.

  “I’ll ram them down your fucking throat...” Grogan began.

  “Shut up, the pair of you! Kinsella, you were described to me as a ‘terrified down-and-out who’d had a crisis of conscience’. Maybe that’s the game you play on Saturdays. Sunday you’re a pushy little piss-taker. Monday? Tuesday? What are you then?”

  I asked Grogan if he’d be informing his boss of Kinsella’s bid for freedom. He didn’t see any need to bother Blackwell, since the matter was being dealt with. He hoped I agreed.

  I said to Kinsella, “So you’re their star witness?”

  He smiled, gelatinous teeth. “Well, I...”

  “Only, if you’re having second thoughts, there’s a way out. I’ll suggest to Commander Blackwell that he cuts you loose, then tells Flaxman all about it. Without your testimony he’ll get off and you’ll be the first person he goes looking for. The man murdered two trawlermen, cold blood. Police reckon he was after you too. You’ll be dead by Christmas.”

  About an hour later Fee knocked on my cabin door and entered. She gazed round, her eyes coming to rest on the four clocks.

  “Tokyo, seven in the evening. He’ll be going off to Elio’s. Italian restaurant. You’d love it.” She took a deep breath and changed the subject. “So ... this is your hidey-hole. I don’t think I’ve ever been in it.”

  “It was here when I bought the place.”

  She smiled. “You don’t have to apologise for having it, Dad.”

  She went over to a photo on the wall, all six of us a century ago, and straightened it. It hadn’t needed it; she’d just wanted to put her hands on it.

  “What’s going on in the house?” I asked.

  “Breast beating. Grogan accusing Fairchild, Fairchild just about holding her own...”

  “Accusing her of what?”

  “The car keys. Her responsibility, he says.”

  “He’s the one at fault!” I said, too loudly. “Senior officer.”

  “Kinsella’s loving it.”

  She came to the desk and started to tidy it, straightening the piles of bills in their clips. It’s genetic: her mother used to fiddle with paperwork, unfold it, straighten it, put it in a different order to mine.

  “Loving it how, why?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “They disagree, he plays on it, they argue even more. You know what their trouble is?”

  “Cabin fever.”

  She shook her head. “Future tripping. Know what that is?”

  I answered as best I could. “A journey one will take sometime in the, well ... future?”

  “It’s the habit of trying to deal with a problem long before it happens. You do quite a bit of it.”

  “I call it forward planning,” I argued.

  “That’s different. Forward planning’s a straight line to an objective. With future tripping you come at something from all angles and ne
ver reach a conclusion. Fairchild’s an expert at it.”

  Fairchild’s latest future trip, Fee told me, involved the visit by the Crown Prosecution’s legal team, due sometime next week to interview Kinsella. Did he understand what was being asked of him? Would he keep his word and give evidence at the trial? Should she and Grogan be present for the questioning?

  “What does Grogan say?”

  She smiled. “Basically, fuck everyone.”

  There aren’t many things which bring all human beings down to the same level, unless you count war, plague or famine, but being treated for head lice is one of them. I won’t dwell on it, but Laura lined us up just before lights out and made us douse our heads with an oil that boasted a double-barrelled name. We had to wear it all night. By morning the lice would be dead. Then, she said, we would need to shampoo our hair, even those of us who didn’t have much, and wet comb each other like gorillas to remove any remaining nits, the eggs which had the power to cling to their hosts no matter what. She’d bought a selection of nit combs for us to choose from and tried to make the process sound like fun. And I said a moment ago that I wouldn’t dwell on it...

  - 7 -

  Over the next couple of days the nit combing ran its course and the ointment Laura had prescribed for the sores on Kinsella’s face and neck started to work. As she examined them just before supper one evening, Kinsella said, “Mr Hawk, that Lewis chess set in your living room, is it just for show? Are you a player?”

  “I’m not.”

  Laura glanced in my direction, then went back to the sores.

  “I saw that, Doc. He does play, he’s just scared I’ll beat him.”

  “Well, I’m not,” said Laura. “I used to captain my school team. I’ll have a game with you sometime.”

  “This evening?”

  “Very well.”

  “Fantastic! I bet you’re good. Are you good?”

  She smiled, went over to the sink and began washing her hands more thoroughly than most people ever contemplate, forbearing to lecture us on the subject even though it had become her latest hobby-horse. Kinsella followed her there for an answer.

  “How good?”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  Grogan ducked into the kitchen from the hall with a visible aura of panic clinging to him, the one reserved for lost dogs or misplaced children. His eyes came to rest on Kinsella, who’d been out of his sight for five minutes, and he relaxed. It was a game they’d started to play and in the scoring so far Kinsella was way ahead.

  The conversation over supper was too girly for my liking, and I’m sure Bill Grogan felt the same, given that it centred on men’s fashions, childbirth and calorific values. Kinsella tried to hijack it. He’d been overweight as a kid until he’d started playing football. With practice twice a week and a match on the weekend he soon slimmed down. Laura praised his parents for getting him out in the fresh air instead of letting him solidify in front of a television. At that point Kinsella made a bid for our sympathy. Far from being model parents, his mother was completely under his father’s thumb, afraid to challenge him on any of his shortcomings, and she ended her life as a haggard, neurotic parody of the woman she might have been. The girls made a few sympathetic noises, then went back to their conversation, this time about skin-care products, Charles Dickens and breast cancer.

  “On the subject of staying healthy,” said Fee in her patrol leader’s voice, “I think we should all go jogging, starting tomorrow morning.”

  There was one hell of a silence. Only Kinsella thought it was a good idea. He’d done quite a bit of jogging in his time, a couple of half-marathons, though never in bare feet. He tried to whip up our enthusiasm and failed.

  “Oh, come on!” said Fee, gesturing at what remained of supper. “We can’t just sit here, packing away more and more calories, never burning any off.”

  “I agree,” said Fairchild, hands straying to her hips.

  “Settled, then!” said Fee. “Seven thirty, tomorrow morning?”

  Grogan wasn’t so much lost for words as disinclined to use any.

  We cleared the table, a team effort, after which Kinsella asked Laura if she was still up for a game of chess. She said she was looking forward to it and suggested that he go and set up the board in the living room. Once he’d left the room Grogan muttered a two-word instruction to her.

  “Thrash him.”

  “Are the rest of you going to sit and watch while I do?” she asked. “Or have you other plans?”

  “Fee and I’ll mosey up to The Crown, I reckon. Care to join us, Fairchild?”

  She was about to say yes, but a slit-eyed look from Grogan changed her mind.

  The Crown was pretty busy for a weekday and, since Fee hadn’t been there since Christmas, she received quite a welcome, people asking how she was, how life in Japan was treating her but, more importantly, had it started raining outside yet? Fine, fine and not yet, she was able to tell them. Most people thought she looked radiant, of course, but one or two inquisitors wanted to know the real reason for her trip home. Was it just to check on the old man, make sure he was behaving himself? She’d made a pact with herself, she told them, to return at least twice a year, and if she hadn’t got the summer visit in sharpish it would soon be Christmas again. That gave everyone a chance to bemoan the passage of time.

  We settled at the bar and when Fee asked Annie McKinnon how Roberta, her two-year-old daughter, was, I thought I sensed envy in her voice. Annie must have caught it too and, without ceremony, asked after Yukito almost as if she were inquiring about his sperm count. Just as bluntly Fee told her that she and Yukito were history and, to Annie’s delight, launched into a detailed account of the break-up. I was glad to see that an old friend, Jaikie’s Latin and Greek teacher, was in the snug and apparently on his own, finishing off a crossword someone else had started. I took a drink through to him.

  John Demise rose to greet me and we broke into the usual square dance of embraces before settling down to chat about cabbages and kings. Over my shoulder he caught Fee’s eye, through in the main bar. He waved, she waved back and he seemed to drift off for a moment; he’d once told me how Fee reminded him of his late wife, Susie. When he returned, he said, “I didn’t know you had an extended family, Nathan.”

  “I don’t. That’s Fee, my daughter.”

  “Yes, I know that’s Fee,” he said, with a teacher’s irritability. “I’m talking about your cousin, Bill.”

  He was referring to Grogan who, for cover purposes, was my mother’s nephew. The trouble with people like John Demise is that you tell them some trifling detail and they remember it forever.

  “So he’ll be Auria’s son, will he?”

  “Yes, yes,” I said, trusting that at some stage I’d tested the logic of that. “You met him?”

  “No, not him, his wife, Petra. If I ever decide to get married again I’ll advertise for someone just like her. Poor Susie, eh?” he added. “The moment her back’s turned.”

  I smiled. “Give it to me in Latin, may not sound so bad.”

  He gazed into the middle distance for the translation. “Quando tergum suum convertum, ceterae feminae converto.”

  “Sounds worse. Where did you meet her?”

  “Durham University, 1965.”

  “Not Susie, my cousin’s wife, Petra.”

  “Oh, in the post office queue at Stone, couple of days ago.”

  I hadn’t made it my business to check on every move Fairchild or Grogan had made since they’d been with me, but something about the words ‘post’ and ‘office’ retains the power to disconcert coppers of a certain generation. It has something to do with them being robbed every five minutes.

  “What was she doing in Stone Post Office?” I asked.

  “Posting something.” I acknowledged his gentle dig. “A parcel. Somebody’s birthday, given that the wrapping had ‘Happy Birthday’ written all over it.”

  “Dead giveaway. No one in the family, so I guess it must be
, well...”

  Leave something like that dangling and, if the other party has the knowledge, they’ll usually share it. Besides, it’s in a teacher’s blood to pass on information.

  “Someone in Grimsby,” he said. “I know you’re supposed to stand well back when those in front of you are at the counter, but there’s something about the name Grimsby that cuts right through the air.”

  I’d suspected there might be something fishy about this case ever since the name Grimsby first came up, way back when Blackwell asked if he could billet Kinsella on me. So far there’d been nothing much to go on, apart from my natural feelings of mistrust, but this was promising. An SOU officer, charged with protecting the main prosecution witness, had sent a parcel to someone in the town where Aaron Flaxman murdered two trawlermen. Who and why? Who was it addressed to, why had she sent it? It smelled decidedly off.

  Walking home from The Crown, arm in arm with Fee, I might have been any middle-aged man strolling late at night with his daughter, each of us happy to place our private worries on the back burner as we chatted. Had they been brought to the boil, Fee’s would’ve concerned a man called Yukito whom she’d spent two hours being disloyal about to Annie McKinnon, something she doubtless now regretted. Mine would’ve homed in on Grimsby and birthday presents being sent there. And, beyond that, why I’d let Tom Blackwell lumber me with his star witness. Hadn’t experience taught me that such unguarded generosity would land me in trouble?

  Under the glare of a security light we’d triggered, Fee suddenly said, “Dad, what about the shoes?”

  “You mean Kinsella?”

  “I mean his feet. I bet it’s true, you know, it’s an abuse of human rights to deny a man footwear.”

  “Nonsense! There are whole races of people who’ve never worn shoes in their lives.”

  “Not in the North of England, or wherever he comes from.”

  “North Wales.”

  “That might be a special case, but I still want an answer.”

  She’d always been a persistent girl, argumentative and fearless, all qualities I admire so long as they’re not directed at me. I’d also disregarded her Grand Plan to save the world one creature at a time, a mission she’d inherited from her mother.