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 clear-up 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 Citroen 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.
It looked to me as if the person lying dead on the kitchen floor had lived here, and the one in the other room with Gilbert was a visitor. It takes years of experience to make deductions like that.
The PC came to join me standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “Shall I take over outside, Mr Priest?” he asked.
“Oh, er, hello Martin,” I replied. “Yes, if you will please. How much has laddo told you?” I took three careful steps across the kitchen and turned the gas off.
“Not a great deal. His opening words were: ‘I killed him,’ but since then he’s clammed up, refused to answer any questions.”
I backed out again, trying to place my feet on the same brown squares. “Right. I’ll radio for the team if you’ll take up station on the gate and log all visitors, please. There might be someone — family — coming home from work anytime, so watch out for them and don’t let them in.”
“So will you do a full enquiry?” he asked.
“We’ll have to,” I told him.
“What? SOCOs and all that?”
“You bet.”
“Even though you know who did it?”
I tapped my nose with a finger and said: “Something’s fishy.”
“Blimey,” he replied, and went outside.
When I stepped into the front room Gilbert looked up at me and shook his head. “This is Detective Inspector Priest,” he said to the man, enunciating the words as if he were addressing a foreigner. “Perhaps you would like to talk to him.”
It looked to me as if the chief suspect was playing dumb. “Maybe we should let Sam have a look at him,” I suggested. Sam Evans is the police surgeon, and we needed him to certify the victim dead, but when a witness or suspect is in any sort of a state it’s always useful to have a medical opinion, if only for self-defence at a later date.
“Good idea,” Gilbert said, rising to his feet. “I’ll send for him while you…” he gestured towards the man, “…try to have a word.”
“I haven’t sent for the team, yet,” I said to his back.
“I’ll do it,” he replied.
The team was comprised of the collection of experts we had on duty round the clock, plus a few others that we always called in for a murder enquiry. They’d be at home now, tucking into their fish fingers and chips or playing with the kids, but they’d grab their jackets with unseemly haste and be out of the door before their wives could ask what time they’d be back. We needed SOCOs and a photographer to record the murder scene before anything was moved, exhibits and statements officers, and sundry door-knockers. Then there was the duty DCS at region, the coroner and the pathologist to inform. I dredged up the checklist from the recesses of my mind and ticked off the procedures.
The man was smartly dressed, with slip-on shoes that gleamed and a gaudy silk tie dangling between his knees. The top of his head was facing me and he was completely bald, his scalp as shiny as his shoes. I placed my hands on his lapels and eased him upright.
“Could you just sit up please,” I said to him, “so I can see you.”
He didn’t resist, and flopped against the chair back. His eyes were red, as if he’d been crying, or rubbing his knuckles into them, and there was blood on his fingers.
“That’s better,” I said. There were stains on the front of his jacket, too, but I couldn’t be sure what they were. “Like my superintendent told you,” I began, “I’m DI Priest from Heckley CID. Now could you please tell me who you are?”
He didn’t reply, and the corner of his mouth began to curl into the beginnings of a sneer. He shook his head, ever so slightly, and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling.
“Your name, sir,” I tried. “Who are you?”
He mumbled something I couldn’t catch.
“Could you repeat that?” I asked.
He looked at me and said: “It doesn’t matter.”
“What doesn’t matter?”
“All of this. Who I am. It doesn’t matter.”
Before he could protest I reached forward, pulled his jacket open and whipped his wallet from his inside pocket. The secret is to make sure you go for the correct side. He made a half-hearted attempt to grab it back, then resumed his slumped position in the chair.
It was just a thin notecase, intended for credit cards and a few tenners for emergencies. I didn’t count them but there looked to be about ten. I read the name on a Royal Bank of Scotland gold card and checked it against the others. They were all the same.
“Anthony Silkstone,” I said. “Is that you?”
He didn’t answer at first, just sat there, looking at me with a dazed, slightly contemptuous expression. I didn’t read anything into it; I’m not sure what the correct expression is for when you’ve just impaled someone with the big one out of a set of chef ’s knives.
“I killed him,” he mumbled.
Well that was easy, I thought. Let’s just have it in writing and we can all go home. “You killed the man in the kitchen?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “I told the others. How many times do I have to say it.”
“Just once more, for the record. And your name is Anthony Silkstone?”
He gave a little nod of the head. I handed him his wallet back and said: “Stand up, Mr Silkstone. We’re taking you down to the station.” He placed it back in his pocket and rose shakily to his feet.
I held his arm and guided him down the driveway and out into the street. A small crowd had gathered but Martin was doing sterling work holding them back. I sat Silkstone in the back of the police car and gestured for Martin to join me.
“Anthony Silkstone,” I began, “I am arresting you for the murder of a person so far unknown…” He sat expressionless through the caution and obligingly offered his wrists when I produced the handcuffs. “Take him in as soon as some help arrives,” I told Martin. “I’ll tell the custody sergeant to expect you.”
At the station they’d read him his rights and find him a solicitor. Then they would take all his clothes and possessions and label them as evidence. Even his socks and underpants. Fingerprints and DNA samples would follow until the poor sod didn’t know if he was a murder suspect or a rat in a laboratory experiment. He’d undress, sit down, stand up, say “Yes” at the appropriate times and meekly allow samples of his person to be taken. Then, dressed like a clown in a village play, he’d be locked in a cell for several hours while other people determined his fate and came to peep at him every fifteen minutes.
Gilbert and Jim joined me on the driveway. “You’ve arrested him,” Gilbert commented.
“It’s a start,” I said, turning to Jim. “Any luck?”
“Yes, Boss,” he replied. “A bloke called Peter Latham lives here. He’s single, lives alone, and works as some sort insurance agent. Average height, thin build, dark hair. Sounds like the man on the floor.”
“He does, doesn’t he. Single. Thank God for that.”
“Somebody’ll love him,” Gilbert reminded us as his mobile phone chirruped into life. He placed it to his ear and introduced himself. After a few seconds of subservience from the super I deduced that it was the coroner on the phone. Gilbert outlined what we’d found, told him I was on the job and nodded his agreement at whatever the coroner was saying. Probably something along the lines of: “Well for God’s sake don’t let Charlie touch anything.” Gilbert closed his phone and told us: “We can move the body when we’re ready.”
“We haven’t certified the poor bloke dead yet,” I informed him.
“Well he’d just better be,” he replied.
A white van swung into the street, at the head of a convoy. “Here come the cavalry,” I said. “In the nick of time, as always.”
As soon as Sam Evans, the doctor, confirmed that the man on the kitchen floor was indeed dead, and had been so for about an hour, we let the photographer and scene of crime loose in the place. They tut-tutted and shook their heads disapprovingly when I confessed to turning off the gas ring. Sam’s opinion, only given when requested, was that death was possibly induced by the dagger sticking out of the deceased’s heart. Police doctors and pathologists are not famed for their impetuous conclusions.
I asked Sam if he’d go to the station and give an opinion about the state of mind of Anthony Silkstone, the chief suspect, and he agreed to. The doc’s an old pal of mine. I’ve plenty of old pals. In this job you gather them like burrs. Some stick, some irritate, most of them fall off after a while.
As we hadn’t set up an incident room we had our initial team meeting with lowered voices in the late Mr Latham’s back garden. I sent the enquiry team, all three of them, knocking on doors to find out what they could about the dead man. Except that they wouldn’t have to knock on any doors because everybody was outside, standing around in curious groups, wondering if this was worth missing Coronation Street for or if it was too late to light the barbecue. We wanted to know if anybody had seen anything within the last three or four hours, the background of the deceased, and anything about his lifestyle. Visitors, girlfriends, boyfriends, that sort of thing. I was assuming that the dead man was the householder. As soon as someone emerged who was more than just a neighbour I’d ask them to identify the body.
We knew that Silkstone had the opportunity, now we needed a motive and forensic evidence. He might retract his confession, say he called in to see an old friend and found him dead. Maybe he did, so if he wasn’t the murderer we needed to know, fast. Gilbert went back to the station to set up all the control staff functions: property book, diary, statement reader, etcetera, plus vitally important stuff like overtime records, while I stayed on the scene to glean what I could about a man who aroused passions sufficiently to bring about his elimination.
The SOCO was doing an ESFLA scan on the kitchen floor, looking for latent footprints, so I had a look around the upstairs rooms. It was a disappointment. There was nothing to indicate that he was anything other than a normal, heterosexual bloke living on his own. No gay literature, no porn, no inflatable life-size replicas of Michelangelo’s David. Except that the bed was made. His duvet was from Marks and Spencer and his wallpaper and curtains probably were too. It all looked depressingly familiar. I promised myself that from now on I’d lead a tidier life, just in case, and dispose of the three thousand back issues of Big Wimmin that were under my bed.
There were ten suits in his wardrobe. “That’s nine more than in mine,” I said to myself, slightly relieved to discover a discrepancy in our lifestyles. And he had more decent shirts than me. The loo could have been cleaner but wasn’t too bad, and the toilet paper matched the tiles. He’d changed his underpants recently, because the old ones were lying on the bathroom floor, with a short-sleeved shirt. There was a sprinkling of water in the bottom of the bath, and the towel hanging over the cold radiator was damp. At a guess he’d showered and changed before meeting his maker, which would be a small comfort to his mother. In his bathroom cabinet I found Bonjela, Rennies and haemorrhoid cream. Poor sod didn’t have much luck with his digestive tract, I thought.
I gravitated back into the master bedroom. That’s where the clues to Mr Peter Latham’s way of living and dying lay, I was sure. Find the lady, I was taught, and there were framed photographs of two of them on a chest of drawers, opposite the foot of the bed. I stood in the window and looked down on the scene outside. Blue and white tape was now ringing the garden and the street was blocked with haphazardly parked vehicles. Neighbours coming home from work were having to leave their cars in the next street and Jim, the PC, was having words with a man carrying a briefcase who didn’t think a mere death should come between him and his castle. I gave a little involuntary smile: he’d get no change out of Jim.
The first photograph standing on the chest of drawers in a gilt frame was one of those wedding pictures you drag out, years afterwards, to amuse the kids. It was done by a socalled professional, outside a church in fading colour. The bride was taller than the groom, with her hair piled up to accentuate the difference. She looked good, as all brides should. This was her day. Wedding dresses don’t date, but men’s suits do, which is what the kids find so funny. His was grey, with black edging to the floppy lapels of his frock coat. The photographer had asked him to turn in towards his new wife, in a pose that nature never intended, and we could see the flare of his trousers and the Cuban heels. Dark hair fell over his collar in undulating cascades. He’d have got by in a low budget production of Pride and Prejudice. It wouldn’t have stood as a positive ID but I was reasonably confident that the groom and the man lying on the kitchen floor were one and the same. So where was she, I wondered? The second picture was smaller, black and white, in a simple wooden frame. It showed a young girl in a pair of knickers and a vest, taken at a school sports day. She’d be ten or twelve, at a guess, but I’m a novice in that department. Some men would find it sexy, I knew that much. Her knickers were tight fitting and of a clingy material, with moderately high cut legs; and a paper letter B pinned to her vest underlined the beginnings of her breasts. It was innocent enough, I decided, but she’d be breaking hearts in four or five years, that was for sure. Maybe a niece or daughter. At either side of her you could just see the elbows and legs of two other girls, and I reckoned that she’d been cut from a group photograph. A relay team, perhaps. As with the other picture, I wondered if this young lady might come bounding up the garden path anytime now.
“Boss?”
I turned round to see the SOCO who was standing in the bedroom doorway, still dressed in his paper coveralls. I hadn’t put mine on, because the case had looked cut and dried.
“Yes!” I replied, smartly.
“We’ve finished in the kitchen,” he said. “We just need the knife retrieving.”
“I’ll have a look before anybody touches it,” I told him.
“Oh. We, er, were hoping that you’d, er, do it.”
“Do what?”
“Well, retrieve it.”
“You mean…pull it out?”
“Mmm.”
“That’s the pathologist’s job. He’ll want to do it himself.”
“Ah. We have a small problem there. He’s on his way back from London and his relief is nowhere to be found, but he’s spoken to Mr Wood and he’s happy for you to do it if we take a full record of everything.”
“I see. What does it look like for prints.”
“At a guess, covered in ’em.”
“Good. What do you make of those?” I asked, nodding towards the photographs.
“The pictures?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“It looks like their wedding day.”
“I’d gathered that. Do you think it’s him?”
“Um, could be.” He looked more closely, adding: “Yeah, I’d say it was.”
“Good. What about the other?”
“The girl? Could be their daughter,” he replied. “The hair colour’s similar, and they both look tall and thin.”
“Or the bride as a schoolgirl,” I suggested.
The SOCO bent down to peer at the picture. After a few seconds he said: “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because the timing’s wrong.”
“You’ve lost me,” I told him.
“Can’t be sure,” he went on, “but they both look as if they were taken around the same time. About fifteen or twenty years ago, at a guess. Maybe a bit less for that one.” He pointed towards the schoolgirl.
“How do you work that out,” I asked, bemused.
“The knickers,” he replied. “Long time ago they’d be cut straight across. Now they wear them cut higher. These are in-between.”
“I take it you have daughters,” I said.
“Yep. Two.”
“Some men would find a picture like that provocative,” I told him.
“I know,” he replied. “And you can see why, can’t you?”
I suppose that was as close as we’d ever get to admitting that it was a sexy image. “I don’t find it sexy,” we’d say, “but I can understand how some men might.”
“Why,” I asked him, “do the knicker manufacturers make them with high-cut legs when they know that they are intended for children who haven’t reached puberty yet?”
“Because that’s what the kids want. There’s a demand for them.”
“But why?”
“So they can be like their mothers.”
“Oh.”
All knowledge is useful. Knowledge catches crooks, I tell the troops. But there are vast landscapes, whole prairies and Mongolian plains, which are a foreign territory to me. They’re the bits surrounding families and children and relationships that have stood the test of time. My speciality, my chosen subject, is ones that have gone wrong. Never mind, I consoled myself; loving families don’t usually murder each other.
We went downstairs into the kitchen. Peter Latham hadn’t moved, but there was a thin coating of the fingerprint boys’ ally powder over all his possessions. “We decided not to do the knife in situ,” one of them told me.
“So you want me to pull it out?”
“Please.”
“Great.”
“But don’t let your hands slip up the handle.”
“Maybe we should use pliers,” I suggested, but they just shrugged their shoulders and pulled faces.
“Have we got photos of it?” I asked. We had.
“And measurements?” We had.
“Right, let’s have a look, then.”
Sometimes, you just have to bite the bullet. Or knife, in this case. I stood astride the body and bent down towards the sightless face with its expression cut off at the height of its surprise, a snapshot of the moment of death. Early detectives believed that the eyes of the deceased would capture an image of the murderer, and all you had to do was find a way to develop it.
I felt for some blade, between the handle and the dead man’s chest, and gripped it tightly with my thumb and forefinger. It didn’t want to come, but I resisted the temptation to move it about and as I increased the pressure it moved, reluctantly at first, then half-heartedly, like the cork from a bottle of Frascati, until it slipped clear of the body. The SOCO held a plastic bag towards me and I placed the knife in it as if it were a holy relic.
“Phew!” I said, glad it was over. I could feel sweat on my spine.
“Well done,” someone murmured.
My happy band of crime-fighters started to arrive, wearing the clothes they’d intended spending the rest of the evening in. Annette Brown was in jeans and a Harlequins rugby shirt, and my mouth filled with ashes when I saw her. She’s been with us for about a year, and was now a valuable member of the team. For a long while she’d kept me at a distance, not sure how to behave, but lately we’d been rubbing along quite nicely. She was single, but I’d never taken her out alone, and as far as I knew nobody else had. Inevitably, there were rumours about her sexual inclination. She has wild auburn hair that she keeps under control with a variety of fastenings, and the freckles that often go with that colour. I looked at my watch, wondering if we’d have the opportunity to go for that drink later, and ran my tongue over my teeth. No chance, I thought, as I saw the time.
I sent Sparky and Annette to talk to the house-to-house boys, collating whatever they’d discovered, and asked Jeff Caton to do some checks on the car numbers and the two people in the house. At just before ten the undertaker’s van collected the body. We secured the house, leaving a patrol car parked outside, and moved en masse to the incident room that Mr Wood had hopefully set up at the nick.
The coffee machine did roaring service. As soon as I’d managed to commandeer a cup I called them all to order. “Let’s not mess about,” I said. “With a bit of luck we’ll still be able to hit our beds this side of midnight. First of all, thank you for your efforts. First indications are that the dead man might be called Peter Latham. What can anybody tell me about him?”
Annette rose to her feet. “Peter John Latham,” she told us, “is the named householder for number 15, Marlborough Close, West Woods. He is also the registered keeper of the Citroen Xantia parked on the drive. Disqualified for OPL in 1984, otherwise clean. Latham’s description tallies with that of the dead man, and a woman at number 13 has offered to identify the body. She’s a divorcee, and says they were close.”
“Do you mean he was doing a bit for her, Annette?” someone called out.
“No, close as in living in the adjoining semi,” she responded, sitting down.
“Thanks Annette,” I said, raising a hand to quieten the laughs. “It appears,” I went on, “that Latham was killed with a single stab wound to the heart. We’ll know for certain after the post-mortem.”
“Arranged for eight in the morning,” Mr Wood interrupted. He was on the phone in his office when I’d started the meeting, organising the PM, and I hadn’t seen him sneak in.
“Thanks, Boss,” I said. “It doesn’t appear to have been a frenzied attack, but all will be revealed tomorrow. You OK for the PM, Annette?”
She looked up from the notes she was making and nodded.
“The man who claims to have done it,” I continued, “is called Anthony Silkstone. What do we know about him?”
Jeff flipped his notebook open but spoke without consulting it. “Aged forty-four,” he told us. “Married, comes from Heckley and has a string of driving convictions, but that’s all. His address is The Garth, Mountain Meadows, wherever that is.”
I knew where it was, but didn’t admit it.
“Yuppy development near the canal, on the north side of town,” Gareth Adey interrupted. “We’ve had a car there, but the house is in darkness and the door locked. Presumably the key is in Silkstone’s property.”
Jeff waited until he’d finished, then went on: “He shares the place with a woman called Margaret Silkstone, his wife, I imagine, and drives an Audi A8 with the same registration as the one parked outside the dead man’s house.”
“Nice car,” someone murmured.
“What’s it worth?” I asked.
“They start at about forty grand,” we were informed.
“So he’s not a police officer. OK. Number one priority is find Mrs Silkstone — we’d better get someone round to the house again, pronto — get the key from Silkstone’s property. Then we need next of kin for the dead man.”
“We’re on it, Charlie,” Gareth Adey said.
“Cheers, Gareth. And we need a simple statement for the press.” He nodded to say he’d take that on, too.
The door opened and the afternoon shift custody sergeant came in, wearing no tie and a zipper jacket over his blue shirt to indicate that he was off duty and missing a well-earned pint.
“Just the man,” I said. “Has our friend been through the sausage machine?”
“He’s all yours, Mr Priest,” he replied. “He’s co- operating, and beginning to talk a bit. Dr Evans says there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be questioned, and he’s not on any medication.”
“We think there’s a wife, somewhere. Has he asked for anybody to be informed?”
“No, Boss, just his solicitor. I’ve never heard of them, but apparently they’re an international firm with a branch in Manchester, and someone’s coming over.”
“Tonight?”
“That’s what they said.”
“They must be able to smell a fat fee.” I turned to the others. “Right, boys and girls,” I said. “Anybody short of a job, see me. Otherwise, go home to bed and we’ll meet again at eight in the morning. With a bit of luck we’ll have this sewn up by lunchtime.”
They drifted away or talked to the sergeants to clarify their tasks. Sparky found me and said: “Well that mucked up our nice quiet drink, didn’t it?”
“And I could use one,” I replied.
“If you get a move on we might manage a swift half over the road,” he said.
“You go,” I told him. “I’ll hang about a bit in case anybody wants a word.” I like to make myself available. They might be detectives, but some of them are not as forthcoming as others. There’s always someone who seeks you out to discuss an idea or a problem, or to ask to be allocated to a certain task. This time it was Iqbal, who was on a fortnight’s secondment with us from the Pakistan CID and who never stopped smiling. He was lodging with Jeff Caton, and apparently had come in with him.
“Where would you like me to go, Inspector Charlie?” he asked.
For over a week he’d followed me round like a bad cold, and I was tempted to tell him, but he outranked me and the big grin on his face made me think that his provocative phrasing was deliberate.
“Ah! Chief Inspector Iqbal,” I said. “Just the man I’m looking for. Tomorrow you can help me with the submission to the CPS. That should be right up your street.”
“The dreaded MG forms,” he replied.
“Precisely.”
Before I could continue Annette came by and said: “Goodnight, Boss. See you some time in the morning.”
“Er, we were thinking of trying to grab a quick drink at the Bailiwick,” I told her. “Fancy one? Dave’s paying.”
“Ooh,” she replied, as if the thought appealed to her, then added: “I’d better not. I don’t want to feel queasy at the PM. Thanks all the same.”
“The PM!” I exclaimed, as enlightenment struck me. “What a good idea. How do you feel about taking Iqbal along with you?”
Whatever she felt, she declined from expressing it. I don’t know how Iqbal felt about watching a body being cut open, but I suspected he’d rather eat a whole box of pork scratchings than be shown around by a woman. He tipped his head graciously and they arranged to meet at the General Hospital, early.
As they left us Sparky said: “Annette’s a nice girl, isn’t she?”
“She is,” I replied. “Very sensible. But she will insist on calling me Boss all the time.”
He grinned and shook his head.
“What did I say?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” he replied.
A couple of others came to clarify things with me and it was about ten to eleven as we walked along the corridor towards the front desk. Some of the team had already gone across to the pub. The duty constable was talking to a short man in a raincoat, and when he saw me he indicated to the man that I was the person he needed.
“This is Mr Prendergast, Mr Silkstone’s solicitor,” the constable told me, before introducing me as the Senior Investigating Officer. Prendergast didn’t offer a handshake, which was OK by me. I’m not a great shaker of hands.
He didn’t waste time with unnecessary preliminaries or pleasantries. “Have you charged my client?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “We haven’t even interviewed him, yet.”
“So he is under arrest and the clock is running?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Since about six forty-five this evening. The precise time will be on the custody sheet.” He was a keen bugger, no doubt about it. I mentally slipped into a higher gear, because he’d know every dodge in the book and screw us if we made the slightest mistake.
“And when do you propose to interview him?” he demanded.
“In the morning,” I replied. “We normally allow the prisoner to sleep at night. He’s been offered food and drink, and given the opportunity to inform another person of his arrest, but he has declined to do so.”
“Yes, Yes,” Prendergast said, swapping his briefcase from his left hand to his right. “I’m sure you know the rules, Inspector, but I would prefer it if you interviewed him tonight, then perhaps we can explain away this entire sorry event.”
“I think that’s unlikely, but I’m happy to interview him if he’s willing.” I turned to Sparky who was hovering nearby, and said: “Looks like we’re in for a late night, Sunshine. You’d better ring home.”
“Right,” he replied, grimly. Anybody who keeps Sparky away from that desperately needed pint is walking near the edge. We took the brief through into the custody suite to have words with the sergeant, then locked him in the cell with his client, so they could get their story straight. After ten minutes we knocked on the door, but he asked for another ten minutes. We didn’t wait idly while they were conferring. Phone calls to friends in the business told us that Prendergast specialised in criminal law for a big firm of solicitors based in Luxembourg who worked for several large companies with tendencies to sail close to the wind. It was nearly midnight when Sparky pressed the red button on the NEAL interview recorder and I made the introductions.
Tony Silkstone, as he called himself, was of barely average height but built like a welterweight. I could imagine him working out at some expensive health club, wearing all the right gear. The stuff with the labels on the outside. His pate still glistened, so I decided he was a natural slaphead and not one from choice. He had a suntan and his fingernails were clean, even and neatly cut. Apart from that, his paper coverall was pale blue and a trifle short in the arms.
“Today,” I began, after the formalities had been committed to tape, “at about five p.m., police officers were called to number 15, Marlborough Close, Heckley. Did you make that call, Mr Silkstone?”
“Yes,” he replied in a firm voice, and Predergast nodded his approval.
“When they arrived there,” I continued, “they found the body of a man believed to be one Peter Latham. He was lying dead in the kitchen. Did you kill Mr Latham?”
That threw them into a tizzy, but I wasn’t in a mood for tip-toeing round the issue. I wanted it sewn up, so I could go home. Silkstone had been offered a meal; Prendergast had probably dined lavishly on smoked salmon and seasonal vegetables, washed down by a crisp Chardonnay; I’d had a Cornish pasty twelve hours ago. And, I remembered, four chocolate digestives in Gilbert’s office. Prendergast grabbed his client’s arm and told him not to answer, as I’d expected.
“That’s a rather leading question, Inspector,” he said.
“And I’d like a leading answer,” I replied.
“I think I’d like to confer with my client.”
“Mr Prendergast,” I said. “It is after midnight and I am tired. Your client has had a stressful day and is probably tired, too. Do you not think it would be in his interest to conduct this interview in the morning, when we all have clear heads? If you are constantly asking for adjournments we could be here until the day after tomorrow.”
Except, of course, that there would be other places where Prendergast would prefer to be tomorrow. Like the golf course, or entertaining one of his corporate clients who was having alimony problems. Silkstone himself came to the rescue. He ran his hand over the top of his head and massaged his scalp with his fingers, before saying: “It’s all right, Mr Prendergast. I’d like to answer the inspector’s questions.”
“In which case,” I stated, “I would like it on record that this interview is continuing at your insistence and not under any duress from me.”
Prendergast put the top on his fountain pen and sat back in his plastic chair.
“Why did you make that phone call, Mr Silkstone,” I asked.
“Because Peter was dead.”
“You knew he was dead?”
“I was fairly certain.”
“You didn’t send for an ambulance?”
“There was nothing anybody could do for him.”
“Who killed him?”
“I did.”
Prendergast sat forward in an involuntary reaction, then relaxed again.
“Tell me about it.”
“I followed him home. We had words and I pulled a knife out of the set of carvers that just happened to be on the worktop. I stabbed him with it, in the chest, and he fell down. He moved about for a bit, then lay still. I could tell he was dead.”
“What did you do then?” I asked.
“I sat in the other room for a while. Driving there I’d been seeing red. Literally. I always thought it was just an expression, but it isn’t. I’d been mad, raging mad, but suddenly I was calm again. I could see what I’d done. After about ten minutes I rang the police.”
“So you are confessing to killing Peter Latham, by stabbing him in the chest?”
“Yes. I did it.”
“And the man is indeed Peter Latham?”
“Yes, it’s Peter.”
“You knew him well?”
“Yes.”
“So why did you kill him?”
Silkstone put his face in his hands and leaned forward until his forehead rested on the little table that separated us.
I said: “Why did you follow him home and stab him?” and he mumbled something through his fingers.
“I’m sorry…?” I said.
He sat up, his eyes ringed with red. “He killed her,” he told us.
So that was it, I thought. Some old score settled. Some grudge over an old sweetheart, real or imagined, that had festered away for years until it could be contained no longer. I’d seen it all before. I even held one myself. “Who did he kill?” I demanded.
“My wife. He killed my wife.”
I leaned forward until my elbows were on the table. “When was this?” I asked. “When are we talking about?”
“Today. This afternoon. He…he…he raped her. Then he strangled her.”
There was a “clump” as the front legs of Sparky’s chair made contact with tiled floor, and Prendergast’s eyes nearly popped out. I interlaced my fingers and leaned further forward.
“You’re saying that Latham killed your wife this afternoon, Mr Silkstone?” I said, softly.
He looked up to see if there was a clock on the wall, but it was behind him. “Yes,” he replied.
“Where exactly did this take place?”
“At my house. I came home early and saw him leaving. She…Margaret…she was upstairs, on the bed. He’d…he’d done things to her. So I followed him home and killed him.”
I looked across at Sparky. “Sheest!” he mumbled.
“Interview terminated while further investigations are made,” I said, reading off the time and nodding for him to stop the tape. I rose to my feet and glanced at the hotshot lawyer who looked as if he was trying to run uphill with his shoelaces tied together. “I think it’s safe to say we’ll be holding your client for a while, Mr Prendergast,” I told him.
“I’m not surprised, Inspector,” he responded, shaking his head.