A couple of years ago Annabelle and I had a lightning drive down to London to see an exhibition of Pissarro’s work at the Barbican. I like him, the reviews were good, and it was an excuse for a day out. On the way home, late that night, Annabelle was making conversation to keep me awake. “If you could have one painting,” she began, “just one, to hang above your fireplace, which would it be?”
“Of Pissarro’s?” I asked.
“No. Anybody’s.”
“Oh, in that case, a Picasso. Any Picasso.”
“Except him.” She knew I was a Picasso freak.
“Right.” I gave it a long thought. We were approaching Leicester Forest services and I asked if she wanted to stop. She didn’t. “I think it would be a Gauguin,” I told her.
“A Gauguin? I’ve never heard you championing him before.”
“Oh, I’m very fond of him,” I said, “but there’s one in particular that gets me.” I thumped my chest for emphasis, saying: “Right here.”
“I know!” she exclaimed. “One with lots of nubile South Sea Islanders showing their breasts.”
“Where do you get these ideas about me?” I protested. “Actually, it’s a self portrait. Gauguin is just coming home from a walk, and his landlady is greeting him at the garden gate. It’s called Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin. He captures the moment beautifully. Haven’t you ever seen it?”
“No, I don’t think I have.”
“You’ll like it. The colours glow like a stained glass window. I have it in a book somewhere.”
The conversation was preserved in my mind with almost every other word that passed between us, but I hadn’t expected it to be recalled in this way. The Bart Simpson fridge magnet was drawing my thoughts back to Peter Latham’s house, or, more precisely, to the postcard that it pinned against the cold metal. It was the same picture as I’d told Annabelle I’d like to have on my wall, before all others: Gauguin’s self portrait, Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin.
There was no message written on the back, no pinhole through it. It was as blank as a juror’s expression. Cards like that are only available in galleries. Had Latham bought it for himself, because he liked it above all the other offerings on show? That was something for me to ponder over.
Tuesday morning we hit the headlines. The UK News, Britain’s foremost tabloid, written for Britons by Britons, with lots of white British bosoms for red-blooded British men, carried yet another world exclusive. Yesterday it had been the convent schoolgirl with the fifty-two inch bust — Only another seven days to her sweet sixteenth, then all will be revealed! — today it was: Why is this man in jail? above a near life-size photograph of a tearful Tony Silkstone.
Silkstone, we were told when we turned to page five, was living in a prison hell because he had rid the world of a scumbag. Latham was a child killer and rapist who had gone on to kill Silkstone’s wife. Cue blurred holiday snap of Margaret, wearing a bikini. Silkstone had done what any good citizen would have done — what the courts should have done years ago — and made sure Latham wouldn’t be raping or murdering anybody else. Good riddance to him, but meanwhile poor Silkstone had to wait in an overcrowded prison, three to a cell, while the geriatric legal system, aided and abetted by a police force only interested in statistics, argued what to do with him. Give him a medal, says the UK News! On the next page was a picture of Caroline Poole — not the sports day one, thank God — and all the gory details of how her violated young body was found, back in 1984.
Prendergast! I thought. Bloody Prendergast! The courts are supposed to be isolated from public opinion, but if you believe that you probably still think that Christmas is the time of goodwill to all men. And why shouldn’t the public have their say, you may argue: it’s the public’s law, after all. And while we are at it, let’s bring back lynching.
Wednesday I went to the Spinners with Dave and we had a good chinwag. We’ve lapsed a few times, lately. Thursday night I ate at home, alone. I didn’t have the opportunity to ask Annette if she fancied a Chinese, and I didn’t go looking for her. No point in appearing eager.
Summer fell on the third of July. Otherwise, it slipped by in the usual mixture of showers and mild days. As the saying goes: If you don’t like the English weather, just wait ten minutes. I did some walking, finished the painting and one Saturday, in an unprecedented burst of enthusiasm, dug all the shrubs out of the garden. They weren’t as labour-saving as I’d planned, so I decided to sow annuals from now on.
It was the silly season. A family in Kent — Mum, Dad and two kids — changed their names so that their initials matched the numberplate on their Mitsubishi Shogun. It was easier and cheaper than doing things the other way round. Heckley’s first space probe exploded on the launch pad up on the moors, and a man was drowned trying to sail across the Channel in a shopping trolley.
In the job, we had the opportunity to catch up with burglaries and muggings, and made a few good arrests. A female drug dealer whose home we were raiding one morning drove over Dave’s foot while trying to escape. There were all the usual “hopping mad” jokes, and for a few days he came to work with it heavily bandaged, minus shoe. I appointed him office boy, and the troops started calling him Big Foot behind his back. The new CCTV cameras were installed in the market place and soon earned their keep, and the chief constable’s daughter was fined and banned for driving while pissed. That cheered everybody up.
Annette took two weeks’ leave. I didn’t ask her if she was going away, but a card from the Dordogne appeared on the office notice board. The day she was due back I booked into my favourite boarding house in the Lakes. The weather stayed fine, sharpened by the first suggestions of an early autumn, and I bagged a few good peaks.
“Nice holiday?” I asked, when I saw her again.
“Mmm,” she nodded, without too much enthusiasm. Ah well, I thought, she has been back at work for a whole week. “And you?” she asked.
“Mmm,” I echoed, adding: “You caught the sun.” Her freckles were in full flush against a background hue several shades deeper than usual.
She blushed, adding to the rainbow effect. “I try to stay out of it,” she said, “but you caught it, too.”
“The weather,” I explained. “I caught the weather.”
On August 19^th Sophie learned that she’d earned three straight As, and the following day a magistrate allowed Tony Silkstone out on bail. Swings and roundabouts. We knew he was likely to be released but we’d opposed it, and I’d gone to court in case the magistrates had any questions. They didn’t. Silkstone was unlikely to abscond as he’d phoned the police himself to confess, and psychiatric reports were available which said that he was sane and unlikely to offend again. Coming home twice to find your wife murdered and raped by your best friend would be downright bad luck. What probably clinched it was the fact that he had a job to go to. Heckley magistrates’ court hadn’t tried anyone with a job for nearly two years. Silkstone had been inside on remand for eight weeks, which would be deducted from any sentence he was given, and there were conditions to his bail. He had to surrender his passport, reside at The Garth, Mountain Meadows, and report to Heckley nick twice per week. We wouldn’t be inviting him to stay for tea and biscuits.
While I was slogging up Dollywagon Pike, sweating off a hangover, the troops had collared a burglar who put his hand up to just about every outstanding blag on our books. I saw it as making the citizens of Heckley safer in their beds at night, to Gilbert it was an opportunity to make our clear-up figures look better than Olga Korbut’s on a good day. Dave and Annette sat him in the front seat of Dave’s car and took him for a ride. He took pride in his work, liked to show off about his nefarious deeds. Put him in the company of an attractive lady and he sang like the Newport Male Voice Choir the time they beat the All Blacks. I didn’t like using Annette that way, didn’t like the thought of his hungry eyes dragging over her contours, stripping her naked, but sometimes I have to act like a grown-up. It’s not easy for me.
“A hundred and nineteen,” she sighed, five fifteen Thursday evening, as she flopped into the spare chair in my office.
“That’ll do,” I told her. “No more days out for Laddo with my glamorous assistant. Do they all check out?”
“The ones we’ve looked at do. He remembers how he got in, what he took, the make of everything and how much he sold it for. A hundred and nineteen householders are going to find out that their burglary — their burglary — has been taken into consideration. All that grief, and he walks. He doesn’t give a toss about any of them. It doesn’t seem fair, Boss.”
She was right. He’d stand trial for the one we caught him for and, if found guilty, the judge would be informed of the other offences. The TICs. They’d make a marginal difference to his sentence, his slate would be wiped clean and our figures would look good. Everybody happy except the victims. But villains don’t commit crimes against individuals, they commit them against society. It might be your house that is burgled, your car that is stolen and torched, but the crime is against the state, so tough luck.
“It’s not fair,” I agreed, “but that’s the law, and our job ends when we nab him and gather the evidence. Don’t worry about it, Annette. If he gets a light sentence and never does another crime, then the system has worked. If he keeps on blagging, we’ll keep on catching him. His cards are well-marked.”
“I suppose so. Sorry to be a moan, Boss.”
“No problem.”
She bent forward, as if to rise from the chair, then stopped. “Um, it’s Thursday, today,” she said, looking me straight in the face.
“Yep, I had noticed.”
“Well, after four days of him I don’t feel like going home and cooking. Fancy a Chinese? I owe you one.”
I pursed my lips, sucked in my cheeks. Anything to look noncommittal. I failed, miserably. “Um, yeah,” I said. “Smashing.”
“What time?” she asked, rising to her feet.
“Er, now?” I wondered, following her up.
She wanted to go home and change, and it wasn’t a bad idea for me to do the same. At seven thirty, clean shaven and crisply attired, I parked outside her downstairs flat on the edge of the town. Annette saw me arrive and came out, wearing jeans and a Berghaus fleece over a T-shirt. Her hair was tied back, where it exploded from out of a black band in an untamed riot. I wanted to sit there and tell her how good she looked, but I didn’t.
I settled for: “Hi Kid, still Chinese?”
“Yes, please.”
“We could have a change, if you’d prefer it.”
“No, Chinese is fine.”
“OK.” I put the car in first gear and eased away from the kerb. “If I remember rightly,” I told her, “it’s my turn to get you drunk.”
Mr Ho wasn’t there, so we didn’t have a cabaret or free tea, but it gave us a chance to talk. The holiday had been good but I gained the distinct impression that something about it wasn’t too brilliant. The company, perhaps? They’d canoed down the river for four days, staying at campsites and imbibing copious amounts of local produce. It sounded heaven to me. She didn’t want to talk about it, and her friend was never mentioned by name. When I ventured to ask if the two girls had enjoyed themselves the first flicker of enthusiasm came into her eyes and she said they had. Inevitably, the conversation found its way back to the job.
“I saw Silkstone this morning,” Annette said, “when he came to sign the bail book. He was larger than life and twice as cheerful.”
“Cocky little sod,” I replied. “I haven’t seen him since he was given bail. Anybody would think he’d won the welterweight championship, the way he was jumping up and down, shaking hands with his brief.”
“He wants to change his day next week, because he’s talking at a sales conference.”
“Has his solicitor applied to the court?”
“Yes. He was asking if we’d had notification.”
“Did they let him?”
“I imagine so.”
“Well they shouldn’t have.” I adopted my stern expression and growled.
“You think he’s got away with it, don’t you, Charlie?”
“I don’t know, Annette. I really don’t know.”
“The famous intuition?”
I shook my head. “No, definitely not. I have no sense of intuition. I study the picture, weigh the facts. All the facts, including the seemingly irrelevant.”
She tipped her head to one side and rested it against her fist. “Such as what?” she asked.
The waiter brought the portion of toffee bananas we’d decided to share and I spooned a helping on to my side plate. “These are delicious,” I told her, passing the remainder across the table.
“Mmm!” she agreed after the first mouthful.
“What do you do with junk mail?” I asked.
“Throw it away, usually,” she replied.
“No. In detail, please. Step by step.”
“Step by step? Well, I look at the envelopes, then usually put it all to one side.”
“So you don’t throw it straight in the bin?”
“Um, no.”
“Go on.”
“It stays on the hall table until I have an idle moment. Then I open it, read it a bit…and…that’s when I chuck it in the bin!”
“What about charity stuff?”
“Charity stuff? That hangs about a bit longer. I usually save it until I have a clear out, then it goes the way of the rest, I’m afraid.”
“Do you reply to any?”
“Not as much as I should. Mum has bad arthritis, and I’m scared of it, so I usually send them something. And children’s charities. One or two others, perhaps, but not very often.”
“I’d say you were a generous, caring person,” I told her. “You probably feel uncomfortable about not helping more, but sometimes resent being blackmailed by the more emotional appeals.”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“There were four items of junk mail in Latham’s dustbin, two of them from charities. He’d opened them all and the return envelope and payment slip from one of the charities — the World Wildlife Fund — was pinned on his kitchen noticeboard. Silkstone, on the other hand, handled things more efficiently. There were two items in his bin, both of them unopened. One of them, from ActionAid, was postmarked the day before the killings, so it had probably only arrived that morning.” I grinned, saying: “Of the two of them, I’d rather pin it on Silkstone. Wouldn’t you?”
She smiled and carefully lifted a spoonful of toffee banana towards her mouth. I watched her lips engulf it and the spoon slide out from between them. “So…” she mumbled, chewing and swallowing, “So…if you were a psychiatrist, doing a profile of whoever had killed Mrs Silkstone, you’d go for the person who dumped his junk mail, unopened.”
“Every time.”
“What about the evidence?”
“We’re just talking profiles. You used the word, I try to avoid it.”
“Why?”
“Because most of it is common sense. I don’t need a psychiatrist on seventy grand to pinpoint crime scenes on a map for me and say: ‘He lives somewhere there.’”
“It might be common sense to you, Charlie. It’s mumbo-jumbo to most of us.”
“It’ll come. There’s no substitute for experience.”
“So how did Latham’s semen get to be all over Mrs Silkstone?” Annette asked.
I shrugged and flapped a hand. I suspect I blushed, too. “In the usual manner?” I suggested.
“So he was there when she died?”
“It looks like it.”
“But you think Silkstone was with him?”
“I don’t know, Annette,” I sighed. “What do some people get up to behind their curtains? It’s all a mystery to me. Profiling isn’t evidence. It should be used to indicate a line of enquiry, and you should always bear in mind that it might be the wrong line. When you do it backwards, like we’ve done, it’s next to worthless.”
She smiled, saying: “That was interesting. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” A waiter placed the bill in front of me but Annette’s arm reached out like a striking rattlesnake and grabbed it.
“My treat,” she said.
Light rain was falling when we hit the street, and I guided Annette under the shelter of the shop canopies, my hand in the small of her back. “Shall we have a drink somewhere?” I asked.
“Mmm. Where?”
“Dunno.” I was out of touch with the town-centre pubs. Most of them were good, once, but yoof culture had taken them over and the music made thinking, never mind conversation, impossible. Annette might not mind that, I thought, and something gurgled in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t have a calculator in my pocket, but elementary mental arithmetic said she was nineteen years younger than me. Nowhere would that gap be more evident than in a town-centre pub.
Across the road there blinked the neon sign of the Aspidistra Lounge, Heckley’s major nightspot. Formerly the Copper Banana, formerly Luigi’s Nite Scene, formerly Mad John’s Fashion Emporium, formerly the Regal Kinema. The later two of these enterprises were run by Georgie Casanove, formerly George Hardwick. Georgie was our town’s answer to Pete Stringfellow, but without the finesse.
“We could try there,” I said, nodding towards the lights.
“The Aspidistra Lounge?”
“Mmm. We could call it work, claim on our expenses. Georgie, the proprietor, isn’t exactly a Mr Big, but I think he could finger a few people for us, if he were so inclined. Let’s put some pressure on him.”
“Right!” she said. “I’m game.”
We dashed across the road, avoiding the puddles, and stepped through the open doorway of the disco. A bouncer with a shaven head and Buddy Holly spectacles was leaning on the front desk, chatting to the gum-chewing ticket girl. He straightened up and stepped to one side, taken off-guard by the sudden rush of customers, and tried to look menacing. I’ve seen more menace on the back of a cornflakes box.
“Two, please,” I said to the girl, not sure whether to speak under, over or through the armoured glass that surrounded her. We could have flashed our IDs like TV cops would have done, and they would have let us in, but I preferred it this way.
The words: “Ladies are free before ten,” came out of her mouth in a haze of peppermint that evaporated in the air somewhere between her and the bouncer, who she was gazing towards.
“Oh, I’ll take three, then,” I answered.
“That’ll be seven pounds fifty.”
I pushed a tenner towards her and she slid my change and two cloakroom tickets under the window. “Thank you.” The bouncer strode over to a door and yanked it open. I ushered Annette forward and said: “Cheers,” to him. We were in.
I know one tune that’s been written in the last ten years by any of the so-called Brit-Pop stars I see on the front pages of the tabloids, and the DJ was playing it.
I leaned towards Annette and said: “Verve,” into her ear. She stared at me, her eyes wide. “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” I added, determined to exploit my sole opportunity to swank. It’s a simple catchy rhythm, repeated ad nauseum. I nodded my head in time with it: Dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum. Once heard, it’s ringing through your brain for days, a bit like Canon in D.
“I’m amazed!” she gasped, and I rewarded her with a wink.
Our brains slowly modified our senses to accommodate the sudden change in environment. Irises widened to dispel the jungle gloom and nerves in our ears adjusted their sensitivity to just below the pain barrier. Noses twitched, seeking out pheromones from anyone of the opposite sex who was ripe for mating. Four million years of evolution, and this was what it was all leading to.
“It’s a bit quiet,” I shouted above the battery of chords bouncing through my body.
“It’s early,” Annette yelled back at me, in explanation.
It was the same as every other disco I remembered from my younger days. A bright, small dance floor; bored DJ sorting records behind a console straight from NASA; pulsating lights and lots of red velvet. OK, so we didn’t have lasers and dry ice then, but they’re no big deal. Still permeating everything was that same old feeling of despair. These places always look a dump when you see them with the house lights up. This looked a dump in semi-darkness. When I was a kid we called it the Bug Hutch, and came every Saturday to catch up with Flash Gordon’s latest adventures.
Georgie himself was behind the bar, attired like a cross between Bette Davis on a bad night and Conan the Barbarian. “It wouldn’t cost much to convert this back to a cinema, George,” I told him, flapping a hand in the direction of the auditorium.
“Hello, Mr Priest,” he growled, managing to sound threatening and limp simultaneously. “Not expecting any trouble, are we?”
“Who could cause trouble in an empty house?”
“It’s early. We’ll fill up, soon as the pubs close.”
“Two beers, please.” The locks on his head were platinum blond, but those cascading through the slashed front of his satin shirt were grey.
“What sort?”
I looked at Annette and she leaned over the bar, examining the wares. “Foster’s Ice, please,” she said.
“Two,” I repeated.
He popped the caps and placed the bottles on the counter. “That’ll be four pounds fifty,” he told me.
I passed him another tenner, asking: “How much is there back on the bottles?”
“Isn’t he a caution,” he said to Annette as he handed me my change.
We walked uphill, away from the bar and the speakers, feeling our way between the empty tables to where the rear stalls once were. It was much quieter back there, and a few other people were sitting in scattered groups, arranged according to some logic based on personal territory. As the place filled territories would shrink and a pecking order emerge. There were two couples, three men presumably from out of town, and a group of girls. We looked for a table equidistant from the girls and the couples, but before we could sit down one of the girls waved to me.
It was Sophie, with three of her friends. I nudged Annette and gestured for her to follow. The girls moved their chairs to make room for us, removing sports bags from the vacant ones.
“It’s Charles, he’s my uncle,” Sophie told her friends, a big smile illuminating her face.
“Hello, Uncle Charles,” they chorused.
I introduced Annette to them, and Sophie rattled off three names that I promptly forgot. She and Sophie renewed their acquaintance.
“You don’t do this for amusement, do you?” I asked, looking around at the decor.
“We’ve been playing badminton at the leisure centre,” someone informed me.
“We just come in for a quick drink and a dance,” another added.
“It’s free before ten,” Sophie said.
“Right,” I nodded. Apart from the price of the drinks, it sounded a reasonable arrangement. I gritted my teeth and asked them what they’d have.
“Thanks, Uncle Charles,” they all said when I returned, six bottles dangling from between my fingers. One of the girls, dark-haired, petite and vivacious, said: “Can I call you Charlie, Uncle Charles? I already have an Uncle Charles.”
“I’d prefer it if you all called me Charlie. Uncle Charles makes me feel old.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight,” I lied, glancing up at the ceiling.
“Gosh, that is old.”
They were in high spirits, the adrenaline still pumping after a couple of hours on court, and I began to wonder if joining them had been such a good idea. Four confident young women at the crossroads: left for marriage and a family; right for a career in whatever they chose; straight on for both. I didn’t feel old — I felt fossilised.
The music paused, the DJ spoke for the first time, and when it started again the four of them jumped to their feet, prompted by some secret signal.
“We dance to this.”
“Come on, Annette. Can you dance, Charlie?”
“Can I dance? Can I dance? Watch my hips.”
I had a quick sip of lager, for sustenance, and followed them on to the floor. The difference in rhythm or melody was invisible to me, but this was evidently danceable, what had gone before wasn’t. I joined the circle of ladies, swivelled on one leg and wondered about joint replacements.
The style of dancing hadn’t changed, so I didn’t make a complete fool of myself. The girls put on a show, swaying and gyrating, lissom as snakes, but I gave them a step or two. Fifteen minutes later the DJ slowed it down and the floor emptied again, faster than a golf course in a thunderstorm.
We finished our tasteless beer and left. There was a street vendor outside, selling hot dogs. The girls’ ritual was to have one each then make their ways home. I couldn’t have eaten one if Delia Smith herself was standing behind the counter in her wimple. Just the smell of them made me want to dash off and bite a postman’s leg. We stood talking as they wolfed them down. Young appetites, young tastes, young digestive systems. Here we go again, I thought.
Annette shared my views on hot dogs, and declined one. When we’d established that nobody needed a lift we left. “That was fun,” Annette said as we drove off.
“It was, wasn’t it.”
“Sophie’s grown up.”
“I had noticed.”
“The little dark one — Shani — took a shine to you.”
“Understandably.”
“And not a size ten between them,” she sighed.
I freewheeled to a standstill outside her flat, dropping on to sidelights but leaving the engine running. “Thanks for the meal, Ms Brown,” I said.
“You’re welcome, Mr Priest,” she replied. “I’ve enjoyed myself.”
“Good. That’s the intention.”
“Well it worked.”
After a moment’s uncomfortable silence I asked: “Are you…are you going away, this weekend.”
“Yes,” she mumbled.
“Right.”
She pulled the catch and pushed the door open. “Charlie…” she began, half turning back towards me.
“Mmm?”
“Oh just, you know…thanks for…for being, you know…a pal. A friend.”
“A gentleman. You mean a gentleman.”
“Yes, I suppose I do.”
“Just as long as you understand one thing.”
She looked puzzled, worried. “What’s that?”
“That it’s bloody difficult for me.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Her smile made me want to plunder a convent. “Goodnight, Charlie,” she said.
“Goodnight, Annette.”
The house was in darkness, blind and forlorn. The outside light is supposed to turn itself on at dusk, but it looked as if the bulb had blown again. The streetlights illuminate the front, but the side door is in shadow. I avoided the milk bottle standing on the step and felt for the keyhole with a finger, like drunks do, before inserting the key. It was cold inside, because a front had swept in from Labrador and the central heating was way down low. I turned the thermostat to thirty and the timer to constant. That’d soon warm things up. I made some tea and lit the gas fire. I was too alert to sleep, too many thoughts and rhythms tumbling around in my head. The big CD player was filled with Dylan, but that wasn’t what I needed:
I know that I could find you, in somebody’s room.
It’s a price I have to pay: you’re a big girl all the way.
Not tonight, Bob, thank you. I flicked through the titles until one flashed a light in my brain. Gorecki’s third; a good choice. Sometimes, the best way to deal with a hurt, real or imaginary, is to overwhelm it with somebody else’s sadness. I slipped the gleaming disc from its cover and placed it on the turntable.
“What do some people get up to, behind the curtains?” I’d asked Annette. “Profiling isn’t evidence,” I’d said. They get up to everything you could imagine, and plenty of things you couldn’t, and that’s the truth. Read the personal column in your newspaper; look at the magazines on the top shelf in any newsagents; explore the internet; look at the small ads in the tabloids. That’s the visible bit.
We don’t stop when we prove that someone committed a murder. We carry on until we prove that everybody else involved didn’t commit it. Sometimes, with some juries, nothing less will do.
If it wasn’t for the evidence, we’d have arrested Silkstone for the murder of his wife. Everything pointed to him, except the evidence. That’s a big except. The evidence, and the witness, pointed to Latham. That witness, of course, was Silkstone, and Latham was in no position to defend himself. The obvious solution was that Silkstone killed them both after discovering that they were lovers, but that’s not what he said happened, and he was the only witness. Next favourite, for me, was that Silkstone killed Latham out of self-preservation, because they were both there when Margaret died, but, like the professor said, it would be a bugger to prove. Perhaps they did the Somerset job together, too. Sadistic murdering couples were usually a male and a female, with the male the dominant partner, but there were exceptions. Some people think the Yorkshire Ripper didn’t always act alone, and the Railway Rapist almost certainly had an accomplice. And even if they’re wrong, there’s got to be a first time. There’s always got to be a first time.
My job is to catch murderers. It’s a dirty job, and dirt rubs off. Like the men who empty my dustbin, I come home with the smell of it following me. To catch a jackal you must first study its ways. Before you can look a rat in the eyes it is necessary to get down on your belly and roll in the dirt. Silkstone and Latham had known each other for a long time; married two sisters; committed adultery with two women who were friends. No doubt they’d shared a few adventures. Had they shared their women, too?
How does it start? A casual boast, man to man, after a few pints? A giggled comment between the wives after one too many glasses of wine? Expressions of admiration, followed by a tentative suggestion? Jaded senses find new life, curiosity is aroused, objections dismissed. “If we all agree, nobody gets hurt, do they?” Next thing you know, you’re alone with your best friend’s partner, undoing those buttons that you’ve looked at so often across the table, revealing the mysteries that they conceal.
Is that what happens? Don’t ask me. I thought Fellatio was a character in Romeo and Juliet until I was thirty-two. I awoke to Dawn Upshaw in full voice, and on that pleasant note crawled up the stairs to bed.
Monday morning I rang the clerk to the court who had granted Silkstone a variation to his bail conditions. “I believe he’s supposed to be speaking at a sales conference,” I said.
“That’s what his solicitor told us in the application, Mr Priest.”
“Did he say what time?”
“Yes, I have the letter here. He’s speaking at two p.m., for half an hour, but he asked if he could spend the full day at the conference. We saw no reason to object and we’ve told him to report tomorrow, instead. It’s not our intention to interfere with his employment.”
“No, that’s fair enough. And where is this conference, exactly?”
“Um, here we are: the Leeds Winchester Hotel.”
“Good. Thanks for your help.”
“Is there a problem, Mr Priest? Would you have preferred it if we’d contacted you earlier?”
“No, no problem at all. I was just thinking that I might go along and listen to him.”
The troops had plenty to catch up on, and the super was more interested in his monthly fly-fishing magazine, so I didn’t tell him my intentions. Just before one I walked out of the office and drove to Leeds.
The Winchester Hotel is part of the revitalised riverside area, to the south of town, near the new Royal Armouries. Leeds has an inner ring road, which is only half a ring, and something called the Loop, which doesn’t join up with it. I missed the hotel, drove into the city centre and came out again following the M1 signs, except that the M1 is now called the M621 and the new M1 is not what I wanted. I drove back into the city centre and tried again.
This time I found it. The Winchester chain of hotels caters for business trade working to a budget. It’s roomonly accommodation, without the frills. No Corby trouser press, no complimentary shower cap. If you want to eat, there’s a restaurant on the ground floor. I pushed my way through the door at a few seconds before two, just as the tail end of a group of people disappeared into the lift. The doors closed, leaving me stranded. I looked around for a sign saying where the conference was being held, but there wasn’t one. Presumably it wasn’t necessary. Ah well, I’m not a detective for nothing. The illuminated indicator above the lift door had flicked through the lower numbers and was now stationary at number five. That must be it, I thought, pressing the button.
There was a movement beside me and I turned to see a little man standing there, his face moist with perspiration. The indicator over the lift door to my left stopped at G, something pinged and the door opened. I gestured for the man to enter first. You never know, maybe there’d been a failure of electronics and the lift wasn’t really there. He didn’t fall to his death so I followed him in.
“Five?” I asked.
“Yes please.” He was seriously overweight and appeared to be wearing a skirt over his blue-check trousers. A name badge declared that he was called Gerald Vole.
“Er, napkin,” I whispered, nodding towards his nether regions.
“Oh God!” he exclaimed, snatching it from his belt. He managed a nervous smile, saying: “The service was terrible in the restaurant,” by way of explanation.
“It always is,” I confirmed, airily.
The door pinged and opened, and I gestured him forward. “Enjoying the conference?” I asked.
“Yes, very much. There’s so much to learn, though. Are you with the company?”
“Yes, for my sins,” I lied.
“Sales?”
“Head office,” I told him, adding: “Personnel,” because it felt good.
“Gosh!” he replied, impressed.
“Charlie Priest,” I said, offering him my hand.
“Gerry Vole,” he squeaked as I crushed his clammy fingers. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Welcome to TGF, Gerry,” I said.
The door we entered through was at the back of the room, fortunately. The conference facilities consisted of one side of the whole fifth floor being left empty, the space divided into three by sliding partitions. Trans Global Finance had booked the lot, so all the partitions were retracted. The place was nearly full, but we found chairs on the end of the back row and sat down. Gerry produced a typist’s pad from a pocket and rested it on his knee. I stared at row after row of shaven necks poking from blue suit collars. It could have been a Mormon revivalist meeting. Gerry’s checks and my sports jacket were the only discordant notes. Gerry would have to learn to conform; I make a speciality of not doing so.
The door behind me closed with a bang and I took a sly peep back. A man and woman who would have looked completely at home on local-network breakfast TV were standing there, and he’d pulled the door shut. She had nice knees, and I’d seen her type a hundred times before. Sometimes she, or her sister, was in the precinct, handing out freebies for the local newspaper; other times she was there in her clingy T-shirt and Wonder Bra extolling the virtues of holidays in Cornwall or Tenerife. A promotions girl. Anxious to shake the dust of Heckley from her stilettos but not good looking enough to be a model, not bright enough to be a holiday rep. Promises of riches galore had brought her into the finance industry, and today she was a cheerleader.
“Welcome back!” a voice boomed from the front. The owner had oddly luxuriant grey hair and could easily have done Billy Graham on Stars in Their Eyes. “And now for the session you’re all waiting for,” he proclaimed. “It’s my proud duty to introduce the man we all think of as the Prince of Closing. The man who can, literally, walk on water…”
Boy, this I’ve got to see, I thought. Gerry Vole beside me was wriggling in his seat, trying to make himself taller.
“Ladies and gentlemen…”
“No! No! No!” Silkstone was there, waving his arms as he dashed on to the stage to interrupt the eulogy, but just too late, of course, and the rest of it was drowned by the applause. It started behind me in a burst of small explosions and rattled through the audience like machine gun fire. “Good afternoon!” Silkstone shouted.
“Good afternoon,” we yelled back.
“I didn’t hear you! GOOD AFTERNOON!”
“GOOD AFTERNOON!” This time they heard us in Barnsley.
“Right on!” I added as the reverberations faded away, and nudged Gerry with my elbow.
“Yeah!” he shouted, recovering his balance and punching the air with a podgy fist.
“What is that magical quality that converts a lead into a sale?” Silkstone demanded of us.
“Closing!” The word jumped around the auditorium like a firecracker.
“What are the three golden bullets in the salesman’s armoury?”
“Closing, closing, closing.”
“You don’t seem sure!” he shouted. “So I’ll tell you!” There was a table and chair on the low stage, with a glass and water jug on the table. Silkstone leapt up on to the chair and shouted: “Number one — closing!” Long pause for effect as he made eye contact with the front rows. “Number two — closing!” Another leap took him on to the table. “Number three — CLOSING!”
Gerry, beside me and beside himself, was busy scribbling. He’d written: 3 golden bullets: 1 — closing, 2 — closing, 3 — closing!!!
Silkstone, still up on the table, was launching into an anecdote about how Bill Gates got to be the world’s richest man. Presumably, I thought, because gates are good at closing. After five minutes I’d had enough. I reached out and took Gerry’s pad from him. On it I wrote: 4 — treat every client as if he might be an eccentric millionaire and winked as I passed it back. “I’m off,” I said, rising to my feet. “Good luck.” He read what I’d written and stared at me, eyes wide, mouth open, as if I’d just given him the co-ordinates of the Holy Grail.
I yanked the door open and took a last look at Silkstone. He had one foot on the floor, one on the chair when the movement at the back of the room caught his eye. He froze in mid-stride and fell silent as he recognised me. Other heads turned my way. I stepped out through the opening and closed the door behind me. “That’ll give him something to think about,” I mumbled to myself as I headed towards the lift.
Gwen Rhodes played netball for England and hockey for Kent. I had trials with Halifax Town as a goalkeeper, but wasn’t signed up. I considered myself a sportsman, years ago, although I never reached the heights that Gwen did. We sit on a committee together, and have talked about the value of sport over a cup of coffee in the canteen. These days, the only place you can regularly see honesty, courage, passion is on the playing field. Out there, with the sting of sweat in your eyes and the taste of blood in your mouth, where you come from and who you know is of no help at all.
So when I saw the note on my desk saying that she wanted me to ring her I didn’t wait. “The Governor, please,” I said, when the switchboard at Bentley Prison answered.
“Who wants her, please?”
“Detective Inspector Priest, Heckley CID.”
“One moment.”
I waited for the music, wondering what might be appropriate — Unchained Melody? Please release me, let me go? — but none came. “Hello, Charlie. Thanks for ringing,” Gwen’s plummy voice boomed in my ear.
“My pleasure, Gwen. Long time no see. Shouldn’t we be having a meeting soon, or did you ring to tell me I’d missed it?”
“Between you and me, Charlie, I think that committee has probably quietly faded away. We didn’t achieve much, did we?”
“Lip service, Gwen, that’s what it’s all about. Make it look as if you are doing something. So what can I do for you? I’m available, Saturday morning, if you need a goalie.”
“Oh, those were the days. I may have some information for you, Charlie, but first of all, an apology.”
“Go on.”
“You know that we monitor inmates’ calls, tape-record them for transcription at a later date.”
“Mmm.”
“Well, we’ve rather fallen behind lately, so this weekend I put one of my officers on to them, and he’s come up with something that might be of interest to you.”
“I’m all ears, Gwen.”
“Does the name Chiller mean anything?”
“Chiller?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You disappoint me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He’s supposed to be the most wanted man in Britain, according to the tabloids.”
“Chiller?”
“That’s his nickname, a contraction.”
I repeated the name softly, to myself: “Chiller- Chiller — Chiller,” until it hit me. “Chilcott!” I pronounced. “Kevin Chilcott!”
“That’s the man.”
“He’s a cop killer,” I said, suddenly alert. “What can you tell me?”
“Just that one of our inmates, a hard case called Paul Mann, telephoned a London number, four weeks ago, asking for a message to be sent to someone called Chiller about ‘a job’. Since then there has been a quantity of rather enigmatic traffic, but the name was never mentioned again. Sums were quoted. There’s lots of other stuff which may or may not be related.”
“Chilcott’s a hitman,” I said. “Maybe someone’s putting some work his way.”
“That’s what my man thought. He’s ex-Pentonville, and was there at the same time as Kevin Chilcott. He said everybody called him Chiller, and he rejoiced in the name.”
“When can I come over and see this stuff?”
“I should be free about four-thirty,” she replied.
“Right, put the kettle on. Will you make it right for me at the gate, please?” Getting into prisons is harder than getting out of them.
“It’s a long time since you were here” she observed. “I’m over the road, now. Just ask and they’ll point you in the right direction.”
I did some thinking before I went down to Control to find someone authorised to interrogate the computer systems. The CRO would tell us Chilcott’s record, the PNC would have other stuff about him. Confidential stuff. Trouble was, his name would be tagged in some way, and any enquiry we made would be relayed straight to Special Branch and NCIS. They were on our side, I decided, so I did it anyway.
The print-outs didn’t make pleasant reading. Chilcott started young, served the usual apprenticeship. He had a full house of cautions, followed by probation and youth custody. As an adult he’d served two years for robbery and eight for armed robbery. After that, it was all hearsay. A series of building society raids were put down to him, as was a bank heist that netted over half a million and left a security guard shot dead. I was wrong about one thing — he wasn’t a cop killer. A uniformed PC, under-experienced and over- diligent, walked into a stake-out that nobody had told him about and was shot for his troubles. He didn’t die, but in his shoes I’d have preferred it. The bullet fractured his spine, high up, and left him a quadriplegic. Chilcott escaped and fled the country. Nothing had been heard of him since 1992, but rumour linked him with a string of gangland killings. Maybe the money was running out, I thought.
Her Majesty’s Prison Bentley sits four-square on a hill just outside Halifax. It’s a Victorian-Gothic pile, complete with battlements, crenellated turrets and fake arrow-slits, but with the proportions of a warthog. The architect was probably warned about the gales that howl down from the north, so he built it squat and solid. It strikes terror in my heart every time I visit the place. I swung into the car-park, mercifully empty because we were outside visiting hours, and gazed up at the gaunt stone walls, wondering if Mad King Ludwig ever had a skinhead brother.
Gwen had told the gatehouse to expect me, but they put a show on before accompanying me to her office. Double-check my ID, a quick frisk and then through the metal detector. She runs a tight ship. She has to; Bentley houses some of the most dangerous men in the country, as well as remand prisoners.
I’d forgotten how handsome she is, in a Bloomsbury-ish sort of way. Strong features, hair pinned back, long elegant fingers. No faded delicacy with Gwen, though. At a shade under six feet tall she’d be a formidable opponent, tearing towards you brandishing a hockey stick. We shook hands and pretended to kiss cheeks, and I flopped into the leather chair she indicated.
I told her she looked well and she said I looked tired. That made it twice, recently. One of her officers, male, approaching retirement age, knocked and poked his head round the door to ask if I preferred tea or coffee. Gwen thanked him, calling him Thomas. He called her ma’am.
“These are the transcripts,” she said, reaching across the polished top of her desk to pull a sheaf of loose sheets towards us. She’d joined me at the wrong side of it, where you stood to receive her wrath; or words of encouragement; or the news that your wife and the bloke you didn’t grass on had run away to Spain with all the money. “I’ve highlighted the relevant bits,” she added, pulling her chair closer to mine, so we could both read them. I detected the merest hint of her perfume, which was heavy and musky and put me off balance for a moment or two.
I studied the lists, then said: “I never realised just how much work was entailed with these, Gwen.” Someone had to obtain a printout of all the calls, with times and numbers, and then transfer that information to a transcript of all the tape-recorded conversations that somebody else had prepared.
“It’s a bind, Charlie. And all for so little return.”
“Now and again you come up with gold,” I said. “Maybe this is one of those times. How do you know who made the calls?”
“The hard way. An inmate has to ask to use the phone, and we keep a book.”
“Which wing is whatsisname on?”
“Paul Mann? A-wing.”
Maximum security, for long term prisoners in the early years of their sentences, and the nutcases. “What’d he do?”
“Poured paraffin over his girlfriend and ignited it. It burns deeper than petrol, apparently.”
“She died?”
“Eventually.”
“Mr Nice Guy.” I read the scraps of conversation from the sheet, next to the London number he’d dialled:
V1: Billy?
V2: Yeah.
V1: S’me. Can’t talk for long. Only got one f- card. Tell Davy I need a job doing, don’t I. [Indecipherable] S’important.
V2: A job? What sort of f- job.
V1: Never you f- mind. Just tell him I know someone who wants to buy a Roller.
V2: A f- Roller? What you on about?
V1: Listen, c-. Ask Davy to have a word with Chiller about it. And don’t ask no f- questions.
V2: Oh, right.
V1: I’ll ring you Tuesday.
V2: OK. S’long.
V1: S’long.
Tuesday’s conversation was even less fulsome:
V1: Billy?
V2: Yeah.
V1: You talk to Davy?
V2: Yeah.
V1: What’s he say?
V1: He says a decent f- Roller is hard to come by these days. Could be f- expensive. Cost your friend a packet.
V1: How expensive?
V2: Fifty big ones, plus expenses. Number f- plates, an’ all.
V1: [Indecipherable]
V2: You what?
V1: I said tell him I’ll f- think about it.
Two days later we had:
V1; That you, Billy?
V2: Yeah. Listen. Davy can do your friend the Roller, at the price agreed, including all expenses, if you can arrange accommodation. No f- problem. And he wants to know when he’d like to take delivery. He says sooner the f- better.
V1: Right. Right. Tell him we might have a f- deal.
Thomas came in with the teas, on a tray with china cups and a plate of biscuits. We both thanked him and Gwen poured the tea. I reached for a bourbon, saying: “Whoever transcribed this cares about your sensibilities.”
She beamed at me. “Sweet, isn’t he?”
“What’s Mann’s tarrif?” I asked.
“Thirty years,” she replied, easing an over-filled cup in my direction.
“So ordering a Rolls Royce would seem a little premature?”
“I’d say so.”
“And would you say that fifty thousand pounds was a reasonable price for killing a man?”
The cup was halfway to her lip. She paused and lowered it back to its saucer. “Mann killed his girlfriend because the baby was crying,” she told me.
I bit half off the biscuit and slowly chewed it. When my mouth was empty I asked: “What did he do with the baby?”
“The baby? Oh, the room was on fire, so he tried to save the baby. He threw her out of the window. Says he forgot they were on the seventh floor.”
“Jee-sus,” I sighed.