The prisons have a dilemma. It doesn’t take long for a hierarchy to form, with men like Mann and Chiller as the kingpins. They build up a coterie of acolytes and prey on the weaker inmates. Contrary to popular opinion, for most prisoners once is enough. All they want to do is put their heads down, serve their time and never come back. Faced with someone like Mann, they back down, accept the bottom bunk, hand over their phone cards and cigarettes. The men at the top never want for drugs, booze, cigarettes or sex. They still run their outside empires through a network of contacts, and anyone who steps out of line gets hurt. The occasional broken leg, slashed face or crushed hand is amazingly good for business
So the prison governors move them. They allow the hard men to become established and then transfer them to the other end of the country, with maximum inconvenience. It’s called ghosting. He eats his breakfast in Brixton, full of the joys of life, and at lunchtime finds himself hobbling out of the van in Armley, squinting up at the coils of razor wire above the walls, wondering who the top cat is. On any Monday morning prison vans, usually accompanied by the local police, are criss-crossing the country like worker bees seeking out new feeding grounds.
There is a down-side, of course. The constant exchange of prisoners creates an unofficial inter-jail communications network that cannot be improved upon. When the inmates of Hull decide to have a dirty protest, or to hurl tiles down from the roof, it’s no coincidence that the prisoners in Strangeways, Bentley and Parkhurst choose exactly the same time to do exactly the same thing. The great revolution of the late twentieth century has been in communications, and the prison population is leading the field.
Some of it is high-tech, some of it lower than you’d believe people could go. Phone cards, not snout, are the new currency, but the big porcelain phone in the corner is available to everyone with a strong stomach. The days of slopping out are over because most cells now have a toilet. The prisoners are not as overjoyed about this as you might expect. Once they had a room, now they have a shithole in the corner of the cell, behind an aluminium sink unit to give a modicum of privacy when you’re sitting there. What no one envisaged was the communications opportunities this created. What no one realised was the ingenuity of caged men.
All the toilets lead down to a common drain. Take a small receptacle — your cellmate’s drinking cup will do fine — and drain all the water out of the toilet u-bend. Pour it down the sink. You are now connected to the drain. If somebody else does the same thing elsewhere in the prison, even in another wing, you can now have a conversation without raising your voice above a whisper. There may be interruptions of a nature that BT users never experience, but you’ll never be left hanging on through three movements of the Four Seasons. To break the line, terminate the call, you simply flush the toilet.
I didn’t feel hungry. I’d had no lunch but the thought of having a long and meaningful conversation with your head down the pan, listening to all the extraneous noises, savouring the odours, is a wonderful appetite suppressant. Perhaps I could sell the concept to Weight Watchers and never have to work again. I won twenty-five thousand pounds in a quiz programme on television, then had a long hot soak in the bath. Freshly scrubbed, I managed a tin of chicken soup, with some decent bread, followed by a few custard creams. In deference to all the people who think I looked tired I went to bed early and, unusual for me, slept like a little dormouse.
“Where were you, yesterday?” Gilbert asked at the morning prayer meeting.
“Bentley prison,” I replied, sliding a chair across and placing my mug of tea on a beer mat on his desk. “I left word.” There were only the two of us, because Gareth Aidey had a court appointment and was polishing the buttons on his best tunic.
“So you really went to Bentley?”
“Of course I did. Where did you think I was — having a round of golf?”
“I don’t know what you get up to. I’m only the super. Regional Crime Squad were after you, said that Special Branch had tipped them off that you were on to something.”
“Christ, that was quick.”
“Nobody had a clue what it was all about. I felt a right wally.”
“Sorry, Gilbert, but I didn’t know myself until after five o’clock. I was at Bentley until nearly seven.”
“So what was it about?”
I found the transcripts in my briefcase and laid them on his desk. “It looks as if someone in Bentley prison is trying to organise a hitman to do a job, and the hitman is a certain Kevin Chilcott. Remember him?”
“Kevin Chilcott? He killed a police officer, didn’t he, ten or twelve years ago?”
“As good as. I consulted the PNC about him and SB must have picked it up.”
“Humph!” he snorted. “Makes you wonder what else they pick up. So what have you got?” Gilbert read the excerpts, running his finger along the lines like a schoolchild. He mumbled to himself and turned the page over.
“That’s just the usual stuff,” I told him.
“What do you call the usual stuff?”
“Oh, you know…” — I adopted a whining voice — “That you Sharron? Yeah. I love you. I love you. How’s your mum. She’s all right. Tell her I love her. She sez she love’s you. How’s your Tracy? She’s all right. Tell her I love her. She’s pregnant. Is she? Yeah. Whose is it? Dunno. When’s it due? January. It can’t be mine, then.”
Gilbert said: “OK, OK, I get the message. So this stuff stands out, then.”
“Like a first-timer at a nudist colony.”
“You’d better let RCS know.”
“I’ll do it now.”
Gilbert stood up and retrieved his jacket from behind the door. “I’m off to headquarters,” he told me. “Monthly meeting. You’re in charge. What can I report about the Margaret Silkstone case?”
“Solved,” I replied.
“Good. And the Peter Latham job?”
“Solved.”
“Good. As long as you remember you said it. Do you want me to tell them about this?” He waved a hand towards the papers on his desk.
“Might as well,” I replied. “Give you something to talk about.”
Special Branch are not a band of super-cops, based in London. Every Force has an SB department, quietly beavering away at god-knows what. They have offices at all the airports and other points of entry, and keep an eye on who comes in and goes out of the country. Anti-terrorism is their speciality, but they keep a weather-eye open for big-league criminals on the move. If you don’t mind unsociable hours and have a high boredom threshold it could be the career for you. Special Branch don’t feel collars, they gather information. The Regional Crime Squads specialise in heavy stuff like organised crime, the syndicates and major criminals. They are experts at covert surveillance, tailing people and using informers. They move about, keep a low profile, infiltrate gangs. Dangerous stuff.
“So where is he?” I asked an RCS DI in London when I finally found myself talking to someone with an interest in the case.
“Wish we knew,” he confessed. “Over the last five years we’ve had sightings in Spain, Amsterdam and Puerto Rico. He moves around. What we do know, though, is that the money must have run out by now, even if he’s living very modestly. Half a million sounds a lot, but when someone charges you thirty per cent for converting it to used notes or a foreign currency, and someone else charges you for their silence, and so on, it soon depletes.”
“In the transcripts he says make it quick,” I told him.
“Sounds like he’s getting desperate, then. We’ll dig out a new description of him and circulate it to all points of entry. After that, we can only hope that someone spots him. Which district are you?”
“Number three.”
“So that will be our Leeds office?”
“That’s right.”
“Any chance of you getting the transcripts over there? If the conversations took place a month ago we might be too late already.”
“’Fraid not. I’ll address them to you and leave them behind the front desk.” It was their baby, so they could do the running around.
“OK. I’ll arrange for them to be collected, and thanks for the information.”
“My pleasure.” I asked him to keep us informed and replaced the receiver. Another satisfied customer, I thought, as I delved into Gilbert’s filing cabinet where he keeps his chocolate digestives.
After two of them I rang Gwen Rhodes at HMP Bentley and told her that the hard men were now on the Chiller case and that they had promised to keep us informed, but don’t hold your breath. People say they will, then don’t bother. It’s a mistake. I always make a point of saying my thank-yous, letting people know what happened. They remember, and next time you want something from them you get it with a cherry on the top.
Gwen said: “So the message was definitely for Chilcott, was it?”
“They think so, Gwen. Apparently his money should have run out by now, and they’re expecting him to make a move. This might be it.”
“Good,” she said. “Good. Glad we could be of assistance.”
“Listen, Gwen,” I said. “While you’re on the line, there’s something else I’d like to ask you.”
“Ye-es, Charlie,” she replied, in a tone that might have been cautious, may even have been expectant. What was I going to ask her? How about dinner sometime? The theatre?
“A few weeks ago you had a remand prisoner of mine called Anthony Silkstone,” I said. “I was wondering how he took to life on the inside.”
“Silkstone,” she repeated, downbeat. “Tony Silkstone?”
“That’s the man.”
“Killed his wife’s murderer?”
“That’s him. Anything to report about his behaviour?”
“I read about him in the papers but I didn’t realise he was one of yours, Charlie. Knew we had him, and he certainly didn’t cause any problems. Let’s see what the oracle says…” I heard the patter of keys as she consulted the computer terminal that sat on her desk, followed by a soft: “Here we are,” to herself, and a long silence.
“Gosh,” she said when she came back on the line. “You can send us as many like him as you can find, Charlie. A golden prisoner by any standards.”
“Oh,” I said. “What did he do?”
“It’s all here. First of all the other inmates, the remandees that is, regarded him as some sort of folk hero. It explains that the person Silkstone killed had murdered his — Silkstone’s — wife and was also a sex offender. Is that true? Was he a sex offender?”
“Um, it looks like it.”
“So that gave him a big pile of kudos, in their eyes. You know what they all think of nonces. It goes on to say that Silkstone took an active part in the retraining programme we’re conducting, and became a popular lecturer in salesmanship. He even promised one or two of them an interview with his company, when they were all released. We need more like him, Charlie. Send us more, please.”
“That sounds like my man. He’s a little treasure, no mistake.”
“He certainly is. Anything else you’d like to ask?”
Dinner? The theatre? “No, Gwen,” I replied, “but thanks a lot.”
Wednesday morning Sophie Sparkington received a letter from the admissions tutor at St John’s College, Cambridge, where she would be reading history, and I received one from the matron of the Pentland Court Retirement Home, Chipping Sodbury.
Mine was handwritten on headed paper, and was addressed to the senior detective at Heckley Police Station. It said:
Dear Sir
One of our clients, Mrs Grace Latham, who is elderly and frail, dictated this letter to me and asked for it to be forwarded to you. If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours faithfully
Jean Hullah (Mrs)(Matron)
Stapled behind it was another sheet of the same paper, with the same handwriting. This one read:
Dear Sir,
My name is Grace Latham and I am the mother of Peter John Latham who was murdered. Now that he is dead the papers are saying terrible things about him. These are not true but he cannot defend himself. Peter was a good son and I know he could not have done these terrible things. He was kind and gentle, and wouldn’t hurt a fly, and was always good to me. Please catch the proper murderer and prove that my son, Peter, did not do it.
Yours faithfully
Jean Hullah (Mrs)(Matron) p.p. Grace Latham
Dave came in and I handed him the letters. He read them in silence and shrugged his shoulders.
“Mothers,” I said.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“Which would you rather be: the murderer’s parent or the victim’s parent?”
“Don’t ask me. I wonder if Hitler’s mother said that she always knew he’d turn out to be a bastard, or if she loved him right to the end. What do you want to do with it?”
“Drop her a reply, please. Not the card. Make it a letter, in my name. Then show it to Annette and stick it in the file.”
“OK. Nigel rang,” Dave said. “Wants to know if we’re going to the Spinners tonight. He says long-time-no-see.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Eight thirty.”
“Looks like we are, then.”
“Oh, and he says not to laugh, but he’s grown a moustache.”
“A moustache?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Nigel?”
“Mmm.”
“This I’ve got to see.”
But I didn’t, because he never came. We’ve developed a new routine for our Wednesdays out. The Spinners is about two miles from each of our houses, so we walk there. It’s a half-hour power walk and that first pint slides down like snow off a roof when you stroll into the pub and lean on the bar. Towards closing time Dave’s wife, Shirley, comes in the car for an orange juice and takes us home.
Dave had arrived first and was sitting in our usual corner. I collected the pint he’d paid for and joined him.
“Sophie heard from Cambridge this morning,” he told me before I was seated. “We’re going down at the weekend to look at her accommodation.”
“Fantastic. I’ll have to buy her a present. Don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you what she might want.”
He looked glum. “Just about everything. Pots, pans, microwave. You name it, she needs it. Then there’s a small matter of books, tuition fees, meals, rent. It’s never-ending.”
“That’s the price of having brainy kids,” I said.
“Brainy kid. Daniel wants to be a footballer or snooker star.”
“He could be in for a rude awakening,” I warned.
“He’ll take it in his stride. We did.”
“That’s true.” We were both failed footballers. Dave had his trial with Halifax Town the same time as me, with a similar result: don’t call us, we’ll call you.
“This beer’s on form,” I said, enjoying a long sip.
“It is, isn’t it.”
“So where’s Golden Balls with this flippin’ moustache?”
But at that very moment Detective Sergeant Nigel Newley’s full attention was elsewhere. He was gazing into the green eyes of Marie-Claire Hollingbrook, her face framed by the riot of golden hair heaped upon her pillow, her full lips parted and her naked body languidly spread-eagled across the bed. They were the first green eyes Nigel had ever seen, and he was stunned by their beauty. They were unable to return his gaze, because Marie-Claire had been strangled, several hours earlier.
“Do you ever regret not making it as a footballer?” Dave asked me.
“Nah,” I replied. “This is a lot better. Do you? They’d have taken you on if you hadn’t fluffed that goal.”
“No, I don’t think so. Can’t imagine how I missed it though. An open goalmouth in front of me, and I kicked it over the bar.”
“As I remember it, you kicked it over the grandstand.”
“It was a wormcast. The ball hit a wormcast and bobbed up, just as I toe-ended it. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“Sentenced to a lifetime of ignominy by a wormcast.” I said.
“I know,” he replied, glumly raising his glass and draining it.
“Just think,” I continued. “Of all the millions of worms in the world, if that one particular specimen hadn’t crapped on that one particular square centimetre of grass on that one particular day, you might have married one of the Beverly sisters.”
“Blimey. Frightenin’, innit?” he replied.
“Innit just. Same again?”
“Please.”
“Pork scratchings?”
“Cheese and onion crisps.”
I went to the bar to fetch them.
The phone call we were hoping for but not expecting came next morning, just as I was having my elevenses. I went downstairs to control, to catch the action. Arthur, a wily old sergeant, was in the hot seat. He slid a filled-in message form towards me as I moved a spare chair alongside him.
“Anything come in about the dead girl in Halifax?” I asked. There’d been a report about it on the local news.
“Just the bare details, pulled off the computer. We haven’t been asked to assist, yet.”
“Our young Mr Newley will be up to his neck in that one,” I said, secretly wishing that I was there, too.
“Ah! Nigel’ll find ’em.”
“So what have we here?”
“From the Met Regional Crime Squad,” he said as I read. “One of their men thinks he’s seen Kevin Chilcott at the Portsmouth ferry terminal. He rang in from a phone box and is now trying to follow him. Last report came from the arrivals concourse at 10:37 hours.”
“So what do they expect us to do?” I asked.
“Be alert, that’s all. He could be going anywhere.”
I explained to Arthur that we were responsible for raising the APW on Chilcott, because of the messages from Bentley prison, but the phonecalls were to London, and that was probably where he was heading. “Stay with it,” I told him, “and keep me informed. I’ll be in the office.”
I went back upstairs and finished my coffee. One by one, for no reason that I could think of, I rang Dave, Annette, Jeff and three others on their mobiles and told them what was happening. “Keep in touch,” I told them, “he might be coming this way.”
The super was unimpressed when I told him. “He’ll be heading for London,” he declared, dismissively.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I agreed.
But he wasn’t. Arthur rang me on the internal at 14:20 hours, saying that Chilcott, with the RCS chief inspector tagging along behind him, had boarded the 13:30 express from Kings Cross to Leeds. I went downstairs again and spoke directly to the RCS control, in London. Their man, I was told, was starting his holiday, but had found his way into the arrivals section hoping to meet his parents, who were coming home. He’d seen Chilcott come off the boat and followed him. They caught the train to Waterloo and transferred to Kings Cross, where Chilcott had purchased a single to Leeds. The DCI was unable to communicate from the Portsmouth train, but he could from this one. He was, they said, wearing holiday clothes, which made him somewhat conspicuous.
Our own Regional Crime Squad, based in Leeds, went on to full alert, borrowing our ARVs and booking the chopper for the rest of the day. They made arrangements to evacuate the station minutes before the London train arrived and dressed several officers in natty Railtrack uniforms. Marksmen were positioned around the adjacent platforms and steps taken to block-off all the exits and roads. ETA was 16:01, and Chilcott’s feet wouldn’t touch the ground.
At 15:06 the express stopped at Doncaster and Chilcott left it. The RCS detective got off, too, but had to hide behind a wall until Chilcott boarded the 15:40 to Manchester. That arrived at 17:00 hours and Chilcott and his faithful shadow then boarded the 17:12, Manchester Piccadilly to Newcastle.
“Could be Leeds, after all,” the super stated. He’d joined me in control when he realised that this one wasn’t going away. Dave wandered in and I told him to collect as many bodies as he could, urgently.
“No, Boss,” I told Mr Wood. “If there’s one place he isn’t going, it’s Leeds. He could have stayed on the Kings Cross train if he was going to Leeds.”
The Met’s RCS control room had managed to find someone in the railway business with the authority to spend some time talking to them, and were now being relayed times and destinations. “That train stops at Heckley,” I told my contact. “Where else does it stop?”
I wrote them down as he read them off. Oldfield, Huddersfield, then Heckley, Leeds, York and Newcastle.
“What time at Heckley?”
“17:54.”
“Six minutes to six. Struth, any chance of delaying it? I think he could be coming here and we’re a bit depleted.”
They said they’d do what they could.
I sent someone to Heckley station to arrange things there. We needed parking spaces and easy access. Mr Wood rang the Assistant Chief Constable to organise the issuing of weapons. Our ARVs were in Leeds, so we improvised, borrowing two off-duty officers from the tactical firearms unit who’d missed the shout to dash to Leeds, in their own cars.
“Just the man,” I said when Jeff Caton wandered in. “Did I see your crash helmet in the office, this morning?”
“I’ve come on the bike, if that’s what you mean,” he replied.
“Good.” I turned to Mr Wood. “Can we have a word, Boss?” I asked. He adopted his worried look and the three of us moved outside, into the corridor.
“So far,” I said, “all we are concentrating on is lifting Chilcott. What I’d really like to know is: what is he doing over here? If he’s up to something on my patch, I want to know what it is.”
“What are you suggesting, Charlie?” Mr Wood demanded wearily.
“Just that we don’t arrest him straight away. I think we should follow him for a bit longer, find out who he’s working for.”
“No,” Mr Wood stated. “Definitely not.”
“He’s been tailed for three hundred miles. Another twenty won’t hurt.”
“I said no.”
I turned to DS Caton. “What do you think, Jeff?”
He shrugged, embarrassed by the position I’d placed him in. “Mr Wood’s the boss,” he said.
“But could you do it, on the bike, working with someone in a car?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“No, Charlie,” Mr Wood said. “If he gets off at Heckley, you arrest him. And that’s my last word.”
“It seems a shame, though, doesn’t it?”
Gilbert heaved a sigh that would have blown a small galleon off the rocks. “Just…just make it look good,” he said.
“Right,” I replied. “Right.” I looked at my watch. It was
17:33. Twenty-one minutes to go.
We had a lightning rehearsal in the briefing room, with me drawing a plan of the station and slashing arrows across it. I designated who would ride with whom and appointed Annette as my driver.
“Code names?” someone asked.
“They’re Batman and Robin,” I replied.
“Da-da da-da, da-da da-da,” they all chanted.
“Who’s who?”
“Chilcott’s Robin. Put my phone number in your memories, but we’ll use the radio when the action starts, switched to talk-through but no chit-chat. OK?”
“OK,” they replied.
“And no heroics. He’s dangerous, so don’t forget it. There’s enough widows in Heckley already.”
They strode out, talking too loudly and fooling around, but I hung back as Jeff zipped up his leather jacket and pulled his helmet on. Two others joined us and then Annette came over. “What do you think, Jeff?” I asked.
“Always obey the last order, that’s my motto,” he replied.
“And you two?”
“We’re game,” one of them replied.
“OK,” I said. “Nothing’s decided, yet. We’ll play it by ear if he gets off the train. Just listen for my instructions.”
“Of course,” one of them said, “there’s always the possibility that he has already jumped off, or he stays on it, isn’t there.”
“He’ll get off,” Jeff stated, his voice muffled by the gaudy helmet. “I can feel it in my water.”
“What was all that about?” Annette asked as she jerked my car seat forward. The clock on the dashboard said 17:41.
I told her briefly what I had in mind.
“Does Mr Wood know?” she asked.
“Um, partly.”
“And he agrees?”
“Yes. Well, no, not really.”
“Oh, Charlie!”
I rang the RCS control on my mobile and gave them my number. Batman had commandeered a phone from a fellow passenger and was in regular communication with them. All along the line itchy-fingered policemen were assembling outside the railway stations, wondering if the nation’s most wanted criminal was going to grace their gunsights with his presence. The possible receptions varied. In some places he would be discreetly followed, in others shot on sight. We, I hoped, were doing it properly. As the train left each station Batman would pass a message back to the RCS and they would alert whoever was in charge at the next one down the line. At Heckley, that was me.
The train station is just down the road from the nick, so we made it with minutes to spare. A uniformed PC was at the coned-off entrance to the car-park, supervising a man in overalls who was working on the barrier. I thanked them both and told them to go for a cup of tea. We spread ourselves out, enjoying the luxury of all those parking places. Other cars, frustrated by having to drive round the block, started to fill the remainder.
“Presumably,” Annette said, “if he is getting off here somebody will be meeting him. Taking a taxi would be risky.”
“Good point,” I agreed. We sat in silence for a few seconds, until I asked her if she was going away for the weekend. My mobile rang before she could reply, but her expression and the hesitation told me the answer. “Heckley,” I said into the phone.
“Leaving Huddersfield,” the RCS controller told me. “Still on-board.”
“Understood. Out.”
I turned to Annette. “They’ve left Huddersfield. We’re next.” I clicked the transmit button on the radio I was holding in the other hand and said a terse: “Stand by, we’re next,” into it. You can never be too sure who’s listening to radio traffic.
“There’s an interesting BMW just pulled in,” Annette told me.
“Where?”
“Behind us.”
I adjusted the wing mirror with the remote control, so I could see it without turning my head. It was R registered, silver, with four headlights. “Looks expensive,” I remarked as I made a note of the number.
“Series seven,” Annette stated. It sounded about right to me but cars aren’t my strong point. She produced a tube of mints and offered me one. I shook my head. The clock changed from 17:50 to 17:51.
“Let’s have some music,” she said, pushing the radio power button. A politician was sounding off about something or other. He used the expressions spin doctor and mind set in the same sentence, and would probably have slipped in a sea change had Annette not hit a station button. Two more tries and she was rewarded with Scott Walker’s warm tones. “That’s better,” she said.
“We haven’t been for a meal for a while,” I remarked.
“No,” she agreed.
“It’s Thursday.”
“So it is.”
“If Chilcott’s not on this train we could go for one.”
“A girl’s got to eat,” she declared, throwing me a big grin.
I smiled at her and started to say: “You should laugh more often. It suits you,” but the phone started warbling somewhere in the middle of it.
“Heckley,” I said.
“He’s on his feet, heading for the door. Looks like this is it.”
“Understood. Out.”
I needed a pee. It’s always the same: the least bit of excitement and I remember that I haven’t been to the loo for four hours. “This could be it,” I told her, and clicked the send button on the RT. “Charlie to the Young Turks,” I said into it, “it’s looking good for us.” Three cars down in the facing row Dave raised a finger off the steering wheel in acknowledgement, and a face in a window to my left raised an eyebrow. I wish I could do that. Smoke puffed from the exhaust of the car in front as he started the engine. I reached forward to kill Scott Walker and we both pulled our seatbelts on.
It all went off like a dream, exactly as planned, but you’d never have believed it. The Regional Crime Squad DCI was called Barry Moynihan, and he was one of the grumpiest little piggies I’ve ever come across. Now he was slumped in a chair in the corner of Mr Wood’s office, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. He’d ranted and raved all the way to the station and plenty more when he was inside, but it’s hard to take a bollocking from somebody wearing three-quarter length Burberry check shorts and a Desperate Dan T-shirt. Gilbert was lounging back in his executive chair, staring at the blank wall opposite. I was on a hard seat, left ankle on right knee, wondering if breaking the silence would be polite. I picked up my coffee cup and took a long loud slurp. Gilbert glared eloquently at me, but didn’t attempt to put his feelings into words. I shrank into my jacket and placed my mug back on his desk as if it might explode.
Moynihan leapt to his feet and paced across the office. “She might be in Le Havre now, for all I know,” he declared. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his shorts, then took them out again. “God knows where she and the kids are.”
“Try ringing her again,” Gilbert suggested.
“How can I?” he snapped. “How can I? The daft cow’s got the friggin’ mobile switched off.” He was back at his chair. He spun it round and crashed down on it, back to front, resting his chin on his forearms. “She’s never driven the Frontera before,” he informed us.
“You should be able to join her tomorrow,” Gilbert ventured.
“Where?” he demanded. “Portsmouth? France? I only popped across to arrivals to see if my parents were there.” He banged a palm against the side of his head, saying: “And my friggin’ passport’s in the glove box.”
I had to admit it; he was in a predicament. No money, no credit cards, stranded in Yorkshire without a passport, in clothes like that. I must have smirked or sniggered, because suddenly he was on his feet again, pointing at me. “You’re history,” he snarled. “You’re fuckin’ history.”
“That’s enough,” Gilbert told him. “I’ll not have you talk to one of my senior officers like that.”
“He deliberately didn’t arrest him,” Moynihan ranted. “A target criminal, and he let him go.”
“He had his reasons,” Gilbert said.
“He deliberately disobeyed instructions.”
“Listen,” I said, looking at Moynihan. “We had less than forty minutes notice that he was on a train that stopped at Heckley. Two minutes notice that he was getting off. RCS had taken all our firepower. We’d had no time to evacuate the station and I wasn’t going to risk the lives of my officers and any civilians on your say-so. We contained the situation and have isolated the target. We have also identified his accomplices. I’d call that good work.”
“God!” Moynihan cursed, “What a friggin’ hole.”
There was a knock at the door and Mr Wood snapped: “Come in!” so loudly my ankle slipped off my knee and my foot slammed down. The door opened and DS Jeff Caton emerged, leather jacket flapping, hair plastered down with sweat, grinning like a new dawn. He had a red line over his bloodshot eyes and down his cheeks, where the helmet had pressed.
“Good,” Mr Wood said. “So what’s the position, Jeff?”
“Pretty hunky-dory,” he replied, flexing the fingers of his right hand. “We followed him over the tops and he turned off on to the old Oldfield Road, then down a narrow lane that goes right over towards Dolly Foss, past the dam. You know where I mean, Boss?” he asked, turning to me.
“I think so,” I replied.
“By the way, this is DCI Moynihan from the Met RCS,” Gilbert told Jeff.
“Pleased to meet you,” Jeff said, extending a hand. Moynihan ignored it and Jeff said: “Suit yourself.”
Gilbert had acquired the appropriate OS map and we leaned over his desk as Jeff traced the route they’d taken. “That’s the house,” Jeff said, laying a finger on the map. “It looks to have a name.”
“Ne’er Do Well Farm,” Gilbert read out, because the map was the right way up for him.
“Ne’er Do Well?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Sounds appropriate.”
“What’s the layout like,” Gilbert asked.
“Couldn’t be better, I’d say,” he replied. “It’s an old farmhouse, with signs of some restoration work, so it’s in reasonable condition. There’s a dry gill behind it and about five hundred yards away, on the other side of the gill, there’s a rock outcrop, not far from a track. It’s a perfect place for an OP.”
“We won’t need an observation post,” Moynihan asserted. “As soon as we’ve enough bodies we’re lifting him. Where can I use a phone?”
He spent half an hour on the telephone in the secretary’s office and Gilbert used the time to ring the Deputy Chief Constable. His advice was to let them get on with it. Give any assistance they might ask for, but otherwise leave it to them. Jeff told us about tailing Chilcott and I made some more coffee. He’d alternated with the Fiesta, hanging about a quarter of a mile behind, and was certain they hadn’t been spotted.
“You did well,” I told him.
“He did bloody well,” Gilbert told us, nodding towards the adjoining office where Moynihan was brewing something. “All that way, without being rumbled.”
“Dressed like that,” I added.
Moynihan came back in and we fell silent. “Right,” he said. “From now on it’s an RCS shout. A team from the Met are coming up to lift him, probably on Saturday morning. In the meantime — tonight and tomorrow — number three district RCS will keep an eye on the farm. Thank you for your help, gentlemen, but we won’t require any more assistance from you. If you don’t like it, contact Chief Superintendent Matlock.”
With them it’s personal. Chilcott was as good as a cop killer, one of their target criminals, and someone at the Met wanted the pleasure of feeling his collar. It would look bad if a bunch of hicks from Heckley did the job for them.
“Good,” Gilbert said. “Good. That takes the pressure off us. All the same, we will keep a weather eye on things, if you don’t mind. Just in case. We do like to know exactly what’s going off in our little neck of the woods.”
Annette had vanished but didn’t answer the phone when I rang her flat. I’d stayed behind to brief our local RCS boys, and it must have been after eight when I left the station. I drove straight to a pub up on the moors and had the landlady’s steak and kidney pie. Friday morning I apologised to Annette and said I’d tried to ring her.
“I thought you’d be here until late,” she replied, “so I went to the Curtain.”
“Aw, I am sorry. I wish I’d known. Did Mr Ho entertain you?”
“Yes. He was sweet. I said you might be along later, and when you didn’t turn up he was all apologetic and filled with concern. He said you must have had a good reason for not being there.”
“Mmm, stupidity,” I replied.
I told her all about the RCS take-over and she said she’d enjoyed the shout. Her adrenaline was high and it had kept her awake all night.
“Maybe that was the monosodium glutamate,” I suggested.
“Yes, perhaps it was,” she agreed, but there was just a tinge of pink on her cheeks as she said it.
“This weekend…” I began. “Are you going away?”
“Yes, unless…”
“Unless?”
“Unless you want me to work.”
“Er, no. No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Right. Thanks”
I spent the rest of the morning on the word processor, typing a full account of the Heckley station caper in graphic detail. I even slipped in a few semi-colons, because I suspected it would be read in high places. I laid it on thick, saying that I thought it unsafe to approach Chilcott, a suspected killer, in a public place when we were ill-prepared. In fact, I made such a good job of it I decided that any other course of action would have been downright irresponsible. Ah, the power of the pen.
It gave me a headache. I found some aspirin in my drawers and washed a couple down with cold tea. I was rubbing my eyes with my forefingers when there was a knock at the door and it opened. I blinked and looked at my visitor. It was Nigel Newley, my one-time whizz-kid protege.
“Hiya, Nigel,” I gushed. “Sit down. Do you want a tea?”
“No thanks, Charlie. I was in the building, so I thought I’d call in.”
“You did right. So where’s the famous moustache?”
“Ah.” He rubbed his top lip. “You heard about that, did you? I decided it wasn’t quite the part. Looked too frivolous.”
“For a detective on a murder case? Sounds a nasty job. How are you getting on with it?”
“Pretty good. We found semen samples on her, so we’re going straight for mass testing, no messing about. That’s why I’m here.”
“Nothing on the data base?”
“No, unfortunately. She was gorgeous, Charlie. Beautiful and intelligent. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody wasn’t stalking her, but we haven’t turned anything up yet.”
“Boyfriend? Ex-boyfriends?”
“Married last Easter to a childhood sweetheart who has a cast-iron alibi. He was building a bridge in Sunderland at the time. We haven’t cleared him with the DNA yet, but we will.”
“And what does Les say about it all?” Les Isles was Nigel’s new superintendent, and an old pal of mine.
“Oh, he’s OK. A bit different from you, but he’s OK. He wants to go ahead with the mass testing, soon as possible. Says there’s no point in hanging about.”
“That sounds like Les.” I moved the computer mouse to cancel the screen saver, and clicked the save icon. I was playing for time, organising my thoughts. “Tell me this,” I said. “This girl…”
“Marie-Claire Hollingbrook.”
“…Marie-Claire. The reports say she was sexually assaulted. What exactly did that mean?”
“She was raped. Strangled and raped.”
“Post-mortem?”
“Possibly.”
“Was she assaulted anally?”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
“You want to know if there’s any comparison with your case. Margaret Silkstone.”
“Yes.”
“I thought that was cleared up.”
“It is, but maybe this is a copycat.”
“Mr Isles has considered that. Yes, she was raped vaginally and anally, but I didn’t tell you. We’re not releasing that information.”
“We didn’t release it for Mrs Silkstone, but the UK News got hold of it.”
“Maybe they were kite flying.”
“No, they knew about it. Someone spoke out of turn.”
“So,” he said, pointing to the little bottle on my desk and changing the subject. “What’s with the pills.”
I picked it up and placed it back in the drawer. “It’s nothing,” I said. “I’ve just been staring at that thing for two hours. It’s a bit bright for me. Do you know how to change it?”
“Just alter the contrast,” Nigel replied.
“How?”
“With the contrast control.”
I looked at the blank strip of plastic under the screen. “There isn’t a contrast control.”
“It’s on the keyboard. You alter it on the keyboard.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the contrast on the keyboard,” I argued. “It’s the display that’s too bright. It’s giving me spots before my eyes.”
“What sort of spots?”
“Just, little spots.”
“Do they go away when you stop looking at the monitor?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see them all the time.”
Nigel said: “Turn towards the window and close your eyes.” I did as I was told. “Can you see them now?” He asked.
“Yes.”
“Right. Cover one eye with your hand.” I did. “Can you see them now?”
“I can just see two of the little buggers, close together near the middle.”
“Do they move when you look up?”
“Um, yes. Not straight away. They follow, quite slowly.”
“OK. Now the other eye.”
I swapped hands and the two spots vanished, but now I could see three others, spread about. “I can see three now,” I told him.
“They’re floaters,” Nigel informed me.
“Floaters? What are they?”
“Dead cells, floating about in the fluid of your eyeball.”
“Oh. What causes them?”
“Age. It’s your age.”
“Well how come I have three in one eye and only two in the other? They’re both the same age.”
“It’s not that specific.”
The door burst open and Dave Sparkington was standing there. “What do you want?” he demanded, looking at Nigel.
Nigel faced up to him, saying: “I came to have a conversation with the Big Issue seller, not his mongrel.”
“We were talking about floaters,” I said to Dave.
“Floaters?” he queried.
“Yeah. Do you ever get them?
“Floaters?”
“Mmm.”
“Well, now and again. Especially if I’ve been eating chicken chow mein.”
We agreed to meet on Wednesday evening and Nigel drifted off to organise a caravan in the market place where all the males of the town would have six hairs plucked from their heads, or would donate some other body sample, if they so preferred. It would be voluntary, but a close eye would be kept on those who didn’t attend. Superintendent Isles would have prepared a list of the usual suspects, and they’d be encouraged along. I told Dave what Nigel was doing.
He said: “Les Isles will have his balls for a paperweight if he finds out that Nigel’s been talking to you about it.”
I said: “There are certain similarities with our Mrs Silkstone job.”
“Copycat,” he replied. “All the gory details were in the paper.”
“That’s what I said.”
In the afternoon a superintendent from the Met RCS came in and introduced himself. He was obviously on a damage limitation exercise, shaking my hand, calling me Charlie, saying what a good job we’d done. I showed him Ne’er Do Well Farm on the map, then took him there, via the lane at the other side of the gill where the rock outcrop was.
Barry Moynihan was in charge, wearing a shell suit that somebody two sizes smaller had loaned him, with a decent growth of stubble on his face. Three others, from number three district, were also there; two of them permanently watching the farm. I had a look through their binoculars, but the place was as still and silent as a fog-bound airport.
Two more arrived, bringing flasks of soup, blankets and waterproofs. As they lifted them from their boot I glimpsed the dull metal of a Heckler and Koch rifle barrel. I had no doubt they had a whole armoury of weapons in their cars: H amp; K A2s for general purpose killing; Glock PT17s for close range killing; and perhaps a Heckler 93 sniper rifle, for long-range killing. I had an uneasy feeling that Kevin Chilcott would not be walking away from this one.
They were reluctant to discuss tactics in front of me and I began to feel like a rogue sausage roll at a bar mitzvah, so I glanced at my watch and said I’d better be off. It was just after half-past four when I left, and ten to five when I walked into the office, quietly whistling to myself: The hills are alive, with the sound of gunfire. At twenty-six minutes past five the phone rang. It was Superintendent Cox, the RCS super that I’d just taken up on to the moors.
“Did a motorcycle pass you, Charlie, on the way back to Heckley?” he asked.
“A motorbike? Not that I remember,” I replied.
“Shit! A bike left the house, about one minute after you. We clocked him heading that way, but lost him soon afterwards. He was probably in front of you.”
“You think it was Chilcott?”
“Yeah, didn’t you know? A bike’s his chosen mode of transport when he’s on a job. He can handle one. Used to race at Brands Hatch in his younger days.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Christ, Charlie, I hope this is a dummy run and not the real thing. If it is the shit’ll hit the fan.”
And I bet I knew who’d catch it all. “Do you have a number for the bike?” I asked.
“No. Just those of ones stolen locally in the last couple of weeks.”
“You have done your homework. What make did he race?”
“What did he race? No idea, why?”
“Because bikers are often loyal to one make, that’s why.”
“Christ, that’s a thought, Charlie. That’d narrow it down. Well done.”
He was telling me that they’d asked traffic to look out for him when someone at that end attracted his attention. “Wait a minute, Charlie,” he said. “Wait a minute…he’s back. Thank fuck for that. We can see him, riding towards the house.”
I hung about for another hour, but no reports of gunshots or dead bodies came in, so it must have been a training spin. Cox didn’t bother to ring me back so I went home via Sainsbury’s and did a major shop. My favourite check-out girl wasn’t on duty, which meant that the ciabatta bread and feta cheese were pointless purchases.
I had them for supper, toasted under the grill with lots of Branston pickle until they were bubbling. Welsh rarebit, Italian style, but it wasn’t a good idea. I lay awake for most of the night, thinking about a man who was loose in society with the intention of killing someone. Thinking about Annette. Thinking about her friend.
What if…what if…what if Chilcott shot his target, who, by the type of coincidence that you only find in cheap fiction, just happened to be Annette’s friend? Would I be pleased? Would she turn to me for consolation? Yeah, probably, I thought, to both of them. That’s when I dropped off, just before the cold breath of a new day stirred the curtains and the bloke in the next street who owns half of the market and drives a diesel Transit set off for work.
Saturday is his busiest day, and I had a feeling that this one might be mine too. I had a shower and dressed in old Wranglers, cord shirt and leather jacket. I put my Blacks trainers on my feet, designed for glissading down scree slopes. You never know when you might need to.
According to the electoral role, the tenants of Ne’er Do Well Farm were Carl and Deborah Faulkner. According to the DVLA, the series seven BMW that picked Chilcott up at the station belonged to Carl Faulkner. According to our CRO, Carl Faulkner had a string of convictions long enough to knit a mailbag and Deborah had a few of her own. His were for stealing cars, bikes, household items and bundles of bank notes, plus GBH and extortion. Hers were for receiving, causing an affray, and a very early one for soliciting. The one thing that they certainly weren’t was farmers.
“Nice couple, aren’t they?” Dave said as I returned the printout to him. He sat in the spare chair and placed his coffee on my desk.
“He saved her from a life on the streets,” I commented, sliding a beer mat towards him.
“Blimey, you’re in a good mood,” he said.
“And why not? It’s a new day, the weekend.”
“Chilcott might be the Met’s,” he responded, “but these two are ours.”
“They haven’t done anything.”
“Well that’ll make it harder, won’t it,” he declared. He had a sip of coffee and continued: “There’s harbouring a fugitive, for a start. And conspiracy. And probably stealing a bike. And I bet they don’t have a TV licence.”
“First time they poke their heads above a windowsill they’ll probably have them blown off,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s a strong possibility,” he agreed.
Word came through that strange policemen were congregating in our canteen and eating all the bacon sandwiches. They were the Met’s Regional Crime Squad. At nine o’clock Mr Cox came in to my office on a courtesy call, to tell me that they were having a meeting in the conference room and they’d be very grateful if I could make myself available to answer any questions that might arise about local conditions, whatever they were. He looked as if he’d spent the night on a bare mountain, which he had. I said: “No problem,” and followed him downstairs.
They were an ugly-looking bunch, chosen for their belligerence in a tight situation and not their party manners. Any of them could have moonlighted as a night-club bouncer or a cruiserweight. A couple wore suits and ties, some wore anoraks and jeans, others were in part police uniform, bulging with body armour. I gave them a good morning when I was introduced and settled down to listen.
It was the usual stuff: isolate; control; maximum show of power, minimum violence. There was only one road going past the farm, with junctions about half a mile away to one side and two miles away at the other. A bridlepath crossed one of the roads. I told them that it was not negotiable by a car but a Land Rover or a trail bike might do it.
They would set up roadblocks on the lane, either side of the farm, and the local force would create an outer ring of roadblocks, just in case. This last comment raised a few sniggers, because they all knew it to be superfluous. Nobody would get past them. Mr Cox asked the various teams to acknowledge that they were clear about their duties and said: “OK, gentlemen, let’s bring him in.”
I was guest of honour, invited to ride with him. Our carpark was filled with their vehicles, haphazardly blocking the regulars in or out, and others were parked outside, straddling the yellow lines and pavement. We slowly disentangled ourselves and moved in a convoy out of town, towards the moors. I suspected that some of them had never seen a landscape devoid of houses, billboards and takeaways.
A steady drizzle was percolating through the atmosphere as we crossed the five hundred foot contour, blurring the colours slipping by our windows to a dirty khaki. Just how I like it. Superintendent Cox turned his collar up in an involuntary action and switched the windscreen wipers on.
“That’s the lane to the other side of the farm,” I told him. He slowed and jabbed his arm several times through his open window. I swivelled round in my seat and counted five vehicles turn in that direction. Two miles further I said: “And this is our lane to the farm.” He turned off the main road and set his trip odometer to zero.
“I reckon we make the block in about one point three miles,” he stated, slowing to a crawl. Three minutes later, with the farm still not in sight, he stopped and switched the engine off. “This’ll do,” he said.
Three vehicles from our side and two from the other were going to approach the farm and make the arrests. The others would act as roadblocks in case someone made a run for it. Our three moved ahead and parked in single file. Doors swung open and black looks were cast at the sky. Stooped figures opened boots, lifting out pieces of equipment: waterproofs; body armour; weapons. They donned hats and baseball caps, or pulled hoods over their heads. I stepped out and felt the cool rain on my face. Beautiful.
Cox was on the radio, calling up the observation post. I heard them report that the farm was as quiet as a grave. About half an hour earlier the curtains in an upstairs room had opened, and that was the only activity they’d seen. He made contact with the other section of our small army, code name T2, but they hadn’t turned into the lane yet. The chopper was standing by, he informed us.
T1 was us, or more precisely the three cars that would do the job. When the snatch teams were kitted up they squashed themselves into the cars and waited, steam and smoke rising from the open windows as they waited for the call. Every couple of minutes a cigarette end would come curling from one of the windows to sizz out in the wet grass. Our remaining three cars arranged themselves at angles across the narrow lane, completely blocking it.
“The trap is set,” Cox told me with a satisfied grin. He produced a half-empty hip flask of Famous Grouse from the depths of a pocket and took a long swig. I shook my head when he offered it to me, so he had mine, too.
He was on the radio again, chasing up T2 when there was a crackle of interference and a voice shouted: “They’re moving, they’re moving!”
“Quiet please! Come in OP,” Cox said.
“Activity at the farm, Skipper,” came the reply. “Three figures have dashed out of the house. In a hurry. I reckon they’ve rumbled us.”
“T2, acknowledge.”
“T2 receiving.”
“Are you at the lane end yet?”
“We’re at a lane end, Skip, but it’s only a dirt road.” “That’s the bridle path. The lane you want is about half a mile further on. For fuck’s sake get there, now! OP, come in.”
“OP receiving.”
“What’s happening?”
“They’re in the garage, I think. Yes, the big door’s opening and a motorbike’s coming out.”
“My team, T1, did you hear that?”
“Yes, Skip.”
“He’s making a run for it. Stand by.” Car doors opened and they tumbled out, brandishing their Heckler and Kochs.
“OP, OP, which way’d he go?”
“He’s not reappeared yet from behind the house. A Land Rover and the BMW have also just come out of the garage and gone round the house. I can see the bike now. He’s turned left, heading east.”
“That’s towards us. Good.”
“And the other two are heading west.”
“Right. Did you clock that, T2?”
“Yes, Skip.”
“Are you at the lane end yet?”
“Not sure, Skip. There’s a dam and a reservoir with a lane…”
“That’s the wrong way!” I yelled at Cox. “They’ve turned the wrong friggin’ way!”
“You’ve turned the wrong way,” Cox told them, trying to read the map that was draped over his steering wheel. “You need to be about three miles the other way, and get a move on.” He turned to me, saying: “Fortunately Chilcott’s coming towards us.” I rang Heckley control and told them to let our boys know that he’d made a run for it. It looked as if we might have to do the job for them after all.
The road ahead undulated like the spine of the Loch Ness monster and bent to the left. I climbed out of the car and peered at the furthest crest in the road. After a few seconds the bike appeared, rising into view then falling out of sight as it sank into a hollow. Then it appeared again, nearer and bigger, travelling quite cautiously, and dropped out of sight. In front of me the RCS crew spread out across the road and adopted kneeling positions, firearms at the ready. The bike rose into view again and fell away. One more brow left. We could hear it now. They pressed rifle butts against shoulders and peered down sights.
The rider’s head appeared, then shoulders, windscreen, wheels: a splash of colour — red, white and fluorescent green — in the murky landscape.
“Here he comes,” a voice said at my elbow. It was Cox, his eyes bright with excitement. In the next few minutes he’d be reciting the caution to the most wanted man in Britain or zipping him into a body bag. Either would do. The bike stopped, a hundred and fifty yards down the road. I could sense the fingers tightening on triggers, and I desperately needed a pee.
“Easy boys, he’s not going anywhere,” Cox shouted.
The biker tried to do a U-turn, but the road was too narrow. He paddled the bike backwards a few feet and completed the manoeuvre, driving off back towards the farm with a new urgency. The engine note rose and fell as he went up through the gears, the bike and rider bright as a tropical fish as it crested the brows.
“T1 to T2,” Cox yelled into the radio. “He’s coming back your way. Where are you?”
“T2 receiving, at the lane end,” I heard them confirm. “Forming roadblock now.”
“Have you seen the other two vehicles?”
“Negative, Skip.”
“He’ll be with you in about two minutes.”
The same thing happened at their end. The biker stopped, turned round, and headed back this way.
“OK, let’s tighten the net,” Cox ordered. We climbed back into our seats and moved half a mile down the road, until the farm was clearly in view. We’d just reassembled into a roadblock when the biker came burbling round the corner, the rider sitting up, only one hand on the handlebars.
“He’s a cool customer,” I said.
“Bravado,” Cox explained. “He knows the show’s over.”
The biker turned round, went back, saw the others blocking his flight and turned towards us yet again. He accelerated, front wheel lifting off the road, as if about to do an Evel Knievel over our heads, then slowed to a crawl. Cox was right: he could handle a bike. T2 moved forward, shrinking his playground.
There was a gate in the wall about a hundred yards in front of us, marking the beginning of the bridle path. The rider stopped, leaned the bike on its side stand and made a dash at the gate. Cars from both sides accelerated towards him, tyres spinning on the wet road. We held back, maintaining the roadblock. He pushed the gate open and leapt back onto the bike, gunning it towards the gap as the car from our side swerved to a standstill feet from him.
I’d started to say that he wouldn’t get far on a bike like that when events made my words redundant. The motorcycle bucked, a leg tried to steady it but the bike spun sideways and shot from under its rider. Policemen were running towards him, guns pointing, shouting orders across each other.
The leather clad figure rolled over onto his back, one leg smeared with mud.
“Stay still!” Someone shouted.
He stayed still. In seconds he was surrounded by enough guns to blow a battleship out of the water, except we’re taught that you can never have enough. And I’d proved it to be true, once, a long time ago.
“Don’t move.” Hands reached down, pressed against him, passed over his limbs and torso, feeling for hard objects.
“Now, sit up, slowly.”
The figure sat up, very slowly.
“Now, very slowly, remove your helmet.”
A gloved hand moved deliberately towards the chinstrap and fumbled with the fastening. Then the other hand came up and started to ease the helmet over the rider’s head, twisting it from side to side, forcing it upwards over flattened ears. A chin emerged, then a nose and eyes as it lifted clear. The rider’s hair was still inside the helmet. When it was high enough the hair fell down, a cascade of shoulder-length peroxide — blonde locks that would have looked good on any Page Three girl. “Was that slowly enough?” she asked with a smile.
“Oh fuck!” Cox exclaimed. I couldn’t have put it any better myself.
I phoned the nick and told them what had happened. T2 stopped the BMW, driven by Carl Faulkner, which meant that Chilcott was in the Land Rover and had probably fled cross-country, bypassing our roadblocks. Deborah Faulkner, the motorcyclist, was handcuffed and taken to Leeds, her husband to a different nick in that city, but they both played dumb, refusing to answer questions. The helicopter came thumping over the hill, somewhere up in the clouds, and made a wide banking turn before heading back towards the valley and civilisation.
Cox liaised with our control, with number three district RCS and with the Met RCS before admitting: “That’s it. It’s out of our hands, now.”
“I’m going to the house,” I said, walking in that direction. I’d almost reached it when the depleted convoy overtook me.
Barry Moynihan and the rest of the observation team had already arrived, walking across the moor from their overnight position. He’d borrowed a waterproof coat and leggings, but was still wearing the sandals with the rugged soles and more buckles and straps than an S amp; M salesman’s sample case. His colleagues were brandishing guns as if they were no more lethal than walking sticks, and the whole scene could have been newsreel footage from the latest East European war zone.
“We’ve swept the house, Mr Cox,” a tall guy with a bristly moustache and a military bearing said as he came out of the front door, “and it’s clean.” He was carrying a Remington pump action shotgun, probably loaded with CS gas cartridges.
“Thanks, Bruce,” Cox replied. “Let’s see what we can find, then.”
“Gentlemen,” I called, raising my voice above the hubbub. They all turned to me. “Can I remind you that this is a crime scene,” I continued, “and ought to be inspected with that in mind, by the appropriate people.”
“Don’t worry, Charlie,” Cox said. “We’ll be careful.” He wandered inside followed by his acolytes, and after a few gestures of helplessness I followed. They moved through the kitchen and into the living rooms. I headed for the fire burning in the iron range and stood with my back to it. They could trample on as much evidence as they wanted, but this was as far as I was going. The house had triple glazing, but any attempts at modernisation ended with that. The kitchen floor was stone-flagged, and ashes from the fire had spread away from the hearth, crunching under your feet as you moved around. All the furniture was bare wood, working class antique, and the sink was a deep stone set-pot.
Barry Moynihan came in and looked around. “They’re all through there,” I told him.
He joined me by the fire, saying: “I’m perished,” as he balanced on one leg and tried to dry a soaking foot against the flames.
Suspended from the ceiling by a system of strings and pulleys was a rack filled with clean washing, hung up to dry. I pulled a wooden chair from beneath the table and stood on it. The washing was dry. I removed a threadbare towel and a pair of hiking socks from the rack and handed them to Moynihan. “Put them on,” I told him, “or you’ll catch pneumonia.”
He took them from me and sat on another chair, drying his feet. When he’d finished he stood up, stomped around a few steps, then pronounced: “That’s better. Thanks.”
“We got off to a bad start,” I said.
“Yeah, well.”
“Have you contacted your wife?”
“Yeah. She went home. At first it sounded a daft thing to do, but I suppose it was for the best. I’ve spoken to her a couple of times and she’s calmed down. Now I’m hoping the firm will recompense me.”
“They ought to,” I told him.
There was a shout from the next room that sounded like my name. We stood there waiting for it again, until Cox appeared in the doorway and said: “We’ve identified Chilcott’s target, Charlie. Come and look at this.”
We followed him through into what was the living room. It was gloomy, even with all the lights on, furnished with overstuffed easy chairs and flowery standard lamps. Centrepiece of the room was a highly polished table that was no-doubt worth a bob or two, and spread over it was a series of black and white photographs.
“We found them in this,” Cox said, showing me a cardboard folder. “What do you think?”
The cops around the table parted to make room for me. There were six pictures, arranged in a big square. Top left was simply the frontage of a house, such as an estate agent might produce. Next one, a male figure was emerging from the door at the side of the house. After that it was his car, focusing on the numberplate. Then the man himself, stooping to unlock the car, followed by two more of him behind the wheel.
I picked up the last print and held it towards the light. It was taken through the side window of the car, and the driver was completely unaware of it. Next time, it might be a gun, blowing his brains out. Somebody coughed.
“It’s me,” I said, looking at Cox. He didn’t reply. Everyone was silent, empty expressions on their faces. “It’s me,” I repeated. I placed the photo back on the table, carefully aligning it with its fellows. “Why would anyone want to kill me?” I wondered out loud, and I swear they all shrank back a step.