I made inspector bang on schedule, but by then I had a wife, Vanessa, and a mortgage, and had been sucked into a way of working that wasn't negotiable with much in the outside world. I'd had a brief spell in CID and enjoyed it, so when the opportunity came to head the branch at Heckley I grabbed it with enthusiasm and outstretched arms. The job fell into them and Vanessa fell out. My dad was dying of cancer at this time and I desperately needed a rock to lean on. I rang Dave Sparkington.
"Could I speak to Sparky, please?" I said when he answered.
"Hiya, Shagnasty," he responded. "Congrats on the move. Sorry I didn't make the bash but I wasn't invited."
"We haven't had it yet. Do you still want to be a DC?"
There was a silence, apart from his breathing, then he said: "Are you serious?"
"Deadly. There's an aide ship coming up. Interested?"
"You bet!"
He did six months as aCID aide and sailed through the twelve-week course at Wakefield training college. The day he joined us he came into my office carrying six pairs of white socks and insisted that we change into them, right there and then.
Slowly, I built up the team I wanted. Gilbert Wood arrived as our new superintendent and gave me a free hand to run the show my own way. We rewarded him with the best arrest rate in the division, and some of them were big fish. I'd worked for Gilbert before. He was one of a dying breed the old school who believed that we were there to catch villains and protect the public, and if this meant we upset a few local politicians, or failed to keep within budget, so be it.
Trouble was, Gilbert had no time for meetings, either. Somebody had to go, which was why I was now sitting at the bottom end of the long polished table that graced the conference room at City HQ, while he cast a fly across some lake filled with tame but hungry trout. It was nearly six o'clock and the deputy chief constable was drawing proceedings to a close.
"As you know…" he was saying, '… this will be my last Serious Crimes Operations Group meeting, so I'd like to take the opportunity …"
"Let's have a look," Les Isles whispered to me, leaning closer. Les is another one of my proteges who leapfrogged past me in the promotion stakes.
I'd spent nearly three hours doing sketches of the DCC on my note pad, and the last one had his likeness to a T. He was leaving at the end of the month and I knew that the day before he went somebody would ring me and ask for a cartoon illustrating some inglorious moment from his past. They thought I could churn them out like Barbara Cartland novels. I slid the pad across to Superintendent Isles.
"Brilliant. Can I have it?" he hissed.
"Mmm," I mumbled.
"Sign it." He slid the pad back my way.
With a few deft strokes I gave the DCC a quiff of black hair falling over one eye, added a Penny Black of a moustache, scrawled L. Isles across the bottom and pushed it in front of him again.
"Was there something, Inspector Priest?" the DCC was saying, his head tilted forward so he could see me all the better through his bifocals.
"Er, not really, sir," I improvised. "Superintendent Isles was just commenting that you'll be sorely missed."
A murmur of amusement ran round the table and the assorted chief supers and bog-standard supers who represented their divisions at the SCOG meeting took it as a signal and closed their notebooks. They eased their chairs away from the table to notify the chairman that he was pushing his luck if he thought he was going to keep them here much longer.
"Before we finish…" the boss remonstrated, determined to show us that he wasn't gone yet, '… could we just wind up by going round the table. Anything you'd like to raise, George?" he asked the person sitting on his immediate left.
"No, I think we've covered everything," George replied, clipping his pen into his inside pocket for emphasis.
"No," the next in line added.
Shakes of the head and various negative expressions answered the DCC's query as his glance moved round the table, towards me.
I couldn't resist it. Not often do I have so many bigwigs hanging on my words while slavering in anticipation of the pre-prandial gin and tonic that the little lady was no doubt mixing at that very second. The bifocals flickered in my direction and moved on, but not quickly enough.
"There is just one thing, sir," I said.
They stopped, hesitated, swung back and settled on me like the searchlight at a PoW camp finding a luckless escapee. There was a rumble of groans and the clump of chairs falling back on to four legs.
I had them in the palm of my hand.
"If we could go back to item seven on the agenda…" I continued.
Papers were retrieved from executive-style briefcases and shuffled impatiently.
The DCC said: "Item seven? Retrospective DNA testing? I thought we'd given it a good airing, Mr. Priest. You made it quite plain, if you don't mind me saying so, that Heckley was way ahead of the rest of us in reopening unsolved cases where DNA evidence was available."
"Yes, sir, and with a certain amount of success. As I told the meeting earlier we were able to associate two rapes with a villain already in custody, and a murder with a dead suspect. However, if we examine the statistics, I believe they lead us to consider new lines of enquiry."
The person on my left sighed and tapped his pencil, but the chairman leaned forward on his elbows and Les Isles said: "Go on, Charlie."
Nothing would have stopped me. "If I could just invent some figures, to illustrate my point," I responded. "If we go back, for convenience, for, say, twenty unsolved major crimes murders in the Yorkshire region.
There might be four of those where old DNA samples are available which were of little significance at the time of the offence. The new techniques allow us to link crimes in a way which was unheard of just a few years ago. Our experience at Heckley indicates that of those four crimes with DNA availability, it is highly probable that we will find links. Supposing, for example, we link two of the crimes to the same villain. All well and good. We rope him in, present the evidence, and he gets a few more years on his sentence, probably running concurrently with what he's already serving if he's in custody."
There were murmurs of approval at my disdain for concurrent sentences.
It proved they were listening.
"But!" I went on, raising my hand as if plucking a plum, as I'd seen the Prime Minister do. "But what about the other sixteen cases where there is no DNA evidence? The statistics indicate that eight of those crimes could quite easily have been committed by the same person. Maybe we should be taking a new look at all of them. DNA testing isn't the only new tool we have."
They were silent. They had been listening, unless they'd fallen asleep. "Profiling," someone mumbled.
"Is that what you're thinking, Charlie?" the DCC asked in an uncharacteristic show of intimacy. "That we should set a profiler loose on the files?"
"Some call it profiling, sir," I replied, resisting the urge to call him Clarry. "I prefer to call it good detective work."
"But that's the sort of thing you have in mind?"
"Yes, and computerisation of all the information."
"Going back how far?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "Thirty years?"
I sensed a collective Sheest! In theory, unsolved murder inquiries never close, but it's in our interests to conveniently forget the occasional one, and staying within budget earns more medals than pinning a forgotten murder on some old sod who is in a nursing home in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's. I could see the cogs going round in the DCC's head. A serial killer would be a fantastic high note to go out on, but he was already on notice, and I was talking about results in three years, not three weeks. There was nothing in it for him.
"Right, Charlie," he concluded as the wheels ground to a standstill.
"It looks like you've got yourself a job." He gave his famous smile, like a chimpanzee threatening a rival, and closed his file. Everybody laughed.
"You walked into that," Les Isles told me as we strolled out into the sunshine.
"I'll never learn," I concurred.
"Mmm. You could have a point, though."
"I'm sure I have. It'll give Sparky something to do."
"How is the big daft so-and-so?"
"Just as big. Slightly dafter."
"Mr. Priest!" Someone was calling my name. I turned to see a PC following us out of the front entrance. "Telephone!" he shouted at me.
"See you, Les," I said, turning to go back.
"Tell him he's missed you," he urged.
"It might be a woman," I replied.
"Fair enough. S'long."
It wasn't, of course. It was Nigel Newley, my brightest sergeant.
"There's been another," he told me, as I leaned over the front counter, the telephone cord at full stretch.
"What, a burglary?" I asked.
"Yes. Old couple tied up and robbed, some time this morning."
"InHeckley?"
"That's right."
"Who rang in this time?"
"The BMW showroom on the high street, about fifteen minutes ago. An ambulance is taking them both to the General for a check-up. I'm going straight to the house, while it's daylight."
"Have you done the necessary?"
"Had a word with traffic about the videos; told the wooden tops to keep off anything that might take a tyre print sent for Scenes of Crime.
Maggie's on her way to the hospital."
"Good show. Give me the address, I'll see you there."
I knew what to expect. Not the details, just the overall picture. This was the sixth robbery of its type in as many months; three outside our parish and now three inside. Elderly couples, well off, living in comparative luxury in large, secluded houses. Two villains drive up, pull balaclavas on and threaten them with baseball bats. They tie the terrified householders into chairs and steal anything of value, loading their own vehicle and, in two of the robberies, also taking the victim's car. They grab all their cash cards and force them into revealing the PIN numbers, threatening to come back if they don't work.
Several hours later, when well clear of the scene, they telephone someone from a call box and suggest that the police go to such-and-such an address.
They didn't risk calling us themselves, choosing to ring small firms that had switchboards but wouldn't be expected to record calls. So far, they'd been lucky. The people who received the calls had been responsible and passed the information on. It was only a matter of time before some dizzy telephonist, chosen for her off-the-switchboard talents, put it down to an ex-boyfriend taking the piss and hung her nails out to dry. Then two people would have a lingering death.
The target this time was on Ridge Road, between the house where our football manager lives and the home of Heckley's only pop star. He sprang to fame with a song called "Wiggle Waggle' which earned him third place in the Song for Europe contest. The following year he destroyed his career by winning it with "Jiggle Joggle', or something.
He's a nice bloke, but alcohol and fast cars have earned him a few hours of contemplation in our cells. Nigel was waiting outside the grounds.
"They're called McLelland," he informed me. "Audrey and Joe, late seventies. He ran a printing business until about five years ago. Sold out and came to live here."
"McLelland?" I said. "They had a shop in town, and a couple more in Halifax and Huddersfield. Sold stationery, artists' materials, that sort of stuff, and did small printing jobs. We used them now and again. Have you been in?"
"No, not yet."
The PC who'd answered the call and found the couple came with us, explaining exactly where he'd been and what he'd done. The house was mock Georgian, with pillars flanking the entrance and windows that would be a bugger to paint. Four bedrooms, two en suite, and what estate agents describe as a minstrels' gallery. They have the monopoly on midget minstrels. It wasn't your average retirement home.
"I can imagine you living somewhere like this, Nigel," I said, casting my gaze towards the chandelier and flamboyant Artexing as we stood inside the doorway.
"Cheers," he replied, with a scowl.
The PC showed us the two chairs in the dining room, at the back of the house, where the couple had been tied. Bundles of string lay on the floor between the chairs' legs. "You cut the string," I said, bending down to examine it.
"Yes, sir."
"Good." The knots were evidence. "Did you touch anything else?"
"In the kitchen, sir. I took a knife from a drawer. And I found a dressing gown for the lady, from the bathroom."
"This would be about, what… five thirty?"
"Five thirty-seven, sir."
"Cut out the sir, please. You make me feel like Mr. Chips."
"Sorry, er, Mr. Priest."
"Charlie will do. So Mrs. McLelland was still in her nightclothes?"
"Yes, she was."
"So they could have been here from, say, eight this morning. Ten hours."
"It looks like it."
"How were they?"
"Bad, I'd say. In shock."
Nigel returned from scouting the rest of the house. "It's been well and truly turned over," he announced. "Just like the others. Stuff lifted out of drawers in a bundle, almost neatly. Mattresses disturbed. Circles in the dust on the sideboards and suchlike. We won't know what's missing until we talk to them."
I looked at the chairs, imagining two frail people tied to them all day. He'd risen early, perhaps, like he usually did. Made a pot of tea to take to his wife. A little ritual they'd fallen into after they'd retired. He'd have heard the tyres on the gravel drive; maybe thought it was the postman with a parcel. When he answered the door he was bundled aside as they rushed in. They roughed him up a bit terrifying the victim was part of the modus operandi and then one of them would dash upstairs to find his wife. We could never imagine how she must have felt when he burst into her bedroom, masked and armed.
I stood in the doorway to their lounge and let my gaze run round the room. A lifetime's accumulation was there. It wasn't to my taste, but everything was good quality, some of it old, some newer. Mrs.
McLelland's mark was on the place. She liked frills and bows and flowery patterns of pinks and lilacs. His pipe sat in an ashtray on the hearth, within reach of his favourite chair. This was their home.
"We've got to catch them, Nigel," I said softly. "Before they kill someone."
"How do we know they haven't?" he replied, coming to stand next to me.
"All it takes is for someone not to pass on the message. Somewhere, two people might be sitting in chairs like these…"
"In that case," I interrupted him, 'we'd better give it all we've got.
Why isn't that bloody SOCO here yet?"
Maggie Madison, one of my DCs, had no luck at the hospital. Audrey and Joe were sedated and in no condition to speak. "Perhaps," the doctor told her, 'after a good night's sleep…" At least it looked as if they'd survive. They had friction burns from the string on their ankles and wrists, and bruises on their arms from manhandling, but no other damage. No other physical damage. I dismissed the troops and arranged for a full meeting at eight a.m. On my way home I stopped at the fish and chip shop, but it was closing. I settled for a bowl of cornflakes and went to bed.
The meeting was informal, in the CID office, with me at the blackboard making notes on it and everyone else sitting around in rapt attention.
SOCO had found a tyre print where a vehicle had turned round in the drive and run on to the garden. So far all we knew was that it wasn't from Mr. McLelland's elderly Rover which stood in their garage. He'd collected a few fingerprints but it was looking as if they all belonged to the householders. We hadn't expected it to be otherwise. "The string used to tie them," he informed us, 'is the same gardening twine as from the Woods End robbery, and the knots were simple over hands three or four on top of each other, as at Woods End."
"They used clothesline at the first four," I added, 'but the knots were the same."
"They ran out of clothesline?" someone suggested.
"Probably," I agreed. "The point is, we can assume it's the same gang." I turned to DC Madison. "Hospital duties for you, Maggie. Ask if there's any next-of-kin they'd like informed, then if they saw the vehicle. Most importantly, what time did the villains leave and who do the McLellands bank with? Take one of those consent forms with you that we created after the last job, so we can talk to their bank. Find out what you can, but let me know if either of them is fit enough for a proper statement."
"I'm on my way."
"Jeff," I said, looking at Jeff Caton, another of my sergeants. "Liaise with our neighbours, let them know we've had another and keep them informed. Tell them about the tyre print one was found at the Oldham job, I believe. Collect whatever videotapes Traffic have to offer and have someone look at them. Maggie'll let you know the time frame.
It's a pound to a pinch of snuff they use the motorway." So did seventy thousand other vehicles, every day, but what the hell.
"It was Oldham," the SOCO confirmed, referring to the tyre print "Have you done a comparison?"
"No. We don't have the file."
"Fair enough, but let's have it done." I dispatched people to talk to the neighbours and a couple of DCs agreed to have a word with local likely lads on the estates who might have heard something on the jungle drums. They have a system of communication that doesn't rely on wires or radio waves or satellites. It's a hotchpotch of rumour, gossip, lies, wishful thinking and wild imaginings. It spreads like chicken pox through an infant school but sometimes, just sometimes, there's a kernel of truth in it. It's a bit like satellite news.
"And you and me, sunshine," I said, turning to Sparky as the others grabbed jackets and notebooks and filed out, 'we'll have a pleasant morning talking to the usual suspects."
We blinked into the daylight and I wondered if some decent shades would help my image. "We ought to be having the day off somewhere," Dave said as we walked to his car.
"When we sort this," I said. "Big day out. Ingleborough, Hill Inn for a few bevvies, Chinky in Skipton. We'll hire a bus. Long time since we did something like that."
"It'll probably be raining tomorrow."
"Nuh-uh." I shook my head. "It's set fair for the foreseeable future.
High pressure over North Outsera."
"Day after tomorrow, then."
We placed our coats on the back seat and I wound my window down. Dave started the engine. "Tony's Antiques?" he suggested.
"Good a place as any," I agreed.
But Tony had nothing to offer us. These days, he claimed, he'd lost contact with the old gang. Things were not the same; no honour any more; too much violence. He was respectable; all his mistakes were behind him; little woman saw to that. Just like he'd told us the last time.
"Sell many of these, Tony?" I asked, turning a twelve-inch bowie knife with a serrated blade in my hands. I held it to the light and saw Made in East Germany etched into the steel.
"Not many, Mr. Priest," he answered. "One or two, to collectors. And 'unters, sometimes."
"Hunters? What do they hunt?"
"Rabbits, that sort of thing. There's a fishing line in the 'andle."
I pulled the end of the hilt and two yards of tightly coiled nylon line sprang out, thick enough to restrain a playful corgi. I imagined one of Tony's shaven-headed, pot-bellied customers chasing a rabbit across the moors, and concluded that Benjamin Bunny and his friends were not in danger.
"You'll be sure to let us know if you hear anything," Sparky said, pushing his face close to Tony's. "Won't you?"
"Er, yeah, 'course I will," Tony promised, leaning away, his eyes flicking between us.
We were at the less prosperous end of town, where the mills and workers' cottages better described as slums once stood. Now it's a junction on the bypass, with a few run-down terraces left clinging to streets that terminate abruptly against the guard rail and don't figure in the council's road-sweeping plans. We came outside, squinting against the glare and the traffic-borne dust. An old man shuffled by using a Zimmer frame, slippers on his feet. He'd probably lived all his life within a hundred yards of that spot, in one of the few houses left standing. When he died, they'd knock it down and go back to their offices to wait for the next one. It's development by attrition.
"How's he supposed to cross the road?" Sparky wondered as we watched him dodder away.
"Cross the road?" I replied. "Cross the road? Why would he want to cross the road? Roads are for cars."
"Right. So where next?"
"Well, as we're talking about cars, let's go kick a few tyres."
"Good idea. And why don't we walk?"
"Good idea."
It's funny how second-hand car showrooms cluster together, challenging the would-be customer to find a better deal. There are three on the road out of town and over the years we'd had dealings with all of them.
The dazzle as we approached the first one hurt the brain. A Ford Escort convertible, the hood invitingly down, stood temptingly in front of all the others, bait for the impulse buyer. Car of the Week was emblazoned across its windscreen.
"Why doesn't mine shine like this?" I asked the proprietor when he swam out from under his stone.
"I don't know what you drive, sir," he replied. "But these are all quality motors, and that's reflected in the paintwork. Reflected in the paintwork! That's a good one, eh? Are you particularly interested in a cabriolet?"
"No, not really."
"So did you have anything in mind?"
"All of them," I said, showing my ID. "Do you have papers for them all?"
His expression fell quicker than a politician's trousers. "P-papers?" he stuttered. "Papers? Er, yes, in the office. Is there… is there a problem, Officer?"
"Not at all, sir," I replied, smiling like the same politician when he realises it's only the wife who's caught him, and she's not going to derail the gravy train. "I'm sure everything's in order. We'd like a word with you about another matter, though, in the office, if you don't mind."
We were wasting our time, and the other two dealers were no help. They hadn't made any big cash sales recently, and nobody had offered them goods in kind or suggested any sort of dodgy deal. Business was steady and wholesome, even though customers these days knew every trick in the book and were determined to rip them off.
"My heart's bleeding," I said as we walked back to the car.
"You were too easy on them," Dave admonished.
"I think they got the message," I replied. "If they don't know anything they don't know anything."
"Everyone knows something. We should turn one of them over, then ask again."
"Sadly, it's not that easy, and you know it. Where next?"
"The tattoo parlour, then the Golde and Silver Shoppe in the town centre."
"Right. I might have a discreet boudoir scene done on my left thigh while we're there."
Unfortunately the tattooist was busy, so it would have to be another day. We dragged him away from the young girl who was having an iguana added to the menagerie on her scapula, but he didn't know anything, 'know what I mean?" The manageress of Ye Olde Golde and Silver Shoppe used language that would make a Cub Scout blush and threatened to report us to the Council for Civil Liberties. You'd never have believed her old man was doing four years for receiving.
We lunched on a bench in the square. Every town should have a square, a focal point. Ours has just been refurbished at monstrous cost, but it looks good and the office workers and shoppers certainly enjoy it when the weather's fine. We had ham sandwiches in oven-bottom cakes, and tea from polystyrene beakers.
A girl, about six feet two, clomped by on platform soles. She had the longest legs, the briefest mini and the skimpiest top I could imagine.
Well, not quite imagine, but the longest, briefest and skimpiest I'd seen in a while. I turned my head to follow her, sandwich poised before my open mouth.
"You'll go blind," Sparky warned.
"It's this warm weather," I complained. "It makes me feel poorly."
"It certainly brings them out. What do you think of them?" He nodded towards the statue in the middle of the square.
It was a bronze, about half life-size, showing two doctors dressed rather differently; one Victorian, one Edwardian. J. H. Bell and F. W.
Eurich lived in Bradford, when the woollen industry was at its height and employed hundreds of thousands of people. Of all the afflictions that beset them, wool sorters disease was the most feared. A man might go to work perfectly healthy in the morning and be dead from it by supper-time. The French called it la mala die de Bradford. Dr. Bell reckoned it was caused by imported fleeces and was a form of anthrax.
Eurich took up the Petri dish and confirmed the link. He devised a way of treating the fleeces and the disease was eradicated. Pasteur was lauded for discovering how to protect animals against the disease, but the good doctors had gone un recognised for their work with humans until Heckley decided to honour them.
"It's somewhere fpr the pigeons to sit," I said.
"Did you vote?" Dave asked. The local paper, the Gazette, had conducted a referendum on who should grace the new square.
"Mmm." I finished my sandwich and rolled the paper into a ball, trying to wipe my hands on it.
"Who for?"
"Them." I nodded towards the doctors.
"Really? I'd never heard of them."
"Neither had I until someone nominated them. Who did you vote for?"
"Denis Law."
"Denis Law! A foot baller I should have known."
"He gave pleasure to millions," he retorted, primly.
"He was the best, but he didn't save any lives."
Dave took my empty cup and wrapper and walked over to a bin with them.
When he was seated again he said: "Do you think we'll catch them, Charlie?"
The pigeons that had been strutting round our feet like battery-driven toys waddled over to the next bench to see if the pickings were any better there. "We've got to, Dave," I answered. "Nigel thinks that someone might already be dead, sitting tied in their chairs because the message wasn't passed on."
"I've thought the same," he said. "Maybe we should put out an appeal.
Check your neighbours, if you haven't seen them for a while. Something like that."
"I'll mention it to Gilbert. I'll have to get back, make some calls.
Are you all right for seeing a few more miscreants?"
"I've a long list, but I'm not hopeful. This morning's been a waste of time."
"So what do you conclude from that?" I asked him.
"Dunno," he replied. "They could be new boys in town. Or new to the job but clever with it. Or everybody's scared of them.
Or maybe they're from way outside the area."
"All the jobs are centred on Heckley," I said.
"What's fifty miles these days? They could be from the Midlands, travelling north for every job. Or from the north-east. It's probably too hot for them up there. Who knows?"
"Like I said, I'll do some ringing round." I stood up and swung my jacket over my shoulder.
"Want a lift back?"
"No, I'll walk. Let's see what's happening." I undipped my mobile phone. "Oops," I said. "Switched off. No wonder we've had a quiet morning." I pushed the slider across to the red dot and pressed a memory button.
"It's Charlie," I said. "Anything happening?" There was a message for me. "Did he say what he wanted?" He hadn't. "Right," I said, "I'll ring him when I get back."
I must have looked thoughtful as I clipped the phone back on my belt.
"Problems?" Dave asked.
"I don't know. Someone called Keith Crosby wants me to give him a ring."
"The MP?" he asked, his eyes wide.
"Ex-MP. I'm not sure."
"Bloody 'ell. It's been a long time since we saw him."
"Hasn't it? I wonder what he wants."
I was deep in thought as I walked back to the office. Keith Crosby had fallen from grace twenty-odd years earlier, and I'd been at the centre of things. The tall girl stepped out of Top Shop right in front of me and I banged into her. She told me to look where I was going and I said sorry. The tune blasting from within was Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it Through the Grapevine', number one in 1969, and for a few seconds I lost track of time and place. It had been a long time ago, and was still unfinished business.