a way, it was. It looked as if it had been engaged in a monumental struggle against an ancient enemy, fought to the death. And lost.
‘It’s all superficial,’ Jimmy assured me. ‘It’ll put right.’
‘Of course it will,’ I replied with forced enthusiasm. It was hard to believe, looking at the wreck they’d left me with.
‘Don’t mention the wedding,’ Jimmy advised as I read out a question about the purpose of my journey.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re not insured for it. It’s called hire and reward. Just put pleasure.’
‘Right. So what do you reckon, about?’
‘Oh, thick end of four grand.’
‘Blimey.’
Jimmy wanted to go for a pint, but I declined. Once he gets in a pub he believes it’s bad manners to leave before closing time. Driving home I thought about our conversation and one I’d held earlier in the day with Inspector Adey.
I’d seen him in the washroom at the station, wearing his full uniform, and asked him what the celebration was. He was handing out cautions to juveniles, and the uniform was to impress them with the gravity of the situation. He’d just done the first three. One had consumed a Mars bar and a can of Coke while pushing an empty trolley around the supermarket. He fell into the poverty trap: unemployed, but too young to claim benefit. Said he was hungry. Another had paddled in the koi carp pool in the shopping mall and the last one stole all the garden gnomes on the Barratt estate and lined them up across the road.
They’d have criminal records until they were eighteen. And here was me, plotting to sting an insurance company for four thousand pounds, knowing there’d be no comebacks. It was a so-called victimless crime, but it was still fraud. To he that hath, it shall be given; or to put it another way, life’s a bitch.
I typed my report of the day trip to Bridlington on my own word processor, in the spare bedroom-cum-office. I checked it, made some alterations and ran off a copy for our files and another for Fearnside. It would be easier to transmit it electronically, or send a disk, but it’s forbidden. That’s how you spread viruses. I talked to his office and a few minutes later he rang me from home.
I’ll say one thing for him: he’s a good listener. ‘Tell me the messages again,’ he asked, when I’d finished.
‘McAnally’s was, “The martyrdom of St Sebastian”, and Morgan’s was, “Five yards in, at five yard intervals.”’
‘Mmm. Sounds bloody nonsense to me. Do you reckon he was having you on?’
‘It had crossed my mind. Oh, by the way, I suggested that we might lose his file, if he cooperated. Is that OK?’
‘He hasn’t got a file.’
‘I know, but I said he had a whole drawer to himself, that you thought he was the driver. Actually, he didn’t bust a gut denying it.’
‘Didn’t he, eh? Suppose we could lose him, providing this is good information. What do you reckon, Charlie?’
‘I really don’t know, but in the absence of anything better…’ I let it hang in the air.
‘Right. You’re not going to suggest that I domicile myself in the British Museum and swot up on the lives of the bloody saints, are you?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘That’s for Hollywood. It’ll be something more obvious than that. They had the right idea, looking for a pub or a church.’
‘The simple explanation — Occam’s razor, eh?’
‘Took the words right out of my mouth, Mr Fearnside.’
‘Splendid. Well, you keep on with it, Charlie, and let me know how it goes. I’ll put some of our brainboxes on to these messages. One or two of them time their soft-boiled eggs by doing The Times crossword. Maybe they can put their efforts towards something useful for a change, eh?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
All Tuesday we were bogged down with a missing thirteen-year-old girl. Monday morning she’d told her parents she was going to a chum’s after school, but when she wasn’t home by eleven p.m. they rang the other girl’s parents. Samantha wasn’t there, hadn’t been there, and she hadn’t been to school either. Nothing knackers the overtime budget like a vulnerable MFH. The nightshift, with some help from CID, looked into her background, friends, state of mind and everything else that might shed some light on her whereabouts. She had some strange acquaintances, and when I came on it was fairly certain that she’d run away. We’d have to go through the motions though, and the helicopter and the task force started an interim search of the local countryside.
We found her early in the evening, after somebody heard our appeal on Look North and put the finger on her boyfriend. They were drunk, in bed, at his council flat in one of the Sylvan Fields tower blocks. He was unemployed, thirty-eight, had four children elsewhere and normally slept with an eight-foot-long boa constrictor. He swore blind she’d told him she was seventeen and she said she loved him. We couldn’t afford any more overtime for the next two months.
I was in the shower when the phone rang, washing that man right outa my hair. It could have been anyone, and some folks don’t like talking to answerphones, so I dashed downstairs leaving soggy footprints on the Axminster. ‘Priest,’ I said into it.
‘Hi, Pissquick. How y’doing?’ came Mike Freer’s melodious tones.
‘You got me out the shower!’ I protested.
‘It comes with the training. Always strike when the opposition least expects it. That’s what we’ve just done. Since when did Drug Squad knock on anyone’s door at eight o’clock in the evening?’
‘Is there a point in this, Mike? I’ve stood here dripping so often I have flag iris growing in my hallway.’
‘And frog spawn?’
‘Buckets of it.’
‘OK. Well, put some in a jar and take it down to City HQ. I’m sure Michael Angelo Watts would appreciate something to amuse him as he sits in his cosy ten-by-eight.’
‘You’ve lifted him!’ I exclaimed.
‘’Bout an hour ago, in Chapeltown.’
‘Fantabulosa! What’s he saying?’
‘Would you believe: “Bring me my solicitor”?’
‘I believe it. Great. I wonder how soon Les Isles will let me have a crack at him?’
‘After everybody else, I imagine. Just thought you’d like to know. S’long.’
‘Thanks, bye.’
The water was running cold when I went back upstairs. I thought about walking to the local again, and ruining all their evenings, but decided they weren’t worth it. I settled for watching a science programme on Channel 4 and a reasonably early night.
The PC who’d tried to find my name and address from the DVLC said that a civilian had made an unofficial complaint to him about an E-type Jaguar being driven recklessly. He hadn’t taken the civilian’s name, but decided to look into it ‘just out of interest’. What he meant was that one of his shady friends had slipped him fifty quid for the information. The liaison officer asked him all about it, prompted by my DI colleague. A discreet eye would be kept on his future behaviour. I thanked my opposite number for his assistance and put the phone down.
Simon Mingeles was Michael Angelo Watts’ brief. He was in court on Wednesday morning, defending the AIDS virus against a crimes against humanity rap, so I had to wait until he was available to hold his client’s hand. It was almost three thirty when I spoke the time into the tape recorder, in one of City’s interview rooms.
Michael wore baggy pantaloons, some sort of ethnic top and an expression of bored arrogance. Mingeles had that glow that a two-hour lunch gives one.
