gullible young ladies, don’t you think?’
‘We wouldn’t know about that,’ Mingeles informed the tape.
I leant on the little table that separated us. ‘Listen, Michael,’ I said, ‘you’re going down for dealing. That’s as sure as Haile Selassie was an ugly runt. Makinson wants to pin a murder rap on you. Believe it or believe it not, I happen to think that you didn’t cut Lisa Davis’s throat. But you have a good idea who did. Right at this moment I am the only friend you have that you haven’t paid for. I’ll ask again: where did you lose the phone?’
Watts didn’t understand the Selassie jibe. He only joined the Rastas for the haircut. It’s a bit like joining the Young Conservatives for the table tennis. ‘You a fuckin’ joke, man,’ he told me for the second time. ‘You know fuck all.’ Mingeles silenced him by grasping his arm.
I leant forward, closer to him. ‘I’ll tell you what I do know,’ I said. ‘I could get you off a murder rap. But why should I? Tell me where you left the phone, and get yourself off.’
Mingeles looked puzzled, sat back and listened.
‘Where were you,’ I asked, ‘when you made those last calls on your dad’s phone and got three wrong numbers? You thought it was your own phone at first, didn’t you? You gave it a shake, then realised it was your father’s. What did you do? Pick up the wrong one as you left home?’
He glowered at me, leaving the question unanswered.
I went on. ‘So, you visited someone and left the phone on their hall table or the mantelpiece or wherever one puts a mobile phone. You had a discussion, maybe a little argument, and left in a hurry, forgetting to pick up the phone. That’s what happened, isn’t it, Michael?’
Sweat was dribbling from under his dreadlocks and his nostrils were flared, like he was halfway down the hundred metres track, or coming out for the third round.
Mingeles shuffled in his seat. ‘You appear to know a lot about my client,’ he stated. ‘Sadly, for you, it is entirely supposition.’ He lifted his briefcase and clicked the locks.
I turned to him. ‘Listen Mingeles,’ I said, ‘this is all good stuff. I know how many times your client shakes his prick after a piss and which finger he picks his nose with.’ I hooked a middle finger towards him and he shrank away. ‘He is protecting someone because that person is the key to continued wealth for him. If you want to be of real service to your client, I suggest you advise him that the gravy train is off the rails.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Interview terminated at…three fifty-four.’ I pressed the button and ejected the tapes.
Mugging is a high risk business. High risk for the offender as well as the victim. It’s an entry level offence, the first step on a pathway that usually leads to further, more violent, crimes. The mugger needs no tools, no training and no conscience. A fast pair of legs and an urgent desire for a few quid and you’re in business. Old ladies out shopping are the first targets, for our young thief has never heard of osteoporosis. But they don’t have much money, unless you catch them straight out of the Post Office on giro day. Male targets are often more prosperous, but might fight back, so he starts to carry a knife.
If he’s carrying a blade, he might as well use it to threaten the victim. And so it goes on. Rapists, especially the ones who attack their victims out of doors, usually started their careers as muggers.
We were having a plague of them, with two on Thursday morning. Thursday was pension day — laddo was on the learning curve. Maybe we could find a place for him on a residential course. The Davis enquiry was going nowhere, and I wanted this latest pimple in the figures squeezing out before it became a rash, so I put everyone I could spare out on the streets, including myself. For once the two victims gave good descriptions which, surprisingly, tallied. Wearing a Forfar Athletic Football Club jersey anywhere outside Forfar could be considered eccentric. In Yorkshire it was downright weird. We scoured the town and a patrol car spotted him coming out of a betting shop after the last race at Hamilton.
‘You’ve got to admit,’ Sparky said later through a mouthful of biscuit, ‘it makes the job worthwhile when you target a criminal like that and catch him so quickly.’
I took a well-earned sip of coffee and put my feet up on the desk. ‘He’s hardly John Dillinger,’ I remarked.
‘It’s one less scrote on the streets. That’s what counts.’
‘I’ll drink to that. Hopefully, when Mr Wood comes back we’ll be able to spend a bit more time on the Goodrich affair. Anybody know where Nigel is? I suppose we ought to call him off.’
‘He had a theory about someone up the Manchester Road.’
We were chattering away, pleased with ourselves, when my phone rang. It always does.
I swung my legs off the desk but Sparky beat me to it.
‘Who?’ he asked. His face screwed up in puzzlement and he said, ‘Dances with Wolves? No, there’s no one here called Dances with Wolves. Pardon… It’s a bad line, could you speak up, please. Dances with Anybody? Oh, you must mean Mr Priest. I’ll put him on.’ He reached out with the phone, saying, ‘It’s for you.’
Before I put my ear to it I could hear Nigel protesting. ‘I never said a thing! He’s making it up, boss.’
‘So that’s what you call me, behind my back, is it?’ I growled.
‘No, boss. Honest! I never said a word. He’s winding us up.’
‘So what do you call Dave?’
‘I don’t call him anything! What’s going on?’
‘Botulism Feet? Aw, Nigel, that’s not nice. That’s personal.’
‘I never said a word! You’re as bad as he is! Put him back on!’
‘And what else, did you say?’
‘Nothing!’
‘The what?’
‘NOTHING!’ he shrieked.
‘The Line Dance Kid? Sorry, Nigel. I don’t know what you mean.’
I glanced at Sparky who glowered back at me, slowly turning colour. ‘Bastard!’ he hissed.
‘Put him back on!’ Nigel insisted. He sounded hurt and confused, like a dog in a cactus garden.
‘He doesn’t want to talk to you. What did you ring for?’
‘Oh, flipping heck. Put him on, please.’
‘Sorry, Nigel. He’s shaking his head. We got someone for the muggings, so you can come back, now.’
‘So I heard. Is he annoyed?’
‘Well, he’s not pleased, stuck in a cell like that.’
‘I meant Dave.’
‘Oh, he’ll get over it. Thanks for those notes on ethics that you left me, Nigel. They look useful.’
‘That’s why I rang. I wasn’t sure if you’d found them. Good luck with the talk, if I don’t see you. Listen, boss. You are having me on, aren’t you?’
‘Having you on, Nigel? Moi?’
‘Ha! You nearly had me going, there. Good one. Any instructions for tomorrow?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’ll leave the shop in your capable hands. You could always… Oh, never mind.’
‘What?’
‘I was going to say that it might not be a bad idea to put a little pressure on K. Tom Davis. Maybe go see him, ask a few innocuous questions; perhaps even suggest that Michael Angelo Watts might be released, for insufficient evidence; something like that.’
‘Great. I’ll try to do it myself.’
‘OK, but take someone with you. Give me a ring tomorrow night.’
The first-class rail warrant didn’t materialise, so I drove down to the staff college at Bramshill. The session on ethics was the last one on Friday, presumably put there to reinforce, or perhaps negate, everything they’d heard on the previous days. I rose with the sun and made it in time for lunch. It was the best meal I’d had since Annabelle went away, although the company was stuffy. They like to do things with decorum at the staff college.
The Assistant Chief Constable had supplied me with his paper on the subject, but I decided to personalise it, using a few ideas of my own and the notes Nigel had given me. There were about thirty-five people present when I rose to my feet, after being effusively introduced by someone I’d only met three minutes earlier. Some of the delegates were no doubt from overseas, but there was a fair smattering of what I took to be our top brass. Let’s see if I could make them squirm…
