“I’m a cop,” I said, as if that was a full explanation.
“Fifty Gs, did you say?”
“That’s right. Would you have taken the contract, if you’d known?”
“No,” he replied. “Not my scene. But I’d ’ave chipped in.”
He had the grace to smile as he said it. I flapped a hand at him and we walked our separate ways. Me back to the car and Heckley, him to his room in jail and the calendar on the wall that said that in two years he’d be let loose, with nobody to order him around, nobody to feed and clothe him.
The sun was in my eyes on the way back. I drove with the visor down, listening to a tape I’d compiled of Mark Knopfler and Pat Metheny. There’d been a shower and the roads were wet, so every lorry I passed turned the windscreen into a glaring mixture of splatters and streaks. I stayed in the slow and middle lanes, driving steadily, doing some thinking, my fingers on the wheel tapping in time with ‘Local Hero’ and ‘The Truth Will Always Be’. These days, in this job, you rarely have time to think. Something happens and you react. Time to reflect on the best way to tackle the situation is a luxury.
Halliwell said he would have contributed towards the fifty thousand if he’d known about it. If he’d guessed the truth he’d have donated the full sum. We knew who his accomplice was because we’d arrested him the day before, and he’d turned informer, gushing like a Dales stream about the Big Job he was doing the following night. Halliwell was set up by the man he refused to grass on, and we were waiting for him. The gun was a bonus; we hadn’t expected that. It was found afterwards, thrown behind a dustbin on the route Halliwell had taken as he tried to flee the scene. He denied it was his, and we admitted in court that we hadn’t found his fingerprints on it. Because he wouldn’t say who his accomplice was the judge credited him with the weapon and gave him ten years.
I’d give my right arm to be able to make music like that. Not to have to deal with all this shit. Nobody asked us about the bullets. The gun had been wiped clean but we found a fingerprint on one of the bullets. It belonged to the accomplice, who just happened to slip through our fingers. This was eight years ago, before the law changed, and like I said: nobody asked.
Gilbert had some good news for me. A British couple starting their annual holiday had been held up at gunpoint outside Calais and their car stolen. The hijacker answered Chilcott’s description. As I had grumbled to him every day about my bodyguard Gilbert reluctantly agreed that Chilcott was probably making his way across France and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum could safely return to their normal duties. I didn’t point out that it would also help his staff deployment problems and overtime budget, but I did tell him about my confrontation with Vince Halliwell. Gilbert gave one of his sighs and peered at me over his half-moon spectacles. “You’re saying that Silkstone took the contract out on you because he wanted you off his case. You have a reputation for never forgetting, and he wanted to be able to sleep at nights. Is that it?”
“In a coconut shell,” I replied.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why does he want you off the case? He’s admitted killing Latham.”
“Because he’s a worried man. He has something to hide. Everybody else is saying: ‘Well done, Tony. You rid the world of a scumbag.’ I’m the only one saying: ‘Whoa up a minute! Maybe he was there with Latham when Margaret died.’”
“You know what the papers are saying, don’t you.”
“That he’s a hero. Yes.”
“And that we’re hounding him unnecessarily.”
“I haven’t started hounding him yet.”
“You really think he was there, when she died?”
“Yes, Gilbert. I do.”
“OK, but play it carefully. Let Jeff take over the everyday stuff, and you spend what time you need on this. And for God’s sake try to keep off the front page of the UK News.”
Gilbert’s a toff. He listens to what I have to say and then lets me have my way. If I were too outlandish, way off the mark, he’d step in and keep me on track, but it doesn’t happen very often. He protects me from interference by the brass hats at HQ; I protect him from criticism by giving him our best clear-up rate. If you want to commit a murder, don’t do it in Heckley. Don’t do it on my patch. I searched in my drawer for an old diary. I needed some information, the sort they don’t print in text books, and I knew just the person to ask.
Peter Drago lives in Penrith now, but he was born in Halifax and was in the same intake as me. We attended training school together and got drunk a few times. He made sergeant when I did and inspector shortly after me, but he also made some enemies. With sexual predilections like his, that was a dangerous thing to do. He was eventually caught, in flagrante, by the husband of the bubbly WPC he was making love to in the back of her car, and they had a fist fight.
Next day Drago was busted back to PC and posted to Settle and the WPC told to report to Hooton Pagnell. That’s how things worked in those days. Step out of line and you were immediately transferred to the furthermost corner of the region. It changed when the good citizens of these far-flung outposts discovered that the handsome and attractive police officers with the city accents that kept arriving on their doorsteps were all the adulterers and philanderers that the force had to offer. I found his home number and dialled it.
“Fancy doing Great Gable tomorrow?” I asked without ceremony, when he answered.
After a hesitation he said: “That you, Charlie?” No insults, no sparkling repartee, just: “That you, Charlie?”
“The one and only,” I replied. “How are you?”
“Oh, not too bad, you know. And you?”
“The same. So how about it?”
“Great Gable? I’d love to, Charlie, but I’m afraid I won’t be climbing the Gable again for a long time.”
“Why? What’s happened?” This wasn’t the Dragon of old, by a long way. His motto was: if it moved, shag it; if it didn’t, climb it.
“I’ve just come out of hospital. Triple bypass, three weeks ago.”
“Oh, I am sorry, Pete. Which organ?”
“My heart, pillock,” he chuckled.
“What happened? Did you have an attack?”
“Yeah. Collapsed at work, woke up in the cardiac unit with all these masked figures bending over me. Thought I’d been abducted by aliens.”
“I am sorry,” I repeated. “And was it a success? Are you feeling OK now?”
“I’m a bit sore, but otherwise I feel grand. Right champion, in fact.”
“OK,” I said. “We’ll take a rain check on the Gable, but only for six months. Next Easter we’re going up there, you and me, so you’d better get some training in. Understood?”
After a silence he said: “You know, Charlie, that’s the best tonic I’ve had. Next Easter, and sod what the doctors say. It’s a date.”
We chatted for a while, reminiscing about walks we’d done, scrapes we’d shared when we were PCs together. He asked about Dave and his family, and I told him that his daughter Sophie was about to start at Cambridge. Eventually he asked why I’d rung.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” I replied. “It was a bit personal, and I don’t want to excite you.”
“Now you do have to tell me,” he insisted.
“Well,” I said, “it really is a bit personal. Are you able to, you know, talk?”
“Yeah, she’s gone for her hair doing. Tell me all about it.”
I didn’t ask who she was; Pete’s love life has more dead ends and branch lines than the London Underground. “Well, it’s like this,” I began. “There’s this bloke, and he’s having an affair with a married woman.”
“He’s shagging her?”
“Er, yes.”
“I just wanted to clarify the situation. Sorry, carry on.”
“That’s all right. He sees her every Wednesday afternoon, at her house, while her husband is at work.”
“Presumably this is a purely hypothetical case,” Pete interjected.
