there was somebody new to interview.
None of the caravan phones had sounded in the last five minutes.
The sergeant said, ‘Smiler, who’s on the checkpoint?’
The constable so addressed, glanced at a list and said, ‘It’s Hector, Sarge. Everyone got called in for this one.’
The last sentence was significant.
In a case of murder accompanied by a serious assault on an officer, everyone was expected to turn out and help. Indeed, everyone wanted to turn out and help. But if Wield had been consulted, he’d have advised that the best way Police Constable Hector could help was to continue to devote himself to whatever unimaginable activity occupied his mind on his day off.
The sergeant rose and opened the caravan door. From this elevated position he could see down to the checkpoint quite clearly.
There was no one there.
The air was very still and a distant splash drew his attention down to the river bank. There he was, that unmistakable figure, lanky and skinny, with a head set slightly beneath the level of the shoulders, as though like a terrapin’s it could fully retract in time of trouble.
He was throwing stones into the water. No, on closer observation of the throwing style, it seemed likely he was trying to make stones skip across the surface of the water, only they never rose out of the initial splash.
This time I’ll kill him, thought Wield. But that pleasure would have to wait.
He jumped down from the caravan and headed into the building.
As he ran up the stairs he could hear raised voices drifting down from above.
He found their source on the second floor outside number 39.
The young man from the white van was having a row with PC Jennison, who was on guard outside the fatal flat. The SOCO team had finished and now its sole occupant was the faceless corpse waiting to be bagged and transported to the morgue. Joker Jennison had risked a peep and wished he hadn’t. Now the door was firmly closed and he was concentrating on his appointed task of keeping unauthorized personnel out.
At sixteen and a half stone, he formed a pretty effective barrier, but while he was winning the battle he was clearly being worn down by the argument and he spotted Wield’s arrival with relief.
‘Sarge,’ he called. ‘This gent says he wants to go inside and he won’t take no for an answer.’
‘No, I bloody well won’t!’ exclaimed the man, turning. ‘You in charge here? Then tell your pet ape to let me in.’
He had a lilting Welsh accent and a fiery Welsh tone.
‘I’ll do what I can, sir, but first why don’t we calm things down a touch, and take a close look at this thing together?’ said Wield.
His words were softly spoken and would have won plaudits in a bedside manner contest. But he knew it wasn’t his soft answers that turned away wrath but the agate-hard face they came out of.
‘Yes, all right, it’ll be good to talk to somebody who’s got two penn’orth of sense for a change,’ said the man, shooting a twelve-bore glance at Jennison.
He allowed himself to be led away to the far end of the corridor.
‘Now, sir, I’m Detective Sergeant Wield of Mid-Yorkshire CID,’ said Wield, producing his ID.
He let the man study it for a moment, then put it away and took out his notebook and pen, by these small rituals providing a space for the more volatile vapours of anger to dissipate.
‘OK, sir,’ he said, pen poised. ‘Could you start by giving me your full name and address, and then explain why you want to get into number 39?’
The man let out a long sigh, but his voice was relatively calm as he answered.
‘My name is Alun Gruffud Watkins,’ he said. ‘My address is Flat 39, Loudwater Villas. And I want to get inside because that’s where I bloody well live!’
16.00-16.30
Maybe I ought to play the lottery today, thought Maggie Pinchbeck. Clearly I’m on a roll.
Her first stroke of good fortune had been the timely phone call from Gwyn Jones.
The reasons for the Bitch’s anger had been made clear on the journey from the Shah-Boat to Marina Towers.
‘Family fucking emergency! His old gran seriously ill. Got to go back to fucking Wales to help sort things out. God, you could almost hear the tears in his voice! And all the time he’s heading up to Yorkshire chasing a story! Bastard! There’s got to be trust, hon. Once a man starts treating you like an idiot, that’s finito.’
Maggie noted that it wasn’t the lie that bothered her, it was the assumption she wasn’t smart enough to spot it.
It had been an easy job for Beanie to get Gareth Jones to repeat a full account of what he’d overheard when bugging the terrace table, almost as easy as it was for Maggie to get the Bitch to repeat the story.
‘Like any kid, he really wants to impress big brother,’ said Beanie, ‘and knowing that Gwyn’s got this thing about Dave the Turd, soon as he heard the name Gidman, he couldn’t wait to pass the info on to Gwyn.’
In fact there wasn’t all that much to pass on, and from what Beanie relayed to her, Maggie wasn’t any clearer why the possible resurfacing of an amnesiac cop should have got Gwyn Jones salivating. From Dave the Third’s reaction, she was pretty convinced the name Wolfe didn’t mean a lot to him either. She didn’t anticipate getting much more from Beanie Sample, but she was presently her only link to what was going on in Yorkshire. So when they got to Marina Tower, and the Bitch got out of the car still talking, Maggie followed her up to her apartment.
Inside, Beanie poured herself a large vodka and invited Maggie to help herself. She matched the size of Beanie’s drink but hers was mostly soda.
The Bitch went wandering off. Maggie followed her into a palatial bedroom.
She was noticing a change in the tone of Beanie’s complaint. The initial fury had died away and though the descriptive language used about Jones was just as colourful, the target area of complaint seemed to be shifting from his demeaning attempt at deception to the fact that he hadn’t shared a possible scoop with her.
‘Shit, I was breaking front-page stories before his balls had dropped,’ she declared. ‘I could have run things down here for him while he was pissing about up in Yorkshire. Cover your back, hon, that’s rule number one. No fucker’s a fucking island.’
She’d pressed a button that set the doors of a wall-length closet sliding silently open.
‘Look at that,’ she said, indicating the few hangers from which men’s garments hung. ‘Some women cut up their guy’s clothes when he pisses them off. This fucker, I’d be doing him a favour. Only decent things he’s got are a jacket and shirt I bought him, and the cunt’s wearing those.’
She reached up and took a gleaming silver laptop off a shelf.
‘Let’s see if he’s got anything in here to show what he thinks he’s up to,’ she said.
‘That’s Gwyn’s laptop?’ asked Maggie as the woman opened it and turned it on.
‘Right,’ said Beanie as the screen lit up and invited her to enter a password.
Without hesitation she hit the keyboard.
‘He gave you his password?’ said Maggie incredulously.
‘Not so’s he noticed,’ said Beanie, smiling. ‘But when I invite a man into my house, I expect him to give me everything. Now let’s see. No, not you, hon. He may be a creep, but he’s my creep and even a creep’s got right to some privacy.’
She turned the computer so Maggie couldn’t see the screen. This wasn’t a good sign, possibly signalling a further softening of her attitude to her lover that could make her regret sharing her initial anger with an interested stranger.
Well, unless she tries to silence me by chucking me out of the window, it’s too late to do anything about it now! thought Maggie as she admired the view. To see the sky out of her own bedroom window, you had to open it and lean out backwards. She didn’t envy Beanie much, but this she certainly envied.
