mumbled our thanks. When he'd gone I said: 'Have they given you a sick note?'
'Yeah. Just for a week,' he replied.
'It's my long break.' Four blessed days off and the weather was set fair. 'Have you ever done any walking?'
'Walking? You mean up mountains?'
'We call them fells.'
'Not since a couple of school trips. Ilkley Moor, Simon's Seat, would it be?'
'I was thinking more like Helvellyn, in the Lake District.' 'I've never been to the Lakes. Would I be able to do it?' 'Course you would. And I'll tell you something else: you don't half enjoy a curry and a pint on the way home.' I didn't mention the aphrodisiac properties of a day's pleasant exertion in the fresh air. He could discover that for himself, in different company.
And that's how the West Yorkshire Police Walking Club was born, all those years ago.
Melissa wasn't in London when the litre of petrol ignited, sending a fireball up the staircase of the hostel and instantly consuming all the oxygen in the sealed-against-draughts building. The fire had faded briefly, starved of fuel, until the windows imploded and dense morning air rushed in to meet vaporised hydrocarbon in a conflagration of unimaginable ferocity. The news reports said that the eight occupants were overcome by fumes. They were being kind; fire is not a gentle executioner.
Melissa was in bed at the time, in the finest hotel Biggleswade had to offer, in the arms of Nick Kingston. They learned of the fire on Radio Four's The World This Weekend, sandwiched between a story about Lord Lucan being wanted for the murder of his child's nanny and one that they didn't hear because they were dancing on the mattress. They lunched in the dining room and took a bottle of champagne back to their room. Melissa wanted to make love, but Nick was discovering, to his dismay, that sometimes it took a day or two for the well to fill up again. And he preferred them younger.
Three weeks later they met again, at the same hotel. Duncan had received his two hundred pounds, as promised, and Melissa had told him that she was booked into the clinic for the abortion. After dinner, in the safety of their room, Nick handed her a thick envelope.
'I'm to tell you well done,' he said.
'How much?' she asked, glancing at the contents.
'Normal rates. Two for the job, plus a bonus of a hundred each for the bodies. How's your boyfriend?'
'A cool thousand pounds. Thank you very much. How's Duncan? I'm worried about him.'
'Did he take the money?'
'Oh, he took the money, no hesitation.'
'He'll be all right then. Don't forget you'll need a hundred from him for the abortion,' he told her, grinning.
'Well, let's make sure they've got something to look for, Dr.
Kingston,' she whispered. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him, then lowered her hands and started to undo his belt. Nick Kingston grasped her hair, pulling her head back, and explored her mouth with his tongue. If he imagined she were the nineteen-year-old maths student he'd shagged last night, he might just about manage it.
He was beginning to find Melissa repellent and sensed it would lead to trouble between them.
Chapter 2
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
