The Filey Connection

by David W Robinson

  “It’s off the record, Terry. They’re playing some game and I have a few games of my own I can play. I promise you will be no worse off.”

  Cummins drummed his fingers again. Then, as if making up his mind, he snatched up the phone. “It’s Cummins. Get Ivan Irwin to interview room two.” Putting down the receiver, he stood up. “Come on.”

  Joe had never liked the interior of police stations, and Scarborough was no exception. Situated on Northway, west of the shopping centres, it was a modern and well-appointed building, its offices smart, airy and comfortable, but the interview rooms were as bad as Joe anticipated; small, pokey, smelling of floor cleanser and old socks.

  In deference to Ivan’s huge size, Cummins ordered two constables to stay in the room with them. Ivan, already in a surly mood, became even more irritated when confronted with Joe. “What’s he doing here?”

  Cummins opened his mouth to explain, but Joe beat him to it. “I’m here to help you, believe it or not. Course, I can just walk, if you’d prefer, and leave you facing a murder charge.”

  “I haven’t killed no one,” Ivan retorted. “But if I was gonna, you’d probably be top of my list.”

  “Mr Murray is an experienced investigator, Irwin, and he has an eye for detail which some of us envy. You don’t have to talk to him, but it might help you if you do. The interview won’t be recorded and we won’t bring anything you say into evidence unless it’s repeated in the presence of a solicitor.”

  “I’ve a living to earn,” Irwin protested, “and you’ve no right to keep me here. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Then talk to Joe,” the Chief Inspector insisted.

  Ivan glared at them. He appeared as if talking to Joe was the last thing he would like to do, and for a moment Joe had an insight into the fear of a wounded zebra confronting a hungry lion.

  At last, Ivan capitulated. “What do you want?”

  “I run my own business, just like you,” Joe said. “I know about the stresses and strains of trying to make a profit, and my wife walked out on me ten years ago. Disappeared, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “The difference is, Alison cleared off to the Canary Islands. I didn’t kill her and dump her in the sea after finding her fooling around with Eddie Pennig.”

  The colour rose in Ivan’s already tanned face. He threw himself across the table, his fingers stretching for Joe’s throat. Joe forced his chair back, scraping it across the floor to keep clear of those huge hands. Cummins half rose, and the two constables restrained Ivan.

  “I’ll kill you. I swear I will.”

  “Touched a nerve, did I?” Joe asked.

  “Sit down and behave,” Cummins ordered. “You two stay where you are,” he barked at the uniformed officers. “If he moves again, cuff him.”

  The two constables ranged themselves either side of the suspect, who fumed at Joe.

  “My ex-wife is alive,” Ivan hissed. “She lives somewhere outside York. I told you, I didn’t kill no one.”

  “I’ll need an address so I can confirm that,” Cummins told him.

  “I don’t think you’ll need it, Terry,” Joe said. “He’s probably telling the truth. That’s not what annoyed him, is it, Ivan?” The big fisherman did not answer. “It was talking about Eddie Pennig and his wife that hit the spot. Am I right?”

  Ivan looked away, glowering at the wall.

  “See, Terry,” Joe went on, “when we spoke to him earlier today, he told us in a roundabout way that he knew Pennig. He didn’t actually say so, but when you pressed him to admit that he bought the Land Rover off Edward Pennig, he agreed that he did. Sellers and buyers don’t go into such close details. If you’d asked him did he buy it from someone called Pennig, he’d have said the same, but you were specific. Edward Pennig. That told me he knew Pennig. Then, when you said the Land Rover was worth anything up to fifteen grand, the penny dropped. Why would any man let a car go for four hundred notes when it was worth fifteen thousand? Because he needed rid of it urgently. And Ivan, here, knew that, didn’t you, Ivan? So you screwed him to the ground on the price, and you didn’t even hand over cash. Instead, you let him have a credit note for four hundred pounds so he could do some shopping at Jonny’s place. Four hundred was theretail value of the stuff Eddie bought. It probably cost Jonny less than two hundred.”

  “What about it?” Ivan demanded.

  Joe gloated in his superior logic. “There are two reasons why someone would do that. One: because he can. In other words, Eddie was in a fix, and he needed a way out of it. Two: revenge. You knew Eddie Pennig from years ago. You actually told us he was from these parts but he’d been away in the navy for years. You caught him screwing around with your wife, but before you could get at him, he was gone, away with the navy, and he never came back until last Thursday, did he?”

  For a long moment, Ivan continued to glare at the bare, plaster walls and did not speak. When he finally faced Joe, his face beamed pure hatred. “I’m bound over for eighteen months, see. I was dragged in court for a scrap last year. Another offence, and I go down. When I saw him last Thursday, I felt like ripping his heart out and ramming it down his throat, but I couldn’t. Life’s tough for us fishermen. If I go down, I lose my business. So I had to keep me hands to meself. Then he told me he needed shot of the car. He’d been in an accident with it. Some old bird got killed. Not here. He didn’t say where it was, but he promised us the local plod wouldn’t be looking for it. He asked me for ten grand in cash. Dirt cheap, he said. I told him right where he could stick it. He was practically on his knees, begging. So I offered him two hundred notes. We did a bit of haggling and eventually we came to the deal. Four hundred, but not in cash. He’d take a credit note for our Jonny’s shop, or nothing at all. There was a bit more arguing and eventually he caved in.” Ivan grinned. “And do you know how much I enjoyed shafting him like that? It’s the best party I’ve had for years. And when we were done, I told him to clear off and if I ever saw him again, I’d lamp him good and proper.”

  “And it didn’t bother you when he turned up dead forty-eight hours later?” Cummins asked.

  Ivan shrugged. “Until you dragged me in here and told me, I didn’t even know it was him. All I knew was they’d pulled some dead angler from the water.” He jabbed a hard finger into the table top. “But I’ll tell you this, again. I didn’t kill him, and neither did our Jonny. We had nowt to do with killing him.”

  “Lamp him good and proper,” Cummins repeated Ivan’s words. “That sounds to me like you would have killed him.”

  “Aye, happen I would, but I didn’t because I never saw him again. Our Jonny did when he went to the shop to order and collect on his credit note, but shortarse here saw him after that.” Ivan pointed at Joe. “We had nowt to do with killing him, me and our Jonny.”

  Cummins pushed a pen and paper across to Ivan. “Your ex-wife’s name and address.”

  “I dain’t knah where she lives, man. Only that it’s Copmanthorpe near York.”

  “Write her name down. I’ll get the community officers to check it out.”

  Ivan scribbled down the information and Cummins spoke to the uniformed men. “Take him back to the cells.”

  “I’ve told all I know,” Ivan protested. “I have to be out to catch the tides.”

  “You’ve put me to a great deal of trouble, Irwin. You could have told me all of this earlier today. You’ll stay put until I have some confirmation of your story,” Cummins nodded to the two officers, who took Ivan by the armpits.

  “Hang on, Terry,” Joe said.

  Everyone paused.

  “Irwin, what did you do for a vehicle before you bought the Land Rover?”

  “I have an old van. It’s at my place.”

  Joe felt his anticipation growing. “Bit of engine trouble? Piston slap?”

  “Aye, it’s getting on a bit.”

  “Did you lend that van out last Tuesday night?”

  Ivan shook his head. “Nope. It was on the dock wh
ile I was out fishing.”

  Joe’s heart sank again. Another image leapt into his mind. “Do you own a set of ladders?”

  Ivan’s eyes widened in surprise. “What? You think I hook ladders to the boat and dive in to catch the fish by hand? My boat’s a coble, not a bloody pirate ship.”

  Joe fumed. “Do you own a set of ladders?”

  “Yes, I do. They’re at home.”

  “Are they usually on your van?” Joe pressed.

  “So now you think I’m moonlighting as a window cleaner, do you? No, they’re not on my van. I don’t even have a roof rack. All right?”

  Joe nodded and the constables led Ivan from the room.

  “Well?” Cummins asked.

  “We’re no further forward,” Joe admitted.

  “Irwin could be lying.”

  “He could be, but I don’t think so.” Joe took out his tobacco tin and rolled a cigarette. “It’s all too easy to check. What we do know is that Eddie killed Nicola Leach. He was panicked into letting the Land Rover go for a fraction of its value. Beyond that, we’re no nearer learning why he wanted to be in Filey, or why he was murdered.” Dropping his tobacco tin back in his pocket, he held up the cigarette. “Where do we go for a smoke?”

  “Car park at the rear,” Cummins said, and led the way from the interview room.

  Joe followed him along the gloomy, ground floor corridor, to a rear entrance, where the Chief Inspector pushed open the door, and let them out into the warm, evening air.

  Lighting his cigarette while Cummins fished out his own pack, Joe said, “I’m trying to string this together. Eddie hit Nicola. I believe it was intentional to create a seat on the Filey outing. After he’d hit her, he either panicked or, more likely, he deliberately approached the Irwin brothers. All that begging and haggling was so much bull. He was willing to take a serious loss on the car. Why?”

  Cummins lit up and blew smoke into the sunshine. “Because he had something cooking worth so much that it made the fifteen grand for his car look like pocket money.”

  “Correct,” Joe agreed. He took another deep drag on his smoke. “Tell you what I was thinking on the way back from Bridlington, this afternoon. His parents’ house in Hunmanby. Are his parents still alive?”

  “I don’t know,” Cummins replied. “We haven’t got that far into his life story yet. Or, at least, I haven’t. Young Mike Flowers might know.” He took out his mobile and punched in the numbers.

  While Cummins spoke to the Filey policeman, Joe looked around the car park with envy. There were many police vehicles, but just as many private cars, too, most of them late model compacts, with one or two larger cars here and there. He mentally compared them with his ageing Vauxhall and asked himself how it was that a businessman like himself could not afford anything on the scale that these police officers could. The truth was, he could afford it, if he wanted. It was the luxury, he could not afford. What use would a flash and fancy people carrier like the one parked under the high walls of the police station car park, be to him? It would sit in his back yard most of the week, going out only to deliver sandwich orders on a morning. It would be a waste of money.

  “Well that answers that,” Cummins said, putting his phone away. “The Pennigs died several years ago, within months of each other. The old man went first, the wife a while later. Flowers remembers the inquest into the old man. To his knowledge, the house was sold off by the family solicitor after the wife passed one, presumably on orders from Eddie who, as far as Flowers can recall, never even came home for the funerals, and was probably still overseas with the navy.”

  “I think if I knew Ivan Irwin was waiting for me, I wouldn’t have come home, either.” Joe chewed his lip and drew on his cigarette again. “I’m trying to string this together, Terry, and I can’t. Eddie has served his twenty-two, he must have had a decent pension, and he’d soon find somewhere to rent. What the hell was he playing at that would be worth throwing all that away?”

  Cummins stubbed out his cigarette and took his car keys from his pocket. “I’m sure the answers will show up, Joe. Come on, I’ll run you back to Filey.”

  They climbed into Cummins’ Ford Mondeo and drove out of the car park, mingling with the light, evening traffic.

  “You’re in service, Terry, just like Eddie,” Joe said, as they followed the Filey signs through and out of town. “How much would you need to make you chuck up your pension?”

  Cummins braked for a set of traffic lights. “It would have to be something like a lottery win. A couple million. A large amount of money I could bank anywhere in the world and spend my time doing nothing.”

  “And where would Eddie get that amount of money?” Joe demanded. “Drugs? Weapons? Illegal immigrants?”

  “All possible, Joe, but why would he need to kill himself off to become involved with that kind of business? Why the fishing gear? Why the need to come back to Filey with your club?” The lights changed and Cummins pulled away. “None of it makes sense, Joe.”

  “Unless you consider an insurance fraud,” Joe said, “but why would any company insure Eddie’s life for that kind of money? He was a nobody. A jack tar and a cook. What was so special about him that he should be insured for millions?”

  “When I find out, I’ll let you know,” Cummins said.

  The road opened out and the sun blazed in across the farmlands off to their right. Cummins lowered his sun visor. “Tell me, Joe, how did you rumble this business of Eddie and Ivan’s wife?”

  “I didn’t,” Joe admitted, “but I saw Ivan yesterday, coming out of some pub with Sarah Pringle, and it occurred to me that there was something between them. I don’t know for sure, mind, and Sarah was coming onto me last night. Again, I figured ‘not likely’. Not if she’s fooling around with Ivan the Terrible. While we were in your office, I suddenly thought about it, and I wondered why Ivan was still single. He’s no youngster, is he? Then I remembered that Eddie had wasted no time hooking up with Nicola Leach, and I took a shot in the dark.”

  Cummins laughed. “That brain of yours. It’s wired up differently.”

  Joe chuckled, too. “Not wired up well enough to get me through all this, though.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  With the disco in full swing, the Sanford 3rd Age Club jiggling around the floor to the Bee Gees’Night Fever, Joe left instructions for Sheila and Brenda to runYou’re the One That I Want next, and stepped off the podium out into the gathering dusk.

  The sun had disappeared, setting somewhere behind the hotel. Out here, the sky was a pale pearl, the Moon, waxing past first quarter, hung in the sky over Flamborough Head and in the far Northeast, the approaching night could be seen casting its shadow over the sea.

  It felt cooler out here, but Joe knew that it was comparative. The day had been another scorcher, and in the Beachside’s lounge, the energy of all those bodies combined with the heat of the disco lights to raise the temperature. Out here it was probably still in the high fifties, but it was cooler and the onshore breeze helped chill the sweat on his forehead.

  To his left, Tanner and Sylvia sat with drinks, looking out over the bay. To his right, Billy Pringle was smoking a cigarette. Joe lit his own and drew the smoke deeply, gratefully into his lungs.

  He had returned from Scarborough too late for dinner, but Sarah Pringle had managed to scrounge a meal for him, and he ate alone in a corner of the dining room. It suited him. If he was to crack the problem of these two deaths, he needed to machinate the gears of his agile mind, and that was always difficult when he had his friends around him. Loyal, faithful and trustworthy though they were, they could be a proper pain when he needed to think.

  There was nothing at stake but his pride. Puzzles and mysteries had been a joy to him since his childhood when he had thrilled to the writings of Conan Doyle, Christie, Simenon and Creasey. Not for him the hard-edged, American detectives Mickey Spillane or Raymond Chandler. Give him a good, old-fashioned line of logical deduction and he was in his element. When h
e reached his teens, he was determined to join the police and become a great detective, but family matters had put the blocks on that.

  His father, who always addressed him by his full name, had told him, “Our Arthur won’t work in the café, and one of you has to, so it’s you, Joseph.”

  Arthur, his older brother and Lee’s father, had cut away from the family, and gone to work for the Gas Board as a fitter. His skills proved useful in later years, whenever any of the gas appliances needed servicing or repair, but Arthur’s determination in the face of Alf Murray’s demands had set him apart as the black sheep of the family. Much later, he had isolated his position further by emigrating to Australia, one of the last of the ‘ten pound poms’.

  Older and wiser, Joe no longer resented his brother’s decision, but at the time, he had been livid. Arthur’s obstinacy had put paid to whatever career Joe wanted for himself, leaving him to run the café, like it or not. Maturity had brought a new perspective on the matter. Aside from anything else, at the time, there were minimum height requirements for the police force, and Joe was a couple of inches too short. He could hardly hold his brother responsible for that.

  Instead, he settled into the routine of catering for truck drivers and factory workers, and he remained convinced that he did a better job than his father ever had, but while he busied himself in the kitchen or at the counter, he nevertheless honed his deductive skills.

  At first, his observations were the easiest. A regular customer calling in when clad in a suit, collar and tie, where he usually wore overalls, was obviously not working. Likewise a young woman turning up in a frock instead of a wraparound overall. As his skills developed, he tackled deeper deductions. The man with a shaving cut had either been clumsy or in a hurry that morning, and usually the speed with which he ate his meal would tell Joe which it was. The woman constantly checking her appearance in a compact mirror was likely on a date, the man and woman glancing furtively round while they ate were on some kind of clandestine meeting.