by John Dean
‘I’m sure she did,’ said Blizzard with a smile.
‘Anyhow,’ said Colley. ‘Forgot Knoefler for the moment, I’m not finished about Green Meadow Farm. See, I got to thinking about Henderson Ramage.’
‘I can see why,’ said Ronald. ‘He’s got to be worth a pull, hasn’t he, John?’
Blizzard nodded.
‘Then what are we waiting for?’ asked Ronald. ‘Let’s bring him in.’
‘In which case, sir,’ said Colley, ‘you might like to know that among Henderson’s little mates is none other than one of the chief inspector’s oldest and much-valued friends. In fact, it’ll be a truly touching reunion.’
Blizzard raised a questioning eyebrow.
‘Go on,’ said Ronald cautiously, suspecting a sting in the tail to the comment.
It was duly delivered.
‘Eddie Gayle,’ said Colley.
‘Marvellous,’ said Ronald, raising his eyes to the ceiling. ‘That’s all we need.’
Blizzard beamed.
Chapter four
Fat, short and perspiring, Eddie Gayle somehow reminded Colley of a little round pig as he sat in the cramped interview room at Abbey Road Police Station late that afternoon. What was it with him and animal metaphors lately, thought the sergeant idly as he waited for the interview to begin. Then he remembered; a few days before, Jay had been telling him over dinner about a project that her young class were doing. Twenty-eight nine-year-olds producing drawings and writing stories on the theme of animals. And Jay said he never listened! The sergeant chuckled. Sitting next to him at the desk, and glancing quizzically at him when he heard the low laugh, was John Blizzard, the chief inspector’s eyes bright – clearly relishing the opportunity to confront an old adversary.
Gayle, aged in his mid-forties, thinning black hair covered by a poorly-fitting wig and dressed as ever in a sharp dark suit which would have looked good on anyone else, glared back at the officers. He mopped his brow in the oppressive heat of the small room, the police station central heating system having continued to malfunction throughout the day. Cold as an ice box when the day shift reported for duty, the prefabs were now broiling. Colley, himself feeling uncomfortable in the heat beneath his sharply dressed exterior, noticed the flecks of dandruff on Gayle’s jacket, the sweat rings round its armpits and the ugly red food stain on the pale blue tie. All in, Eddie Gayle did not present an appetising sight, and the sight of him perspiring gave the sergeant grim satisfaction. Blizzard’s first rule of interviewing, he thought: make them sweat. Indeed, on more than one occasion, the chief inspector had been known to turn the radiator up in the interview room.
Gayle was well known to the police. He was a low-life, a man who stalked the gutters of the city, spreading his own brand of fear and hatred. And yet he had proved, so far at least, an ‘untouchable’ for the police, even though Blizzard and his detectives had been after him for years. Gayle’s ability to twist and turn out of the very tightest of spots had long been a source of growing infuriation for Blizzard and Colley. Gayle’s ‘legitimate’ business, the outwardly respectable façade behind which he sheltered, was property. Preferring to present himself to the public as a man of great standing within the community, he was the owner of many of the city’s beautiful Victorian houses and liked to claim that he was helping to ease Hafton’s acute accommodation crisis.
But successful entrepreneur was only the face that Eddie Gayle presented to the world. His real business was much darker; it was about making money whatever the cost to other people. Behind what little respectability his flash motors and cheap suits afforded him, Gayle was a selfish and nasty man, as well as being a crook and a thug.
For all the persistent rumours, pinning him down had proved virtually impossible and every time he walked free Eddie Gayle’s confidence grew, the mocking smile became wider and his bravado more pronounced.
In the interview room that afternoon to ensure the chief inspector showed due respect was Paul D’Arcy, himself no stranger to police attentions. A local lawyer who had become immensely, and mysteriously, rich, he was a thin-faced man in his late thirties, dressed immaculately in a dark pinstripe suit with a white handkerchief poking out of its breast pocket. A man who had helped Eddie Gayle wheedle his way out of more than a few tight spots over the years, D’Arcy interested the police greatly. Alerted to the lawyer’s wealth by his large house on the western side of the city, and the expensive cars parked on its gravelled drive, detectives had long suspected him of laundering dirty money for organised crime in the city.
But, as with his client, proof was difficult to come by, so the slippery D’Arcy remained at large, determined to grasp every opportunity to increase the pressure on the police and ensure that the detectives did not pry too deeply into his own affairs. Despite his hostile expression now, the solicitor actually welcomed the latest police decision to bring Gayle in for questioning. The lawyer found his client a particularly useful tool; if the police were looking at Gayle, they weren’t looking at his lawyer.
‘I would like to place on record,’ began the lawyer icily, ‘that as an upstanding citizen, my client objects most strongly to the way he has been brought to this police station on yet another flimsy pretext.’
‘But I thought he liked our little chats,’ said Blizzard innocently, glancing at the whirring tape machine; the words would sound OK but the recorder would not pick up the thinness of his smile. ‘I know I look forward to them immensely and the lovely letters Eddie writes to the chief constable afterwards, complimenting me on my work.’
‘Is my client under arrest?’ asked D’Arcy.
‘Under arrest? Eddie?’ said Blizzard, again feigning innocence. ‘Oh, no, no, the very thought of it. No, in his capacity as an upstanding citizen he is here to help us with some inquiries. You are an upstanding citizen, aren’t you, Eddie?’
Gayle glared at him but said nothing.
‘So why exactly is he here?’ asked D’Arcy. ‘My client is a very busy man…’
‘Yes, well once we get this sorted out, he can go back to beating up people.’
‘I resent that!’ snarled Gayle, leaping to his feet.
‘Sit down,’ snapped Blizzard.
The landlord hesitated then looked deep into the ice-blue of the chief inspector’s eyes and slumped back onto his chair, where he sat eying the detective balefully.
‘So what is this about?’ asked D’Arcy, angry at the ease with which Blizzard had provoked his client into losing his temper. ‘Another pointless fishing expedition, I assume?’
‘We are making some preliminary inquiries into the discovery of the body at the old POW camp,’ said Blizzard.
‘So, it is another fishing expedition,’ said the lawyer.
‘Yeah, I ain’t got nothing to do with that!’ exclaimed Gayle.
‘I am sure you haven’t,’ said Blizzard. ‘But he was found on land owned by one of your associates, one Henderson Ramage, a farming gentleman of this parish.’
‘Is that why we are here?’ asked the lawyer incredulously, picking up his shiny black briefcase and pointedly snapping it shut. ‘Because of Henderson Ramage? Well, this has nothing whatsoever to do with my client. It sounds like you are desperate, Chief Inspector. As per usual.’
‘At this stage, I am just trying to get a picture of what happened on the land,’ said Blizzard.
‘Then talk to Mr Ramage and don’t pester my client with these fatuous questions.’
‘Mr Ramage is out of town on business,’ said Blizzard. ‘So, I am talking to your client first. And I am interested, Mr D’Arcy, because it seems to me that the name means something to you and your client. Would you care to explain that?’
‘We have no comment to make,’ said the solicitor.
‘Yeah, and I ain’t saying nothing,’ said Gayle, sitting back in the chair, crossing his arms and staring defiantly at the detectives. ‘I hardly know him.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Blizzard.
The chief in
spector looked down and started to flick idly through the brown file on the table. Watched uncomfortably by the landlord as he turned the pages over, Blizzard finally settled on one of them and leaned forward to look closer, seemingly entranced by the contents. The seconds lengthened. The silence was oppressive. Gayle and D’Arcy eyed the file uneasily.
‘What is that?’ asked the lawyer, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.
‘What’s what?’ replied Blizzard innocently.
‘That.’ He nodded at the document.
‘That?’ said Blizzard, looking down as if he had only just noticed its presence. ‘Oh, that is a file, Mr D’Arcy. Surely you have seen one before? Your office must be full of them. I believe they are usually made out of some form of card.’
Colley allowed himself a smile.
‘Don’t mess with me,’ said D’Arcy. ‘What does it contain?’
‘It is the file on your client’s associate Garry Horton.’
‘I ain’t never heard of him,’ blustered Gayle, running a hand round his grubby shirt collar as he started to sweat even more.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Colley, his voice hard-edged as he stared at the little landlord. ‘Horton works for you. We all know that.’
Eddie Gayle thought for a moment. Next to him, D’Arcy looked uncertain for the first time in the interview. D’Arcy and Eddie Gayle did indeed know about Garry Horton.
Horton, a 17-stone bruiser now in his early forties, was an ex-bodybuilder with a long record of violence stretching back to his late teens and who had worked for many years as one of Gayle’s enforcers. His reign of fear came to an end when he was jailed for a savage attack carried out in one of Eddie Gayle’s bedsits. Two tenants, a couple in their late teens, had complained about the state of their room and threatened to go to the city council when Gayle refused to do anything about it.
Late one night, they received a visit from Horton and another heavy, who was never identified. Although he was never able to prove it, Colley had always privately believed the second attacker that night was Henderson Ramage; the farmer knew Horton from school and they were known to still associate with each other. Despite an ugly atmosphere of intimidation, including veiled threats against himself – one of the reasons Colley shared Blizzard’s distaste for Gayle – the sergeant eventually managed to persuade the terrified couple to give evidence after several weeks of delicate negotiations at their hospital bedsides. It was to be the first of several jail sentences for Horton in the years that followed.
‘And what is so interesting, of course,’ said Blizzard, flicking through the file then glancing at his sergeant, ‘was the victims’ nationality. German, were they not, David?’
‘They were,’ said the sergeant. ‘Exchange students over from Hamburg.’
‘Hey, I’ve just realised, our victim in the grave was German, too,’ said Blizzard, fixing Gayle with a steely glare as he dropped his pretence. ‘So, you can see why we are so interested in you. After all, Garry Horton is your heavy, is he not?’
‘He doesn’t work for me,’ blustered Gayle.
‘But surely all this is irrelevant, Chief Inspector,’ said D’Arcy. ‘Even if my client did know this Mr Horton, and we deny that to be the case, I understand Mr Horton is in jail and could not possibly have killed the man you found at the farm.’
‘It is a point to consider,’ said Blizzard.
‘Somewhat of an oversight on your part, I can’t help feeling,’ added D’Arcy.
He smiled triumphantly at the chief inspector, but it was not a convincing smile, more of an act; long experience had taught him that Blizzard did not make those kinds of mistakes. Colley sat back, enjoying the verbal jousting match and waiting for Blizzard’s next move. The chief inspector’s features were inscrutable. He would have made a fine poker player, thought Colley, as he did so often in these situations.
‘You are absolutely right, Mr D’Arcy, it would indeed be an oversight,’ said Blizzard calmly. ‘Except our victim was actually murdered fifteen years ago – at just about the time Garry was stomping around the city beating up innocent Germans, oddly enough. At your client’s behest, might I add. And, as you well know, Garry Horton was released two weeks ago and now appears to have gone missing. Strange coincidence, is it not?’
The solicitor bit his lip. It was always like this representing Eddie Gayle, he reflected gloomily; you were never quite sure of exactly what he was guilty, you just knew it was something. Adding to D’Arcy’s unease was the fact that he knew Horton did indeed work for Gayle. Everyone in the room knew it. Knowing it was part of the game.
‘But surely,’ said the solicitor, ‘the radio said you only found the body at the farm last week. It did not mention anything about fifteen years ago.’
‘It must have slipped my mind,’ said Blizzard, deadpan. ‘But that’s when he was killed. You know, now I say it like that, the coincidence really does strike you. What do you think, Sergeant?’
‘It certainly makes you think,’ said Colley.
Gayle and D’Arcy sat there in silence for a few moments, digesting the information. The landlord, perspiring even more now, glanced hopefully at his lawyer, who was thinking quickly for a way to regain the initiative. Once you let John Blizzard gain the upper hand in interviews, life could become extremely difficult indeed.
‘Whatever the truth or otherwise of those statements,’ said D’Arcy at last, ‘none of this has anything to do with my client.’
‘Yeah, I ain’t got nothing to do with some dead square-head!’ exclaimed the landlord angrily.
‘Such a wonderful respect for multi-culturalism in this city,’ murmured Blizzard. ‘No wonder people regard you as such an upstanding citizen, Eddie.’
‘Please, Eddie,’ hissed the lawyer. ‘Let me handle this.’
‘Na, he ain’t getting away with saying I attacked them Krauts!’ said Gayle angrily. ‘He can’t prove that!’
‘Perhaps I don’t need to,’ murmured Blizzard.
‘Chief Inspector,’ said D’Arcy. ‘I do not appreciate your little games and I fail to see where this is leading us. As I recall, your sergeant here tried to cynically implicate my client in the terrible attack on those two poor exchange students at the time Mr Horton was arrested, and patently failed to do so.’
‘Yeah, funny that,’ said Colley. ‘Even though it happened in your house, no one living there seemed to know who you were, Eddie. And you such a pillar of the community, too.’
‘I have had enough of this,’ said the lawyer, standing up with a scrape of his chair. ‘And since nothing seems to have changed, we are going to take our leave of you. What’s more, I will be writing to your chief constable to protest about the way my client has yet again been harassed.’
‘I’m sure you will.’
Blizzard wafted a hand at Colley and watched the sergeant escort them out of the room. As he went, Eddie Gayle leered and made a writing movement in the air at the chief inspector.
‘Make sure your lawyer does the letter, Eddie,’ said Blizzard. ‘Your spelling is atrocious.’
Gayle glared at him and disappeared into the corridor. The chief inspector walked slowly back to his office and closed the door. He was still there two hours later, contemplating whether it was time to go home as the office clock edged towards seven. Blizzard stared moodily out of the window into the inky blackness of a winter evening, scowling as the rain started to fleck against the glass. With a sigh, he glanced back down onto the desk, where Garry Horton’s file had laid open for the past thirty minutes. The chief inspector’s reverie was disturbed by Colley, who entered clutching a piece of paper.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ said the sergeant, perching on the edge of the desk and noticing the far-away expression on Blizzard’s face.
‘Not sure I have any at this stage.’
‘Do you really think Knoefler is a racist murder?’
‘No, not really. And let’s hope it isn’t, we’d have every civil rights campaigner in Haf
ton besieging the station if it was. Not to mention that silly woman from the diversity relations department or whatever they call it. Agatha Fish-tank or something.’
‘Agnetha Flitcroft,’ said Colley. ‘She’s Swedish.’
‘Whatever,’ grunted Blizzard. ‘You know the one I mean, the bimbo with the blonde hair and the three-feet heels.’
‘You’ve always been so politically correct. I bet Danny Wheatley would never say something like that.’
‘He’d be too busy counting bollards,’ grunted Blizzard. He recalled once again, as he had many times in recent days, his strange experience at the graveside. ‘Besides, this goes beyond Eddie Gayle and his hired thugs, I am sure of it. There is something much deeper to this, David, and the answer lies at Green Meadow Farm.’
‘This place has really got to you, hasn’t it?’ said Colley.
Blizzard did not comment and they both listened to the increasingly insistent drumming of the rain on the office window. Colley eyed his friend for a moment.
‘What?’ asked Blizzard, noticing the look.
‘Are you finally going to tell me what spooked you at the graveside?’
‘No.’
‘I’ve never seen you like that.’
‘You live and learn,’ said Blizzard.
The tone of his reply suggested it was a closed matter.
‘OK, OK, I get the message,’ said Colley. He knew Blizzard would open up to him in time.
The chief inspector looked at the piece of paper in the sergeant’s hand.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘It’s a fax from the German Embassy,’ said Colley, handing it over. ‘I told you they’d come through. Vorsprung durch Technik and all that.’
‘I didn’t know you could speak German,’ said Blizzard.
‘I had an Audi once.’
‘Do they know much about Knoefler?’ asked the chief inspector.
‘Na, they just make cars,’ said Colley, trying not to laugh.
