Denise spoke before Joe could cause more argument. “That was the businessman. What about personally.”
Again Spencer’s look was one of undisguised disdain. “I didn’t mix with his sort.”
Joe, who had been mentally grumbling at the lauded opinion of Vaughan, looked up sharply. “His sort?”
“Parties up at the big house. Unseemly parties. With plenty of men and women. Not the kind of men and women you would take home to meet your mother. I’m sure you understand me, Mr Murray. Now if you will excuse me, my wife is preparing lunch.” Spencer backed into the house, and closed the door behind him.
Joe and Denise gaped at the door, then at each other.
“Does he mean—”
Denise nodded gravely. “They call themselves escorts these days, but it amounts to the same thing.”
“Male or female?” Joe asked.
“The way he put it, I thought he meant both.”
They turned to walk back to Denise’s car, and Joe shook his head. “I knew Vaughan wasn’t married, but it doesn’t make sense. Why would a man like him with all his millions employ, er, brasses?”
Denise unlocked the car and climbed behind the wheel while Joe settled into the passenger seat. Winding back the sun roof, she said, “Some men do, Joe. They want what they want, but they don’t want any involvement. And of course, a hooker is going to do whatever he wants, provided he pays her enough.” She paused with her hand on the ignition key. “Where next?”
Joe pursed his lips and stared out at the sun-baked street with its high-priced dwellings. “I’m thinking about it.” Turning back so suddenly that he startled her, he said, “This suggests a whole new picture, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?”
“How did Vaughan manage to short-circuit so many planning regulations to chuck up his buildings here, there and everywhere?”
“Did he short-circuit them?” Denise asked.
“Put it this way, he didn’t meet as much opposition as you might expect. I think that’s why he got so mad when I stalled him. He was used to ploughing through council departments in half the time other developers would take, but I held him up.”
“So he paid someone to torch the café.”
“Do you have any doubts now?”
Denise shook her head. “I haven’t had doubts for months, Joe, but I can’t prove anything.”
“Right, right, right.” Joe’s irritation showed through. “Let’s not get side-tracked again. Let’s get back to how he did it, and let’s suppose he got some of these people to his parties where they had a grand old time.”
“Between the bar and the bed.”
“Correct. Then he puts the pressure on. ‘Well, Mr Smith, I wouldn’t want your wife to learn what you got up to at my place on Saturday night.’ ‘Well, Mr Jones, are you absolutely certain your employer knows you like to turn the other cheek?’ You get my drift?”
“And Mr Smith and Mr Jones toe the line by helping planning applications go through with as little fuss as possible.”
“Correct.”
“All right. Where and with whom do we follow it up?”
Joe chuckled. “With whom? Bit posh for Sanford on a Sunday afternoon.”
Denise smiled by return. “I was brought up to talk proper. Not like you backstreet scruffs.”
Joe was not listening. He was still deep in thought, his fingers drumming irritably on his knee.
Snapping out of it, he said, “I have people in mind, but we can’t do much about them until tomorrow. But there is one thing we can chase up now.”
“Yes?”
“Who had the opportunity to take the pen and the knife from the ruins of the old Lazy Luncheonette? There’s one man who might know, and even on Sunday, I know exactly where to find Walt Eshley.”
“Who?”
“The demolition contractor.” Joe waved at the windscreen. “Drive on. I’ll direct you as we go.”
Denise mock-saluted. “Very good, sir.”
***
Walter Eshley was not so much indignant as determined when confronted by Joe and Denise.
“I know what you’re trying to say, Joe, but you’re knocking on the wrong door. My lads took nowt from that site. They never take anything from any site. They wouldn’t dare. It’d be me they were ripping off and I’d cut ’em up for the frying pan if I caught ’em.”
In his early sixties, dressed in a shabby suit and an ageing trilby, with an unlit, hand-rolled cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, he looked less like a businessman, more like a racecourse tipster, and an unsuccessful one at that. The impression was heightened by a copy of the Sunday Mirror jutting from his jacket pocket, but clearly folded with the sports pages open.
His yard was on the industrial side of Sanford, a small, dingy and untidy square of rough land on which were parked several tipper lorries and a low-loader with a large, mechanical digger sat on its trailer.
“We were on standby at Britannia Parade for weeks while you were arguing the toss with the muppets in the town hall. Vaughan was always complaining about the cost of having my crew standing idle. We were supposed to take it down brick by brick, so as not to bother the traffic on Doncaster Road. But, when we finally got the go ahead, on the day of the fire, Brad Kilburn and his pals declared the place unsafe. We had to rip it down with the machine.” Eshley waved at the low-loader and its cargo. “If that pen and knife were there, they were buried under the rubble and if anyone found ’em when we’d cleared up. They wouldn’t have been in good nick.”
“So what are you telling me, Walt?”
“If anyone took ’em on that morning, it had to be either the firemen or plod. They were the only ones who went into the building.”
While Denise looked on, Joe strummed his lips. He faced her and raised his eyebrows.
“Could Vaughan have taken them, Mr Eshley?” she asked.
The demolition man shrugged. “Possible, I suppose. I don’t remember seeing him go into the site, but he’s the kind who’d ride rough over police protests. Kilburn would know. He was the man in charge that day.”
Joe and Denise came away no wiser.
“What now?” she asked as they climbed into her car.
“Fire station,” he said. “Let’s see if we can catch Brad Kilburn.”
Denise turned the engine over and pulled on her seatbelt. “How well do you know him?”
“Brad? Known him years. Good, solid, Yorkshire stock. He’s a bit younger than me, but he’s done well for himself. Took him a couple of tries before he got into the Fire Service, but he’s stuck at it. And he’s fair, you know. When he checks my place out, he’ll find things wrong and tell me to get ’em put right, and as long as I do, he won’t report it. Unlike Pemberton and his crowd, Brad cuts you some slack.”
“Tough on his crew?”
“As I understand it, he’s as tough as he has to be. They have a job to do, he expects everyone to do their job, and if they don’t, he kicks. Other than that, he’s popular… so I’m told.”
The fire station was out of town, on the main Leeds Road, not far from where Joe lived. They found it a hive of inactivity. The three fire engines stood inside their bays, the shutters raised to combat the raw, summer heat. Gleaming, even in the confines of their bays, Joe guessed that the crew had spent the morning polishing and cleaning their vehicles so that they could take it easy during the hottest part of the day.
Red Watch Manager, Fenton Appleton, a year or two younger than Kilburn, greeted them with a warm smile and pleasant handshake, before guiding them to his air-conditioned office and providing soft drinks.
“You’re looking for Brad?” Fen sounded surprised. “He’s finished, Joe. Gone. For good.”
While Denise took the news with calm equanimity, Joe was surprised. “Finished?”
“Been planning it for months, mate.” Fen assured him. “He’s put in over twenty-five years and the service was looking to cut senior jobs, so he took the opportunity.
Got himself a tidy severance package, and he’s landed a plum little job in the Middle East. He’s taking that mate of his with him. Corbin.”
“They’re big pals,” Joe explained to Denise. “Brad and Alan Corbin. Some kind of relation, aren’t they, Fen?”
“Second cousins eight times removed or summat,” Fen agreed. “So what did you want with him?”
As briefly as he could, Joe explained their quest. Fen listened and when Joe had finished, he stroked his chin while staring at the blank wall behind them.
Eventually, he concentrated on them. “I’m not gonna say it doesn’t happen. It probably does, although, speaking personally, I’ve never come across it. But I have to tell you, Joe, if I caught any of my people nicking stuff from fire sites, I’d come down on them like the wrath of God. And I know for a fact Brad would, too. There are rules, y’see. Anything like that could be considered potential forensic evidence and the police might need it, so we don’t touch unless we have to and if we do, we report it to the cops and their scientific support people deal with it.”
“All right then, Mr Appleton,” Denise said, “is it possible Vaughan could have taken those items from the fire at the old Lazy Luncheonette?”
Fen did not answer right away. Instead he looked out through the window onto the rear of the fire station where watch members were sunbathing, one or two of them playing an impromptu game of cricket. When he eventually turned back to face them, his brow was creased.
“I say this, and I shouldn’t, but that Vaughan… Do you know what kind of man he was?”
“I’ve a pretty shrewd idea,” Joe replied. “We crossed swords often enough.”
“He didn’t give that for anyone or anything.” Fen snapped his fingers. “The morning the old place burned down, Joe, our boys were all out there. All three tenders, plus crews from Leeds and Wakefield. Brad was technically in charge. It was on his watch. He declared the building unsafe. Police forensic had to go in. So did we. Health and safety bods from the Town Hall went in, against our advice, but they did. Just to satisfy themselves that we were telling it like it was.” Fen smiled wanly. “That was your fault, Joe. The stink you kicked up about them demolishing the old parade. They wanted to be sure that the building could not be repaired. That way you couldn’t claim that they’d taken advantage of the blaze to get what they wanted.”
“I get the picture,” Joe assured him.
“Your Gemma had sent Vaughan away with a flea in his ear—”
“I was there,” Joe interrupted again.
“But you weren’t there when the little snot turned up again at three in the afternoon, were you? Brad had gone home by then, and I was Watch Manager. I warned him, the cops warned him, even Walt Eshley warned him to keep out because it wasn’t safe.” Fen shook his head. “Didn’t take a blind bit of notice. Said that now the place was burned out, it was his, accepted responsibility for his own safety and went in. Now I have to admit, I didn’t see him pick anything up, but he was pottering about for a good twenty minutes and I wasn’t watching him every minute of the time.”
Denise seized on the admission. “So he could have picked up both the pen and the knife.”
Fen nodded slowly.
“Yet you didn’t report it.”
“I reported him entering the site, but Brad was responsible for the final report on that fire and I passed it along to him. He never mentioned it. Probably forgot.”
It sounded to Joe as if Fen was on the defensive, and he moved to reassure the fireman. “Administrative box-ticking. The main point is, Vaughan went into that site before it was pulled down. He could have picked up both the knife and the pen.” Joe stood up. “Thanks Fen. You’ve been a great help.”
Joe and Denise emerged once more into the heat of Sunday afternoon.
“It proves nothing, Joe,” she said as she unlocked the car.
He opened the passenger door and wound down the window before climbing in. “Nothing that any of us, you, me, the cops, have learned, proves anything, but it does open up lines of inquiry. Dockerty hauled me in and locked me up on the strength of the knife and the pen turning up at the fire. But now we know they could have been there all along.”
Denise adjusted her seat, ensured the rear-view mirror was right, and slotted the key in the ignition. “Wrong. Ray locked you up on the strength of the video of your car turning up at the rear of The Lazy Luncheonette on the night. He released you the moment I demonstrated that it couldn’t have been you.” She fired the engine. “On the other hand, you are right about the pen and the knife. They do open up lines of inquiry. If Vaughan had them all along, then his killer knew about it and used them. In fact, I’d go so far as to say they may have prompted him to pin the murder on you.”
With the clutch pedal depressed, her hand on the gear lever, she smiled at Joe. “Where next, Sherlock?”
“Don’t think there’s much more we can do this afternoon. We have other people to see, but they can wait until tomorrow. I’ll know where to find them, then.”
Chapter Thirteen
Irwin Queenan was predictably outraged when Joe and Denise by-passed his secretary at eleven the following morning. “Get out of here. Now. I don’t see anyone without an appointment.”
“You’ll see us, Irwin,” Joe assured him.
Queenan looked past them. “Call security, Miss Darbishire. Have these people removed.”
Miss Darbishire made no move to do anything, but simply looked painfully uncomfortably at her boss.
“Alice has more sense, Irwin,” Joe said. “She doesn’t fancy being charged as an accessory to murder.”
The colour rose through Queenan’s thick neck to his cheeks, and eventually engulfed his furious face. “How dare you? How bloody dare you accuse me of…” Trailing off he reached for the phone. “I’ll call security myself.”
“While you’re doing that, Mr Queenan, Joe and I will call the police and tell them what we’ve learned about Vaughan’s parties and the people who attended them.”
Queenan paused, his finger over the keypad. Looking at each of the three people in turn, he put the receiver down on its cradle and smiled at his secretary. “That will be all for now, Miss Darbishire. I don’t want to be disturbed while I’m with Mr Murray and Ms Latham.”
“Very good, Mr Queenan.”
Joe read Queenan’s sudden acquiescence as complete capitulation and he anticipated getting everything he wanted during the next few minutes. He watched Alice Darbishire leave then rounded on Queenan. “I will bury you for this. You and anyone else in this building who was involved in this filth.”
“No. It wasn’t like that, Joe—”
“You deliberately sold my place out so you could get your jollies with these tarts at Vaughan’s place. And not only me. Dennis’s DIY, Patel’s minimarket, the launderette and the hairstylist. Five working businesses and you undermined them, shut them down for you own ends, and I do mean ends.”
Queenan made a weak attempt to fight back. “I did nothing of the kind. That parade was a shambles. It had been for years, and the best thing that could have happened was demolition.”
“They were good businesses; they kept people in work, they—”
“Gentlemen, please,” Denise interrupted. “There’s no point raking up an old argument. It’s over, it’s done with. Let’s concentrate on what we need to know. Mr Queenan, tell us about Vaughan.”
“Well, the fact is, I’m, er…”
“Gay?” Joe demanded.
“No. Not gay, but, er…”
“Both sides of the fence?” Denise suggested, and when he looked blankly at her, she added, “AC-DC.” When that too fell upon apparently deaf ears, she said, “Bisexual?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Does you wife know?” Joe asked. He was finding the conversation as uncomfortable as Queenan.
“Good lord, no. I was – am – very discreet.”
“So how did Vaughan find out?”
“He saw me
at a hotel some years ago. I used this hotel frequently.”
“I didn’t know we had any gay rendezvous in Sanford?” Joe grumbled.
“It’s not in Sanford. It’s between York and Beverley.”
A light lit In Joe’s brain. “Not the Palmer is it?”
“Well, yes it is as a matter of fact. It’s not a gay rendezvous, either. They simply ask no questions when you check in. I used it, so did Vaughan and if you know the place, Joe, you’ll know it’s out in the sticks. Well, Vaughan saw me there one weekend. A few weeks after that, he invited me to one of his parties.”
“And you accepted?” Denise demanded. “Even though one of his projects was going through planning?”
“This was four or five years ago,” Queenan argued, “And he had nothing going through planning at that time. At least not in Sanford, he didn’t. There was absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t go.” Queenan’s face fell. “Of course, later on, when he was seeking planning permission for Britannia Parade…Well, then I wish hadn’t gone. In fact, I wished I’d never set eyes on him.”
“Blackmail?” Dennis asked.
“In the nicest possible way,” Queenan replied with a sad nod. “He had photographs, even a video. Told me he needed my help and if he didn’t get it, these images would go to the press and all over the web.”
“But you’re a local government officer,” Joe protested. “You were duty bound to remain impartial.”
“I told him that, but he explained how I could persuade the committee without actually appearing to persuade them.” Queenan’s face fell. “And as you know, it went well until we came up against you.” Now his features took on an accusatory appearance, to match his words. “You got me hauled over the coals.”
Joe shook his head. “I did nothing of the kind. I fought my corner. I fought for myself and my employees. You dropped yourself in it, Queenan, by giving him the opportunity to get one over on you. Anyway, you objected to Les Tanner and he was replaced as chair of the disciplinary hearing by Kenny Pemberton, and he let you off with a slap on the wrist.”
Queenan shuffled uncomfortably in his chair and Joe’s mind went into overdrive.
Trial by Fire Page 15
